Lukor grabbed the guard roughly by the collar, “Are you questioning my orders, Lemnock? Maybe you want to challenge me. Well, do ya? This can be settled according to the Code of Torin here and now.”
Lemnock growled, began to raise his hand to strike his superior, but a second later, thought better of his actions. “No sir, you command.”
Lukor released Lemnock. “Better get that nose of yours looked at. I’ll take over here.”
Lemnock started down the corridor. He was grumbling all the way though none could make out what he was saying. I can only imagine what. We all knew that he had it coming. He’d had it coming for a long time. None of us felt any sympathy for him.
Lukor turned toward the other guards, who had gathered together in the wide corridor. “Do any of ya have anything ta say? Now is the time.”
Only silence answered his words. There was not a one who would question Lukor. He was in command and there was no one who would dare question it.
Lukor turned to the rest of us, his eyes were surprisingly cold. “Back ta work, we’ve a quota ta meet and I’m two set of hands short.”
We worked all the harder that afternoon. What we’d seen today was unheard of. I prayed that it was a sign of things to come.
When we returned to our cells, I was amazed to discover that Lukor had seen to it that Gwen and Marci were provided with a pan of water and a large cloth. Marci had done her best to clean up the little girl. Gwen was sound asleep on her bed, with her head on Marci’s lap. Marci looked in my direction and smiled slightly.
“She’s doing better,” she whispered, trying not to awaken the child. “I think all she needs is rest.”
I smiled back at her, thankful that Gwen was feeling better. Yet I knew that her life here would be tragically short unless something more was done. I had to speak to Lukor.
It wasn’t long before the captain walked by our cells and gazed in at the sleeping child. “I’ll give the pair of ya another two days of rest, but the young one had better be able to work on da third or I’ll be a sending her to the drells to do with her as they will.”
“I understand,” replied Marci, stroking Gwen’s forehead.
Lukor only glanced at me for an instant before continuing on down the corridor. It wasn’t until much later that evening that I had a chance to talk to him. Even then he really didn’t seem like he was in the mood.
The corridor was very quiet and Marci and Gwen had been asleep for a long time before Lukor walked past my cell. He seemed surprised to see me standing at the bars.
“Why are ya still awake?” he scolded. “You’ll be in no condition fer work tomorrow.”
“I was hoping to talk to you,” I replied.
His face lit up with surprise maybe even a little bit of anger. “About what? I’ve done all I can fer ya. My debt to you is paid in full.”
“I know, but I wanted to thank you for what you did for Gwen this morning. It meant a lot to all of us.”
A slight smile came to Lukor’s face. “What I did was a simple matter of conserving human resources. To send Gwen ta the drells would have been foolish. There is too strong a bond between her and Marci. Marci would have revolted against me. In the end, I’d have lost both her and Marci, and Marci is one of my best workers. They’d be na good ta me on the dinner table of the drells or where ever it was that the drells saw fit to send them. That’s all there is to it. I’m short workers as it is.”
I looked directly into the captain’s eyes, “I know you better than that, Lukor.”
“Do ya now?” he said in a stern voice, yet his eyes betrayed the kindness in his heart.
I didn’t reply, but my eyes never lost contact with his. A moment later his stern expression melted away to be replaced by the slightest of smiles.
He reached out to take my hand, “Do ya think that I know ya less well? You didn’t wait up so patiently just to tell me that.”
His response surprised me, the time would never be better. I prayed for the wisdom to say the right thing. “Lukor, I don’t want to die a slave.”
“No one does, but tis the fate chosen fer ya by the drells. Neither you nor I can change that.”
“Who are the drells that they have the right to decide our fates? They can’t be allowed to go on hurting people, yours or mine.”
For a moment, Lukor seemed stunned. “That’s mighty dangerous talk. Were the drells ta hear da likes of it, you’d soon be made to wish that you’d ner spoken against them.”
“Tyrants are tyrants whether you speak against them or you don’t. I think it’s about time that we did something about the drells. Lukor, if our people were to work together, stand against the drells, maybe we could bring an end to this nightmare. We could win our freedom, both yours and ours.”
Lukor squeezed my hand gently, his eyes were full of sympathy. “Now yer talking foolishness.”
“We’ve got to try. Please Lukor.”
“Do you think yer da first ta speak of such a thing? In the time of my grandfather, my people rebelled against the drells. They fought bravely, yet they were crushed within but a few days. The horrors that were visited upon them in the days that followed are spoken of even now. Twould take more than human slaves and wulvers ta defeat da magic of the drells.”
I didn’t want to cry in front of Lukor, not now. Yet I was barely able to hold back my tears. “Please, Lukor, at least think about it.” I hesitated. “God is on our side. Why else would He have given me the strength to save you? He will give us the victory.”
For a moment Lukor looked at me incredulously. “God ya say?”
“Yes,” I said.
Lukor let go of my hand and turned away. “Never have I heard one of yer kind speak as you, nor move me so.” He started down the corridor, but had taken only a few steps before he stopped and turned once more. “I’ll consider what you’ve said this night. I’ll even consider the thought that this Jesus of yours is on our side.”
I wasn’t sure what to think as this beast with a human heart walked away. I’d done all that I could, it was up to him now.
During the weeks that followed, I spoke a lot to Lukor, and I learned even more. He stopped by my cell after most of the others were asleep fairly often. Strange as it might seem I felt at ease talking with him. We had become good friends. I was not in hell as I had feared on that first day. I was still very much alive as were the others. As Lukor described it, we were in some other world, perhaps some other dimension entirely. Exactly where, he couldn’t say. You see, he saw things from a seventeenth century perspective, he could not relate to modern concepts of time and space. All that he knew of Earth as it existed today was what he had gleaned from the quiet conversations of slaves in the tunnels. Much of what they said made no sense to him.
I tried to give him a more twentieth century view of the universe. I’m actually pretty knowledgeable about that sort of thing. I’ve always been interested in the sciences, especially physics. You see, my father is a high school physics teacher and he talked to me about science a lot as I was growing up. Well, I guess his enthusiasm for it all was contagious. I told Lukor about how the universe was put together, about planets, stars, and galaxies, that sort of thing. He seemed to accept and absorb what I told him, even if it was coming from a slave. What I said mattered to him. That made me feel better about myself.
But as we spoke another thing became clear, there was no way back, at least none that Lukor knew of. The trip to this place was a one-way road. We would live out the rest of our lives here, far from the world of sunlight.
Despite all that I’d told him about the laws of science and the marvels of modern technology he still clung to many of the old ways of thinking. He spoke of witches and their powers as though magic and curses really existed. Perhaps they did, perhaps we had become too confident in our science and technology. Maybe we’d lost sight of certain ancient arts. He told me of the Sisterhood of Twilight. It was this sisterhood that delivered me unto the drells, delivered all of
us here to this terrible place. It was their purpose in life, part of their unholy pact with the drells. In turn, the drells granted to them eternal youth, eternal beauty. I had a terrible thought. Could Keira be one of them, a witch? Could modern witches still be weaving their evil spells in the 1990s. It seemed crazy. Yes, there were those people that still practiced witchcraft. I’d read about them. But I’d thought that it was all just a game. They couldn’t have any real powers, or could they? After all I’d seen, I was starting to become a believer in their dark powers. It all made sense.
In the whole scheme of things, the wulvers were slaves, plain and simple. The drells wanted to keep the wulvers as ignorant as possible when it came to their dealings and their history. The wulvers were forbidden to keep records beyond those necessary to manage the slaves. Indeed, only a few select families were permitted to possess the skills of reading and writing. Lukor’s family was one of them. Even when it came to the 300-year history of the wulvers within this realm the records were a blur. Yet as time passed, I began to realize that Lukor’s fear of the drells was greater than his hatred for them. There would be no revolt.
It was late May as I lay upon my stone bed staring up at the rock ceiling. I was nearly asleep when I heard a key being inserted in the lock of my cell. I turned to see two guards roughly push a slender young woman into its confines. The blond youth seemed confused, as she rattled the bars, then she turned to me. For a moment I couldn’t see her face, then my vision cleared and I recognized her.
“Leslie?” I said softly, rising to my feet.
“Oh God, Debbie!” cried Leslie, in a voice no louder than a whisper. “What’s happened to us?”
She rushed into my arms crying. I began to cry too as I thought of the horrors Leslie would share with me, and though she tried to comfort me, I felt like I could have cried forever.
And so my journal ends. I can bear to write in it no longer. Maybe I’m having a crisis of faith. Maybe I’m just tired.
Chapter 6
“Your friends in school have been asking about you,” said 48-year-old physics teacher Tom Langmuir, gazing at his daughter in her hospital bed. “Someone in my AP physics class asks about you nearly every day. They’ll be graduating tomorrow night, you see. They all miss you. They are so sorry that you won’t be walking with them. So am I.”
Debbie just laid there motionless. A monitor read off her vitals on a computer screen on a regular basis. It had been seven months since her comma had begun, seven months of tests, specialists, second opinions and even third opinions. Her case was baffling. She could breathe on her own without the aid of a machine yet she was totally unresponsive.
“They’ve moved you from the West Shore Rehabilitation Center and brought you here to the Martin Neurological Center, in downtown York,” continued Tom. “They’re going to be trying something new. The doctors say they have real hope with this new procedure. Oh Debbie I wish you could get a look at this thing they’re going to use to try to help you today. I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s called FENS, the Focused Electronic Neural Stimulator. It uses a huge liquid helium cooled electromagnet to focus a magnetic field into your brain. They’re going to use it and powerful radio waves to stimulate the higher functions of your brain. The radio ways will release electrons from the surrounding neurons and those electrons will be guided by the magnetic field into the sleeping parts of your brain awakening it. We talked about how magnetic fields can bend the path of electrons in class, remember? I’ll tell you, that doctor made a believer out of me real fast. I just know this is going to work. You’ll be up and about before you know it, you’ll see.” Tom hesitated. He was fighting back tears. “I pray that you can hear us. I have to believe that you’re still in there somewhere that we’re reaching you.”
Tom’s wife Christa took her daughter’s hand. “I’m here too sweetie,” she said. “We’ll never give up hope, we’ll never give up. We have the whole church praying for you.”
At the door to Debbie’s room Dr. John Wilson watched as the heartbreaking scene unfolded before him. Mr. Langmuir had the theory of FENS down pretty well. Few people that he explained the FENS instrument to had even the vaguest concept of what he was talking about.
Now here he was on the threshold of a dream. A few months ago this dream seemed like a lost hope. If this treatment succeeded his would be a life well lived.
He glanced at his watch. The orderlies would be wheeling this poor girl into the FENS lab in another ten minutes. His whole life had been converging on this moment.
“Connie says we have the superconducting coil to -268 degrees,” said Ron, who now joined Dr. Wilson by the door. “Everything is looking good. We’re ready.”
“Good,” confirmed Dr. Wilson.
“Debbie is a pretty girl,” noted Ron. “I believe in you, doctor, you’re going to make this work, you’re going to bring her back to the land of the living.”
Dr. Wilson nodded. “Her condition is so typical of Hobart’s. She has virtually no higher brain function and yet she continues to breathe, her heart continues to beat, and her other bodily functions continue without outside human intervention.” He paused. “Until you came on board with that computer enhanced EEG unit you built I’d have said that she had no higher brain functions whatsoever.”
“I figured that you didn’t hire me for my good looks,” joked Ron. “No, she has some higher brain function but at a level below the threshold of standard EEG units. And the nature of that brain function is peculiar. There is function throughout the cerebrum, no dead spots. On most unresponsive patients I’ve studied I find inactive regions indicative of dead or severely damaged brain tissue but not with Debbie. No, with her the activity is uniform. It’s just at a phenomenally low level.”
Dr. Wilson nodded. “Your work has been of great help to me. If we can just stimulate the synapses, open up the pathways in Debbie’s cerebrum, I’m convinced that we could restore at least some of her higher brain functions to normal. I know that part of her brain isn’t dead, you’ve confirmed what I already suspected.”
Again Ron nodded. Dr. Wilson was so intense, so motivated. He only prayed that this experiment would work, not just for Debbie’s sake but for the doctor’s as well.
A minute later the orderlies arrived with the gurney to take Debbie to the FENS lab. This was it. It was show time.
Debbie and Leslie had only spent about 20 minutes studying Debbie’s Bible tonight. They were both very tired and Debbie’s hand was hurting her where the sharp flying rock had struck it. She had it wrapped in a cloth bandage that Lukor had provided her but it still throbbed painfully. It would be another scar to add to the collection, one of the worst.
Leslie had been asleep for the better part of an hour but sleep seemed to have eluded Debbie up until now. She lay back on her stone bed staring at the darkened ceiling. Then she closed her eyes. She could hear sounds from all around her; coughing, water dripping, movement from the cell across the corridor. Yet as she laid there she was hearing other sounds, stranger sounds, distant voices.
“Cutting in relay three, power to 38 KV, field strength looks good at 12.6 Teslas,” said a distant male voice.
“Watch the current on the coil,” warned a distant female voice. “Bring it up slowly. Don’t let the induction get ahead of itself.”
With each passing second the sounds of the cavern faded even as the voices and a persistent low hum grew louder. The room seemed to be brightening fast.
“Field is stable. I’m ready to begin the first RF stimulation of the regions surrounding the frontal lobe,” said the male voice. “Oh wait, something is happening, doctor. She just moved her arm, I’m sure of it.”
Debbie opened her eyes; it hurt. “Too bright,” she said in a soft voice.
“Doctor, she just opened her eyes,” said the male voice. “Oh my God, she just spoke.”
Debbie squinted as she looked around the brightly illuminated room filled with unfamiliar equipment and faces. Then she
focused on the man in the surgical mask standing directly over her. “Who are you? Where am I?”
Ron quickly removed his mask to reveal his broad smile. “Hello, Debbie. My name is Ron, and you are in the FENS laboratory at the Martin Neurological Institute. Welcome back to the land of the living. How do you feel?”
“Confused,” replied Debbie. “Is this a dream?”
“No, I don’t think so, unless we are both having the same dream at exactly the same time,” replied Ron.
Suddenly Debbie seemed more alert. “I can talk. Oh, thank you Jesus, I can talk!”
“And you’re doing a great job of it,” noted Ron. “You haven’t done it for a long time.”
By this time Dr. Wilson had joined Ron at Debbie’s side. “Hello Debbie, I’m Dr. Wilson. You’ve been in a coma for nearly seven months. We’ve been trying to bring you out of it. You’ve just been through an experimental treatment and, well, it was successful.”
“My mom and dad,” insisted Debbie. “I want my mom and dad.” “Your parents are waiting just over there,” said Dr. Wilson. He pointed toward a set of windows that separated the FENS lab from the control room and observation gallery. Beyond the windows Debbie saw about a dozen people her mother and father among them, waving to her. There were tears in their eyes.
Ron looked to Dr. Wilson. “I don’t know doctor but I think our job is done here. Shall I have Connie power down?”
Dr. Wilson hesitated. “Yes, go ahead, do a normal shut down but keep the coils cold.”
“Yes sir,” said Ron, motioning to Connie.
The background hum decreased in intensity and pitch until only a soft pumping could be heard within the laboratory. Ron carefully removed the head unit from Debbie allowing her more freedom to move about.
“My muscles are so stiff,” said Debbie, “and I feel so weak.”
The Realm of the Drells Page 8