The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette) (7 page)

The hospital seemed to be on the brink of an
entrance point to the afterlife or some form of supernatural region
of space, and all the paranormal scientists were working away
there, every night, as occurrences were occurring everywhere, and
though they were delighted in it they were not only not making any
progression in what was occurring and they were accumulating a
repeatedly increasing amount of unsolved mysteries, and I was
investigating one of the most baffling of them.

Something was occurring down a major shaft
in one of the walls, which we found hidden away in a wall at the
top of the hospital, and I had entered it and was going down it,
when something had activated, at precisely the same time the
occurrences occurred in the hall of the house in Craigmillar
Road.

I had only entered and shifted down the
shaft, when the sounds emerged below me and had amplified, and as I
slowly moved down, they had gone mind-bending!

They were screaming up at me through the
shaft with a dangerous fury that stunned me, and no matter how I
tried to shake them off and contemplate their identities I could
not form stable recognitions of what was there.

I never had a clue what was there, and had
never thought paranormal could be so strange, and
unrecognizable.

I shifted around in complete darkness,
entirely alone, with nobody at the opening above anymore, where
there was darkness now, and I finally managed to find my blasted
light in my backpack and tried to grab it and force it out to use
it.

Clouds of powdered cement from walls swirled
about all over me, going into my lungs, and I tried avoid coughing
it out, while I tried to breathe in, in a way I could avoid the
dust clogging my lungs up, while occasionally gasping at the sounds
below blaring up at me, taunting me, threatening me about something
I could not grasp, as if I was hovering over the depths of some
form of hell.

Once I got the light and attached it to me I
put the light on and I realized straightaway that the batteries
were far more used and the small torch was virtually going out, and
I realized that I might not be able to climb back up as there was
nothing to grip and I would have to climb the thin rope itself, and
I was sure the harness I had on stopped me doing it.

I examined the dust that swirled about me
through dim barely visible beams of light and I released some rope,
edging me downwards, seeking to get away from it, and I avoided
touching the sides and making more of the dust blow up, and I
started to consider if I should go to the bottom after all.

The others were bound to emerge eventually
at the opening above and get me out but the harness and dust was
choking me, and then decided that I would have to go down again
anyway, and that my mission would be a failure if I never competed
it and I decided then to investigate what was there, and wait at
the bottom for them to arrive and help me up.

What was incredible was I did think it was
dangerous, and I was in actual danger! While I was listening to the
blasted sounds, another sound appeared that I felt going through
the ground below and I knew it was entirely different, and was
positive it was a bomb or something going off.

The Second World War was going on, and I
wondered if the hospital could be bombed as it was a major
structure.

For a few seconds I even considered being
left trapped at the bottom of the shaft, and builders or
archaeologists discovering my skeleton remains away in the
future.

I groaned and dangled about on the rope,
spun around and around, and grabbed hold of part of the wall to
steady myself, while I glimpsed parts of the shaft all about
overhead.

I really wanted to explore what was there
and what was below! The last encounter had left an increasing
amount of unanswered occurrences and questions and I knew I would
have to answer them eventually. It was as if it was my destiny and
something would have to happen.

I really wanted to do it! I wanted to
explore the shaft! And I had always wanted to explore and discover
something incredible and new, with perhaps value and greatness, and
perhaps even be remembered in history for it.

What interested me and the others was why
what was there was there and in such a place!

What was it we were dealing with anyway? Was
doing some elaborate plan to do something?

Something of an unfathomable unidentifiable
supernatural nature sounded as though it were below, and even
waiting on me, and yet I had already confronted it, and I could not
grasp why, and if it was so powerful why did it not just get me
there, and trap me in some form of magnetic field or energy, and I
suddenly listened to it and wondered if it was something trapped
and trying to free itself from something, ultimately escaping and
gain liberty, and the more I listened to its strange sounds I
realized that it might actually be true, and I imagined some form
of ghost trapped there for hundreds of years, perhaps in an ancient
dungeon below, and I wondered if my future mission was to find a
way to free it.

I went through all the things I had heard of
ghosts being trapped on this world waiting for some occurrence to
occur for them to be freed, and enter some afterlife.

“
Have
you found anything
?
”
a voice yelled out, and hung there, and I
wondering if it had overheard my thoughts, and had taken a form of
human presence, and I never knew what to reply with.

I eventually shouted back, “What do you want
of me?”

To my surprise a reply emerged above, and
yelled, “We want you to tell us if you have found anything! And if
we should pull you up or lower more rope?”

I gasped and realized it was Higgins in the
blackness above, and I stared there realizing that there must be
some light there and if my eyes altered to the darkness there I
would see him, and once I did I instantly shouted up for him to
lower more rope, as I was going to the bottom, and I realized that
I now had to go through with it, and there was no turning back! Yet
I had them above now, and could shout up for them to pull me
upwards when I wanted.

In a combination of annoyance and confusion
I started lowering myself down again, into the blackness. Annoyed
at the rope only being lowered by a couple of feet and in confusion
at what I was doing there.

I had the impression that the two paranormal
scientists up above might be on the edge of considering doing
something extreme, and beyond their customary actions, and it
seemed somehow dangerous.

For a few seconds, as I lowered myself, I
heard Oswald and he gave me the impression that he was waiting for
something tremendous to occur, and I wondered if he thought there
were paranormal life forms or something!

I realized the implications of any find and
that they and I would have to check what was there!

I then
realized that there might people near the location behind the thick
walls in hospital beds and I wondered if they realized that I was
there, and that there was something of paranormal origins buried
away there.

Now it
was
basically the three of us, with Higgins and Oswald
above, and I was sure the others had left to go to bed, leaving
their equipment monitoring everything, which they believed was
there.

For a few seconds I sleepily wondered what
the tiny sparkles were below, and realized that I was nearly
falling asleep, and my light had entirely gone out, and they were
not reflection sparkles of light from above, and gasped, and
realized the implications.

I felt like a worm on a fishing line,
floating in the sea, and there to get what was below! I realized
the two paranormal scientists might have trouble climbing down, and
were slightly overweight and bulky at the moment, and they would
have a hard time getting back up again!

I even considered if I would have to spend
the night at the bottom or something, if I was too tired and sleepy
to get back up, and if anything happened to me, and I lodged my
boot into a gap between two of the boulders, to rest better.

I realized how
low down I now was and must be close to the bottom, and I suddenly
realized the depth down I had come and surely far more than the
actual size of the building, and I wondered if I had gone
underground, and how far underground I was, and how far down it
went, and the blackness there looked like an abyss.

“
So are
we
going down ...?
”
Oswald moaned firmly, from out of the
blackness above.

“
You
could
send down a camera with a light
attached?
”
I moaned, confusing both of the scientists.

“
But you must be about on the ground?”
Oswald firmly replied.

The rope started swaying and vibrating
furiously, giving the impression that something was frantically
doing something against it just above me and I glanced up but never
saw anything, and it felt as if something had got caught on the
rope just above me and was trying to free itself, and desperately
tried to escape from there, like some form of bird, which baffled
me, and I realized I had no rope left below me.

I was trapped over an abyss with something
deadly, but the darkness was too absent of light, and it was then
that I noticed a dim light come across my front, over my clothes,
and I unsuccessfully tried to discover its source, and could not
believe that a light could have no source, and looked everywhere,
and out of the darkness downwards something emerged shining
upwards, and my eyes fixed onto a strange dim orb floating
upwards.

My only
way to escape was to swiftly remove
my harness and
plunge down into the abyss below, and perhaps avoid hitting it, as
it was not directly below, but the bottom could be at a great depth
below, and the fate of hideously dying on the ground below and
having a normal death there persuaded me to remain and handle
it.

My eyes seemed to alter and see some dim
light and I realized I was no longer in the shaft, and in somewhere
like it.

A bright light flashed and I realized
I was now not in any shafts, and dazed and confused I examined what
I could of my surroundings and saw little but what seemed a
whirlpool of shifting energy outlines and I studied them with my
tired and dazed vision and was sure it was some form of energy
formation, and I watched energy patterns transform into things I
could not recognize, and I could not grasp what was there, and I
started to
remember what
had happened to me when I activated the metal detector in the
woman’s house and I went unconscious.

Chapter 16

The Body

Things seemed strange and utterly
unbelievable and I studied everything trying to grasp what, and
what had happened to me, and I kept trying to recall what had
happened before I collapsed, just wondering what the hell
happened.

I kept gasping as I wondered if I had
received brain damage, as I was sure I had fallen down to the
bottom of the shaft, and that I was lucky, and lucky to be alive as
I could not have been that far over the ground. Even though I
recalled I was further down than the bottom of the hospital, and I
proved it, and I was left confused about it, and as I had lost so
many memories, and I kept trying to recall things.

I wondered if I blew my mission as the
scientists were annoyed at me for not giving them information on
what had happened.

The whole
event was incredible, and I could hardly believe anything had
happened as I could hardly recall it, and the events of the past
weeks were astounding.

They had found
me asleep at the bottom of the shaft hours later, and had thought I
had done something or was up to something, which I have still not
grasped what, and when I climbed out the shaft I fully realized
that I could have climbed up after all.

At the top I
watched the first shreds of sunlight emerging in the horizon, and I
wondered what I had discovered as I could barely recall a thing,
and I realized that if it was not a haunting why was it occurring
at night, as I could even imagine anything else.

To my surprise
I was told by a nurse that I had phone call and I discovered it was
from the police and that the killer had struck nearby, and they
wanted me there to help them investigate it, and I was surprised
that it was only a few streets away, and I sensed that the
incidents were connected and wanted to discover why and I rushed
out the hospital, and over to where I spotted policemen and their
vehicles going, and as I did I kept trying to work out how the
incidents were linked.

When I
got there and glanced at the body I gasped and nearly fell over, in
my weakened and tired condition, and grew annoyed
and
felt like screaming, as I saw Marple’s body lying on the street,
surrounded by police and investigators.

I wondering who the hell had done it, and
had dumped him there in a pool of muck, and thought it could have
occurred because of what I had done, and disturbed what ever
existed there.

I was furious and I marched over and
suddenly spotted all the people there standing watching me,
confused, with mouths open, watching me with staring unblinking
eyes, and I went silent, and when I was only feet away from the
body I spotted Marple coming out of a building with a police
inspector.

It was incredible how similar the man was to
him and I wondered repeatedly if the killer had thought it was him,
as he was doing more than anyone to catch him, and could easily
have found out about it from all the publicity it had got.