Star Revelations

Chapter Eight

To help free the television star, I left my impartial space and entered the deep recesses of her past and memories in her unconscious mind. This world of the unconscious is one of your most powerful influences because you are not aware of its influences until it surfaces.

This is where the Controllers are staging their quiet mind war.

Wake up! It’s not as it seems.

The man ran through the dark woods. He dashed headlong through the brush, bashing recklessly through branches, making no attempt for stealth. The breath came out of him in panicked gasps. He tripped over roots and rocks, gathered himself, and continued his desperate race to escape.

Behind him, the beam of a flashlight slashed through the murk, its harsh illumination rendering the landscape as frightful tangles.

On and on the man continued, groping, stumbling through the darkness.

He crashed against a tree and clung to it. He held his breath, hoping that his pursuers had lost him. Waiting through several heartbeats and hearing nothing behind him, he stepped lightly and proceeded forward.

A shot rang out.

Sharp pain pierced the man’s back as if they had skewered him with a red-hot poker. The pain turned ice-cold, and he dropped to the ground as his life ebbed away.

Night vanished, like a fog yielding to the warm sun.

The young Alexandra stepped through the woods, now bright with sunlight. As she emerged from under the shadow of a tree, holding pinecones she had collected, she spied a man lying on his belly. At first, she thought he might have lain down, but because of the askew position of his arms and legs, it appeared like he had been knocked over.

She paused and waited for him to stir. When he didn’t, she felt the faint ring of an alarm, and that ring shrieked louder when she walked closer. Something about him looked very familiar. Too familiar.

An even darker spot stained the back of his dark coat. A pistol lay at his side. Had he shot himself? In the back? How was that possible?

Her heart seized in trepidation, and she slowly, carefully, crouched beside the man.

She placed the pinecones on the ground and grasped his shoulder and rolled him to his side. When his face came into view, it was instantly recognizable. It was her father, Joseph.