An Angel on My Shoulder Read online

  First published as ebook in 2011 by Ocean House Press

  This revised edition published in 2019

  Copyright © David Callinan 2011

  David Callinan asserts his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All Rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, copied, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  PROLOGUE

  The End of the beginning

  “We will erase certain events from your mind until you are ready and the time is here,” said the angel. “You have been chosen for the task because you are one of us.”

  Paul took another deep breath, trying to unblock the pressure. He looked around him. It was terrifying and disturbing, he thought anxiously for the hundredth time, to be talking to angels and other spiritual beings whilst in the midst of normality.

  He was sitting in a chintzy sofa in his familiar and comfortable living room. Logs were piled high on either side of the fireplace and out of the French windows he caught a glimpse of the midwinter clouds racing across a bleak sky. He squeezed his hands together in a childhood gesture of anxiety.

  “No,” he replied without speaking. He just blinked his answer in the shorthand language he had become accustomed to using during these strange, transcendental and celestial conversations. He thought deeply about the task for which he had been supposedly chosen. He did not feel at all comfortable at the prospect. In fact, a large ball of fear had formed in his solar plexus just as it had been doing on and off as the precursor to all the traumatic events he had been experiencing.

  This had been an intense and life threatening period in his life that he once believed would never come to an end and one he would never be able to forget or wish to repeat. Until now his interest in metaphysical and spiritual matters had been, he realized bitterly, purely academic. Even when the angel group first made contact and later, when the dark forces almost drove him insane, he still, somehow, held on to a semblance of his everyday normality. This then must be the true test of whether these experiences were real, or just a terrifying mental aberration. The problem was that the everyday definition of reality had no meaning in this situation.

  Paul could sense the presence of the angel group. Each member of it was an individual and left a definable personality impression on his mind so that he was able to distinguish one from the other.

  “We will erase only part of your record of experiences,” whispered Development Angel. “It will be some time before the next phase begins for you and in that time you will be hidden from the perceptions of the dark one. Only when events start to fall into place and you start to emerge as who you really are will it be alerted to your existence again.”

  “You will be left with sufficient memories for the first book to be written,” explained Punishment Angel. “Someone you will meet will help you. Then, much later, you will transcribe the second book.”

  Paul knew that he could keep no secrets from this group, whatever and wherever it was. No part of his mind, even the deepest recesses where he hardly dared penetrate, was hidden from these angels. He had learned not to care about this, but to allow himself to feel as deeply and as emotionally as he could, irrespective of whether they observed or not, and to learn to recognize his own inner demons; something he would have found impossible to do before all this began. He also thought that he must be crazy to be agreeing to such an absurd proposition or so-called destiny. His rational self still believed none of it. The obvious culprit for all of these staggering events was stress. The problem was that he was not suffering from any form of serious stress as far as he could tell. Madness was, of course, another distinct possibility that came to mind, but then, could a person wonder rationally if they were mad if they actually were mad or insane? The angels had told him that the whole mind and soul bending episode was coming to an end and that he would not have to endure contact with these forces for very much longer.

  Nevertheless, it was a nerve wracking moment of decision. To make it would denote an acceptance that what had been happening to him was in some way real. If it wasn’t, and it was some kind of weird hallucination, then it didn’t matter anyway. He would say anything to get rid of these spiritual intruders.

  But, it was also a seductive and mind blowing prospect. To play a part in the next phase of the development of the human race was simply an orgasmic notion. Paul had asked the ‘why me’ question over and over and no explanation had ever been forthcoming, other than that he had been born for this destiny or fate. This is what made the whole situation so absurd. There was nothing special about him. He was a middle aged IT consultant who had developed an interest in spirituality, religion, magic, the occult and so-called new age matters and had delved deep, but no more than many people. Why he should be chosen to transcribe a book which would apparently herald a new world order he simply could not fathom. Right now, he just wanted to agree to anything and get rid of them all so that he could get back to work and to his normal life. He was certainly no writer.

  “All right,” he blinked. “Let’s get on with it.”

  “Lie back,” commanded Punishment Angel.

  “Goodbye, my little cherub,” said Guardian Angel with real warmth.

  “Goodbye, Paul,” crooned Development Angel.

  “Goodbye, Paul,” said Prosperity Angel.

  Paul could sense an uncountable number of angelic presences then and at that precise moment he knew he belonged with them. He was of the cherubim. They had told him so. The angel presences were singing, as they had done during the worst moments of his experiences, in the most astonishing harmonies, the deepest notes of which reverberated through the very earth while the highest were almost beyond hearing. The sound was unbearably poignant and yet wonderfully and magically uplifting. The sound just took your soul and gathered it tenderly and soared to unimaginable heights of ecstasy. The angels were saying goodbye, for the moment.

  He felt tearful. He would miss them after all. He had never experienced such unconditional love.

  His mind went numb then. The experience felt like a train racing across the front of his brain, all noise and light and blurred images. Then it was gone.

  Paul lay on the sofa for a while just being in the moment, something he struggled to do normally. Now, it just seemed natural. The house felt normal again. He felt normal again. He ransacked his mind, blinking madly to communicate. Nothing. Outside, he could hear Sabre pacing up and down and closer the tap of a stray rose briar against the window panes.

  There was nothing there. But then, since the enigmatic Nuttley had cast a protective shroud of spiritual white light around the house, only the angels had been making contact. The ferocious and terrifying spirits that had turned his mind into their private playground and the awesome blackness of the negative dark evil force had been unable to penetrate the psychic screen of light, or else had done what they came to do and departed.

  Paul pulled on a warm jacket and went outside. He looked at the expanse of sky, grey with impending rain and speckled with ribbons of homeward bound birds. He called for Sabre and in an instant the terrier was by his feet, watching him intently.

  “Come on, boy.”

  Sabre had been the on
ly one Paul could confide in during the darkest hours of the past few months. The dog understood what had been happening. He knew some unusual spiritual forces had infiltrated the house, and his master.

  He had howled like a banshee at times and he never did that ordinarily. He had done his best to frighten them off but sharp canine teeth are impotent against wraiths, demons and angels.

  Paul’s wife Kate had been unaware of anything unusual except for remarking now and again about his odd behaviour. But she was used to his oblique way of thinking by now and just put up with it.

  The children, Annie and Rory, had not noticed anything untoward either. Paul did not know how he had kept, what amounted to, a virtual possession or infestation of forces he could only regard as spiritual individualities, such a secret from the rest of the family.

  Sabre sprinted ahead sniffing out a long familiar track into the woods near the house. Paul paused and looked at the river and the forest.

  “An angel on my shoulder,” he thought. “Where am I going to find someone to write it? Who’s going to believe it for a start? They’ll think I need medication.”

  Paul trudged into the woods, revelling in the sheer pleasure of not being forced to share his mind with any other entity.

  It was all Nuttley’s fault. If Paul had not taken his daughter Annie to the mind, body and spirit show, and, if he had not been intrigued by the elf-like Nuttley crouched over his pendulum playing what seemed to be a board game, then none of this might have happened.

  But it was the bald headed and brown skinned Nuttley who had been on hand to help him when white witches, spiritualist healers and even his great friend and mentor Malone had been unable to do anything. The spiritual healer Paul visited had removed her hands from his shoulders as though her skin had been scorched. The healer had been astounded, frightened, and had hustled Paul out onto the street as quick as a flash.

  “Sabre, here boy!” The dog came pounding out of the undergrowth ahead nervously trying to anticipate the flight and direction of the stick Paul was preparing to throw.

  The bottom line of this whole affair was simple. He was going to embark on an epic journey or maybe many journeys, both physically and mentally. He was going to be guided to meet certain people over a period of time who would play their part in channelling and directing him to meet the young man it was being prophesied he would meet. These encounters would feel like co-incidences or chance meetings but with profound implications. The first phase would end when a book was written recounting his odyssey. This book, ‘An Angel On My Shoulder’, the angels had told him, would alert the world to Paul’s story and this would trigger a chain of events that would elevate his journey and raise the stakes. Paul would then meet more powerful people, advanced beings placed on Earth for the same purpose as he. He would be changed by this process and be subject to mental, spiritual and physical dangers as he evolved to the point where he would be able to understand the words of the new world saviour.

  Paul knew little about this person except that he was now around fifteen years of age and could not read or write. He would not be linked to any religion or creed. In fact, his emergence would see many religions go the way of the dinosaurs. They would finally have served their purpose and be reborn within a new collective spiritual era.

  According to Paul’s angel friends, many thousands of people all over the world had been chosen for many different tasks, some seemingly insignificant. Not all the people Paul was destined to meet would be aware of anything other than that they were talking to a new friend. But Paul would gain something that would trigger the next stage in the path. It could be guidance or wisdom from someone. It could be a sudden insight or vision. It could be an inexplicable occurrence. And it would also be a journey back to his spiritual beginnings. Paul would not meet the person he was destined to serve until he had been properly prepared.

  Paul had to be exposed to a kind of purification process before the eventual meeting with a person who was going to change the world, in fact, steer it into a new phase of development, a true avatar who would also be known as the new Messiah and fulfil the prophecy of the second coming, but without the religious connotations. He would be Christ, Buddha, Mohammed, Zoroaster, Krishna and every spiritual or religious leader and guru rolled into one.

  Paul recalled many a conversation with his great friend Malone, who lived by himself surrounded by a library of books on philosophy, magic, voodoo, spiritualism, religion, metaphysics and science, as they discussed and argued the toss about the nature of existence, the destiny of mankind and everything from Buddhist mysticism to Atlantean reincarnation.

  “I’m on a five million year journey to create a transcendent light body,” Malone had told him in a matter-of-fact way when they had first met. “Pop over and I’ll tell you all about the Kashmiri doctrine of vibration.”

  That chance meeting had been the start of a long and close friendship during which Malone’s wife had left him for a young art student and his sixteen-year old daughter had died from a rare form of cancer. Paul wondered idly if their relationship and intense contemplation of esoteric ideas had, in some subterranean way, caused his own recent experience. No, he couldn’t see how. He lived a normal life with a normal family, did a normal job and paid normal bills.

  The impression the angels had left with him was that there was a shift taking place in human consciousness. This shift was not uniform across the entire human race, but would eventually be focused following the arrival of the new Light Of the World, the very person Paul was destined to meet; that’s if you could believe any of it. So, from mystical supposed saints such as Sai Baba, to people becoming interested in ‘new age’ ideas; and from genuine yogis to mom and dad attending yoga classes, the shift was taking place.

  Paul had always retained a critical faculty, unlike Malone who tended to jump into anything esoteric with his entire being and brook no argument. Maybe this was why Paul had been ‘chosen’. He didn’t just accept everything at face value. He questioned it all but rejected little. He remembered one of his early meetings with Malone in an Irish bar.

  “The human race is like an insignificant mass of ants crawling on the surface of creation,” Malone had said. “We are just a passing phase in evolution. It is only our egos that convince us we actually exist. It’s just an illusion. Everything that there is vibrates, okay? Some gross matter, like us, vibrates at a low level. Other material, like soul bodies, vibrates at a much higher frequency, impossible for human beings to measure. This is how the system works. As above so below. We are awash with examples in our everyday lives of how the cosmos operates, but we are too blind and ignorant to notice.”

  A stroke of realism hit Paul as he jumped over a fallen tree trunk. How could he just disappear and follow his destiny and not alert and worry Kate and the kids? He stood and looked back down the track to the river snaking its way through the valley. Then again, he didn’t have to do anything. Things would just happen to him. People would emerge and make contact. Like cogs in some cosmic wheel or the pieces of a mysterious jigsaw, he would be led towards his destiny. He had no idea what this would entail. His instinct told him there would be dangers. The angels had not minimized anything. Just as there were people in the world who would help him, there were others who would do him harm. What if he just did nothing? What if he just ignored the signposts, meetings, insights and coincidences that would lead him to this special being? What if he just didn’t go on the journey? He didn’t know for sure but he sensed that this would just not be allowed to happen. Why him? His mind had ached as a result of wrestling with this question. The angels had not been forthcoming.

  Later, Paul prepared supper. Kate would be home from work and Annie back from school. Rory was in the first year of an arts course but was dropping out to go bag packing his way around the world. Paul’s eldest daughter, Cassie, lived two hundred miles away. As he prepared pasta and vegetables he was overcome with a burst of love for his little family. Who were any of them in the
cosmic scheme of things? How insignificant we all are, he thought. And yet, how indispensable to the web of life and spirit.

  Sabre had settled down by the fire as Paul served supper.

  “Don’t forget it’s bridge tonight,” Kate remarked.

  “What’s our reply to one no trump?” he asked her. Kate sighed as if to say, not now, I’m tired.

  “You know I don’t eat beef, dad,” Rory complained.

  “It’s tuna,” said Paul.

  “As long as it’s not dolphin,” said Annie.

  “How was your day?” Kate asked him.

  “Oh, you know, laid in bed till lunchtime, went for a beer, placed a bet, called a couple of clients.”

  “I need a holiday,” said Kate, “somewhere different.”

  “What about us?” said Annie.

  “I’ll be in Australia soon so don’t include me,” said Rory.

  “We’ll take you somewhere,” said Kate looking at Annie. “What made you think we’d go without you?”

  Annie shrugged, dismissing the conversation. Paul looked at Rory.

  “So, what’s this about Australia?”

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Pendulum Diaries

  There are days when sunlight scythes through the branches of trees and etches the world into a still-life tableau. On such days time is banished as scintillas of light trap people in frozen poses, like statues, or shadows in a peepshow. It can last for less than a second but it might as well be a lifetime.

  It was on a day such as this that Paul had stood with Annie outside a dome-shaped theatre surrounded by well-cut lawns. A straggling crowd was making its way into the exhibition, ‘Connections’. This was a mixed bag of a show, part market, part new age bazaar, part chicanery and pseudo wisdom, where you could buy organic juice, fresh vegetables, candles and love potions, visit a couple of clairvoyants, sit in a tepee, learn to meditate or buy oddball books.