The Alien Artifact 9 (Novelette) (2 page)

He had
been
unraveling something for some considerable time
and I went over it considering if he had deliberately disguised
facts throughout his message, and if he was after something
else.

Chapter 2

My First
Investigation

All I had been given was that an elderly
woman had witnessed something unusual in the night, while going to
bed, and there seemed to me no case to investigate and no crime had
been committed, and nothing seemed to suggest anything, and I went
to the client confused and repeatedly going over the document I was
given, which consisted of nothing but a few paragraphs about a few
lines she had given the agency, and I came to the conclusion that
she might have stopped an attempted burglary and wanted me to
secretively handle the problem.

What could she have confronted at night in
the hall of her ground floor tenement flat that could have caused
her to seek such dramatic action?

The location was in the south of the city at
Craigmillar Road in Langside, and when I entered I expected little.
It was my first mission! And when I saw and talked to the elderly
woman I realized she had recently become a widow, and was on her
own there, and realized that she had encountered something that she
believed was of a paranormal nature, but which was of the strangest
nature that I had witnessed in all my encounters, and from
everything I had ever heard of.

Surely if she had fantasized something it
would be of a normal ghost, but it was far stranger, and I had to
try to deduce what she meant by what she told me, and I then had
her give me accurate descriptions of the visitation, or whatever
she thought it was, and it gave me nothing and it left me
confused.

She was not ill, or had taken anything, and
had not had previous hallucinations, and still she insisted
something had started to appear there, in her ground floor flat, at
the same time it grew dark, and she claimed it floated over her
hall floor, and its movement suggested it was doing something.

In the end I was so engrossed in discovering
what would happen, and in the unusual case, I accepted her offers
of staying to see it, and was given a bedroom to stay in, and was
surprised that she insisted I should consider the occurrence after
it happened, to give her advice, for when I met her in the morning
at breakfast.

Chapter 3

The Haunting

For a moment I thought something of enormous
danger could occur on the investigation, but I could not believe
such a thing could happen on my first case for starters, and it had
not occurred to any of the other investigators, and how could
anything happen with such a case! It was absurd!

Yet I wanted to know what it was she was
talking about, and placed a seat at the door of the bedroom and
left the door partly opened, just enough to see the hallway, and
entire area where she told me she had seen it, and I sat reading a
book, and started to realize why she could have imagined something
in the dark there, on her own, and then I started to see sense and
that she might have some form of medical condition that could have
caused her to observe something.

What really astonished me was the fact that
she arrived near the time the occurrences had taken place and
apologized to me for something, and handed me a book, to which I
believed she had given me as she felt sorry for me, leaving me
there doing nothing, in the dark, with her elaborate plan, whatever
it was, and I considered if she intended to use the story of the
occurrences for somewhere for some reason.

Then when I started to read the book I sat
back staggered, as the book was full of ghost stories! They were
supposedly real accounts, which had been written like they had
authentically occurred, and I started to believe she had it in for
me, and realized it could be part of her plan to persuade me there
was something there, and I even considered helping her fabricate it
at one point, as she might need it.

Though after flicking through the pages,
trying to see what was there, I was left even more staggered as
there were accounts of occurrences actually taking place in the
same region.

There were accounts claiming
ancient
inhabitants of
the region had seen alarming evil mysterious magical forces and
transcendent things dwelling there, which I could not grasp the
identity of.

It grabbed my attention that the place had
not always been a city region, centuries ago, and it sent a chill
through me as I thought what could be buried away there.

There was an
old newspaper account that reported and warned the readers of
unexplained ancient occurrences, and one of the worst of the
detailed accounts told of travelers that had come upon the
mutilated remains of gypsies left in pieces in the region by some
hideous occurrence, with their remains scattered throughout a wood
nearby, and others of people being attacked and chased by things
with fearful sounds.

Upon reading
it with fascination my eyes fell upon something in corridor, which
I had seen but had ignored, as I was engrossed in it, and I stared
at it for almost a minute trying to recognize it but was unable to
form an image of what was there, and what I was looking at, as it
had no real form, and the darkness and my tiredness never allowed
my mind to come to a conclusion.

It was the
woman’s appearance there that brought me to, and she stood behind
the door, out in the hallway, and I could say little, and she
quickly entered my room and closed the door, and turned on the
light.

After
questioning her again about it, with me this time realizing that
there was something there, I asked what she had been doing before
its appearance, and if she had done something that could have
caused its appearance, and she considered everything and was at a
loss.

I then asked
her if she had done anything anywhere that she had not done
before!

For a long
time she thought it over and came up with something!

The only thing
she had been doing, which she could recall, was she had been using
a metal detector, which she had borrowed off a friend, who had
given it to her as she had lost her old wedding ring, and she could
not find it anywhere.

While using
it, searching for it, she had found a small hole in the floor and
carpet, and she had taken up the floorboards under the carpet and
had used it to examine all the heaps of rubble, dirt, and building
remains below for it, and she had found the ring, but the metal
detector stopped working, but was working again the next day.

I asked her
when the occurrences had started and she eventually told me that it
had appeared there that night.

So I asked her
if she still had the metal detector and she took me into her living
room and removed it from a box, behind her sofa, and I examined it
and I realized how expensive it was, and that it was powerful!

It was then
that I was sure the thing in the hall could be affected by it, and
that I could solve the case by using it on it, and perhaps get rid
of it, as I was sure ghosts might be affected by such forces.

Once I found
out how to use it and its controls I went out into the hall with
it, and prepared myself, and waited for the woman to turn it on at
the mains, and I was so fascinated with the ghost or whatever it
was I marched towards it trying grasp any detail in it that I could
recognize, but I could not get anything, and up close it looked
like a mass of red energy being generated by something, and to my
amazement it exploded into a frenzy of activity, and I realized the
metal detector had been switched on, and at that point I collapsed
across the floor, unconscious.

Chapter 4

The Home Guard

Everything seemed to look weird and somehow
unbelievable, and I studied everywhere trying to grasp what, and I
kept recalling the moments before I collapsed and awakened in bed
in the morning, wondering what the hell happened.

I was sure it damaged my brain and I had a
bad time recalling things. I could not think of what to do and if I
should try to help the woman further, but it was ridicules as I had
never heard of such an occurrence, and never mind what the solution
was, and I wondered if I had blown my first case, and I decided to
ignore it and hope the woman never asked Marple for further
help.

I wanted to join the Home Guard, even though
I could not recall wanting to do it before, after I saw an advert
looking for part time Home Guard soldiers, and realized I could fit
it into my schedule.

I had immediately gone there, and sat bored
in the Home Guard office waiting room, sitting on my own, with some
faint sounds behind the office door in front of me, where I assumed
I was to be interviewed, and I started wondering what I was about
to do and how deadly this war could become, as if the Germans
invaded it would equivalent to being on the frontline, and I was
also getting desperate for answers and wondering repeatedly if I
had received damage to his mind, and realized that I would be
checked by an army doctor at some point and realized I could have
him properly check me out.

I felt different somehow and I could not
grasp what and stood and started checking myself, and feeling my
head for damage where I collapsed and hit the floor, and realized
the woman could have covered up me hitting something when I
collapsed, as she would have felt responsible for it, and I started
examining my whole body, trying to see how it functioned to me
doing things, and I started jumping up and down and waving my arms
about, and examined my legs, and they responded, and I did a
handstand and noticed my body was weak and seemed to move
differently than I intended, and I partially looked upwards and saw
a large shadow shift across the floor, and saw someone standing
over me, in front of me.

An officer was standing staring at me
crazily.

“
What in the hell are you
doing?
”
the
sergeant shouted, and I collapsed over the floor.

“
I’m starting to get out of shape
sitting in here!” I moaned.

He stood staring insanely, and not believing
anything, and clearly thinking I was someone else.

“
God help us!” he shouted. “If this is
all we get …”

“
This is the Home Guard?” I swiftly
replied, trying to look normal.

“
Well it surely isn’t the boy Scouts!”
he moaned. “Yes! We’re the Local Defence Volunteers!”

He ordered me into the front office, and I
knew I was in the army, and I sat in a seat at the desk and waited
for an officer to come. Then I wondered what the hell I was doing
there!

An officer entered, looked through a form
about me, which I had filled in and handed in at the entrance
office.

“
Captain Godfrey!” he announced. “And
that’s Sergeant Clooney my deputy officer.”

Clooney sat in the seat beside me, in front
of the captain’s desk, and watched us both, and the captain shuffle
through his stuff.

“
We’re putting together a group of
soldiers because of the war and you look suitable …” he announced,
examining information on him. “So you’re a private
investigator?”

Clooney looked sideways in surprise, and
examined me over again, differently.

Suddenly the phone blared out and the
captain picked it up and instantly realized who it was and launched
into an argument with the person, and shouted not to phone him
there unless it was an emergency, and thumped the phone down.

He glanced over and gasped, stopped what he
was doing and examined me up close and looked straight into my face
as if he suddenly saw something he did not want to see and could
not fully grasp, and continued studying me.

“
Your face it’s familiar!” he moaned,
and he started tapping his finger hard against the desk, and tried
to grasp something.

“
I want to ask you a few
questions!
” he finally
asked.

I sat upright and waited.

“
Why do you want to join the army,
Malone?
”
he
asked firmly, studying me with confusion, and he started sipping
tea from a cup.

“
I can
’
t remember!
”

“
What?”
he loudly gasped, also coughing up the tea in his mouth. “What
can’t you remember?”

“
I have
had an accident recently and have had some memory loss!” I
confessed, and suddenly wondered why I had done it, and sat
depressed.

The captain
seemed to alter somehow, and he suddenly grew interested in me, and
seemed to want me.

“
Okay!
You’ve had a recent misfortune! Perhaps caused by this blasted war!
But surely you can make a rough guess as to why?”

Clooney stood
up and went over and got a cup of tea, and sat back down, and
sipped it and watched us both.

“
I can
’
t really remember at
all!
”
I
moaned, and made Clooney gasp and cough out all the tea in his
mouth, blasting it all across his front, and he instantly started
cleaning it up.

When I offered to help clean it
Godfrey screamed,
“
Leave it!
”

After
resting and calming himself he looked over, and he finally asked,
“
Why do you think people join the
army?
”