The Lost Treasure Map Series (33 page)

“
The thing is: she never did find a
way to enter it!
”

“
How did you learn about the
entrance?
”

“
I predicted that she had never found
it because there had been a ceiling covering the wooden beams. The
earlier inhabitants had not liked the bare wooden beams! And, of
course, there had been another added just after her era, when they
had put in the lights.
”

It was difficult to see much. There were
chimneys passing through to the roof all about it.

“
What
’s
that?
”
James asked, pointing his
torch.

Two shapes started to glow in the light
there.

They approached them in stages, examining
them at various perspectives.

One of
the objects was clearly an immense chest
.

“
You
’ve
really found
it!
”
Robert
cheered, repeatedly ecstatically clapping Bryson hard on the
back.

When Bryson
arrived beside it, he saw that the other object was a small stone
tomb. And he shoved away the thick slab covering it – revealing a
rolled carpet in its interior.

He
inquisitively pulled a piece of string from it – shifting tattered
remains of cloth. Then he stopped, and left it – when he saw part
of a bone.

The chest was massive and glowed under the
bright torches!

The others moved in at their sides, glaring
at it.

James then pushed the lid away, and a
gold radiance exploded out
–
with sparkles of gigantic diamonds and
rubies
–
gleaming off jewellery packed into its interior.

Chapter 59

The Last Witch

The thing must
have come from beyond the boundaries of space and time, beyond
normal reality. They had no way of knowing precisely where or what
it was!

Bryson felt
edgy just looking at its devilish features, similar to a skeleton
of a demon.

He nervously
rested at an angle to the decrepit corpse, lying over sheets,
partly unwrapped, across the dining room table.

It was so
despicable that nobody had objected to its presence there. But, as
soon as the celebrating of the discovery of the fortune was over,
someone would.

The content of
the chest was worth immense millions as normal jewels! And the
lawyer had it taken away to a bank.

The lawyer,
with some historical experts, had already proven that they had
belonged to a Scottish king, and that they were Scottish Crown
jewels, and far more valuable than their normal value. There was
even a king’s crown buried in them!

They sure had
had the last laugh on Sir Richard!

It was late,
and they still had not decided what to do with the thing on the
table. He wanted to return it to where it had been, and observe it
there.

What the hell
had William Randall and his other ancestors thought it had been?
They must surely have been religious after seeing it! Where had he
found it? Had it been anything to do with his enemies, who had
killed him? Had they been enemies of Charles I, Charles II, or
whoever had been on the throne? How had William acquired such a
vast wealth? Why had the treasure not been money?

Merton finally
finished setting up their psychic research equipment about it.

Bryson
imagined the thing dragging him into the afterlife, with them
trying to film it.

“
I’ve
made sure that nobody will come in,” Mortimer spoke, coming through
the doorway.

“
Just
one point, this could be a dangerous experiment,” Bryson revealed.
“Those things in the woods could have killed us!”

“
We’re
going to go!” Mortimer moaned. “We’ll monitor it on a TV, from
these cameras. And, if possible, approach in unhurried stages
...”

“
As long
as we’re leaving before anything happens,” Bryson warned, taking
his word for it.

It was as if
they did not believe that they would be able to remove it from the
castle. Nobody would object!

Yet there was
a chance that moving it might alter it.

Moreover, if
those things in the wood went with it, they could have monsters
rampaging through London.

Bryson started
to realize that it would somehow have to stay. It was a shame! They
could have showed it to the world. But they could record everything
for science, and if anything else ever turned up, the people of the
future would have a better understanding of it.

They must find
a way to destroy it!

Perhaps, if
they couldn’t, they could drop it into the deepest depths of the
sea. But he could imagine people seeing strange lights out at sea,
and monsters attacking ships. The disturbances had a definite
attraction to people. Perhaps it would create another Bermuda
triangle, with those things smashing massive holes in ships.

They could
build a small rocket, and send its ashes into space. But if that
did not work properly, and it ended up in orbit, they could have
haunted spaceships, space monsters attacking spaceships, and
sightings of strange white lights.

Mortimer
started unwrapping bits of material from it, making sure that he
did not damage it.

The skeleton
was entirely different – like a strange version of a human – like
another species of human.

“
What’s
that?” Merton responded, jerking back, shifting onto his
feet.

“
It’s
some sort of book.”

Bryson saw
something similar to a book, made of some type of animal skin, in
its claws. Merton pulled it away from it, as if it were welded to
it.

Bryson saw
James and Robert emerge, at the doorway, as if they had been
listening to them, near the door.

“
What
are you going to do with this place then?” Bryson asked, wondering
what Robert had in mind.

“
I’m
going to do it up and look after it, as Sir Richard wished. And I’m
going to make it – as a historical place. It’s famous! It’s now
been in most of the newspapers, and television ...”

Bryson
realized that there could be many more deaths, if they did not rid
the woods of those things.

“
This is
full of symbols and strange words!” Merton remarked, holding the
book out for them to see.

“
That
may be her spell book!” Robert forced himself to
confess.

“
What?”
Bryson instantly asked, looking alert.

“
I told
you that I knew a few legends ...”

“
What
legend ...?”

“
Well,
that legend that I told about them having built the castle on the
site where something had killed those people was only one legend
about it. There was another about a witch or something that had
been living out here in a cottage. And they had hanged the witch!
But the witch had placed a curse on them and this place before they
had!”

“
There
has to be some truth in it,” Merton replied, vaguely disappointed.
“There’s some truth in most legends!”

Bryson held
back a smile, and returned to looking at the book that Mortimer was
now grasping in his hands.

“
I
understand this ancient writing,”
Mortimer uttered. “This stuff was used with
witchcraft
!”

He looked at
Robert’s startled expression.

“
What
does it say?” Bryson asked.

James and
Robert sat next to him, fascinated in it – probably thinking of the
money that it might make.

“
This
book was thought to be the spell book of the witch that you
mentioned, and someone – I believe to be William Randall! – has
written things through it, giving details about things.

“
They
found this book after they’d killed
it
– the witch or creature. This thing on the
table!”

Mortimer held
up the book, and turned it, to show them a drawing of a being that
looked like a woman and a creature, with a long sheet of material
wrapped about it.

“
He
believed that she had transported herself to this world, from
beyond the grave, with some type of magic or magical object. She
spoke in a strange language, but she told them of being one of the
last witches, with the power to enter this existence.”

As he stopped
speaking, silent sounds manifested about the room – as though
invisible creatures were surrounding them.

Strange,
glowing and swirling, forces, forming a large bubble, went about
them. And telepathic figures, like spirits with shrouds, flew about
it, wailing and screaming.

Bryson felt
himself falling over, staggered, and partly in a dream state,
similar to the ones that he had been in when he had been asleep.
Then, as it increased, he believed that he was holding onto
reality, and that he would not be able to keep his sanity.

All about him,
the others went into dream states.

James fell on
the floor, as though taking a fit.

Bryson lunged
at Mortimer’s shoulders, pulled him to the door, and he forced him
to rush away with him, until they were away from it.

Mortimer
glared at his watch. “We must help them!”

“
It’s
too powerful!”

“
We’ll
have to find a way.”

“
You
must tell me all you know about that thing.”

“
I don’t
believe that it is her. She brought something here that I believe
that she had used to travel here. However, William Randall could
not break its curse. He tried to use her spell book and spells to
do it. But nobody could read it properly, or they believed that
they were in riddles to stop anyone else using it.

Mortimer
glared, and he read parts of the book fast, in more detail.

“
A
crystal created the magic! And William Randall intended to find the
spell to neutralize it.”

“
That’s
the spell there!” Mortimer stated, holding out the book, showing it
to him.

“
Can you
decipher it?”

“
I don’t
know! But where’s the crystal?”

“
It has
to be with the being.”

Bryson
realized where it was! He had seen it on the drawing of the
creature in the book. It was in a pendant.

They rushed
straight to the dining room, and to it.

He ripped the
last of the material off the skeleton, plunged his hand in its
chest, and onto the pendant.

“
This is
it!” Bryson screamed, holding out the pendant, watching strange
energy surges make his arm muscles wildly shudder and
vibrate.

The green
crystal embedded in the pendant was pulsating, beaming out blinding
beams of green light.

Mortimer
grabbed the pendant, and held it out.

“
I know
why the spell never worked!” he shouted. “It was not a spell! It
was an order to destroy it, if she had to. If she was captured by
humans! It was a riddle, to hide it from anything that was not an
alien transcendent!”

Mortimer
smashed the pendant hard against the table, shattering the crystal
into millions of particles, instantly making the disturbances
vanish forever.

Epilogue

The
Transcendents

Once transcendent entities had existed
throughout the universe and beyond, with magical forces.

Their wars and elaborate usages of their
powers had in the end caused it to be annihilated, and the last had
possessed so little that they could barely dwell in the universe,
from beyond.

Objects, with accumulations of it, had
allowed the last to dwell in desolate regions of the universe.

The powers of the last one had been told of
in legends!

Fishermen had stumbled upon the magical
being, floating in the sea, washed ashore, on the shore of a
Scottish island.

It had been about to expire, but had somehow
survived.

It had stayed, its last days, in the
desolate Grovnor wood, as a witch, in a cottage, hiding to conceal
itself, and magical crystal.

It had foreseen the future, and had
found how to accumulate its powers from anything that had had it.
And, when it had expired, it had left the most powerful magical
object left
–
with powers going beyond anything else
–
with power surge sequences
that opened gateways, going beyond the universe.

Part II

Novel 2

The Lost Treasure Map 2

Victor Bertolaccini

Prologue

The Lost Treasure and
Voyager

For centuries
legends of lost treasure had been passed on through generations of
people, though few details existed, and the occurrences behind them
had been too confused and vague. Fundamental facts had been clearly
missing that would have allowed people to locate anything thought
by them to exist, and nothing had clearly been known to answer the
queries of the treasure hunters, who had risked their lives in
deadly attempts to explore the castle.

The origins of the
castle
’
s
hauntings, from the majority of accumulated sources, had been
proven to have occurred around 1620 when fishermen had witnessed
the materialization of something of unknown origins, with a bright
light of magnitude that had exploded out of the morning
mist.