An Angel on My Shoulder

by David Callinan

  He managed to get showered and changed without too much attention being paid and left hurriedly. By the time he reached his car in the darkened car park, patterned with shadows from trees waving under a couple of security spotlights, he had to withstand a full on assault. He could hardly fit the key into the car door lock as waves of black fear poured over into his mind, blotting out rational thought and leaving his mind free only to do battle with the terrifying darkness. He began to breathe heavily, remembering his yoga and Tai Chi training. He placed his forefinger on a pressure point above his heart and exhaled. His breath seemed to go on forever but with the exhalation came sheer irrational fear escaping as through a valve causing him to gasp and shiver with relief. He repeated the release technique until his pulse and heart rate had stabilized.

  He sensed rather than saw it.

  Somewhere in the shadows of the trees, leaves dripping with condensing mist, he could make out a blackness so dense it blotted out everything nearby. The blackness was real. It breathed and moved. It was alive. There was no question about it in Paul’s mind. Up to now, it had all been pretty academic; all this talk about love and evil and angels and destiny. But, even though he had been warned, nothing could compare with the experience of confronting sheer evil manifest in a tangible form he could see and feel. This black mass or presence could wipe his mind clean, erase it completely and forever, he knew that instinctively. He dared not focus on the darkness. He knew that if he went towards it he would merge into it and never return. He would be, as Lucy had described earlier, an inmate of an institution somewhere having his dribble mopped up by a bored nurse and being spoken too as if he was an idiot. But the darkness was focusing on him. The density of the power he could perceive was so condensed it was like a dark star imploding. Nothing could survive within that mass. Nothing of this world or universe that was certain.

  He heard the voices then and he saw again the opened mouths of the angelic choir, uncountable, indescribable. The mantra Ru-Ah, Ru-Ah, reverberated through his mind. He had been going blind, unable to see the world around him and being sucked in to the antimatter mass before him. Now, he felt protected by a greater power.

  “We are with you,” said Guardian Angel.

  The feeling of menace began to ebb and Paul could see clearly once again the car park and one or two figures hurrying through the light drizzle that frequently swept through the forest. Without stopping to think or communicate he started the car and drove out of the lot, back along the darkened forest road, wipers flicking to and fro, blinking in the headlights of oncoming vehicles, eager to get home to safety. He realized as the thought entered his mind that home was not safe. It was no safer than anywhere on the planet. There simply was no escape from this kind of superhuman force. It was awesomely more powerful than any human being could ever hope to be and who seemed like crawling brainless insects by comparison.

  I need some serious help, thought Paul as the miles clicked by. Malone was a friend but he was an interested bystander, He actually wanted all this to happen. It intrigued him. People like Lucy were no help and he couldn’t talk to Kate. Up to this point he just had not taken any of it seriously. It was just a mental phase he was going through that would ebb away as they always did. What was the central message of the angels? He was going to meet people over a period of time who were going to wittingly or unwittingly prepare him to meet this special super being at some time in the future at which point he, Paul, would have been through a mind and soul expanding process. Opposing him, he now realized, was a force that could drive him insane. If that happened, no one could help him. No one would believe him. Surprisingly, the very story he had been telling to Malone and Lucy and which they accepted without question would be the very story that could see him committed. No one would ever believe the likes of Malone or Lucy, both of whom might find themselves going down with him. By that time, he would probably be a babbling, incoherent lunatic, hearing voices of angels and demons.

  He arrived home in a state of abject confusion, terrified that at any moment some disembodied force would attack him and that at some point it would become obvious because he would not be able to hide it anymore.

  Somehow he had to conceal it all from the family. He cooked himself some supper and brought it on tray into the living room. Kate was on the telephone for one of those long, drawn out female conversations with a friend who lived three or four roads away.

  He immersed himself in some inane television debate on law and order while eating mechanically and trying at the same time to make sense of events. He began to calm himself and in an almost childish fashion, a throwback to his upbringing, put his trust in the angels to keep him from harm.

  He had a couple of conversations with Annie and Rory and wished them goodnight, told Kate he wouldn’t be long as she climbed the stairs to bed, and prowled around the house turning the situation over in his mind. There were deep-seated rumblings in his psyche but he pushed them back as best he could. He really had to concentrate on work. He had been letting things slip lately and he did have a sneaking concern about his mental situation overflowing into his everyday working life. There was a big meeting coming up which he needed to prepare for and an overnight stay job for a client. He trawled the web for a short time not sure of what he was looking for. There were a lot of angel sites but most of them were mundane and based upon books on angel contact that simply glossed over the real business of communicating with angels.

  When he eventually settled down beside a gently snoring Kate, he found it hard to sleep. Outside was a solid block of night which gradually lightened into a waxing moon-filled sky. Strange, he thought, how the pendulum is now hardly used at all. As long as the pendulum was the main method of communication it acted as a barrier between himself and his subconscious. Now he just had his eyelids for protection.

  He began to drift into an uneasy sleep but then felt a little tug of angelic contact.

  “We are with you, Paul,” said Guardian Angel. “Remember Ru-Ah. That is your mantra. It is also the cosmic and magical name of the One you will meet. It will offer you protection.”

  “What’s his proper name?” asked Paul drowsily. “And protection against what?”

  “You will learn this when you meet him,” replied the angel. “Meanwhile I want you to prepare yourself.”

  “Prepare myself for what?” Paul asked mentally.

  “There is always an opposing force at your level of duality,” said Development Angel.

  “You have been strengthened by burning off weaknesses which could be used against you,” explained Punishment Angel with what seemed like a wheeze.

  “All the riches of the universe can be yours, Paul. You must believe and trust,” said Prosperity Angel.

  Paul just wanted to go to sleep but began to notice what seemed like a denser patch of darkness appearing on the ceiling. He watched in fascination as the patch grew and condensed,

  “Hold on, Paul,” said the angels in unison.

  What were they talking about? Time for sleep not angels.

  The tingling feeling began at his toes and began to creep up along his calves. He had the distinct impression that, as it progressed, only fetid and rotting dead flesh was left behind. He tried to move his feet. He could not budge them, not even by wriggling his toes.

  Paul remembered the darkness in the car park and knew that the very same black energy now occupied most of the room. The paralysis slowly climbed up along his legs, centimetre by centimetre, molecule by molecule, leaving an ice cold numbness behind.

  He began to panic. Kate stirred briefly alongside him, muttering in her sleep. Oh no, Paul screamed silently. Not Kate. Not Annie or Rory. The denseness had almost solidified into a mass hovering above him. He knew he was going to die. He could not withstand this kind of power. If anyone had asked him for a description of evil he would have recounted this experience. Yet he knew that naming this force as evil was too simple. It was a necessary force and a counterweight to the joy and l
ove he had felt from the angels. Neither could be destroyed because both were necessary at this level of existence. Notwithstanding any intellectualisation of the presence, Paul knew in his innermost being, in the very core and fabric of his soul and spirit that this force could extinguish his existence with no guarantee of rebirth or reincarnation. He would be eradicated forever. And beyond this world there was no time or space, was there? He felt such utter despair. Why not? Why not just jump off the evolutionary path? How much better it would be not to exist? All troubles and pain would be over for good. He would have no more worries or concerns. There would be nothing left of his personality or of his being to feel anything. No memories. No regrets.

  The paralysis had reached his stomach and genitals and the numbness now caused all feeling to disappear. Paul could see the black mass hovering above him. He could sense a real presence or personality within the core of the force sucking resistance and life force out of him. But the most intense emotion he now felt was fear. But it was fear of a kind he had never experienced before. It was a terminal fear that could not be resisted. It was, quite simply, the fear of imminent extinction.

  Immense waves of self-pity washed over him; piercing flashes of his life replayed. He remembered the first time he had set eyes on Kate. It had been at her university. He had been playing in a band and gigging at a student concert. He knew immediately that she was the one. The bar after the show was packed with bodies and perspiration. Kate was sitting on the floor with a group of friends staring in his direction. He remembered she had her long legs pulled up in front of her, arms around her knees. She wore black, full-length stockings. He felt an immediate charge, an instant attraction, a chemical reaction.

  “Paul,” the angels sounded urgent and concerned.

  His self-defence mechanism exploded into action, adrenaline pumping through his body as he lay curled up beside his wife unable to move or even to breath.

  “Repeat his name, Paul. He will help you.”

  “Ru-Ah,” Paul savored the sound of the name, not knowing what it meant, if indeed it meant anything. He recited the name over and over silently but intensely, resisting the power now floating directly above him, trying to penetrate his mind and squeeze his heart until it ceased pumping.

  Suddenly there were angels everywhere. Paul could see them behind his tightly closed eyelids.

  The angels appeared as they had done before, as myriad points of light forming mouths from which emanated the most perfect sound. “Ru-Ah,” sang the angels, including Paul’s angel group. The sound began to build into an orchestrated harmonic symphony of impossible range covering every semitone in every scale, below and then beyond hearing. It was an awesome, universe building sound that vibrated so intensely that planets and suns could be formed by its impulse.

  “Paul, you must lead the choir,” commanded his angel group as one. “Quickly, Paul. He is upon you. He is upon you.”

  Paul threw himself into the universe of angels. He raised his spiritual arms to conduct the greatest sound the cosmos had ever heard. “Ru-Ah,” the sound elongated and shortened, increased and decreased, destroyed and created everything there ever was and ever could be simultaneously. Paul experienced an intense desperation formed from the sheer desire to live. He felt his will being squeezed by the dark force. The angels came closer. He was amongst them. They were inside him and he inside them. Paul knew with unerring certainty that he was fighting for his life.

  “You are the chosen, Paul,” sang the angels. “This is the battle you must fight.”

  Paul could not move in bed. He was paralyzed with hope and with fear. “Ru-Ah, Ru-Ah,” the sound grew until it occupied every inch of space in the Earthly universe. There was room for nothing else. The black nucleus of evil gradually ebbed, squeezed out by the power and intensity and the desire of the sound.

  “Wonderful, Paul,” crooned Development Angel.

  Paul did not know what to think or feel. He lay in bed, listening to a far off dog barking and Kate turning over in bed. He was astonished the cacophony of noise and his sheer terror had not woken her. But then, there had been no sound. And he had been virtually rigid. This was now no game. It was deadly serious. He wanted out and back to normality. He remembered with fondness his readings and conversations and playing around with esoteric ideas. It all seemed so enlightened then, so much sheer fun. But it was a far cry from the reality of unreality. He knew now that at any one time there were precious few human beings alive who understood or who had experienced the real deal. The churches, mosques, synagogues, spiritualist gatherings, temples, covens and festivals of light crammed with devotees and believers were only at the edge of the truth - most nowhere near, however devout they believed themselves to be. Then again, he had to wonder about his mental state. He didn’t feel as if he had gone crazy. Nobody was staring at him with that patronizing look they adopted for the partially insane. So, that being the case, his experience was real. He felt it was real. He believed the angels actually did exist in some dimension he could only witness but not enter.

  “You are safe for the moment,” he heard Guardian Angel say.

  “How long?” he asked inside his head. “How long before all this stops?”

  “There are certain matters which must be explained to you and journeys you must take with us,” said the angel. “Then there will be a period when everything will return to normal. We will ensure that you retain the memories necessary to prepare the first book.”

  “’An Angel On My Shoulder’,” Paul transmitted. “An appropriate title.”

  “You will meet someone, a writer, whom you will work with. This book will unlock the next and most important phase.”

  “And Ru-Ah, what’s happening to him as we speak?” asked Paul.

  “He is preparing himself. He is hidden from the eyes of the world.”

  “I’m not sure I can withstand much more of this. Just what was that hovering over me?” Paul said.

  “One like us,” said Prosperity Angel. “This may be a little hard to understand but at this level of existence we all reflect the forces that constantly ebb and flow, form and reform, live and die, love and hate, understand and exist in ignorance, grow and wither. It is a level or degree of creation which in turn is generated by the impulse which in turn emanates from the vibration of spirit and then of gross matter.”

  “And the impulse is fuelled by energy thus completing the circle,” Paul beamed the thought.

  “That is a good way of putting it,” said Guardian Angel.

  “So, how can human beings develop?” asked Paul, fascinated in spite of his physical tiredness and the almost comic realization that he was just lying in bed thinking.

  “This is what Ru-Ah will explain. Human beings will grow in spirit and become as they used to be. They will begin to understand the nature of energy and of cosmic forces.”

  “What about science and scientific thought?” asked Paul. “There has always been a conflict between religion and science.”

  “That, too, will pass,” said Development Angel. “You will meet the appropriate people on your journey towards Ru-Ah. You will see how science, as you understand it and, what you describe as, spirituality and cosmic mysticism are simply ways of understanding the same fundamental creative processes. Human brains will begin to develop further and receive a greater range of vibratory impulses and developmental information. But, that’s enough for now. It is time for you to sleep.”

  That night Paul was plunged into another vivid dreamscape. He was with a companion but couldn’t say whom. There was a house, pretty ordinary, with a verandah situated on the outskirts of a town. Paul did not recognize the house, or the town, but they were, nevertheless, familiar. Several times he approached the house with the other person who always shadowed him and walked slightly behind. There were other houses in the vicinity but this one stood alone and the windows were dark. As they approached the house Paul became aware of an increasing pressure on his head. He looked up and was shocked
to see the sky leaden black and descending. The darkness pervaded the town and the house. The sky was boiling with a black density that could crush everything in its path. It was close to the Earth and falling. He knew he had to get inside the house to be safe from impending disaster. In a panic, he rushed to the side door of the house noticing that he was now alone. The door was locked. The pressure on and inside his head was almost unbearable.

  The door finally gave way and he stumbled inside, crying with relief. Outside the windows pitch darkness covered the Earth and crowded in on the house. Paul knew he had to stay inside to be safe. There was no one around, no one to talk to. He knew this had been a family home at some time. It was comfortably furnished but nothing special.

  The dream replayed itself several times, unravelling as it went, distorting the time frame. Each dream sequence ended with Paul just getting inside the door in time with his heart pounding and stress level off the Richter.

  He awoke to a pink sunrise and a fluttering breeze entering through the open timber-framed windows. Kate was bustling around getting dressed. Morning wasn’t her best time. It was probably wise to say little, particularly anything fatuous or funny. Paul had noticed that she had become a little touchier since she had been to that women’s assertiveness evening. Even more reason to let sleeping dogs lie. And speaking of dogs, it was Paul’s turn to take Sabre for a walk before breakfast and before he left the house for a client meeting.

  But the events of the night were firmly in the front of his mind. He remembered the dream vividly, which was unusual. And he remembered the psychic attack. He had been utterly convinced he was going to die. He saw Kate watching him with a peculiar expression, as it she was about to say something. Instead she checked herself the full-length mirror and went downstairs.