I have told this story quite a few times in my life. To the police officers that arrived at my house after my father had called, to my excited classmates, who encouraged me to divulge every little detail, and of course, to the boy who was inadvertently the cause of all this.
And now here I am, publishing this story for all to see. It wasn’t exactly an easy decision, but I felt that this might put into perspective just what sort of crazy shit exists out in this world. People usually think of cults as something outside of reality, this realm that exists beyond them which has no effect on their daily lives. Well, I’m about to tell you the story of such a cult, just a few miles from my very own backyard.
It started with my sister’s crush on an older boy in our school. Everyday, she would tail him between classes, watch him as he laughed and joked with his friends on their way to the cafeteria during lunchtime like a forlorn puppy. More often than not, she’d drag me along for her stalking. It seemed she was hopelessly infatuated with him to the point where nothing else occupied her mind, and her grades and social life suffered as a result.
Her friends began to become distant, tired of hearing about the older boy all the time, and my sister had taken to daydreaming in class, which had landed her in hot water more than once. I figured as an older sister I had to talk some sense into her, but she never seemed to take my advice seriously.
However, one day she rushed toward me after school and told me that she’d found the solution to all our problems. At the time, I had no idea what the hell she was even talking about, since I wasn’t the one with falling grades and a gradually deteriorating social life because I was pining for an upperclassman.
I bombarded her with questions, but she kept dodging them, told me it was a secret and said that I had to see it to believe it. We made for the neighbourhood our house was in, but we didn’t go to our house. Instead, we headed for a patch of trees that grew over a valley, where there was what looked like an elementary school. Brick-red tiled roofs, bright, colourful murals of happy, smiling children decorated the walls.
I was perplexed. This place had the answers to our problems? We headed down a walkway to an innocuous-looking entrance, where a middle-aged woman with short hair wearing long white robes greeted us and let us in. We were told to change into the same long white robes laid out for us on a wooden table in the hallway and to take off our shoes as well.
My sister happily obliged, but I felt uneasy. The fact that the only source of light in the hallway was from the afternoon sun beaming in from outside, and I could spot what looked like candlelight a little ways down the hallway didn’t reassure me, either. Something about that middle-aged woman also seemed unnerving, too.
The woman led us down the hallway into a room lit with many little candles, where there were already several other people at a makeshift registration, writing on pieces of paper. My sister made a beeline for the table, immediately snatching up a piece of paper. I went towards the table as well, and picked up a piece of paper. There were strange little symbols on the paper, like a square with a pair of circles for eyes with Xs through them.
We were instructed to draw these over and over on the paper, and apprehensively, I did. Before I turned in the paper, I turned it to the back, just out of curiosity. And what I saw would remain burnt into my memories forever. Illustrated on the back of the paper were a four-step set of instructions on how to take out your eyeballs with a toothpick. I tugged at my sister’s wrist, hissing at her that we had to leave without drawing as much attention to ourselves, but to no avail. My sister was completely under the spell of the cult.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I coughed up the old ‘I need to se the bathroom’ excuse for the woman standing guard at the door. The entrance was still open. There might still be hope yet for me to escape. Then, over the PA came an announcement that made my blood turn to ice.
“May all initiates complete their forms and gather in the main hall. We will be starting in 15 minutes.”
I made a run for it. Just as I was about to reach a gate, I spotted a pregnant young woman wearing a flowy pink blouse and jeans. I dived behind the iron-wrought gate, but she spotted me anyway.
“Hey, what’s a minor initiate doing here?”
I continued running before she could gather her bearings. There were already several other white-robed people coming out of the building, presumably searching for would-be escapees— like me. I banked a hard left into another building, this one white walled and accented with a dull grey. I found myself in the veranda of a public school, with a bulletin board on one wall.
It then occurred to be that I wasn’t alone. A tall, thin scruffy-looking boy was looking at me, perplexed. It was probably because of the strange white robes I was wearing.
“What the hell are you—“
I had spotted some of the white-robed eyeball-stabbing cult approaching out of the corner of my eye and had ran off before he could finish his sentence.
Dodging between trees and ducking under bushes, I tried to keep an eye on the movements of the cult people. Soon, I was at the edge of the grove, with only a steep slope in my way to escape. I started panicking. It would only be a matter of time before they found me here. Or they could just ask the boy and the pregnant lady where I went.
Then my eyes caught a tree root, as long as the slope itself was high. I could hear footsteps and the rustling of robes behind me. It was a crazy, dangerous idea, and god knows what might happen if I didn’t make it. Grabbing the rough bark with both hands, I scaled the root.
I wasn’t much of a climber, but fuelled by adrenaline I was as deft as a monkey. Soon enough I had reached the top of the hill and was looking at a line of picturesque terraces— it was our neighbourhood. I looked below, but all I saw were a thick growth of trees. There was no elementary school in sight, no white-robed people sweeping the compound. The only evidence that what just happened wasn’t just some fever dream were the white robes I was currently wearing.
The adrenaline was slowly wearing off, replaced by exhaustion and a cold feeling in my heart. While I was running, I hadn’t realised that I’d left my sister back there. And whatever could’ve happened to her… I shuddered, even though it was a sweltering summer afternoon.
With what seemed like all the strength I could muster, I pulled myself up and trudged towards my house. My mother was waiting in the living room with my father, who had returned early from work upon hearing that my sister and I were missing. Of course, I got an earful. But when I broke down and told them about what happened, my father immediately called the police.
The news blew up almost instantly. Almost every day, we’d get neighbours at the door with presents and condolences. When we weren’t dealing with the neighbours, we were confined in our living room for hours on end while policemen peppered us with questions we’d answered a million times. I’d described to them time and again what exactly happened in the elementary school beyond my backyard, but they’d never seem to find little more than some ruins in the trees. Of course, there was no sign of my sister.