They remained mainly together and wandered along the corridor in the one direction, in the direction that they had been going in outside the castle before they had found the entrance.
With startled and bemused faces many of them searched its interior, with faint thoughts of what it would be like staying there in darkness. The place to everyone there seemed to have connections to the occurrences in the wood, and it at times was like being in a central area where something existed that was more powerful than anything else on the island, and the stuff in the wood avoided going there because of its power! It was like it was checking them out and that it had hidden intentions to do things with them!
The treasure being hidden away there was like something were using it to lure people there to their deaths of something, or like spiders using bate to trap insects onto their webs, and he wondered again if he could survive this adventure, and return home! How the hell were they going to get home? He realized many of the others had faith in it happening for some reason and he just left it open! Contacting the thing that landed the airplane there was their only real chance of getting the island to reappear home again!
Merton wandered about smiling and smoking a cigarette, which he had the food dispenser make for him, from one of his last cigarettes, and he spoke to anyone he met with confidently, and they gave him startled expressions to the surroundings and to him being a leading investigator of psychic occurrences.
Parker started giving them confidence in carrying out the tasks that they did, while gently persuading them to do what he wished, and talked them into using their powers of deduction to find clues or anything there. Motivation seemed to make everything work, and they were all positively charged!
As they passed different rooms it became clear that nobody had been anywhere near there in an incredible amount of time! Dirt and what looked the fossilized remains of alien insects and creatures shrouded regions they met with!
Nothing showed any clues to what Bryson wanted, and all the major things still made little sense.
The killer had to be ruthless and carefree to have done what he had done and in the way that it had been done, especially to one of them, and having to live with them! Perhaps permanently!
The person had done it right under their noses! Yet it could indicate that he never fully knew them or what they were like, and that he was an outsider, and Bryson tried to fit the description onto all of them and realized that there were more strangers there than he had been thinking there was.
From the looks that he had caught when the subject had come up he knew that the incident had affected most of them deeply! Some of them had even been argumentative when the others mentioned the dead guy, and he was sure that they had not found any major clues on the death yet.
Bryson touched his cold sore forehead with his fingers, feeling it as if the coldness had sunk through into his brain, and blamed it on the lack of sleep he was getting!
Through large cracks in the roof and walls he saw that the world was now at the intergalactic sky and he tried checking again how it affected the surrounding world and climate conditions. He saw that it had still stopped raining and that there was a good chance, according to his earlier forecast, that the weather would stay that way until their night.
He again wondered what beings had lived there, and if they had been identical to humans, as everything was sized and perfectly designed for them, and he wondered what had happened to them, and if they had slowly expired or if something had killed them off!
He wondered if the killer had an interest in something that they never knew about and had even killed for it!
A loud thud emerged away in the distance and they all grew silent and considered it, and Bryson knew it was an immense meteor strike. Perhaps in the cavity itself! And Bryson watched some of the others and he heard one mention earthquake, making some of them even change their interest there to other places, and he heard some of their communications blaring out as they spoke to people below at the bottom of the castle, showing Bryson and the others there that they had adapted their communications to work on the island, which Bryson had seen them creating parts for from the machines that they had created with their minds in the walls of their rooms.
They had discovered many other things than his food and drink dispenser, and he realized that it would have been a mistake keeping it a secret. The scientists were able to create parts and devices to use for their work, and even the archeologists had created many things, and he had seen the appearance of many things and living aids there and knew that they could survive well there, and wondered if they could create some vehicle for their transportation through the castle.
Yet could they build small airplane? Yet that would take months and there was nowhere they could use to take off and land! Though the site the airplane had landed at was flat he did not know if they could use it to land such a small and fragile plane!
Some of the scientists with Parker had formed a group that were going to act as the police to stop the killer if he struck again, and they caught him, and Bryson noticed Mortimer joined them, but others left it.
“We can separately look about,” Parker declared, clearly getting interest with the idea. “We can cover more ground!”
They all split up and into groups, going into rooms, and searching more, and Bryson started to enjoy himself more, and so did Merton and Mortimer. It was incredible they were probably the only people to have explored something of some alien technology. If they could find things and return to the Earth the value of it would be immense, and he was also looking for things of value to them to survive there.
Bryson marched away on his own to where he thought there was one of the main rooms ahead, which was a larger and unusual room that he was sure was an important room.
It was incredible how fast Merton followed him and Mortimer rushed after him, and he watched Merton follow, seeing he also thought that it was the most interesting place to go, but he probably also thought that he had discovered something.
What he liked about the upper floor was that it was damaged and had things that were in the original way of the castle, and had not been altered by what was altering the rest of the castle, and that things there showed things of the original ancient structure.
He was sure that if there was anything about to give them evidence of what existed there that it would be there, and he was determined to look in depth for it.
The archeologists mainly agreed to search around the corridor from room to room checking for anything, and look through vast heaps of dirt and rot piled up in regions, from regions of the structure crumbling with deterioration.
The door to the room was firmly shut and felt locked when Bryson reached it, just before the other two had made it to him, and he quickly confirmed that it was locked and realized that it was the only room that he had seen closed there. For some reason they remained open when there was nobody in them, and he gasped wondering why.
“Curious!” Mortimer muttered, seeing his reaction as he arrived. “Very curious! It’s locked from the inside, of course!”
Merton ducked low and shoved hard at it and moved backwards, and asked, “We could wait and try to find a key or something, which may not exist. Or we could just break it in?”
“Let’s try and break it in!” Mortimer quickly replied first. “What’s in there could be of value to us! And if we leave it someone else will do it first! This place is getting more and more excited, and they’re looking for action and results ...”
“All right!” Bryson replied. “How strong is that door? And can we actual smash it in?”
Mortimer immediately left to nearby rooms until he found what he wanted, and arrived with a large chunk of stone, collapsed in from the roof, and they used it to smash in the lock and viciously shove it in, until the door screeched right inwards and Bryson saw only darkness and that the room was covered in thick blankets, and dust blew up and flew over them as they shifted in and they entered like they were entering
a sacred region.
The mess was shocking! Things had deteriorated and fungus had shrouded everything at one time and an ancient bed was left rotted away within the room, with small amounts of ancient furniture around the edges falling to pieces, and Bryson attempted to age it all but never succeeded.
“This bed is almost human,” Merton muttered, humorously, examining its remains, watching a dust cloud from their entrance float in beams of light, from streaks of light coming through a thin crack in the roof, from powerful starlight now going overhead, and they looked at it all with some fascination!
There were many mysteries everywhere and Bryson noticed nobody attempted to make any claims at answering it all! They took things as they appeared about them. Yet surely something might arrive to allow them to explain them!
They then crept around the room shifting things with fascination, and Bryson spotted part of a drawing in some rubbish and quickly removed it and examined it as he listened to the creaks and cracks of Merton making his way across the rubbish scattered across the floor to view it.
“That’s strange!” Merton stated, as he moved in close.
“What is?” Bryson replied, trying to see what he was staring at.
“Those trees in it,” he answered. “They are almost Earth trees!”
“So they are!” he replied, realizing that he had missed it.
Bryson’s attention fell on the bed again trying to imagine what age it was, but he could not be sure. There was a large amount of differences and there was no reason for it being there.
The place interested him and he liked such places and their history, imagining all the past events and what strange beings had been there, and all the many hours and days and thoughts that they had spent there and all the things that they had done, and he wondered what the future would hold for there and fantasized it being in the future. What would the future be for the island? And what would the outcome of their investigations there be?
What would happen if the island arrived back at the Earth and stayed there? Would this be the end of the desolation of it? And would the place be so deadly that they would have to isolate it from humanity?
A small drawer became visible under the legs of some piece of furniture in the corner of the room and he saw it had not been seen, and investigated it with interest, while he considered the room from different perspectives. He wondered if the people had just slowly left there after the damage there or if they had all left to go somewhere else, or had they all just died out there?
The stiff drawer revealed it had been full of old clothes that had rotted away and he looked through it considering what had been there, but there was not enough of it left.
Mortimer never investigated anything any further and watched on, while Merton copied Bryson and searched unusual places and any objects that he came to.
“This place gets more gruesome!” Bryson muttered. “It must have been the biggest castle ever built! And it could have held a future race too! It must have been the most magnificence building to live in at one time, with luxury beyond other people’s wildest dreams! And look at where it ended up! One of the worst deadliest places!”
He wondered if something might occur to mankind in millions of years with the world turning desolate like the castle? Could this be really what happens to the whole of civilization? Will the remains of the human race end up living in the remains of everything, treating it as desolate gruesome remains of an ancient race obsessed with wealth and power, building immense structures for unknown strange reasons?
“An incredible place with perhaps an even more incredible history!” he remarked, flicking a strange insect away from him.
“Do you think that we are making a mistake being here?” Merton asked, seeing his change of feelings. “This place could be cursed with deaths? And not just in small amounts?”
“A buried away ruthless place with many lost secrets!”
“Let’s check somewhere else!” Mortimer moaned loudly.
As they left they were amazed at how far the others were going to search there now, and Mortimer gave a surprised look at what some of the archeologists were doing and that they were frantically yanking up types of floorboards all over the place, as well as in specific places.
As Bryson followed Merton along the corridor he watched Merton become surprised and stand with his mouth wide open, and one of the men there whispered something in his ear and he realized something and nodded back in agreement, making Bryson wonder what they had realized, and why their search techniques had turned frantic.
“A good way!” Merton revealed. “We can get this place searched properly if they all carry on like this!”
“Why is this floor so different from the rest of the castle?” Bryson muttered out loud, trying to discover some hidden away clue to what had happened there.
It was like being an insect in the back of a television and trying to realize what was there, and trying to see it at an entirely new perspective.
When nobody answered or showed the slightest bit of interest, and they were all more involved in their work, he moved along the corridor and realized that it was a good idea copying and helping them search again.
He remained ready to go to anywhere when anything was occurring, and wandered around just to see what he randomly found and stopped at what looked like antiques, wondering what they were worth. The owners were immensely wealthy and could easily have left things of value!
His next surprise was that the others were more interested than he had thought in checking the value of the things. He knew how eager the Exploration Association members and Parker were in getting hold of the treasure, but he thought that they were more interested in scientific discoveries like Merton and Mortimer.
While he searched a repetitive forceful hammering appeared in the distance and occasionally interrupted him enough to stop and listen and wonder why someone was so determined to break through something!
He realized how much he liked and missed treasure hunting and the quest, and the discovery of the technology advances and highly advanced technology was fascinating and realized why he was there more than ever. The quest, the exhilaration, the thrill of the chase and unraveling clues gave him immense excitement and adrenalin surges! He was sure there was stuff all over the place after seeing their reactions and the things there already!
Yet even if they found new technology, there was a good chance that they could not work out what made it tick, as with the walls of the lower castle! How could they find its secrets? Some of the scientists said that they had managed to get samples of it! Yet even if they managed to break one of the walls to pieces he was sure they would not be capable of properly studying what made it work, and with returning with it to the Earth! Did the technology need more advanced technology to study it properly?
While he considered the castle’s interior from various perspectives sounds in the background escalated into a furious rummaging and banging, and he heard the archeologists excited voices mingled within, which made everyone about him stand alert and listen. What was happening? What had they missed by not checking there?
The sounds sounded as if they had really found something and were trying breakthrough something to get it!
Bryson stood next to Merton and watched the room far along the corridor where clouds of dust puffed out, and heavy thuds of rock being used smashed something open and were accelerating louder, almost climaxing with them breaking through, and the people around Bryson marched quickly there, and he joined them.
“What the hell are they up to?” Merton moaned loudly, glaring ahead, fascinated.
The archeologists were strange to them, and even to the Exploration Association members that they were connected to, especially them carrying guns on the surveillance airplane flight!
Bryson still followed behind the others and watched the room ahead – where the cloud of dust increased in size and moved along the corridor towards them, and they heard and felt the shudders go through the
structure around them, with the sounds of boulders crashing across the floor, and they knew that they had broken through to something.
Their looks at each other changed to bewildered glances, and then to observing everything as they approached there, and they finally got to the doorway and saw chunks and pieces of rock scattered everywhere across the room and the archeologists crowded around an area of the floor where there was a deep black hole, which they had smashed the floor away to reveal.
They had discovered a hollow region below there, where there was a hole leading down. Yet Bryson wondered what the fuss was about! Plenty of structures could have hollow regions in them, and he tried to question one of the archeologists about it but he ignored him, and kept his mouth closed!
One of them finally told them that they had found that the stone floor had a hole in it, where it had caved in, and that they had seen a chamber below with something in it when they shown light through.
Bryson measured the floor with amazement and realized that he had not even considered it, even after being in the last castles. It was too modern looking, and not like the old castles he had seen, and he was fascinated that it was more common than he had thought. It was phenomenal how thick the floor between the top floor and the lower floor was, but he had no way of noticing it as the region between the floors was covered at the stairs, where they would only have seen it, and it never looked large enough to conceal anything from where they had been, and he recalled the other castles and what they had been like.
Yet why had someone gone to such lengths to conceal this one?
The archeologists saw objects hidden away in the chamber below and they viciously smashed heavy rocks against the thick hard stone to make the hole bigger for them to climb in, and chunks of rocks started crumbling away and crashed down, and they got ready to climb in.
Chapter 11
The Lost Treasure Map Series Page 52
