Chapter 6

By the time we woke up the next day the college team was already hard at work decrypting and cataloging our discoveries from the previous night. I asked professor Kent to brief me on their progress after breakfast. Professor Kent explained that while some segments of the carvings remained untranslated they had cracked the code for at least some of the writing. He told me that there were at least two different languages used in the writing, and that based on natural weathering the carvings were done over a long time period, with the most recent being at the mouth of the tunnel. The writings told the story of some sort of religion, or perhaps cult would be a more apt description. Based on the style of the writing this cult had roots around the time of the pyramids, and the founders had traveled from there to here. What made them settle here was still unclear. It also appeared that the same writer was at work for what must have been several hundred years, though the writer rarely talks about himself. It still remained unclear what the meaning of their beliefs was, but it seemed to center on receiving a more clear understanding but of what it doesn't say. The problem of translation was that the writing wasn't intended for outsiders, it is merely a chronicle so that other members of the cult could understand. They also spoke of vibrations, and they seemed to dance around what it was that they worshiped, only that it was much older.
One member of the team had spent some time testing bone samples in a lab they set up at the base. The bone samples were humans, some dating back several decades.
The recording devices had picked up more rumbling and noises as we slept, but no movement.
Finally, he had saved the best news for last, they had unlocked the secret behind one of the doors in the chamber. They had spent the past few hours documenting the door because all doors were designed to slide back into the wall, and we still didn't know how to close them again once opened.
I gathered our exploration team and hiked down into the chamber.
As we reached the alter chamber we prepared to explore beyond the door that our team had been working on unlocking.
The door slid aside effortlessly, despite it's size it moved as noiselessly and gracefully as if it weighed nothing. The tunnel revealed behind the door sloped gently up. The walls were smooth and glassy, as was the floor and ceiling. The shape of the tunnel changed as we moved along, from having a squared off floor and an arch above to completely round. After gently sloping up for a few feet the tunnel leveled off and continued straight for several hundred feet. I was leading the group, as my curiosity got the better of me. we had difficulty setting up lights, the glassy smooth surface of the tunnel was much too hard to chip with our chisels. We still dragged a wire behind to keep communication with our team who had set up a temporary camp at the mouth of the tunnel we continued to delve into. After leveling off for a time, the tunnel began to slant downwards and curve to the right. It became obvious after the tunnel had been curving for awhile that it formed a spiral, spiraling deeper and deeper into the rock. I still marvel at how we reached that conclusion however. It became apparent when we looked at the side of the tunnel on the right, the side that curved. We discovered that the sides of the tunnel were semi transparent, and that some sort of space existed past that wall. As we looked through the side of the tunnel we saw the lights both in the tunnel over our head, and across an expanse on the other side of the spiral. We stopped in admiration of this effect once or twice in the beginning, then for a long time we walked. Level stacking upon level, we must have been 10 stories below the level that we had started into the spiral. Suddenly a movement seemed to catch our eyes. This movement was on the other side of the tunnel wall, in the expanse in the center of the spiral. It looked like, some sort of swimming thing, or was it flying? It's hard to tell what this, thing was moving through.  We hadn't really thought about the expanse that much up until that point, but now it seemed to be all that we could think about. we sat on the floor of the tunnel to take a rest, and to watch the expanse to see if the movement repeated itself. After what seemed like an hour of tense waiting, it did. None of us could pinpoint where the mass came from, but suddenly it fell down the expanse, as gracefully as something moving through water, which supported the theory that the expanse was filled with water. This thing, it wasn't human, and it didn't look like any creature of the air or water that I was familiar with. I wished we had a closer ability to study it, it was frightening and horrible, yet so beautiful, perhaps because of the way it gracefully flew through the expanse. It had six appendages that moved in a sort of boneless dance. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared it was gone. We determined it was time to keep moving. A couple hundred feet ahead we found a branch off the main tunnel to the left. We felt that we could always get deeper into the the main tunnel, but now was as good a time as any to explore this new tunnel, we felt like this would be a good area to finish off and return to base after we finished exploring this new area. The new tunnel was more of the stone we had seen in the upper areas. The carvings in the side were closer to hieroglyphics, illustrating some sort of creature similar to what we had seen in the expanse. It showed some sort of manlike creatures bowing to them. Perhaps this was the object of the mysterious cult's worship. We discussed what the purpose of this branch of tunnels might be, tomb or temple. The tunnel opened up into a large hall, two stories tall with massive stone pillars. The hall was decorated evenly with more pictures and ancient writing. The hall was perhaps a hundred feet wide by three hundred feet long. At the end of the hall a wide set of steps led up to a  balcony overlooking the room. We climbed the stairs and behind the balcony found a doorway. Beyond the doorway we found a large room. I didn't see the room for myself, one of our surveyors was the first into the room.  His scream came suddenly with pain and alarm. He appeared to be trying to remove himself from the room he had just entered. He managed to remove himself, but at the cost of a good portion of his upper arm and shoulder. The source of his loss didn't remain a mystery for long as the strange thing chased him into the hall. It was one of the mysterious creatures described on the walls of the hall. It pushed him back, and he lost his balanced and tumbled over the railing of the balcony. He landed on top of one of the survival experts, just behind me. The injured man was completely incapacitated, but the survival expert recovered. My attention however was on the creature. I pulled out my gun and cocked it, as did the undowned survival expert. The creature floated to the center of the room, and attempted to dive down on me. I dodged it, but I felt it's dry appendage brush me as I rolled away. I fired into the center of the thing's body. It seemed disoriented as the echo of my shot rang through the chamber. That was the upshot of the situation, the only problem? My shots woke more of these things. There were at least 10 of them that streamed out, writhing in the air, searching using their blind tentacles. By the time the others had finished entering the chamber the downed survival expert had recovered his feet and prepared his gun. They seemed to be focused on me at first, then as the two survival experts opened fire they split their attentions between the three of us. We systematically dispatched several of them in a row, then had to reload. This was the most frightening of all, it left us no defense but running and hiding behind the pillars. There seemed to be no escape, I was caught by one of them just as I finished reloading, it tore a gash down my side. I twisted away from this thing, pushed my gun against it's flesh and fired at point blank range. The thing was down for the count, leaving half their number. Something came over me, I started screaming in rage at them,  I ran after them, got as close as I could and fired into the center mass of their bodies. One shot per creature dispatched them all. After the battle we paused to regroup before returning to base. We recovered our dropped equipment and used the radio to communicate our situation to the team at the mouth of the tunnel. They offered to send down help, but we refused, as it would take too much time and we didn't want to wait more than we had to. We determined that the injured surveyor would have to be carried by his fellow surveyor and the survival expert who had not had a body dropped on top of him. We were all injured to some extent, from minor scratches on the survival experts to the missing chunks of the first surveyor's arm. The second surveyor was the exception. He had no weapon and had not taken part in the battle. In fact the creatures had ignored him completely, and he had been wise to not try and attract their attention. We decided there would be plenty of time to recap after returning to base camp and tending our wounds. We prepared to move up the tunnel as quickly as we could, leaving our lights in place for future exploration, which though far from our mind, did save us the trouble of toting it all back up the tunnel. As we made the best speed we could up the tunnel we couldn't help but notice one more unsettling thing. The center of the expanse was writhing with what appeared to be hundreds of the unsettling creatures we had dispatched in the hall below. They made horrible clicking sounds, now I finally knew the source and it gave me no comfort knowing that. Every once and awhile one would propel itself against the tunnel wall, bounce off and reunite with the center mass of writhing creatures. The tunnel was made of stronger stuff however and didn't show any sign of cracking. As we neared the top however I heard a number of noises behind me, and I saw two of the things chasing us, gliding along the tunnels making horrible clicking noises, letting the sharp talons at the end of their appendages scratch the walls, which though it left no mark made a horrible scratching noise. I had taken the precaution of loading my gun before we had started moving and I dispatched them with two shots each. When we reentered the stone chamber, we told everyone there to pack up and be ready to move up the tunnel to base camp. They took a little over 15 minutes, in that time two of the creatures drifted up to the mouth of the tunnel, as they moved within five feet of the mouth I dispatched them. This seemed to put some motivation in the team to get moving, we moved even quicker up the tunnel to our base in the cellar. When we got to base those of us who were wounded had our wounds dressed. A duty roster was made up so that one man would always sit beside the tunnel entrance near the base. I don't think any of us slept well that night.

Chapter 5

authors note: the format of this chapter is more of a continuation of the previous chapter because that is really what it is. On with the tale.

Professor Kent was particularly fascinated by the stories revealed in the logbook of the estate, especially linked to the carvings and runes I had discovered in the old cellar. He insisted on me that local universities would be glad to send archaeological teams to study the obvious history behind the structure. The next morning he requested that we return to the cellar and apply the full manpower of our team into exploring, lighting and mapping the cellar. I agreed on the condition that no one must go down the tunnel, not until we had more manpower and perhaps a greater knowledge of what was really going on down there. We woke up much before dawn and went without breakfast so as to start setting up lights until every inch of the main area of the cellar was lit. This took several hours using traditional gas lamps, and it was generally agreed that one thing we should do when we went about purchasing more equipment that a generator and electric lamps would be a good expenditure of money. As it stood we had enough gas canisters to last us only a few days because we had planned to use daylight in as many areas as we could. This former strategy was successful in that we did not have to devote much energy to hauling fuel and had more room for food and other essential items. The new revelations however would force our hands to outfit our expedition with more expensive lighting and probably invest more in communications and more high tech equipment. Up to this point our most complex equipment had been cameras. As we went through these items we required we wrote them down to include in our proposal to present to the local university. Professor Kent spent most of the morning after setting up some lights obsessed with photographing and recording what he could about the cellar. The rest of us performed a general survey of the cellar. We found the pantries we had known were down there, as well as many store rooms some of which were stacked ceiling high with boxes. The group decided to move our base of operations to an empty store room was obvious when considering that we did not want to go up and down stairs every time we had something we wanted to bring into our base of operations for study. Outside the store room we set up two lights that would remain lit at all times that anyone was in the cellar.
At about this time the professor completed his photography of the carvings, and I was satisfied with my contributions towards the exploration of the cellar. After having a quick lunch with our team, the professor and I packed some examples of our findings and headed into the town of Garfunkel. The Garfunkel university was our first stop. Professor Kent had a solid reputation with them having taught at the college in the past. He gathered a few deans and professors of archeology to discuss our findings. Needless to say they were impressed. The deans had the power to immediately grant us the funding to obtain better equipment and five graduate students. They required of us that we document the explorations as completely as possible, and that if artifacts of historical significance were acquired that they either be donated or loaned to the school for at least 5 years. We agreed to the requirements, and signed contracts saying that we represented the university at the site. After that we did inform the university that we could not absolutely certify the safety of the site, but every precaution possible would be taken to protect the members of the expedition. Their enthusiasm was such that they shrugged that off, and told us that "Such dangers are always present when advancing the cause of knowledge and science." We asked the new members of our expedition to go prepare their bags, and we gave them directions to the property. We then cashed the check from the university and obtained all the provisions we needed. The university had loaned us a larger truck capable of moving larger amounts of equipment and we found it necessary to fill it to the brim with the various items we needed. In addition to electric lighting and gas generators, we purchased computer equipment sufficient that every member of our team would be able to document their experience. The university had provided more specialized camera equipment of the type used by professional photographers, as well as measuring devices that covered the whole spectrum from air quality indications to accurately determining the age of various samples. There was no worry in my mind as to our being prepared to document what we found. I sent Professor Kent to the property, I had one further purchase I didn't want him with me to see. I went to a local hunting supply store and purchased a shotgun to keep at the base as well as a pistol that I intended to keep on me at all times. The man at the shop advised me to practice with my weapons so I would be well prepared when the time was right. I also purchased the ammunition I needed, telling myself it would be better to be over cautious than unprepared for the worst.
It was almost dark as I drove back up the path to the lodge, but when I got there I found it well lit, and that the entire team was awaiting my arrival. After moving the provisions from my vehicle to our base downstairs we sat down and had a meeting. Everyone was introduced to the new members of our team, our arrangement with the university was explained to those that had not been there, and a plan of action was formed. It was decided that the students would be far better used at the base analyzing our findings, being led by the professor. I would head up a team exploring the tunnel, followed by the surveyors and survival experts. I privately noted that the survival experts were armed as they had expected to be exploring wooded areas, and thus had prepared for the dangers of facing hostile wild animals. After the meeting I discussed that it would be wise to bring their rifles with them, just to be prepared. I suspect they thought me silly to worry about hostile creatures underground, but I didn't care if I looked silly if it saved our lives. Every member of the exploration team was outfitted with a jumpsuit and dust mask to protect us from any environmental health hazards we might face. We were also required to wear head protection at all times in the tunnel. Though it was dark outside, time really had no meaning below ground. Our team was anxious to begin our work, and many of us were familiar with working through odd hours to get what we were after. Therefor we decided to not wait until morning but to start out that very night to explore the tunnel. The man at the back of the group was tasked with hanging mine lights as we went, so that the students could later come behind and examine the tunnels after we had approved them as safe. I let the survival experts take the lead, as they had the best reflexes if dangers were encountered. We were forced to walk in a line, as there was no room to walk side by side.  As we neared the first turn we heard a large amount of noise echo up the tunnel ahead of us. First a sound like shouting, then more inhuman clicking. Finally a great hum punctuated by the previous sounds growing fainter and fainter until at last it blanked out. The silence was now thick, and our group started talking just to make noise. We had stopped walking when the noises had come to listen, but now we continued our descent.
We took plentiful pictures, but we felt that the carving would be better documented and perhaps even copied in person. as we rounded the last turn, I felt unease settle in my stomach. Though I had not counted the turns on my previous trip, I knew that we were fast approaching the chamber I had visited on my previous trip. I think my discomfort was communicated to the other men, as we all stopped talking. The chamber seemed much different than the last time I was there. The biggest difference was the glow, which was almost absent, and not enough to even be seen a few feet away. The silence also made it different. The only sounds came from members of our team as we gathered at the mouth of the chamber, right outside of the tunnel. We tried to examine the chamber from where we were but had little success, as the last of our group moved into the chamber we began setting up lights so that the entire chamber would be well lit. Only after the chamber was lit did our team begin to document it. As the chamber filled with light I forced myself to examine the alter at which so much unholy evil had been present on my previous visit. gathered around the base of the altar was a pile of bleached bones several feet high. The alter was washed clean of any body fluids or flesh. The only thing found on top of the alter was the torso and skull of the unfortunate person I had witnessed being victimized before. I had one of the survival experts bag it to be examined at a lab to see if the dental records matched either my father or one of the men I had lost. Though saddened to find the bones, I was much more relieved that we did not find anything more of the horrors I had witnessed. The many other tunnel mouths were closed up with doors constructed of a metal that I am not familiar with. This metal seemed to be soft and forgiving, but when trying to bend or pry our way past it, it displayed a rigidness unfamiliar to any of us. There appeared to be some sort of lock on each door, and we determined we would attempt to pick or undo the locks at a future point. We set up both conventional and night vision cameras, and set the lights so they could be controlled remotely. We also set up an intercom between the base and this chamber, so if we needed to communicate back and forth we could. At that we decided we would call it a day, that there was much work to be done in unraveling the secrets of what we had found thus far, and that any secrets beyond those doors would keep while we slept. We used our new intercom to communicate that we were headed back up, and upon reaching base camp collapsed into our beds and slept a dreamless sleep.

Chapter 4: Comfort

People underestimate the simple things. Small comforts are a simple thing that people take for granted, they forget them until they go without them for a day or two. Only in the void lacking these comforts is the need for them keenly felt. Small comforts are the best coping mechanism available to deal with the pains of this world. Simple comforts include things like a warm drink on a cold night, blankets wrapped around you keeping you snug and warm. The perfect food is sometimes just the thing for sorrow or pain. Good company can lift your spirits, especially when small comforts such as alcohol are shared by all those in the group.

I woke up on a mattress on the floor of the old kitchen in the lodge. The light of the setting sun shone through the house, and several familiar faces gathered as I stirred from my long dreamless sleep. My sister and the professor loomed over my bed, obviously full of questions but worried to ask. They were perhaps even more worried as to what my answer would be. I decided to give them as much information as I could, while leaving out some of the more unpleasant facts. They informed me that I had been asleep in that bed since they brought me upstairs three days ago. I had been covered in bruises from running head on into the walls of the tunnel I had escaped through. The first thing I wanted to hear once I had learned the facts of my recovery was to hear of the other's progress.
The two men versed in survival had the least success, though they did report that they heard noises in the woods that suggested the movement of man sized bodies through they woods, they only found broken twigs and tracks that led to nowhere. They reported that several hours walking they had come across a stream fed by a natural spring  in one of the nearby hills. They said they dared not drink from it even though the water was constantly flowing. The water carried an unnatural color they seemed almost unable to discribe, only that it did not reflect a healthy water supply. They also were unable to describe the smell that, while not strong, was without a doubt of something unpleasant. They reported no fish or frogs in the stream, but of seeing a large black mass float down the stream too fast to even follow by the shoreline. They had been unable to cross the stream as it was too wide with no logs crossing it, though they had followed it as far as they dared.
The two men assigned to search the west wing had some success, though it was only in improving the comfort of our accommodations. They had found a room filled with feather beds and mattresses, all clean and in good enough shape to sleep on. This explained my easier sleep on the much more forgiving surface of a mattress. Other than that they had once again found little to nothing telling of the fate of those we searched for.
Professor Kent proved to have had the most success apart from my adventure in finding clues about the Lodge we stayed in. He had read the logbook from cover to cover several times as he had much time as I recovered. None of them had dared retrace my footsteps until I woke, and they had barred the door to the basement almost immediately after retrieving me.  Professor Kent described for me the true history of the property that had been handed down through my family in the past centuries. It became apparent that I had been deceived when I had been told many times as a child that the property had been uninhabited for the past several hundred years. In fact the land had been only sparsely populated since my ancestor tried to spare his family the dangers in entwining their affairs with the property that had been responsible for a number of mysterious disappearances. It turned out that some members of the family had taken it upon themselves to live on the property in some form for hundreds of years. There had been at one time a gypsy caravan that camped in the woods near the lodge for a number of months through the winter. It was noted in the log that several days before they had planned to pull up and move on every member of the caravan had completely disappeared. What proved even stranger was a number of men in crimson robes who seemed to make some sort of pilgrimage to the land. When asked for reasons behind their interest in the property they simply said that it was a mystical location to their ancestors and they honored the traditions handed down to them. Half a century ago the pilgrimages had tapered off, from several a year to one a decade. Two explanations were offered, and it was assumed that either one or both had occurred.  Either the interest had died down or those interested found another way to find what they were looking for. The book also described a box of keys hidden in an old storage pantry in the cellar. As darkness was quickly approaching and I had not completely retrieved my wits we determined to form a new plan at the new dawn. All my companions were overjoyed to have me back but forced me to agree that no one should explore alone in strange places. They suggested we break down into two teams, one to search the surrounding grounds and the other to continue unlocking the secrets of the cellar. The dinner was the best I could have dreamed of considering. The explorations had turned up some aged wine as well when they had ventured into the cellar to retrieve me, as I could not in the state I was in. The aged wine combined with a hot meal was just the thing to lift my heart and give me hope that we could cope with anything we found, no matter how horrible.
End of chapter 4
Authors note: sorry this chapter is not as long as previous chapters, but some business had to be taken care of before we could move further into the story. More will be up tomorrow

A more clear picture of your author

Hey guys, I thought that today would be as fine a time as any to discuss who I am and what I'm doing here, in case I haven't told you personally. My name is Max Malcolm and pretty much all the work on this blog is mine. My friend Larry Albano lent me some space to post my stories and I am very pleased to see how it's taking off. I haven't been this prolific of a writer in a year or two. For example today I wrote over 4000 words of story between two stories on here. That's not including my releases telling people about it or other side projects I have going. This is a huge step forward, and that I was able to jump back and pull out chapter 3 after more than a day break and losing my flow impresses me.
Speaking of chapter three, it may concern you to know why that story has no name. The story begins with "In the beginning..." and chapter 3 is the latest and most exciting installment yet. I want to name it, I really do, but because any name I try and call it tells you too much about what is yet to come, I have no choice but to have rather bland titles on it. I hope I make up for it in the chapters themselves. My goal is a chapter a day, every day I can do it, until I reach a decent novel length or the story ends.
As for the other projects, that is just for fun. I like writing short sweet little stories that make you feel good, so that's what they are there for. I don't know how often they will appear because it depends entirely on if I am meeting my other goals. For example, after writing chapter 3 I had enough energy to continue over and do a short story, some nights I do, some I dont.
Finally, a note on how the blog works. I've tried to set up the comment system so it can be usable, so please try and communicate with me about the stories themselves on there, also feel free to get in huge long winded discussions on there, our host doesn't seem to have any limits on space so you can chat and discuss the stories to your hearts content. Who knows, I might even join in. Finally I really love it when people say they are going to tell their friends and send them the link. That is the best compliment I can get because that means you enjoyed it enough to want to share. That's what storytelling is really about is sharing a common bond. I do it to share what I can and hope to entertain a little. Someday I might want to publish, but only because i know the result would be more people getting to enjoy what I've written. And on that note, please do tell your kids my short stories, that's supposed to be part of the format. I love telling a story I could tell to anyone, from 2 to 92, so that's the goal of the short stories.
Someday in the future I would like to add illustrations as well, I especially think some of chapter three could have been enhanced with them, but I tried to create the images verbally until I figure out the best way to do that with the blog software. So anyway, thank you so much for reading and watch this space, more exciting stuff coming as soon as I can possibly get it here.

a short tale: Captain Kellog and the lost island

Alright that last chapter really taxed the spooky side of my brain, so I decided to use the other part, you know the same one that created the Lonely King. So now on a lighter note I present a story I call Captain Kellog and the lost island again presented by Mr Max Malcolm.

Not so long ago, but longer than most of you can remember there was a time that the measure of a countries greatness was their power at sea. Being a man meant something different then, and like a country was hardly worth talking about unless they had a powerful navy, a man was hardly a man if he hadn't sailed the seas and explored shores unknown all in the name of his country. During this time the fastest ship usually won, and countries had to compete to be the first to land on new shores and claim them for king and country. This was also the time of privateers and pirates. Being a privateer was a sort of trade off. On one hand you had wonderful chances to make money in a unique and challenging way. Add to that if you were particularly good your king or queen would pin a medal on you and perhaps even grant you a fancy title and land to go with it. On the downside you wouldn't have been very popular with the merchants and navies of other seafaring countries. But that's life for you, you take the good you take the bad you take them all and there you have... Captain Kellog is just such a man as we have been talking about. Some called him a monster, terror of the high seas was his nickname to his enemies. But to the people of his country he was a hero, and mothers told their sons to grow up to be like the great man. He was popular with his men, and women in every port he stopped at tried to pull out all their womanly whiles to try and tempt the great man into being their personal sweetheart. But Captain Kellog was immune to their charms, while he appreciated the acclaim and popularity he wanted to win a woman's heart on his own. He also always told himself that his mistress was the sea, and such a saucy mistress is as much trouble as any man can handle.
This is a story about an above average adventure that changed his life. Captain Kellog was charting his own course out of port. He had a full supply of goods, a happy and well rested crew and the wind was on his side. He sailed southwest out of European influences toward the unknown. About three or four days out to sea the man in the crow's nest spotted clouds on the horizon, and Captain Kellog instructed the helmsman to try to sail around it. This turned out to be little help as the storm was much to large to avoid. They hit the storm several hours later and the sailors fought for their lives and their ship to survive the horrible storm. This was more than just being a man and saving yourself it was keeping your friends save and serving your captain. Captain Kellog's crew were as fine a crew as any captain could hope for. The ship tossed and battled through the waves through the night, several men were swept overboard as the vessel tipped in the waves and rainwater made the deck slick and dangerous. When they finally got free of the storm they found themselves within eyesight of a landmass none of them were familiar with. An island rose out of the frothy ocean like a mirage, and many of the men wondered if this was some sort of trick of their tired minds. Captain Kellog ordered them to  sail closer and to drop anchor so they could assess the damage and try and repair the damage. As he had worried the mast was in no condition to sail, not even to limp towards friendly waters. The determination was made that a new mast must be constructed and that the sails needed some work before they could continue on their voyage. It would be five days before the ship could sail again, and the more time they could give it the better off they would be.
Since only half the men were needed to do the repair work the captain decided that now would be as good a time as any to explore the uncharted island that they had come to. He personally led an expedition ashore to learn more. Upon first glance the island looked as inhospitable as any he had ever seen. On one side steep stone cliffs with rocks around the bottom prevented even their lifeboats from finding safe harbor. As they rowed around the island however they found a hospitable cove with sandy beaches to safely pull their boats up onto the shore. They had not seen any sign of natives from the shore, but that didn't mean by any means that the land was uninhabited. The captain and his crew cut a path through the underbrush, unknowing that they were being watched. They didn't expect the tripwire or net to ensnare them as it did. Even more unexpected was the state of the natives. When the natives came to collect them the captain was shocked to see them fully clothed in finely tailored suits, in bright beautiful fabrics. This was far from what any of them had seen in what they always considered primitive cultures. Even more shocking was the way they spoke, they spoke with as much intelligence as any crewman on their ship. The natives told them that their leader had expected them, and the sailors were now prisoners and should not struggle and they would be treated fairly if they did as they were told. Captain Kellog agreed and they followed the natives through the underbrush until they reached a large clearing and found an english style large dwelling there. They entered into the house and met the leader, a tall white man in a tailored suit as fine as any nobleman. He spoke to them thus: "My name is Gorag, well not actually. It's actually Smith but the natives have taken to calling me  Gorage which means leader to them. I teach them things I know and they made me leader, that seems like a fair trade to me." Well what could captain Kellog do but agree to that? so he did of course. Then Kellog went on to explain their situation, and how their ship was stranded until they got a new mast. Gorag was sympathetic and said he would do what he could to help. Gorag explained that he had become shipwrecked on this island with nothing but his intellect to survive, lucky for him that he was a scholar and knew how to teach the natives how to create beautiful clothing and strong buildings. As Gorag explained this a door opened and in walked the most lovely woman Kellog had ever seen. It almost didn't seem fair to call her a woman she was so beautiful. She wore a simple tightly fitting dress that displayed every bit of her figure. Her skin was practically golden from the sun, and her complexion was flawless. She spoke and it was like music, such music as they had never heard before. She said that she was curious to meet the first visitors they had received in her lifetime. Kellog couldn't keep his eyes off her, and for her part I shouldn't have to explain she didn't mind looking at him either. Gorag was fuming and had been for several minutes before Kellog noticed.  Gorag ordered his men to tie up Kellog and his men and throw them in cages until a fitting punishment could be devised for their disrespect.
Kellog was halfway to the cages before he thought to ask their captors what he had done wrong. The natives informed them that to look on Gorag's daughter Sheela was seen as horrible disrespect by Gorag, especially to look at her like Kellog had been doing. Kellog thought for sure that this was the end. He thought this is no way for a hero to go out, there must be a way out. They might well have been doomed if not for the luck of fate. It just so happens that Sheela had been just as enchanted by Kellog as he was by her. Some people don't believe in love at first sight, but most of those people have never had it happen, or are too jaded to remember what it feels like to be young and in love. They want to remember, but it hurts to much when compared with their present state. Kellog was no such man, he was tough and brave no question, but he was an idealist and believed the best out of people. It was why he got the best out of his men. This quality of his is probably what would save him, as it had many times in the past, but it saved him for different reasons now. Sheela knew from the moment she saw him that she wanted only him for the rest of her life. Like I explained, she was every bit as entranced with him as he was with her. So she devised a plan to free Kellog and his men, and get them free and far from her father. Her plan was fairly simple: she would get her father to drinking his homemade wine which he was known to overdo sometimes, and when he was asleep steal his keys. So she used her clever womanly talents of hospitality and prepared him a fine dinner. As he ate she brought him glass after glass of his strongest wine. Gorag was too busy eating to think about how much he had drunk. Then Sheela got her father to talking about his tales of adventure and of how he got stuck on this island. This was another area that she found herself lucky in, because she found out her father had been building a ship. Unfortunately he was not a perfect shipbuilder, and his ships never would have held up to the long ocean voyages to escape that island. However she talked to him until he dozed off, and carefully removed his keys. She delivered the information she had received to the captain, and offered to free him on one condition. That condition was that he take her with him, and bring her with him on his voyages. He tried to protest that a ship is no place for a woman, but she said that she believed her place was by his side, no matter what. Well Kellog was wise enough to know that you never really win an argument like that so it's pointless to try, so he agreed to her terms. She freed them, and they carefully made their way to the hidden bay her father used as a shipyard. The crew picked out two small masts that could be lashed together to make a sturdy enough replacement mast, and enough sail material to get them back on the ocean immediately. Sadly this was the end of their luck in being sneaky. Gorag's men had found Gorag asleep and known that trickery might be afoot. When they found the cages empty they tracked Sheela and Kellog to the shipyard. They arrived at the shipyard just as Kellog, Sheela and his men began making for the lifeboats to return to ship. They ran after them and a chase ensued. The captain and his crew running through the underbrush with Gorag's men close behind. The crew arrived last at the lifeboats and practically threw the supplies into the boats and rowed like men possessed to get out to the ship and safety. When Gorag's men saw the sailors in their boats they doubled back to the shipyard and took the best boat they could find to try and board Kellog's ship. This is where the sailor's luck took a turn for the better again. Because they were better in their mastery of boats they reached the ship half an hour before the natives could have. This gave them just enough time to lash the masts together and get the sails prepared. They hauled anchor just as the natives pulled alongside. This was a chase they knew they could win, and they did. Kellog and Sheela became married and she became his first mate, as well as his mate for life which has a kind of symmetry to it. Kellog's fear of having a woman aboard eventually proved completely unfounded and he found her to be not only pleasant company but as hard a worker and as good a sailor as any of his men. She became a legend in her own right as a matter of fact, but that, alas, is another story.  

chapter 3

 Authors note: I have just reread this chapter so I feel it is only fair to warn you that this is the most intense chapter thus far, and contains some of the most intense imagery and raw terror as I can render. I have done my best to make it possible to stand, but I am not responsible for any nightmares you may have on reading this. This is just a taste of what this story is really about, I've been building to some of the stuff in this chapter since I started so I'm glad to see some of it happening. anyway on with the show, keep reading and I'll keep writing
Hubris is a dangerous byproduct of success.  Pride in your own success can build in you a sort of false bravado, a feeling that you can take on anything and are unable to be harmed, perhaps even immortal. Many great men from gladiators to emperors have been struck down by an overconfident sort of hubris.  Most religions and philosophies try to remove this  malady by trying to remove pride, perhaps even considering it a sin. This does not work as taking pride in your success is a natural human emotion, and no amount of shame at your supposed sin can truly stop this in the end. Another strategy that has seen more success is to surround yourself with people capable of reminding you of your human frailty, and failings. The flaw in this is that human groups are just as capable of falling into a state of overconfidence in their group accomplishments, which often leads to miscalculating the dangers present and becoming another causality of hubris.

As I woke in such a strange location, I saw nothing. Once again I heard nothing, not even breathing of my companions. I groped in the dark, searching for a light to check the room around me. I don't know how long I groped in the dark, disoriented in the strange room. What I do know is that by the time I found the lantern and matches to light it my heart beat in my chest like a snare drummer beating time and my movements had become trembling in the cold dark, and I had to spend a moment warming myself by the flame of the lantern before I could check the room.
I felt a great amount of relief to find all of my companions sleeping quietly, unplagued by the uneasy kind of sleep I had experienced. In my mind I imagined the amount of noise I must have made as I tossed and turned trying to find a peaceful state of repose. I sat up with my back to the wall, leaving the lantern aglow on it's lowest setting. I found it restful to plan out our team's plan for the day. I decided to send the surveyors into the west wing of the lodge, I felt no need to accompany them as they could reach me or any of the other members of the team by walkie talkie. The professor, Dr Kent, I desired to spend time studying the logbook he had come across, as it may hold clues to unlocking the doors they had found so far and perhaps cast more light upon the mysterious structure. For the two survival experts I decided to send them out into the surrounding land, as knowing the land was what they were best at. They should still report in and return to our base of operations at the end of the day as I did not find it practical to have them camp and waste daylight hours setting up a structure. Finally I set for myself to explore the cellar and pantries under the great lodge. I had an attitude of efficiency and applying our resources as best as possible. My sister would best be at use in this kitchen, receiving and recording reports from the field.
As I finished deciding these things my companions began to stir, and we decided based on our watches that we could open the doors and have more natural light as we took care of our bodies needs and prepared for our tasks. We gathered together for a hearty breakfast, or as hearty as can be had on limited supplies. The planning was done over breakfast to take the best advantage of the daylight hours ahead. I was pleased to see that each person took to their task well and was excited to begin on their task for the day. I told the professor we would discuss what he learned when I returned, and that he was to stay within sight with my sister. Every man was made to understand to report any danger encountered so that those nearby could drop what we were doing and come to their aid. Having provided my team with their instructions I set about my job for the day, namely the lower floor. The stairwell to access the cellar was close to our base in the kitchen. The door seemed a tighter fit than most, and when it did finally swing ajar a draft of stale air  flowed out, pulled by me breaking the seal and equalizing the pressure. A thick dust coated the stone steps down into the darkness. In the dust I saw several sets of footprints. I lit a lantern and descended the steps, trying as best as I could to leave the footprints undisturbed. as I reached the bottom of the steps and proceeded to try and gaze through the darkness, perhaps see a wall or something to guide myself by. In every direction I saw great stone columns supporting even greater stone arches. The arches reached so high that I could not reach and touch any part of them, the ceiling was out of my sight. Unlike most cellars this one appeared to be much more spacious, and far from  being cramped it was eerie in it's spaciousness and silence. The footsteps I had followed to the bottom of the stairs proceeded ahead of me to the north, so with a lack of other clues I decided to explore in that direction first. Several feet on,  as I lost sight of the stairwell, the footprints gave way to a wide path, made by something being dragged across a floor thick with the dust of time. I was ill at ease with this discovery, and I wondered if I was soon to find the fate of my missing companions from my first attempt. As i reached the wall I found the shape of a door engraved on the wall. Both inside and surrounding this shape were numerous carvings, almost like a system of hieroglyphics or runes. The carvings seemed to be untouched by time and painted with some sort of reflective or luminescent paint as they seemed to glow with a brownish green sort of light all their own. The most noticeable  carving of all was 4 feet tall by a foot and a half wide at the widest. It was perfectly centered in the door shape and glowed with a gold hue unique to this carving. Curiosity took hold and I set down my lantern and reached out to explore the large symbol with my fingers. The symbol consisted of a wide circle at the top, joined to a similar circle at the bottom by a straight line the same length as the circle is wide, then the line is crossed twice by line segments that extend to be even with the edges of the circles. I traced the edges with my fingers and  I heard a whispered sound, not quite human or mechanical, it seemed to say "Sekhmet." A low hum began beneath my feat, followed by a mechanical thumping that seemed to come from behind the wall, if that's possible. The thrumming and thumping set the dust in the basement into the air, becoming like a mist or smoke. The symbols shone brighter, shining and defusing into the dust creating a spiritual and mystic feeling in the room. My curiosity at this point reached it's apex, far outshining any fear that had gripped me before. A crack formed at the floor and the lines of the doorway became cracks as well. The stone doorway then quickly pulled back and slid to the side, opening a passageway. The passageway, far from being dusty like the cellar in which I stood was completely clean of any dust. If it wasn't for the style of construction and my own knowledge I could have sworn that it had been chiseled from the rock recently. My desire to unlock the mysteries from this mysterious new passage caused me to ignore the dangers and not even inform anyone of these new developments. I took my lamp and walked down the long narrow tunnel. At the mouth of the tunnel the carvings were sparsely covering the wall, perhaps a marking every six inches. As I got deeper into the passage the carvings got closer together and more numerous. Oh the stories that must have been told in those walls, if only I had the knowledge to unlock them. I  knew though there would be time for that later, for the moment I must investigate the source of the footprints and perhaps find answers to some of my questions.  The tunnel gently sloped downwards, which only eased my descent.  There is no telling how far I walked, it could have been a few hundred feet, it could have been miles, I did not count paces. Every once and awhile the tunnel would turn almost back on itself and go in the opposite direction, running parallel to the higher tunnel.   What I remember, or what I cannot  forget is reaching a wider chamber, circular and lit by the carvings on the walls, floor and even the ceiling. This was the densest the carvings had ever been, only millimeters apart and tiny and numerous. Thousands of pages could have been filled with all the markings on the walls of this chamber. It appeared to be a nexus for five other tunnels going in all directions.  The other tunnels were kept shut with metal doors cast out of a metal that I am not familiar with, it seemed to be etched with carvings as were the walls. I was so distracted by the walls and tunnels I didn't notice the center of the chamber for some time. I stood there marveling at the wonder of this chamber, so far down and far from where I had started. As I stepped into the great chamber a low hum began low, then got higher, punctuated by a clicking noise reminiscent of the dream I had received on my first night in the lodge. The carvings' glow changed colors, going from a greenish brown to brown to red as I approached the center of the chamber. The center of the chamber was the only exception to the carvings, a circle at least a hundred feet wide consisted of completely smooth stone. Chiseled from the living rock was a large alter. That alter, when that alter received the light from my lantern I screamed. The clicking got louder, and I swear I heard an inhuman howl of laughter echoing off the walls of that cavernous chamber as a cold wind came from every side of me, enhancing the shaking I was already doing. I tried my walkie talkie and all i heard was static. My lantern was out, I tossed it aside and ran. As I fled the horrors that filled my mind, the sounds from that chamber echoed up the tunnel behind me. I don't know how I got back to the surface through those dark and winding tunnels. I must have beat myself senseless on the walls of the tunnel on my way back up. My companions heard my shrieking as I finally collapsed on the steps back up to the lodge. They found me shaking, crying and shrieking in horror because of what I saw and heard in that chamber. I saw, a human corpse, mangled beyond recognition. It's blood still dripped over that unholy alter, and standing above it, if you can call it standing, I saw a figure naked and craven. The figure stood on two legs like a man but on it's face was an expression so horrible my blood ran cold. It's eyes shone with an unholy light of it's own. It's hands, it's monstrous dripping hands above the corpse it had been at some sort of horrid awful work at. I thank my luck that I screamed and lost my light, because the sounds that followed told me I was lucky not to see. I cannot even describe the sounds coming from the alter, only that when the horrible laughing drowned it out I believe that is ALL that protected my sanity from the twisted mangling of that mad horrible man shaped abomination deep in that awful chamber of horrors. I tried to tell my companions of my tale, but I passed out cold in the arms of my sister, and knew no more that day.

a short tale: the Lonely King

I'm sorry, I can't continue my former story until I tell another, I don't know why.
I just need to tell a little story, I call it the Lonely King by Mr Max Malcolm

Once, oh so very long ago my lovelies, there was a kingdom high in the mountains. This kingdom sat so high that the capitol was constantly among the clouds. You might worry that it would be cloudy or foggy in the streets, but it was not so. Actually it was bright, and the streets shined like silver in the moon. Well, it was so when our tale first begins. The old king was a grand sight, as grand as he was old, and believe me when I say he was quite old indeed. But don't think that just because he was old he lacked vigor, because if you did you would be dead wrong. He strode through the gates of his high castle in the mists, out onto the streets of his capitol. He walked past all the stalls and merchants in the market, and people couldn't take their eyes off of him in all his majesty. He walked so gracefully that you might think he was flying, and with such grandness and pomp that he was a parade in his own right. He stood in the town square and with a voice as strong and beautiful as a brass band he said; "I think the time has come for a festival! Our life is good and I have been your king now some 90 years, we certainly don't lack anything to celebrate!" and with a flourish he turned and walked twice as quick back into his castle. The streets exploded with excitement and before the day was out the preparations for the festival were complete, and that night by lamplight they ate and drank, singing songs and raising their glasses to toast their happiness. The one disharmony in the evening was the lack of the good old king, but they comforted themselves that he would be there the next day to join in their revelry. The old king sat in his castle and he cried. His sorrow was as deep and as unbearable as any a man had faced before him. The king sat in the tall tower, knowing that his hours were now numbered. His reign had been long and happy, not without it's struggles but overall a very fun ride and a well worthwhile life to have lived. The problem had come several days earlier, as he was eating his evening meal a man came to him dressed in rags. The king was shocked by the man's dirty appearance, but bid him speak nevertheless. The dirty man spoke in a voice that sounded like shattering glass "I come to you in a generous mood, as you have always been generous with those less fortunate than you. I am the man in charge of fortune and luck, my name is Destiny and I have walked by your side every year of your reign, and so it is my duty to deliver the unfortunate news I have brought you. Your sun is setting great king, every man must see the end of his journey, and yours is coming in 14 days. Use them wisely, you cannot escape, rush or delay the setting of the sun and the end of your life." and with that the dirty man threw a marble on the floor, which exploded in a cloud of glorious colorful smoke, leaving the king alone with his thoughts. Well the prospect of death was not at all something unfamiliar to the king, he had fought many battles and knew that death could have come at any time then. The problem was the prospect of an heir, he had none. He had once, he had 5 sons, but every last one of them had died out in the wide world, adventuring, leaving no heirs of their own. The prospect of leaving his kingdom without leadership, he knew that without a leader his kingdom would fail and die.
So now you know why the grand old king cried alone, and he could not burden anyone not even his advisors with his troubles. So the old king sat and he thought, and he had been thinking for 5 days when he said to himself "something has got to be done." So he sent for the tax man, and he said to the tax man, "Tell me of an honest, tax paying man of no high office in my kingdom." Because you see no one knows the country better than the tax man, and the tax man had quite a long think himself. Almost everyone he knew at some point tried to avoid paying tax, for sadly that's the folly of human nature to hold onto every last penny. Finally he remembered, several years ago he came across a young man, hard on his luck, but willing to pay every bit of tax due of him. The tax man remembered this because he had tried to force the money back on the man, but the man said to him "I would not cheat my country out of what is owed them, for have they not provided us this peaceful land and how would we keep it, if every man didn't do his part?" The tax man smiled at the memory, and said "I know just the man, his name is Roland, he makes tools." So the king said that this was just the man needed for the job. He sent his men to search the countryside for the man, and to inform him that he was the kings heir. The men went out from the castle to search for Roland the toolmaker, heir to be king. And the king went down to the festival and drunk and enjoyed his friends and subjects. At the end of the great feast on the last day, he stood up and raised his glass to his guests and said "I appreciate all of you more than I could ever express. My time is at an end, but preparations have been made for the future, and I trust he will take as good or better care as I would have." Then, having said his goodbyes he sat down and closed his eyes as the setting sun outside dipped below the horizon.
You would have thought that nature herself was mourning for the state of the kingdom afterwards, people cried constantly and when they went about their business it was with a weary heart. All the beauty and wonder seemed to melt away as the sky turned gray every day, not even the stars would come out. Everyone was at ill tempers and fights broke out, and the only thing that brought them any peace was the thought that maybe there might be a brighter day coming with the dawn. But the dawn didn't come and the search for their new king Roland lasted three horrible miserable years. It almost became like a ritual or sacred rite and less like a task that anyone expected could be achieved. They even tried expanding their search to include nearby kingdoms. The men put in charge of the quest, the kings own guard, were ready to give up and try and find some new form of governing, maybe drawing straws or a whistling contest, because any king must be better than no king at all. Finally, on the final day of the third anniversary of the good kings death, the kings guard passed through a desolate region between the kingdom next door and their kingdom, heading back home in misery and shame. They came across a tall stone tower in the middle of the desolate plain. They were so hungry and so tired they could not go on, so they knocked on the door. They said "we are the royal guard, and we request shelter and something to fill our bellies as we cannot go on." To be honest with you they didn't expect a response, after being on this journey for so long they knew that many people would simply ignore a knock on the door asking for help.
Imagine their suprise when the door opened, and a great tall man with a loud booming voice said "Come in, come in, I'm afraid I'm not used to house guests, I live alone you see and until you showed up I had almost forgotten the sound of my own voice, it's been so long since I used it you see."
So they ate their meal, and humble though it was it felt like a feast to be with such a cheerful man after such a long hard journey. They told him of their troubles, the whole tale as I've been telling it to you, and the man seemed to have a spark in his eye and a grin on his lips on hearing the name Roland, and of the incident described by the tax man. He let them finish their tale, and he thanked them for the lovely story, and prepared them beds, and told them he would dine with them again the next day. The next day just before dawn the guards were woken by noises outside. The man had set them a table out in front of the door outside, and what's more the clouds overhead were starting to break up, and sparks of blue shone through, and in the predawn light they sat down for breakfast. The man spoke first and said "I'm terribly sorry to hear of your long ordeal, and it has touched me straight to my heart. Had I but heard or known of your tale I would have saved you much heartache. But the past is the past and nothing can change that now. I am the man that you seek, my name is Roland and I am your king. I have set things in order here and as soon as you our ready we will ride for the capitol and set about putting things right again." The guards had stopped eating when he stood to talk, as is polite, and when they heard who he was, they fell to the ground and bowed, weeping sweet tears of gladness. And the great man just smiled, and he took them each into his arms in a warm embrace, laughing and patting them on the back, thanking them for their great service to the kingdom. They rode to the capital and as they rode with the dawn coming behind them, people came from miles around, following them into the city itself, filling the streets as they hadn't been filled since the good old king had left. Roland stood in the town square and said loud for all to hear "Your new king has arrived, and there will be a new golden age." He was very right, of course, and he had many adventures of his own, but those are tales for another day.

chapter 2

authors note: I expect that when I reach the end of this tale I will go back and revamp the early chapters as details become more clear. Oh, and since I didn't say so before I'm saying so now, all rights to this story belong to me. I don't want it reposted unless I have some approval as to how it's posted. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to anything else is accidental. now on with the story!

Chapter 2

Silence is a strange item to approach. It can fill your soul with terror, or soothe the weary mind. Silence is a blade with two cutting edges. Silence can be your ally or your enemy. There have been times that I would have given anything to receive the blessings of silence. I longed for it at times, when my life became so full of noise and clutter that silence was like an old friend that I embraced it like an old friend. I let it surround me, like a warm blanket keeping out the wind.

Sadly for me the silence I found in that long empty house was far from a friend. It was rooted in emptiness and death perhaps. I was able to search the corridors of the 3 main floors. I realized soon that a room to room search on my own would take me days, and though I had provisions to last that long I was not capable of it. I had intended to search the house from the moment I found my fathers footsteps approaching the ancient building. The problem was resources, and to that point I had only been able to bring what I could in a pack on my back. The lodge had been so long uninhabited that no food or provisions could be found. That was not the major problem though, the silence was the problem. Working alone was dangerous. The prospect of working alone was so unpleasant to me that I determined I would have to return to the nearby city for help. Furthermore I would set up a base of operations and a sort of residence in the ages old lodge in case of the event that I would need to set up a search and survey of the surrounding acres. Having determined this need I quickly scribbled a note to the effect that if my father or companions found it to stay in the central living area until I returned, and that I would return within a day and a half. Included in the note were the time I had left and a number at which I could be reached in case they had something urgent to communicate to me. I attached it with a tack and hammer to the inside of the heavy wooden front door, left my provisions but for the bare essentials on the inside of the door frame and locked the door behind me as I left.
I stuck to the main road this time and in a little more than an hour hiking on the abandoned roadway I reached the front gate and headed back into town, after making a quick stop at the family home to pick up my sister Alice who was three years older than me and an excellent cook. In town I went about contacting a team of two surveyors, a professor of history, and two men with backgrounds in both back country survival and handling weaponry to protect our small group. The situation was explained to all involved, and that regardless of whatever we found they would be employed for a minimum of a month, and with no maximum time limit. Upon the advice of our expert survivalists we purchased a good deal of communications from advanced walkie talkies to several miles of cable and a set of portable communications terminals. The professor who's name was Doctor Kent required that all of us carry cameras to record what we found. I had no trouble luring  him or the others, no just with wages but with the smell of adventure and mystery. It is easy to overcome caution simply by sparking a person's curiosity.  Alice put herself in charge of shopping and bringing the provisions in and holding down a sort of home base when we arrived and got set up. We gathered that night for a drink to help take the edge off, but headed to our respective homes early to get an early start. We agreed to meet at the front gate at dawn the next day.
The dawn saw me driving down the empty highway, not too cloudy out at the time. The strange thing was that as my car approached the gates a fog hung close to the ground, thickly blanketing the ground and hiding all the details of the pavement and ground.  I led the way using my car as we drove down the winding service road up towards the lodge. Though the sun was just coming up tall trees surrounding the road blocked out much of the light, leaving us to use fog lights to see our way. The road was particularly treacherous because of our inability to see the pavement under our wheels added to the winding and changes in the altitude of the road surface. This forced our pace to be painstakingly slow. Finally after many agonizing minutes that felt like hours we reached the lodge and parked our vehicles at the end of the building. Looking up at the foreboding stone structure I felt the enormity of our undertaking in searching the building and grounds. It seemed to me that we would never see the end of this place. I shivered involuntarily as I thought about those hundreds of empty rooms, long empty time had forgotten them. He suddenly wondered if a building could become feral and wild, taking a life of it's own and refusing to be tamed by man. People put so much of themselves into buildings that they sometimes begin to take on personality of their own, a life of their own. They seem more like people than structures, and if the lodge were a person what sort of person would it be? I imagined a lonely but tenacious old man, tossed aside by the world left with nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company year after weary year. At some point he stays alive out of a sort of unholy determination, feeding on his own stubbornness and refusal to let go of life.
I knew I had spent too much time staring when Alice woke me from my daydream, bringing me back to the present. "Can we get on with getting in the front door? You've been standing there staring for over thirty minutes. What do you see?"
"Nothing, just wondering if there might be termites.
"Even termites would have trouble sustaining themselves on this stale building, it would probably taste terrible." Susan retorted, bringing a smile to my face. 
I unlocked the front door, letting the double doors swing inward on their own weight. As everybody brought our supplies indoors I looked to see if my provisions I had left had been touched. Once again I found every trace that I had been there was wiped away, even the tack I had used to pin the note to the front door. This was slightly unsettling for me, so I checked the central living area. Once again I found nothing. Our group decided to store our provisions in the large kitchen, so that Alice could cook and have what she needed close at hand. I instructed the survival experts to help Alice set up a sort of home base in the kitchen, while the surveyors, Dr. Kent and I proceeded to the east wing of the lodge. The most puzzling thing that came to our attention was a giant room lined with shelves. The door hung ajar making this the logical first stop for our search. While what we had found so far seemed orderly and everything in it's place this room looked like it had been ransacked. Chairs lay on their backs, books and papers lay scattered over every surface, however the shelves themselves were empty. Dr. Kent was thrilled with all the books, as he went through picking them up and putting them in a sack to bring with him. He called my attention to a large leather bound volume with the title "Logbook of the Orion estate", which I told him to set aside for me back at base camp. We finished our sweep of the first and second floor with very little eventful happening or being found. The third floor just left us mystified as all rooms except a storage closet were locked securely, and did not budge no matter what we did. As the daylight left us we gathered in the kitchen for an evening meal, sharing the experiences of the day and enjoying Alice's wonderful cooking. It was decided we should sleep on the kitchen floor, and bar the doors against entry. I was the last to fall asleep, frightened of a return of my previous dream in this unfamiliar place.
I did not have a repeat experience of the dream, instead just imagining a drumbeat, followed by the tune I had heard in my dream before. The lyrics were missing, but the tune still brought me restless sleep, I was unable to hold still the whole night.
End of chapter 2

In the beginning....

(this is rewrite 1, my browser crashed and I lost my work, so this will take a different look than my original idea.)
There are so many things we cannot know, simply because our histories do not cover. The greatest tragedy of the ancient world was the destruction of great libraries by barbarians, when man discovered writing the use of oral traditions was lost. Perhaps if some of those stories could be told they could cast light on what we do not know of our planet's past. One thing is certain, and that is the uncertainty of the past. Even in the cases where someone did put pen to paper and it was preserved, history is written by the winners.
Our story's beginning is one of those uncertain things. Some would say it began centuries ago when my family first was granted a title and some land in exchange for our silence about the truth behind the history that was then just being laid down. Others would say it started thousands of years ago, as man was first laying down the foundations of civilization. It's possible  it began even before that.
The land had been handed down from generation to generation, from father to son for over six hundred years. But almost ever one of them to a man lived in a reverent sort of fear of the land itself, not to mention the houses that lay upon it. Their age had made them more tombs than houses, though they housed no dead. Well, not any dead that would be visited. Once and awhile one of my ancestors would disappear into the many rolling acres, and never be heard of again. It served as a sort of warning, enough to frighten not just the local villagers but every male in my family as well. Though we lived in fear of the property, we felt it was our duty to keep the houses locked, safe from anyone with the misfortune to wander onto the property. About one hundred and fifty years after my ancestor first came into possession, one of his decedents decided to move to a less unsettling location, but still within close range so as to tend the property. He moved everything important, but left two houses and a workshop, simply because the buildings had foundations too deep, and it would have felt wrong to destroy them. He built a gatehouse, which was the only structure that anyone used for the next four hundred and fifty years.
This is what I consider the beginning of our story, and it occurred shortly after I came of age. My name is George Orion My father was not well, and not a single doctor could find out what it was, why it had happened, or how to cure it. He told me he sensed that his end was near. Those were the last words I ever heard him say. The next day I found his truck parked at the gatehouse to the property. It was open, the keys were in the seat along with a current copy of his will. I pocketed both and locked the truck. I returned to town and hired two strong men, and outfitted our team with enough provisions to last for months. I felt that the reason so many had disappeared was because of a stubborn streak of pride in my family. We decided to go on foot from the gatehouse, as it would be too easy to lose the trail. We followed the tracks for a mile, until the joined a larger path, about one hundred feet away from an imposing stone building. It looked like an old hunting lodge, made of stone presumably cut from nearby rock. It was three stories tall, with a large balcony on each end. I had never seen it before in my life, nor had anyone even discussed it aside from that there were structures dating back to before we abandoned the property. It was the duty of whomever was the male head of the family to do repairs and take care of the grounds. I could tell that although in decent repair, no one had lived there for a long time. The silence was permeating, so thick and unsettling, we found ourselves talking just to hear noise.
    The only sign that anyone had been there recently were the footsteps we had followed here, and that the front door was unlocked. My companions were in awe and fear of the structure, and strongly urged me to set up camp outside, however I felt that would be letting an opportunity for shelter go to waste. On the inside we found various furniture from different eras, most of it from the mid 20th century, though there were some pieces much older than that. We cleared a space in a large seating area surrounding a fireplace big enough for five men to stand side by side in and not scrape the sides.
We soon lost our daylight, and relied on heat and light from the large fireplace, and firewood we cut outside. I was instantly glad to have brought companions, simply to have someone to talk to in this large unfamiliar building. The silence inside was even more unbearable, growing up in a modern world I was used to the sounds of a house, ticking from clocks, air conditioners coming on. In spite of an unfamiliar lack of noise I found sleep. Unsettling dreams still haunted my sleep, regardless of the fact that I had company.
I dreamed of voices in the dark. This was my dream:
I was wondering down a stone lined corridor with no windows, curious carvings decorate the walls and ceiling. I have a torch in my hand, but the light gives me no comfort. Coming from every direction   I hear clicks, a grinding sound, water dripping in the distance. The corridor stretches to infinity, and I fear what lies outside of my torchlight. I felt a chill of air moving from somewhere ahead of me. it blew scraps of paper by my feat and past my arms, giving me an uncomfortable feeling like when you walk through a spider web. Luckily there are no spiders, or any other sign of life for that matter. I take comfort in the idea that air moving means a way out. I continued in that direction for some time more, then the torch blew out as the strength of the wind became too much. I touched the corridor wall and let it guide me, as I did not have any more matches. I came to the end of my wall, and I could tell from my hearing that I was now in a large chamber. I hear whispers in the dark.
"who is this?" a deep whisper reached my ears.
"you are in over your head boy, turn back."
a second voice joined in "there is no turning back, what lies in shadow should not be visited on the outside world."
I try to voice my protest, but it feels like icy fingers grip my neck, preventing speech.
A chant starts, and I continue to move forward, stumbling in the dark. There is no way to tell if the voices are real or imagined.
The chant, which contains no words I thought I would ever hear a human utter, becomes a background for a horrible song that penetrates my mind to the very core. I could never forget it.
"In the dark where shadows lie
hide the things that cannot die
Hidden deep beneath the ground
They guard the secrets that they keep
Older than trees, older than earth
These creatures lack death and birth
they guard their gruesome knowledge
Many secrets lie sleeping beneath the dark
Under the world of man, you'll find such secrets if you can
But watch yourself, and be aware
Because many before you have tried and failed
There's is a fate that you may share"
I heard a heart wrenching sound, and I woke to the sound of screaming.
I soon found the screaming was my own. A red flushness covered my body, and I had drenched myself in sweat. I looked around to see if I had awoken my companions. But where they had lie the night before now was empty. There was no sign of their gear or that they had even been there at all. I became more panicked and began to search the lodge, getting more frantic with every passing minute. However it was all in vain, I found no trace of them.
End of chapter 1

introduction

Hello, My name is Larry Albano, and I will be your story teller. I have been writing professionally for about a year or two now, and I want to work up to writing a novel. I find that I enjoy blogging, so I figured that I would tell my stories in blog format. I'll talk more about me between my stories, for now I want to get to writing