{NOTE} This is the first chapter of the forthcoming novella, Cult Boy. It’s still a work in progress and may undergo minor edits before its release. The book will available on June 9, 2026.
1
the clocks are all broken
six long years
time stood still
the child could not be healed
________
My name is Andy Burden. I’m 27 years old and living in a 20-foot trailer in an apple orchard. The space allows for thought, perhaps too much. Working overnights at the Easy Mart near the crossroads of highway 2 and 97 pays the rent. Days are for sleeping and nights off are to read and write and play guitar, anything to keep the mind busy. A little beer and weed helped until paranoia set in. Now it feels like people are following me, out to get me.
Last week it was church for the first time in years at the Assembly of God in Dryden. Larry’s the preacher and he works with me at the Easy Mart. Larry asked everyone to close their eyes and bow their heads but instead of praying he just asked questions. Raise your hand if you’re certain you’ve been saved and if you know you’d go to heaven if you died. I didn’t do it. Church ended and Larry told me I was the only one who didn’t put my hand up. He said, that makes you the most honest person in the congregation.
Why didn’t I raise my hand? Mom and dad brought me up Christian and I had a religious experience a couple of years ago. I believe in God and read the Bible and pray but the whole thing reminds me of the cult. The cult had a vision and the leader claimed we were special people chosen by God, destined for paradise. Larry’s heaven feels the same way and to reach it certainly requires some kind of sacrifice.
Thinking back to Maine where a moving truck sits in the driveway and I carry boxes of memories, I trip on the threshold and glass scatters everywhere. Was it an omen? We were going West to where dad said great things were happening, to Washington State and a town called Snohomish. My dad said the spirit was moving and we would move with it. Soon the house was empty and the truck door slammed and my friends watched us leave. They rode away on their bikes toward the ocean as I watched through the glass without tears as Maine faded away.
The orchard sprinklers are relaxing and they act as a metronome keeping time and marking life’s changes. But the sound doesn’t soothe me tonight because the voices are back and it’s 3:00 in the morning and I haven’t slept.
Whenever you did something wrong in the cult you’d get screamed at. Jimmy ran away and they hunted him down and dragged him back from Eugene and beat the shit out of him in front of the rest of us. Jimmy bled and it instilled fear and now that fear doesn’t go away. I moved across the Cascade Mountains searching for peace and space and solace, trying to escape, but the seeds were already planted.
A year ago the voices got so bad that I ran from Wenatchee to Sleepy Hollow in the winter at 2:00 in the morning without a coat. I jumped a fence and didn’t even notice that I’d sliced my hand open. The the cops saw me running and stopped me and asked why I was bleeding. I told them my story and they looked at me like I was crazy told me to go home.
I remember when we stopped at Grandma Evelyn’s house in New Hampshire and she was confused. Why were we moving three thousand miles? Dad talked about Ted again and the great things he was doing.. He didn’t heed Grandma’s warning when she said, there’s something not right. I don’t trust that Ted.
We drove ten days with the windows down and the wind in my face and the steady drone of the road. The weather was clear and we passed through a state park in New York and sand dunes in Indiana. The truck broke down in Iowa and we ate lunch at Burger King while we waited for the repairs to be done. Further to the West the wide-open prairie surrounded us, it hugged me and held me close and there was a feeling of safety in its vastness. We saw Wall Drug and the Badlands and the Black Hills and the faces of America.
When we got west of the Dakotas something changed and there was a darkness, not just in the sky but in my heart. The mountains cast shadows and thunderstorms threatened rain. David burned his hand and Pete got sick. Idaho was scorching hot and mom became sullen. The final stretch proved laborious and dreadful. We arrived in Snohomish Washington on July 5, 1973.
It’s 3:00 in the morning and the trailer is hot and the sprinklers have stopped and I still get no sleep. Reading can help soften the voices and calm the mind. It reduces fear and that’s good but lately I’ve been reading the Bible, chronologically, and the Old Testament is violent. I read the dictionary tonight, sporadically, and I look up the word deception.
Deception is deceiving or being deceived, an illusion or a fraud.
Was the cult a deception? Does belief protect you from deception or is pure belief in something, anything, a form of faith? I think about Ted Rinaldo. He was the leader of the cult and he had a vision and he believed in it. He believed it so much that he claimed it was God’s. Dad also thought it was God’s.
Deception is an illusion or a fraud.
The cult wasn’t an illusion and the blisters and the calluses were proof of that. Ted kept us working all the time, from sunup to supper for six days a week, and even on Sundays whenever he decided. I was a kid doing man’s work, pushed too hard and driven too far. There was no mercy regarding my age or my size. It was slavery. And what was gained in the end? I wound up with back problems and bad knees and a head full of ghosts and a heart full of sorrow.
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Copyright 2012, 2026 by Dan Steven Erickson