Angelic Pathways (4 page)

“Jake!” I awoke, clutching my blankets and shaking. I could have sworn I had screamed his name aloud, but my friend, who was sleeping right beside me during a girls’ sleepover, didn’t stir. I tried to push Jake’s tormented face from my mind, but there was a strange allure about him—and the dream itself—that held my imagination in thrall.

It was 1994. I was in college, in debt, and completely disenchanted with life, so I found the dream a vexing, albeit welcomed, distraction from the mundane. I spent weeks pondering its meaning. My angel with the crow-black hair seemed more like a demon at first, coming to shake my rickety spiritual life into a pile of rubble. Was this dream predicting a hell-to-come for me? I didn’t know. Perhaps it was more foretelling of a hell-to-come for Jake, as I would probably be one of the most difficult-to-convince humans ever encountered by a spirit guide.

At the time, I didn’t know exactly who Jake was, and for all I did know, he was simply a bogeyman that haunted all of my dreams and stood in the shadowy corners of my bedroom daring me to fall asleep. I tried my best to ignore his presence, or at least what I considered a presence. Though he often spoke to me in dreams, and I could only later vaguely recall his words, I was convinced that he was yet another figment of my overactive imagination.

For two years Jake haunted me in my sleep, until one rainy night in 1996 when he finally stepped outside the parameters of dreamscape and into my reality.

I was in a rare mood that night, hypersensitive to the world around me. I had been this way before, and it was annoying as hell. My senses were acutely aware of the smallest things. Eating was difficult—processed foods had a toxic taste, and the metallic taste in red meat was more than I could stomach. I couldn’t tolerate the faintest of whispers without getting a headache. And if my father had left an appliance on somewhere in the house, I could actually hear the buzzing of its electrical currents.

Visually, I was sensitive to light. But even as I sat in the darkness, light danced before my eyes, either in the form of bright flashes; rapid, streaming colors; or slow, colorful flows like something in a lava lamp. There was no escaping it. Even with my eyes shut tight, I could not gain the peace of total darkness.

All of that, on top of what I knew were nothing more than anxiety attacks, left me feeling stressed and clawing at the walls. It also didn’t help that I was coming down from a conversation I’d had that day with some college friends. We were all feeling as if we were trapped in limbo as we faced graduation without a clue of what we wanted to do with our lives. There was this sense of being lost and running against the clock to … nowhere. We had come to the painful conclusion that life no longer held any magic or meaning. Gone was the innocence of childhood. Gone were the hopes and dreams of doing anything truly meaningful in life. Here we were, all stuck in jobs none of us wanted with the realization that we were quickly becoming our parents, living only to pay the bills and nothing more.

With those thoughts still fresh in my mind, I sat alone that night in the silence and refuge of the family room and listened as a thunderstorm slowly moved in from the distance. I tried to think about other, more positive things, but instead my brain ceaselessly churned on the negative cycle. I knew if I didn’t find a diversion quickly, I would go nuts. Still, the thought of turning on the television, with all its light and noise, made me physically ill.

After a few more minutes of mental torture, I began to weep. I was so afraid of facing the world with no sense of direction. It was a world that seemed so broken with its many problems.

This is not the life I signed up for,
I thought as I clutched my hair in frustration and tried not to give in to the notion that there was nothing truly worth pursuing in life. At twenty-three years old, I was already angry, tired, and jaded. I’d seen all too many times just how unfair life was—to everyone. No one seemed to be happy. Everyone seemed to be clambering over everyone else to get ahead, no matter how it affected others. In what I then considered the muck and mire of humanity, I could see very little love or compassion; and those few souls who still managed to retain a bit of love in their hearts were often crushed under the heels of those driven by nefarious ambitions.

“My God,” I groaned hoarsely, “what’s the point?”

It was at that moment I heard a whisper. I thought it was my father calling from upstairs. Clearing my throat, I replied and waited for what I knew would be a request for a glass of juice. But there was nothing. I called to my father again. Still nothing. I sighed.

“Chantel,” I heard the masculine voice repeat in the darkness, and I knew then that it was not the voice of my father. A frost crept over my skin, and the hairs on my arms stood at attention. Gripped by fear, I wiped my tears away and slowly brought my feet up upon the couch. My only defense was a single pillow.

Of course I entertained the possibility that sanity had finally left me and that a trip to the state mental hospital was due first thing in the morning. And I knew that if I answered the voice, I would probably hear something I would regret. Was it a demon or devil coming to tempt me to Hell?

“Who’s there?” I asked, my voice muffled behind the pillow. I was frozen to that couch but not so frozen that I couldn’t bolt through a window if objects went flying through the air. After all, I’m a child of the eighties; I grew up watching films like
Poltergeist
and
The Amityville Horror
. I was mentally prepared to run as if my pantyhose were on fire, and, unlike in the horror movies, I wouldn’t look back or trip over a paperclip in the middle of the street.

“Chantel, please don’t be afraid of me. I’m only here to help.”

“Yeah … right.”

Help me how?
was the big question. Jake never provided a verbal answer; instead, he spoke through his actions in the coming months.

Initially, his guidance seemed innocuous enough. He proved himself to be a huge boon at work by helping me stay one step ahead of a manager who excelled at procrastination.

“Don’t plan on leaving work on time tonight,” Jake said, sitting cross-legged in one of my office chairs.

“Wha …?” I looked up, just as I was starting to pack my briefcase, to see my boss pass my door, then backtrack into my office with a stupid grin.

“Oh, Chantel, you’re still here! Good.”

“Told you,” Jake whispered. Because I often worked late, well past midnight after coming in at ten am, the night watchman and I were the only two left in the sprawling complex. To make matters worse, I was always parked in the dark, secluded lot a block away and well out of anyone’s earshot. I worked in an affluent neighborhood where crime was nil, but still, one couldn’t be too careful, and it was during those moments when I clung to Jake the tightest.

“You’re fine,” he’d whisper. “I would never lead you into harm’s way, Chantel. There’s no one out here but you, me, the trees, and a few ghosts who couldn’t care less about us.”
Ghosts? Great. Just great.
It was no secret that the century-old complex where I worked was haunted. Employees, patrons, and even contractors had reported seeing strange shadows, moving furniture, and doors that opened and closed by themselves. They had also heard voices, whispers, and footsteps when there was no one else around.

Many of the employees made sure to be out of there before sundown if possible. The night watchman, however, seemed to love his job because of the strange things he’d seen. In fact, it was he who turned me on to the late-night radio show
Coast to Coast AM
. At two in the morning, I’d be folding letters at the front desk while he and Jake sat back and listened to the show that covered everything and anything paranormal.

The funniest late-night moments I recall were times when a ghost expert or psychic medium was on the radio discussing the afterlife. Jake would just sit there and shake his head in pity.

“What a crock of …” he’d moan and roll his eyes, making me giggle. But his scoffing made me realize what I truly had in my presence. He wasn’t some ghost, someone who had refused to walk into the Light. He was someone who had lived, gone to Heaven, and returned to help us hapless humans along. Don’t get me wrong—I begged him numerous times to push a pen off my desk or change the channel on my television set.

His usual comeback: “My days in theater are over.”

Or were they?

Other than begging that I accept his presence in my life, Jake had but one other request.

“Write my story,” he would frequently whisper. “Please, Chantel.” His voice seemed so pain-filled that I couldn’t help but feel guilty that I used the excuse of my two part-time jobs, school, and Goth club hopping to avoid doing so. The man was relentless, but after a while, I told him I wasn’t familiar with the medium he wanted me to use. He had wanted me to write a screenplay, and I didn’t even know that’s what movie scripts were called, much less how to write one.

“I’ll teach you,” he said. I was hesitant. Here this spirit guide was bonding with me and establishing waking-world contact with me. Why me, of all the billions of people in the world? To this day, I still don’t know. All I do know is that the more he pressed me, the more I reverted back to how I was when he first spoke to me that night from the dining room—wary as hell. If I was going to make a sacrifice of time for him, darn it all, I had every intention of putting him through a gauntlet of spiritual challenges, including a homemade exorcism that I had learned from a book at the university library. I mean, I had to do something before I committed to him. Wouldn’t
you
after first seeing him as an inmate of some infernal prison in a dream?

As our relationship progressed, I became more unbearable than ever. Neurotic, even. One day I was accusing him of being a demon come to tempt me away from God, and the next I was questioning my sanity since I was not only hearing a disembodied voice, I was
arguing
with it. Worse yet, I could see Jake in my intuitive vision—my third eye—although I didn’t actually realize I
was
seeing him. I thought I was imagining him, visualizing him. But when it finally dawned on me that I could see him as easily as I could see any corporeal human, I only felt kookier. My life was starting to look like a Goth version of the movie
Drop Dead Fred
, only Jake was a lot cooler and didn’t cause me to do things that got me in trouble … often.

The biggest argument we ever had occurred around the first anniversary of his contacting me on that memorable night in 1996. The project he had seemed so desperate for me to complete was done. My screenplay won multiple awards at the university, but when I attempted to get it made into a movie, I unwittingly allowed the script to be stolen right out from under me. When I realized that all my hard work had been claimed by someone else, I was pissed off to a level of monumental proportions. I was angry at the thieves, the situation, the fact that I could do nothing to bring them to justice and the fact that Jake had even allowed the theft to occur. He had actually served as my mentor and muse for the entire piece! It was what I then considered my most creative moment ever. I blamed him for allowing my hard work and research to go to waste.

“Jake, go! I never want to see you again!” I screamed as I paced my bedroom like a caged lioness. “I hope you enjoyed your little game with me. You’re nothing but a damned devil, so go back to Hell where you came from.” Jake hadn’t said a word in his own defense. He merely nodded respectfully and vanished. I can only liken the feeling he left behind to that of total emptiness. Where there was warmth, peace, and security was now nothing. Absolutely nothing.

As the hours passed, I warred with myself. Part of me wanted to call him back to my side and apologize for berating him so mercilessly. The other part of me was still wondering if he was just some ghost having a laugh at my expense. Upon nightfall, I decided it was best that I move on without him. After all, it was through his influence and urging that I had missed what I then thought was the opportunity of a lifetime.

The next morning, I got up for work still feeling as angry as ever. My fury at Jake was still off the charts, and all I wanted was to go back to the time before he came into my life. I had gotten so used to talking to him almost every morning before work that even sunny days without him seemed bleak. This particular morning, however, I was determined to start anew. I thought putting on a new suit and creating a new hairdo would make me feel better.