"I can still remember the day this journey began as if it were yesterday. I had just been appointed executive director of the Asbury Family Planning Clinic and was in my third or fourth day when this perfect stranger approached me as I was leaving. He was older than I was but he was so distinguished. And there was something about him that I found extremely attractive: his confidence. And that confidence came from one source: power.

"Power. Sweet seductive power. It seems as though I had been seeking power all my life. My looks gave me power. Money gave me power. But it wasn't enough for me. I sought absolute power, the power to hold someone's destiny in the palm of my hand. I didn't simply want to be powerful; I wanted to be invincible!

"And Preston Porter offered me that. He shared with me the secret of his power. He revealed to me the mysteries that have been hidden from most of mankind from time immemorial.

"He introduced me to Lucifer."

Like Dave Slater, Alison Bissonette was also a native of this White Mountain community. She was raised as part of the town's upper crust, her baby boomer parents being liberal lawyers as well as social activists. Although she attended the local public schools, Alison's parents made sure she got the best of everything. There were singing and dancing lessons, horseback riding, and a brand new Ford Mustang on the debutante's sixteenth birthday. There was a coming out party and dinners at the fanciest restaurants in the state.

But despite all these material possessions, there was an emptiness in Alison that gnawed at her incessantly. Dates with the handsomest guys in town did nothing to fill that longing, nor did being named valedictorian of her college graduating class. She tried working with the homeless, fighting for the environment, and picketing zoos and circuses with the animal rights activists, but the emptiness remained.

Outwardly successful and fulfilled, few, if any, saw the real Alison: insecure, discouraged, always searching for acceptance. A brief marriage to a golf pro twenty years her senior only added to the heartache in her life.

But now, years later, she believed that she had finally found that which would ultimately lead her to her destiny.