Lucid

By Brian Stillman

When she was 11, Lucy McCall’s life changed forever. Her mother died, and her older sister Maddy fled their tiny hometown in pursuit of Hollywood stardom.

Five years later, Lucy’s life is about to change again.

Dream turned reality, Maddy’s returning to rural Eaton, Washington to premiere her newest romantic comedy, the aptly titled Small Town Girl.

Not only is Maddy a movie star, she married the biggest movie star in the world – action hero Jack Ford. The Hollywood power couple claims membership in the Church of Lucentology – a controversial religion as well known for a roster of big names as for the whispers of human rubble left in its wake.

Lucy’s father, Senate, is no fan of Lucentology, or the stranger he believes Maddy has become under the poisonous influence of the Church, and its unsettling leader, Horace Walton. Senate hasn’t forgotten the promise he made his late wife: he’d always protect their girls, no matter what it took.

An intimidating personal security detail accompanies the Hollywood visitors, helping mitigate the crush of press and enamored public descended not only upon the tiny farming community, but camping literally across the street from the McCall’s front door. All of this is more than enough to throw Lucy’s life into turmoil, but then the unthinkable occurs during the post-premiere party. Explosions rock the posh country club and in all the mayhem...a kidnapping occurs.

While the Hollywood visitors begin an intensive, secretive, and increasingly frantic search for one of their own, Lucy begins piecing together what happened in the days leading up to the attack, and soon realizes she might be her sister’s best and only hope of being saved.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brian Stillman
• Release date: May 8, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310306846

Brian Stillman

Brian Stillman lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and several cats. Besides a brief flirtation with Hollywood, he has worked as a grain elevator operator, software test engineer, and bookseller.He is the author of two e-books: a crime novel, The Lipless Gods, and a teen thriller, Lucid.He recently completed Exit The Skin Palace, the first book in a young adult horror series, as well as a crime novel titled Grimgrack. Currently, he's busy writing Surfer On The Drift, the sequel to Exit The Skin Palace.

Book preview

The first hint of the trouble ahead arrived when I was 14, flying back from my older sister Maddy’s wedding.

She’d been married at a mansion in Pacific Palisades. The bedroom I’d stayed in had a fountain on the balcony. If I walked past the naked baby angel and the burbling gush of water out to the balcony rail and looked west, I could see the Pacific Ocean stretching on out to the horizon.

My new brother-in-law was one of the biggest box office draws in the world. He was barely taller than me. He had a strong handshake. He looked me in the eye when he spoke. The next time I visited them, when he wasn’t dealing with the 1000 wedding guests, Jack Ford promised I could take his Lamborghini for a test drive. He knew a guy with his own driving course. Speed limits didn’t apply there.

Throughout her high school years, Dad had never approved of any of Maddy’s suitors. They were all going nowhere. He could tell. Jack’s movies had grossed over a billion dollars worldwide. He’d been nominated for a Golden Globe. He donated money to charities worldwide. He spoke out on international issues. Had shaken the hand of at least two presidents.

Dad hadn’t liked Tate Ruchert, high school quarterback hero. Dad didn’t seem very taken with Jack either.

Right after the pilot announced we were flying over Lake Tahoe it happened.

At first, I thought Dad pounding the armrest was something related to flight stress. Mom had said she’d have to spike his coffee before ever getting Senate McCall onto an airplane.

A thin band of wet worked out the corner of his right eye. His lips puckered. The couple in the seats across from us were asleep.

McCall men didn’t cry. We’d buried my grandma and grandpa and my mom’s stepbrother Clark. We’d buried Mom. Dad hadn’t cried. Uncle Bob hadn’t cried. I was still a kid all those burials. Only 11 when Mom died, and I hadn’t cried either, at least not in front of anyone. There wasn’t shame in it for a girl, but Mom had told me I always looked like I’d bit into a sour apple when I cried. She’d smiled, one of the last times she did, admitted she was trying to keep me from sobbing at her hospital bed.

It was giving away his daughter finally catching up to him I thought.

How could I let it happen, he whispered.

Let what happen? Dad? Are you ok?

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. He sniffled. A flight attendant walked past us. It felt intrusive to look at Dad. I looked past him, out the window at the plane’s wing. It was the third flight I’d been on in my life. First being the Horizon flight between Ashmond and Seattle four days prior, second being Seattle to L.A. that same day.

Lucy. Dad leaned his head near me but didn’t look at me. That wasn’t Maddy. That wasn’t your sister. That wasn’t your mother’s daughter we just left behind.

I shook my head. I wasn’t hearing him right, I figured.

I didn’t recognize that girl. Maddy? No, he said. I don’t know that person we handed over to that…Man. Looked and sounded like Maddy, but not her. No. Not by a long shot.

The day before I’d been at what the press christened the wedding of the year if not the decade. A full orchestra played the wedding march. Dave Matthews performed solo at the reception. Queen Latifah had stood in line behind me to get some punch, and I handed her the cup I’d poured for myself. She’d laughed and thanked me for the punch. Touched my arm and smiled and told me my sister was beautiful. Jack had introduced me to a prince from Spain. A prince with bodyguards. And Jack just called him Tony and told Tony this here was Lucy, his new sister-in-law. The prince kissed the back of my hand and smiled at sight of the blush breaking out all over me.

Maddy and Jack were honeymooning in Buenos Aires. Then after that Maddy was going to start shooting her new movie. I’d met the director at the reception. He told me I should maybe think about acting, too. I looked like a young Sigourney Weaver he said, tall, athletic, a bit of a tomboy, but soft where it counted. Feminine. Later when Dave Matthews covered the song from Maddy’s high school prom, I saw the director dancing by himself, wine glass in hand. It looked like the gopher dancing from Caddyshack.

We’ve got to help her, said Dad. He rubbed at his chin like when he was trying to figure out how the washing machine had stopped working.

He didn’t say anything else. It was sunset when we landed in Seattle. It was night when we landed in Ashmond. We drove home to Eaton in the same car Dad had owned since before Maddy was Maddy the movie star.

Maddy looked the same and sounded the same. She actually seemed to like me more than when we lived under the same roof, but I took it that came from being trained by a publicist or maybe a side effect of being in the constant presence of Jack’s million-dollar smile.

The thing bothering Dad was Maddy was now a member of Jack’s church - Lucentology. It didn’t play a huge part in the actual wedding ceremony. The man officiating hadn’t whipped out a copy of Forward, the church’s manual, and made the bride and groom swear upon it or chant or anything.

But everyone who practiced, most everyone who attended meetings in L.A., wore a necklace with a blue ‘L’ pendant, or a bracelet. There were even earrings. The head of the church had been at the wedding. He had a ring with a big glittery blue ‘L’ inset in the band. Looking around the reception, it seemed every fifth person in attendance sported a blue ‘L’ one way or another.

When Maddy and Jack had started dating, she’d sent us all kinds of Lucentology material. Dad had trashed all of it. I’d salvaged a copy of Forward and the DVD series The Program – the primer for the believer ready to enter the ‘Becoming’ phase of church life.

I thought it was all a little weird, but I didn’t see the threat so obvious to Dad’s eyes.

When I went to bed, he was still pacing the house. I was exhausted.

I dreamed of the wedding, the exchanging of vows. As Maddy talked, the words ran together until it was gibberish. The gibberish turned into a call and response with the guests, and the guests began to glow the same blue as the 'L' pendants around some of the necks. And then it was all the necks. Even Dad wore a glowing 'L.'

Soon the blue obscured everything except Maddy's face, and then even that began to disappear, feature by feature like she was the Cheshire Cat, vanishing from view.

Her mouth was the last object to go, and then the chanting stopped, and then there was nothing but blue.

Chapter 2

The phone rang minutes after Dad had left the house for work Tuesday.

It’s me, he said when I picked up. Don’t worry about the woman. You’ll see her when you come out to wait for the bus. And I told her it’s all right to park in our driveway if she wants.

After a few moments of silence he asked, You there, Luce?

Yeah. Who…What are you talking about?

You’ll see. The smile in Dad’s voice audible. She’s all right, okay?

I started to ask what that meant, but he’d hung up.

Maddy’s new movie, Small Town Girl, premiered Friday. It didn’t officially open until the following weekend.

The role seemed tailor-made for an actress born and raised in a small town. Someone at the studio publicity department had come up with the keen idea of doing the premiere in a small town and in fact, why not Maddy’s? Problem being, Eaton didn’t have a movie theater, but that was easily worked around.

Ashmond was only 11 miles west of us and compared to Los Angeles, its population of 35,000 is still teeny tiny, still home-town values, know your neighbor, all that, at least if you discounted the semi-regular eruptions of gang violence.

Maddy and company were slated to arrive on Thursday. Maddy and Jack, still in the upper echelon of world famous movie stars, were slated to stay in the house. There’d be an assistant or two and security outside at all times.

It sounded like a logistical nightmare, but Jack and Maddy’s handlers had gotten the two in and out of famous international hot spots on a honeymoon and several vacations. Popping in and out of Hicksville, Eastern Washington ought to be a snap in comparison.

I couldn’t figure out why Dad agreed to it. It was two years after the Hollywood wedding extravaganza, and he still held the opinion that Lucentology was damaging Maddy.

Plus he’d told me we ought to plan for the fact that the house might get bugged. Every thing we said, on the phone or otherwise, or anything we did on the computer, it was all up for grabs surveillance wise until after the premiere. I understood the reason for his obliqueness on the phone that morning.

I brushed back the living room curtains and looked out beyond the yard to East Jennings Road. A figure was just getting out of a sedan parked near the intersection of driveway and gravel county road.

She’s all right.

Whatever that meant.

*

House locked, backpack over my shoulder, I walked down the driveway to the gravel road. Getting close I saw the sign resting at the woman’s feet, and I got an inkling of what Dad had meant.

The sign read ‘Kip Arnett Was Murdered.'

Kip was one of the tens of thousands of hopeful actors and actresses who populate Los Angeles, looking for the break that catapults them from obscurity to the spotlight.

She’d been found starved to death in a Hollywood apartment. She had been battling a drug addiction, but more interesting was the fact she was a practicing member of Lucentology.

The press spin on the tragedy was that instead of going through detox or getting herself to a rehab facility, Kip had tried to tough it out using Lucentology methods to make herself clean and pure. According to the literature, Lucentology Centers were always available to help anyone – not just members – deal with addictions, but it could become costly. Just because anyone was welcome didn’t mean it was free.

Kip had appeared on one of the videos for The Program, the series for people interested in becoming Lucentologists. Just a quick appearance, but the press had used it as fodder for stories after her death.

The woman on the shoulder of the road was a cute, short blonde, almost a perfect copy of the relatively unknown comedienne who’d been found weighing 66 pounds, her face partially eaten away by a housecat.

The woman waved at me. She wore sunglasses tipped up onto her scalp, a green jacket, and parachute pants with pockets up and down each leg.

I waved back.

She looked both ways and crossed the road, gravel crunching under her heel.

You must be Lucy, she said. Your dad said you’d be out here shortly.

She put her hand out.

I’m Ruth. Arnett. I know, she said. It’s a little weird. I’m not a zombie though, I swear. I’m Kip’s twin sister.

The protest sign leaned against her backpack on the road shoulder.

Pointing back across the road she said, You see I’ve obviously got something to get off my chest and I’ll tell you what I told your dad. I’m not trying to make trouble for you guys. I think you guys are in the same boat I am. You have a loved one involved in something that isn’t healthy. You want to make sure they’re all right. You know, Kip thought she knew what she was doing. She didn’t. And there’s gonna be people out here, there’s going to be church members out here, and I’ll be damned if I’m not going to speak up for Kip. These people are trying to forget her, trying to make the world forget her, and it’s bullshit.

I nodded. I didn’t talk much mornings. Ruth rolled right on along.

Since the movement started, back in the ‘60s and ‘70s, there’s always been something nasty about it. These people aren’t saints, much as they think they are or much as they might make you think they can make you. There are a lot of spent shells, ok? Bodies at the roadside. Griffin Sharp. Selkie Rosenfeld, ok? Right out of the gate. Those two, waaaay back when. Most people don’t know who they are. Horace Walton does. You know who he is, right? Head of the church? Ok. Good. Oh, boy does Horace know. And people like my sister, well, she found out how nasty it can be, too.

She’d flung her hands about, making her points. She trembled slightly, the blood rolling around inside her short body.

"And if you don’t know who Griffin is, if you don’t know who Selkie is, I could tell you. Horace Walton could tell you. Well, he could tell you his version. His version. I know what the real version is."

She smiled.

Sorry. I get worked up a little. Probably a little more in your face than you’re expecting just going to school, huh?

I shrugged. Maybe.

But this. You know. This-

She angled her right arm up vertically, hand in front of her face, and laid her left arm flat so the tip of her fingers touched the right elbow.

It was an ‘L.' Imperfect if she did it or if I did it, but the intros to all the Lucentology videos and the cover of Forward, the Lucentology guidebook, featured a slender, genderless figure whose arms were positioned so that the ‘L’ their arms made looked comfortable, not too bendy or painful, the way a normal person would manage the position, sockets and joints being what they are.

That ‘L,' right hand hitting the head, left elbow near the heart, the only supplies you needed to change and move forward into the person you were meant to be. To become ‘lucid.'

I get sick. So sick of it. The last picture Kip took of herself she was doing this. This. The last goddamn picture. Ruth dropped her arms. I see someone do that I just go—

Momentarily she stuck her tongue out, both hands displaying an extended middle finger. She stared at the ground and then looked back at me. She smiled her tired smile.

All right. I’ll leave you alone. Oh. Hey. She held her hand out. Let’s make it official at least. Ruth.

Lucy.

We shook.

You’re a big kid. She smiled. No offense meant.

None taken.

You must get asked this a lot, but you play basketball?

Long distance.

Ah. I can see that. You’ve got the legs. And I’ve got the legs of a munchkin. ‘What’s it like working at the North Pole?’ I get that a lot.

Walking back towards her side of the road she suddenly spun on heel, arms out from her side like she was going to throw laser bolts from her hands.

Let me ask one thing.

Ok.

Does your sister keep telling you she’s fine? Not fine like she’s hot but fine like she’s ok? Nothing to worry about?

Maddy usually complains when I talk to her.

Ruth laughed.

Sorry.

No, it’s ok. I smiled. It’s fine. She nodded in appreciation of my using the term. I asked, Why? I mean was that what your sister did?

I’d ask if she was ok. Like right before she… And she’d say she had a really bad flu, that’s why she sounded so tired and so out of it. But she’d be fine. She emphasized that. ‘I’ll be fine, Ruthie. I promise. I swear. Fine tomorrow and fine the day after.’ And then she stopped taking my calls. And then they found her.

Just as she got back to her backpack and her sign the school bus swung around the corner and headed towards us.

I usually rode in the row of seats behind the driver. After we picked up the one other rider beyond the house and came back headed for Eaton, I made sure to look out the window and wave at Ruth. When we went by she was head down, fully engaged in texting.

It was only upon entering town that I started wondering how long in advance Dad had known Ruth Arnett was coming to town.

Chapter 3

The drawing taped to my locker was done in black ink on a sheet of notebook paper. The fringe on the spine stood at sharp angles to the paper’s edge. Chunks of fallen-off fringe lay scattered on the hallway carpet below my locker.

In the drawing, a UFO was abducting a cow. The cow was levitating off the ground towards the UFO. The cow had udders. The cow said, Moo.

The UFO was the standard UFO disc shape, the command center encased by a transparent bulb.

The UFO controls were under the direction of a man and woman. They wore unitards. Each unitard featured an uppercase ‘L’ on the chest.

The man said, Ok. But remember this time I get to do the anal probe.

The man grinned a semblance of Jack Ford’s worldwide famous grin. The woman didn’t really resemble my sister, but who else would be flying a UFO with Jack other than Maddy McCall?

Both of them had antennae. Behind them stood an alien with a potato-shaped head and antennae. The alien held a copy of Forward, the guidebook for practicing Lucentologists like Jack and Maddy.

I crumpled the drawing up. The hallway was full of between-class activity.

Every day for a week straight someone had put drawings up. Someones. Too prolific to be one person. The art styles seemed too different for it to be one artist, too.

I glanced around, but no one looked at me and then looked away, blushing, indicating guilt.

Whoever was doing this was just going to keep doing it until all the hubbub died down.

Another one?

Sherman Blackwell looked at the balled up paper in my hand.

I nodded.

Only be a couple more days, Lucy, and then it’ll stop. Probably.

I glared at him. He shrugged.

I’m not saying it doesn’t suck. He pushed his glasses up his nose. Held out his hand. Let me see.

I handed it to him. He uncrinkled it and laughed and quickly put up a hand to still my anger.

Now, not Jack or Maddy. I’m laughing at the cow. See? He pointed. The one still on the ground. It’s looking up at the one going to the spaceship, and it’s got its head tilted like- he tilted his head to the side, 'Duhr?'

He waited for me to smile. It used to come automatically almost. But then earlier this year Sherman had made out with SharDi Leasey at a party. He hadn’t even meant to go, but his pal Neal had talked him into going. Sherman had downed a beer out of boredom. Just wanted the party to end so he could go home and it wouldn’t end so he had another beer and then another beer and the next thing he knew…

He was sorry. He didn’t know what he’d been thinking. All that happened was some kissing and some light groping. He tried to convince me that the fact that he came to me with the admission before someone else told me counted in his favor.

We hadn’t kissed or hugged since. He’d written a song called ‘The Makeup Song’ and put it up on his Facebook and YouTube. It was kind of good, in a bad-American-Idol-audition-kind-of-way.

You know when you get pissed you look almost like your dad.

That’s what I’ve heard. That’s what my mom used to say.

That shut him up. Sherman tiptoed ultra-carefully around the subject of Mom. Especially since he’d pledged to take care of me before she died. He pledges to her and the next thing you know he’s got his hand up SharDi Leasey’s tank top.

Sherman’s face went white. Even before I turned to follow his look I could guess SharDi Leasey was walking down the hall. I’d developed an ability to tell which Eaton High beauty was in the vicinity just based on Sherman’s bulging eyeballs and gaping mouth.

There hadn’t been drama between SharDi and I. I barely knew her. She hadn’t tried to steal my guy. My guy had just been kind of dumb and drunk and she had a weakness for nerdy looking guys.

Walking past, she smiled at me and nodded at Sherman. Then went right on along with her business - being pretty and built and enjoying all the benefits therein.

Sherman stared at the floor. He looked hopeful some sort of exit would appear. Maybe a slide all the way to China.

Blushing he said, I looked. I tried not to.

It’s okay. I’m used to it, I said. You’re really weak, and her shirt was really tight.

*

At the start of 4th period, I got to tear another cartoon off my locker.

Chapter 4

We lived outside of town, but we didn’t live on a farm. The house was a white two-story Victorian without much flair. There was a small amount of lawn that needed mowing, but most of the property consisted of a dirt driveway that easily transformed to a muddy, shoe-eating mess.

The remnants of a little barn sat on the edge of our backyard. It’d served as a kind of workroom for Mom when she started to get into sculpture. She didn’t get very far. She got sick more or less at the same time. A couple of her works were still out in the barn, unfinished.

Dad’s brother Bob had a farm about a half-mile from our place. Bob had a couple of hands that helped him work it, and every summer harvest I drove a truck loaded with his grain into town to the grain elevators. Uncle Bob never had married, but the way they talked about their youth, he’d had any number of possibilities before settling on the bachelor’s life.

Except for the odd occasion of getting a lift from a car, I rode the school bus most every day. For a time Sherman had been giving me lifts, but that had come to a halt, post-cheating incident.

The bus riders’ pattern was more or less the same as it’d always been. Little kids in front. Boyfriends sat with girlfriends. The kids who read hunched down and pressed their legs into the seatbacks in front of them. The coolest kids had the seats at the very back. At least one in the back - blond as sun fed hay - thought he was African-American, baggy everything, do-rag, lips pursed, rural Washington’s very own Eminem.

Nick Verney and Geoff Tyco sat together two rows up from the very back. They were in my class. Nick still wiped boogers on people and found gags like pushing his behind into a girl’s leg and farting the height of entertainment. His older brother Tyler had practically stalked Maddy when she was in high school. Tyler lived in Oregon now. Balding and married last I heard.

Eaton was a small community. Total the town and the immediately outlying community, and the population added up to a whopping 2433.

Any town with a prodigal daughter coming home for a visit and movie premiere would be hub-bubbing. Given the rural scale of Eaton, Maddy and Jack’s Thursday to Saturday visit was like royalty plus the president stopping in.

Two middle school aged girls sat across the aisle from me. One was a McKean. All the McKean kids looked the same. Solid, healthy, with wide faces and bright eyes. The other looked like a Betsy.

My mom would name people.

A guy in glasses was a Dilton. A girl with long blond hair was a Betty. Any girl with short hair was a Betsy.

They kept looking at me, talking under their hands, giggling.

Ask her, said Betsy.

No.

Ask her.

No!

LUCY!

Ohmigod! The McKean girl covered her blushing face. She cried out as Betsy tried to pull her hands away from the blush.

Is Jack Ford really going to stay with you? asked Betsy.

I nodded.

Really?

Far as I know, I said.

Is he nice? asked Betsy.

Yeah, hey Lucy, yelled Nick Verney. Will you have to give him and your sister a special bed to fit their antennae in? So they can talk to the mothership and shit?

Shut up! yelled the McKean girl.

Nick made antennae with his fingers. Geoff picked up the gimmick and while waggling antennae they made noises like babbling monkeys. Nick looked toward the back and babbled. In reply, the would-be Eminem summoned up a look even sourer than the one already on his face.

I don’t know what he’s talking about, sulked Betsy. I love Jack Ford. I love your sister, too, Lucy. Madeline McCall? Ohmigod. She’s just…

She’s so- said the McKean girl.

Pretty.

Pretty, right-

Die to have her hair-

I know! Her hair is-

And she’s SO skinny.

I know! SO skinny. Ohmigod! I wish I was that skinny. I’m so fat.

Me, too.

The girls started discussing in detail all the other fat girls in their class.

In the seat in front of the girls sat Kitty.

When I got off the bus every day, Kitty was the last rider. East Jennings continued past her place, and looped, turned into West Jennings, and then headed right back into the west side of Eaton, passing a few houses, including Uncle Bob’s place.

A spit wad shot over the back of Kitty’s seat and splattered against the seat back in front of her.

Kitty looked up and looked over her left shoulder toward the back of the bus. A port-wine stain tattooed her forehead, slipping out above her right eyebrow just from beneath her hairline. Another splotch coated the skin beneath her right ear.

Nick laughed. He’d put his antennae away and picked up his spit wad straw. Geoff looked like he wasn’t too happy with his seatmate, but not to the point of telling Nick to cut it out.

Kitty and I made eye contact. She gave me a look like I was partially to blame for the spit wad. Then she turned and sunk back down, out of my view except for her black jeans and her sneakers.

Nick was prepping the next spit wad when the bus came to a stop.

I don’t mean the driver signaled and pulled over. I don’t mean he hit the brakes and threw us all for a violent rattling around in our seats. The bus came to a gradual halt. The driver shut the engine off. Then he stood up, straightened the knee brace over his left knee, and walked down the aisle to the back of the bus.

*

Pat Corley stopped alongside Kitty’s seat and took a sidelong glance at the spit wad fallen onto the floor.

Pat scratched his chin. He had a perpetual five o’clock shadow. Done scratching, he inspected his fingernails as if expecting to have collected residue. He mumbled something to himself and straightened the Seattle Mariners cap on his head. He put a hand on top of each of the seats closest to him and patted them.

I don’t know if you guys know, he said, "but all the bus drivers touch whatever is left behind on their buses. I drive this bus. I clean this bus. Part of the deal. Your personal effects and my skin can share