The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette)

by V Bertolaccini

  He nodded in agreement, and examined my face a little more.

  For a moment I considered there being a danger in the treasure hunt, and why he wanted my assistance, and I also wondered why it would still exist, and doubted the value of the objects, and waited patiently.

  What I knew was that I had been given a major clue to its location and I wondered if he wanted me to determine where it was, to see if we came to the same conclusion.

  I got out a recent map of the region and studied it in detail, and he watched on with curiosity, and I watched him open the document Dr Barrymore had when he had first met us, and told us of the treasure.

  He examined the ancient tattered piece of parchment with a magnify glass, where there were lines and words scribbled over it, as though the writer had been doing something and was in a great rush to finish it!

  “So it’s a verified 1568 map?” I asked, and he nodded, and continued to try to grasp what it meant.

  Marple finished examining it and placed it on the table, and looked over and asked, “So you want to know what’s on the map? I’ve had it rechecked and it is Langside, and the area you’ve been working in …”

  I realized it was there, but it never gave the proper location, and there was only a mark of something on it, which I was sure was something that was not part of the landscape.

  “The paranormal investigators phoned earlier and they asked you to join them in their investigation of the hospital.”

  “You want me to join them working there and to search for it?”

  “Yes! I’d like you to search for it, when you do, and to phone me with anything of interest, or for information!”

  Chapter 15

  The Shaft

  I was staggered at the deadliness of it altering in magnitude or something was playing tricks with me and it was being magnified!

  Sounds were unidentifiable and I realized that I was observing another form of the encounter! This time it was far different than the last. Even though I had collapsed and went unconscious at the last occurrence, when I had activated the metal detector.

  What was going on! The world about me seemed to be going crazy! The war was accelerating on and the Home Guard I was in was being activated more for a potential attack. Marple was going crazy trying to capture the killer, with his ultimate challenge, and all the investigators were pursuing every lead.

  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.

  The dead man had been viciously beaten to death, and I stood wondering what the hell the killer was up to anyway.

  Could it have been caused by the war or it indirectly?

  What was the motive? Why had all the people been killed?

  There was no connection between them!

  Police inspector looked annoyed at not having the case solved, and by the fact they had virtually nothing on the killer, and it looked as if they would never do it now.

  Marple swiftly handed me a sheet of paper with information about the death and deaths, and I started to read it, and studied the crumpled body as someone lifted the body, and I realized that it was a reporter from the sheet of paper, and I wondered if I knew him, and I studied his face.

  I examined the complexion of the frozen body, drained of blood, and from the expressions of people behind nearby windows I realized how dangerous it made the place.
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br />   I wondered if the reporter had discovered something, and knew that Marple would be investigating him and questioning people he knew trying to find what he had been doing before his death.

  I attempted to work out the exact time that it could have occurred, and where I had been, and was sure it could have occurred at night, and I wondered if I should take it as a warning from what had been at the hospital. Yet I could not be sure, as all the facts added up to it not being, and nothing actually suggested it actually was.

  Locals that passed in the distance could not understand what was happening, and people nearby seemed slightly shocked, and I spotted what looked like marks on the ground where the reporter had tried to crawl away in his last seconds of life.

  “Who would want to shoot him?” I asked the inspector, frustrated at not seeing anything suggesting an answer, and not being able to stay silent any longer.

  “What worries me more than anything,” the inspector muttered back to Marple, with confusion, “is that I don’t have a clue!”

  “They’ll find something!” Marple assured him, confidently, and I realized he had to have something, and I was surprised the inspector reacted in the same way.

  Chapter 17

  The Army

  Everything seemed to be edging into disaster, especially the war, and the killer not found, and the disturbances at the hospital and house, and what had happened in the shaft, and strange occurrences emerged, and this time seemed to gain power!

  At the Home Guard headquarters I was left with the other recruits and my attempt to tell them what happened failed, and most put my memory deficiency down to drink, as they drank a lot themselves, and in the end I went along with it, and Godfrey and Clooney thought it was.