“I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at home in my palace, contented and prosperous. I had a dream that made me afraid. As I was lying in my bed, the images and visions that passed through my mind terrified me.”

 — Daniel 4:4-5 (NIV)

A scream.

A screech.

A crash.

Silence.

The settings and characters in Wakeman Pells’ nightmares changed nightly, but the plot never veered from the same wicked script.

There was screaming. The type someone unleashes when he or she knows that life will last only a few more seconds. A yelp like this didn’t exist in any horror movie he had ever seen. This had real terror at its root. A howl so loud Wakeman couldn’t understand why he didn’t wake up the instant he heard it. Oh, if only he could.

There was screeching. Tires vainly attempting to grip to pavement and halt a 1969 Camaro speeding through a convenience store’s parking lot. To Wakeman, this noise was the worst of the three. It sounded like a giant cat was clinging to a towering chalkboard by the ends of its claws and slowly sliding into an unseen abyss. Plus, there was the acrid smell of burning rubber filling the inside of the car, a stench so strong Wakeman thought it would fill his lungs and choke the life out of him before he could wake up.

Then came the crash … and the sickening sound of human flesh and bone colliding with steel, chrome and glass. It wasn’t the individual sounds of crumpling steel, cracking chrome and shattering glass that haunted Wakeman’s days long after the nightmare evaporated in the early morning hours, but knowing what created those sounds in the first place. If Wakeman was lucky — or able that night to force himself awake, which unfortunately wasn’t very often — this would be the end of the dream. But most nights it wasn’t.

Then there was silence … and the sight of a person flung several feet ahead of the car, and landing lifeless. Guilt, however, would hang in the air as Wakeman slowly released his steel grip on the steering wheel, wishing beyond hope that he had chosen to swerve into a group of parked cars instead of placing his faith in the brakes to slow the car down in time.

This was where the nightlyhorror film ended for Wakeman Pells. You could have rolled the credits and placed a giant “The End” on the picture. Because now Wakeman was sitting up in bed, fully awake, covered in sweat, breathing quickly and feeling his heart pumping like it would jump out of his chest. Sometimes the images were so vivid that Wakeman could swear he was still dreaming when he was truly awake, the afterimage flickering away like an old movie projected onto a cracking, peeling silver screen.

Slowly, after the last vestige of his nightmare melted away, Wakeman swung his long legs out of bed and onto the floor. He opened the blinds to the small window in his apartment bedroom and peered outside. A fresh snow had fallen overnight and there were a few people walking by and leaving their footprints behind.

After a few moments, Wakeman realized that his hands and legs were shaking, not because of the cold — he usually set the heat to 70 degrees inside his place in a vain attempt to shut out the harsh winters most residents of Duluth, Minnesota, were used to. No, the dream had shaken him to the core and he shook because it seemed as real as the actual event that took place less than a year before, another nightmarish movie reel that played itself into an endless loop during his days.

Wakeman glanced at the old King James Bible sitting on his nightstand, a gift from a childhood friend that he no longer kept in contact with. The brown leather cover was caked in dust, except for a few spots where rings had formed when he used the Good Book as a cup holder. He thought about opening it up for the first time in moons, but decided against it.

“What does it matter? I won’t understand a word in it anyway,” he muttered to himself while rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Genesis, Psalms, Romans, Proverbs. This thing should come with a Rosetta Stone so that people can actually learn something from it.”

Still, glancing at his Bible gave him an idea. It was Sunday morning, and it had been a few weeks since he darkened the door of a local sanctuary. Maybe showing up and sitting in a pew would help exorcise his troubling dream — at least until his head hit the pillow later tonight.

Wakeman had lived in Duluth for about 10 months, but already he had visited 21 churches by his latest count. His method of choosing churches to visit hardly was scientific. They ranged from word-of- mouth recommendations to choosing them out of the telephone book or newspaper. And he had hit about every denomination and worship style ever invented. Catholic and Protestant, Lutheran and Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian, stoical and charismatic, old-fashioned and contemporary.

But no matter the affiliation, worship style or the demographics of the parishioners, Wakeman Pells rarely visited the same church twice.
Each church had its pros and cons, but he had yet to find the perfect fit. However, Wakeman’s search had nothing to do with finding a church that matched his theology, had music he enjoyed or even preaching that gave him spiritual lessons he could apply in real life. He readily admitted that he knew — or cared, if he was truly honest with himself — very little about God. At its core, Wakeman’s nomadic search through Duluth for a church was ultimately about finding an answer to another nightmare that plagued his nights and came true every day.

This all-too-real terror would later force Wakeman to pull on a pair of sunglasses before heading out to a local church service, even though the sun had not fully risen and dark clouds prepared to shield its rays.