He started to wonder why they never thought of there, and realized nothing was up there, and the mark on the map was on the top floor, and he realized that it could have been in the ceiling, and above them all along, as the person might have just put it there, and wanted to conceal its exact position.
There was little room from the ceiling to the top of the building and anything there would be really small, but he realized there could be something.
Chapter 31
The Attic
Eisenberg stood on the roof staring and checking the estate all around him, and he climbed into a hole in the roof they had made, and crouched down and entered the darkness of the attic.
Further along he saw light and there was a cloud of dust appearing, and heavy thuds emerged and accelerated, almost climaxing at one point, and he sensed that they might be about to uncover something, and he tried to move faster, watching he never put his feet through the floor, even though he was sure that it was wood, and planks of wood below it.
He watched the men working there, glaring down at something.
Further on he saw them crouched around a hole in the attic floor, surrounded by a cloud of dust, and he tried to work out where it was situated in the top floor and gave up, and watched one continue to smash away the floor and increase the size of the hole, and he moved nearer, as he heard and felt shudders going through the floor, roof, and air, and heard of crash down below somewhere near them.
Their looks slowly altered from bewildered glances to observing something in the darkness there, and he examined all the chunks of rock and pieces of plaster scattered everywhere across the floor about them and he wondered who the hell had put them there, and knew that it had to be one of his relatives, and surely Kurt being involved, and knew it had to be at about the center of the building.
When he reached them he saw the large black hole up close and wondered what they were doing, and investigating.
What had they discovered was concealed below the floor and he watched one eventually shine a dull torch down, and clearly never saw anything.
He measured the floor with amazement and realized the size of the hole was large and that there must be far more secret chambers all about the mansion.
He had still not fully considered the implications of it, even after measuring walls and regions all about the place. It was phenomenal how thick the walls and floors actually were, and he wondered why the occupants wanted to conceal so much, and he saw Kurt appear behind him, and heard him talking, and realized it was him behind the workmen searching there, and he started to realize how deadly the place was becoming.
Chapter 32
The New Paranormal Investigator
Eisenberg sat in the ancient library watching a paranormal researcher, who was searching through the books with amazement, and he could not even recall him, as there were so many there now, and realized Kurt had put him there, and he realized that he was actually reading the books, and for Kurt.
“What do think?” Kurt eventually asked the new paranormal investigator. “Tell him what you’ve found!”
The paranormal investigator looked up, and placed the book down, and replied, “It would be a shame to ruin this place …”
Eisenberg sat confused and realized how long he had been away from them, and realized it was not really long, but realized a lot of things had happened, and eventually asked, “What’s been happening since I’ve been away … Can you actually understand the writing in the books?”
“Yes! He has been …” Kurt replied.
“So what’s the stuff about?” he eagerly asked, determined to get an answer to what he had been trying to solve for hours.
“Much of it’s supernatural stuff …” the paranormal investigator replied first.
“Stuff such as witchcraft, voodoo, devil worshippers …”
“Yes! Ancient stuff!”
“What did you get?”
“They were into really heavy stuff …”
“What like?”
“They seemed to have killed large amounts of humans … We still have not found out what they were …”
“The original occupants?”
“Probably all the occupants that lived in the castle for centuries …” the paranormal researcher replied, holding up the book he had, and showing his alarm at the discoveries he had made.
“Castle? What castle?” Eisenberg asked, concerned.
“This castle! Alright the building they made this building out of when they reconstructed it here …”
“Was this a German castle?” he asked, curiously.
“This was a Transylvanian castle … These books and the library are from there and were in the original building …”
“What else?” he gasped, realizing that it was a castle.
“Well they seemed to be really eminent and mind-boggling and they seemed to have some form of science, which I’ve been trying to grasp … It was really far out … I’ve not fully grasped what they were or were doing, and what happened to them …”
“Were they some form of royalty?”
“I believe so! Or had become royalty after many wars and killings – and had ruled ruthlessly for centuries …”
“What do you think it is then?” he asked whispered, confused, not fully grasping what was there or what he was explaining the place was.
“What’s what?” he asked.
“The ghost figures and occurrences in this place?”
“That’s something else I’ve not been able to answer … These are notes I’ve taken of things I’ve found …”
Eisenberg reached over and took his notes and started reading through them carefully, ignoring many, which were connected to the paranormal researcher, and sat staggered at things, and realized how haunted and deadly the place actually had been, and might return to in the future, and realized that he had hardly read the majority of the stuff in the library, and knew there was far more.
Chapter 33
The Complete Map
The next morning Eisenberg studied the new paranormal researcher as he walked into the library and wondered who he was, as none of the others had heard of him, but he knew he was good and knew far more than the others, and he trusted Kurt, and was sure he had put him there for a reason.
He watched him search through the books, with amazement at the speed and amount of books he had searched.
“What do think?” Kurt asked. “Tell him what you’ve found!”
“This place is hideous …” the paranormal researcher replied, gasping at the things he had read. “They must have killed thousands … What I don’t get is their true identity … I’ve not been able to trace them to anything really … Other than some wars they fought … And even they did not know who was fighting them, and there were accounts of them massacring massive armies and there being no survivors …”
“Is there anything else on the wars in the books?”
“There’s little on and there seems to be some sort of cannibalism they carried out … They mention them feasting on the bodies of the soldiers …”
The paranormal investigator looked energetic, as though he wished to do something, and he had noticed some of the others were losing hope of finding anything new, and he watched him place a book he had down on the table.
“It would be a shame to ruin this place!” he silently moaned, and Eisenberg recalled his reply and wondered what the hell he was talking about.
“It’s incredible that this stuff is full of supernatural stuff?” he moaned, wondering what else was there.
For moment Eisenberg wondered if he was trying to get valuable books, but he doubted it, and he wanted to thank him for spending so many hours trying to solve and uncover what was buried away there.
“There is a lot of supernatural stuff … The rest is stuff by other people about other things ...”
“Stuff like witchcraft …”
“Ancient stuff from Transylvanian …”
Eisenberg removed the
map he had found in the library and spread it out on the table and used a magnifying glass to study it, and realized it looked different with the extra lighting now in the library, and he managed to recognize things on it with fascination, and sat wondering what it had been used for, and he knew the book it was in had nothing, as the paranormal investigator had studied it scrupulously and had found nothing.
The fact that the original map was relatively similar drew his attention to it.
“It’d also probably destroy what’s there if you used explosives to blow it …” the paranormal investigator continued, and Kurt nodded back, and Eisenberg realized that they had been talking about something, which he could not grasp.
Eisenberg sat confused and suddenly recalled where he had put the original map and got it out the bottom of his inside jacket pocket and placed it over the table.
He sat surprised, as both of the treasure maps were so similar and he could not grasp why, and he flattened them both out and was surprised that their sizes were identical, and he had thought the new one was far larger, perhaps as it had been squashed and crumpled more.
The amazing thing was they actually fitted together, and the more he flattened them and fitted them together the more he was positive they were once joined together, and he started to study them and realized they were a complete map of the original top floor of the castle, even though both looked about the same.
Yet what he could not grasp was why they were there, and why one half was hidden in a book and why the lawyer gave him the other one, and he wondered why it was not a better drawing, and he wondered if Howard Eisenberg had been more confused than he had been, as there was no suggestion of there being anything on it and he had checked the original map scrupulously with everything he could think of and it surely never held much.
Eventually Eisenberg got the plan of the top floor and compared it to the map version and tried to spot any differences, and scrupulously studied it centimeter by centimeter.
In the end, at a distance, going over it again, all he could see was what looked like an the ink mark at the center of both of them, which was on both maps, which was on the original map beside the cross mark, at where the hauntings and library were, and he studied it with a more powerful magnifying glass and was amazed that it actually had a shape, which had been smudged and altered when both parts had been separated, and he realized it might just be the library, and drawn wrongly.
It was located at the exact center of the original castle, and he eventually pushed it away from him and realized it had to be in the library after all, and he wondered where the hell someone of ancient times would hide something in the library, and he decided to search everywhere in the library they had not searched.
Chapter 34
The Real Center
“What the hell is this place?” Kurt moaned out loud, playing with the map, with both maps stuck together, and Eisenberg wondered why he reacted strangely.
“It’s great during the day,” he uttered back, and thought of trying to explain something, and he stopped, as though he wanted to avoid saying something, and he kept wondering if Kurt knew something about the place he never.
While they approached the center of the building, where the large cavity now was, where the deformed ghost figures still emerged at night, floating in midair, as though the floor was beneath them, they wondered what they were missing.
Eisenberg watched Kurt approach the place and wondered what the hell he was hiding away now, and if it was the same thing as before, even though he had found many things he had already been keeping to himself.
“What is it you’re looking for?” Kurt moaned, looking at the place, now with some depression, and shrugged.
“This is not the center of the building!” Eisenberg announced, and pointed at the map. “The exact center is over there!”
They both went around the hole in the floor, and Eisenberg recalled all the scientists that had been at work there and realized that they had been searching the wrong place and the place behind a wall further along at the side of the corridor was, and they came to the place where there was a large region between two rooms, and they entered one room, where they saw a small hole drilled into the wall, and they examined it.
“You’ll not be able to enter there!” Kurt moaned, shrugging.
“Why not?”
“We drilled there to send in a camera. But couldn’t get through! It’s solid! We think it’s some form of metal … That’s what we found up in the attic …”
Eisenberg recalled it and realized with surprise that they had been searching there, and probably had worked out it was the center point.
“What now?” Kurt asked, curiously.
“We can have the inside checked with something …”
“We tried everything! But for some reason nothing shows up at that zone.”
“What about sonar or something?”
“Nothing works! But we got the depth of the wall and inner solid chamber, and found it was its thinnest at the top in the attic, and about only a tenth of the thickness, and they’ve been working on getting through it ...”
Chapter 35
The Chamber Shell
Eisenberg crouched down under the attic roof and watched the workmen drill furiously into the shell of the room below them.
Again he wondered how the hell the occupants of the castle had managed to build the chamber shell, and realized they should have removed the outer wall surrounding it and examined what it was, and he wondered how the hell they were going to enter the thing and get safely out, and if there was anything inside they would have a hard job getting out the blasted thing.
Suddenly he saw more workmen appear from the roof overhead, bringing in ropes and the way for them to descend into its confines, and he was sure they had something to lower them down and hoist them up, and he gasped and wondered what they thought existed there.
As the cloud of dust about them started to disperse he heard them trying to decide who should go down and realized none them wanted to do it, and he realized how much the place had affected them, and he for some reason wanted to do it, and he made his way over to them, crouching below the ancient roof, and he was amazed that he never even needed to say anything, and as though they were waiting for him to do it, and they immediately started attaching a harness to him and he moved into the hole going into the blackness below, and he gasped at the size of it and that he might not be able to get out of it, or get trapped going through.
It was what he had been waiting for though, and it was the climax to all their investigations, and he fitted everything he needed about him, and loosened himself up and started squeezing his legs and body through the hole, and as he went done he examined the thickness of the shell that they had drilled through with some astonishment, and wondered how the hell they had manufactured such a thing, and accepted that it might not be what it seemed, and made differently, and he shifted into the blackness below, and it engulfed him, and they started lowering him faster, and he looked down into the sheer blackness as though he was hanging over an abyss, and it went out into infinity.
Above he felt dust falling and spotted the workmen sitting around the hole on the attic floor, and he tried to work out what the hell the building had been used for and why it was so different, and wondered if it just belonged to some wealthy eccentric person.
While his speed slowed he watched the hole decrease in size and he heard and felt shudders from the rope from the drill being used on something else and he tried to work what they were doing, and he smelt the surrounding stale air, and heard surrounding shudders about him from the drill vibrations, and he felt dust and small stones come down over his head.
Chapter 36
The Hideous Chamber
Eisenberg stood confounded, like he had died and was standing somewhere in hell, surrounded by impenetrable blackness, waiting to be given his punishment for entering the chamber.
When he grabbed his light from his jacket and put
it on its dimmest setting, and waited, and turned it on, and saw nothing at first, and barely able to see, and examined all the chunks of material and pieces of wood scattered across the ground, from the hole overhead, and he wondered who the hell had put the place there, and how the hell he had ended up doing what he was doing, and he could not fully grasp what dangers there were, and even if any really existed, and he still had not been able to prove the ghost figurations could physically affect them, and he wondered if they were actually the real thing and that the media and the era had altered them beyond recognition.
A deep thud echoed down and he looked up startled in time to see something flying through the air and land next to him, and realized one the workmen had dropped a ruler into the chamber, and he watched one gaze down at him through the hole, and he shifted position, and away from the debris, and he vaguely saw shapes about his side and stood transfixed trying to identify them.
The ebbing radiance of his light surprised him and he could not grasp why he had one with the batteries going dud and he quickly turned the brightness up to see what was there but the power of the batteries was too low, and he played about with it until he had it at its brightest, and he walked over to the objects he saw, scarcely grasping the concept of why such a place existed.
The solid walls echoed sounds of his movements that took strange tones, and he strained his eyes increasingly to see further, but there were no real features to anything.
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