Chapter 1 — Episodes

The first time I had one of my “episodes,” I was eight years old and on a playground seesaw at Bellaire Elementary. A hundred other kids ran and shouted, clambered on the monkey bars, plied the rings, or rode the merry-go-round. One moment I was bobbing up and down at the end of a plank with Bobby Swenson as a counterweight, the next I was riding a galloping horse across a grassy plain. And I wasn’t an eight-year-old boy anymore; I was a young man wearing chaps, tall boots, and a buckskin jacket.

Wind whipped my face, and the horse’s hooves thundered beneath me. I was exhilarated and terrified all at once. The only real horse I’d ever ridden was at the Sarpy County Fair. Well, it was sort of a real horse; it was a Shetland pony that I’d fancifully named Black Beauty, even though it was really dark brown. It had been doomed to walk in endless circles at the end of a tether while I pretended to be a cowboy, yippee-kie-ay.

I had dreamed of riding a horse like this, of course, but there was no chance of it happening—or so my parents dictated—until after my twelfth birthday. Why my twelfth birthday, Mom and Dad were unable to explain clearly, but it was apparently a magical age to them, and so it became to me.

Hands on the reins as if I knew what I was doing, I wanted to laugh and cry and scream bloody murder all at once. But the terror ebbed quickly when I realized I actually did know how to ride a horse. At least, my grownup body did. I let myself enjoy the experience, not even bothering to ask myself what had happened to the seesaw or Bobby Swenson or the school playground.

This is so cool!

I looked ahead now, tears streaming from my adult eyes, and saw a ramshackle outpost ahead, set close to the dirt road I galloped madly along. A guy stood in front of the outpost with a horse, watching my approach. I felt my body preparing for something and realized, with a jolt of surprise, that I knew what it was.

I got this.

I reined my sweating mount to a gliding stop, flung myself to the ground, then grabbed my saddlebags. As I spun to throw them up behind the saddle of the fresh horse, I was struck by how short I was. That horse seemed awfully tall. Didn’t seem to faze me; I fastened the saddlebags down with a leather strap as if I’d done this a million times, and vaulted lightly into the saddle.

This was like a dream, only better. In my dreams I hardly ever did things so expertly. The other guy let go of my new horse’s reins and grasped the reins of the horse I’d just dismounted. Then he tipped his hat as I urged my new horse into a full gallop, continuing on the road across the plain.

I, Peter August, was a Pony Express rider! How cool was that? And I realized I knew I was bound for Sacramento, California, where I would receive the huge sum of $100 and three days’ rest before having to carry another batch of mail and newspapers back east to St. Joseph, Missouri.

Before I reached Sacramento—someplace I’d never been for real at that point in my life—I knew that I had a rifle in a scabbard under my right knee and wore a gun belt with a single revolver in it on my left hip, mounted backward so I could reach around and grab it with my right hand. I told myself it was a Colt .45 at first, ‘cause that was the most famous gun in the world and the one that every movie cowboy carried. But I somehow knew that wasn’t right. My gun was called a Pietta .44.

I’d never heard of a Pietta .44 then. Now, I own two.

I rode for uncounted hours on the last leg of the journey, heading toward a strange city that I somehow knew like the back of my hand. There would be beer and food and a big, fat cigar tonight. And maybe a card game and … I flushed with embarrassment. A girl. Well, a woman, I guess. I distracted myself by trying to remember if I’d ever smelled cigar smoke. I hadn’t, but somehow I remembered it anyway and knew I liked it.

My horse galloped into the cool shadow of a twilit forest; elms and oaks rustled in the breeze, and the birds of evening called to each other through the branches. I could barely hear them over the sound of hooves on the soft ground. I could smell wet earth and knew a stream flowed nearby. That made me thirsty, so I took a drink from the canteen dallied to my saddle horn. I gulped some water, surprised at how good it tasted, then stoppered and dropped the canteen. It hit the pommel with a soft clang that spooked me more than it did the horse.

I glanced up and realized we were coming up fast on the stream and that the horse would jump it to get across.

Awesome!

I braced myself for the leap … and landed at the bottom of the seesaw’s arc with a jolt that made my tailbone cry for mercy. Bobby Swenson had jumped off the other end of the seesaw and stared at me with his face all screwed up. The playground was almost empty; the other kids had fled back to the school, answering the bell.

“Jeez-Louise, Petey!” Bobby whined. “What’s the matter with you? You were like a zombie or something. The bell’s been ringing forever. You want to make us both tardy?” Bobby turned and pelted for the nearest door.

Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I jumped up, wincing, and scrambled after him.

I had similar episodes over the years, each one unique in its own way. I figured they were waking dreams or visions, maybe. I started writing them down when they were interesting, and I even told some of my friends about them … before I realized they thought I was a raging loon and made fun of me over it behind my back. So, I started telling people I was writing stories; my episodes were scenes I’d come up with. By the time I was in high school, I’d taken my flights of fancy to the Old West, to ancient Egypt, and to some old school where the students wore robes and the study hall looked like Hogwarts.

I kept my journals private; I showed them to no one … until my last year in the Omaha PD Police Academy. I was dating a fellow cadet—Lauren Canfield. We were what they call simpatico. I’d often heard people say of their life partner, “They complete me” or refer to them as a soul mate, but with Lauren, I felt that was true. So, I struggled with whether I should share with her the real-life source of the stories I wrote.

That was decided for me on the evening I proposed. I had a ring—one Lauren had already admired. We’d been drifting toward this moment for months, and both of us knew it. So, I went cheerfully into the Big Evening, anticipating the beginning of our life together. We crossed the Missouri into Council Bluffs to dine at a riverfront restaurant we both liked, and I gave her the ring at a table overlooking the water. There was no question of her turning me down; we both knew we belonged together.

I was still holding Lauren’s hand, tilting it so that her diamond sparkled in the candlelight, when the waiter arrived at our table with a covered platter. He smiled at us as he set it on a folding stand and whisked off the gleaming cover. I blinked and found myself in the cool recesses of an immense, fire-lit hall in which vividly painted columns rose at least two dozen feet to a vaulted ceiling.

“Did you hear me, Amenaru?” said the guy standing next to me.

I blinked and turned to look—or, at least, my body did. The young man peering at me in the shifting half-light of the hall wore a short dress—well, okay, I guess you’d call it a tunic—and a cream-colored head covering. He had on more jewelry than Lauren ever wore, and all of it was gaudy and as brightly hued as the columns rising all around us. Light from braces of oil lamps—the kind that look like little squashed tea pots—glinted off all the bling. I could almost imagine the flutter of lamp flames as distant applause from invisible admirers.

The guy had a name I already knew. This was Har-khebu, acolyte to one Nebemakhet, high priest of the Divine Physician, Imhotep. I’d “met” him before in at least one of my waking dreams. He’d called me Amenaru then, too. Weird. What were the odds of dreaming about the same fictitious person more than once, while not actually repeating the same dream? The last time I’d “been” Amenaru, Har-khebu and I had been attending Nebemakhet during a ceremony that was completely alien to me, yet which I somehow knew every nuance of.

Yeah, I know. Contradictory as hell.