If they survived and threw off the pursuers, would they go? Or would they with determination wait for them like vultures?
By Brydon’s reactions, away in front of him, he saw that he had spotted something ahead.
The ground rhythmically crunched under his boots, from stones being crushed, and he looked out and saw a building, embedded within undergrowth, vines, thick web, and winding trees.
A type of black structure was there, and the gunmen guarded it – like soldiers that had been fighting battles a great length of time.
It struck him how odd this was. What kind of people had lived or been here? They would have to have had a small army to have been able to build it, and remain.
Chapter 25
The Tower
He fully saw what it was when they were at a short distance away.
It was a black tower that had the shape of a small lighthouse, stretching up to forty feet between the trees.
Parker and Carlton approached it slowly together, examining its featureless surface, trying to figure out what it resembled. While away in the distance, the shapes of shrieking creatures circled the region between branches.
“What do you think it is?” Carlton asked Brydon, seeing his confidence, as Parker and Carlton moved into a clearing, about its base, where Brydon and some of the gunmen stood, in the shade, resting.
“It could be some sort of observation station ...!”
“If it was – these trees could not have been around …”
“How old could it be ...?” Parker uttered, looking at its shiny brown surface. “
“It’s made of a material like metal,” he muttered back, “which seems to have avoided corrosion ...”
Parker felt its surface, and was surprised. It felt nothing like metal, and yet it was really old, and the majority of it went underground.
There were no dents and scratches, and they wandered around its base, until they arrived back where they had been. It was thirty feet straight across all around it.
Parker studied it with confusion, and moved over to Gorman.
“What is this thing?”
“We don’t know,” he replied, while eating some food out of his hand.
“Where is it we are going then?” he replied, disappointed that they might not have reached their goal.
“Here!”
“What we came all this way – after all that to this …”
“Yes!”
“Why?” Brydon swiftly asked, using the opportunity, to investigate things further.
Gorman stopped his son replying, by putting up his hand, to silence him.
“I’ll tell him – now that we’re here! We need their help.”
Parker felt exhilaration now that they were finally going to explain things.
Chapter 26
The Lost Treasure
Parker ignored his annoyances, and felt his tense leg muscles, and that they were sore and weak.
At least they had accomplished their mission.
He wondered if they would go back the way that they had come here from.
Gorman sat on a boulder opposite Parker and Brydon, and considered his thoughts, and turned towards them.
“This place was found by soldiers in the Second World War, when they were taking control of this island. The military base that we visited up there was built by them. They found that substance under the ground while building it, and found its incredible properties – which they intended to give to Japan, when they came into contact with the outside world. Yet they had trouble realizing just what its properties were – even after them carrying out careful experimentation on it.
“The next problem they had was that there was so little of it.
“They searched, and dug, but they never found more of it. They had only found it by luck!
“They explored the island, as they had little to do here, and they looked for anything like it, and they found this place – then this tower at the center.”
Gorman reached into his pocket and removed the old scroll map, and carefully unrolled it, and passed it over to Parker.
“This was a map of the island that one of them made on their explorations.
“They were at last remembered and taken off the island – well after the war – but they were ignored, and their discovery was not wanted or recognized …
“They never pursued their goal, as they never found much of the substance, and it would have only been an interest to science.”
He then considered the thought.
“Well, they may have finally reproduced it or something – but I believe that they would never have been had able recognize it.”
“How did you get to hear of it?” Parker asked.
“My great grandfather knew one of them, when he was in the army, and the guy told him what he had discovered – and swore to its existence. I believe that it was another attempt to return, and he thought that he might have been able to help him. But he never had the means to fulfill what he wanted!
“The problem was he refused to give the location of the island. He managed to get the scroll long after his death, and uselessly attempt, as well as we did, to find where they had been stationed.
“It was the discovery of that substance, which led us to you!”
Brydon and Carlton looked surprised.
Parker believed most of it, but thought it was an altered version.
They had to have taken it from the real guy, who had the scroll.
Brydon waved the scroll about in his hand.
“This does not explain why you wanted to come here. The substance was already found and in our possession …”
“Correct! When they found this tower down here, marked at the center of that map. See it! Right.
“Well they found treasure down here!”
“Treasure here!”
“What were their opinions of these creatures down here?” Brydon suddenly asked.
“I never said that they mentioned them!”
“But did they?”
“No! Why?”
“Just one point – which has been missed …!”
“What’s that?”
“None of the creatures down here, even though many climb, have made it above – which they would have done. Explain why?”
Chapter 27
The Creature Emergency
All of the men around him turned and stared at Brydon, as if they were finally going to get some answers to things.
“Where were they before if they emerged here?” Gorman’s son asked loudly.
“I do not know that!” Brydon replied.
“I’m a paleontologist and archeologist as well as a scientist,” Parker continued, “and I also believe that there would be some or some versions of them up there …”
“I am willing to state that I believe that it is correct,” Carlton added. “There would be the remains or at least signs of their presence – if they had been here for an extensive amount of time.”
“That only confuses things …” Gorman muttered.
“I have a question to ask you,” Carlton stated.
“What’s that?” Gorman asked, curiously.
“Why did the men that were here, who drew the map, not get the treasure when they were here. They must have had the means to get it ...”
“I do not have the answer to that. I only heard that they needed the military to help them.”
“The military! Strange! It could mean that it wasn’t actually treasure …”
“No! There is treasure here!”
“Who built this tower then?”
“They found it here.”
“It must have been built along time ago!” he replied, staring at the underground part, beneath it.
“Correct!”
“But how did any natives of these islands manage to build that thing like that?”
“You are correct,” Parker replied first, wondering once again what the hell they were dealing with – and what they wou
ld have to deal with in the future.
Chapter 28
The Tower Exploration
The details of the treasure, supposedly buried away there, and occurrences in relation to it, were by far too indistinct, too few, and muddled up. All the key facts were missing, which they would have been able to grasp things with.
Brydon was now the main center of attention, and the person with the most answers, and Parker decided to leave it that way, for the present.
He consistently enquired on things, and was surprised that he had a good knowledge of things, and came to the correct answers, with basically the right angle on things.
The gunmen still occasionally let out gunfire, while they rested and checked the surrounding landscape.
Parker stood with Brydon and Carlton, and occasionally after shots were fired, at shapes of creatures in the trees, wondered why they had been so heavily armed, anyway. They had claimed that they never knew of any of the creatures!
“What was that skeleton doing there?” Parker asked Gorman, as he moved near him.
“Some of the soldiers must have started fighting each other,” Brydon replied first.
“Correct!” Gorman replied. “Especially after what they found up there – in that tower!”
Parker gulped, and wondered what he meant.
“And that material that the tower is made of is far more advanced than anything that I’ve heard of,” Brydon stated.
Gorman’s son signaled Gorman, by waving his hand, and Gorman gathered some of his men, at the bottom of the tower.
Then they started climbing up one of the trees that went up the side of the tower, and Brydon and then Parker copied them.
“So we’re finally going to see this treasure,” Parker mumbled to himself, as he went up last.
The only sounds that he heard were branches creaking above with the weight on them.
Parker carefully fitted his bag securely onto his jacket, so that it would not fall off.
He spotted the place that they were going to. They were going up to the roof of it, and they would have to do some awkward climbing to reach in.
Carlton stood below, as Parker pulled himself up the branches, lightly gripping them, using his legs against its branches.
It was easier than he had thought as the branches acted like a strange ladder, evenly spaced, at a few feet apart.
Scents like pine mingled with the hot air, and the view captivated him, encouraging him to keep going up.
Were they wasting their time? What was up there?
Brydon rested over a branch, occasionally testing its safety, and spotted the entrance place, and moved on.
Parker considered if he had primal instincts for tree climbing – considering humans had such close genetic links with monkeys, and had been in them for some considerable time – and were built for it.
It was relaxing and interesting! What would it be like staying there though – in a tree house?
At the top, he climbed over to the roof, and instantly saw two small pillars, and that one of them was an entrance.
Once at it, Gorman entered first, with a torch, and handgun. And the rest followed, shifting inwards, and Parker watched Brydon enter, and moved close to the entrance for a close look.
There was no door or cover, and edges of it showed that it was a surprisingly heavy, solid material.
It struck him how odd such a construction was. It was far from being badly constructed, and he doubted very much if anything like it had been constructed by natives in the Pacific, or anywhere.
Its interior was dark and gloomy, and looked empty, and he climbed down a descending floor, and over to where all the men were standing.
Parker stood with them around another entrance going down, with a tunnel, and floor descending below.
“I will proceed ...” Gorman spoke, and walked in, shining his torch down the descending floor – spiraling around the tower – going downwards to the base.
Parker looked at the floor, with its slightly leaning black shape, and started to follow them, into the darkness.
The only sounds, except from the others exhaling, that he heard were the clangs of the floor, echoing downwards, as though they were clambering through an oil pipe.
The hot air drifted in from behind him, and sometimes he believed that he saw someone climbing back towards him.
The temperature had to be reaching its maximum limit, and he plodded on, while the natural light from overhead grew fainter.
The tower a few times swayed, and he wondered what caused it.
In a blur in the torchlight below, a vague illumination emerged in it, and he vigorously moved around the slope of the descending floor towards it.
At it, he saw it was another entrance, where faint beams of blue light flashed, from somewhere in its surroundings.
At the entrance, he saw Brydon standing, in the blueness of the flashes, next to something, at the center of a room, covering the rest of the tower, and he went near him, and saw him examining a large black box shape, where a mysterious blue flash was being generated.
The entire black box had lines, curves, and many strange objects on it, and there was massive diamonds and jewels embedded in it, and, going by the others, they were on other various box shapes visible about him, at different positions about the floor, and as his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the immense value that they had.
Chapter 29
The Trip Home
Deep blasts, from guns, echoed around the jungle, and they swiftly marched on, towards the cliff, and to leave.
Parker realized again that he now had a firm and complete agreement with Gorman and his men. They would receive a share of the treasure – of all those diamonds – if he returned with them to the tower, and brought in equipment capable of removing the diamonds – and they managed to get the diamonds free from there.
They surprised him! Firstly, he was surprised that they trusted him, and he never reported them for kidnapping him. There were witnesses and film from street cameras that could prove it. Secondly, why did they not just return with something and remove them themselves?
He occasionally observed them, from the edge of his eyes, trying not to look at them too much. He watched them to see what he was missing.
He now was a partner, and they treated him as it.
He loved adventures and explorations, and the second expedition there would be really exciting – and he could not turn it down.
It was strange that they never thought the animals were worth anything.
However, the diamonds could be worth an immense amount.
What was strange was the way that Gorman knew things before they had happened, and always seemed to know what he was doing. He had kidnapped him, and took such risks and still never thought he would make a mistake.
Gorman was positive that he needed him so much that he was going to give him a share.
They had spent hours in that tower trying to remove the diamonds – firmly embedded in the tower.
They had singled one out, and had done everything to remove it – including shooting it.
Nothing seemed to even make it budge, vibrate, or loosen ...
Yet why did he not just come back and remove them with explosives or something?
The shape of a creature in a tree brought him out of his thoughts. What was this place? And what possible motivations could have instigated the construction of that tower? There were no suggestions of anything! Why had they embedded diamonds there anyway? Yet by the fact that it was a tower could suggest it was to defend the builders. They could well have been strange and superstitious – especially down here – in this place.
A sanctuary from invaders! Why else would it have been so deeply hidden? It might well have been the remains of a large civilization that had lived there hundreds of years ago, and perhaps these creatures had once been their property.
Chapter 30
Back at the Beach
The plane caught the rays of the
descending sun, as it made a perfect landing on the water, over reflections of a vague crimson glow from the sky over the horizon, and Parker walked along the beach, and smirked and vibrantly recollected his enjoyment at reaching the top of the cliff alive.
The magnificent coastal scenery about him captured his attention, with its aged, ancient, rugged appearance.
He stopped and focused on the end of the beach, at a perpendicular cliff, on a hill, curving into the ocean.
Why had that tower been there, buried away in the depths of an island jungle? He was a good archeologist, and he was interested in having the ground there dug up and searched, and given a complete investigation.
They would have to remove all those creatures down there!
Firstly, they were too deadly. Secondly, they could not have them spreading out across the globe, anyway.
He recalled being in the tower again, and when he had touched the diamonds and surroundings.
It was strange, as though they had been made of extraordinarily cold ice, and he had felt horrific shivers through his hands and even in the muscles of his arms – as though some form of energy had been blasted across it, and had caused it.
Brydon and Carlton had ignored it, overcome by the great value of the treasure and atmosphere there, and they had dismissed it as static electrical surges – whatever that was supposed to mean.
He had kept touching his fingers on its surface, and his fingers had felt numb, as though an energy source had been running through it. And once he had taken his hand away, it had felt as if the feeling had not been there.
He tried to work out the age of the tower. There were signs that it was old. Its walls were made of a material that nobody had recognized. Perhaps it was from an unknown and rare element found down there. The place was a unique site and discovery, and a real winner – and he had waited the majority of his life for such a find to emerge, and now he was going to grasp it!
From Beyond Reality (Novelette) Page 6