The Realm of the Drells

by Kenneth Zeigler

  Aberdeen smiled slightly. “Call it want you will. I was being truthful, more or less. Perhaps I did overstate my position. Even after all of these years I still have a tendency to do that. You humans have a saying. I suppose I did tip my hand a bit.”

  “We humans,” gasped Wilson.

  Aberdeen smiled, though slightly. “You have been so insightful for so long. You sensed the presence of the drells though you knew not their name. You gave up everything in the pursuit of them, in the pursuit of evil. You reached out to save innocence. Did you truly believe that we would abandon you just short of your goal? We have a vested interest in your enterprise, your mission. We perceive that you will be doing some housecleaning here on your Earth, purging it of an insidious infection, vermin who invaded it from the outside. They have interfered in the affairs of man long enough. Their reign, their very existence must come to an end. You will bring an end to it, with a little outside help. You will save Debbie and the others, I am sure of it. Believe in yourself and know that Samantha did not die in vain.”

  That last statement hit Dr. Wilson profoundly. “What do you know of my daughter Samantha?”

  “I can tell you that she loves you very much,” said Aberdeen.

  “She loved me very much,” corrected Wilson. “She died in that realm of the drells many years ago.”

  Aberdeen stepped toward Wilson, placed his hand on his shoulder. “No John, she still loves you very much. You might say that she is your biggest fan. Surely you must understand that physical death is not the end of us. We go on.” Aberdeen hesitated. “It was not part of my directive and there are certain things that I was forbidden to reveal to you but I suppose I never was very good at following orders. I visited her but three days ago, knowing that this confrontation was inevitable. It is a beautiful place where she lives, John, a place surrounded by the trees of a green conifer forest. Her suffering was but for a moment, now she lives in peace and happiness where your wife also dwells. Her words were to tell you not to give up or give in. Don’t blame yourself that you were not able to save her. She wants you to save the others, to bring them home, and you will.” Aberdeen placed a floppy disk upon Wilson’s desk. “Here is all of the information you will need to find them, every last one of them. Locate them John Wilson, bring them here, and at the appropriate time bring them home. You will know when. You already know how.”

  There were tears flowing from Wilson’s eyes now. “In the name of God, who are you?”

  Aberdeen seemed deep in thought for a moment. “The clever answer might be that I am one who dwells in the shadows, not because I fear the light but because I seek to root out the evil that hides therein. That is my prime mission. I am evil’s worst nightmare. I am called Abaddon, the Destroyer.”

  “You’re an angel,” said Wilson in a trembling voice.

  Abaddon did not respond to Wilson’s question. “You have what you need and I have said too much. We can have no further contact. The rest is up to you.”

  Abaddon turned even as a sphere of glowing mists and sparkling stars appeared before him. “I bid you good hunting, doctor,” said Abaddon. He walked into the mists and vanished.

  Wilson sat there dumbfounded. A moment later Ron and Connie stepped into Dr. Wilson’s office.

  “We heard a gunshot,” Almost immediately Ron noticed the damage to the wall. “What happened?”

  Wilson’s awestruck gaze told Ron that something incredible had transpired here. “They were here, both of them.”

  “Who was here?” asked Ron. Then he looked at the floor. “Doctor, what is this?”

  Wilson rose to his feet and stepped around the desk. Then he looked down to see the small puddle of green blood on the floor. His eyes grew big with surprise. “My God, blood, drell blood.”

  Ron knelt down. “Drell blood?”

  “Don’t touch it,” warned Wilson. “We need to study it. I need to get a sample and I need to get it quickly before it becomes contaminated.”

  Wilson stepped around Ron and made his way down the hall and into his lab. Ron and Connie followed. Wilson quickly obtained a syringe and a vial.

  “Doctor, you’re not making sense,” said Connie.

  “Not now,” said Wilson. “We don’t have time.”

  Connie looked to Ron. He simply shrugged.

  They returned to the office and watched as Wilson carefully sampled the precious few drops of the thick greenish fluid. He looked to Ron.

  “Green blood, green!” exclaimed Wilson. “Drell blood must be based on some metal other than iron. Incredible!” He looked at the side of the syringe. “A bit more than three milliliters, more than I’d originally thought.”

  “But how did drell blood get here?” asked Ron.

  “I’ll tell you about it as we work,” said Wilson, placing the three-and-a-half-inch floppy disk in his pocket. “We have to know more of these drells. This is the only evidence we have so far. I have to know what their weaknesses are. You’d better be ready to work throughout the night, both of you, we don’t have very much time.”

  As they worked on in Dr. Wilson’s lab he spoke of the incredible encounter that he had had this evening; both encounters.”

  “I just don’t understand how you came to be in possession of bullets made of iridium and osmium,” admitted Ron. “I’ve heard of uranium bullets but not iridium bullets.”

  “I think I know,” announced Connie. “I remember you talking about the gold that Mr. Aberdeen brought to you and about the assay. It contained traces of iridium and osmium.”

  “Over twelve percent iridium and osmium,” said Wilson placing a slide of the prepared drell blood under the microscope. “I sold most of it but kept a few pounds of it for a rainy day.”

  Connie nodded. “I remember that Karl was bound and determined to isolate the iridium and osmium from the sample you kept. He’d read up on how to do it. He spent a lot of his free time pursuing that hobby. When he was finished he had this small block of shimmering silvery metal. It was so dense. It was almost unreal how heavy it was.”

  “He managed to refine over a hundred grams of the stuff,” said Wilson. “At the time I thought that is was largely a waste of time. I don’t think that anymore. When Ron came to me with his wild story of meteorites, drells, and magic chalk I had a friend make me six iridium osmium bullets.” Wilson turned to Ron. “You see; I did take what you told me seriously.”

  Wilson leaned down and gazed through the eyepiece at the thin film of blood between the slide and the cover slip. He focused the microscope, scanned the slide for a moment, then moved on to a higher magnification, then to an even higher one. There was a dead silence for over two minutes before he stood up once more, turned to Ron. “You’ve just got to see this.”

  Ron took his place at the microscope. He seemed totally mesmerized.

  Dr. Wilson gave Ron a moment to focus and look around before continuing. “As I see it there are three different types of cells in that blood, if they truly are cells. I’ve never seen anything like it. Those green ones that are so much more numerous than any of the others and give the blood its color must be the drell equivalent of our red blood cells. They have to be.”

  “Yeah, I see them,” confirmed Ron, still looking through the eyepiece. “But they don’t look anything like red cells. They don’t look anything like any cell I’ve ever seen. Each one looks like a mass of microscopic crystals radiating out from a central point. They’re like living crystals, incredible.”

  “And you see the long needle-like objects?” said Wilson.

  “I do,” confirmed Ron. “They look almost crystalline too. What do you think they do?”

  Wilson shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “There are spherical cells too,” said Ron. “They at least look like cells.” Ron pulled back from the eyepiece. “This organism is totally alien. This thing didn’t come from Earth.”

  “The ancestors of the drells didn’t spawn in our Earthly oceans,” said Wilson. “That is
certain. What we have here is a biology totally alien to our experience.”

  “Yet they eat people,” observed Ron. “That doesn’t make any sense. How could they get any nutrients out of us if they are so different from us?”

  Wilson shook his head. “That I don’t know. I can tell you that they have powers that we don’t have. They have the ability to influence our minds, override our own will. I can assure you that it is not a pleasant experience.”

  “Mind control is the stuff of science fiction,” objected Ron. “I mean, how would something like that work?”

  “I didn’t ask?” replied Wilson. “I only know that he could both read my mind and control my actions. I was able to block him for a time but I couldn’t have held out for very much longer.”

  Connie was the next one to view the mysterious blood. She was an engineer, not a biologist, but even she could tell that this was no ordinary blood. It looked more chemical than biological.

  “I wonder about the plasma,” continued Wilson. “Will it be based on sodium chloride or something else more exotic?”

  Ron only shrugged.

  “We will find out,” vowed Wilson. “We have ion specific electrodes in the lab here. I only hope we have enough of this stuff to do the tests we need to do. We need to learn as much as we can as fast as we can before this stuff starts to die and clot.”

  “If it dies and clots,” noted Ron.

  Their work went well into the wee hours of the morning, and they learned a lot. This creature was very different from any species ever studied on Earth. The blood chemistry of the drells was based upon cobalt, not iron, and their plasma was rich in potassium thiocyanide. Indeed, their blood was actually toxic to humans. They were probably oxygen breathers; probably. Still what they learned led to even more questions. They needed to run tests that they were not equipped to run here.

  They finally set the research aside just before 3:00 am. There were still so many questions but they were too tired to continue. They needed to bring in outside help but exactly who. Did they want to call in the CDC or maybe even NASA? No, they had to keep this to themselves for the moment. Calling in the feds would only complicate the matter. Perhaps once they rested they’d have a plan, but right now they didn’t know which way to turn.

  Chapter 11

  “You’ve got to hold still my lord,” said Keira. She was trembling as she reached into the wound in Lex Ton’s gray chest with a long pair of forceps. She wasn’t being very successful.

  “To the left, wench!” said Lex Ton. “You are such an idiot!”

  “I’m trying,” said Keira, tears in her eyes. She gazed upon the drell stretched out across this makeshift operating table, in reality her parent’s dining room table. In the living room her parents lay passed out on the couch, victims of Lex Ton’s mind control. If she failed both of her parents and perhaps even she would perish. But this operation was rapidly making her ill. It was more than the green blood and digging into the chest of an alien it was the stench. God, did this creature stink. She tried to put that fact out of her mind for fear that Lex Ton would sense her thoughts. That might be viewed as an insult and these drells seemed easily riled.

  “My ability to control the pain is slipping,” said Lex Ton. “Don’t fail me. You need to get that metal out of me. It’s killing me.”

  Keira struggled all the more. She had hardly imagined that something like this could ever happen. She remembered the day she discovered the crystal ball in the attic. Her grandmother had warned her never to seek it out, never to even touch it. She had protected both Keira and Keira’s mother from it as she had promised her own mother she would. It was her duty.

  Keira remembered asking her grandmother why she hadn’t destroyed it. If it was that dangerous wouldn’t that be the thing to do? But it couldn’t be destroyed, or so her grandmother had told her. The only thing that could be done was to hide it, prevent it from corrupting another soul. The ball gave its owner power, great power, and power corrupts. It wasn’t the sort of thing you told a young girl. It would only make her want it more. Keira’s own mother had shown no interest in it. Perhaps she viewed the stories of the ball as nonsense, but not Keira. With her grandmother’s death Keira sought it out. Her life had never been the same after that. The first time she and the crystal ball came into contact a sort of power passed between them. It was the crystal ball that had chosen her not the other way around. That meeting had been followed by dreams and visions. In ethereal form she had communed with the other members of the Sisters of Twilight. They had been quick to accept her.

  She felt the metal within Lex Ton’s chest. “I’ve got it,” said Keira, pulling the slug from Lex Ton.

  “Get it away from me!” he commanded. “Take it out into the other room.”

  Keira complied, placing it on the coffee table in the living room. She glanced over to see her father and mother lying on the couch both in a deep trance. She hesitated and returned to the kitchen. She was surprised to find that the drell had risen to his feet, his wound nearly healed.

  He glanced at the wound as it vanished from sight. “Come with me,” he said as he led Keira back into the living room. “Your parents will remember nothing of this night other than they fell asleep on the couch while watching television,” he announced. “They will not remember seeing me. Still they are more of a hindrance to your work than a help. It would be a simple matter for me to dispose of them for you. You are eighteen. All of their possessions would go to you in the event of their deaths. All I need do is place the suggestion in their minds that they need to commit suicide. They would go to the car, drive off a cliff if I so desired. Then you would be free to go about your work for my people undisturbed.”

  “No!” gasped Keira. “I don’t want my parents dead. I love them.”

  Lex Ton nodded. “Love, always with you humans it is about love; very well. Then you will need to leave.”

  “I will,” said Keira, her voice quivering. “It’s already set up. The head of my coven sent me an invitation to the Brashier School of Art, a full scholarship. My parents think that it’s a prestigious private art school in New York but it’s a front for her coven. In reality I’ll be studying the black arts. I’ll be leaving in just two days.”

  “Very well,” said Lex Ton. “It will be as you wish, this time.” He paused. Are you certain that you would not prefer my exterminating them for you? It might be better in the long run.”

  “No, my lord,” replied Keira trembling slightly. “But thank you anyway.”

  Lex Ton nodded. “Then I will take my leave of you.” He paused. “I believe that the ball did well in selecting you. You are a bit inept, somewhat clumsy right now, but I suspect that will pass with time. You desire the power we offer and you are obedient. I know this was not easy for you but you persevered. I may call upon you if I need further assistance.”

  “Yes my lord,” said Keira, bowing her head slightly. “I’ll do whatever you ask.”

  The drell said no more. He simply faded into a gray mist. Keira was relieved to see him go. She didn’t know how much time she had before her parents woke up but she had a lot of cleaning up to do, blood mostly. She would need to erase any evidence of this drell ever having been here.

  As she went about the task she was starting to question as to whether she should even have opened the box with the crystal ball. It was fun at first; that sense of power of belonging to something greater. She’d had no problem doing Debbie, no problem at all. She was certain that Debbie had always thought of herself as being better than her. She had such a holier than thou attitude. She was an A student, the vice president of the National Honor Society, the popular one. She didn’t say it in so many words but she could feel it. She’d come to resent her. Now Debbie was where she belonged; in the caverns serving the drells, a slave laborer dressed in rags. It was poetic justice.

  She’d done four others as well. She’d been so cleaver. She’d hardly known the others, really, except for Leslie. The only re
ason she’d done Leslie was that she was certain that Leslie was becoming suspicious. Apparently she’d seen something in the crystal ball that night. For the longest time she’d assumed it was the alcohol that made her think she saw a ghostly image of Debbie in the ball. But later she wasn’t so sure and she was starting to talk. It only seemed fair that she should join Debbie in her fate. In fact, it was she that had arranged for Debbie and Leslie to be cellmates. She was actually surprised that Debbie had lasted so long.

  But now that she’d met a drell face to face her attitude was adjusting. Never had she imagined a creature so vile. And she was serving them? What was left of her conscience was bothering her, for the first time. Virtual immortality was a precious quantity. Yeah, but was it that precious? Was it worth her soul? That was what she was giving up if she stayed the course.

  Her parents were starting to stir just about the time she had completed her task of sanitizing the house. Getting rid of the odor of the drell was the greatest challenge.

  It was as the drell had said; her mom and dad assumed that they had simply fallen asleep in front of the TV. Her secret was safe. But would they be safe? As she headed off to bed that thought troubled her. She figured that she hadn’t lost her soul quite yet.

  Ron was on edge as he walked Connie home. He’d really wanted to drive her there but it was Connie who had insisted upon the walk. She’d said something about the cool night air and the walk helping her put things into perspective. After all it was only three blocks through a good neighborhood. But it wasn’t the neighborhood or the distance he was concerned about. The drells has struck twice and both times it was at night. Ron wasn’t all that sure that he should be drawing conclusions based upon that thin line of evidence but it left him uneasy. Perhaps they were night hunters, perhaps like the vampires of legend, they could not tolerate the light of the sun. After all, they were subterranean creatures. He looked up at the cloudy sky nervously. Sunrise was still over three hours away. A lot could happen in three hours.

  The trip took them down well-lit suburban streets that were totally dead at this hour of the morning. Connie continued talking about the need to fire up the FENS instrument again. That was why she’d brought home the schematics. She had a few ideas, minor modifications to FENS that might potentially turn it into a weapon against the drells. She also insisted that they bring Debbie or perhaps Leslie out of their comas and into the realm of waking reality. Yeah, but would they be safer here or in the tunnels laboring under their task masters?