Dracula's Lost Treasure Map

by V Bertolaccini

  Again he realized the value it could have and be more valuable than they assumed, but on the other hand it could be a future disaster. He studied it from different angles, until he started losing interest in it.

  At the top floor they stood examining the main corridor, and Eisenberg removed the treasure map and compared them.

  “That looks like a faded mark of something?” Kurt said, leaning over, studying it, and Eisenberg looked at it, vaguely recalling it and the first time he had seen it, and was surprised that the more he examined it the more it looked like someone had marked something with a cross, at the edge of the map.

  Chapter 17

  The Cross

  While they walked along the corridor Eisenberg started notice differences all about him and expensive carpets, valuable paintings on the walls, and he took photos of them, wondering if they had great value, and some surely were from the original building, and he realized he might be able to trace the original building to where it came from, and he realized Howard Eisenberg surely would have known, and all he needed to do was find something he had about it, which surely had to be located there.

  There were various things he noted that he could use to trace things he wanted to know.

  He became so absorbed searching rooms and realizing where the best places to look where he stopped following Kurt and suddenly realized he had vanished and started searching the corridor and found him measuring the floor further up the corridor, outside some strange rooms, and he wondered what he was up to or had discovered and searched the place on the map, and found little and decided just to wait and see what he was looking for.

  The map looked different in the powerful overhead light in the corridor and he saw things that had not been recognizable before and it slightly surprised him, and he recalled that Kurt had been examining that area on the map, and dulled lines and blemishes took more distinctions, and marks that were not entirely visible became clear, and he realized the light from the light was far less brighter than direct sunlight, and he considered finding somewhere to examine it further for anything hidden away on it.

  Eisenberg glared up close, and he saw more detail and faint lines that had faded that had not been visible before, and he wondered if Kurt had seen the stuff, and he studied things on it astonished at missing them, and saw where the exact location in the corridor of a cross mark marked on the map was, even though it was so faint that it could be a badly drawn mark or correction rubbed away, and he saw it was located at the direct center of the building structure, and stood considering what it could be.

  Chapter 18

  The Sounds

  While Eisenberg considered how long he had slept he examined his dark bedroom about him and wondered why he had awakened as it clearly was in the middle of the night, and he still needed more sleep and was tired.

  He studied everything trying to grasp any reason for him to be awake and was about to go back to sleep when he heard something shift in the outer corridor and immediately realized he would have to investigate it, and he realized just how much he had been investigating there and that it was like he had been trying to solve things constantly for days.

  Even though he was a private investigator he never normally reached more than a certain amount of hours making investigations themselves, and he wondered what the hell would be in the corridor at that time of night, and started to realize the situation again and what the place was like and jumped out of bed and rushed up to the door and stood listening at the door to find out what was there.

  He gasped when he heard sounds emerging from somewhere further away, and then he heard something directly behind the thick wooden door, which silenced him, and stood considering what to do and what could be there.

  Suddenly the door banged, and he heard someone banging it, and realized it was Kurt and unlocked it and yanked it open, and stood staring at Kurt and watched him listening to the distant sounds coming from the end of the corridor, and he mildly amused him, as he recalled a similar situation and his attempt to explain their existence.

  Yet he realized that the sounds had somehow changed and he tried to identify the difference, and stopped as Kurt silently marched away without saying anything and he wondered why.

  He eventually realized he had done the same the last time, and reacted like he was influenced by the occurrence.

  Eisenberg rushed back into his room and quickly got fully dressed and raced along the corridor after him.

  “What hell has happened?” he moaned, rushing up the corridor to him, attempting to get any information, after surely being awakened by him, and hearing sounds had a slight difference.

  When they approached the exact region of the corridor that they heard the sounds at their loudest the last time he thought it was the wind or air currents reacting to something, even though there was no real climate conditions to create anything.

  “Hear it?” Kurt gasped, confusing him.

  “Hear what?” he moaned, wondering just what he thought it was, which confused him as he could not actually recall him given any real strange explanation to anything.

  “Hear where it’s coming from?”

  He stood listening to it for up to minute, sleepily, and walked about the region, and put his head and ear against the wall where it was, and moved into the room behind it and heard it coming from every direction about him, and proved again, like the last time, it was from the wall, and he saw how many feet thick it was, and moved over to Kurt.

  “I reckon it’s the heating … There’s some form of old heating system and part of it goes through the wall!”

  “That’s not what I meant! I meant do you get where it’s coming from?”

  It left him confused and he listened to it up close, and shrugged his shoulders, and replied, “It has to be coming from down below. Perhaps there’s some sort of basement with it hidden away …”

  “No! It’s coming down from above!”

  Eisenberg put his head close and listened to the strange sounds and gasped, and wondered why it now sounded like a haunting sound he had heard in an old horror movie, and why such sounds were found in old buildings.

  Most of the sounds before sounded as though they were strange plumbing and heating sounds, but the sounds there now were different, and he wandered about the wall and corridor trying to detect the exact location and in the end he traced it to coming from above, even though when it altered it sounded as though it was coming from below, and he just agreed it came from above.

  Why Kurt was so interested in it coming down from above baffled him, and by the fact he refused to state why.

  He watched Kurt, and replied, “We could find some workmen to check it out …There could be a chance of a future explosion from a boiler or something …”

  Kurt looked at him strangely, with his hands at his side, determined to do something, and replied, “Well then we better investigating it then, before it goes away …”

  Chapter 19

  The Ghost Formations

  Away in the darkness of the top floor corridor Eisenberg watched what looked like two illuminated white figures shifting about and he stood with his mouth open, and vaguely saw Kurt remove a camera and begin taking pictures, and Eisenberg watched him move away towards them, and Eisenberg looked down the stairs they had just climbed and decided to follow him, realizing he would have to investigate it anyway.

  As he marched away, into blackness, he became alarmed as whatever was there and occurring was becoming more authentic the closer they got and he could not grasp the outcome.

  The incredible thing was no matter how close he got or how closely he looked at the figures he could not see any features and started to believe it was something else and his mind raced through all the phenomena he could recall and was surprised that when they started getting to them they vanished.

  It resembled a sort of dream in his tired sleepy state and when he reached where Kurt was he watched him checking his camera and digital pictures he had taken and wondere
d what he got, and if it would look like old ghost photos he use to see in ghost sighting books and he realized that even if any of them came out properly they would be absurd, and he realized that they had ruined the ghost investigations as he could not believe anyone would believe it if they found anything.

  “This place is a hell of a place!” Kurt mumbled, playing around with the small pocket camera, and Eisenberg wondered why he had it with him.

  “You’ve inherited one hell of place!” Kurt continued, trying to explain something, and stopped, as though he avoided saying something he should not, and he wondered if he knew something of the place he should know.

  “What’s the place you got like then?” Eisenberg finally replied, as they approached the place the ghostly figures had been, and he watched Kurt ignore him and turn on his small light and he again wondered why he had been so interested in investigating the sounds, and he realized that they were over the spot below where the sounds had been.

  When they reached the place the figures had been they both stood near it surprised and studied there astonished as it was the exact location Kurt had been examining earlier, and where the cross mark he had found marked on the mansion on the treasure map was, and was located at the direct center of the building structure, and they both stood considering what it could be, and Eisenberg spotted where Kurt had clearly been attempting to remove one of the giant stone slabs the floor was made of.

  Chapter 20

  The Ghost Hunters

  Eisenberg watched the New York traffic speeding up and his taxi rush on, and the driver no longer glance back at him, and he listened to loud voices and engines, and he sat reading through the documents he got.

  What was in the documents astounded him, and he could not believe such occurrences, and tried to grasp why the agency he used to get the material thought supernatural occurrences occurred, and realized he was either reading it all wrongly or they thought of it as something else that their clients liked, or it was equivalent to some form of strange religion.

  The paranormal occurrences it claimed took place at the region of his mansion were ludicrous and he started to believe they were altered from something else, and he searched through everything looking for clues of it, and occasionally laughed out loud at stuff.

  Claims of what servants witnessed there were ludicrous, which he was sure he could disprove, even though there were signs the servants had worked there, and he realized there could be an address where he could hire them for the mansion, and was surprised when he found an agency providing them and he phoned them and asked them for the same ones if they were available, and for cleaners to clean the place, and sat wondering if they would give him the ones he wanted.

  What could have occurred at the mansion astonished him and left him breathless and he could not let it go and he had to investigate its existence, and he wondered what the hell Kurt thought occurred there as he could believe he thought ghosts or anything like it existed.

  When the taxi arrived at its destination he was surprised to find Kurt waiting on the pavement with hippy psychic scientists, with large bags and cases full of their equipment, and he listened to them discuss their investigation of supposedly psychic activity, and he realized they were authentic investigators but thought the real stuff never existed, and by what Kurt came out with he was sure they were the only ones available.

  After a while, and on the journey back to the mansion, he started to gasp and wondered what they would think of the two ghostly figurations, but started to realize that they probably would not even reappear.

  The next big surprise was the documents he was reading started stating facts about the mansion that he could grasp how they knew without the people having stayed there and it left him stunned and the psychic investigators in the taxi wondering what it was he was reading, and he decided to currently leave it, and not tell them, rather than ruin getting what psychic investigators thought existed there, and he tried to evaluate what it said in the documents, and claims of paranormal sightings and sounds emerging from regions of the mansion, and he was sure they never unraveled the source.

  At the edge of his vision Eisenberg watched the traffic vanish and the sky becoming dark, and buildings go, and the taxi rushed on, and he watched the news, glancing at the others, and wondered what the hell he had done and if he should start trying to get out of it as if the place was authentically possessed with evil spirits it at some point could become dangerous, and he considered if the haunting of the place was a stunt to get rid of him.

  It was crazy! He could not entirely grasp what Howard Eisenberg had been up to, even though it sounded simple, and he wondered if the treasure chest still existed, and why it would not be damaged if it was cash as the treasure. Yet the will the lawyer gave clearly said that they were competing to gain control of the companies, which were far more valuable than some treasure, and he considered paying someone to find it for him but he knew that the person would not find it and that he needed to find it.

  He recalled Howard Eisenberg liked playing games and he became sure it was his main motivation, and he realized he really wanted to do it and enjoyed it and liked the mansion and the desolation that existed.

  He shifted nearer the window as the darkness increased and the landscape vanished out of view, and he was surprised to see a black car further behind still there and wondered if they were going to blow it somewhere else by bringing in so many people to the mansion.

  He had no idea what the outcome would be and he considered using all the investigators he had met to get to the source of what they were looking for, with him controlling them all, and he tried to comprehend what they would come up with from such insignificant information.

  Kurt glared over at him for a moment, with urgency, and he wondered why he wanted the treasure so much!

  He had originally chosen to join up with Kurt for a reason, and that he could help him greatly get what he wanted!

  Both of them had been searching everything for clues, and anything resembling anything they needed to know, and he had been surprised when Kurt had wanted to bring in the others, his relatives, and he had wondered why, and he realized he now never thought they could find the treasure on their own.

  He started to recall what they were really like and their ability to uncover things and the discovery of the lake and first clue and he was sure one of the others could find it, and he thought they should just share the businesses, and there was more than enough cash, and he was sure he could make mistakes running them, and he wondered what would happen if they found it and attempted to take it for themselves and in the end just ignored it and realized the competition would help greatly and they were bound to come up with things he never thought of.

  The whole episode was unbelievable and he could hardly believe what had occurred and he told Kurt just to contact them and bring them in, as the quicker they found it the better.

  He sat back and listened to Kurt negotiate with them on his phone, and he realized he had timed it wrongly, as they were arguing over the situation and what to do, and in the end he convinced them that they were onto something and that they should come there as soon as possible, and he hung the phone up and told him they would arrive there the next morning, and he was that sure that they intended to bring in people to investigate the place, and with equipment, and he felt excitement at it and at getting rid of the emptiness of the mansion, and he wondered, if they never found it, if his uncle had ludicrously decided to give it away to someone else.

  Chapter 21

  The Paranormal Investigators

  Eisenberg stood staggered on the top floor when he spotted the ghostly figures away along the corridor, and he watched the two paranormal investigators while they made their way up the last steps and look around and along the corridor.

  At first they were more dazzled by their new surroundings and darkness they were in and stood trying to see what was there, and he was surprised when they totally dismissed there being anything there, and
studied the phenomena and realized they could not properly see what was there, and he led them towards what was there, and he soon realized that they had not encountered anything, even though they had reacted to the mansion and how haunted it looked when they arrived earlier, and had been fascinated by the painting in the living room, and the haunting man with the sword.

  It was incredible, and he allowed them to go along the corridor first, and he watched the darkness ahead and what looked like two illuminated white figures shifted about and for a moment one of them halted and stood studying what he could see with disbelief, and seemed to dismiss it and continue, and further along their speed slowed and he spotted their mouths wide open, and saw one remove a camera and take a picture, which he checked, and they remained silent and walked at a steady pace forward.

  While he followed them, staring into blackness, searching for any reactions from the ghostly figures, he became more alarmed and saw the two psychic investigators start to hesitate, and he saw how deadly the ghostly figures were and realized they had altered, and he wondered just how dangerous they were, and realized they might be anything, and they had no proof of their identities and what they were capable of.

  Surely there must be some danger from whatever they were and he realized they altered their appearance by some means but he could not grasp if it was to them or if they were doing it before they arrived, and they now seemed to not react to them, and he tried to see if they were communicating with each by some means, and wondered what the hell two ghosts would be doing there, but he could not grasp anything and again started to believe they were something else, and perhaps even something that had never been encountered and he wondered why the hell they were.