Return to Mystery Chamber.

“A new year dawns and yet a mystery needs solving. Last year we journeyed into The Mystery Chamber click the link to relive that adventure. Now, it’s time to return and solve the secrets which lie within!”

I wrote this Story in answer to the following prompts:
FOWC with Fandango — Brass
Your Daily Word Prompt — Favour
Ragtag Daily Prompt— Goodbye/Hello
Word of the Day Challenge — Renewal
Three Things Challenge #466 – Work – Add – Hidden

Return to Mystery Chamber

Cruel winds whipped over the cliffs. Whistling as they swept through the falcate depression. A camera panned until a smooth-featured face came into view. The young woman had long blonde hair and a dainty freckled nose. She wiped tears from her eyes and took a deep breath before speaking, “I’m Mia Sowerbridge. Ten years ago, while I was still at school, my brother Michael came here to film an archaeological discovery. On that day he vanished along with three archaeologists. His disappearance drove me to become an investigator. While I failed to make the rank of police officer, I did become a very good reporter for Radio Norfolk. They may fire me for investigating, but I have to know what happened to my brother. Many people speculate, they disappeared as part of an elaborate hoax. A ruse in which they got rich by selling whatever they found in the cave. This is simply not true. Today, I intend to find out what really happened to my brother and the three missing archaeologists.”

A man with blonde hair and a goatee stepped alongside Mia and squeezed her shoulder. “I’m Adrian Knowles. I was an archaeologist working here on the day of the disappearance. Professor Phil Chadwick, Phineas Potter, Michael Sowerbridge, and my dearest friend Juliet Robins, hoaxed nobody. Something paranormal occurred here and I intend to help Mia prove it.”

“Hello, and thank you, Adrian. Let’s do this!” Mia swung her Handy-Cam to face the cliffs and picked her way over the rocky ground to reach them. “As you can see, the investigators dynamited the entrance shut after their work failed to find my brother and the archaeologists. This alone fails to add up. It proves they did not believe those four people were part of a simple hoax. They knew something paranormal is hidden inside these cliffs. Thanks to Adrian secretly clearing a path through the dynamited rock, We have a way inside.”

“When we came ten years ago, we had to remove a keystone barring the entrance. It bore many strange cavings. One of which was a stylised ‘A’ I believe through my research; it was an Agarthan ‘A’,”  Adrian handed her a helmet and head torch. “Let’s go find us some answers!”

Mia nodded and followed him inside. “This is one narrow, bare rock passage.”

“Yeah, sure is! Do me a favour; stay close to me. If I say run — you get out of here immediately. I don’t want to be responsible for you disappearing like your brother.” Adrian began snaking his way deeper into the cliffs.

Mia watched him moving with great caution. He lit every nook and cranny with his torch as he explored. “Of course. You don’t think it’s dangerous in here do you?” she asked with a waver in her voice.

“All I know is; four people disappeared in here. I don’t want to make it six!” Adrian reached a dead end. The conical-shaped mystery chamber.

“So, this is the chamber where my brother and the three archaeologists had to have been before they disappeared.” Mia panned her camera about revealing nothing but non-descript rock walls.

“Yup. The only thing that was found was a brass button believed to be from the coat Phineas was wearing that day.” Adrian scratched his head and turned a circle. “Well, there are no UFOs, no signs of secret passages. There’s bugger all in here.”

“I’m surprised. It’s just like the investigator’s photographs. I was sure they’d deliberately hidden images of artefacts and evidence they found in here.” Mia sighed and turned off the camera. “Well, that’s it. We’re not finding any answers in here.”

“What did you expect to find? A Velociraptor?” Adrian began examining the chamber and feeling about the bare rock walls.

“Snarky git! I don’t know, an ancient civilisation, a labyrinth, something at least!” Mia slapped her thighs in frustration, “There’s sod —”

“Whoa!” Adrian gasped. “This wall’s pulsing.”  

“What you mean Puls—” Mia made it two steps towards him and froze. The whole chamber around her began to buzz and hum with a mysterious energy. “Adrian, what’s going on?”

“I don’t … We need to get out of—” the underground room was filled with a deep blue ultraviolet light. “Mia RUN!”

Mia screamed as the chamber vanished. When her vision cleared, she was stood in an entirely different place. A pentagonal room which appeared clad in brass. One wall bore a glass window. Another had a high, sealed brass door. The rest of this new chamber was empty.

“I thought these walls were brass. The colours wrong though. I’d bet Porsche this is orichalcum.” Adrian’s voice sounded low and shocked. “Well, at least we know where your brother, Juliet, and the archaeologists went, now!”

“I disagree. Where the hell are we?” Mia swore at her camera. Its battery had been fully charged as she entered the cave. Now, it was drained and useless.  Cursing her luck, she approached the glass and peered through. What she saw broke her heart, sending tears cascading down her cheeks.

“Mia, what — Oh … Juliet!”

“What … have they done … to them?” Mia sobbed. Her eyes were glued to one of thirty glass cylinders reaching from floor-to-ceiling. Michael Sowerbridge looking as young as the day he disappeared was suspending inside. He was naked and surrounded in a liquid with the appearance of effervescent lemonade.”

“I don’t think that’s our problem, right now. Adrian indicated two cylinders to the left of the one holding Professor Chadwick. “I think people disappear in the mystery chamber when they need to fill those things with bodies. Those two are empty and waiting for us.”

“No! Oh, please don’t say that!” Mia felt herself tingling with fear as she backpedalled away from the window and bumped into the far wall. “There has to be a way out of here.”

“Don’t bet on it.” Adrian wiped his forehead as a fresh humming filled the room.

“Adrian! Look out! The bloody door’s dematerialising!” Mia felt frozen as she watched the door glow that ultraviolet blue colour and fade to nothing.

Before either of them could react, a being draped in a shadow-blue cloak entered the room. He was easily nine feet tall and made no noise upon the metal floor.

Mia could see no face beyond the dark cowl. She was almost hyperventilating with fear but anger rising through drove her on. “You! I demand you to release our friends and let us all go. NOW!” her shout reverberated off the Orichalcum walls.

“Those in the Bio-cylinders are here purely because of the damage you Humans do to your Earth. They—”

“Our earth? Who are you? What the hell are you doing down here?” Adrian interjected having come to stand by and protect Mia.

“Never interrupted me again!” The being’s voice filled boomed in the empty room. “I am Professor Fugal. You are within the City of Arianni and inside my Renewal Lab. The humans of your earth are beyond the point of no return. Within a couple of short decades, no life shall remain on the Earth. Humans, through their blind greed and absolute stupidity, will eradicate every living thing. They will leave Earth resembling Mars. Nothing can stop the destruction.”  

“There has to be a way. People are now beginning to recycle more and —”

“I told you not to interrupt me!” The being groaned toward Mia. “There is no way back now the Forests burn and the ice sheets melt away. Once the humans live no more. There will be a great renewal on your barren Earth. We the Aryan people have protected every species buy storing them in our tissue collection facilities. It is our divine duty to repopulate Earth just as the gods envisaged thousands of years ago. Enough talk for now. Come, we must prepare you.”

Mia stood apoplectic with shock. It was only Adrian pressing her forward which drew her back to reality. “What! I — er… This is insane!”

“It’ll be okay,” Adrian whispered. “Come on. We have to follow him for now.”

Fugal flowed back to the door and faced his captives. “She will stay here. We have no use for her tissue.”

“You rude, git! I have beautiful tissue, I take good care of it!” Mia smoothed her cheek indignantly.

“I never said you were ugly. However, your genetic make-up will be the same as your brothers rendering you useless to us.” Fugal shot out a hand and propelled Adrian through the door. “Goodbye!”

Mia leapt forward and slammed into the brass surface of the door as it materialised right in front of her. She staggered back in the daze, glanced at her brother’s cylinder through the glass and passed out.

“You will remember nothing of your visit to Arianni. Do try to use your journalistic powers to save Earth.” said a robotic feminine voice.

Mia had the sensation of slamming into the ground. She woke up surrounded in the meadows of the English countryside. She realised she was on a bluff above the cliffs baring the caves to the mystery chamber. Crawling to the edge she looked down and saw the cave was once again sealed behind a rockfall. Rolling onto her back, Mia realised she had solved the mystery and it scared her to death.

Although she wasn’t supposed to remember anything; she remembered everything. Her brother in the cylinder. The professor’s dark words, and Earth’s coming demise. What was she to do with that information? Maybe she should just forget about the mystery chamber altogether?

The End

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Thanks for reading my friends. There’s more in the Short Stories. and Short Stories 2 tabs.

Have a great day!

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