“Yeah, but how did your grandmother get hold of it?” objected Maya.
“The 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 still dwells 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 Tanya Cassadore. Visit us, and make clear the way to the spirit world.”
We sat quietly in the darkened room, waiting for something to happen. 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 was frozen by the ball’s power. I couldn’t understand why the others didn’t say anything. They had to be seeing the glowing ball and the fiery clouds around us. Yet they just went on about the business of calling out to the spirits, laughing and joking as they did. Their 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.
Then suddenly I could see again, though this vision was very different 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 bowed and 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 and round 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. Then I was within the ball itself looking out through the glass. The glass made the world look so distorted, so unreal. My girlfriends looked like giants gathered about me. Then I could see myself again. Yeah, but I was naked, floating weightlessly in the middle of this bubble 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 that sounds, 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. I cried out to my friends who gazed into the ball at me. They 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.
Then Keira came up real close to the ball. She looked right at me. The others couldn’t see me but she could.
“Goodbye, Debbie,” she whispered before pulling back.
Then the world beyond the ball faded away into a kind of blackness. Now I was truly alone. The walls of the bubble around me were 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 darkness, 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. There 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. The weightlessness caused my head to pound and I became sick to my stomach.
Suppose I was to puke in this thing, what would happen? I tried not to 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. There are a lot of things I still don’t understand about that 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 supernatural 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, illuminated in the green light of the bubble, came closer. It wasn’t floating like I was. It seemed to be walking on air.
With its gaunt leathery hands, it pulled back its hood and I saw its pale gray features. I still have trouble describing it. A face out of a nightmare 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 its black mouth were white razor like teeth. In a way its head was almost goat-like, but without fur. But its eyes were like no animal I’d ever seen. They were large and orange, like some sort of enormous insect, and they glowed like hot coals. Its gaze was intense and penetrating, and for a moment, I felt like I was looking into the face of the devil himself.
The body of this being was mostly hidden by its long cloak but it looked 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 deep thundering voice. “I am Dre Kon, your master.”
The beast drew nearer, eyeing me over all the more carefully. I was trembling, and tears blurred my vision. I was too terrified to speak, yet I couldn’t turn away either.
“You are a pretty one; an excellent choice,” he continued. “You look healthy and perhaps even strong, given the proper training. This is good. You have been brought her
e to serve my people, and that is exactly what you shall do. Cooperate, and you shall live longer. Do not contemplate escape 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 the terror that filled this moment, I did not remember from where.
“I shall leave you in the care of the wulvers, your taskmasters, do all 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 you again, 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 delay that meeting, that fate, for as long as you possibly can.” The slightest of smiles came to Dre Kon’s gaunt face as he pulled the hood over his head once 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 from Dante’s Inferno, the words inscribed on the gates of Hell. “I must be dead!” 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 a higher power that had led to this?”
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 huge glowing crystals that lined the gray stone walls of a long rocky tunnel. Standing within the glow of that first crystal stood four large beasts. They 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. Their 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?
They 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 painfully upon 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. The tunnel seemed to fade out 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. There 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 remained outwardly 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 to my feet.
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.
“Then yer a fool,” he replied. “Prepare her!”
Two of the beasts grabbed me by my arms and dragged me down the huge tunnel. We had walked about ten minutes when we past several small cells cut into the rock on the left side. They 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 with glassy eyes. I don’t know if she saw me or not. She sort of looked like she was in shock.
“That’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 hair firmly 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 throat burned 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 sure I heard them chuckle, like a group of high school pranksters. What 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.
The pain had begun to subside when Lemnock turned to Lukor. “These el fit er, Captain,” he proclaimed, tossing a pair of tan sandals from one of the stone shelves to the ground. They 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, placing 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. “The elixir of silence ya drank will quiet ya down a bit, take the bark from ya. The 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 listen and 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 loudly as 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’t look 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, uncomfortable 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 hinge at 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 at that narrowest point, where it ran between one’s legs,
was a small barbed opening, while toward the back was a much larger oval hole. It didn’t take 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. The others were crowding in around me. I did the only thing I could do, I moved forward, stepped into the belt.
The 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, pulling the belt up around my waist and locking it about my hips, drawing it ever tighter with his key. “It’s not so uncomfortable. In time, it’ll seem almost 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 pregnant. Pregnant humans don’t work well, and those who don’t work well become 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 to become pregnant by another of yer kind it is the law of the drells that both the mother and father be taken into the deep tunnels, there to be bound hand and foot, and offered as food to one of the cave beasts. I’ll tell ya this; they don’t always give ya a quick death. Some of them like to play with their prey before they eat them. That isn’t a fate I’d wish on anyone, 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 is something else. Ya see, there are also those among my people that take a liking to yer kind. It’s strictly forbidden, ya understand. I would punish them most severely if they were caught, yet the flesh can be weak. Yer here to work, not ta pleasure my guards. By having ya wear that thing I take the temptation from them, prevent you some pain, them some embarrassment.” Lukor turned toward me once more. “Surely ya must see the mercy in that.” He handed me a soiled gray dress. “Twouldn’t be a good idea fer ya to be running round naked either. Here, put this on.”
The Realm of the Drells Page 2