The Lost Treasure Map Series

by V Bertolaccini

  Even though he never actually had anything he still felt glad he had some form of recognition of what it was and tried to work out what it did, how it worked, and where it might go to!

  While he was considering what would happen next he spotted a miniature circle of flames buried away in the central region ahead of him, and he grew more and more interested, and he started to recognize more detail as it grew and was astonished as he shifted into it, and within its depths he saw what looked like magnificent colossal stars, in a golden haze, blending into his surrounding brilliant colors.

  Spectacular golden beams exploded out, and gold stars shot by, and he realized the tremendous speed that he was traveling at, and a region of golden space was expanding out all across his front, and he floated into it.

  He saw his body emerge with a new formation and start transforming, and sensed there was something far more different about it, and he saw a strange transparent world formation emerge, with ghost images going through the swirling golden brightness.

  Magnificent bright white and gold lights filled his entire vision everywhere, shifting around everywhere, as if he were floating into some form of cartoon cosmos.

  Where was he now? Was he actually in one of his dreams he had been at the castle? It was incredible! Would he be able to solve all those queries he had accumulated? At an early age, when he had first visited the first castle, he had experienced the dreams and mysteries buried away there!

  Large objects, he was sure were stars, dazzled him with their brightness. Their density together filled space everywhere and yet they never came into contact with each other, staggering him that they could even exist in their state, without being pulled together.

  The whole of space around him had the objects shifting and visibly shooting around, and he observed them with curiosity, and as a scientist. He had to answer what was there as much as he could! He was sure that they avoided courses that would make them crash into other objects, and he finally spotted one actually altering its course to avoid hitting another and was dazed and confused that such an object, if they were suns or the size of suns, could have intelligence and the ability to alter their course through space, and he considered what they were and did.

  He exploded with excitement when he searched behind him and saw the vortex he had come out of stretching across space, and he tried to grasp what it was and realized the immense speed that he had been traveling at, and was still moving away at.

  The size of vortex looked close to the size of a solar system and the vision staggered him and stuck in his mind!

  Over a great deal of time he dreamily partially entered a form of sleep state, shooting through the surrounding emptiness, through the surreal space, far from the universe, out beyond reality.

  Obscure illuminations endlessly shifted as he wildly spun around, with no real awareness of anything, and a tranquil shape gradually emerged across his front, of something of brightness, and he came to sometimes to study it.

  How had he managed to end up in such a far-out place? Where the hell was he? How could he survive this? He was barely a ghost/energy state in some far out mind-bending place, and he considered if he was actually in the castle in a dream state!

  He felt as though he had been falling through something and he tried to grasp the concept, and where, and suddenly realized something was blowing at him from somewhere and he saw, hidden away in intense brightness, he was plunging down to some form of world under him.

  He was over some form of water! He was sure of it! And he was falling out of its sky!

  He prepared himself for everything that he could think of and a roaring and blinding surge of what looked like invisible water or form of energy hit him and he automatically put out his arms, swimming upwards and pulling himself out of the endless depths, where he saw star objects through at the other side of the world.

  Chapter 2

  The Mind-Bending Universe

  He continually kept going over everything that had happened! All the supernatural occurrences that they had encountered as they had approached the castle, exploring the wood surrounding the castle, and the strange mists and lights there that haunted the place for centuries, and attacks by the things that emerged there, chasing them through the deep snow and into the strange tunnel that they had found that led them to the location of the castle.

  Even now he could not explain what it was all caused by! What could be there and have created such a disturbance, which nobody could now deny existed? Yet he had worse things to explain now, and thought if he ever returned he would be spending the rest of his life trying to explain it all!

  They had professional ex-soldiers, with Mitchell leading them, and every leading scientist in paranormal or anything connected to it, and he was a leading scientist too, with the two main psychic researchers there, Merton and Mortimer, who had explored the last castle, and found everything that they could have, and he was sure they could achieve something if given long enough.

  Who had the killer of one of the ex-military men been? The police were exploring the whole region there now and he wondered what the outcome of that would be, and he gasped! They could not find a way to explain things to them to prevent them from doing something stupid there!

  The most frustrating things were the search for the treasure and them finding more and more clues! They had only been searching the castle for a day and they had made discoveries everywhere! A chamber under the top floor with a tomb in it, with some strange writing on it, which he had not been given any proper time and proper examination of, and the strange skeleton inside, which had to be someone significant and be buried there for a reason – and with a ring that had a secret compartment with a map with a secret location marked on it that they had traced to a library where they had found a tunnel below – which the three of them had climbed down, with him following Mitchell down and one of Mitchell’s men following him, and then Mitchell had suddenly vanished below him and when he had climbed down had been transported into the vortex to where he was.

  He had to find a way back and he constantly went over things trying to find something that he had missed!

  He wondered where Mitchell was, and the other man if he had followed him there, and he wondered if it transported people to random locations? Was it the supernatural vortex that he had dreamed of in the castle? Did it have things trapped in it? Did things get transported back and forward through it? And if it did why could he not reenter it and return there?

  The island, if it could be called an island, was fascinating and made of something similar to matter, and he constantly studied.

  It was virtually translucent in places, as well as being slightly translucent in different degrees in other places with different colors through it, which he was sure was made of some form of new energy, with strange atoms replacing normal ones.

  It was firm in places but like being on a waterbed in other places and he was glad to be on it as he had spent hours wading through its sea, if it could be called a sea, as it was nearly like thick air and he only managed to float on it due to him also being made of a similar composition. He was sure gravity existed, at least! Or was it just something similar?

  It was incredible! Through the sea and areas of the land he had seen the other side of the world, if it could be called a world, and its size was close to being the same as the moon and he saw similar islands to his in different sizes and shapes, some massive and others small like his island and they seemed to float around it.

  The place never needed a sun and glowed brightly with all the surrounding lights or suns in the sky, virtually covering all the sky, and he had to search for black areas of empty space to confirm they actually existed there, which he was still unable to prove.

  The world also generated its own light and heat, but he could not realize how! The strange thing was it had the many of the characteristics of the normal universe and it was like it was mimicking it and as though it had some of the same forces like gravity and had formed si
milarly with the forces governing it.

  Though his survival was an important thing he wondered if he could actually die as he never needed any food or oxygen and he was made of the same indestructible or nearly indestructible substance that everything there was made of, and he was unsure how it functioned.

  The sea surrounding the shore was barely visible but had colored matter grains in it against the shore, like sand, mixing through it, and the rhythms of its waves skimming up the surface of island gave sounds like real waves and blew the form of air there in gusts like something was breathing over him, and he wondered if something was there examining him!

  There were vague things in orbit and mists over the upper atmosphere that shifted, with the world’s vague rotation, and he saw some signs of its faint rain having fallen. And he put the exploration of the island as his main activity, except he had to find a way to return home!

  One time he dived deep into the sea, as fast as he possibly could, and admired the surreal abyss below and enjoyed the swim, going fast and furiously into it. It was a dreamland and he treated it like a holiday, especially compared to the conditions of the castle, and he realized how bad the conditions at the castle had been and that the warmness there was ecstatic compared to the cold and snow and he wandered around enjoying the solitude and bright light, and exploring an unexplored alien world.

  Chapter 3

  Back in the Castle

  Deep in dark regions and lights surrounded Bryson in his dream as it started ending and he started waking, and he caught sight of things shifting about with no form and wondered what they were or were doing there as he opened his eyes and examined the sun beaming into his castle room, and the snow falling outside.

  After all he had been through the dreams still never made any sense and he still insisted in trying to examine it to find some clue to what he was missing.

  The dream had been about nothing and eventually bored him, and he rested in his bed with his blankets wrapped tightly on him.

  Yet the lights in the dream reminded of the supernatural vortex he had been in and he now wondered if it had anything to do with the supernatural or something else.

  The dream had allowed him to forget all the events of the previous day and his return to the castle. It had been incredible! He had been exploring the shore of the island when he had found footprints, which could have only have belonged to a human put there like him, and he had traced them for hours, thinking it had to be Mitchell or his man who had been behind him in the tunnel, but he had been surprised that it had been another human.

  They had talked for hours, and he had realized that the man was almost crazy in places from being stranded there for many years, and the man had loved hearing his accounts of what the outside world was like, and all the new technology that now existed, and Bryson had learned that he had been there for decades and from the Second World War, surprising Bryson with his young looks, and that he was far older and had clearly not aged.

  Bryson had learned about him being in the castle and their search for the treasure there with great interest!

  Even though Bryson had been surprised at his search for the treasure he was sure that he had not known much about it and had been there to help.

  Both of them had thought each other had been dangerous at first but had slowly realized that they had finally met other humans, and though he had been amazed at Bryson’s accounts of the castle and the tunnel he had been surprised that there had been stairs in the tunnel and Bryson had realized that the man and his two associates had been in another tunnel and that they had been sure the treasure had been buried away there.

  Yet one of the biggest surprises had been when the man finally remembered his own name again, as he had been so delirious for so long that he could not recall things about himself, and he had told him that his name was Pendleton, which Bryson had heard of in the accounts of some of the people who had vanished there.

  The man’s view of the island had been startling and he had even thought that he had missed something as the man had not fully believed that he had been transported there through a vortex and had religious beliefs of what had occurred! He surely had thought he had gone into his own place in the afterlife and was unsure whether it was heaven or hell, and had beliefs that he was still being considered for both, and he had watched him regularly praying to be saved.

  Yet after being there, and all that had happened, he almost felt like copying him, but had thought better of it. It clearly had not saved him for one thing!

  One of the problems had been there was little to do! There was no need for food and they never got tired or slept! And if it had not been for the fact that they never felt properly bored, agitated, or, in fact, anything really, and he would have been worried!

  One time they had visited a strange phenomenon on the island, which Pendleton had told him of, which was a large hole going into a hard region of the island, which seemed to go down into an abyss far below the island, which had actually looked volcanic, and had grasped Bryson’s attention as if it was volcanic it could have proven that the island had been formed in the same way as the world, and, of course, given him some form of insight into how the world had been formed and what it actually was.

  Yet after a great deal of examination of the substance there he had still found nothing! There had been no sign of anything that remotely came out of volcanoes!

  About a day later, when they had started to think about leaving there they had suddenly started vanishing, which had grabbed Pendleton’s attention first and the most as he had not experienced it before and he had prepared himself for years to meet something there and enter some other place in the afterlife.

  They had both appeared in the castle, surrounded by scientists, to their astonishment and confusion!

  How the hell did they get there? Neither of them could explain anything! Bryson could not explain anything and why they had not gone through the vortex and Pendleton could not explain anything either! And Pendleton could not even recognize the castle after such a long time! He must have been the only person in the history of the world to have been in such a place and have returned to the world after such a long time!

  The simplest things confused Pendleton and his now normal human body staggered him, and he had a hard time adapting to it and having such things as feelings. He could not understand and remember what hunger was and why he grew tired, and even thought that he was ill most of the time, and occasionally gasped at what he had been missing – yet as he was still the same age as he been when he had left he still had the same amount of years that he would have had!

  He also never recognized people, and they were different from what he had remembered them as, and he had not seen anything of the future! He was like a time traveler in a future world! He also thought of himself as having been put there to start over again and repent, in another attempt at entering his relished afterlife.

  He spent most of his time studying everything that he met with in fascination – like he were an alien being visiting this world in the form of a human being.

  Chapter 4

  The Psychic Research Equipment

  When Bryson had recovered and rested from everything that he had been through he decided to go and visit Merton and Mortimer in their new psychic research room, which was located behind the wall of the tunnel at the exact spot he and Mitchell had vanished into the supernatural vortex – where they were most likely to get the best response – and where all the action must be.

  When he entered he was surprised at not only how advanced their equipment had become but at the capabilities of other stuff they had there. Their visit to the last castle had clearly given them far more of an insight and knowledge than he had realized. He was positive that they had found far more than they had indicated, and were keeping secrets from him.

  What confused him the most was how they had managed to get him back to the castle! He had not thought of anything himself, and continuously tried to think of a good wa
y to get them to tell him as they had avoided answering his and everyone else’s queries on it and were clearly hiding things. What sort of equipment could have taken him back into the castle almost instantaneously with Pendleton?

  He recalled seeing Pendleton wandering around dazed exploring the inhabited region of the castle, getting use to his new body and life on the Earth. He mainly remained on his own the most of the time, as he had become use to, but was still excited to meet the others in the lounge. The police there had examined him wondering what he was doing there as they had been given strange vague replies and detailed explanations by the scientists, which had left them baffled.

  Mitchell’s return had confused everyone as he had given them the strangest replies that he had heard from any of them, and he was particularly interested in where he had ended up as he had not arrived at the same place or even universe that he had, and he clearly was covering things up on what was there, which they had not been able to get why. It was in his nature not to say much and be secretive, and it was not apparent if there was anything they should know there and that he was really keeping something that they had not even imagined.

  The other man, Mitchell’s man who had been behind Bryson in the tunnel, had seen and acknowledged everything that had happened in the tunnel and had returned to the top, which explained why nobody else had entered it, looking for them, and it had been him that had told the scientists what had happened and what he had seen happen, and they had immediately started work on getting him returned.

  It surprised them and Bryson that only the three of them had returned, and he and them believed that the rest had all died a long time ago at where they had been located, and Bryson realized that it proved that there was no immortality in the places that they had gone and that the other places were vastly different, which could also be proven from what they had seen of the other events that they had heard of, and what they had seen existed.