THE CRYSTAL IN THE WALL

THE CRYSTAL IN THE WALL
by Hal Hefner

Skipping school on Friday afternoons had become one of our senior-year rituals. With only study halls and gym left on our schedule, why the hell wouldn’t we? I didn’t have a car, but Donger did, so we’d pile in and drive around, hunting for new places to get high in a town where nothing felt new anymore. Tommy suggested we go on an adventure—hike out to the giant cross near the Russian monastery. Donger bitched about potholes and gas, like he always did, but finally caved to our relentless peer pressure.

There were five of us—me, Tommy, Jules, Dante (aka “Donger”), and Eric—hiking through the woods past Jordanville under a bruised pink sky. The plan was to get high behind the massive cross and skull on the hill, and maybe snap a few pictures of the monastery it loomed near. Eric was leading the way like a man on a mission. There it stood: a beacon of confusion. There was nothing holy about this cross—its base weighed down by a monument of stone and a cracked skull embedded like some unspoken curse. Towering over us in a field of overgrown grass, it cast a long shadow across my face as I squinted toward the sun.

That’s when Eric and Tommy pulled out a pre-roll of kush, and we got high as hell. Before we even finished, Jules—her ADHD in full bloom—was already wandering into the trees a hundred yards away, trailing smoke and chaos behind her.

She’d always had bigger balls than any of us, even as a kindergartener. We followed her down a winding deer path behind a moss-covered stone wall, no idea where it led. Jules didn’t either—but once she made up her mind, there was no stopping her.

We hit a fork: one trail dipped down a hill, the other curved around a bend. Donger, nursing his bad knee from last football season, immediately started whining. Jules ignored him and marched downhill. Tommy busted his balls for being fragile until I had to break it up before Donger went full tantrum. Eric waved the joint like a bribe and urged us to catch up with Jules.

Then we heard her call to us.

We followed her voice but couldn’t find her at first. She’d veered off the path and into a tangled stretch of overgrowth.

That’s when we saw it—an ancient, forgotten church half-swallowed by the earth. The rotted roof sagged beneath thick moss and decay. Trees burst through its stone skeleton, nature reclaiming the holy. One rusted door hung crooked on its hinge, and when Donger pushed it open, it fell off with a crash, kicking up a cloud of dirt and moldy air. Always the showman, he screamed like a banshee and leapt backward.

We laughed, but deep down we were all uneasy.

“This fuckin’ place is probably full of dead nuns who fuck demons,” Tommy muttered, flicking his lighter like he wanted to summon them.

The deeper we went, the colder it got. It smelled like wet leaves, rot, and shit. Tommy lit a half-melted candle stuck into a stone holder. Jules snatched the joint from his hand, lit it, and passed it around. Smoke softened the fear. We marveled at the walls, carved with strange, twisted symbols that felt more Satanic than Orthodox.

Tommy and Eric found it first—buried in a crumbling wall: a quartz crystal the size of a football. At first, they thought it was just a rock, but I saw the shimmer. I pulled it free and held it up. It pulsed faintly in my hand. As sunlight filtered through holes in the roof, I felt a charge run through my fingers—like it was breathing through me.

Tommy grabbed it, laughing. “Yo! It's humming or something!”

Then everything fell away.

I was back at the cross. But Jesus wasn’t on it. A goat-like beast oozing blood had taken his place. Black clouds churned above. A herd of sheep stampeded past me, bleating in terror. I flinched and shut my eyes.

When I opened them, I was in a dark, ruined building. I heard a wet gurgle and looked down—blood oozed around my shoes. Tommy lay beneath a collapsed wall, crushed, his leg twisted. His mouth moved but no sound came out.

I dropped the crystal and staggered back, clutching my head.

They thought I was just too high.

But it wasn’t the weed.

That night, back in Ilion, we were waiting on some other friends. The crystal was in my backpack with a few cans of spray paint for tagging the old Remington Arms building. Tommy kept hounding me.

“That shit’s probably worth a fortune. It’s got vibes. Let’s sell it, buy a fat sack of shrooms.”

It was tempting. But something in me wanted to keep it—no, protect it. I swallowed the feeling like bile.

We slipped through a side gate into the factory. Rust peeled from every pipe. Dust and chemicals choked the air, ghosts of our grandfathers echoing in silence.

I was alone when I reached into my bag. My hand brushed the crystal.

The air snapped electric.

I pulled it out. Ahead, a figure shimmered in the dark—flickering, glitching. Then two figures. A man in a butcher’s apron, yelling in what sounded like Russian. He raised a hammer and brought it down, again and again, on another man’s skull.

Blood sprayed the concrete.

I turned to run, but something grabbed my throat—cold, iron hands. I couldn’t breathe.

A voice—no, a thought—invaded my mind:

“Lazarr showed them mercy. Will you?”

It released me. I felt its breath—hot, sour—on my cheek.

Then nothing.

I came to near the elevator shaft. Jules was calling me. I was shaking.

When I found them, Tommy was kicking a rusted wall.

“Yo! Watch this!”

He kicked the wall harder than he should have—and then came the sharp crack of splitting stone, followed by a deep, guttural groan from above as the old ceiling began to sag.

I opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came out.

In the next instant, the wall and ceiling collapsed with a deafening roar. Bricks and rusted beams came crashing down in a storm of dust and noise. Jules screamed. The air filled with choking debris.

We rushed toward the wreckage, coughing, crying out, digging through splintered wood and twisted metal. At first, we found only his hand—still twitching beneath a slab of stone.

Moments later, all that remained was blood.

As we heaved off a heavy cluster of bricks, the ruined shape of Tommy’s skull came into view, pulped and gurgling. His brain bubbled out from the crack in his head.

And there it was—the crystal—rolling free from what used to be his backpack, smeared red, humming like it always had.

But I had it upstairs. I know I did.

How the hell did it end up here, beneath the rubble with him?

None of it made sense—except that I already knew this was going to happen. The moment his foot lifted, it flashed in my mind. The same scene. The same blood.

I hadn’t said anything. I hadn’t stopped him.

Would it have mattered?

Donger and Eric were already sprinting for the exit. Jules fumbled with her phone, screaming into the receiver as she called for help. And I stood there—frozen—just staring at the crystal.

I didn’t touch it.

I won’t touch it again.

Because it touched me first—coiling around my thoughts like a snake made of whispers and light—and I know now that I will never be the same.

Art and story by Hal Hefner 
Produced by Catmonkey Studio