PROLOGUE
The Lost Voyager
For billions of years the transcendent time/space voyager probe had existed never wholly knowing what had created it or where it had originated, carrying out its mission of searching through time and space in its universe for abnormalities, unknown civilizations and species, and transcendent entities with colossal powers and capabilities and to destroy them if they were dangerous to reality and what its programming considered dangerous.
It had been designed and given technology beyond anything else that it had encountered and had the abilities to search its universe in a degree and with abilities that would not have been believed to exist by the most advanced transcendences and civilizations, and would have been thought of as magical powers, and it had the ability to search its universe throughout time.
Its form had been an invisible complex mass of energy, stored in many dimensions, that had been built to last forever, and it directly entered stars to energize itself and store its vast powers for extensive amounts of time.
Its stores of information had been vast and it had the ability to collect as much information on what it had been programmed for eternally and improve its defenses and other abilities, and it had become the ultimate weapon of destruction against the destruction of its universe.
It had stored the technology and abilities of zillions of species and had the ability to recognize and handle what it had been searching for within a range of its universe.
At one point it had unintentionally left the universe and had entered an outer universe that it had not known the existence of, where colossal amounts of universes had existed, and on its entrance there its programming had accepted it as the real universe and that it had to accept it as the universe that it had to carry out its mission in.
At first it had been unable to enter the universes and properly detect anything in them and it used all its information and studied how it had entered the outer universe and found a way to enter them and locate particular things in them, but infinite amounts of things of unknown origins existed in them.
In supernatural universes it had learned to open and use gateways that shifted it accurately to destinations. It discovered far more than it had ever realized could exist and it gave itself colossal magical abilities and energies and it had analyzed everything in a greater degree.
On its first entrances to this universe and world it had been left staggered when it had encountered something of unknown origins that had drained its energy from it!
Even though it had not done much in its damaged condition, with most of its vast abilities virtually unusable and it being trapped and buried away in a castle, it had been able to explore things through supernatural gateways into universes, going out into the strangest places, and it had even considered if there had been others such as it in the endless universes and if they had created it, and if it could get them to help it, and it had gained abilities to explore inconceivable dimensions and powers in the universes, far beyond its original knowledge and powers.
PART I
THE LOST VOYAGER
CHAPTER 1
The Deadliest Treasure
The sounds had initially been astonishing! Now they had gone beyond, and were mind-bending! They came screaming up through the shaft with a dangerous fury that stunned Pendleton, and no matter how he tried to shake it off and contemplate identities his thoughts never altered or formed stable recognitions.
Clouds of powdered dirt and stone swirled about through beams of lights from the above lights as he released some more rope, edging him downwards, seeking to get hold of the treasure.
The Second World War was still going, but just about over, and Pendleton realized that he had avoided being killed after all, and wondered if he was going to be killed here instead, and was unsure what was worse.
He groaned and dangled about on his rope, and grabbed hold of part of a castle boulder, while glimpsing parts of the shaft above, wondering if he could have wangled his way out of it. But it was not really them and he really wanted to do it, and he wanted to explore the castle shaft. He had always wanted to explore and discover something new of value and greatness, and perhaps even be remembered in history.
What interested and terrified them was why the treasure was hidden in such a place with such occurrences!
What was it they were dealing with anyway? Why was it there in such a far out place? Was the stuff protected by something?
Something of unfathomable unidentifiable supernatural nature sounded as though it were under the castle, in some form of magnetic field or energy field, trapped or trying to free itself from something, ultimately escaping to another location of liberty, and he tried imagining some form of spirit trapped there every night for hundreds of years, perhaps in an ancient dungeon. Yet again even that could not explain it, or anything!
“Have you found if it’s down there?” Henrik shouted down, in a combination of extreme annoyance and confusion, with a way that gave Pendleton the impression that the two archaeologists up above might be on the edge of considering doing something extreme, and beyond their normal. Though Norgrove, the other archaeologist, gave him the impression that he had waited all his life to be here!
He again started to realize the implications of the find and that they would have to check what was there, no matter what.
He quickly shouted up: “You investigated all these walls?”
“Yes!” Norgrove replied. “We used all the best equipment.”
“We’re the only ones here and that know about it?” he replied, still trying to find out more about what was happening, and they were allowing him to know. Basically it was just them three there at the great old immense haunted castle, buried away in the wood, at the location that they had traced the treasure to.
Yet they could have left the task until the morning but they could not wait. They had waited too long and had gone too far to get their hands on it, and he just wanted to get it.
What the hell difference did it make if it was morning or night? It was dark there in the tunnel at both times!
He wondered why the lights were above, and why he never had one, and shouted up, “Are you two coming down here or what?”
The two archeologists shifted into the shaft and made their way down, with the lights, and he observed them, and realized why they had not given him a light, and that he was like a worm on a fishing line, and there to check what the score was. The two also had trouble climbing in and down, and were overweight and bulky, and he was better at climbing than they were. They would have a hard time getting back up again! And he even wondered if they would camp the night at the bottom or something, if they were too tired and sleepy, which made him gasp again when he thought about it, and he lodged his boot into a gap between two of the boulders, to rest his tired body.
“What did they find out?” he muttered, mainly to himself, and wondered what he was missing again.
“There are other small shafts running through here ...” Henrik called down, dangling overhead, who had stopped to examine a small hole in the shaft, he had missed in the darkness there.
“Ventilation shafts that connect together,” Norgrove continued. “They must run through most of the building.”
“I agree! I’m sure they are for an ancient ventilation ...” Henrik continued, sticking his head up close, and shining his light in the hole and looking along it.
“What else could it be?” Pendleton asked.
“They could have been used to build it ...” Henrik replied, moving away, looking for something else.
Pendleton wondered how high up they were, as the height of the castle was immense, and they had been on the top floor, and they never knew how far underground it went, and the blackness there looked like an abyss.
The height of the castle was incredible, as well as the length being massive with rooms and corridors going out everywhere, especially with there being no proper lighting, and he had not thought such a construction was possible at the date that they had given. It was also unbelievable that somebody had managed to ship the thing over to America, and when it must have happened, in such large sections and fit them together.
How could people spend so much on such things and leave them derelict, out in such desolate woods? Why had it not even been put out in the open for everyone to see?
Pendleton gasped as he recalled the legends and what had already happened, and wondered if this would be his death, in a death or glory situation.
For a moment he wondered if it had actually come from Transylvania and had vampires, and realized that if it were at least he would be still around as a vampire. At times he had thought it had similarities to castles over there.
“So are we going down ...?” Henrik asked firmly, watching Pendleton’s peculiar expressions in his light, from overhead.
“You could send down a camera with a light attached?” Norgrove moaned sarcastically, and Pendleton started to move off from the wall where he was resting against, and prepared himself, and took glances at what was below as he started going down, but even with the lights being closer it never revealed anything new.
The rope suddenly started swaying and vibrating furiously, giving the impression that Henrik was frantically doing something against Pendleton’s rope, and he glanced up and realized Henrik was climbing up for some reason, and he gasped when he realized Norgrove’s face was frantic and that the two were actually desperately trying to escape from there, almost slipping trying to climb up, which amused him for a moment, bewildered at their sudden change of attitude.
As he tried to see what was going on he noticed that light across his front was not coming downwards from them but shining upwards from something below, and his eyes fixed onto a strange orb of light floating upwards.
“Get me out of here!” Henrik hollered, making Pendleton shudder and try to escape for his life.
Pendleton even thought of removing his harness and plunging down, and perhaps allowing him to have the fate of dying on the ground below, and having a normal human death.
With a loud thud Norgrove came crashing down to his original position after slipping, and clouds of gray dust flew up and blinded Pendleton as it went into his face and lungs, and he went crashing into the wall.
He groaned and dangled about on the rope, glimpsing parts of the shaft around him, mentally exhausted, needing sleep, allowing himself just to go into sleep state, wondering if he could somehow wangle his way out of it. But it was not a matter of persuading himself of anything, it was really happening, and he wished what was going to happen would just happen.
If he had only known all those years ago what would end up happing, he would have forced himself to forget about such ventures.
Sounds were now screaming out at him and he realized how loud they had become, from the abyss below, as if a gateway into hell were there, with him suspended over it on a thin rope, spinning endlessly, waiting to descend into its hideous reaches.
How had they managed to talk him into this? One minute they had been chasing treasure and the next a castle mysteriously appears into it, and he had been dumped with their theories, and then with the shaft.
He jerked, startled, hearing a sort of scream, almost human but somehow different, as though out of a distant strange place, and he visualized it out in space, in blackness.
There were traces of rotted vegetation floating in the light coming down from overhead, as they still continued to climb out.
Some of the blocks of stone about him resembled the stones in Egyptian pyramids. They were strange things to use to build, but they were hard to penetrate, and needed in a good castle.
He realized sounds were now not emerging from under him but coming were from somewhere above, and then they started emerging about him and he listened intensely with confusion.
Sounds manifested everywhere as though invisible creatures were surrounding them, and strange glowing and swirling forces formed and went about them and telepathic figures like spirits with shrouds swirled about it, wailing and screaming, and he partially entered a dream state, and as it increased he believed he was holding onto reality.
A bright explosion of colors exploded out making him come to, and realized the thing below him had reached him and he opened his eyes wide and examined his surroundings and saw that he was no longer in the shaft, and dazed and confusedly he examined his surroundings and an immense whirlpool of shifting outlines magically shifted by, and he studied everything and realized that he had no body or proper presence and was some form of energy formation shifting around with other similar formations, and that he was swirling out into a vortex of reshaping energy patterns that replaced reality, with transforming elements altering to something that he could not recognize.
If he had died and gone into the afterlife why was it so strange? Why it was there mesmerized him! Was he classified as being anything? Where was it? Reality was no more than magically spinning patterns and he wondered how worse the situation could get, realizing that he could be trapped there for all eternity!
CHAPTER 2
The Lost Castle
The whole story was incredible now and Bryson could hardly believe anything, and what had occurred. The events of the past weeks were astounding and he could hardly believe that they were on the trail of another treasure quest.
The last shreds of sunlight had vanished beneath the wood behind them, and well below the horizon, with the deep black winter night there engulfing them, and Bryson studied his surroundings over and over trying to explain why the wood so closely resembled the wood surrounding Grovnor Castle.
The wood looked almost the same in places, and he considered their search for the castle in what must be one of the most desolate regions of the US. They had not seen anyone for many miles, and planes even seemed to avoid flying there.
The fifteen members of the team (including him, and Merton and Mortimer), had been put together by him and Mortimer, and were mainly made up of archaeologists, scientists, ex-military, and explorers, who had experience in searching, examining, documenting, and detecting what they might miss, or there to help or defend them.
The adventure brought him back to life after a long length of inactivity and lack of anything of interest. At times he still could not believe that there was another castle, and that anything existed there! And that there had actually been a similar castle near Grovnor Castle at one time!
The last castle exploration, after all the findings and evidence they had collected, in the end seemed to add up to little, and he still now occasionally thought they had found something else.
It was winter and deep snow shrouded the jungle of vegetation around them, and he realized again that they would have to camp there. And having not slept outdoors in winter he gasped at sleeping in such thick cold snow, and considered if they would find his remains there one day, and wonder why they had done it.
The snow landscape was untouched by human hands, and at times empty of sound, and had a deep silence that he had only heard in thick winter snow landscapes. It reminded him of another world! An empty wood absence of life with faint mist surrounding regions around them.
What was shocking was how easily they could get lost, and he was unsure if they even knew accurately where they were. They knew where they had come from and what they would eventually arrive at after days of falling a compass, but not what was there about them. They had been unable to get a helicopter to search, but if they had waited and went far enough he was sure they could.
There was nothing to recognize anywhere, and he watched some of the men attempt to use communications devices to give updates on what was happening without picking up anything.
They were all getting too exhausted wading through the deep snow areas to do and recognize anything significant, and the first peculiarity he noticed was a distant hum, similar to a distant engine whirling, out at an unknown place, which shadowed them, and drove him insane trying to identify it.
Their legs almost became stuck in deep bogs of stinking vegetation buried below the snow, which resembled quicksand as it grew in depth, and they were hidden, even under intense lights, and Bryson started to wonder if they could even find somewhere that they could actually camp over. There was a definite look of a swamp emerging around them!
A cold haze edged its way over the trees and undergrowth and they started slowing, and allowing themselves to rest. It was nothing like anything that he had seen elsewhere.
He could not get if it was a strange environment about him, something strange existing there, or a combination of things that created different reactions.
Strange vapor clouds shifted about their sides, always shadowing them, at about the distance – as if they were probing them, and analyzing them for some purpose.
Nobody said anything about it but most looked like they were wondering if any of it had intelligence, and sometimes pondered vaguely watching it linger over deep pools of slime in the mind-bending landscape.
When more confident it existed Bryson watched it to find out what form of life it could be. What did it use to exist? What was it doing?
He wished he could get some samples from it, but decided to wait or leave it, and they would check if it was dangerous.
Gusts of freezing wind blew and withdrew simultaneously in opposite directions, blowing and sucking, giving him the feeling that something invisible nearby was breathing over them, something of supernatural or alien nature, like a hungry beast breathing over its prey, perhaps with saliva dripping from its mouth, or something was there and the environment was reacting to its presence and its paranormal powers.
Though the tiredness and lengthy day were affecting him and most of the others, Merton and Mortimer, the two paranormal scientists loved it, he was sure, and seemed to come to life more, as they always did in such situations, and at night.
They had become famous celebrities and the media had given them coverage for weeks at one point, and their technology had vastly improved, and if they found anything they would bring in all their new equipment to investigate everything that they could.
Since their investigations of Grovnor Castle and all the proven details had been released, what everyone had experienced there, people’s thoughts on it had seemed to alter more and more in the direction of there not being anything there, and there being no evidence of anything, and he had seen the problem again and again that people were not going to believe anything unless they were confronted with it, and that the two scientists had work to do.
He never got why they had not become conventional scientists like him! Surely they were good enough to become immensely wealthy and could lead the way in some other field?
Many of scientists were working on what it had been at one point, and again they all returned to their original thoughts.
Even though he also wished to investigate everything there, as they were sure to experience something, going by all the facts given. Yet he was starting to remember all the dangers and last encounters that had occurred.
The two paranormal scientists had tried informing others, not with them now, of their investigations of paranormal disturbances that could be there, and had soon withheld their research from them when they had found out that they did not accept anything of that nature, without total positive proof, and they avoided giving any details of anything of that nature, especially to the people there that had been in the military, including Mitchell, the head of them, who were there to help them and with any dangers and to investigate further.
They had given Mitchell some of their findings and thoughts of paranormal activity and strange occurrences occurring there, and he had given them his thoughts about it and that he was not fully sure what to make of it as they had not proven anything.
On the day before they had arrived there Mitchell had been amazed at the findings of the scientists when they had given him more, as they had believed that they should, as that they believed they would encounter more.
Nobody, not even the two paranormal scientists, knew what was there, and they withdrew saying anything.
Mitchell had wished to join the two paranormal scientists, as he had wished to investigate things further, and if they had found something, and he mostly wanted to find the treasure and anything else buried away there,
As they journeyed on Bryson watched the gray mist thicken, and it start to surround them, and snow and swamp pools increase.
As they marched on behind Mitchell they almost walked into the mist, while ignoring it, and more and more of them started getting nervous and begin complaining to Mitchell, who ignored it at first, with being so determined to achieve something. They knew the vague region of where the castle was supposed to be, as they had checked some of the region it could only be in.
Bryson’s legs became stuck in deep bogs of freezing water and he knew that they would have to do something soon, and watched the others and noticed that they were mainly holding back complaining.
It was then when they slowed that he properly looked about, and realized that the fog formed a perfect circle right around them, at the same distance all the way round, and was intensifying, and he wondered what they were trapped in.
“Where are we going ...?” one of Mitchell’s men finally spluttered, fighting for air, furious that he had been put in a situation.
Mitchell stopped and showed how annoyed he was at the way things were going, and walked back towards them.
“We better agree to something ...” he moaned, giving glances about at things and the mess of his expedition.
“Where can we go?” Merton continued, wondering what they’d do next. Barely able to realize what the outcome of such a situation could be.
Mitchell removed his phone and tapped it repeatedly against his large jaw, as he now had a habit of doing when in deep thought, considering trying to use it again to get help, which he really knew would not work, and which had been his main answer to such situations before they had lost using the communications.
It was then as they all waited for the outcome and his solution that one of his men shrieked out from behind them, and they turned slowly to see what was there.
The man had removed his gun and he swiftly fired it at something hidden in the trees, like an ancient gunfighter, and it swiftly smashed into a tree, with the loud explosion temporarily deafening them and sending piled up snow falling from the trees all around them.
All of Mitchell’s men removed their weapons and stood in a circle covering every area around them.
“What’s there?” Mitchell asked, vaguely confused, not seeing anything but the surrounding mist getting in the way.
“You never saw that thing ...” the man that fired the shot moaned, slightly satisfied by his dramatic display and the deadliness of his weapon.
Everyone stood confused, especially by what he meant by thing!
Then, out of nowhere, a light emerged out of the mist, and Bryson stood considering if it was what he had seen at the last castle or if it was something new.
Its radiance pulsated like a mechanical life form, magically illuminating the snow and trees, stretching shadows from everything everywhere.
While they silently observed it loud pounds of something of immense weight rushed around, causing them to scurry away from the location.
CHAPTER 3
The Things in the Wood
They furiously shifted through the swamp, shifting over to hard ground, and to safety.
“You never saw that thing did any of you?” Mitchell moaned, dissatisfied by their actions and retreat.
Could their weapons have killed it? Was it something new? What could possibly avoid the deadliness of their weapons?
Then, out of nowhere, more lights emerged through the undergrowth with their radiance pulsating like living things, magically illuminating everything far more brightly, blinding their eyes with beams, lighting the snow and trees everywhere and fully showing them their surroundings and all its detail.
Bryson was fascinated by it and everything, and was surprised what the place really looked like. He had thought the other castle could not be worse! And he watched Mitchell and his men remove their weapons, and fired them into a region near the main light, where he had not properly observed, and heavy snow, from the powerful explosions, fell from just about every tree about them.
While they silently observed it deep pounds and creature sounds of things with immense weight rushed around, out of view, unaffected like any normal life forms by the explosions and guns - and made their way towards them - causing them to scurry away.
They furiously moved their legs in and out of bogs, shifting away to another region, with Mitchell and his men in confusion unable fully discover all the results of their actions were and what they were up against – but they had failed and they really knew it!
They ran almost blindly over humps and rough ground, rushing through thick trees and snow, while heavy beast sounds furiously chased, smashing trees down in way, like something out of a strange nightmare.
They were breathless and they could not move fast enough, and a thing was closing in on them.
Suddenly one of the scientists shouted, “Look out there!”
“There’s something!” Mitchell confirmed first. “Quick over there! There’s something there for us ...”
Over to their side there was a hill the height of the trees, with its length going far away into the distance, with a cliff front facing them, almost the only place there without any snow over it.
The lights radiated its rock through the wood and they forced their legs to go faster to it. The appearance in the hideous place, out of the night, amidst the jungle of vegetation, was staggering! They just knew it had to be a place of sanctuary!
It was heaven within a phantom zone, out on the edge of realism, beyond the bounds of what lay beyond, and they were rushing away from the depths of hell, trying to return to reality.
For a long time as Bryson rushed along with the others he watched wondering why he and the others were so sure it was an escape from anything! Why was it? What was there? Was it just a hill and cliff? Could these things not climb or something?
Quick glances he gave behind him at the lights surprised him further! The place looked static, with it supernaturally glowing, and as if he were staring at a mind-bending animation, and he thought it was his exhaustion and breathing heavily affecting him.
Branches broke to pieces as they ran through them, as if dead for centuries, and some trees looked as if they were ready to fall into dust and that forces of something supernatural were keeping them in existence.
Behind them shifting lights were darting about through the wood like sparks, and he saw ghost images of creatures shifting about doing hideous things.
Yet all his looks showed him nothing of the heavy sounding beast things, he still occasionally heard rampaging towards them.
The minds of many of the others clearly were conjuring up hidden demons – as they rushed on an on - as they approached the hill - and they looked for ways to avoid them.
They rushed over an area of flat hard ground, clearly made of rock, and staggered up to the hill, where Mitchell moved over to an area next to the cliff, where they could climb up the easiest.
A deep thud like an explosion made the ground around them shudder like an earthquake and they all looked for what it was, but saw nothing except that they had gained some ground, but it was still approaching.
“Over there!” one of Mitchell’s men shouted, pointing. “There’s a cave!”
