Shaman - The Awakening

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Book excerpt

The Gift and the Curse

I was alone at a table in the corner, playing chess in the activities room. The other patients were watching television, playing cards or some other board games. The television seemed to remain on Law and Order whenever I was in there. I had learned to block it out. We were all here for multifarious mental disorders or breakdowns and required psychiatric assistance in one form or another. This wasn't an institution for the criminally insane, but for voluntary admissions. It was a privately run institution and their patients were affluent or from affluent families.

This wasn't the first institution in which I had been a patient. When I was a child I had been in and out of these types of facilities. The psychologists and doctors attempted to treat me for my sleep disorder and strange nightmares. I was poked, prodded and placed under the close scrutiny like a lab rat. I was humiliated and treated as subhuman; someone without feelings or a soul. There psychobabble didn't really help much as you can see.

I have this gift or curse, whichever way you want to look at it. It has been in my family for years; trickling down through the generations. My grandmother, a Cherokee Indian, had the gift and her father, a Medicine Man, had it also. He had acquired it from his mother; and so on and so on. My mother didn't have the gift, but her sister, my aunt, acquired it. I consider it a curse, because it has been tormenting me for years. The Cherokee's name for it, translated in English, is 'Vision Quest'. It is the ability to have foresight in dreams, but not only to read dreams; to manipulate them. Historians and scholars refer to it as Shamanism.

These dreams were just nightmares I had as a kid. When I became a young adult and learned how to control the nightmares, the dream manipulation became something else. I worked with Dr. Gregory Banks, a renowned Psychologist, for years. He guided me and helped me to focus my nightmares and turn them into positive dreams.

Women who wouldn't ordinarily give me the time of day would show interest in me. If I dreamt of them in certain romantic scenarios, it was like I implanted my dreams or subconscious suggestion inside their heads, but it was much more than that. It was like the actions or scenarios actually took place! I would catch them blushing around me the next day, as if they had experienced the same dream. Of course I couldn't confront them about it, but soon dating became extremely easy! Dr. Banks called it dreamscaping.

It got to a point where I could have any woman I wanted, and I did. I had orgies with two to three women. I even had happily married women leaving their husbands' bedsides at three o'clock in the morning to visit me for sex. Then the nightmares came back! I had grown weary of the sex games because it felt like I was cheating, no; I was cheating! Would these women really be with me if it wasn't for my dream implants?

As soon as I stopped dreaming of the women, my mind went other places at night. Dr. Banks stated that my unusual subconscious mind was stronger than normal. They couldn't find any physiological differences between my brain and others', but I utilized more of my frontal lobe than they did. He also explained that at night, when the rest of my brain is asleep, my frontal lobe goes into overdrive.

I was always a bit of a scopophiliac. I would rather observe than participate; not like a peeping tom, but more of a voyeur with permission. So, of course I watched a lot of television news. It let me into the lives of others. This is what really began my quest into what landed me here in the loony bin.

I began to dream of these cases of people getting murdered. Unlike my previous nightmares as a kid, now I had actual faces and events I could put together in a dream. I could focus as Dr. Banks taught me. I attempted to notify the police on these cases to assist them and ended up their prime suspect, until they caught the actual killers or perpetrators with my assistance.

Once again I was poked, prodded and placed under the bright lights of their endless deprivation interrogating techniques, or 'interviews', as they would call it. It was a mild form of torture. They were no better than the childhood psychologists who did the same thing when I was younger. I felt like I was at Abu Ghraib, when all I was attempting to do was help. Still, to this day, there are some who think I'm a cohort in some of the crimes. They can't wrap their minds around the fact that someone has the abilities I do.

This gift that I have has been around for years in different cultures and forms. The Native American Medicine Man, the Celtic Shamans – druids, witches and others throughout history have displayed this ability, but modern man views this as a threat. Most can't even believe in a higher power than themselves, and consider anyone with advanced abilities as a threat; thus the witch burnings throughout history.

Once my assistance was beginning to prove valuable to the local authorities, the FBI became interested in my abilities as well. I was hired as a consultant with the FBI's National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime in Quantico, Virginia. There are several departments that fall under the NCAVC. The particular section I was associated with was a Special Task Force called the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (ViCAP) which was under the auspices of the Behavioral Analysis Unit. Our task was to solve the unsolvable when it came to kidnappings, abductions and serial killings.

In the beginning, I didn't know if they wanted to study me or just keep their eye on me. I thought perhaps their intent was to prevent me from being involved in any further high profile cases. There were still those out there who wanted me locked away somewhere with the key destroyed instead of being thrown away. I was an anomaly that a lot of authorities and people in general weren't ready to accept. Therefore the FBI kept my abilities under cover.

The FBI placed me in a section of ViCAP with others who had special gifts. Most of the Bureau referred to us as the X Files and the rest just called us the Freak Show. It truly was a circus of characters. Say what you want about the Freak Show, but our section had one of the best case closing records of the entire Bureau. We weren't celebrated or paraded around due to our unorthodox methods, but numbers don't lie. We were invaluable consultants and the textbooks were thrown out the window when it came to our section.

The teams were assembled with one special ability consultant. There were usually five to six person teams including a consultant and a SAC (Special Agent in Charge). The SAC for our team was Steven Weiss. He was a very cerebral, calculating and analytical agent. He was a born multi-tasker. As a child he was a chess prodigy and graduated from Stanford University at the age of 15, when most kids are going to high school. The FBI was lucky to acquire him.

Agent Weiss' parents were murdered when he was a youngster and the killer was never found. It was their deaths that brought him to the FBI. Perhaps it was a personal crusade, but he was still one of their best and brightest. The other agents comprising the team were Dianna Samboro, Amber Carson, Max Maurice, Paul Woodward and me, the special abilities consultant; Christian Sands.

Agent Dianna Samboro was an Italian American and former Olympic archer. She graduated from American University in Washington, D.C. with a B.S. in Psychology and remained in D.C. after graduating. Born and raised in Sacramento, California, her family was originally from Sicily. She was a marksman with firearms.

Agent Max Maurice was a star Linebacker for LSU, until he tore his ACL. He graduated from LSU with a double degree in Psychology and Social Studies. After college he enlisted as an officer in the Marine Corps before joining the FBI. His family was originally from New Orleans, Louisiana.

Agent Paul Woodward graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in Criminal Justice and a post Jurisprudence. Being from an affluent family in Houston, Texas, his parents didn't condone his career choice. He was supposed to become a lawyer and work in the family business. Paul was married, with five kids and a beautiful wife.

Ms. Amber Carson had graduated from Howard University School of Law and had a license to practice law in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, but chose to walk in the footsteps of her father, who died in the line of duty as an FBI agent. She also had an undergrad degree in Psychology. Her family was from Washington, D.C. She was a divorcée with one young son, who was born before she attended college.

Then there was me; I had a musical degree from the University of North Carolina. My family was originally from Clinton, North Carolina, and I just happened to be paired with these psychoanalytic experts. As much as I had been examined and prodded by psych experts, I guess I had a long range of experience in psychoanalytic techniques as well.

In the beginning, it all seemed so surreal for to us. Most of the teams took our team for a joke. I was nicknamed Freddie Krueger behind my back, but as the results of my consulting began paying off, they began to take me more seriously. As the caseloads increased and the criminal profiles became more vicious and violent, my dreams became the same. That's when things really became creepy and weird.

At first I was just an omniscient observer in these reenactment dreams, but eventually I began communicating with the killers and seeing things that could only be described as supernatural. Even my team looked at me like I was crazy and in need of medical care. I was officially considered weird and insane at that point. The FBI abandoned me after that last uncanny job and placed me in here to receive psychiatric treatment, but I wasn't insane and they knew it. They just couldn't accept the facts of what happened. Hell, even I must admit looking back that the events which occurred would seem a bit strange and unbelievable, if it hadn't happened to me.