You have a clever idea cooking here, and, for the most part, you tell it well. And, unlike much of what I see, you're working with a real story. So far so good.

Alas, you have violated one of the fundamental rules of my reviewing universe:

Thou shalt not pull rabbits out of your hat.

Imagine, if you will, a story about an ordinary guy in an ordinary situation with a believable set-up and a development that's proceeding along an ordinary track. Maybe he's lost his job, or his girl, or he's looking for something... you know, ordinary stuff from an ordinary life. Then, somewhere in the middle, he locks himself out of his house, and the author inserts this: "Fortunately, he was a retired CIA field operative, and picking locks to him was like riding a bicycle to the rest of us." That's the rabbit, the unexpected trick that has no preparation and which takes us by surprise. And it's a cheat for which your reader will never forgive you.

You've done it not once, but twice. I understand why. You have a high-concept story here and, as is always the case, you have to figure out what to do with the high-concept supporting material that allows the reader to make sense of the center-stage action. You're trying for the same effect as AMC's HUMANS, which is to simply put your characters in the midst of the universe you've crafted for them, let them behave they way one would expect, given the circumstances, and leave it to the audience to sort it all out.

The problem is that your high-concept, the fact that Larry had a near-death experience, went to heaven, fell in love, and then came back, feels more like a crucial part of the actual story that you're simply referring to. That's the TV script short-cut, when you can't afford to produce the battle, the car chase, the earthquake or the collapse of the skyscraper, so you have a quick cut to the aftermath and have two characters talk to each other about what's just taken place. You spoon feed the salient details to the reader, but you're not actually telling your story. You're telling us (i)about(/i) your story. While the scene where she decomposes powerful, and well presented, it's pretty much a rabbit trick, since we have no reason to expect any of it.

The second time, is even less forgivable: Okay, maybe we'll go along with you and intuit that Larry's extra-dimensional excursion opened him up up to esoteric explorations once he got his feet back on the ground, which strikes me, actually, as another major part of your story that you casually dispense with in a quick paragraph. Stories aren't just about things happening, they are things happening to specific people, and what those people do in response. That's what keeps the reader interested, wondering what's going to happen next. Larry's journey, and his efforts to contact the other side, are part of his effort, the actions he takes. Characters taking actions as a result of decisions are the basic building-blocks of a plot. You've cut this out of your story completlye, settling for an assurance that such events took place.

I might point out that you also glossed over the climatic scene, which was the summoning of The Devil. You can't expect your readers to do that much work for you, and still walk away with a satisfying experience. You need to do more of it yourself.

One side-note: Paul violates another crucial rule of story-telling, the Rule of Chekov's Gun. Chekov is the one who observed that if there's a gun in Act One, it needs to go off in Act Three, and in a way that contributes meaningfully to the plot development. Otherwise, it's simply an effect for no purpose. Paul shows up in the opening scene, but he has nothing to do, except comment on things that a properly handled narration could do much more effectively. When we have a character in the opening scene, and he shows up again at the close, and contributes nothing, it simply fragments our focus and leaves us confused and unfocused.

Don't do that to your readers.