“Dr. Sean K**** was leader of the group of anthropologists who first happened upon the strange religious colony in the 1980s. In the investigation following his research team’s disappearance, his journal was found by happenstance in a parking lot fifty miles off their planned route through the mountains. The pages were filled with drawings of archaic religious symbols, as well as notes about the strange beliefs revolving around the ruins the sect called home. It was in these pages that law enforcement discovered the cult’s chosen moniker, a name that struck fear into the hearts of people across the country:
The Monadites.”
- Steph C*****
The Cult the World Forgot, pg. 24
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My life was ruined the day I turned twelve years old.
Everyone wants to know what it was like growing up in a cult. They want to hear all the sordid details: did they beat you? Cut you? Was it a sex thing? If you’re not careful, you turn into an object of fascination, a human curio. All anyone cares about is what horrible thing might have happened in your past. And when you tell them the truth, they have the gall to be disappointed.
The truth is that before my twelfth birthday, my life was ordinary.
I grew up in a position of privilege. While my mother was just a washerwoman, my father was someone of status. He was the leader of our church. While he had many wives and many children, I was the only son. That meant I was treated with respect and deference. I wasn’t beaten or tortured. Neither were any of my friends or half-sisters. The only difference between my upbringing and others is while most parents probably read their children Dr. Suess, my father would read me the Apocrypha to rock me to sleep.
Like I said, a perfectly average life.
I had a friend, B. We were born on the same day, two hours apart. For the next twelve years, we lived right next to each other. We spent every moment of our growing up in each other’s company. We loved all of the same things: swimming, playing with wooden swords, building imaginary cities out of the crumbling stones of our home.
But above all else, we loved to explore.
We did not live in houses built by our own hand or surrounded by the confines of barbed wire traced fences like most cults. We lived in the ruins, or sanctuary as we referred to them.
When our ancestors came to the valley, lost, starving, and half-insane, they took the crumbling buildings as a sign from God. This was the paradise deity wished for us to inhabit. The ruins were a sprawling complex, crumbling roads and buildings all made of decaying stone cut from an unknown quarry. At the center of it all was a great gothic tower, stretching high over the landscape. It covered our entire settlement in its shadow. On quiet days, when the sky was overcast and muffled, some claimed you could hear it humming, a deep throaty noise that shook your bones and boiled your blood.
I can only imagine how desperate my progenitors must have been to see this place as their salvation.
B and I first discovered the underground passages when we were ten. They formed a twisting labyrinth that extended beneath the whole city proper. We believed we had uncovered a great mystery, known only to ourselves, and began to explore those dark passages, armed with “borrowed” candles and chalk.
Our mothers discovered our first attempts, and forbade us from going back into those depths. But while we pretended to agree to never return, we would sneak away whenever we could to continue our efforts.
We discovered many things, secret passages between houses, abandoned rooms attached to our subterranean playground. Sometimes we even came across hidden places.
When I was eleven years old. B and I had discovered a secret room attached to one of the tunnels. B had tripped on a rock and fallen through a wall when he tried to catch himself. The hole he created led to an open space, a room with a low ceiling. The walls were covered with all manner of carvings, and words that looked to be written in Greek. We were required to learn all the biblical languages as part of our grade school education, so we were familiar.
But these words were different. The composition was all wrong, and the letters were scrambled and jumbled in odd formations.
B and I immediately made this into our own personal hide out. We would examine the pictures and strange words, sounding them out with untrained tongues and imagined pronunciations. We would speculate on their origins, and revel in the knowledge that no one knew of this room except for us.
One Sunday, we snuck off after church service to be in our hideout. In our tradition, the first part of worship was held in the courtyard of the tower every Sunday and was attended by all. The second session was held directly afterwards in the tower. Children were not allowed to attend. B and I often took advantage of this lack of supervision and went to the tunnels.
That Sunday, we made our way to the room and began our usual game of creating theories as to what the words on the wall said. We were focused on a series of symbols that appeared together in several places around the room.
“Maybe it’s a verb?” I looked at B. His face was drawn up in an almost comical look of concentration. But he wasn’t playing it up. B just took thinking very seriously.
“I think it’s a name.”
“That’s stupid.”
“No it’s not.” B looked at me, indignant. “Look how many times they wrote it. That could be a sign. Elder Luke told me that’s a way you can tell.”
Elder Luke was our school teacher. He knew more about Christian lore than any other person alive. But that was not the most interesting thing about him. He had no arms. This wasn’t especially odd. It seemed like a lot of adults where we lived had similar problems. Some were missing fingers, toes. Elder Mark was missing his right leg from the knee down. But Elder Luke was missing both of his upper limbs, and was impaired by his lack. Each shoulder ended in a stump two inches extended from his torso.
B was the most intelligent child in our class. Elder Luke often turned to him when he needed to write things down. They also spent extra time together in tutoring sessions. Everyone knew it was to prepare B for his future calling. With his brain, it was only natural B would become a teacher and scriptorian.
“I don’t think it’s a name.” To tell the truth, I had no evidence to suggest otherwise. I was just jealous B seemed to be right about everything. I struggled in school, and sometimes I saw Elder Luke whispering to my Father at church, glancing in my direction. I was sure they were talking about how poorly I was doing.
B ignored me. He got close to the word and traced it with his finger. Dirt came away from it in fine grains, making the etching stand out on the wall. “It looks familiar. I think I’ve read it somewhere before.”
I probably would have kept arguing, except my thoughts were interrupted by a noise. It sounded like someone speaking. B and I looked at each other, and blew out our candles. Our mothers’ had caught us in the tunnels a few weeks ago, and we weren’t eager to repeat that experience.
But as we waited in the dark, the sound developed. It wasn’t our mothers. It was human, but it wasn’t the tones of a normal composed voice. It was a pleading and begging wail. It grew louder, and more ragged. The desperate noise echoed on the walls, and I felt the hair on my neck prickle.
The sound continued to expand. It became an open-mouthed keening, the kind you hear when one’s misery is so great the words don’t have time to form in your brain before the pain comes out of your throat. I had heard Sister Mary make that noise when her son had died of fever. It had gone on for what felt like years. At the time, I worried she would die too if she didn’t stop.
I found B in the dark and pulled myself closer to him. I felt B shift beside me, searching for something. There was a flare, and B relit his candle with a small piece of cloth he had set alight with his flint. He patted out the cloth until it stopped smoking and put it in his pocket. He reached over with his candle and lit mine.
I got up to look out the hole. I was worried that I would see whatever was making that sound the moment I poked my head out. But once my eyes cleared the wall, I saw nothing down either path.
B had a determined look on his face. “Let’s see what it is.”
“What?”
“It sounds close.”
I shook my head. “That’s crazy. That noise…feels wrong.”
B got up to peek out with me. “It sounded like crying. Someone might be hurt.”
This pricked my conscience. We were taught to help each other in church. Imagining someone down there, broken and afraid, was just enough of an emotional hit to make me rethink my fear. “...Fine. I hate you.”
“Yeah, but your mother doesn’t.”
I swung to hit B on the arm, but he ducked out of the way. He grinned at me. The playfulness cut the tension a bit and I could almost tell myself everything would be fine. But the noise sounding in my ears a moment later brought back all the old fears.
B left the room first. He stepped out into the dark, and made his way down the right hand tunnel. I followed. My feet dragged on the ground as I tried to keep up with him. We held our candles aloft, tiny pin pricks of light in the overpowering gloom.
With each turn in the tunnel, we went deeper. Soon, we exhausted all our familiar routes. When we turned onto an unknown path and heard the noise increase in volume, we knew we were close. The keening grew louder with each step. It began to reverberate in my chest. I wanted to cover my ears, to block it out. At every junction, I worried we were about to run headlong into the source of this terrible sound, only to feel relief when we saw nothing. But then we’d continue on, and the noise would grow clearer and more terrible than before.
Then just as we made another turn, the noise stopped.
Everything was silent. It was a long time until we began to hear the noise of the cave again, the dripping of water and the echo of flowing air.
B took another step forward, but I grabbed his shoulder. “Let’s go. We’re gonna get lost.”
“It sounded like it was right around the corner.”
“It’s gone. If we don’t get back soon they’re gonna notice we’re not there.”
B shrugged off my hand and ran forward. I followed behind, not wanting to be left alone. We didn’t have to go far, we ran into a dead end almost immediately. It was a brick wall, similar to the kind that had blocked up our secret room. The stone was different from that of the tunnel. It was old, weathered, and was missing two bricks that had come loose and fallen to the ground. Where the two bricks had been was a dark hole.
B peered into it. I couldn’t see anything with the light of my candle. It was almost like the dark inside was swallowing the feeble yellow rays. My eyes played tricks on me. In the pitch black, it looked like shadows were moving around in the space beyond.
“Can we go? Please?”
B kept peering into the hole. “I think I see something.”
“We’ll come back later, okay? We’re gonna get caught.” I looked over my shoulder. I didn’t want to say it out loud, but it felt like someone was down here with us, watching. I saw no movement, but I couldn’t help feeling like eyes were searching all over my body.
B turned to look at me, and saw how scared I was. He nodded slow, and pushed me forward. “Okay. Let’s go.”
It took a long time to get to the surface. We had to double back a few times to make up for some incorrect turns. But eventually, we were in the sunlight again, and we joined up with the other children just as the adults returned from their meeting in the tower. I saw my father lead them out. Our mothers opened their arms to receive us. B and I embraced them. But even in the warmth of relief and safety, I couldn’t shake the cold feeling that still clung to my chest and mind.
While B and I still went to the room with the words, we never spoke of that noise again. Mostly, this was my fault. I had a hard time sleeping after the incident, and every time B tried to bring up the subject, I would shut him down.
A year passed, and I prepared for the acceptance of my calling and entrance into manhood. I had known since I was young that I was to become the next patriarch when it was time for my father to step down. That meant more school, and more time spent in his shadow. Before long, I didn’t have much time to spend with B anymore, and we stopped exploring the caverns.
Father would take me on long walks, explaining the importance of his role as leader. He often said strange things that made little sense to me. One night, as we were tending to my mother’s garden, he began to talk of the future, and how I would lead our church.
“You must see things others can’t see.” He went to grab a weed, his hand missing the stem. He readjusted, grasped it with a firm hand and pulled it out the root still intact. My Father only possessed one eye. It was light blue, and sometimes I felt it could peer into my very soul. The empty socket was covered up in a bandage that swept over the side of his face.
I was old enough to think it was ironic that a man with one eye was telling me to see things, but I didn’t voice it. My father was a strict man. I had never seen his rage, but there was a coldness in his demeanor that made me fall silent in his presence. It took all my energy to find my voice to ask the proper question. “...how do I do that? I…” I couldn’t bring myself to finish the sentence. But Father knew what I meant. I was too stupid. Too slow. I barely saw what was under my own nose.
“Be patient, son.” Father scooted closer to me, and put a hand on my shoulder. It was cold, and a little wet from the soil, but it was also comforting. “You will understand. You are my blood. This is how it has been and will be.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I nodded and went back to work. I was still years away from any sort of responsibility, and there were more exciting things to look forward to now.
I was approaching my birthday. My twelfth birthday.
On that day, I would enter the tower.
It was a rite of passage for us. Most entered at the age of fifteen. Father had arranged it so I might enter early. He felt I was ready. I had looked forward to this day for as long as I could remember. Whenever anyone left the tower after worship, they always had the most blissful look of joy upon their faces.
I wanted that. I wanted to feel that joy, to see what was inside, to peer down from the top of its embankments and to see the entire valley like a bird might.
The night before my birthday, I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned in my bed, imagining all the things that could possibly be inside of that strange and mysterious building.
It was near the middle of the night when I heard my mother crying.
I crept out of my cot and went to check on her. I had been spending time away to receive instruction from my father, and this next step was one that would alter our relationship. I would be a man when I emerged. I knew she wasn’t ready to let go of her little boy. I approached her living space and peeked in.
She was kneeling by her cot, her hands clasped in pleading supplication. I could not hear what she said, but I knew it to be whispered begging. “Please, God, do not take my boy,” was the only phrase I heard in its completeness.
I wanted to comfort her, but I couldn't make myself enter the room. I had the strange feeling I was seeing something I was not supposed to see. After a moment or two of indecision, I crept on light feet back to my own cot. I lay down, but I still couldn’t sleep. A new nervousness ate at my belly and made me stare at the dark ceiling until the light of torches roused from my bed.
The time had come.
Outside, my father and two attendants waited for my arrival. I roused and got dressed in the ceremonial robes of white. My mother presented them to me. Her eyes were dry, with seemingly no trace of the crying she had done the night before. Only a slight twinge of red betrayed her secret tears. I slipped the robes over my head, and gave her a hug, hoping to show her that everything was fine, that we would still be mother and son even after the events of this day.
She held me tight for a moment, her hands clasped around me. Then, when I began to wonder if she would ever let me go, I felt her hands release.
I kissed her on the cheek, then followed my father out of our house and to the tower.
Some had come to watch our procession. I saw B, staring at me with a serious look on his face. I smiled at him and waved, but all he gave me in return was a distracted nod. He looked up at the tower, then back at me. Eventually, our procession moved beyond his place and he was lost in the crowd.
The tower loomed larger with every step, and eventually we came to its entrance. My father stopped me. He turned me toward him and looked me in the eyes.
“Son, a leader takes his role willingly.” His one eye caught mine and I had to fight the urge to look down. “Will you do what I say when the time comes?”
I swallowed down the nervous bile that was rising in the back of my throat. I nodded.
Father turned, and opened the door to the tower.
We stepped inside. It was dark, no light from the outside penetrated the stone walls. The torches the two attendants carried lit up the space. I looked up, surprised to see that the inside of the building was almost entirely hollow except for wooden supports. I could see all the way up to the roof, a small dark circle high above us.
There was a door at the far side. Father approached it and swung it open. Beyond it was a staircase leading downward. He bade me to follow, and then descended down into the darkness.
I waited a moment, anxious. Then I followed.
I don’t know how far down we went. I lost track of time trying to keep my footing on the cold stone stairs. I tried to keep pace with my father, his form obscured at the edge of the torchlight. The air grew cold, like it did in the tunnels under the city. I saw my breath coalesce in front of my face. I shivered, but I tried to hide it by stepping more firmly and clenching my muscles.
Without warning, the staircase leveled out into a smooth stone floor, cut directly into the rock. It stretched out to a small door at the end of a hallway. I swallowed and felt my ears pop. How deep had we gone?
Father made his way down the hall and opened the door, revealing a dark space on the other side. I approached until I was at his side. He gestured for me to go through before him.
I took a deep breath, and went into the blackness.
On the other side of the door was a large chamber. Its walls were smooth, unblemished. If it had been carved out of the rock, it had not been done by any human means. The polished surface almost reflected back the torchlight. Strange shapes I could not make out were huddled against the sides, and after a moment’s inspection, I realized they were large containers made from sanded wood and iron hinges.
“Son.” My eyes went to my father. He had made his way to the center of the room without me noticing. He beckoned me with his hand.
He stood next to a low stone table.
The stone was cut at impossible right angles. The edges looked sharp enough to cut flesh. I came to him, aware of the attendants that followed close behind me. Surrounding the table were stone benches that made concentric circles, like a theater in the round.
“Lay down.” Father moved aside to grant me access to the flat surface.
I hesitated. I felt what I had in those tunnels a year ago, like eyes all around the room were watching us. I thought I could hear whispers in the echoes of our footsteps. The darkness had encompassed us so completely I could no longer see the walls. The air was strangely thick and hard to breathe.
“It’s alright, son.” My father’s voice brought me back. I looked at him, and he smiled. He had never smiled at me before.
I laid down on the slab.
Father walked to the edge of the room. He spoke aloud to me, his voice bouncing off the walls and ceilings of the dome. It sounded to me as if he had never left my side. “You have been instructed about the purpose of life. Tell me now, what is that purpose?”
“To learn of the Almighty.”
“This is correct. And can you tell me why?”
I struggled to remember what Elder Luke had taught us in school. I heard the sound of wood creaking. “To…to…prepare ourselves for…for heaven?”
Father didn’t respond. I heard the clink of metal. I turned to look at him. His back was to me, and he was hunched over one of the boxes at the room's edge.
Finally, he rose up, and turned back to me. I looked up at the ceiling.
“Half-true. Tell me, son, what is heaven?”
“A…place?”
“That is what is taught…” Father drew closer to me. His footsteps grew louder, and I fought to still my pounding heart. Both attendants stood at my side, torches in the air, their faces looking grim. “But it is a lie. Heaven is not a place. It is knowledge. How do we gain knowledge?”
I knew the answer to this. It was part of a phrase Elder Luke recited to me almost every day. He loved to say it when I couldn’t remember the chapter or verse he was referring to. “By sacrifice.”
My father stood above me now. His one eye stared down at me, cold and dark. My heart was beating out of my chest.
“I told you that you would need to see what others could not.” Father moved his hand, and in it I could see a strange metallic instrument. One side was flat and sharp on the edge. The other was scooped like a spoon. He held it to a torch until, and it started to glow hot in the firelight. “Prepare yourself, son. It will only hurt for a moment.”
I knew then what he meant to do. Any courage that I had broke. I tried to get up, but the attendants pushed down my arms. I began to scream. “No, no, NO! Please, Father! I don’t want to! STOP!”
I wasn’t a man. I was just a scared little boy. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t do what my Father wanted.
The attendants became uncomfortable. One looked at Father. “He’s not willing.”
Father's head moved with a jerk to look at him. For the first time in my life, I saw his anger. It burned dark and intensely on his features. I quavered and fell silent.
Father held the gaze of the other attendant for a long moment. “He agreed. That is what matters.”
The metal instrument descended, smoking.
I saw the scooped edge come closer and closer to my face. I tried to shut my eyes against it, but I felt the steady pressure of father’s fingers pulling open the skin. I felt the heat of the metal held close. It was already unbearable. Father was strong, and it took no effort for him to secure my thrashing head with one hand. I cried out and tears ran down my face in twin rivers. I tasted salt as they flowed into my open mouth. I pled with my Father, begged him to stop.
The knife connected with my right eye.
It burned. It pressed deep into my skull, I saw bright flashes that took up the entire right side of my vision. I screamed so loud I felt my throat crack and I tasted the iron of blood. I felt liquid on my cheek that was thicker than my tears. The knife slowly passed around the entirety of the socket, singeing the skin away like tissue. Father pulled, and it felt like a hot iron bar was being shoved through my head. After a moment of intense agony, I felt something give, and there was pressure on my right cheek. When I opened my left eye, I saw the opposite orb resting against my flesh, connected only by a thin string of bleeding flesh.
Father took up the eye, his fingers painfully cold upon it, and he severed the optic nerve.
Everything went dark.
I wanted to die, I wanted it to be over. I wondered if I was already dead. I could still feel the slab beneath me, the blood and tears on my face, the ache of my burns.
The darkness gathered.
What had been pure blackness before coalesced into shapes. Terrible beings defying all logic. They were all around me, staring at me with eyes half-obscured. Some had many limbs, and others bodies covered with mouths. They pressed forward, and I could feel their breath, the touch of their hands. They were so cold. I tried to fight, but the pain of it all was too great, and my arms and legs weakened. I felt my consciousness flee to a place where it might never return.
I heard my father speak before my mind left me.
“Well done, my son.”
—
When I woke up, I was in an ambulance.
It has taken me years to recover from the lies of my childhood. I was young and not privy to all the complicated happenings of the outside world, nor were they spoken about in my presence. To me, there was no world outside of our community.
When I emerged unconscious from the tower, the settlement was being raided by the FBI.
Hikers had been going missing in the areas adjacent to our city for years. Investigations had uncovered disturbing documentation that indicated the violation of human rights. One look at me and my missing eye told them everything they needed to know. I was taken away and my father was arrested.
Far from being comforting, I was terrified. People joke about bringing those from the past to the modern era, about how they would go insane if they saw the progress of mankind. I very nearly did. For most of a month, I was sedated as they took care of my injuries and de-programed my brain so I could re-enter society.
After this process was done, they had me testify against my father to support the state’s case. The only charge that stuck was child abuse. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison, the maximum possible sentence.
I never saw my Mother after that day. I have no idea what happened to her.
It’s been two decades. I went through the foster care system. I found a pair of good parents willing to work with my sensitive past. I graduated high school, went to college, and even got a degree.
But it’s all been tainted. I can never escape my past. My missing eye is a constant reminder of who I am, where I came from, and how I’ll never be able to escape into anonymity. I will always be the boy whose cult leader father took his eye.
And there are the visions as well.
Doctors said it was a form of PTSD. But I’m not so sure. At first, I would only see them out of the corner of my eyes. Dark shadows like the ones that appeared when my eye was taken. They would flit away if I ever tried to look at them properly. Sometimes I can feel the gaze of their many eyes even before I see their presence.
I’ve ignored it for years. But recently they have become bolder.
Just the other day, I saw one standing in a crowd as I waited in line to buy a coffee. It didn’t run when I looked at it. It just watched me, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, eyes blinking, mouths open, like it was waiting for something.
The Doctors keep prescribing pills, but they don’t work.
My father did something more to me in that cave than just take my eye. I worry it’s going to kill me. I’ve been going deep, looking for any possible solution, no matter how crazy, to figure out how to stop this.
I got an email yesterday. It was from B, or someone who claimed to be him. I hadn’t seen or heard from him since the day I first entered the tower. I didn’t even know he was still alive. The email said he wants to meet me tomorrow. He says there are things we need to talk about.
I get emails like this sometimes, and normally put them right in the trash, but he said something that made me stop before I pressed the button.
“I was right about the word on the wall. It’s a name.
I know about your visions.
Come see me, and I’ll tell you how to stop them.”
Whoever sent this to me, I’m meeting them tomorrow.
I hope they have some answers.