The Chamber
Bryson swiftly shifted over to the chamber once an archeologist there moved away, where there was only room for one person.
He copied him and lay across the floor with his head and upper body entering the chamber.
He could not even guess how long it had been hidden away for! The place had confused their logical deductions all over the place, and they could not make proper assumptions and Bryson was surprised that even the most advanced scientists were stumped.
The obscurity there was full of chilling deadly silence, with the vast centuries that it had rested there making it hideous. There was a sensation of death having occurred there, and it being buried away in one of the deadliest regions.
Dead alien insects hung everywhere around the edges of the chamber and Bryson waved his hand in circles scraping them away from him.
In dimness below, just in the light’s range, he watched dim gleams from things in stones reflect dim light, producing a magical effect upon his hazy sight.
Faint echoes of his breathing could be heard in its extraordinary silence in the chamber, and he sensed that the archaeologists behind him had found something there and he could not realize where or what it was!
The descriptions that some of the archaeologists finally murmured made it unacceptable to believe what they suggested the chamber was! They specified that the location was a resting place of something! His mind conjured up vague visions of spooky alien ghosts resting there.
Water splashed over his face as it dripped from a crack in the roof overhead, and he moved sideways from it.
With it away he moved back and cleaned it away from his face and he watched an archeologist’s light at his side explore the chamber, which had been clearly cut out using the same method as the canyon, tunnel, and castle stone.
The chamber was small and things in it looked fragile and he believed they would be damaged if he entered it, and he had glimpses of things and tried to guess what they had been, and he listened to the surreal echoes of the archaeologists giving their thoughts of what was there.
He shifted his arms slowly down into it and an archeologist moved in close and shone the light right into it.
At his front an object came into sight and he felt its roughness with his fingertips through thick dirt, obscuring a proper view of it, and he cleaned the dirt away, and he placed his hands over it and its shape and hideous outline became clear and he moved back jerking his hands away, and established that it was an open-mouthed skeleton with a rusted knife embedded in its chest.
The others soon came over and crowded around it!
“How recent do you think this happened?” Merton asked, examining it up close.
“A very long time ago ...” one of the archaeologists confirmed confidently, who was examining it closely.
Their voices changed and became more professional! Some archaeologists gave silent explanations to what might have happened, clearly affected by the occurrences that had happened at the castle.
Bryson watched Merton’s figure hanging over the chamber trying to grasp information about it, and he searched the remains of the clothing on the skeleton, but found nothing there except pieces of thick string, which it had been tied in.
“This place could have had devil worshipers or similar?” Merton said firmly to Bryson, unsure what else it could have been.
“I would say so!” one of the archaeologists replied.
“Someone gave this human sacrifice here, a long time ago!” he stated to them, and one of the archeologists wrote it down.
As Merton moved away the archaeologists moved in and got to work on checking it in detail, and with gasps and surprises they revealed its hideous agonized face more from the dirt.
They continued brushing away thick dirt, which obscured a proper view of it, while some crumbling bits of gray rot fell off.
Bryson’s mind slowly grasped its hideous outline, and he moved forwards to the chamber wondering what the place had been and why they had been doing it there, and he no longer heard the murmurs of the archaeologists still discussing their find, and what other people would think of it.
How many centuries had the chamber been hidden away there, and how long ago had the death occurred? The chamber had a chilling silence, and he regularly watched dim gleams from stone lighting up like from a mysterious source.
After listening to more of the thoughts of archeologists he realized that they were excited about discovering one of the inhabitants there, which they had not so far found, and they wanted quickly to reveal its fully cleaned features and properly examine it! But Bryson knew it would not show much as it was too old and bad condition, and all its remaining features were revealed already and that it could have even been human.
They wondered why the chamber had been so buried away? Why devil worshippers or whoever had made deadly sacrifices? The race was clearly an advanced race and from some form of ancient tribe!
He wondered what the place would throw at him next! All his life he had been use to solving things as they appeared and now he was having every unsolvable mystery dumped on him simultaneously without a suggestion of a clue.
“Did you come up with anything?” Mortimer asked, entering the room, to his amusement, noticing that he looked frustrated.
Yet they had an alien skeleton, which he noticed most of the archeologists were now more interested in than anything else, and he realized that it could give some information about them, and that they could be superstitious and make sacrifices to something, and he wondered if they could be even more deadly, defensive, and powerful than they imagined, which would explain why they built such a castle.
Mortimer moved around looking baffled, as well as tired, and examined the skeleton.
Bryson rested and listened to two of the archeologists explain what their theories were to him.
Bryson’s sight fell on the skeleton as they lifted the remaining bits of it out of the chamber, and he wondered if he should react to having the privilege of encountering an alien species.
The remains of the skull showed that it had similar looks after all, and he considered why!
Mortimer grew annoyed and one of the archeologists dropped part of the skull, and Bryson shifted position and saw something sparkle in it as he did, and he bent over it and stuck his hand in it at where it was, and into dirt in the center of it, and he probed through it and felt an object, and pulled it out.
“What do you think?” Merton asked, trying to see what it was.
Bryson cleaned the dirt away, encrusting most of it, and found it, and he started polishing it with a cotton handkerchief that he had in his pocket and revealed an ancient large thick metal collar, and he examined it and made it sparkle.
The large size of it was peculiar and he had not seen any normal one that size before.
“Can I see it?” an archeologist eagerly asked, and he swiftly shifted in beside him and put out his hand. “I’ve seen something like that before ...”
Bryson handed it over seeing that he knew something, and the archeologist twisted and unscrewed an area of it, and removed it from it.
“Objects can be hidden in them!” the archeologist stated, and his fingers probed inside it and removed a piece of oily cloth.
Chapter 12
The Map
Bryson placed the ancient piece of worn cloth over the floor and stretched it out as far as he could without damaging it. Perhaps done for the first time in thousands of years, and someone shone a light directly onto it, and Bryson gasped as its faint details became clearer and archeologists grouped around it and they examined it.
“It’s an old drawing of something?” one of the archeologists moaned, seeing something that confirmed his beliefs.
Bryson knew that it was more, and that it was a combination of different views of some region of the castle structure with different side views and a top view, showing where things were there, and he knew it because it was so important and used to find things there,
and he had seen something similar in the other castles. It was far more detailed and advanced, as he would have expected it to be, and more than what it looked like, and it was an accurate map of a region there.
Bryson’s thoughts occasionally went wild wondering what they had been up to there! This castle was like a town, and he was sure that they were in an accommodation region! What were they doing here? And why were there so many mysteries at the place?
Mortimer took the map when he stopped searching it and held it over his light, and Bryson considered the faint lines on it for a moment. He tried to realize what it had been like! And what they thought of the castle?
“But has it anything to do with the treasure?” one of the archeologists finally asked, desperate for clues.
They all took it and examined it for clues to its identity and passed it on, while mainly trying to guess why it was there!
It could be more valuable than assumed but on the other hand it could be anything! They studied it from different angles, until they lost interest.
“There looks to be far more there than there is here?” Merton stated, pointing at faint lines that showed far larger places and rooms than there. It was logical that the entire castle would not be accommodation! Unless the aliens were different, and only seemed human!
“Where do you think it is though?” an archeologist finally muttered, like he knew where it was and wanted to confirm it.
“It’s surely the central region!” Mortimer finally answered, seeing they were not coming out with anything. “So let’s have a check ...”
After a few seconds the others agreed and showed that they wanted to look there anyway, and were tired of exploring the accommodation region, and they started moving out into the corridor, and Bryson put the map away in his pocket.
The place was valuable beyond belief and that could well prove there was more and that they had great wealth! Yet he could not realize why they never admitted there would be more treasures?
As he marched on behind the others he vaguely wondered how safe the castle structure itself really was and if the top floor was safe, as it had been built a vast amount of time ago and there could have been things that had been keeping it up that had deteriorated. The top floor looked far different from the rest of the castle, and clearly never repaired itself. Who would know if they had only designed it to last a few hundreds of years at the most?
Yet if it had stayed up the amount of time that it had it must be strong enough not to collapse! They could have easily built it to last! He had only seen castles with no roofs that were crumbling away, and he had never heard of one such as it falling. Yet he had heard of parts of modern structures collapsing! This world the island was on could well have a higher gravity than where it had been before, and there could be earthquakes!
Chapter 13
The Center of the Castle
It was surprising how accurately and firmly they had identified where the location on the map was in the castle, and he at one point had not even thought that they would locate it without spending weeks and exploring the whole castle!
The members of the Exploration Association with them seemed to be the best at it, and kept some of their detection methods a secret from them, and they soon were in the region examining the incredible place from the top floor, and identifying the places on the map.
The walk there had been about five-miles, through incredible corridors, which in places had collapsed into the floor below, and they learned far more about what the castle looked like than over their entire stay there and since finding the castle in the jungle.
The corridors entirely changed and many turned into corridors that went along balconies of immense halls and meeting places, where things like seats went out everywhere around central stage regions, and they entered other vast areas that were identical to city locations, which he compared them to, but many had no equivalent and had them stumped.
The castle was like a miniature city with the outer regions mainly accommodations and the central region with all of the governing and public work and leisure regions, and he estimated that the castle was around ten-miles in size, all around the square castle, which they confirmed from a central tower that went high above the castle, showing the immense structure, even with trees and vegetation covering most of the roof, and they saw large regions that had collapsed in at the top floor, and they photographed the castle from every angle before they left.
Bryson examined the best places to look on the map, and he started trying to examine any hidden marks on it, and one of the archeologists who helped him suddenly noticed something marked on it at the tower, and later on he saw him measuring the floor at the bottom of the tower, and he wondered what he was thinking.
The map looked different in the bright light from outside at a roof window and he saw things that had not been recognizable before and it slightly surprised him as he had expected it to have dulled lines and blemishes, especially because of its already bad condition and ancient age.
Bryson glared, partially blinded by a sudden illumination from the sun overhead, and its powerful glare, and from not having seen it for a long time. Then he saw more detail and faint lines that had faded and that had not been visible before and he wondered if the others had seen stuff that he had not seen there, and if they had why they never bothered examining it.
Yet it was also the fact he had not seen the place or what it was that had made parts of it unrecognizable as anything!
He studied things on it astonished at missing them and saw his location on it was marked in more detail, even though it was so faint that he had have taken it to be badly drawn marks or corrections rubbed away.
It looked too small to be significant and it was not just a bad drawing as it had been carefully and accurately drawn! And he considered why the alien had gone to such lengths to draw it so well into the sketch, and wondered why it had been killed and what it had been like, and why it had been buried there?
Bryson joined Merton and some of the archeologists measuring the room, who took it that he knew what they knew.
Bryson gradually realized what he had missed and that the map gave the exact location and center of the bottom of the tower, and they accurately measured the precise spot.
He was sure a small chamber existed there, and he wondered why it had been hidden away and why they had been so secretive, and had been marked on the old map?
Nonetheless, how could they check it? Where could the entrance to it be? It had to be sealed!
Bryson considered it for a moment realizing what Merton was considering, and he wondered if he would just knock a hole in the floor at the center of where it was marked on the map? Their faces still showed some puzzlement though, indicating that they had a problem and had not realized how best to deal with it.
Bryson started banging the floor at the spot and about it listening to see how hollow it sounded in different places.
They decided to do more, suddenly looking more energetic!
“It would be a shame to ruin such a floor for nothing,” Bryson explained, considering the hole that they had made in the floor to enter the chamber beneath the floor. “It would make a mess!”
One of the archeologists who had found the chamber suddenly decided to use the opportunity to show them what they were missing and went over to the spot at the center of the room and started brushing away dirt around the perimeter of it, showing them that there was in fact a gap going around it, which looked like a large crack and was deliberately concealed.
“What do you think it is then?” Bryson asked him, confused.
“We’ll need to find a way to tug it out from the side!” he explained, and Bryson shrugged and decided to wait for him to show him what he was talking about.
The archeologists had them go to different places around the spot, examining the crack, and gave them each a tool to insert into the crack, which allowed them to grip the concealed slab there, and they yanked it slightly outwards, proving nothing
was holding it, and Bryson recalled a similar entrance that they had found at the last castle, and realized that it was really a large trapdoor concealing something below, and he helped them pull it out, and soon realized that it then opened out freely on hinges at one side.
It opened out revealing a dark hidden chamber beneath them, and the archeologist left to get a light!
Chapter 14
The Hidden Tunnel
Once the archeologist returned Parker arrived back there with him, after resting and having a meal, and he realized that they had found something and he saw Merton and them standing around the large hole in the floor.
The archeologist shone his light around the large hole and deep into the chamber, which went deep below somewhere.
“What do you reckon’s down there?” Bryson asked, trying to see in it as far as he could with the light, but all he saw were stone steps vanishing below.
Bryson entered the tunnel when Merton entered it, with the light showing the ancient steps going straight down, and Bryson followed him, surprised that they could make a tunnel and stairs fit into such a confined space, and he examined it in detail as he crept down.
Bryson allowed Merton to gain some distance and watched him going down without a light, using Bryson’s light to see the steeply declining steps, and he wondered how much danger there was there as he continued following him down.
He moved down making sure that he never slipped after watching Merton nearly do it, and a deep thud echoed down from behind and he swiftly turned and saw Parker following him, for the Exploration Association, and he realized that it was a good idea only having three of them as the ancient derelict steps might not be able to support more weight.
The ebbing radiance of his light was not enough to fully cover the three of them at the distance they were apart, and neither of the other two attempted to move nearer to him, or had lights hidden away that he thought they might have, by their distancing, and when he speeded up to catch up with Merton Parker fell behind him and he had to slow down, and he was amazed when Merton even entered a region below where his light never fully reached, or allowed him to see Merton.
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