The deep snow and cold turned to a nightmare, and their legs sank into stinking vegetation and muck that started to resemble quicksand, and another light emerged deep in the undergrowth and pulsated like a living form, magically illuminating the snow and trees going everywhere, and they increased their speed.
The castle became the most blissful thing he could think of as he saw the dangers there and it radiating through the wood like a spellbinding castle, and they forced themselves on.
Its appearance, amidst the hell there, was staggering! It was like a dream phantom castle glowing in shining moonlight, like it was magically glowing.
Behind them the shifting lights of glowing life forms became vicious and darted about everywhere in the blackness and landscape, and Cronenberg thought he saw ghost images of intelligent humanoids doing hideous things.
Chapter 10
The Lost Castle
At the front of the colossal extraterrestrial castle structure, when there were no more trees, and they were about to reach its large entrance, the whole structure lit and radiated through the whole region, mass of trees and foliage, silencing what was there to their astonishment, with its colossal powers, and they examined its colossal size going out into the distance all around them and its height going away high over the trees, where a thin fog slowly got thicker and engulfed it.
Vivid streaks of colored lightning exploded all over the top cloud region, and they saw the peculiar sky surrounding the fog, surrounding the castle, and it altered like a form of atomic explosion had blasted out, and massive blinding colossal stars further out blasted out their bright light.
Entering a veil of mist, forming at its entrance, created sensations that they were being summoned there, for some hideous purpose, and they blindly entered the ghost oasis, out on the edge of reality, on the bounds of what lay beyond the universe, bordering death, near the depths of hell, with them seeking sanctuary and reality.
On their entrance, and exit from the hideous jungle, the entrance closed behind them, trapping then there, and the interior illuminated it dim light, and Cronenberg heard vicious heavy beast sounds furiously exploding out outside, clearly making last attempts at threatening to destroy them.
Somewhere over to the side of structure they heard powerful movements rapidly taking something near them, and they wondered what was protecting them, and had stopped them doing anything to them, and Cronenberg gasped and saw a faint colossal ghost shape in an area of deep blackness inside the structure, further along a corridor, and it altered to demon shape floating through the darkness, snapping massive jaws, before it vanished.
The situation was bad and Cronenberg wondered what the hell the place was doing there, and why such a place should and could even exist, without destroying itself!
What the hell had built such a place? Should they leave the place until the morning, and they had rested, before exploring anything? Was there even a morning there, as there was no sign that daylight existed? There could be great dangers there, but they could move to a region where they never existed, and survive!
They had to survive! There was air there! There was life forms and vegetation for food, and they had shelter! Something had to be giving the world heat and light as the trees existed, and by their looks he was sure that it was winter, and that they could survive, and that someday they could find an exit gateway!
Chapter 11
The Ultimate Existence
Cronenberg flicked his eyes open in an instant and wondered where the hell he was, and could not recall how he got there, and he recalled the last memories he could recall, which were of them going through the outer jungle, and he was left staggered, and for a few seconds, for some reason, he never knew what he was!
Was he actually a normal life form of the universe, as he had always thought, or was he a strange phenomenon?
He was sure he was being examined by one of the real inhabitants of the universe, and he gasped and jumped upwards, and checked the air supply in his spacesuit and realized it was low, and realized that he had been lying in a sort of black room with nothing else in it except a strange alien doorway and window.
He had no recognition of what was there or where he was in the castle, or even that he was in one of the rooms in the castle, and he tried to recall more of his last memories, and he started to walk over to the window in the room to see what was there, and he was staggered again and stood upright and turned on his spacesuit light and examined the strange empty room about him, wondering how the hell he got there, and wondered if it was caused by his exhaustion the night before, or his lack of proper food, or the severe cold and snow falling outside, or was something there in the castle influencing him.
He recalled surreal dreams, which had been incomprehensible and he wondered if they had actually been dreams! They never made sense, and one in particular had been made up of nothing but shimmering lights and freakish sounds and him being whirled about somewhere, similar to being in a colossal vortex, where he never thought or even did anything, and had been like he never existed and just experienced what was there.
Suddenly he recalled his first dream and he realized something had been trying to make contact with him! Something strange! Something that was not physically part of the universe! Something put there, to do something he could not grasp!
He detected it had a purpose to do something! Something he could not grasp, and he wondered if he had missed something or if it had missed out something!
He then recalled the thing in the gateway, and the thing in the energy sphere and alien artifact, and he wondered if it was the same thing! Yet he had no proof that it was or was not, and he wondered what it wanted, and he realized that he could discover what it was all about, and he went over and over it and realized it had suggested something else existed. Did it want to contact it or was it doing something?
Suddenly he recalled something and gasped and nearly fell over, and remained silent, and realized that it was warning them of something, and that something similar to itself was there and was checking them out, and was of great danger!
What could exist in the gateways and be of great danger? What was its purpose?
He gasped at what they could have encountered in supernatural gateways in the circle of mirrors, and the dangers that they were playing with, and he thought of some of the most highly advanced deadly races that they could have encountered, and he wondered how the hell they could get back to Mars without entering them.
When he looked up at the window he was amazed that the sky was now everywhere, and dark and full of strange stars, and saw that the jungle was no longer there, and he looked below and saw thick mist, and looked out into the horizon, and the mist went out into the horizon, with no sign of the jungle, and he saw that the castle was floating over clouds away over the world below, and he saw the whole galaxy arranged around the castle.
He was sure it was in another dimension and on the world below, and he noticed the stars there were entirely different from in the jungle, and noticed the castle went far higher above, and he marched out the room into a long, endless corridor, and he heard the other astronauts talking away in the distance, and he marched towards them, and he wondered how the hell he had got there and had not remembered anything, and he recalled the horrors that they had witnessed at the bottom of the castle, and he thought of the dangers.
Suddenly a flash of red flashed, out of nowhere, and he realized that an enormous blood red devil shape had shot through one of the walls in a room, like the wall was mist, and that it was furiously searching for something, with vengeance, and its speed seemed to be increasing, and the wall seemed to alter and glow in flickers after it had left, and he heard it rage on into the distance.
It surprised him as he detected it was different from everything else they had encountered, and it was strange as it was evil but seemed to be different and have a purpose, and he even sensed madness, as though it had altered from something into something else, and that its madness or so
mething was to blame, and for no reason he realized it, or what had put it there, or what was behind its existence, and it was far more powerful than anything else there, and it had become dangerous because of some occurrence, and he was sure the thing in the gateway had been protecting them from it, and that they could be destroyed by it.
In the distance of the corridor he caught glimpses of its distant lightning materializations in flashes of red, as it shifted around, and he wondered why an ultimate existence would give such an appearance, but he realized it was somehow mad, and had even taken a red energy formation with devil features, straight out of the realms of hell, and realized that they were confronting something that could believe it was a devil, and he watched its giant demon shape glowing, altering, within hideous energy surges, while it stood further down the corridor, and stared straight at him, and he watched it consistently stop itself vanishing.
It was a freak of nature, and he wanted to handle it as he thought he had no choice, as he knew he could not escape!
In ancient times on the Earth people witnessing it would have either just freaked out and ran and escaped for their lives and later given accounts of confronting the most deadly powerful evil from the deepest depths of hell or would have perhaps have been brutally killed, and their bodies would have perhaps been found drained of blood or energy, with their remains found in hideous forms, and perhaps found so unrecognizable that they would have thought they were not human.
He rested against a wall listening to the shuttle crew in the distance discussing something he could not grasp, and sometimes he saw the thing lurking in dark shadows of the castle corridors, doing unseen hideous things, and examining the formations.
At times it seemed to detect their thoughts with curiosity and tried to understand what they were and it seemed to detect strange forms of energy or energy sources from somewhere and alter.
The thing seemed damaged to him, and perhaps mad, but it was by far the most advanced existence he had encountered, and for some reason he wondered what had created it, and was left staggered, and he studied its vast unstable energy surges, sensing they went across vast outer dimensions, and it was part of something incredible, which had so much force and powers that he was sure it could destroy space and time.
Chapter 12
The Moon Encounter
A moon appeared about them, going out into a distant horizon, and Cronenberg stood staggered with the shuttle crew, wondering what had happened, as he had been just about to approach the thing in the corridor, to get to the room the others were in, and he seemed to enter a gateway with them, and he felt something was playing with them, and he had a strange feeling that there would be far greater danger than there and the moon, and he checked the stars above, and how unusual they were, and that they could alter so much, and he realized that it could even be another galaxy, and that they could have instantaneously jumped from one galaxy to another, which fascinated him, with him being an astronaut!
Orwell, the shuttle science officer and medic, slowly shifted over to him, looking more disorientated and baffled than he had ever seen him, or any of the shuttle crew.
Even when they had crashed and were in front of the alien artifact discovery, or any of the occurrences, as their trip through space was so mind-bending and deadly!
“What now?” he moaned, to Cronenberg, and the others, breaking the deep intense silence between them.
Cronenberg could do little but shrug, and studied the alien sun that was just over the horizon, and they all stood staring about them confused and Cronenberg checked the stars again trying to identify anything in them, and realized how unusual they were!
He gasped as he looked over the moon surface in another direction and considered what lurked there, and he altered his faceplate’s shading of the sunlight.
Sunlight in space was blasting through blinding him with its intensity and he quickly altered it. The conditions of the moon were incredible and he never thought that he would confront anything more than Mars! And he gasped at the temperature his spacesuit recorded there!
Nothing added up now! Why had it left them at such a place? Yet were they a danger to it?
He considered why and if they were a danger to it and why! Yet he recalled there were two! But he was unsure if it was true, and what the hell they could do about invisible highly advanced aliens!
There had to be far more behind it! Surely they would profit little from what they were doing!
A sudden explosion from what seemed a fired missile made a tremendous explosion, but lacked sound, as there was no atmosphere, but the damage and blast of stone was immense and shuddered through the moon’s surface and knocked them about, and went across the ground, and Orwell leapt back on his feet from where he had sat, and rushed close to him.
“Someone seems to have fired some form of energy beam!”
It was strange as it looked as though it was a missile and that it was intended to hit or scare them and all he could do was get them to rush over to a hiding place nearby, behind a large boulder.
They were shrouded in moon dust, after they managed to cover themselves from being seen, and he realized that they might be able hide in the deep regions of moon dust, as they had oxygen supplies, and he gasped again at what would happen when they ran out, and he just rested back and left it, and he considered if some alien species would find his remains there one day, frozen and in an unaltered condition, and be their only alien discovery, like them finding aliens in spacesuits dead on the moon, and he wondered if he would end up in an alien museum.
The landscape was gray everywhere and was untouched by water or life, and was empty and hollow with no sound, and had a deep haunting silence in its environment that went further than any desolate snow landscapes. He was on another world with another star! An empty lost world lost in the depths of space, absent of life, and a dead world.
Something startled him, over at his side, as he dreamily listened to the others giving their thoughts on what had happened, and he and Orwell struggled to grasp what was there, and focus on anything, and they altered their faceplates back to normal, for normal levels of light, and he saw what looked like a sheet of blackness, which had not been there before, and he heard Orwell gasp at it.
Orwell leapt on his feet, and held his hands over his eyes, shading them, and shouted, “It’s the gateway … It has to be the only way to leave …”
They watched him rush away, attempting to run, but making vast leaps over the low gravity world, and they decided to follow him at their normal speed, and as they approached it Cronenberg was tempted to run to it but avoided it, and wondered what the hell would happen next, and gasped at what the future would be and if they could survive the encounter.
Chapter 13
The Moon Station
Echoes of the astronauts’s startled cries and the remains of their last conversations swirled through his mind, and he attempted to recognize what was actually occurring about him as he exploded out the universe, and he tried give himself a proper scientific account of it this time, especially if he survived!
It looked as if the gateway had followed them to the moon, but it had been there already and he could not grasp why it had left them there and returned.
He sensed again that something was chasing them, and it had not properly detected them and that it was attempting to check what they were, and he knew that something else was there was covering what they were and their presence, and he wondered if it had put them there and if it was why it had put them there, and he sensed there was a powerful reason and it might tell them.
The universe seemed to explode with energy about him and he sensed that they were the chosen ones and that something incredible would occur that was one of the greatest occurrences to occur since the beginning of the universe, and that it had been created for it, and that it would one day replace the other that was chasing them through the universe.
For some reason his mind seemed to remember it as though it had been p
ut there to stay there, and he knew that he would always remember it, no matter what occurred.
Powerful stars exploded through colossal black tunnel shooting through the universe, stunning him with its brilliance and majestic creation, and a colossal vortex of trillions of straight lines magically blasted by, and he studied it for a long time and realized that he had no proper bodily presence, and he slowly lost consciousness, as though entering an altered sleep state.
He sensed something, and he realized he was at another destination! Something of ancient origins was there.
For a moment all six of them stood in complete darkness, trying to see what they had entered, and a vague light emerged, and Cronenberg examined Orwell and was surprised that he now looked confident, and he wondered if he had something planned and what it could be, and wondered if he had detected something that he had not and what he would do, and he had a weird sensation of something happening, and he examined himself to see if there was anything different about him now!
It was incredible! It had only been hours ago that he had been sleeping, and it was as if it was days ago, and he realized how little he remembered of things! All their minds and bodies were affected by the gateway and what they had experienced, and he even recalled losing consciousness and he could not fully recall anything after it! It felt like an incredible amount of time had passed, and he wondered if time had been altered, and if they had traveled through time, and he realized that it could have been a time effect of the gateway!
The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition) Page 43
