The Adventures and Exploits of Mabel Hawkins (Deceased) Volume 2

By Geoff Collins

Collecting the soul of an airline pilot whos about to have a heart attack is all in a days work for a trainee angel; but when the angel in question is the disaster prone Mabel Hawkins, things are bound to become complicated. The discovery that one of the passengers is a terrorist, intent on destroying the plane and all on board doesnt help. If Mabel shows up at the Pearly Gates accompanied by a couple of hundred recently deceased airline passengers, St. Peter will assume its all her fault and start shouting at her again; especially as the passenger list includes a group of elderly nuns.

Meet Mabel Hawkins, LEnfant terrible of the angelic realm. Whether her task is to guard some priceless religious artefacts, or simply collect the soul of someone whos died in their sleep and doesnt realise that they are dead, every mission ends in disaster. Eventually, even the venerable St. Peter has to seek advice from a higher authority before sending her out on an assignment.

A delightful, laugh-out-loud romp through the afterlife with Heavens most disaster prone trainee angel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Jan 31, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452512570

Geoff Collins

GEOFF COLLINS was born and raised in England, but managed to escape in his early twenties. After ten years of living in a number of African countries while working as an aircraft maintenance mechanic, he returned to the UK where he spent the next couple of years teaching people to drive and driving mini-cabs at night in London. He then wandered off again, this time following the hippie trail across Europe and Asia, finally ending up in Australia where he became an Australian citizen and trained as a clinical hypnotherapist. Eventually fate led him to Port Macquarie on the beautiful mid-north coast of New South Wales, where he firmly closed the gate behind him and has refused to move since. In 2004, he began writing short stories with some success in literary competitions, although none of his efforts could truthfully be called literature. A couple of years later, some say when he was horribly hungover, the spirit of a recently deceased little old lady took advantage of his condition and threatened to haunt him forever unless he wrote a book about her afterlife.

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Copyright © 2014 Geoff Collins.

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Cover design and illustration by Gary Young

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-1256-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-1257-0 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 01/30/2014

With Thanks

To Mabel, wherever (and whoever) you are, for bringing so much laughter and delight into my life and the lives of those who have read your stories.

With special thanks to, Brian Tolagson, Marian Easterbrook and Rachel Palmer for their invaluable work in proof reading the manuscript.

Contents

1   Saving the Sacred Scrolls

2   Clarissa

3   Angel Flight

4   The Garden Party

5   On the Slab

6   Death by Moggins

7   And Mother Goes Too

8   Taming the feral priest

9   Reincarnation time

1

Saving the Sacred Scrolls

Ah Mabel, there you are.

Course I’m here, you silly old saint. Where else would I be? You just summoned me – remember?

Of all the Saints in Heaven Saint Peter stood out as the most forgiving. Although it had taken considerable effort to come to terms with the disaster prone trainee angel’s latest debacle, he couldn’t stay angry with her for long.

Since her arrival at the Pearly Gates, wearing a huge grin and an impressive assortment of dairy products when her latest incarnation was terminated by Bertie Higgins’ runaway milk delivery van, trainee angel Mabel Hawkins had cheerfully created more disasters than anyone else in the history of the afterlife. Her extensive litany of debacles read like a catalogue of Hollywood disaster movies.

So far, her record (not counting being expelled from her initial angel training course on the very first day) included killing a priest and then manipulating events so that he became reincarnated as the twin sister of a notorious gangster, threatening to upset the balance of the universe by smuggling her cat into Heaven, and her latest disaster – losing a prospective incarnating soul (who appeared on the earth plane nine weeks later as a puppy called Maurice) then replacing him with a more docile spirit.

The old saint also had to suffer the regular embarrassment of having to explain her exploits to the Council of Higher Level Saints and had an uncomfortable feeling that some of the less evolved members were running a book on how long the trainee would take to make him lose his cool completely. However, apart from having the most forgiving nature of all the heavenly hosts, Saint Peter had a mental toughness that would be the envy of even the most long suffering martyr. Apart from that he was extremely fond of the diminutive spirit. After two thousand years of dealing with an endless stream of sycophantic trainee harp strummers, Mabel’s cheerful irreverence and good natured cheek was like a breath of fresh air.

Mabel, I have a little job for you and I think it could be right up your street. There could possibly be a little haunting involved, he added with a twinkle in his eye.

I’m all ears Your Saintliness, tell me more.

Well, there’s this little island in the Outer Hebrides called the Isle of Rathness and on that island are the ruins of an ancient abbey.

I knew a girl called Abbey once. She got ruined a long time before she was ancient. In fact it was before she was legally —

Yes Mabel, I don’t think I really need to know about that, thank you, interjected the Saint hurriedly. Now please listen. The Island has just been purchased by a multi-millionaire who has a passion for restoring old churches and the like.

I have no intention of becoming an infant brickie’s labourer if that’s what you have in mind. There are laws against that kind of thing you know.

Stop giving me ideas and listen. Now, in the abbey there are some ancient scrolls that no living soul knows about. They were brought back from the Holy Land in the middle ages by the Knights Templar and were hidden away in a crypt. Those scrolls contain information that, in the wrong hands, could set civilization back thousands of years.

So you want me to go and haunt the place and scare everyone away until the human race is ready for that kind of knowledge? Hang on a cotton-pickin’ minute Your Petership. You know that I’ve applied to be reincarnated back into my old home village while some of my friends are still there. I’m not going to hang about in some draughty old abbey in the Outer Hebrides with the arctic wind whistling up my kilt for hundreds of years and miss my chance of reincarnation when it comes. Forget it, Your Saintship. Send someone else.

The old Saint took a deep breath.

"Please listen and stop interrupting. Since it fell into disuse, the place has been haunted by some of the original inhabitants.

So why do you need me to go there?

The place is so far off the beaten track that only the occasional backpacker searching for a different kind of experience goes there and it seems that the resident ghosts have become bored with so few visitors to scare away that they have been seeking other diversions. A short while ago they discovered an emotionally disturbed adolescent in the local village whose energy has been attracting the attention of poltergeists and other mischievous entities and they’ve now deserted their posts to go and join in the fun.

So?

Your job is to persuade them to return to the abbey.

Won’t they go back anyway when the kid becomes an adult?

"They might indeed Mabel – but by that time there’ll be no point because the scrolls will be in the wrong hands. The site will soon be full of workmen engaged in the restoration project. The crypt and its contents are bound to be discovered and it appears that the foreman in charge has already been approached by a dodgy antiques dealer offering to buy anything he can find. You can bet any lifetime you choose that, as soon as the crypt is discovered, he’ll find some excuse to send the workers away while he searches for anything he can sell.

"He won’t understand the real significance of the scrolls of course, but he’ll guess that they have some historical value. Sooner or later someone will understand their contents and then it won’t be long before they wind up in the wrong hands so it’s vital that they continue to be guarded."

OK Your Saintliness. I’ll do it, but only because I like you – well, sometimes anyway.

Good. I knew I could rely on you Mabel. Off you go now and report to me as soon as you get back.

Mabel arrived at the abbey expecting, as