The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette) (12 page)

“
So there are incredible valuable and
historical jewels hidden somewhere … Do you believe they’re under
the hospital?”

“
At first I thought it could be there!
There were two marks!”

“
What about all the tunnels and the
cavity …”

“
That is something else! It is far
more advanced technology, and it was all recently built
…”

“
What happened next?”

“
I think someone took the jewels off
him! And he could have died! Or at a slightly later time used the
map to find them and move them to another safer location nearby …
Where he had intended to get them!”

“
Was there another mark on the
treasure map?” I gasped, and stared at him intensely.

“
I think the person, surely a
relative, in fear of his life, took them to the safest place he
knew, and marked it on the map, with different writing, in a
different style, which faded, and he hid it somewhere near the
house you were investigating, with the supposed haunting
…”

“
As the place is marked about
there?”

“
Correct! Which is why I want your
paranormal scientists to investigate there! You’ll need the
archeologists ...”

Chapter 27

The Killer

At a lane between two buildings we rested
against a wall waiting for the killer, who was predicted to arrive
by Marple, and he stood puffing away at his pipe, now tired of it,
predicting the killer’s arrival, and I wondered how he knew he
would arrive, and at that time, but he would not tell me, and I
gasped when I saw someone pass a house window going somewhere, and
thought of hiding, but Marple ignored it.

Although, a few minutes later, he jumped
upright, as he spotted something, fully alert, and scrambling
movements and panic-stricken curses came from the house we were
monitoring, a house across a road at the end of the lane, and in
the darkness of the lane we watched a dark figure rush out the
building, and enter another lane beside the house, and the police
came racing out of their cars and started chasing him.

As we ran after them, keen to catch and
discover the identity of the killer, a man rushed out the house he
had been in, shaken and holding a handgun, and saw he was gone and
put it away inside.

I could not believe how accurate Marple had
predicted the killer’s attack at the house, and I realized the
killer might be getting away, and that we might not get the chance
to catch him again, and I watched Marple and the others realize it
and run after him, and I ran with them, as more and more police
cars came racing in everywhere, with their sirens blaring at full
blast.

The police clearly believed that they were
chasing the killer, and I realized where he was heading, and
towards a nearby cemetery, and I saw his dark shape in the distance
rushing there, as other figures shifted towards him.

At another street Marple told a policeman
getting out a police car that the killer was going to arrive a the
other side of the cemetery, and he rushed back in his vehicle, and
we rushed up to the vehicle and he let us in the back seat, and it
raced away.

At the other side of the cemetery there were
blue lights flashing everywhere and it was lighting the cemetery
up, and we looked everywhere for him, and for who had been chasing
him, and the vehicles that had arrived there first, and saw that
they did not know where he had gone.

He surely had not entered the cemetery and
had taken another route beside it, where nobody would have seen
where he had gone, and their faces started to look frantic and
worried, and they decided to search all the buildings, and as I
followed Marple to a nearby building I suddenly recognized it, and
it was the back of the Home Guard building where I was a soldier
at, where I had joined up, and I was surprised to spot a light
flash on inside, and I realized it was from a torch, and I knew the
killer had a torch, and I told Marple.

It was worse than I had imagined, as I knew
we would be confronting him indoors, instead of the police making a
quick outside arrest, and I watched Marple get the police, and they
all started silently rushing about outside, getting into hiding
places, and two were in the cars, contacting the rest of the
police.

I wondered what the motive was, and if it
was valuable jewels or he had been doing something else.

My eyes stayed on the place the light had
appeared, searching for him, waiting for him, to take a quick look
out, or attempt to attack us or escape, and I realized that the
police had entirely surrounded the building and that we had him,
and I guessed he never knew where we were.

When a policeman started going to a door I
decided to join him, as I knew the layout of the inside of the
building, and as I approached him Marple followed me there, and I
considered all the options open to us. I then realized that the
policeman had something to unlock the door, and silently opened it
up, and we slowly climbed in, and heard him inside a room.

The policeman removed a handgun, and we
waited for the others to appear, and we stood listening to someone
inside the room breathing heavily.

By their reactions I was sure that they did
not have a clue what they were dealing with, and that they had not
seen the place before. They were in a dark hallway, just outside
the room, at night, within the grounds of an army base, and they
were chasing a vicious serial killer.

At the side of my eyes I spotted
traces of shoe marks from him, and his shoes were wet, and I traced
them going into the room
and I stood amazed as the policeman silently pushed open
the door and crept in, and my face turned pale as I waited for
bullets to go smashing into his body, and I looked in and the other
police moved in beside me, and stood beside me with their loaded
guns facing inside, into its dark interior.

I slowly faced
the blackness at the corner of the room, where there was someone
rolled up in ball in the corner, and we waited for him to do
something, as we searched for his gun.

The policeman
that had opened the door stood frozen, holding his gun out at the
faintly visible black figure.

My heart rate
exploded, beating faster than I had felt it beat in a long time,
and I was still standing doing it when Marple removed his gun and
pointed it at him, and turned the light on.

As seconds
passed I watched the figure lifelessly remain there, rolled up in
ball in the corner, and I was sure he had done something to
himself, and he could be dead.

I spotted a
trail of blood across the floor, in drips, going straight up to
him.

We strolled
up, not shining their torches directly at the killer, wondering who
the hell it could be, and who could have had the entire police
force after him for so long.

W
hen he turned I was dumbstruck, and even wondered where the
real killer had gone, and I recognized the room, and Captain
Godfrey’s main office, and realized I had not noticed it because we
had entered through the back of the Home Guard office, and at
night, where I had not been before, and had been so obsessed with
what was happening to recognize it.

It was Captain
Godfrey’s office and it was Captain Godfrey on the floor in the
corner, and I realized that it was not the killer, and I realized I
had blown it again, and I should not have directed them over to the
army base, and realized that he must have been tired after working
there late and had gone to sleep in the corner, with an old blanket
wrapped about his waist.

He stared at
me in horror and started getting up, and shouted furiously, “You
again! You’re fired! I kicked you out the army!”

All the
policemen stopped pointing their guns at him, realizing that it was
the wrong person, and I watched him almost fall over, and gasped,
as he was holding an injury he had received from something, which
he had recently received, and he attempted to grab his gun off the
ground below him, and the police all pointed their guns at him, and
one grabbed his gun.

Chapter 28

The Scan

What astonished me was after everything that
had happened I had not really solved anything of what had happened
to me at Craigmillar Road or in the hospital shaft, and what the
black sphere was below the hospital, or what the powers I had were,
and I could not grasp what would happen next, as every unsolved
puzzle and mystery that had happened seemed to emerge at the one
time, and Marple, who had forced me into going there, had not
answered anything and had denied the existence of anything, and had
phoned me and ordered me to carry out his mission.

I sensed
that there was something there in the
Craigmillar Road
house the minute I reached the door, and it had not been anywhere
as powerful as it, even at the hospital, and I was now certain of
it, and I sensed
that
all the exploration association scientists and paranormal
scientists that accompanied me there were not saying something, and
it was something powerful, and something deep.

I knew I would
have to wait for them to give it to me, and I kept wondering if we
were in great danger, and which I had felt chasing the killer, and
I allowed the scientists to set up their equipment there again, but
this time with the equipment from in the hospital shaft, which had
found the tunnel, and would scan below the building, as Marple had
insisted, and I gasped at what the metal detector had done, and
even started thinking of ways to protect myself from the forces it
could generate.

I eventually
relaxed on the bed in my room there, and recalled the case of the
killer, and how astonished I was that it was Captain Godfrey, and I
was astonished when Marple that morning had told me who he really
was.

Marple
had discovered that all the killer’s victims had one thing in
common and that they had all fought in the
First World
War, and he had found out that they had all been in the same army
division, and had fought together, and massive amounts of their
comrades had been killed, and Marple had traced all the surviving
members, and there were only two left.

Captain
Godfrey had been German, and a German soldier before he had moved
to Scotland, and he had entirely changed his identity, to hide his
past, and other killings in Germany, and Marple had discovered that
Godfrey had a brother, who had moved to Scotland too, who had
served in the same division, and that he had been killed, which
Godfrey had admitted to the police, and he blamed the other
soldiers for his death, and believed that they had actually killed
him, after their discovery of him being German, but what they never
knew was he was his brother.

The war with
Germany had revived what had happened, and he had used his
experience and knowledge of how the police worked, and used it to
destroy the soldiers.

The newspapers
had the story all over the front pages, with Marple being named as
a chief investigator, and the man who had solved the case, and he
was receiving numerous calls and new cases, and I realized that he
intended to expand the business, and increase the amount of
investigators.

Everything was
perfect, except this case, and what was there!

While I rested
on the bed I considered what could happen next and I listened to
Oswald and the other scientists consulting with each other and
making an agreement, which I missed and tried to work out from what
I heard!

It was
incredible as I recalled things they had been saying earlier, and
that I had not picked up properly at the time, and realized what
they were doing, and that they were even increasing the power of
the scan, and I wondered what the hell that would do, as it had
been powerful enough in the hospital, and I started seeing the
dangers of it again, and thought of going somewhere else, and
returning after they had done it, to survive.

For some
reason the scientists seemed not to want me to be involved in their
discussion and what was occurring, and I believed it was to do with
my earlier worries of what could happen, and I realized Oswald had
said something about it to them. So I decided just to use it and
stay out their way, in the background, and observe what was going
on.

I could
not grasp what would happen, and I did not know what was there, and
w
hat was incredible was I realized that they had read
my report on the occurrence in the building with the metal detector
and what had happened and they had entirely missed what had
occurred, and what I had meant, and I could not explain it any
further to them what had happened, and they never seemed to think
anything had happened, and I realized again that I could not
properly explain what was there, as I never knew what was
there.

Marple had once had a great interest in
investigating the paranormal, which he never believed in, and
consistently explained logical solutions to everything easily,
which I and the others investigators normally did, but he was far
more experienced and determined, and I realized that I had to find
something of that nature to prove something existed.

The elderly woman, and owner of the house,
was glad to see me again, and did everything to welcome us, and not
put me off the case, and at her dinner I discussed the case and she
told me what had been happening since I left and she told me that
the haunting had decreased occurring, especially since we started
work at the hospital, and neighbors had also admitted it.