Bryson briefly considered the archaeological equipment available to survey beneath the ground. And that Sir Richard might not have thought along those lines.
If it was outside after all, they could continue the search after the ten days allocated to them.
But he doubted it very much if anyone would bother. They would just be wasting their time.
Mortimer insisted in taking them back to the vault first, and they soon discovered that more of them had entered the vault than they had expected. Groups of footprints came in from many angles. But it proved that they were an efficient force, to count on in properly searching the wood.
He now saw how useful it would be to use them in the castle. They could at least triple the amount of searches, and places that they searched. Though, for some reason, he was not sure if they would continue using them.
He stood at the bottom steps, with his eyes following the prints, going from tomb to tomb.
They mostly went to the most obvious places. And although the lids had all been lifted, there did not seem to be any damage.
Then his eyes fell on the darkest region, where he had been unable to observe, and fixed onto a dark shape, which instantly made his heart race wildly, and chill his blood. A dark figure was there – standing glaring at him! – out of the darkest part of the vault – as if from the depths of hell.
It surprised him – at there being someone there, standing watching him, without him noticing.
What is more, he was on his own, in the blackness, keeping quiet – clearly hiding there. And Bryson stood, frozen to the floor, just trying to see his face, shrouded in obscurity, and not moving in any way.
He could not recognize any of his clothing, which looked much more unusual than what the others had (for them freely and warmly to run about the wood in).
When he pulled himself together, he saw that the stranger stood staring eerily at him – not flinching in any way – as though trying to remain hidden, even though they were standing staring at each other.
“What have they done?” Mortimer called down, from the top stair – trying to see what he was doing. Bryson had been so enthralled that he had not even noticed Mortimer had been standing staring at him from there.
Bryson considered what dangers there were in such a confrontation, and whether he should back away.
He tried to see what he was doing, but the blackness engulfed his sight, and he saw nothing.
Perhaps outsiders from the village, such as poachers, used the wood, or it could be a region where they walked through. There could be trails leading throughout the woods. Even though there wasn’t the slightest indication of it anywhere.
Yet one of the people that James had there might have persuaded someone to look separately from them, to acquire the money for themselves. It could even be someone who had overheard what was taking place there. There was a large amount of cash hidden somewhere.
As Bryson began to back away, he noticed that not one sound came from him, and he sensed that there was much more to it. This person was reacting more strangely than he should, and he did not like it.
Mortimer marched down to him, fascinated by his strange behavior. And all he did was remain there – almost forced to allow something to happen.
Mortimer jerked, glared at the stranger, and walked over to him.
Bryson followed him. And a torch clicked on, and the stranger held it beside his face, as though showing his identity, but doing it so his features were slightly hidden, and not clearly recognizable. He saw only his blank expression, with no sign of any emotion.
“Did you find something?” Mortimer muttered, to force him into replying.
“No,” a deep voice replied.
“Who’re you with?” Bryson asked.
“I’m a journalist,” he mumbled, moving the angle of the torch near them, ready to remove identification.
“What’re you doing here?”
He made an expression that suggested that they had caught him doing something.
Bryson was sure that he had relied on there not being anyone there. As though he had been listening to them so closely, from a hiding place, that he had believed that they had been all away out of range, and that nobody would have confronted him – not knowing that they would return there to check it for damage.
How could the stranger have observed them so closely and have stayed unobserved? How else could he have so positively have known?
“Are you the reporter that the police caught photographing the castle?” Mortimer asked, startling Bryson. And, to Mortimer’s surprise, he nodded in agreement.
“What’re you doing back here?”
“To continue what I was doing,” he argued, as though continuing with a reply that he had come out with to someone else, which could have been one of the policemen.
“This is private property,” Mortimer warned, forcing him to leave. “You’d better leave now!”
Bryson followed Mortimer to the stairs, keeping the stranger at the edge of their sight – as he followed them out, staying at the same distance away.
At the top door, he watched the man, who now ignored them. His appearance was surprisingly more professional than he had believed. He marched silently and slowly into the surrounding trees, without reacting in any noticeable way. His behavior had been nothing like any reporter that he had encountered.
He did look strong enough to have strangled the servant.
He was up to something, and he did not like it!
Before following Merton and Mortimer into the wood, Bryson closely examined one of his footprints, and it clearly matched the prints of the reporter that they had found. But that was not all what he was looking for: he was trying to establish if it matched the faint prints of the person who had entered the castle. Yet though it did look similar, he was unable to confirm it, making him leave, considering the absurdity of the police at having released him.
Chapter 39
The Cottage
Even as they rushed through the trees, dodging branches, shoving themselves through thick regions of undergrowth, a deep chill still gripped Bryson. They had confronted the killer in the vault, who had been roaming the wood.
However, if they proceeded with enough caution now, not to make any fatal mistakes, which seemed inevitable with what they were carrying out, they should be able to handle the situation.
They had to check everything that they could, to make sure that this guy never acquired an opportunity to do anything.
What had he been doing? Had he been searching for the money, now that one of them was not going to inherit it? Yet that would mean that someone had been in it with him all along, and, perhaps, was informing him of their movements (probably carried out by mobile phones).
What had he been doing in the castle when he had killed the servant though? Had he realized that she had known something about his associate, at the castle, and had he decided to kill her before it had been too late? But he might have been just trying to hide some clue, which, perhaps, he had left, and the servant had confronted him.
Deep within the trees, he heard cheers, whistles, laughs, and shouts.
They were from a large group. The others had gathered together.
They sounded too cheerful for his liking. Perhaps as they had joined together for a leisure break.
Mortimer took them away to the side of them, but stayed obsessed with his intentions of rampaging through the wood on a straight course.
It reminded him of playing blind man’s buff. The wood was too dense, and it revealed very little. And their luck did not seem to be about to change either.
It was surprising how endless the wood seemed. All the woods he had previously been in were not endless – and had visible fringes, and had such things as gaps, and hills that could be used to survey land about it.
Merton and Mortimer still did not seem to have any real ideas on where the spirits of the wood were. He had expected some theories on where or what they actually were looki
ng for to arise, and they seemed more to be waiting for something just to appear.
A bright patch appeared in the vegetation at their side, where there were shapes moving about.
Bryson felt how tired he had become, but decided not to slow; and he noticed that Merton was doing the same.
It annoyed him – when he thought about it – that Mortimer was just taking them somewhere the others would go. Did he think that they knew where they were going? And was he planning to join them?
He had expected him to change their direction.
Nothing that he heard from the others made any sense (seemingly meaningless conversations), but he heard tones of water, which mainly were splashes.
He was sure that it was only a small river, from sounds of water rushing along, as they could be normally heard a great distance away.
In the trees, at the center of a clearing, he saw the river leading through, with a pool that they were at.
Their presence drew the attention of some of them.
He spotted Robert, next to James, sitting in the middle of the group.
“If we could hire a helicopter,” Merton stated, “we could properly search all of this wood.”
Merton swiftly lit a cigarette, and blew out puffs of smoke, enjoying its intoxicating effects.
“Where’s the nearest place that they have them?” Mortimer continued.
Bryson watched Merton draw in smoke, trying to gain something from it. “Perhaps the police have one that we can get hold of.”
Merton and Mortimer nodded to disagree, disapprovingly.
“What’s that?” Mortimer discoursed, turning left.
Bryson only noticed a faint shape of light, glowing in a spot of dark green.
“There’s a wall – in all that jungle ...”
Bryson peered, but accepted that his sight was now better than his.
“I see it,” Merton admitted, stubbing his butt into the bark of a tree, as sparks blew out into a gust of wind.
Bryson stared again, not seeing anything.
He glared into dimness, as they shifted position, to a slightly different angle, and he saw what had looked like rocks was really some form of wall. It resembled the remains of an ancient house.
As they made their way there, Merton became excited about what it could be, and constantly glared.
If they had found something, they would be lucky.
He started to wonder again if Mortimer knew something and had discovered something in the library – such as a map of the grounds, showing another structure. He had insisted on taking them straight there.
Bryson listened to them to see what they made of it, before he examined it in more detail.
He saw that Mortimer was unduly inquisitive about it. It was a small structure in the trees, branches, bushes, long grass, and plants.
Moss and vines made it almost impossible to see in that denser region of the wood, and they had to shove their way into it.
It seemed remarkable how Mortimer had seen it.
Chunks out of its walls were sprawled about them. But it did not have any large holes.
“The roof seems intact,” Mortimer announced, glaring upwards, pushing away the thick vegetation, as they moved around it.
The walls had thick blocks of stone identical to the castle, firmly cemented together.
Most of the slates were still there.
He heard the voices of some of the others moving on.
“Well,” Merton uttered to Mortimer, “do you think that it’s anything to do with that clue?”
“It seems be as old as the castle, but I don’t see anything ...”
The voices of the others grew.
The door was almost rotted away, hanging from rusted bolts.
Mortimer shoved it away, making it screech over the floor instead. The interior had some dampness and rot, and with loose and weak upper beams.
The inside was as gloomy as it could be. Little light emerged through an old broken window, covered over in green slime.
Smells of rot came from places that they passed.
Through the window, Bryson spotted one of the others moving past, looking in a frontal direction.
“Well,” Merton spoke, smiling, “their group never saw it ...”
“But is it of any use?” Mortimer continued.
“Who would want to stay out here?” Bryson muttered. “It would be astonishing if anyone managed to survive one night – with what those legends told ...”
“It doesn’t have any notable signs that anyone lived in it. Why is there no fireplace, or anything, which a cottage or farm would have ...?”
It did have an unusual design. He felt the texture of the stone. It was perfectly smooth as though it had been cut by a machine. The window, under the muck, was ancient, and made of thick glass, which had many warps.
Perhaps the thick walls had protected the occupants from the things in the wood, and they had designed it to withstand their powers.
Bryson helped Merton and Mortimer to sift through the rubbish, scattered in a thick layer over the floor.
“I can’t see us coming to a conclusion over what the clue means,” he confessed, as Mortimer moved past.
“At the moment, I cannot imagine finding it out. Or anything out here! There still is a chance that the answer could be in the library. Have you considered the fact that there could be other books, or even places where things could be written ...?”
“Like a local cemetery?” Merton announced, as though he had been thinking over the matter for some time. “There has to be other graves! If we could find other graves from the same era, which have the same type of writing ...”
“Even if there’s another structure out here, I cannot see it having anything ...” Bryson resumed.
“If there is,” Mortimer replied, “the others may not realize much from it. But they’ll tell us about it!”
“That’s good enough though ...!”
“So let’s not waste any more time – let’s go.”
Mortimer moved for the door, and jerked backwards.
A face emerged at the edge of the door. It was one of the others, who looked as though he had decided to check where their prints led.
As they left, Bryson noticed that they had split up again, and that their voices came in low tones from about them. And that they would have found the cottage anyway!
“Back to the castle then,” Bryson informed them, spotting another three of them already moving in their direction. It proved that they were doing their job, and that they would have a good chance of finding anything else – for him to investigate.
They moved out of the area, and Bryson frequently turned to listen.
He watched a hare hop past, looking terrified. It also looked as if someone else had recently been near it, and had scared it.
It shifted nervously from place to place, and as if its subconscious mind were only making it move past. It was lost without a place to hide.
It did not seem to realize that it was capable of running faster than them. It perhaps took their size to be a sign of how powerful they were at running.
It was interesting walking through the wood, instead of along the path. It gave him the feeling that they now had an advantage, and that they could watch things occur without being noticed.
Other animals were now visible. And his eyes were accustomed to the darkest places, where they passed, and he seemed to be able to notice everything about them, as well as recognize vague noises, which he had not understood before.
Then, incredibly, he spotted distant prints of the reporter, stopping behind a tree, where there was a distant view of the vault – and he saw that the reporter had returned to the tombs.
Chapter 40
The Village
Bryson led Merton and Mortimer along a grassy trail, over to a small graveyard, while they reluctantly followed, still wishing to continue with their previous investigations, but realizing that their chances of finding any conclusions th
ere were vanishing.
They would have, of course, entered the village church to observe its interior if they could have.
The vicar had beat a brisk retreat though, over at the medieval church, bowing his head, as if ducking to enter an extremely low doorway, as he vanished into a side door, and going back to sanctuary.
Merton and Mortimer had spoken with such ease to him that it assured him that they had done it before (working at such locations on their investigations).
He had only suspicions on whether they had any religious interests. Even though it could hold some vital information that he never knew – especially on why they had such an interest in psychic research, and such things – almost dedicating their lives to researching it.
Why had they gone to such lengths to achieve their almost impossible goal? There was no suggestion that they were chasing large sums of cash doing what they did, and he had never heard of anyone succeeding. It was interesting though, and he doubted if anything that he did would come close to it. They were modern explores! They went on assignments in remote places, searching for fascinating freaks of nature.
He wondered if it was their first treasure hunt.
Even though Mortimer had once been an archaeologist. Perhaps that was another reason why they did it, and they used hunting ghosts as a cover to investigate places where there were chances of them finding valuable artifacts, or evidence of their existence.
At the door of the church, the elderly vicar emerged, and walked out, looking shyly at them, trying to focus on them – hesitating and tempting himself – with some hidden compulsion.
“Gentlemen,” he called, “if you wish to look around the church, please do, but I’ll not be able to join you, as I have my work.”
Bryson watched him creep back into the church, wondering what he had reacted to, as he had not said anything.
“What will we do now?” Merton muttered.
“He doesn’t have any information,” Mortimer replied first, explaining how much of a waste of time that was.
The Lost Treasure Map Series Page 13
