Chapter Nine
Hawk walked home with Shauna. They had mapped out a plan and decided to stay within the boundaries of the U.S. There were enough people to interview without having to do any major traveling. Susan and Hutch agreed to stay behind and do what they could such as entering the data as the others went along, as well as fielding phone calls. First they would place ads in the places they planned to go asking for open-minded people who had friends or relatives who had died during natural disasters and if they would be interested in helping with a study in which a medium would endeavor to contact the ones who had passed. These ads would include probable dates and contact numbers. Then Hutch arranged for a local town building or room to rent for the events. The dates had to be flexible as they had no way of knowing the number of people who were responsive to this. They planned their trip according to what they hoped would bring the biggest turnouts. But they really couldn’t know ahead of time, so they used a lot of intuitional guidance, especially from Shauna, who was gifted in this particular area.
Shauna and Hawk made it just in time to make a very large deposit at the bank, then went back to his place for the night. He cooked dinner for the two of them and they had candles and wine, a nice Zinfandel. Shauna wondered when their “honeymoon” period would end and maybe the candles and niceties like that would go the way of the wind. She decided to just enjoy things the way they were in the here and now and forget about the future. One day at a time was her motto. Sometimes it was one breath at a time.
They decided to watch a program on PBS about how the Mayan glyphs had gotten slowly decoded, at one point with the help of a 13 year old boy who was at some ruins with his father. Shauna thought how cool it must have been to be that boy. Hawk and Shauna cuddled up together on his sofa and before the show was over they were making love again.
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Early the next morning Shauna was calling to rent a minivan for their trek. She wanted a nice big comfortable one with plenty of room for all who were going. She also rented a car top carrier for the luggage so they wouldn’t be cramped.
“Ya know,” said Shauna, “we could end up winning the Nobel Peace Prize for this,” and she laughed.
“Right,” said Hawk, smirking. “We’ll probably end up blown hither and yon like the rest of humanity. How’s that for a reward?”
Shauna stood up from the kitchen chair where she’d been making calls and put her arms around him. “Ya know what?”
“What?” he said as he put his arms around her.
“I love you.”
Hawk searched her eyes for a moment.
“You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted to tell you that,” she said quickly, smiling.
“No. I mean I do. I mean...I love you, too,” and he kissed her deeply. Shauna’s mind went blank and she felt purely blissful. She felt like she’d been waiting for this man all her life, and here he finally was, in her arms, loving her.
Hawk had everyone take the next two days off before the trip so they could relax and prepare for the voyage. Rob called Shauna’s the next morning to talk to Hawk. There was something pressing on his mind.
“I hate to bring this up, but with our discussion of epidemiology yesterday I guess it just popped into my brain,” said Rob.
“Before you say anything, is this gonna screw with our already screwed up data, Rob? asked Hawk.
“Yeah. Kinda sorta.”
“Then do I really need to hear it?”
“Do you not want to hear it?”
“Okay, I guess I do. Go ahead. Tell me.”
“It’s got to do with airplanes,” said Rob. “It’s not exactly what we’re looking for, but I think it has huge implications. I was just reading about it last night when I was online.”
“Spit it out then. Are you saying we should include non-natural disasters as well?”
“I don’t know. Just hear me out. You know how we all have innate psychic abilities, how some have just developed them to a higher degree?”
“Right, go on.”
Well, this guy named D.L. Stanton did a study in 1958 of airplane and train crashes. And what he found was that full planes and trains rarely if ever crashed and killed people.”
“Okay. What has this got to do with...?”
“The average percent of capacity was 61% for disasters and 76% for non-disasters. That’s a 15% difference.”
“So,” prompted Hawk.
“So, people who aren’t supposed to die in a crash of that sort know somewhere inside themselves that they were not supposed to, or didn’t want to die that day. But thinking of it the other way around, the people that didn’t heed that inner voice, well, maybe they wanted to go. Maybe they even had something psychically to do with that event taking place. That’s a lot of people who either didn’t listen to their intuition, or who did, and still went on to die in those accidents. This also means we’re evolving psychically. If it were simply because of psychic ability, almost every day people die from crashes of some sort or another. That means there’s a huge chance that we indeed create our own reality.”
“Very good, Rob. This is amazing. A 15% margin is definitely significant. And there’s no telling how many people avoid just plain car crashes every day because they decided not to go to work that day, or to take a different route. We couldn’t even do a study on stuff that doesn’t happen.”
“Exactly. Stanton did the study on over fifty plane crashes and over two hundred train crashes. Pretty good numbers. There was nothing in his study about survivors, though, but it makes me wonder. I sure would love to interview some survivors, or use Noah and interview the ones that didn’t get away one way or another.”
“Geez, yeah. Unfortunately I don’t think we can include accidents in our studies. Although I suppose in this modern age they could very well be considered natural enough. Maybe we should ask the others what their thoughts are on all this.”
“I know Susan got a bit ruffled about adding epidemics. I think it’s because of her brother. I’d sure like to talk to some of these people who crossed over from being killed in a crash. I wonder if they had premonitions they ignored or chose not to ignore because they just felt like it was time to go, especially if they had something to do with the crash happening in the first place.”
“That would be something,” said Hawk. “It certainly ties in with our theory. I wonder if there’s anything else we could be missing. I guess if there were we wouldn’t be able to pursue it anyway since there’s so much on our plates as it is. It would have to be something phenomenal at this point. I think I’ll talk to the group in the next couple days and see what they have to say. Feel free to discuss it with them too, Rob.”
Finished with their conversation, they hung up. Hawk went to find Shauna. She was sitting on the back porch with a cup of coffee in her hands. It had started to rain a bit, but it was really little more than heavy fog. Hawk sat down next to her. He told her about the accident statistics and asked her what she thought about adding them into their swiftly growing body of knowledge.
“Hell, why not? It seems pertinent enough.”
Shauna had overheard enough to have gotten the gist of their phone conversation. She couldn’t think of anything else they were missing unless it had to do with animal deaths, such as great numbers of whales beaching themselves. There would be no interviewing of animal spirits, she thought with a smile. They sat there for a while, comfortable with the silence between them. Neither felt the need to keep a continuing dialogue going. And so they sat that way for several moments.
“I’m scared, Hawk,” said Shauna.
Surprised, he asked her why.
“I don’t feel any awareness that I’m creating the things that happen to me. I mean, I have goals and things I want to do, but everything just seems terribly random to me. I see people on the streets with signs saying they’ll do anything for food and I’m sorry, but I can’t just say, ‘Oh, they deserve it because that’s what they created.’”
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“I know what you mean, Shauna. It does seem like some bad joke at times.”
“Sometimes it makes me so sad and angry. The world’s a mess and we’re supposed to have made it this way on purpose?”
“Apparently so. But I have a feeling it’s not as simple as that. Maybe things aren’t really the way they seem. Those homeless people with the signs, maybe they’re there so someone has the chance to give.”
“There’s just too much suffering in the world.”
“Are you saying something big better come along and change it?” he grinned.
“Maybe,” she said seriously. “Something has gotta give, so to speak. We have been shitting in our own backyards, just like Meera said. The population is way beyond its sustainable limits. So many people, children, go hungry every day. We in the U.S. have such a narrow perspective on what’s happening all over the planet. We can afford to be blind. Comparably few of us lives in life threatening situations compared to some third world countries. I hate to think I had a hand in any of those doings. But on some level I supposedly have.” She started to cry, tears welling up in her eyes. Hawk put an arm around her.
“Let me tell you something, Shauna. I don’t think we do create this.” She stopped crying, startled. Looking up at him she asked, “What do you mean?”
“I haven’t totally come over to the other side, but I think there’s so much more going on here than meets the eye. Because even if we believe we are making our own lives up as we go along we still don’t get it right, so how could we be doing it? We’re just scratching the surface here. We’re focusing on death, a very narrow view out of all the possibilities. It does look like we have some kind of say about when we leave this world, but there’s a lot more to it.”
“True,” she sniffled. “Like the way our parents treated us when we were kids. That couldn’t have been because of anything we were projecting out into the world. I think everything was set up to be this way a very long time ago and we just happen to be the ones who are here to play it out.”
“Could be. But I have to listen to the higher ones on this project for now. I do realize that we wouldn’t destroy the planet willingly. Let’s say everybody found out and believed that the pole was going to shift in 2012. Do you think if we had any power over it we would let that happen? Would we allow the submersion of several thousand miles of coastline? Would we kill millions of people? I don’t think so. That’s why I don’t believe this theory has credence across the board. Maybe we have some small input into what happens, but to say we create our own realities is farcical at best.”
“Maybe when we do our interviews over the next few weeks we’ll be able to pin it down better,” she said. “I really want to know what’s going on at the deeper levels of this life. It’s been driving me crazy since I first started studying metaphysics. There’s so much out there on the subject, but we still don’t seem to know a whole lot about how to control ourselves or anyone else. This whole New Age ideology just doesn’t do it for me. I need to know more. I’m hoping if we can find Meera, or another Starborn one we can get more answers. The trouble with all this is the more answers I find, the more questions come up and remain unanswered. It’s like a whole lot of little loose strings that I wanna tie up, but I can’t no matter how hard I try. There are just more and more of them.”
“We’ll see, Shauna,” said Hawk. “We’ll just have to do the best we can. We’ve certainly got enough money to throw at it if that’s what it takes,” he smiled. So did she.
The rest of the day they spent going for walks and doing a little shopping. When they got home to Shauna’s house they made a quick dinner and went to have some wine in the living room where it was warm and cozy. They sat on the couch together and listened to some old rocky blues CDs Shauna had. It was time to relax and let the thoughts go through their processing. Shauna felt better about things, even though nothing was really ever settled when it came to this highly complicated life. She just let her mind drift and enjoy relaxing with the man she loved. Whenever life seemed to weigh her down she liked to think of Thoreau’s words: ‘simplify, simplify’. Being here with Hawk made her think of a Beatles’ tune... ‘Love is all you need’. She let her mind focus on just that one thing. And she felt good. For now.
The two of them fell asleep that way on the couch together. Shauna had strange dreams. In the first one she thought she was awake. She was lying on the couch, but started to rise above herself. She felt like she knew what she was doing. Slowly she rose, starting to turn towards her body on the couch. She almost saw herself lying there, but the dream changed. She was lying back on the couch in her body, but slowly began to step out of it. She felt weightless, like an astronaut in zero gravity, or like she was under water. Shauna had to wave her arms to make herself stand up. Finally she took a few steps, but was off-balance and fell back into her body with a rush.
Then she had a dream in which she was sitting on her dad’s lap. He was tickling her and she was laughing. He was laughing, too. It was a happy dream at first. The man holding her was now a stranger. It was no longer her father tickling her, but a man with a dark face she couldn’t quite make out. He was tickling her harder and rougher. Shauna began to cry instead of laugh. She tried to get away from this man, but her legs wouldn’t move. She wet herself. The man kept tickling her, but started to poke at her with his long bony fingers. They were those of a skeleton. ‘Please stop!’ she cried. Finally she rushed away from him and ran through the house calling for her daddy. But Daddy was dead, wasn’t he? Where’s my mom, she wondered frantically. Running through halls she didn’t recognize, the man tried to catch her. She could see his bony fingers in front of her face. He was about to grab her. Suddenly she wasn’t little anymore. It was the halls of her old college she was running through. It was empty. The dark figure was behind her somewhere and she couldn’t find her way out of the school. Panic kept her from thinking straight. The real Shauna usually had only lucid dreams where she was in control of what happened. Not this time. But somewhere inside her she knew there was something she needed to do, or to think of. It was somewhere deep in her conscious mind, but she couldn’t seem to manage to grasp a hold of it. She was too terrified.
Then Noah was there with her. She remembered him. Who he was seemed very important. Maybe he could help her. Putting all her focus on him, she was able to make a connection to somewhere down deep in her head. She knew who she was and what she could do! She shook her head hard from side to side to wake herself up. It didn’t work. She told Noah ‘if this was a dream I would have woken up. Shaking my head always works’. Noah just shook his head. Now she thought she was awake, but hadn’t remembered what she’d taught herself, that if you have to wonder if you’re dreaming, then you are. So she was terrified to think this was real life. She just couldn’t get control. Nothing could stop the bad man from getting her. Tears streamed down her face. Just then she started rising up to the ceiling, up beyond it and she could see down at the roof. Something was pushing her up into the dark sky. Her eyes opened and Hawk was trying to wake her up. Shauna wanted to cry, she was so happy to be out of that dream. Hawk held her and told her it was okay, but she still had real tears streaming down her cheeks.
After the dream was told, they went upstairs to bed, trying to figure out why she had had that dream when she had been so in control of her dreams for many years. She didn’t think she could sleep anymore this night, but she finally did after Hawk drifted off.
Chapter Ten
When Shauna awoke, the sun was slanting brightly through the blinds and she squinted against the glare. Hawk must have been making some breakfast, because she could smell coffee and eggs wafting through the house. She wanted to go back to sleep because she was still very tired after last night’s fight for her life, but she managed to force herself up and out of the softness. It was time to write down her dreams in her journal.
The first one was a lesson in astral travel, no problem figuring that one out. The second..
. Who could tell? She thought that perhaps she had been astral traveling in that one, too, in which case it was more real than your ordinary dream. She had actually been in that place with that terrible dark man whose face was a mystery to her. The reason she felt that to be the case was that when she was leaving it she was being pulled or pushed back into her body. What was Noah’s role in the dream? Was he trying to tell her something? Maybe he was there to help her realize her true power in the dream. Shauna thought she just might talk to Noah about it. He knew a lot of stuff about the other worlds we travel in.
“Come and get it,” she heard Hawk call. Perfect timing, she thought, and put her dream journal back in it’s space on the headboard shelf. This was one of those dreams she feared would stay with her throughout the day, especially since they didn’t have anything planned but packing and cleaning out the refrigerator so nothing would spoil while they were away. One time she’d gone on a trip and come back to the biggest science project her fridge had ever produced. She would never again forget that bit of business before traveling. Better to throw things out before they became toxic.
Dressing in short slacks and a long-sleeved T.-shirt, she saw that the sun was dimming considerably. Peeking through the downstairs curtains, she saw that it was going to rain.
“Good morning, love,” said Hawk as she entered the kitchen. Hawk was not dressed yet, but wore shorts and his old T.-shirt he’d worn to bed. That’s as far down as he’d gotten when they’d made their early morning trek upstairs.
“Hi sweetheart,” she said as she leaned up to kiss his offered cheek.
“Any more nightmares?” he asked.
“No, thank God,” she said. “I slept just fine, but I’m really tired. I think that took it out of me. I haven’t had regular dreams like that in a very long time. I’m gonna ask Noah what he thinks.”
“Good idea. So all your dreams are usually lucid?”
Quantum Earth Page 7