The Lost Treasure Map Deluxe Book Collection (2017 Edition)

by V Bertolaccini

  He spotted drawers, and went to them.

  They were mostly full of old clothes.

  Robert investigated every object that he came to.

  “This place turns more gruesome the more I see it!” he remarked, flicking webs away from him.

  “Do you believe that he made a mistake allowing us to search here?” Bryson responded.

  “He was no priest! He ruthlessly ran his business affairs ... I saw a glint of sympathy in those eyes – which could only mean one thing ...”

  Bryson picked up an old bowler hat, realizing how much things had changed.

  “Let’s check somewhere else!”

  At another room, they could not help smile at James’s methods of searching. He frantically yanked up floorboards, as Sarah, his wife, frowningly held up the carpet.

  “Let’s try the floorboards in his bedroom!” James announced.

  Robert stood with his mouth open, realized something, and closed it.

  “Good idea!” Sarah replied, quickly dropping the carpet, and they left towards the room.

  When they moved into the corridor, Bryson realized that it was a good idea, and slowly followed them.

  “I’ll see you later,” Robert answered firmly, going in the opposite direction.

  Once in the room, James quickly pulled up the carpet, and started pulling up rotted nails with an old metal pole.

  Bryson wandered about the room, and wondered if Sir Richard had made a mistake somewhere.

  “Where the last dwell!” he mumbled.

  He went over to the spot where he had been, when the camera had been on him.

  He grabbed a seat, from the other side of the room, and he placed it at the spot - and from it, he studied a painting.

  A repetitive forceful hammering appeared in the distance, and occasionally interrupted him enough to stop to listen.

  While he considered the room from various perspectives, it escalated into a loud rummaging and banging.

  Finally, James went to the door, to gaze along the corridor.

  “They’ve found something!” he abruptly announced.

  Bryson followed him, as he left.

  The noises were coming from a room – where there was a cloud of dust hovering outside.

  There were shudders going through the walls, and sounds of rocks crashing down!

  Their looks changed to bewildered glances, as they approached it.

  Had they found something already?

  At the room, he saw chunks of rock and pieces of plaster scattered over the carpet, and the others crowded around an area of a wall, where there was a large hole.

  They had discovered something concealed in the wall (perhaps after they had discovered that the wall had given a hollow tone - when they had banged it).

  Bryson measured the approximate width of the wall with amazement. It was phenomenal how thick the wall between the rooms was, and he had not noticed it.

  Yet it was far older than Sir Richard’s era! And why had someone gone to such lengths to conceal it? Was there any connection between it and the disturbances that had occurred at the place?

  Robert viciously smashed a heavy metal pole against the thick stone, while chunks of it crumbled away and crashed across the floor.

  Robert dropped the pole, and the clang echoed from in it.

  Then he crouched, crept over the debris, and climbed in.

  Chapter 4

  The Mysterious Find

  Bryson’s eyes followed Robert moving off, and he swiftly followed.

  A deep thud echoed down, from behind, as James entered.

  The ebbing radiance of the torch clearly was not enough to allow more than three to go safely down.

  He scarcely grasped the concept of why a tunnel was there. Surely Sir Richard had not built it.

  By the fact that it was in a castle might prove that it might have been part of its defense against invaders.

  Sounds took strange tones, and he strained his eyes more, trying to see further in, but there were no features of anything. The tunnel’s small shape (not much larger than his height, and less than a meter in width) vanished into darkness.

  As the steps descended sharply, he had to hold himself upright. Its drop almost seemed perpendicular.

  He heard distant movements, and their growing surges, and Robert stopped, just ahead of him, with the torch oscillating irregularly. Its light swayed over the stone, and the narrow shaft seemed to vanish at a point.

  A stone floor was below, and he climbed down.

  A feeble glow came through a crack in a wall, and a faint voice could be heard beyond it.

  “Who’s that?” Robert whispered.

  “I don’t know!”

  Robert shoved his head close to the crack.

  “It’s the butler!”

  He yelled through the crack.

  The startled features of the butler emerged next to it. Then his hands felt the wall.

  “Where are you?”

  “We are in a passage!”

  Robert shoved the heavy mass with his shoulder, making the crack creak and widen.

  The brightness from a window beamed out, and they entered the storeroom, at the back of the kitchen.

  Someone had made the entrance out of castle stones (put together to hide it). The large cracks between the other bricks hid its shape well!

  Chapter 5

  Ghost Psychology

  The bedroom still seemed the same, with just the bed remaining there. The psychic research equipment was all over it, everywhere, and they speedily were monitoring it.

  The night sky did not seem as dark with heavy snow floating about in it. The faint tread mark of a car was below, under a layer of snow. And the wood remained silent and lifeless.

  “Someone seems to have a deep interest in your movements!” Mortimer muttered, at the doorway, glancing sideways, along the corridor.

  Bryson knew that it had to be either Robert or James, over at the rooms. But James had been watching everyone! He looked the type that followed his orders to the word.

  Bryson examined their thermometers carefully placed at the wall. It was just less than fourteen degrees centigrade. He estimated that the temperature outside was just below freezing point.

  “What are the thermometers for?” he asked, for something to say, and to see if he could find out anything, which he did not already know. They were more silent than they normally were.

  “Where there have been some manifestations, there have been drops in temperature – discovered before and during occurrences. Although I have never proven to myself that it happens.”

  “It would be a good way of detecting if there is something near you!” he replied. “So the room should theoretically feel cold before it!”

  Bryson looked about the room. Most of the equipment was on loan. And, according to Merton, was being used in the field for the first time. (They would be carrying out tests and experiments with the equipment to test its capabilities, which could not be properly done in a research laboratory.)

  Some of it he recognized from the work that he had done in the laboratory. In fact, he was sure that he had helped in the making of some of their components.

  They would be checking for virtually all known forms of energy and matter disturbances (perhaps, if it was possible, fluctuations in time). Presumable if it could alter temperatures and produce all the effects that he had heard could be done, it could produce effects with air currents, gravity, magnetic fields, radioactivity, scent, sound waves, static, and the light spectrum. Most of the equipment was there to check everything in a degree that had not been done before!

  “Why have you so many recorders along here?”

  “We’re trying to capture the best recording that we can, from here, as well as in the room behind the wall.”

  Bryson moved over to a different device. “Is this to detect vibrations?”

  “Of course, and we’ve machines here that we’ll use to check the different sound frequencies, to
show us the exact sounds that are occurring, and what we are unable to hear. This information will be vital. We may be able to acquire some type of insight into what is happening here, with the right information.”

  “Have you any of your equipment in the room below?”

  Mortimer strangely glared at him. “Why would you want to put anything down there?”

  “To find out if there are any sounds there! And, if there are sounds, if they are louder or less louder than here. It may help to locate the exact position that the sounds are emerging from.”

  “That may be a good idea,” Merton replied. “But do you think that it could be occurring there ...? This room surely had the loudest sounds!”

  “I’ve a few ideas, which I would like to check.”

  Mortimer moaned: “We wanted to get the right places.”

  “We can carry out your experiment tomorrow!”

  Bryson picked up a glass, off the table, and poured some water into it. “That is perfect! What type of camera are you using over there?”

  “That is a video camera to film our experiments. It’s the best we could get, in case anything becomes visible. That one next to it is an infrared camera ...”

  Bryson began to leave. He was getting tired, and he needed the sleep. He silently tried to quench his thirst.

  “Do you consider that it will capture anything?”

  “Probably not ...!” Merton quickly replied.

  Chapter 6

  Spiritual Manifestation

  Mist shifted about, beneath him, lingering in distant places.

  A whisper came from an unseen place.

  Radiant rays shone down, from a powerful light in the sky, which neither was the sun nor the moon. Its lunar-like radiance was visible everywhere.

  The sky was golden in regions; lights twinkled through thick areas of mist on the horizon. A bright light suddenly appeared, deep in the vapor. It oscillated, and intensified.

  A face emerged out of the mist, over its light. It resembled Sir Richard. It was somehow different, and put there by his mind, perhaps trying to control the dream.

  A gurgle came from somewhere. He sensed the presence of many mysterious things, which existed about him.

  The deep groans of something came from the edge of what he saw. Powerful movements rapidly brought it close.

  A creature shape, in a mass of red energy, floated through the mist, towards him ...

  A loud screech ripped through him! Its unbelievable loudness making him conscious, and open his eyes wide.

  The deep blackness of the room completely blinded him; and he stayed where he was, breathing silently.

  In the blackness, at the end of his bed, something edged out, and he waited, stunned, for whatever was there to hit him hard.

  Chapter 7

  Psychic Experiments

  Bryson’s anger faded with every stride he took through the empty corridor, heading towards the stairs.

  He would always remember that creature’s red features, glaring at him from the end of the bed, out of the blackness of the place, before it had vanished, after him virtually dying in disbelief.

  Of course, the psychic researchers had only believed in what they had encountered (and preferably at night).

  His thoughts turned to their hunt for the money.

  The others had been constantly surprising him with their determination to find it. They had branched out, from the few rooms that they were searching, and they were now searching almost everywhere, in the same rigorous way.

  They had even persuaded the servants and lawyer to help them. The lawyer had been going to leave, but they had persuaded him to stay around, especially to give them any advice, whenever they required it.

  A few people, who he had never seen before, were roaming about, behind him somewhere, going in the direction that he went in.

  Their sounds faded into the distance, when he arrived at the room where the psychic investigators were in.

  It surprised him how long they had spent in the room.

  Mortimer was still checking the equipment, but he stopped, and watched him enter from the corner of his eyes.

  “Well, what did you discover?” he asked, settling down.

  “We found a great deal!” Merton replied frankly, coming away from the window, where he was standing, glaring at the snow shrouding the landscape.

  “But no break through ...?”

  “No proper leads ...”

  Bryson walked over to a digital thermometer, and tapped it, seeing if it would change. It then adjusted slightly to his body heat.

  “Did the temperature change when it took place?”

  “Those thermometers were not accurate enough to detect anything,” Mortimer answered.

  “Did you capture anything with the cameras?”

  “Psychic energy appeared all over these rooms, from many locations ...

  “But we never saw anything, anywhere, and there’s nothing on the cameras. I don’t believe that it will be visible! We had to have recorded what must be the most advanced and highest degrees of psychic fluctuations so far discovered. If we could come up with a way to get visible pictures, and it recorded ...”

  “Will you be checking the room below? We can establish that its nucleus is around that wall ...”

  Mortimer stopped what he was doing. “That’s good!”

  Merton nodded. “Okay, we’ll do that!”

  “Your uncle must have been raving mad putting you in that bed!”

  “So what else did you discover?”

  “We found some incredible frequencies from the wall.”

  “There must be a reason why that is mainly at the wall, and the other equipment is detecting nothing!”

  “And why is it so loud?” Merton queried. “It produces an effect that it’s occurring all about the place, from other locations – as well as it appearing at other locations! – which we detected.”

  “Can I hear your best recordings?” Bryson asked, as he glimpsed Merton playing with a machine.

  Mechanically, Merton activated it, and a few crackles emerged, and chanting loudly came from its speakers.

  “That is just before it occurred,” Merton called out, with his ear at it.

  With utter astonishment, Bryson staggered back, absolutely spellbound, marginally gaining control of his features, while intensely listening to a creature’s roar, as though it were happening in front of him.

  The sounds and the time that it had occurred were so precise that he knew that it could not have been from anything else except the thing that had been in his dream, and at the end of his bed.

  Chapter 8

  The Castle Library

  Most of his relatives were sitting in the dining room, chatting excitedly.

  The hunt for the money was an exciting game, and he was sure that they were mainly overconfident. But why worry about it! They would either find it or they would not. They had nothing to lose.

  Why not have a good time? Who knows! They might get something else of great value in the place. There were many generations of eccentric owners of the castle. Things in it had been there for an immense amount of time. Perhaps some valuable antique existed somewhere!

  He lifted his soupspoon, which was far too flat, and managed to consume the small amount of soup on it. He heard the servants giggling, in another room.

  He jerked, as two loud crackles came off the logs burning furiously in the fireplace, behind him. The heat from it made his back sweat.

  “Well, how are your two friends doing?” Robert moaned, moving into a vacant seat.

  “What ...?”

  Bryson anxiously took a sip of soup, and watched his chunky face smiling at him at the corner of his eye. For a moment, he wondered if he had found the answer to the clue, or something.

  “They made some incredible recordings!”

  Robert hesitated, and stopped smiling.

  Bryson felt the warm air in the surrounding room, and he relaxed against the back of the
seat. The corridor and rooms were cold, and he felt the coldness coming from there, through the door.

  He lifted his wine glass, and tasted the sweet white German wine.

  “That’s odd! Did they not find anything else with all that equipment that arrived here?”

  “They’ve not finished.”

  He lifted his arm, and allowed it to fall to his side.

  Robert stretched his arms. “It’s time to start work! I was thinking of bringing in some local workmen ...”

  “That could be a mistake! Even though it seems a good idea. I think we’ll have to do more thinking – instead of taking up ever floorboard in the castle.”

  “Have you any ideas about the answer to that clue? None of us have come close to finding anything.”

  “It’s too soon! It’s too vague! But there must be an answer, and I shall continue ...”

  Robert stood up, and followed some of the others out of the door.

  Bryson realized that the others were not properly searching the entire castle. They had agreed to concentrate in the right places!

  Therefore, it would be a good idea for him to spend the morning wandering about the rooms, looking for anything. Perhaps it would help solve the clue.

  He always wanted to search this castle. He had been unable to do it the last time that he was at it as the servants had kept him in the lounge, and had persuaded him not to go anywhere else.

  He had the freedom to roam the castle, and he wanted to take full advantage of it before he left.

  As he started going through the rooms on the bottom floor, which he had not seen anyone near, he realized that there were too many mysteries, and no noticeable means of solving them.

  He stopped to rest at a room window, and realized the hopelessness of such an endeavor. He observed the dark parts of trees sticking out from the blanket of snow.

  The snow had stopped, and the sky was cloudless.