The Realm Of The Drells – PREVIEW

8/17/2019 The Realm Of The Drells – PREVIEW

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R E ALM

of the

DR E LLS

Kenneth Zeigler


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© Copyright 2016–Kenneth Zeigler

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America. is book may not be copied or reprinted for commercial gain or profit. e use

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encouraged. Permission will be granted upon request. Unless otherwise identified, Scripture

quotations marked PEB are taken from the Plain English Bible, copyright © 2003. Used bypermission of Destiny Image Publishers, Shippensburg, PA 17257. All rights reserved. All

emphasis within Scripture quotations is the author’s own.

is book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual

events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Chapter 1

e Personal Journal of Miss Debbie Langmuir

My name is Debbie, and I’m seventeen years old, but I’m not likeother girls my age, not anymore. I still look the same; at least Ithink I do. Auburn hair, green eyes, medium build, all of that is pretty

much the same as before. I played on our high school girls’ volleyball

team and was on track to be the valedictorian of my graduating class,

the class of 1992. Believe it or not, I was seriously thinking about goingto the Air Force Academy next fall, major in engineering. But all that

has changed.

I use to hang out at the West Shore Mall on Saturday afternoon with

my friends. Oh, how I enjoyed those times. We’d visit a dozen shops

with plastic in hand, but spend less than ten dollars. Up in my room

late at night I’d listen to my favorite tunes on CD, rocking to the beat ofBlind Melon or Pink Floyd. I even went out on dates, nothing serious,mind you. But that’s all part of my past, part of my life in another reality,

another world. Now I live in a world where sunlight is but a memory and

freedom but a dream. I live in a hell created for the living.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved to write. ere was a time, in

my other life, when I figured that I might be able to write a fairly good

romance novel. Maybe it would occur in medieval times. ere’d be thisgirl who meets the love of her life, a love who takes her away from her life

of hard labor, a real knight in shining armor. ere’s money in writing if

you have the talent. Money, what does money mean now? Money can’t

buy you anything here. I work 12 hours a day every day just so they’ll let


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me eat. Anymore I don’t care what’s on the plate, food is food. Anything

they slide through the bars is fine by me. As for knights in shining armor

that sweep the fair young maiden off of her feet; they don’t exist here.I’m not even sure where here is. ere are lots of things medieval about

this place, but knights in shining armor aren’t one of them.

Now I write to preserve my failing sanity, my dying hopes of ever

escaping this place, to put the pain and hunger out of my mind. rough

my writing, my spirit soars free, even if my body is locked away in this

cell with chains on its feet. I don’t even get to take them off at night,

here in my cell. Maybe no one will ever read this thing other than mebut I still have to write it.

Since I now have a sort of pen, and a stack of paper, which I’vebound together into a diary, I’m trying to piece together the fragments

of a waking nightmare from which there is no escape.

Looking back, I guess my story all started in my senior AP English

class late last October. As usual, Mrs. Peters had droned on and on

for most of the period. I swear she had a gift of making even the mostinteresting topics boring. What a class to have during the last period

of the school day. It was near the end of the hour, and Mrs. Peters had

finally given up trying to put us to sleep, when my close friend Keira

leaned in my direction.

“Hey Deb, do you believe in spirits, ghosts, that sort of thing?”

She gazed at me with blue eyes, and she was oh so serious. Youmight have thought that her question was one of great significance,

a major issue of our time. Yep, it was just the sort of off the wall

question I’d come to expect from Keira. She was blond to the roots

and then some.“Not really,” I replied.

“Well, I just inherited a real crystal ball. It was passed all the way

down from my great grandmother. It was old even when she was alittle girl.”

“How can you tell a real crystal ball from a cheap imitation?” I

asked, trying to give her a hard time, to derail her train of thought.

“No, honest to God, it’s the real thing,” she insisted. “It’s been hid-

den away for years in my great grandmother’s attic. A hundred years agoit sat in the fortune teller’s tent of a circus sideshow, but now it’s setting

on an antique table in my bedroom.”“Doesn’t it clash with the decor?”


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“No, it looks really cool, you’ve just gotta come over and see it.”

Keira had piqued my curiosity, so I stopped by her house on my

way home to see this thing that had her so wired. It sat upon an antiquemahogany table, the same one it had rested on in the fortune teller’s tent

all those years ago. e ball was big, bigger than I’d imagined, setting

on the three prongs of its gold base. Its cloudy depths possessed an

unnatural vastness. It was like a crystalline universe. I don’t know how

else to describe it. It was really spooky. It wasn’t quite what I’d expected.

“My grandmother inherited it from her mother. Her mother told

her it was dangerous and never to play with it. My grandmother gave methe same warning,” said Keira, running her hand over its glossy surface,

gazing into its depths. “She had shown it to me when I was just a littlegirl years ago but then she hid it away again. She wouldn’t even tell me

where she’d hidden it. She once told me that the world would be better

off if it were to be thrown into the deepest part of the sea. You see, you

couldn’t destroy it or you’d be even worse off.”“You couldn’t destroy it,” I repeated.“No,” replied Keira, “because of the curse.”“e curse,” I said. “You wouldn’t care to elaborate on that one

would you?”Keira’s somewhat confused expression told me she wasn’t quite sure

what the word elaborate meant, though she wasn’t about to admit it.

“I mean tell me more about it,” I said.

“I know what you meant,” she retorted. I’m sure there was a littlebit of frustration, even anger in her voice. It caught me by surprise. “Just

because you’re probably going to be the valedictorian this spring doesn’t

mean you’re better than me.”“Oh, Keira, I didn’t mean anything like that,” I said. I really didn’t

mean to offend her.

“Everyone around the school thinks I’m nobody,” continued Keira.

“I’m not a part of the in crowd, I’m not one of the popular ones, thebeautiful people. e other people in our class laugh at me behind my

back, I know it.”

Now I was really blown away. I’d never heard Keira talk like that,

not ever. “at’s not true,” I objected.“Well, they’re going to find out,” she raged on. “ey’re going to

find out just what I can really do. en they’ll be sorry. At least some ofthem will.”


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Keira had me really scared now, though I didn’t tell her. I tried tochange the subject, get her out of this freaky spiral. “But you were tell-ing me about your grandmother, about the crystal ball.”

It was like I’d found some kind of switch and changed the channel.

Keira’s tone changed immediately. e sudden change was almost as

scary as the rant she’d been on.

“Oh, my grandmother died of cancer just a few months ago,” shecontinued. “She went peacefully in her sleep. A few days later I went

looking for this ball. I’d wanted it from the day she told me about it. I

hunted all over for it. When I ran across it in that old trunk in the attic,

it seemed to call out to me. It was really freaky. You know? I think it

wanted to be here. I think it wanted to belong to me.”She stroked the ball in a real strange way. It was like it was a pet cat

or something. e way she gazed into it was, well, almost like she wasin love with it.

“Okay,” I agreed, almost afraid to say anything else. “So, what do

you plan to do with it?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking,” began Keira, turning to me once more.

“Friday is Halloween, and my parents are going to some sort of com-

pany party. ey’ve given me the okay to have a few friends over for thenight. How about a séance? We could invite Leslie, Maya, and Wendy.

It would be a blast.”

“e five of us and a bunch of dead people, sounds charming.”

Keira’s smile was broad but devious. “Oh come on, where’s your

sense of adventure?”

Adventure? Some adventure. I had a bad feeling about the whole

thing from the start. If I’d only known what was in store for me asthe five of us gathered around that crystal ball, I’d have gone trick or

treating with my little brother instead. A bag full of fattening candy,

even an apple with a razor blade in it, would have been better than this.

Still, we all thought that it was going to be harmless fun, an evening of

supernatural entertainment.

Leslie had been drinking. I remember her annoying giggle as Keira

told the four of us the story that her grandmother had told her, a story

of the crystal ball, and its former owner.“Her name was Tanya Cassadore,” began Keira, lighting the incense

candle on the nightstand. “She was a side show fortune teller whose

mystical talents made her both feared and admired. Today she would


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have been one of those psychics with a one-nine-hundred number. You

know the type, call us and find fortune, love, and success. Back then,

those kinds of people wandered about the countryside with the circussideshows, predicting your future for a quarter. Tanya followed in the

footsteps of her mother and grandmother before her. It was they who

had schooled her in the art of witchcraft.”

“I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog Toto, too,” giggled Leslie,

trying her best to imitate the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz. Her

impersonation wasn’t all that good.

Still we all laughed. I suppose that none of us took this whole thingvery seriously.

“It’s no laughing matter,” objected Keira, joining our circle aroundthe crystal ball. ere was anger in her blue eyes, anger that surprised

the others. I’d seen it before. “It would be a serious mistake to offend

the spirits of the ball.”

“Don’t mind Leslie,” said Maya, trying her best not to laugh, “just

go on with your story.”“Well,” continued Keira, “the owner of the circus, a real ass by the

name of Karl Bonner, had the hots for Tanya, but she’d have nothing

to do with him. His lust for her grew and grew, until late one night, he

and Samson the circus strong man, wandered into her tent, the smell

of whisky on their breaths. ey vowed that nothing was going to stop

them from having their way with her that night. I mean, who was goingto stop them? Back then women were more property than people. No

one knows exactly what happened next, but somehow, Tanya was struck

on the head, splitting her skull and splattering the magical orb with her

own blood.”Keira gently caressed the shimmering crystal ball with her hands,

gazing into its depths intently. For a moment her face took on a strange

blank expression, as if she were in a trance. I turned to Leslie, wonderingif I was the only one at the table who was getting seriously spooked by

this whole affair. She looked back at me, a puzzled look on her face, but

she didn’t say anything.

Keira pulled back from the ball and turned toward me, her eyes

wide and intense. No, not just intense, I think a bit crazy. “Yet evenas she lay dying on the floor, she cursed the two men. ‘e drells shall

punish you, and all those who would dare to usurp the power of thecrystal,’ were the last words she ever spoke.”


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Keira looked straight at me just as she said the word usurp. It was

like she was proving to me that she knew the meaning of a word used by

the more intellectual crowd. To tell the truth I thought I saw somethinglike hate in her eyes. Keira and I had been good friends since the third

grade. I don’t think I ever saw her look at me that way before. It hurt.

en Keira looked about at the others. “It was only then that the

two men realized what they had done. Yet it was not the mysterious

drells, but the law that they feared. e body had to be dumped, and

quickly. Karl and Samson wrapped Tanya in the blood stained rug of her

tent and carried her deep into the woods, where she was laid to rest inan unmarked grave.”

“You mean they didn’t hack her up first?” Leslie snickered, leaningback in her chair.

Keira ignored Leslie’s comment, yet I saw the gleam in her eye. Once

again she didn’t quite look like the Keira I knew. It sent a chill up my

spine. It was like she was two people, the Keira, the friend I knew and

this other Keira, this new Keira. Come to think of it, she wasn’t eventalking like the Keira I knew. Keira never could get a story you told her

straight. She really wasn’t a very good story teller. at was until tonight.

Tonight she told the story almost like she’d been there.

“e following day the circus broke camp and moved on to the next

town, yet it wasn’t long before questions of Tanya’s whereabouts came

back to haunt Karl Bonner. A young girl, one of the circus performers,had seen Karl entering Tanya’s tent on the night of her disappearance,

and later heard her muffled screams. She told her parents, who in turn

had gone to the police. Yet when the police confronted Karl, told him of

the charges against him, he laughed. Tanya hadn’t just disappeared, he’dfired her. He’d caught her practicing the world’s oldest profession from

her tent. He couldn’t afford to have her giving the circus a bad name.”

“Oh, come on,” objected Maya. “ey didn’t just take his word forit, did they?”

“ey did,” confirmed Keira.

“Male chauvinist pigs,” said Leslie.

“Maybe, but like I told you it was a different time,” replied Keira,

turning in my and Maya’s direction. “Anyway, it was more than justhis word,” Samson testified that he’d seen Tanya arm in arm with a

mysterious young man on the very night of her disappearance. It hadn’tbeen the first time he’d seen her in the company of a stranger, nor heard


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moaning coming from her tent. A child’s overactive imagination, that’s

what they called it. Although Tanya had been with the circus for nearly

ten years, she was little more than a stranger to most of the troupe.e disappearance of the witch, as she had come to be called, came as

a relief. It wasn’t long before Karl replaced Tanya with another young

attractive fortune teller, one more inclined to meet his needs.”

“e creeps got away with it?” asked Wendy.

“Did they?” asked Keira, a smile coming to her face. “It wasn’t long

before a bizarre series of accidents started plaguing the performers, earn-

ing their show the title of the jinx circus. e Great Redondo’s fatal fallfrom the trapeze, the brutal mauling of the lion tamer, the tragic death

of the beautiful assistant of the Fabulous Leonardo, during one of hisknife throwing performances, it was uncanny. Amidst the mounting

debts of the circus and the terrible nightmares that tortured him night

after night, Karl began to see Tanya’s revenge taking shape.

“en one morning, the body of Samson was discovered in a

corn field not far from the circus, his neck snapped like a twig. eexpression of horror upon his face told of an encounter with something

terrible, something from beyond the grave. Two days later, the new

fortune teller vanished in the middle of the night without a trace, never

to be seen again.”

Keira rose to her feet and walked around the table. She placed her

hand upon Leslie’s shoulders, then upon mine. e way she ran herfinger along my neck frightened me.

“Well, don’t just leave us in suspense,” objected Wendy, her voice

excited. “What happened next?”

“Patience,” whispered Keira, returning to her chair. “We have allnight.” ere was a really strange smile on her lips as she scanned our

anxious faces. “Karl was terrified to the point of madness. He went to

the law, confessing to the grisly murder of Tanya Cassadore. He pleaded with the sheriff to place him under arrest, to protect him from the dark

evil thing that was stalking him. Yet no one could save him from Tanya’s

vengeance. Only two days after his arrest he was found dead in his jail

cell, his head crushed, and his body pulled half way through the bent

bars of his cell window, a window hardly more than a foot square.”“Gross!” remarked Wendy.

“ere’s more,” replied Keira, who seemed as much caught up inthe story as the rest of us. “ree nights later, the circus burned to the


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ground, sparing nothing. Well, almost nothing. e following morning,

the crystal ball and the table upon which it sat stood untouched among

the ashes.”“Yeah, but how did your grandmother get hold of it?” objected Maya.

“e eleven-year-old girl who spoke out against Tanya’s murderers

was my Great Grandmother Lea my grandmother’s mother. She was

very close to Tanya. Tanya had wanted to get her involved in her act,

have her become her apprentice when she came of age. When the circus

was destroyed, and her parents looked for other work, Lea took the

crystal ball with her. She told my grandmother that Tanya’s spirit stilldwells within it, and that it was her will that Lea take charge of the ball

and become the heiress to all of its power. It was hers now. In fact, it would be the property of her daughter and her daughter’s daughter and

so on all the way down to me.”

“Okay, so what do we do now?” asked Wendy, who was as eager as

the rest of us to get started.

“We join hands in a circle,” replied Keira, stretching out her arms.“I’ll try to call forth the spirit of Tanya Cassadore to help us contact the

spirit world.”

“Oh oo oo,” giggled Leslie, as we formed an unbroken ring.

“You’ve got to be serious or this isn’t going to work,” warned Keira,

closing her eyes, and grasping my right hand more tightly. “I, Keira

Parker, the great granddaughter of Lea Anderson, call upon you TanyaCassadore. Visit us, and make clear the way to the spirit world.”

We sat quietly in the darkened room, waiting for something to hap-

pen. When it didn’t, we just started asking questions of the ball, calling

out to the spirits. It was fun for a while.I remember the cold breeze, a breeze that blew in from nowhere. I

mean, the windows were shut and the door was closed, so where did it

come from? A green glow appeared deep within the crystal ball, faint at first,

but growing ever brighter. In just a few seconds the ball was filled with

sparkling stars, while glowing blue and green smoke swirled from its

center and out into the room.

I tried to look away, cry out to the others, but I couldn’t. I wasfrozen by the ball’s power. I couldn’t understand why the others didn’t

say anything. ey had to be seeing the glowing ball and the fiery cloudsaround us. Yet they just went on about the business of calling out to


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the spirits, laughing and joking as they did. eir voices seemed to be

drifting away into the distance, even as the room faded from view. It

faded into total blackness.I couldn’t feel Keira’s or Leslie’s hand anymore. I figured I was still

in Keira’s bedroom, about ready to pass out. I tried to rise to my feet,

I couldn’t.

en suddenly I could see again, though this vision was very dif-

ferent from anything I’d ever experienced before. I was caught up the

swirling mists. I looked down to see the others still gathered in their

circle. I even saw myself there with them, though my head was bowedand my eyes closed. I could still hear the other girls, though their voices

seemed distant and distorted.“Leslie, Wendy, help me!” I cried. Yet they couldn’t hear me.

I reached down; I couldn’t feel my body. No, it was worse than that,

I didn’t have a body, at least not one that I could see. How could that

be? What was happening to me?

I’d become a spirit without a physical form. I swirled round andround with the ethereal mists, yet I was also spiraling in toward that

glowing crystal ball that now looked more like a glowing pulsing bubble

than a crystal ball. en I was within the ball itself looking out through

the glass. e glass made the world look so distorted, so unreal. My

girlfriends looked like giants gathered about me. en I could see myself

again. Yeah, but I was naked, floating weightlessly in the middle of thisbubble of glass, that to me seemed as if it were a dozen feet across. What

had happened to my clothes? How did I become so small? And there

was something strange about my body. I can’t really describe it, not in

any way that makes sense. I felt sort of electric. I know how strange thatsounds, but I don’t know how else to put it. And there was something

else; the edges of my body seemed sort of blurry, like I was slightly out

of focus. I could feel no sense of warmth or cold, I just felt electric. Icried out to my friends who gazed into the ball at me. ey had to be

able to see me now, but they didn’t. I tried to beat against the walls of

the bubble with my fist but I couldn’t reach them.

en Keira came up real close to the ball. She looked right at me.

e others couldn’t see me but she could.“Goodbye, Debbie,” she whispered before pulling back.

en the world beyond the ball faded away into a kind of black-ness. Now I was truly alone. e walls of the bubble around me were


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glowing with a green glow. It was my only source of light, bathing me

in an eerie luminance.Beyond the bubble I could only see darkness. It was a deep dark-

ness, not the darkness of a small room but a vast black nothingness, a

void like outer space but without any stars. And I sensed that I was in

motion. ere was no turbulence like in an airplane, not even a sound

beyond my own breathing and the beating of my heart, but I knew. I was still floating around in that bubble like an astronaut in the space

shuttle. I didn’t know which way was up and which way was down but

I knew that I was going somewhere.

I must have floated for hours in that glowing blob. I thought for

sure that I would suffocate, but I didn’t. e weightlessness caused myhead to pound and I became sick to my stomach.

Suppose I was to puke in this thing, what would happen? I tried notto think about it. Maybe it wouldn’t happen if I didn’t dwell upon it.

You know, now that I look back on it I’m not all that sure that the

sickness was real so much as it was in my head. I thought I should be

sick so I was. Crazy as it sounds, I’m not even sure that I was breathing

or even if my heart was beating. I thought it was at the time, but now

I’m not so sure. ere are a lot of things I still don’t understand aboutthat journey. I only knew that I felt sick, but the nausea would be the

least of my problems

I even prayed. Imagine that; Debbie Langmuir praying. Sure, I went

to church, I didn’t have much choice in the matter. My parents were

dyed in the wool Methodists, pillars of the church. But somehow their

faith hadn’t been passed on down to me. Now I saw the lessons they

tried to drum into me in a new light. Here I was; a victim of supernat-ural powers. If powers like this, powers to spirit me off to who knows

where existed, what was so outrageous about the existence of God? Sure,

I prayed but I didn’t seem to be getting any results. Perhaps God wasn’t

listening, perhaps I was going about it all wrong. In the end I was totally

exhausted but no closer to an encounter with God.

I was starting to fade off to sleep when bad finally turned to worse.

I just about freaked out when I saw the two glowing orange eyes appear

outside the bubble. I mean, one moment I was alone, then it was there.I felt like a goldfish in a small fishbowl as the dark robed figure, illumi-

nated in the green light of the bubble, came closer. It wasn’t floating like

I was. It seemed to be walking on air.


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With its gaunt leathery hands, it pulled back its hood and I sawits pale gray features. I still have trouble describing it. A face out of anightmare might be a good start. It had a bulging head for one thing, with horns, and the tips of its huge ears came to sharp points. In itsblack mouth were white razor like teeth. In a way its head was almostgoat-like, but without fur. But its eyes were like no animal I’d ever seen.ey were large and orange, like some sort of enormous insect, and theyglowed like hot coals. Its gaze was intense and penetrating, and for amoment, I felt like I was looking into the face of the devil himself.

e body of this being was mostly hidden by its long cloak but itlooked to me like the thing had more than two arms. But I could have

been wrong.“I bid ye welcome to the realm of the drells,” he said in a deepthundering voice. “I am Dre Kon, your master.”

e beast drew nearer, eyeing me over all the more carefully. I wastrembling, and tears blurred my vision. I was too terrified to speak, yetI couldn’t turn away either.

“You are a pretty one; an excellent choice,” he continued. “You lookhealthy and perhaps even strong, given the proper training. is is good.

You have been brought here to serve my people, and that is exactly whatyou shall do. Cooperate, and you shall live longer. Do not contemplateescape for there is none, and harbor not mortal hope in your heart. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

Abandon all hope ye that enter here. I knew those words, but in theterror that filled this moment, I did not remember from where.

“I shall leave you in the care of the wulvers, your taskmasters, doall that they ask of you. Pray that we do not meet again, even though

that prayer will be in vain, for in the end, we shall. We see all of youagain, on the day that you are of no further use to us, at least as laborers.On that day you will take on a new role; as food. Your task is to delaythat meeting, that fate, for as long as you possibly can.” e slightest ofsmiles came to Dre Kon’s gaunt face as he pulled the hood over his headonce more and stepped away, fading from sight.

It was several minutes before I regained my senses and the terrible

realization hit me. Abandon all hope ye who enter here, it was fromDante’s Inferno, the words inscribed on the gates of Hell. “I must bedead!” I gasped. “I must have died during that séance. I’m in Hell! But why? What have I done to deserve this? Was it my lack of faith in ahigher power that had led to this?”


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I curled up in mid-air and cried like a little child, I cried for my

mother. Never had I been so frightened or felt so alone. Why me, for

the love of God, why me?I don’t know how much time had passed when I first saw it, a small

point of light, like a distant star. I stared at it for a long time, watching it

grow brighter, trying to make out what it might be. I can’t explain what

it was about that light that calmed my fears. Perhaps it signified hope of

some kind, a light shining out in the darkness. Perhaps it was just that it

was something in the middle of all of this nothing.

Soon I realized that the distant light was the first of many hugeglowing crystals that lined the gray stone walls of a long rocky tunnel.

Standing within the glow of that first crystal stood four large beasts.ey were dressed in brown leather garments; some sort of armor, that

covered only their chests and private parts. Upon their feet, they wore

high boots that appeared to be made of the same brown material. eir

bodies were furry and muscular, like some kind of nightmarish cross

between a body builder and a gorilla. Yet their heads, they were like wolves, with a snout like nose and sharp canine teeth beneath dark

brown lips. Were they werewolves?

ey gathered around me as my bubble settled to the cavern floor.

All of a sudden I seemed to come into focus. What I mean is that my

skin returned to normal and the electric feeling suddenly went away. I

fell two feet to the ground as the bubble vanished. I landed painfullyupon my hands and knees. I looked up to see the circle of beasts close

in about me.

I slowly turned around. Before me was a cave-like tunnel lit by those

strange crystals. Behind me was darkness. e tunnel seemed to fadeout into a sort of nothingness. Maybe it was just a huge cavern room, a

deep pit, or something like that. Maybe it was something worse. ere

was no escape.“I wouldn’t contemplate yer trying to run off in that direction,”

spoke one of the beasts, who I assumed was their leader. “You’ll find

yourself right back in the hands of the drells themselves. I’m sure ya

don’t want that.”

I was terrified as one drew a leathery whip, yet somehow I remainedoutwardly calm. Animals can sense your fear, that’s what my father once

told me. I couldn’t let them know just how frightened I was. I rose tomy feet.


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As I did so I felt strange, not lightheaded but light-bodied. It was as

if my new body didn’t weigh as much as my old one. I didn’t look any

different, no thinner, but I’m sure I was lighter.I stood nearly toe to toe with the largest of the beasts, the same

one who had spoken. I stared up into his cold brown eyes, not daring

to blink. I was surprised, when, after a minute, a slight smile came to

his lips.

“Not afraid er ya?” he said in a barely understandable growl, that

brought a brief round of guttural laughter from his friends around him.

“No,” I lied.“en yer a fool,” he replied. “Prepare her!”

Two of the beasts grabbed me by my arms and dragged me downthe huge tunnel. We had walked about ten minutes when we past sev-

eral small cells cut into the rock on the left side. ey weren’t very big,

maybe eight or ten feet across. Each had dark metal bars in front of it.

One of them held a girl about my age wearing a gray tattered dress.

She was bruised and filthy, sitting there on the floor gazing at me withglassy eyes. I don’t know if she saw me or not. She sort of looked like

she was in shock.

“at’s what el happen ta ya if ya don’t work hard,” said one on my

escorts. “Work well and live.”

We traveled on for several more minutes before one of the wolf men

ushered me into a narrower side passage, through an open metal door,and into a large chamber whose four rock walls had been carved into

rows of shelves from floor to ceiling. A black metal goblet was practically

thrust into my face.

“Drink it!” roared one of the wulvers, grabbing my long brown hairfirmly in hand and yanking my head back.

My hand was quivering as I accepted the mysterious liquid.

“Drink it, or you’ll be all the sorrier fer yer hesitating!” he warned,his heavy hand shifting to my left shoulder. “And don’t ya dare puke it

up. We don’t got no time ta pamper ya.”

I gazed into the cup of sallow liquid that looked like puss and

smelled like curdled milk. I closed my eyes and downed it in just a few

painful gulps. I dropped the goblet, gagging and choking. My throatburned like fire and my stomach was tied in knots. I would have fallen

to the floor if two of the beasts hadn’t grabbed me by the arms. I’m sureI heard them chuckle, like a group of high school pranksters. What


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Realm of the Drells

kind of beings should find such amusement in my suffering? All the

while another wulver scanned the hundreds of shelves as if searching

for something.“I’ll find em, never worry,” he said in a guttural voice, “I know I’ll

find da right size.”

“Can’t ya organize anything, Lemnock?” growled the largest of the

beasts.

“Of course I can, Captain Lukor,” objected the wulver, who searched

all the more frantically.

e pain had begun to subside when Lemnock turned to Lukor.“ese el fit er, Captain,” he proclaimed, tossing a pair of tan sandals

from one of the stone shelves to the ground. ey didn’t. After several attempts, I was fitted with a pair of shoddy threadbare

sandals, that I was later to find were made of specially treated human skin.

“How are you feeling now, my green eyed child?” asked Lukor, plac-

ing his hand heavily upon my shoulder.

“Awful,” I gasped, yet my voice was no louder than a whisper. “No, what have you done to me?”

“You humans are too noisy,” he replied. “e elixir of silence ya

drank will quiet ya down a bit, take the bark from ya. e elixir of

silence has shriveled up your voice box. And I assure ya that they won’t

be a growing back. From now on your voice will be no louder than a

whisper. Ya have no need to talk anymore, all you need to do is listenand obey. You’ll live longer that way.”

“You, you!” I stopped myself before I said something that I’m sure

would only have angered them and made my experience worse.

Lemnock grabbed another item from the shelves, it rattled loudlyas he turned to Lukor. “She’ll be a needing this too, captain,” he said,

handing the black metal chastity belt to his superior.

Yes, I kind of figured out what it was right away, although it didn’tlook quite like the molded metal panties I’d seen in the movies. I think

those movie directors needed a little lesson in medieval history.

Even now, after so many months, I feel very self-conscious, uncom-

fortable writing about it. I’ve come to hate it so. It was a metal band,

two inches wide, that fit tightly above the wearer’s hips, a heavy hingeat the back, a lock in the front. A second band, wide at its ends and

narrow at the middle, was riveted to the first in front and back. Right atthat narrowest point, where it ran between one’s legs, was a small barbed


18/45

Kenneth Zeigler

opening, while toward the back was a much larger oval hole. It didn’ttake a genius to figure out what the holes were for.

“Oh God!” I whispered. It was like something out of the dark ages,barbaric, humiliating! Why would husbands have ever treated their wives that way, made them wear this awful thing?

Lukor placed the belt on the floor before me. “Step into it, wench!”he demanded, looking me straight in the eye.

I looked away. Right now, all I could think of was running, if there was only somewhere to run. e others were crowding in around me. Idid the only thing I could do, I moved forward, stepped into the belt.

e hinge of the devilish belt made a creaking sound as Lukor

opened it, making room for me. “You’ll get used to it,” he grunted, pull-ing the belt up around my waist and locking it about my hips, drawingit ever tighter with his key. “It’s not so uncomfortable. In time, it’ll seemalmost a part of ya. Believe me, we’re doing ya a favor.”

“A favor?” I gasped.“Of course,” he continued. “We couldn’t have ya becoming preg-

nant. Pregnant humans don’t work well, and those who don’t work wellbecome a feast for our drell masters, or worse. More than that, the drells

forbid it. None of ya is to give birth, not ever. If one of yer kind was tobecome pregnant by another of yer kind it is the law of the drells thatboth the mother and father be taken into the deep tunnels, there to bebound hand and foot, and offered as food to one of the cave beasts. I’lltell ya this; they don’t always give ya a quick death. Some of them liketo play with their prey before they eat them. at isn’t a fate I’d wish onanyone, not even one of you.”

Lukor turned from me. He reached out to a stack of clothing on one

of the lower shelves along the far wall, sorted through it. “And there issomething else. Ya see, there are also those among my people that take aliking to yer kind. It’s strictly forbidden, ya understand. I would punishthem most severely if they were caught, yet the flesh can be weak. Yerhere to work, not ta pleasure my guards. By having ya wear that thingI take the temptation from them, prevent you some pain, them someembarrassment.” Lukor turned toward me once more. “Surely ya must

see the mercy in that.” He handed me a soiled gray dress. “Twouldn’t bea good idea fer ya to be running round naked either. Here, put this on.”e sleeveless knee length dress was coarse and tattered, and had the

stench of piss and body odor about it. I’m sure I wasn’t the first to wearit, and I doubt that it had ever been washed.


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Realm of the Drells

“Please, answer me just one question,” I whispered, pulling the

filthy loose fitting garment down around me, covering my nakedness.

For a moment his harsh exterior seemed to melt away. “Ask,” hereplied in a quiet tone.

e words came hesitatingly. I wasn’t at all sure I was prepared for

his answer, yet I could not remain ignorant. I would know the terrible

truth one way or another. “Where am I?”

e smile that came to his face was disquieting. “Nowhere you’d

want to be,” he replied, turning to one of the other wulvers. “Take the

wench to da tunnels. She might as well discover what’s in store fer her.”


20/45

Chapter 2

No time was wasted in getting me ready for my new life. I was ledback out into the stone corridor and into another cavern room,one full of steam and smoke. As best I could tell, it was some sort

of iron works, a blacksmith’s shop. ere I was fitted with my ankle

shackles. ey sat me down, placing my right ankle into an open metal

ring setting upon the smith’s anvil. From the ring a heavy chain ran to

another ring. A muscular wulver beat the ring into shape with a crude

heavy hammer. His blows upon the metal rang loudly in my ears andmade the skin on my leg ripple with every swing. I was certain that

he’d screw up at least once and hit me and not the metal, but he didn’t.

Within a minute he had closed that shackle tightly about my ankle.

en he did the same to my left ankle, closing it within the metal

ring on the other end of the chain. What strange restraints, no locks.

en again, locks were only needed if the shackle was to be taken onand off of the prisoner. ese weren’t, these leg irons were to becomea permanent part of me. e chain joining the two bands was long

enough to allow me to walk but not to run. en again, I figured that

was the general idea.

I was escorted by another wulver through a maze of what appeared

to be natural caverns. e caverns were lit by the same sort of crystals I’d

seen when I first arrived. Here most of them were mounted upon black

poles made of the same sort of metal everything else here was made of.I’d never seen anything like these crystals. ey were about the size of

a football and they glowed from deep within. I have no idea how they

work, even now.


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Realm of the Drells

It was about ten minutes before we arrived at a place where about

a hundred young people like myself labored at the crack of the task-

master’s whip. ey all wore chains like mine and worked with picks,sledgehammers, and shovels to cut from the stone walls a dozen new

side tunnels and rooms. e broken up rocks were then loaded into

some kind of hopper and wheeled away.

“I’m sure yer familiar with simple tools, wench,” said my wulver

escort. “You’ll be making new tunnels and new rooms with them. You’re

going to get real good with them tools or you’re going to die quickly.

e choice is yours. Consider this as what yer people call on the jobtraining. You’re task wulver over there will tell ya what to do, but more

often it will be his whip that does da talking.”My escort told the task master that he had a new piece of working

meat for him. Yes, those were the very words he used to describe me;

working meat. What could we have done that made him hate my kind

so much?

en I joined the ranks of a group of young people carving out anew chamber from the rocks. Like myself, none of them could speak

above a whisper.

“Welcome to Hell,” whispered a thin blond haired boy at my side,

gazing toward me with deep blue eyes. He appeared to be about my

age, dressed in a tattered gray tunic. His hands were dark and calloused

and several scars marred his once handsome face where flying rocks andthe whip of the wulvers had struck him. It wasn’t difficult to start up a

conversation with this boy, a boy by the name of David Tomlinson.

“I knew you were coming,” he whispered, between the swings of his

pick. “You’re Andrea’s replacement.” For a moment his mind seemed faraway, his eyes unfocused. “She was such a nice girl, but she wasn’t strong

enough for this place. e wulvers, damn them, took their whips to her

every time she stopped to catch her breath. Yesterday she just collapsed.ey beat her again and again, and when she didn’t move, they just hauled

her away like she was garbage. God, I hope she didn’t suffer too long.”

I thought back to the girl in the cell I’d seen right after I’d gotten

here. Was that Andrea? “I’m sorry about your friend,” I replied.

I followed the lead of the others, shoveling a heavy load of rocks intothe waiting hopper. Even with the damp heat of this place, a chill ran

up my back. What sort of place was this? What could I or any of theseother young people possibly have done to be sentenced here? Was it just


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Kenneth Zeigler

being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or was there something

more sinister about our selection? I thought back to what Kiera had said

to me while I was in that glowing ball. She had done this to me. Yeah,but how? How had she gotten that kind of power, a magical crystal ball?

And who had taught her how to use it? So many questions, no answers.

“e drells have taken everything from us, even our voices,” David

whispered. “ey have very sensitive hearing, you know, they can’t stand

loud noises. ey couldn’t have our screams of pain hurting their pre-

cious ears. ey work us to death in this hell, and when we’re no more

use to them, well, we end up on their dinner table.”My next question was the most difficult one, the one that had been

on my mind for hours. “David, do you think we’re in Hell?”David looked deep into my eyes, I know he sensed my fear. His

hand reached out to mine. “I don’t think so. is is a terrible place, but

it’s not Hell. If you’re in Hell you can’t die again, can you? People die

here every day and they don’t come back.”

I looked around at the suffering souls about me. ere were peopleof all races here, a melting pot of pain. “But who are all of these people,

where did they come from?”

“ere are people here from all over the world,” replied David, scan-

ning the group, the familiar sorrowful faces. “I’m from California, but

Camron over there is from Scotland, Jennifer is from Brazil, and Jade

is from Singapore. ey never send older people here, and we don’t livelong enough to grow old.”

I looked about to see if the task wulver was listening. “Has anyone

ever tried to escape? I mean, there’s gotta be some way out of here.”

I saw the look of hopelessness even before David spoke. If therehad been a spark of hope in his heart this place had killed it. “Impos-

sible, these wulvers are careful, I mean real careful. ey keep us under

constant guard all the time. Look at those anklets you’re wearing. Doyou think you’re going to get very far in those? And how the hell could

you ever get them off? Even if you could escape, where would you go?

You’d be stumbling through dark tunnels, no food, no water, shackled,

crossing paths with God only knows what. Many times I’ve heard things

howling out there in the dark beyond the light of the crystals. Ciudaches,the wulvers call them. I don’t know if the wulvers made the name up

but they’re real alright, I’m sure of it. When they get to howling likethey do sometimes even the wolvers tremble. ese ciudachs are afraid


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Realm of the Drells

of the light. at’s what the wulvers tell us anyway. Wander away from

the light and you’re ciudach food. But even if a ciudach didn’t get you

how could you escape? You’d be wandering around in total darkness,you might step out into some bottomless pit or maybe just get lost and

starve to death. Believe me, as bad as it is, we’re better off right here than

wandering around out there.”

e crack of a whip across both our backs ended the conversation.

I was unprepared for the sharp stinging pain it brought to my soft flesh.

“Ta work, ya lazy things!” yelled the task wulver. His eyes seemed

red in the light of a nearby crystal with an unusually crimson glow.His sharp white teeth gleamed from beneath his black lips. “We have

a quota ta meet. ere’ll be na supper for any of ya if ya don’t meet it.”I felt the rough handle of the shovel in my hand. I squeezed it

tightly. For an instant the pain inspired the anger that might have

driven me to swing the black spade at this monster’s hideous head. Yet

I quickly rethought the urge that would surely have led to my death. I

had to chill, despite the heat, despite my pain. I moved to scoop up thescattered rocks on the floor before me, dumped them into the hopper.

I think the wulver had anticipated my possibly emotional reaction,

because he had stepped back a few paces. He eyed me carefully for a

few minutes. I think I had somehow amused him, while disappointing

him at the same time. I tried not to return his stare, tried to work all the

harder. In time, he walked away. I was very thankful for that.e hours passed slowly as we continued to hack away at the hard

rock wall in front of us. I had never imagined being a part of something

like this. Oh I’d seen films in social studies class about the slave labor

camps of Stalin and Hitler but I’d never imagined actually being a partof such a thing. I was hurting all over but I didn’t dare to stop.

e hours dragged on. Our task wulver cursed at us, applying his

whip to our backs for the littlest things. e fear of his lash drove us toour limits.

It was hours before we were finally given a few minutes to sit down

and gather our strength. Several wulvers brought around ladles of water,

allotting each of us a few precious sips of the cloudy liquid, along with a

slice of mushroom bread. It did little to satisfy my hunger. Yes, I played sports and I played hard but it hadn’t prepared me for

this. is was way beyond even the roughest volleyball games I’d everplayed and it just went on and on. e hours of back breaking work


24/45

Kenneth Zeigler

that followed that all too short break were agony. My soft hands were

blistered and my legs and back ached when the wulvers finally called an

end to our labors.ey gathered us together in the main tunnel. A long chain was run

through a metal ring attached to our right ankle shackles, joining the

hundred or so of us together into a long human chain. We were driven

like cattle through the gray caverns, our ankle shackles clanking and

rattling all the way back to the slave’s quarters where we were, one by

one, unshackled from the others and tossed into our cells.

Most of the laborers had a cellmate, always the same gender asthemselves, but not me. I had a cell completely to myself. I wondered if

that were a blessing or a curse.My cell was almost bare, containing only a small metal pail for

human waste, and two stone shelves cut from the rock for beds. Upon

one was a roughly woven brown blanket and a flat stone for a pillow.

I gazed through the bars and into the now silent corridor. Across the

hallway, a young dark haired girl of about ten or eleven stood at the barsof her cell. She stared into the corridor with sad dark eyes that seemed

to cry out for help.

“Hello little girl,” I whispered.

She turned to look in my direction, but her blank stare seemed to

look right through me. Her long hair was gnarled and filthy, sprinkled

with dust and small bits of sand. Her skin was very pale and her leftcheek bore a long partially healed scar where I imagine she had been

struck by a sharp rock or the whip of a wulver. It was terrible what they

had done to her, dressing her in filthy rags, locking her away in this

place. My heart nearly broke at the sight of this innocent and frightenedgirl, whose childhood had been taken from her.

I did my best to smile at her. “My name is Debbie, what’s yours?”

After a moment, her eyes seemed to focus on me, and her mouthmoved just a little bit, but there was no sound.

“Her name is Gwen,” whispered her cell mate, walking up to the

bars and placing her arm around the pitiful child.

Gwen leaned her head gently against the tall young woman’s

breast. “How could those monsters have done such a thing to an inno-cent little girl? ey expect nearly as much work from her as they do

from us, and she’s just a child. My name is Marci, Marci Daniels. Welcome to Hell.”


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Realm of the Drells

Marci was unlike the other slaves I’d spoken to. Her dark eyes heldan intensity about them, and she had a special inner strength that youcould actually feel. She caressed Gwen’s neck, attempted to comfort her.

Marci was very slender, yet muscular, and her scarred face still dis-played a trace of the beauty and vitality it must have once possessed inabundance. Her chocolate brown skin bore many scars from the taskmasters whip. Her voice was much stronger than the others and sheappeared to be older. ere were even traces of gray in her dark hair.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.“ree years and nine months,” she proclaimed. “Longer than any-

one else, and at the age of twenty-three, I’m an old woman.”

“I’m surprised that you’ve been able to keep track of the time,” Ireplied. “e others I’ve spoken to have lost track of the passing days.”“e men might have, but we women have a built in clock, don’t we?”I felt almost embarrassed not to have figured that one out.“I can thank the Marine Corps for my survival. e Corps taught

me discipline, and strengthened my body for this ordeal. My heart beatsfor the day when I will avenge the deaths of so many of my friends. Onthat day I’ll wash my hands in the blood of our enemies. I’ll find out if

their blood is red like ours.”Marci’s angry words and the fire in her eyes sent a chill up my

spine. I almost felt as though she might one day make good on hervow against our taskmasters. “How did you get here?” I asked, tryingto change the subject.

e long silence and the angry expression that swept across Marci’sface, told me that I had just made matters worse. “People around heredon’t like to discuss the greatest tragedy of their lives,” she said, looking

away, turning to her small cell mate. She placed her right arm aroundthe child drawing her close. Her left hand squeezed tightly upon thebars of her cell door.

My words were faltering as I strained to get every bit of volume outof my crippled vocal cords. I tried to undo the damage I’d caused. “I’msorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

Marci turned to me once more, her moment of weakness was gone.“It’s alright, it’s just that there’s not much to tell. I was on leave in Ham-

burg, Germany, just taking in the sights. I wandered into this curio shopfull of all kinds of really weird antiques. I figured that I might find someneat trinket that I could send back to my folks in the states. ere wasthis crystal ball setting on a table that caught my eye.”


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Kenneth Zeigler

“A crystal ball?” I whispered, as loudly as I could.

“Yeah, you know, the thing that Gypsy fortune tellers use to foretell

the future. Well, anyway, I could have sworn that I saw a faint greenglow coming from it, so I wandered over to take a closer look. I remem-

ber reaching for it and then everything around me going black. e

next thing I knew I was trapped inside of it on my way here. Damn

my curiosity!” Marci turned from the bars, and sat on her stone bed,

followed by Gwen, who sat at her side. Gwen said something to Marci,

but I couldn’t make it out.

I walked away from the bars and laid down on my stone slab. I’dsaid all of the wrong things. I figured that I’d done enough damage for

one day.It wasn’t long before the wulvers brought our suppers to us. A cup

of cloudy water which smelled of sulfur, and a bowl of mushroom stew

was our reward for a day’s work. It was all that stood between us and

starvation. As I lay back on the stone bed, I longed for someone to talk

to. I just didn’t want to be alone, not tonight.I thought of my parents of my younger brother. How I wanted to

be with them. Were they frantically searching for me, or wasn’t it like

that at all? Maybe they were in mourning, in the midst of planning my

funeral. I couldn’t be sure. What had happened to me? First I prayed

and then I cried. I couldn’t help myself. It must have been about an hour

before exhaustion finally overcame me and I finally fell asleep.e next day I awoke to a loud clanging. e wulvers were walking

up and down the corridor with black metal poles, hammering on the

bars of the cells.

“Wake up ya damn lazy humans!” cried one of the wulvers. “It’stime fer work!”

In the depths of my heart I had prayed that this place had been

nothing more than a terrible dream, something that would slowly fadefrom my memory. I’d hoped that I might wake up at home, on my white

canopy bed with my pink rabbit and my satin pillows, but I was still here.

“Oh God,” I whispered to myself, “not so soon.”

I rose to my feet. My arms and legs still ached from yesterday’s ordeal.

I could still feel the sting of the taskmaster’s whip. Today it would beginanew, as it would every day from now on.

In chains we were taken back into the caverns to continue our labor.I guess we’d been working a couple hours when Lukor showed up.


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Realm of the Drells

“e head wulver has arrived to savor our suffering,” whispered

David, bitterly.

“No talking!” yelled the task wulver, laying the lash across David’s back.I cringed to see his pain, shoveled load after load of rocks into the

hopper, hoping to avoid the whip of the task wulver. Yet as I worked,

I noticed that Lukor was watching me with some interest. Why didn’t

he just go away and leave me be? A long time passed before he finally

spoke.

“How is our newest slave girl doing today? I hope that da work

agrees with ya.”“I’m doing fine, thank you,” I whispered politely, wiping beads of

sweat from my forehead. “I think I’m starting to get the hang of shovel-ing rocks. I hope you are well today, sir.”

For a moment, Lukor looked at me in disbelief. I wasn’t quite sure

what he was going to do. He might have considered my comment to

be rude, even impertinent. But he said nothing more. He turned and

walked away. I returned to my work.“Debbie, what was that all about?” asked David. “Were you trying

to be cute, maybe trying to earn some points with that monster? It’s not

going to work. I don’t think that thing even has a soul. Don’t you realize

just how much we’ve suffered at his hands?”

“It’s not his fault,” I replied. “It’s the drells. I think the wulvers are as

much prisoners as we are. If we could just win Lukor’s trust, we mightbe able to unite forces against the drells.”

David stared at me with wide unbelieving eyes. “You’re dreaming,”

he replied, shaking his head. “You’re still new here. In time you’ll learn

to hate the wulvers, once you’ve had some time to see them in action.”e days passed, and I started to understand what David was talking

about. ere didn’t seem to be the slightest trace of mercy or compas-

sion in the hearts of our task wulvers. ey seemed to get pleasure fromour suffering. ey considered themselves a superior species. ey made

that only too clear in their day to day dealings with us. ey actually

hated us for reasons I just couldn’t understand.

But there was more. e way they looked at us, especially us women

really freaked me out. I swear they looked at us with lustful eyes. Atleast that’s how I saw it. Why would they? We were an entirely different

species. Our taskmasters would inject sexually charged statements intothe workdays, horrible things. Our morning taskmaster, a particularly


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Kenneth Zeigler

brutal wulver by the name of Lemnock was among the worst. He’d often

make reference to my chastity belt as the only thing standing between

me and him. He talked of wanting to spirit me off into a dark cavernand showing me, well, I think you get the general idea. I think he kind

of liked me but not in a good way. Still, it didn’t make him at all hesitant

to apply the whip to me.

rough it all David hovered close to me, did his best to prepare me

for the horrors of this place, protect me if he could. Yet there was one

horror he hadn’t told me about, not yet.

It wasn’t until the morning of my fifth day in the caverns that Lukoragain approached me. He assisted me in lifting a heavy rock into the

hopper before placing his powerful hand upon my shoulder. “Well Deb-bie, it would seem that tomorrow yer scheduled for yer first leaching.”

“Leaching?” I whispered.

Lukor turned to David, a surprised expression upon his face. “Why

David, I’ve heard tell that you’ve been schooling Debbie in da ways of

our world and you haven’t told her about da leaching?”“Please, sir, does it have to be tomorrow?” pleaded David. “I mean;

she’s only been here a few days.”

“Tis already arranged, and I see no good reason ta change the sched-

ule,” replied Lukor. “She’s had plenty of time to adjust ta our world,

tomorrow it’ll be.”

I turned to David, as Lukor walked away. I thought he had toldme everything he knew about the horrors of this place, but he hadn’t.

“What is leaching?”

“It’s a thing that they do to us every three weeks,” he replied, a

nervous expression coming to his face. He looked away. “I’d planned ontelling you all about it eventually, really I did. I just didn’t think they’d

be doing it to you so soon.”

“What is it?” I insisted, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Please,David, for God’s sake I have to know, no matter how terrible it is.”

David’s eyes met mine once more. ere was dampness there, but it

wasn’t the heat or the work, those tears were for me.

“e drells need us to work for them, but they need other things

from us too. We’re not just their slaves, we’re their prey. When we’re nolonger able to work for them we become their food, I told you about

that, but there’s more to it than that. ey need our blood too. eytake it from us by leaching.”


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Realm of the Drells

roughout the day, David told me of the strange ritual that I

would face tomorrow, the ritual that he himself had endured over a

dozen times. We all had to submit to it, to the humiliation, to the terror.It was horrible, made me ill to my stomach. ings here were going to

be worse than I’d imagined.


30/45

Chapter 3

The next morning began as every morning did, with the clashing ofthe wulver’s rods against the bars of our cells, yet they passed mine by.e other slaves had already been led away to the work area when two

wulvers came to escort me to the leaching chamber.

“It’s time, wench,” said the largest of the two, the tallest and burliest

wulver I had ever seen.

I rose to my feet, was reaching for my sandals when he grabbed me

roughly by the arm.“You’ll not be needing those,” he said in a guttural growl. “Yer not

going far.”

I was escorted roughly down one corridor and up another, a wul-

ver gripping me by each arm. By the firmness of their grip I could tell

that they were accustomed to dragging the more uncooperative of their

victims to this place. e stones felt cold and almost slimy beneath myfeet. I was shivering as we arrived at a black metal door at the end ofthe corridor, upon which was inscribed the golden outline of a gigantic

spider. I’m not sure if that inscription was intended to scare the victim

of this ritual, but to me it was real effective.

Inside, the strong aroma of incense filled the air, and long jet black

drapes covered all four walls. Hundreds of red candles setting atop tall

black candle sticks illuminated the room with an eerie light. e wulvers

lifted me up onto the dark marble altar in the middle of the room,securely shackling my wrists to its back corners and locking me by my

ankle shackles to the front corners. I felt like the sacrificial lamb, bound


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for the slaughter. en they departed, leaving me stretched out, spread

eagle, on that cold black slab.

God, I don’t think that I was ever so scared. For a moment I strainedat the black metal bonds that held me captive. It was pointless, I knew

it. I wasn’t going anywhere. David had said that it was best, less painful,

if I just relaxed. I tried.

I stared at the rock ceiling, at a mural that bore the likeness of an

enormous black spider poised in the middle of its web. e rendering

of the spider, many times my size, was directly above me, its eight legs

resting on light gray strands that radiated to the four walls. It was reallydetailed, the sharp jagged mandibles, the glimmer of the spider’s many

red eyes, the very texture of the web. It was frightening. I prayed thatsuch a beast existed only in mythology, not reality.

I was startled as a wulver dressed in a long black cloak emerged from

behind the curtain. is wulver was different from the others. Its fur

didn’t seem to be as coarse and it wore a dark tunic rather than leather

armor beneath its cloak. It was then that I realized that it was a female,the first one I’d seen. I guess I realized that such a thing had to exist, but

it was hard to imagine what her mate, if she had one, saw in her.

“You’d be Debbie, wouldn’t ya?” she said, in a surprisingly feminine

voice.

“Yes ma’am,” I replied, shivering all over.

“I am Kadra, priestess of Lilith. It is I who will perform the holyrite of leaching upon ya this day. Lukor, my mate, has spoken of your

courage. Today I shall test it.”

I could hear the sliding of stone upon stone as Kadra reached into

a hidden compartment beneath the altar and removed from it a glass jar filled with water and swimming brown blobs the size of my fist. She

placed the jar upon a small table at my side and reached into it with a

pair of tongs. She carefully removed a large squirming brown leach, thelargest I’d ever seen, and placed it under my right armpit. I felt a sharp

pain as it attached itself and began to feed. Tears came to my eyes as she

placed another of the horrible creatures under my left arm and on the

inside of both my thighs.

“Just relax Debbie,” she said, stroking my forehead with the back ofher furry hand. e gentleness of her tone, of her touch, surprised me.

“e leaches venom will soon numb the area where they are feeding andyer pain will subside.”


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After a few minutes the pain eased, but my terror didn’t. I didn’t

wimper, didn’t give my fear a voice. I think that impressed the priestess.

I don’t know how much time passed before Kadra finally removedthe first of the leaches. It had swelled to many times its original size,

bloated with my blood. Kadra squeezed it again and again over a large

glass bottle, as though it were a sponge, causing spurts of blood, my

blood, to burst forth. Only then did she return the leach to its tank,

robbed of most of its spoils. One by one she milked the other leaches,

nearly filling the container. By the looks of it I had lost a lot of blood.

Kadra held the flask of blood above her, raising her head high. “Ohgreat Lilith, behold the blood offering of this unworthy human. May

it nourish you and your followers so that they might better serve yourpurpose and spread your influence.” Kadra returned the leaches to their

hidden compartment then turned toward me once more. “Lukor spoke

truly, you do possess courage. Few have endured in silence what you

have endured this morning. And you also showed wisdom and manners

in the way you addressed me. is is also very good.” She gazed oncemore toward the flask, into the crimson liquid. “e deed is done; you

will now be returned to your cell to rest and recover.”

With flask in hand, Kadra vanished once more behind the curtain.

I felt even colder than before, drained of blood as I was, filled with

the tranquilizing venom of the leaches. A few minutes later, the guards

released my wrists from the shackles and carried me back to my cell. I’msure I could not have made the trip on my own.

e world spun wildly as they laid me on my stone bed and placed

the blanket over me. I thought that I heard one of them chuckle, but

I could have imagined it. All I knew was that I had been violated. It was a crime as vile and insidious as rape. At that moment, all I could

think about was escape, and I didn’t care where, just away from this

place. ere had to be a way out of this hell, I had to find it. In myfear and confusion, I cried for my mother, I cried to go home, and I

prayed more fervently than ever before. After a time, darkness closed

in around me as I fell into a deep sleep, a sleep filled with all kinds of

weird dreams.

I dreamed of a huge spider that lived in a metal teardrop. It wassurrounded by a brood of smaller spiders. e smaller spiders were

gathered around the bigger one. ey bowed before it like they were worshiping it or something. en they brought offerings to it, sacrifices.


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I couldn’t see what they were, at least not at first. e sacrifices were all

wrapped up in cocoons of white spider silk. e cocoons were about the

size and shape of humans. Some were still. Others squirmed as if there were something alive in them.

en I got a good look at one of them. Only the head was notcocooned. I gasped. It was me, wrapped up tightly in that cocoon,struggling wildly. All of the cocoons contained people, children. ey were being taken into the giant teardrop where the great spider was.

en, in a moment I wasn’t just watching this spider ritual, I was apart of it. I was the girl in the cocoon. I was hung by one of the smallerspiders upon a gigantic web within the teardrop in a row with the oth-

ers. I tried to wake up but I couldn’t.I could see the other victims more clearly now. Each was a teen likemyself, totally encased within a cocoon except for their heads. Some weregirls, others boys. All looked terrified. e huge spider swung around,placing its black bloated abdomen directly above the first cocooned vic-tim. e spider was shaking like it was straining. en a white gooey eggshaped thing popped out of the spider’s rear end and unto the stomachof the first victim. It stuck tight. e spider moved onto the next victim

and did exactly the same thing.I turned away. I was next. Not far away I saw another huge web

with five cocoons attached to it, each containing a young person, or atleast what was left of them. Now I realized that these things that werebeing attached to us were just what they looked like; eggs, spider eggs,only these had hatched. e baby spiders, about a foot across, wereusing the cocooned victims as food and getting a taste for human fleshin the process.

en I felt the slimy egg drop onto my stomach where it stuck tight. Itried to wiggle to shake it loose but I could hardly move. I wondered howmuch time I had before that egg hatched. Already it was wiggling aboutlike there was something alive inside. en everything went to black.

e other slaves were being returned to their cells as I came to. I’dslept the entire day away. I stumbled to the bars and gazed out into thecorridor. Marci observed me from her cell, her eyes were full of sympathy.

“e first time is the worst,” she whispered. “You’ll get used to itafter a while.”

Get used to it? I’d never get used to it or this place. And then there were those nightmares that came with the leaching.

ey were the worst. I thought it was the effect of the leach venom, but


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when I asked others I found that they never had dreams after the ordealon the altar. ey just slept the day away. at struck me as odd.

With the passage of time my hands became rough and calloused,

and my back was covered with scars from the task master’s whip. My

body hardened, adjusted to the demands of the hard labor, the pain. But

I never got used to it. I came to realize that the rooms we were cutting

from the rock were to become new cells, many new cells, a cell block

four times as large as the current one. Soon there would be even more ofus in the dark domain of the drells.

e days turned into weeks and the weeks into months. I counted the

days, as Marci did, although one day became pretty much like another.

I endured the leaching again and again. It was painful yet Kadra wasnever cruel. It seemed to me that Kadra had come to like me. She was

always as gentile as possible. Her words were always soothing even if the

ritual was not. She sometimes tried to distract me from the horrors ofthis ritual by getting me to talk about my life and family back on Earth.

And with each leaching came the nightmares. ey weren’t always

the same, but they were always about this place. Sometimes I saw an

underground city populated by the drells. Other times I saw them at

play, and when I say play I mean play with humans. ey didn’t just kill

us and eat us when our time as laborers was through, oh no. ey played

cruel games with us first. I don’t even want to write about them. ey were just too awful. It was like a window into the mind of the drells. It

made me fear the end all the more. Why did I have these dreams while

the others didn’t?

I even had a cellmate for a time. Just for a time. She became little

more than a footnote in my tale of horrors. Her name was Letha. She was a pretty blond haired German girl. She didn’t speak much English,

which seemed to be the agreed upon main language of the slaves. Itried to teach her but she wasn’t in much of a learning mood. I did find

out that she came from a wealthy family and wasn’t accustomed to the

kind of work she did here. She did her best to keep up with the rest of

us but she wasn’t very strong. e wulvers beat her frequently. She was

with me for about two weeks before something very strange happened,

something I don’t fully understand even now.It was after dinner of an unusually difficult day that they came. I

call them they because I don’t know what else to call them. ey were

human, totally human, dressed in some sort of military uniforms from


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Realm of the Drells

another time, maybe from another world. ere were five of them, four

men and a woman, accompanied by three wulver guards. I remember

one of them had on a royal blue cape. He seemed to be the leader. eyspoke a language I’d never heard before. I noticed that the wulvers

treated them almost like royalty. ere was no doubt who was the boss

here. e strangers walked slowly through the cell block, eying each

one of us carefully as one might look at a dress or a suit on the racks

at the mall.

After several minutes they selected seven of us, five girls and two

boys. One of the girls they selected was Letha. A wulver opened ourcell and told Letha to come forth, that she would be leaving this place.

I remember she really didn’t offer any resistance to them. I suppose shefigured that whatever they might do to her couldn’t be worse than what

was happening to her here. None of those they selected offered any

resistance. I thought that was sort of odd. In fact, there were those that

practically begged to be taken with them.

en as quickly as they had come they left. I later learned that they were servants of some guy by the name of Malfacian. Even the wulvers

knew little of them other than the fact that they were allies with the

drells and were to be treated as such. Anyway, those who went with

them were never seen again. I don’t know if that is a good or a bad thing.

Do you stay with the devil that you know or go with the devil that you

don’t know?It was after Letha left that I set off on a mission of sorts. I needed

something to hold onto and the people around me needed hope. Per-

haps there was a way to get both. I made it a point to talk to God every

evening in my cell. I think at first I was trying to battle the loneliness I was feeling. But as I went on it turned into something else, something

better. At the same time, I tried to be a positive influence in the lives of

those around me. I had to give them hope. I spoke of deliverance. If notof the body at least of the spirit. ing is, I knew so little about spiritual

matters or the Bible. How I wished that I had a Bible, or someone to

teach me the things I’d ignored for so long. I spoke to others of God

when I could, but it seemed that no one was really very interested in

hearing about Him. at sort of surprised me. Not even David wasmuch interested in what I had to say. He did say that I’d developed

an effective coping technique. ose were the exact words he used. Hethought that was a good thing. Still he figured that if there were really a


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loving God out there somewhere, why would He allow such a place as

this to even exist? I had no answer for him.

en there was Consuela, my second cellmate. She arrived in earlyDecember. She was about my age and was from Spain. I was able to

learn that much. I did my best to communicate with her using the

little Spanish that I knew from high school but she was inconsolable.

She couldn’t adapt to this new life. I think she might have been a little

unhinged even before she came here. She cried herself to sleep one night

and ranted and cursed the next. You could never predict what she was

going to be like the next minute. A lot of her anger was vented at someone by the name of Maria. She

insisted that Maria had sent her here, and spoke of what she would do toher if she ever got back to Earth. At least that is what I gathered from her

sometimes frantic ravings. She called Maria a witch. What Maria had to

do with her being here I couldn’t be sure but I had a suspicion. After all,

I had my own suspicions when it came to Keira.

Consuela did not work well during the day, despite the severe beat-ings she received. ere was an anger in her, a rage that she was barely

able to contain. One afternoon, five days after her arrival, she simply

freaked out. She turned on Lemnock scratching and biting even as he

whipped her again and again. Blood flew all over the place and she still

fought on. en she lit into him like a wild animal. In fact, I’m not so

sure that she didn’t take a piece or two out of him in the process. It tookfour wulvers to take her down. ey beat her unmercifully and when

they dragged her away I wasn’t sure if she was alive or dead. at was the

last time I saw her. I pray that she died quickly.

Still time passed. It was nearly time for our midday rations, and, asalways we were carving new chambers out of the rock, when I realized

that it was Christmas day. I looked toward Gwen as she shoveled up

rocks and dropped them into the hopper. She looked so pitiful. God, what had she ever done to deserve Christmas in a place like this? She

had often spoken of her home and family back in New Hampshire.

is was her first Christmas away from them. It was during our all

too brief rest period that David and I walked over to where the poor

child sat.“Gwen, do you know what day this is?” I asked, trying to be as

cheerful as I could.“No,” she said softly, hardly looking up from the gray floor.


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“It’s Christmas day,” I replied, kneeling besides her, looking into

her eyes. “I wish that there was some kind of present that I could give

you, but the only thing I can give you is my love, and to tell you that Jesus loves you too.” I planted a kiss on her dirty forehead and hugged

her warmly.

A tear came to her eye as she returned my embrace. “ank you

Debbie,” she replied softly, “I love you too.”

David followed my lead, kissing the little child on the forehead, as

did the young Scotsman, Camron. It seemed so inadequate.

Marci placed her hand on my shoulder as we prepared to return to work. ere was such warmth in her eyes. I think there was even the

trace of a tear to be found there. “ank you Debbie, I know it meant alot to her. I’m not so much into this religion thing you’re into but I do

appreciate the sentiment.”

“e only gift we can offer each other here is our love,” noted David.

“It might be the only thing that keeps us alive.”

In the weeks that followed, it was the love of David that allowedme to go on. I cherished the few precious moments of the day that we

could sit side by side, holding hands. Yet when the day was over we were

locked away, apart from each other once more. God, I wish they’d allow

us to spend just one night together. It wasn’t a sexual thing, understand.

I just wanted to spend some time with him, just the two of us. Just

feeling his reassuring arm around me as I faded off to sleep, to know I wasn’t alone, would make my life more bearable. It is strange how we

miss the simple things when they are gone.

It was mid-January, when something incredible happened. It had

been an unusually difficult day of work in the tunnels and I’d fallenasleep in my cell almost immediately. I hadn’t even finished my meager

supper. Now understand, I didn’t dream very much in this realm of the

drells; other than on the day of my leaching. But this night was differentand so was the dream. e dream that night was so vivid, so clear, that

it was more real than reality itself.

I found myself back on Earth, sitting in the middle of a field of

white flowers. Oh, it was so beautiful and the flowers smelled so nice. I

was free of my chains, wearing a long white dress. It was so wonderfulto be wearing nice clean clothes again. Somehow I knew it was a dream

right from the start but I didn’t care I prayed that I would never wakeup again. I rose to my feet to see a man sitting on a rounded boulder in


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Kenneth Zeigler

the shade of a great oak tree not far away. He waved to me, motioned

for me to come to him and I did. I had no fear of him. I knew that he

wouldn’t hurt me. As I drew ever closer I could see him more clearly. Like me he was

dressed in white from head to toe. He appeared to be in his mid-thirties

and had brown hair and a well-trimmed beard. His blue eyes were kind

and deep like none that I had ever seen before. If love were a physical

thing, he glowed with it. Now I knew who he was. Tears of joy came to

my eyes as I quickened my pace. He stretched open his arms and a few

seconds later I fell into them crying for joy.“It’s you!” I exclaimed. “It’s really you.”

“Of course it’s me, Debbie,” He said in a soothing voice. “I’m herenow. It’s going to be alright, I promise.”

“You heard me,” I cried. “You really heard me.”

“Yes I did, every night,” he confirmed. “I’ve been listening to you all

along. So has my Father. I’m so very proud of you, child. When things

looked the darkest you looked to me and your eyes have never left me. You have shared my love with the others too. You have acknowledged

me before others and I in turn have acknowledge you before my Father

in Heaven. I’m here to tell you that the Father has not abandoned you,

far from it.”

Jesus stepped back for a moment and looked into my eyes. I found

such peace in his presence.“Please, sit with me for a time,” He said, motioning to the boulder.

“I’m sure there is room for two.”

I sat with Him. I just couldn’t take my eyes from Him. “Oh Jesus,

please take me from this awful place I’ve been condemned to. Oh pleasehelp me.”

e Lord placed His arm around me. “Debbie, I will help you,

I promise. But let me ask you a question. Do you remember whoMoses was?”

“Yes,” I replied, “he delivered the children of Israel from bondage in

Egypt. He led them out into the wilderness and then into the Promised

Land.” Debbie hesitated. “But he didn’t actually make it into the Prom-

ised Land. He

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