Fun with mind control, p.1
Fun With Mind Control, page 1
FUN WITH MIND CONTROL
The Invasion of Lake Peculiar Book 2
JACK RAVENHILL
Copyright © 2022 by Sterling & Stone
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Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
A Quick Favor…
About the Author
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Chapter One
As cold dawn gleamed across the surface of Lake Peculiar, Pastor Ellie stepped out of the parsonage to find her world changed.
For a moment, she couldn't parse the new reality. The church building was transformed, robed in a shimmering superstructure of sapphire-blue crystal, and she had no idea what to make of it. Her brain was immediately blanketed by the sensation of dreaming, except it wasn't a dream. Probably.
She suppressed a shudder at the transformed structure. It was magnificent, yes, but also surreal. Foreign. The historic old stone was still there — majestic, crumbling — except now the seams and corners were filled in and squared up with the mysterious blue crystalline substance. It was like reconstructive surgery on a badly burned face. Necessary, even good, but still unsettling. She had to work to find the familiar old building she loved inside the web of alien crystal.
The aliens hadn't stopped at healing the wounds in the dying building. They'd reinforced it, then kept going, reshaping the church in their own image. New structures cocooned the original building and stretched out beyond it, somehow angular and organic at the same time.
The huge shadow crouching against the morning light felt somehow bestial, half-alive. Strange figures hunched on the rooftop. The steeple forked dizzyingly upward, triple its old height, clutching at the sky with gleaming blue claws. Six buttresses penetrated the ground like thick fingers thrusting deep into the soft earth.
Awed and uneasy, Ellie edged past the sapphire-veined walls toward the faded red front door. For a queasy moment, she was convinced she would find the door webbed shut and once again suppressed a shudder. She was being ridiculous. This was a good thing. A blessing.
And the door was fine. As soon as she rounded the corner, she saw it waiting, wide open. Above the door was a once-friendly round stained-glass rosette that now had sapphire bulges sweeping down around it. It peered down on her like a vertical eye.
Ellie brushed aside the intrusive fantasies and plunged into the dim interior. She was the pastor. She wasn't going to be kept out of her own church.
As she stepped inside, she realized she was fighting against nobody.
Everything was fine. She was just adjusting to the first real move the aliens had made. It was bound to feel strange at first. But it was fine. They had saved the building. Probably improved it. Certainly done her congregation a huge favor. The whole town, really.
She padded through the entryway, the meeting hall, peered into her office.
It was still the building she knew and loved. The inside was almost indistinguishable from its earlier state, except the quiet dripping in the background was gone. She'd grown so accustomed to it that its absence felt louder than the drip ever had. The chilly drafts once continuously invading the space had been replaced with a warmth and almost holy stillness.
Glimmers of blue shone through spots around windows or between rafters suffering from particularly egregious leaks. Dust motes danced in the beams of early morning sunlight.
But what struck her deep inside was the sense of peace now pervading the building, a peace that slowly scoured away the fears that had unsettled her at first sight. It was as if she was suddenly breathing fresh air when she'd been short of oxygen or stepping out into nature after a year in a grimy and unfamiliar city.
She could almost catch the faint whispers of voices — well, not quite voices, but benevolent presences. The sort of thing people in years long past might have explained as fairies.
Ellie certainly believed in supernatural beings. Their existence was implied by everything she taught, everything her Scriptures said. But now, walking through this serene space, less alone than she had ever felt even though she was the only human in the place, she realized she had never really believed. Not like she believed in trees and the sun and her morning cup of coffee.
She would have told you she believed in angels and, if you pressed her, perhaps demons. But it was a theology textbook belief, a Bible study belief, the necessary conclusion of the positions to which she had committed herself in doctrinal statements signed and in sermons given and in words of comfort offered by the bedsides of the sick and dying. It was a religious sort of belief, comforting and a little vague and not, if she was really honest with herself, particularly important to her day-to-day life.
But this was different, this thickness in the air, this presence around her. It enveloped her and calmed her heart. It strengthened her with the confidence that "all shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well."
This suddenly made her wonder whether she had even known, all these years, what belief really meant. All the times she had explained that faith meant pressing on in the absence of evidence, had she just been justifying her own blindness?
Suddenly, the words of Scripture shifted, realigned, brought themselves to bear with a new reality beyond her old logic. With the shift came a new power. The peace that passes understanding. The hope of glory. More than conquerors.
All this and more made sense to her in a way it never had before. The times of quiet contemplation that she had trained herself to think of as religious experiences paled. She breathed an almost silent "thank you" to the presence that occupied the space, to the God she'd thought she knew.
She inhaled, slowly, deeply, then entered the sanctuary. As she walked up the center aisle, she ran her hand along the edges of the pews.
And there, at the front of the sanctuary, was one last transformation. The table that held the Eucharist was now embedded in a crystal blue altar.
As she approached, she discovered it was covered in minuscule etchings. She couldn't tell whether it was language or symbol or decoration, but it felt eminently meaningful. In fact, as she peered at it, she discovered the etchings were three-dimensional, shot through the crystal, not just scratched on its surface.
This, too, felt right. This encapsulation of the higher meaning should be deep and wide and high, should work in layers and inscrutable patterns. She touched the altar. Suddenly, she was crying. It was pure revelation, insight beyond content, enfolded in perfect acceptance. It was the home she'd never known she craved.
Time passed. Several long moments, or maybe much more.
Her hand parted from the altar.
Ellie felt refreshed, renewed.
She walked back through the building, and as she stepped outside, she understood. The titans weren't trying to twist the church to their own ends. It was a sign of peace. It was their best attempt to understand and extrapolate the original builder's intentions. They wanted to make it even more itself. It was an overflow, an abundance. Pure grace. A foretaste of glory.
It knelt in the grass like a living thing, or the closest they could make it resemble one. The new steeple was like a tree spreading wide, embracing the sky. The round stained-glass window above the door was enfolded like a stone in a river of abundance. The new flying buttresses poured off the roof like waterfalls of crystal, plunging deep to feed the heart of Lake Peculiar.
Ellie walked back to the parsonage, more fully at peace than she could remember ever being.
She started at the sight of one of the titans kneeling between two of the flying buttresses, his head bowed. She was not ready to approach the creature, but she paused for a long moment in quiet contemplation. It was perfectly still, utterly calm, a holy being from beyond the sky. Now that she understood them, she could sense its benevolence.
She smiled, contentment blanketing her mind, then walke
Yes. Everything was fine.
Chapter Two
Journey stepped out onto the front porch of Ellie's parsonage, stretching her arms high as sleep worked itself out of her body. It was morning, and the air was fresh and clean-smelling after last night's storm. She breathed deep and let out a contented sigh. It felt like a renewal of hope, even with the heaviness of the dream still lingering in her mind.
"Hey." Sam sounded subdued.
She was feeling a little shy herself. The darkness of the dream still clung to her mind. But she wasn't about to let it win, so she forced a small smile. "Beautiful day."
Sam hesitated, then slipped an arm around her. "Totally."
Journey leaned into him to let him know it was okay.
Another moment of hesitation passed. "I wish you could see this."
Something inside her soured with unease, like the soundtrack of her life had just slipped off key. "See what?"
He was just talking about the beautiful lake or the rain-washed town or something. He had to be. But suddenly, somehow, she was full of dread. The claustrophobia of the dream still clung to her. It was quickly becoming all she could notice.
"The church building. I don't know how to explain it, exactly."
"Oh, no." For a vivid moment, the dream was back with her. Not just the clinging oppression, but all of it. The three chalk-white bald figures standing a head taller than any human. The rings of devotees encircling them, swaying back and forth. And looming behind them all, an impossible structure of gray stone and gleaming blue crystal.
And with that, she understood.
"It's happening, isn't it? It's covered in blue crystal. The old building's still there, but it's all filled in and built up. Isn't it?"
"Yeah. How did you know?"
"How do you think?"
It felt like a blow to the stomach. Like she'd been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it just had. Except there was so much more to follow. This was just the beginning. It was confirmation that her dream had been telling the truth, that this little town was doomed.
She wished she felt scared, or angry, or anything. But the truth was, right now she just felt numb, tired. The presence — their presence — pressed in on her mind, and now she wondered how she'd ever mistaken it for a fading echo of the dream.
Yesterday had been a day of victory. They had stopped the town from giving in wholesale to the titans. They'd cut off Gus's stupid plan. And, as a cherry on top, now she had Sam.
She hadn't thought even then that this was the end of it, that they had actually won.
But now it was hitting home what kind of fight they had in front of them. Just how real it all was. If the aliens could do this, and do it overnight, Gus would have no trouble convincing the town the aliens came in peace.
Back when it had just been a dream, she hadn't understood the significance of the gleaming blue building. It was just another strange detail in a surreal vision of the future.
Now, though, she knew this building was the heart and soul of Lake Peculiar, knew how hard Pastor Ellie had been fighting to save it. Knew what it would mean to the town that the aliens had miraculously rescued it overnight. Clearly, they had powers. Clearly, they were benevolent. Clearly, they were here for the good of Lake peculiar. The story would write itself, and now no one would question it for a second.
They would all get sucked in, and soon they would all be mindless cultists, swaying back and forth as they sat cross-legged in the dewy grass in the shadow of the building Sam wished she could see.
Chapter Three
Ellie walked into the living room to find Sam and Journey sitting on the couch together, looking worried. A glass of water sat neglected on the coffee table. Journey perched at the edge of her seat, closed in on herself, a look on her face like she was about to vomit. Sam hovered beside her, doing his best to offer some sort of comfort.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Journey, are you okay?"
"I'm … yeah. I'll be okay."
She was trying to put off Ellie's worries, but her tone had the opposite effect.
"What happened? Was she sick? Was there some sort of accident? A problem with one of the locals?
"It's — I don't think we need to worry about it," said Journey.
"Maybe we should tell her," said Sam. "It could be important."
"What is it?" Ellie insisted. "You can tell me, Journey. Whatever it is."
"Fine. It's your church," she blurted. "Okay? It's them. Although if you can't feel it, I'm not sure I can exactly describe the problem to you."
"Try." Part of her didn't want to hear it. After all, wasn't she sort of committed? She wasn't exactly in a position to turn down what they'd done to the church. Full repairs and more at no cost. And besides, it wasn't as if they had asked her permission before they did it. If it turned out the transformation was dangerous, or some kind of trap, it would be a lot easier not to know it.
Then again, it was never a good idea to ignore facts just because they were inconvenient.
"I think I would like to move out," Journey said, not exactly answering Ellie's question. "Maybe out to — I don't know. Not too close to the church. I've got to get away."
"Away from what?" Ellie pressed.
Journey looked up, her face pale. Ellie found her blind eyes disconcerting, try as she might to be open-minded and accepting and … whatever else a pastor was supposed to be.
"I can feel them. I can feel your church, and that box in the middle of it."
"What box?" asked Sam.
But Journey kept talking in a dull monologue. "Pressing in on my mind. All the time. It's not quite as bad when I get away from them. And it's not quite as bad when I've got something between me and them. These walls help. But even so, I'm constantly right on the edge."
Ellie nodded pensively, then realized Journey couldn't see the gesture and murmured, "Yeah."
"All right," said Journey, and it sounded like she was steeling herself to follow through on something hard. "This is going to sound weird, but I guess that's par for the course at the moment. Short version is I've been dreaming about this for weeks, and it's finally happening. And I had the same dream just now, when I walked out onto the porch. Getting that close to them. It pushed me straight into it. I'm right on the edge of it again now. If I think about it the wrong way, I'm sure I can make it happen."
"The dream?"
"The nightmare. Yeah." Journey swallowed, still looking a little nauseated.
"Want some water?" Sam passed her the glass then gently put her hand on it.
"Thanks." She took a few sips before handing it back.
"Are you sure they're bad?" Ellie asked. Probably a stupid question, but she had to be sure. "It's perfectly natural to have bad dreams about something like this. I mean, this is one of the most disruptive events in human history. And we're right in the middle of it. It's happening to us. But just because your brain reacts to it doesn't necessarily mean—”
"Every night I see that building covered in blue crystal."
Ellie's eyebrows rose. Journey had pointed directly at the church, possibly at the altar itself.
"And next to it are three tall bald white muscular men, and around them are all these regular people, just regular soccer moms and farmers and grandparents, sitting on the ground in rings around them, swaying back and forth and chanting. And I see people walking around in sync like puppets. And I go blind—" Her voice failed her.
Ellie's brow furrowed. It was troubling.
"I go blind again. Do you understand? Do you know what that's—"
