Divine Madness (12 page)

‘Have you played volleyball before?’ a pretty redhead called Eve asked.

‘A couple of times,’ James said. ‘Not seriously though.’

‘That’s good,’ Eve said. ‘We’re not serious and you’re only allowed to say positive things on the court.’

‘Eh?’

‘Just follow our lead,’ Eve said, handing James the ball to serve.

James rested the ball in his palm before batting it away. It skimmed limply over the net, making an easy return for the other team.

‘Nice try,’ Eve said, as she backed up and pounded the ball back over the net.

‘Crap,’ James said as his clumsy swipe missed the ball entirely.

Before he knew it there were three girls in front of him,

with Survivors’ smiles on their faces.

‘James,’ Eve said sweetly, wagging a finger under his nose. ‘You’re doing great, but remember you’re only allowed to say positive things.’

Ruth had joined the other team to even up the numbers and was grinning through the net. ‘She’s right James. Negative thoughts are for devils.’

James couldn’t help smiling back at them. ‘You girls are weird,’ he grinned. ‘Wonderfully, positively, weird.’

Eve laughed and gave him a friendly rub on the back. ‘That’s the spirit, James. Do you want to serve again?’

*

James hung out in the community hall for two hours, following the girls between volleyball, soccer and the trampoline. When it got to nine o’clock, a couple of adult Survivors came in and switched off most of the lights. Everyone in the hall formed two circles, tired little kids in the inner circle and older kids and teenagers outside. Lauren’s counsellor Mary stepped into the centre of the circle holding a guitar.

James’ instincts told him that sitting in a big circle with a bunch of guitar-playing religious nuts was lame, but the Survivor girls who’d all been smiling, chatting, rubbing his back and hugging him for the past two hours dragged him into the circle and James couldn’t help laughing and smiling back. He felt really good as he sat cross-legged on the floor. Eve grinned, held his hand and sat so close that her toes were touching his knee.

Mary strummed the guitar. James was expecting her to start singing some dreary hymn, but she played a few bars and then chanted.

‘Boogie, woogie, woogie, woo!’

Everyone chanted back noisily. ‘Boogie, woogie, woogie, woo!’

The next line was, ‘La de, la de, la de, la!’

And everyone chanted back. This chanting went on for ten minutes and James couldn’t help getting into the stupidity of it all, with the two girls sitting on either side of him grinning and putting their arms around him. He looked over at Lauren and noticed she seemed to be having a ball too.

At the end of it, Mary played a longer and much more dramatic version of the chanting song, getting faster and faster until all the lights got switched back on. She screamed out, ‘Are you angels?’

And the kids, especially the little ones in the inner circle, jumped up and answered, ‘Yes we’re angels.’

Mary shouted back, ‘Little angels go to bed.’

All the little kids began running happily out of the room. A few of them split off and joined parents who’d filed into the gym while the lights had been dimmed, but most were commune members and they headed up a disused escalator to the living quarters.

James couldn’t help laughing as Mary called him and Lauren across to the centre.

‘Did you enjoy yourselves?’ she asked. ‘Are you glad you came?’

It was half nine and James was sweaty and tired after all the exercise, but he felt jubilant.

‘Yeah,’ James nodded. ‘It was a good laugh.’

Lauren was smiling too. Abigail wandered out from the group of adults at the back of the hall.

‘Hi kids,’ she said.

‘Hey, Mum,’ James said. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I ended up staying here and talking to Elliot,’ Abigail said. ‘I’m thinking about enrolling in one of the counselling sessions for single parents.’

‘Well I certainly hope you all come back,’ Mary said. ‘You seem like such a nice family.’

Elliot joined them again. He was holding a carrier bag stuffed with goodies. ‘I’ll walk you to your car,’ he said, as he handed Abigail the carrier. ‘Those are the books and CDs I spoke to you about and I put in a bag of our Nicaraguan Roast and a few slices of cake for the kids.’

Abigail looked at all the stuff inside the bag. ‘I must owe you money for some of this.’

‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ Elliot said. ‘Just promise that you’ll give me a call if there’s anything you want to talk about.’

As James, Lauren and Abigail headed down the mall corridor towards the main entrance, Elliot, Eve, Ruth, Mary and a couple of younger girls Lauren had befriended walked with them. They followed through the automatic doors and stood around the car.

Even though it was dark, it was still extremely hot and Abigail reached inside the stifling car and turned on the air conditioning. They waited outside for a minute while the interior cooled down.

Eve smiled at James. ‘You’ll be coming back to see us again, won’t you?’

‘Sure,’ James nodded enthusiastically. ‘Next Saturday.’

‘Maybe even sooner,’ Elliot said. ‘You could come by with your mother when she attends our single parents’ group on Wednesday.’

‘I guess,’ Lauren smiled. ‘Maybe my big sister can come too.’

The Survivors headed back indoors, waving as Abigail switched on the engine, while James and Lauren belted up in the back.

‘That was fun,’ Lauren said.

‘I think the mission’s going well,’ Abigail said.

James realised that he’d been playing sport and chanting with the Survivors all night and hadn’t considered the mission for over an hour.

He looked anxiously at his sister. ‘I think we might have enjoyed ourselves a bit too much in there.’

‘Eh?’ Lauren said, as she wiped her shining forehead on the sleeve of her T-shirt.

‘I actually want to go back in there and do that again,’ James explained. ‘With the grinning girls, and everyone touching me and paying me heaps of attention. It felt
 
really
 
nice.’

Lauren realised what her brother was getting at. ‘We knew how it worked. We read all the books and that, but we still fell for it.’

Abigail looked between the front seats at her two passengers. ‘Are you kids saying what I think you’re saying?’

James rubbed his eyes and looked ashamed of himself. ‘It was like falling under a spell.’

Abigail was concerned at the way the kids had lost their objectivity and been lured by the Survivors within hours of entering the commune. She’d also enjoyed her evening with the charming Elliot.

She phoned John first thing Sunday morning and he called the psychologist Miriam Longford for advice. Miriam was arranging a family lunch, but she agreed to speak with Abigail and the kids provided they drove out to her home near the university campus on the opposite side of the city.

A red setter greeted them on the driveway. James’ hand got a warm lick as he clambered out of the car. Miriam’s young nieces and nephews chased around and splashed in her pool, as she led Abigail and the three cherubs to a muggy double garage. The cars had been pulled out and she’d set some stackable picnic chairs into a circle. It wasn’t ideal, but it was private and the rest of her home crawled with relatives.

Abigail explained what had happened over the previous forty-eight hours, from Lauren lashing out in class and getting sent to the student counsellor, to their visit to the Survivor commune the night before.

‘OK,’ Miriam smiled. ‘It’s understandable that you’re worried by the rush of positive feeling you experienced last night, but I think it will turn out to be a good thing, because it’s given you a warning about the power mind-control techniques can have over people who let down their guard.

‘It’s all to do with the power of context. Have any of you ever heard of something called the
 
Elevator Door Experiment
?’

Everyone shook their heads, so Miriam began to explain. ‘A person getting into an elevator will always stand facing the door, so that they can see what is going on and know when it’s time to get out. However, what happens if a person gets in and finds that there are several other people already in the elevator facing away from the door?’

‘Oh, I’ve seen this now that you’ve said it,’ Abigail said. ‘If the other people in the elevator are all facing away from the door, then the person getting into the elevator will usually do the same.’

‘That’s it,’ Miriam nodded. ‘People think they have free will, but there is actually a strong tendency for individuals to behave in the same way as those around them.’

‘Like peer pressure at school,’ Lauren said.

Miriam nodded. ‘That’s a very good example, Lauren. If you’re at school and all your friends smoke cigarettes, the chances are that you’ll start smoking cigarettes too. I’ve been inside that gymnasium you were at last night. Do you remember the big banner along the back of the hall?’

‘
Welcome to the Ocean of Love
,’ James said.

‘That’s right, and I’m afraid you and Lauren accidentally dipped your toes into the ocean. I take it the Survivors asked you to call ahead and say you were coming?’

Abigail nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’

‘That’s so they can set up a welcoming committee. As soon as you arrive there’s a friendly face to greet every one of you. Then they take you inside, split you up and everyone starts acting warm and friendly. They asked you to play sport, because it tires you out physically. But the whole time you were being worn out physically, the compliments and touching built you up emotionally.’

‘We weren’t supposed to say anything negative when we were playing games,’ James said.

Miriam nodded. ‘That’s a technique called
 
thought stopping
. By encouraging you to think and say positive things, you inevitably start feeling good. And because you only hear positive things from other people, you start feeling guilty and shut out your own negative thoughts. The good vibe is reinforced with lots of touching, hugging and even the occasional kiss. Within a couple of hours, you two found yourselves exhausted, but happy and uninhibited. That’s exactly the state you want a person to be in if you’re trying to sell them something, whether it’s a second-hand car or a lifelong commitment to a religious cult.’

James and Lauren both nodded.

‘It makes sense now you say it,’ James said. ‘But at the time I didn’t feel like anything special was happening to me.’

‘You wouldn’t have,’ Miriam said. ‘When people hear phrases like
 
brainwashing
 
or
 
mind control
, they imagine that it involves being stuck in a room with a gun to your head, or being tied up and made to watch videos while your eyelids are propped open with matchsticks. In reality, harsh methods like that only create fear and resentment. The techniques used by groups like the Survivors are extremely subtle and all the more powerful because of it.’

Abigail looked stressed. ‘The thing is, can we safely send these kids undercover into that environment? They’d read about mind control in books and you’d spoken to us, but James and Lauren still came out of there like a couple of grinning zombies.’

Miriam furrowed her brow and looked thoughtful for a second. ‘Research has consistently shown that people who understand how mind control works are not susceptible to it.’

‘But we
 
did
 
understand it,’ James said anxiously.

‘No,’ Miriam said. ‘You read about it in books and you listened to me speak, but you didn’t respect what you’d learned. You went into the commune with your defences down and you let yourself get drawn in by a few pretty girls telling you what a great guy you are.’

James looked sheepishly at the bare concrete between his Nikes.

‘Sorry,’ Lauren said, ‘we didn’t mean to mess up.’

‘Don’t be daft, sweetheart,’ Miriam smiled. ‘Older and more experienced heads than yours have thought themselves too clever to fall into the lure of a cult. Hopefully, this has taught all of you an important lesson.

‘As long as you immerse yourselves in cult life slowly and consider the motivations behind the things people do and say at the commune, the danger of becoming brainwashed is virtually nil. If you come by my office on the university campus after school tomorrow, I’ll teach you a few basic concentration techniques that will prevent you from being hypnotised or ending up in a state where you’re easily manipulated.’

*

Elliot called Abigail on Monday evening and kept her talking about life and religion for over an hour. On Tuesday, Abigail phoned the commune to confirm that she was bringing the whole family the following night when she attended her first session with the single parents’ group.

They were greeted in the parking lot by Elliot, Mary, Eve and a younger girl called Natasha who had made friends with Lauren on Saturday. James hugged Eve and they kissed each other on the cheek, but this time he reminded himself that Eve’s affection was put on to encourage him and his family to become Survivors.