by BC Powell
A creature leaps over a ridge at the bottom of the hill—a girl, I’m stunned to see when I focus on her. Sleek and graceful, she lands in a crouch, her back facing me. Long, wavy black hair with dazzling streaks of red falls from the air around her, floats over her shoulders, and flows down her back. I know the color is real, not dyed like some of the girls in my school with temporary strands of purple or blue or green.
As she stands upright, I realize she’s my height. Lean with toned muscles, she wears tight black pants, a sleeveless black shirt, and nothing else—not even shoes. A long, metallic spear, sharp points on both ends, is tightly clutched in one of her hands. Her smooth, porcelain skin seems to reflect the light from around her.
She spins to face me. Like a startled animal in the wild, fierce and alert, the girl locks her huge amber eyes on mine. Thick black lines trace her eyelids, instantly reminding me of a tiger or cheetah. The nostrils in her small, straight nose flare out from her diamond-shaped face when she breathes, and her blood red lips tighten.
I’m mesmerized by her face as she glares at me. She’s beautiful and terrifying and sad and ferocious all at the same time, and it hurts like a gut-wrenching blow to my stomach to look at her. Or maybe it’s not pain, but awe.
“Hey!” I timidly call. “Where am I?”
“On the Empty Hill,” the girl answers.
“No, I mean, like, what is this place?” I ask.
Our words delay after we speak them, momentarily pausing in the air before evaporating into my ears. My words are in English when they leave my mouth but transform into new, strange sounds I can still understand.
“Krymzyn,” she replies.
When I hear the word “Krymzyn,” I think of the color crimson, but I know it’s spelled differently—K-r-y-m-z-y-n. That’s the spelling I see in my mind after symbols, archaic runes of some kind, are separated, translated in the air, and then reassembled for me as a word I can comprehend.
“Do you know how I got here?” I yell down the hill.
She slowly walks to me without answering my question, mystifying amber eyes never leaving mine. There’s no threat in her stride and her arms are relaxed, so I don’t feel scared even though a spear is still dangling from her hand. When she stops in front of me, she squints at my eyes with a puzzled expression on her face.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” I ask.
“I’ve never seen blue eyes,” she answers, “except . . .” She shakes her head and looks down at the ground.
“Except what?”
Her eyes spring back to mine. “I shouldn’t speak with you,” she says sternly. “Only Disciples speak with Tellers when they’re here.”
“Am I a Teller?” I ask.
“You must be if you’re in Krymzyn, although it’s odd you arrived on the Empty Hill instead of the Telling Hill. You also look too young to be a Teller.”
“What’s a Teller?”
“A visitor from another plane. Tellers come to Krymzyn to share stories of their worlds with the Disciples.”
I don’t understand her answer, but something tickles my feet, so I glance down. My face scrunches with confusion as I realize I’m barefoot, blades of red grass between my toes, the shoes I was wearing at home gone. Black leathery pants are in place of my jeans, exactly like the ones she has on. Instead of my polo, I’m wearing a sleeveless black V-neck made of the same material as the pants.
“Do you know how I got these clothes on?” I ask, returning my attention to the girl.
“Krymzyn dressed you in our manner when you arrived.”
Although she’s answering my questions, the answers don’t make sense to me. Her answers really just confuse me. But the pain that was blasting through my head is gone, I’m not shaking anymore, and I feel alert, like my senses are heightened in some way.
“My name’s Chase.” At this point, I’m not sure what else to say or ask.
“I’m called Sash.”
“I like your name,” I remark honestly. “It seems to fit you.”
“Thank you,” she says, but she doesn’t smile. “Yours is nice as well, although it’s odd to have a verb as a name.”
“You’ll have to take that one up with my parents.”
The word “parents” seems to stay in the air longer than the other words, never translating, and, instead of transforming into a foreign sound I can still understand, finally just dissipates into the atmosphere.
“I’m sorry, but your word ‘parents’ has no meaning here,” she replies.
“Don’t you have parents?” I ask, realizing that she just heard the word for the first time.
Ignoring my question, she tilts her head to the side and peers into my eyes. Like beams of light passing through my vision and traveling deep to my core, I feel her inside me.
“You’re in great pain in your world,” she murmurs.
“Yeah, I am, but I don’t feel it here. How do you know that?”
“You’re not frightened being here,” she says in a monotone voice, again not answering my question.
“No, I’m not,” I reply, thinking that I should be scared, but I’m actually fascinated more than anything else. Confused, but fascinated. “Where I come from, they’ll say this is just a hallucination.”
“Do you think you’re hallucinating?” she asks.
“No,” I answer, shaking my head. “This seems real to me.”
Her eyes drift away from mine, focusing on something behind me. I turn to see what she’s looking at and jump backwards from shock.
Chapter 2
The freakiest-looking person I’ve ever seen races towards us from the next hill. I can’t believe how fast the incredibly tall man is sprinting across the grass. His strides are long and fluid, black pants and shirt clinging to the flow of his lean, muscular body. Long, ebony hair shimmering with orange flies in the air behind his head and bounces off his shoulders. One hand holds a long metal spear—just like the one the girl has—with glints of red flashing from the scratchy surface.
“Who is that?” A shiver runs through me, and now I feel scared.
“A Disciple,” Sash replies evenly.
“What’s he going to do to me?” I frantically ask as I turn to her.
“You have nothing to fear,” she says, a look of sympathetic reassurance in her eyes. “No one in the grace of Krymzyn will ever harm you.”
I don’t know why, but I believe her more than anything I’ve ever believed in my life. A feeling of calm blankets me while looking into her eyes. Her presence seems to surround and comfort me. It’s not a conscious thought, not a calculated decision on my part. Just an overwhelming truth from deep inside—I’m safe with her.
I turn to see where the tall man is and jolt off the ground because his face is right in front of mine.
“You’ve come to Krymzyn to tell us stories of your plane,” he announces, his words translating in the air before reaching my ears.
His long, thin face is blank, emotionless, but his eyes look inside me, bore into my mind. I stare into infinite black pupils, but the amber circles smolder like hot coals in a fire.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I stammer, trembling even though I still feel like I’m safe with the girl beside me.
“Why do you shake?” he asks with a slight scowl.
His cheekbones, nose, and chin are chiseled and sharp, while dark red lips seem almost painted on his face.
“I-I’m nervous,” I stutter.
When he stands upright, I have to look almost straight up to see his eyes. He’s so tall and fit, with well-defined muscles lining his bare arms, that he could have stepped off the court at a Lakers game.
“Do you know why you’ve arrived on the Empty Hill instead of the Telling Hill?” he asks me.
“I have no idea how I got here or anything you’re talking about,” I answer, trying to keep my voice steady. “What is this place?”
“An infinite plane of existence.”
“Exactly what the words imply,” he answers, mild irritation in his voice. “Krymzyn is an infinite plane where all things exist in perfect balance.”
“Your answer isn’t really an answer,” I complain, feeling somewhat emboldened by his lack of hostility. “That’s like you asking me my name and I say, ‘My name is what my name is.’”
He glares at me for several seconds before speaking. “While that answer would certainly be valid to an extent, Chase, it’s not the most specific answer you could provide.”
Goose bumps spread across my flesh. I never told him my name, and he wasn’t anywhere near us when I said it to the girl.
“How do you know my name?” I demand.
He continues to stare at me, his face expressionless, but his eyes speak loudly, saying, “Don’t challenge me again, boy. I know things you can’t imagine in your wildest fantasies—or conceive of in your worst nightmares.”
“The atmosphere announces your name to us when you arrive,” he finally says, “just as it allows us to communicate with one another despite our different languages.”
I nod, deciding that his response is actually the first thing I’ve heard here that makes sense to me, considering the way our words all delay in the air.
“Do you have any idea how I got here?” I ask.
“Tellers arrive from all other planes of existence,” he replies. “We don’t question how but simply accept that they do.”
“I don’t live on a plane,” I say. “I live on a planet called Earth that’s in a universe.”
“Any world outside Krymzyn, a universe you may call it, is another plane of existence.”
“Why am I here?” I ask.
The tall man shakes his head, glances at Sash, then frowns when his eyes dart back to mine. “You appear too small to be a Teller,” he grumbles. “When you depart, you shouldn’t return unless you’ve grown much taller.”
“Darkness is near,” Sash interrupts before I can respond.
I turn to look at her. She’s carefully studying the sky through narrowed eyes.
“That can’t be,” the tall man insists. “Darkness shouldn’t fall with a Teller in our presence.”
“Darkness is almost upon us,” she says. “I must find my Mentor.”
Sash quickly nods to me before sprinting down the hill in a powerful, sleek stride. As she races across the meadow, her breathtaking speed is more captivating than a wild cheetah in full pursuit of its prey.
The light suddenly begins to flicker, so my eyes leap to the sky. Like a time-lapse nature film, the clouds start to move, but not across the sky. Tumultuous churning within the outline of each billow animates the darkening clouds. The red and orange rays recede until it’s so dark that I can barely see. My entire body flinches when the man grabs the back of my shirt and snaps his face in front of mine.
“We can’t leave this hill during Darkness,” he says sternly. “We’re safely out of reach here.”
A drop of rain splatters on top of my head. Several more splash onto my face and arms, but they don’t feel wet. Silvery beads of water race down my skin and fall to the ground, just like mercury sliding across a sheet of angled glass. Then the raindrops fall harder until they hammer against my body.
My head jerks to a loud creaking sound in the meadow. The bark on the tree suddenly glows crimson red. One of the branches on the ground whips high into the air, coiling like the head of a snake ready to strike. I try to turn away and close my eyes, feeling a throbbing in my head as I begin to shudder. The man tightens his grasp on the back of my shirt.
“Stand still!” he screams.
* * *
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Ally shrieked over Casey’s steady barking.
Footsteps pounded through the hall, and my mother appeared in the doorway. Her eyes gaped with terror when she saw me.
Drool fell from my lips, my body shook uncontrollably, and excruciating pain stabbed through my head. A bitter taste spread from my throat into my mouth. When my stomach convulsed, I launched bile all over my lap, hearing the same guy on TV spinning the wheel.
Chapter 3
My mother rushed me to the emergency room. A doctor asked where my headaches started, how they spread through my head, and what I’d felt during my seizure. After several x-rays of my skull, I was kept in the hospital overnight.
I started the next day encased in a hollow metal tube for half an hour during the MRI. Three different times, they took blood from me. Finally, they pumped me full of blue fluid to record the CT scan.
At the end of the day, I told a neurosurgeon what I’d seen and heard during the seizure. I told him how real everything had seemed while I was in Krymzyn. The doctor’s diagnosis was a “hypnagogic hallucination.”
“It was real,” I said firmly to Dr. Baskin. “I know it wasn’t a dream or hallucination or anything like that.”
I’d dreamt about the place during the night in the hospital, and being there had been nothing like the dream. When that tree had sprung to life and the man had grabbed me, it had felt as real as if my hand were just resting on a table and someone stabbed a knife through it. The dream had felt nothing like that.
“Tell me something, Chase,” Dr. Baskin said. “Did you smell anything during the hallucination?”
“I don’t know,” I answered after a few seconds of thought. “Not that I remember.”
“Was there any kind of flavor in your mouth that you noticed?” he asked.
I had to think again before answering. “Just vomit when I got back.”
He held up a diagram of the human brain showing the stem attached to the upper spinal cord. “Touch the bump on the back of your skull,” he said.
I placed my fingers on the back of my head and rubbed the small lump.
“That’s your occipital bone,” the doctor explained. “Just underneath that”—he pointed to the spot in the picture—“is where your brain stem attaches to your spinal cord. Impulses are sent from that area to your sensory nerves, and that’s exactly where your tumor is.
“The tumor,” he continued, “applies pressure to your optic and auditory nerves. That pressure is what caused your seizure. The pressure sometimes results in hallucinations that can seem very real. Patients have described them as vivid, lucid dreams, similar to a hypnotic state. Smell and taste are never present in this type of hallucination because those sensory nerves aren’t affected.”
“But I felt it all inside me,” I said.
“Your brain transmits corresponding sensations to many nerves throughout your body, even to your sense of touch. Those sensations become part of the hallucination. I’m sure it felt very real to you at the time.”
I was immediately put on anti-seizure medication to prevent any more episodes. A week later, my head was shaved, drugs were injected into me, and I counted backwards from ten until I passed out. The benign primitive neuroectodermal tumor was successfully cut out of the back of my skull. I pretty much just slept the first few days after surgery.
On the fourth day of my recovery in the hospital, I woke up early in the morning. My mother didn’t stir until a nurse’s footsteps crossed the floor of my room. Mom hadn’t left my side since the operation, sleeping in the reclining chair beside my bed every night.
One of the day nurses, Amy, walked to the side of my bed and gazed at the sketch pad lying on my lap. Colored drawing pencils were scattered across the blanket and partially covered the tubes snaking into my arm. My mom’s eyes opened as she drowsily sat up in her chair.
“How long have you been awake?” Mom asked me.
“About an hour,” I answered.
“That drawing is awesome,” Amy said genuinely, admiring the sketch on my lap.
“Thanks,” I replied, smiling at her.
“Her eyes look like a tiger or something,” Amy remarked.
“Cheetah,” I said. “That’s what I want them to look like.�
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“It’s so cool the way you get her to look sad and fierce at the same time.” Amy turned to my mom. “He has quite a talent.”
“It’s a real gift,” my mom said. “He’s taken art classes for years, but what he has can’t be taught.”
“I’ll say,” Amy replied before returning her eyes to the drawing. “Who is she?”
“Just a girl from”— I paused—“from my imagination.”
“She’s really beautiful.” Amy swung a hand behind her head, striking an exaggerated movie star pose. “Maybe you’ll draw me before you leave.”
“Sure,” I said, a big grin on my face. “I’d like that.”
“I’m going to hold you to it,” she said, smiling back at me. “But right now, we need to take a look at how you’re healing.” Amy leaned me forward, gently removed the bandages, and examined the back of my head. “That’s doing nicely. You’ll be ready for radiation in no time.”
“Great,” I replied sarcastically. “I can’t wait.”
“Chemo’s a lot worse,” Amy said. “You’re lucky you don’t have to go through that.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I mumbled.
* * *
The radiation burns healed over the summer, my hair grew back, and follow-up scans didn’t show any new growth. The neurosurgeon said that I couldn’t risk head trauma, so any sports with potential contact were ruled out—even baseball and soccer, sports I’d played almost my entire life. To fill that void in my life, I took up running.
When I first started jogging on the streets around my house, I tried to imitate the long, sleek gait of the girl in Krymzyn. I eventually found my own stride, developed my leg muscles, and gradually increased the distances I ran.
On weekends, my dad drove us to trails located in the canyons between the San Fernando Valley and Los Angeles Basin. Side by side, we’d run together on the arid dirt paths. Dad provided constant encouragement, especially when I felt nerve pain related to the surgery. After the brain stem has been tampered with, pain is transmitted throughout the entire body for several months that follow. At times while I ran, the burning sensation I felt in my arms and legs erupted into a raging inferno.