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 what 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.
What could it be? I was still at the start of the investigation! I considered everything, and only had the metal detector that had activated it, and that never added up to much.
After I was asleep later on the bed I awakened and realized I had missed something, while I had been asleep, and I watched the paranormal scientists and technicians rushing excitedly back and forward checking their equipment all over the woman’s outer corridor, and where the source had mainly been detected, and where I had activated the metal detector, and collapsed, and wondered what was going on, and I realized that they were about to activate their equipment, and braced myself.
When nothing happened I looked up and saw Oswald look into the room, and I wondered if anything had happened.
“Are you scanning below the building?” I asked.
“Yes!” he replied.
I gasped, and tried to detect any differences in the surrounding environment, and I jumped off the bed, and stood at the room entrance, and watched all the scientists standing around waiting for something, and I wondered what, and as I approached them I realized they had all been standing waiting for me, to continue and activate the equipment and experiment, and I wondered why.
When they activated it nobody reacted and barely noticed anything. My mind wandered through all the occurrences that had led up to its discovery.
Suddenly a vast unstable energy blast, which seemed to come from somewhere else, and not below, or from anywhere in the normal universe, and like it came from another outer dimension, and emerged all about the place, with so much force it threatened to warp space, and I went back to wondering what it really was and what damage it could do, and I watched parts of the equipment burst into flames, and the scientists quickly turning it all off and going crazy trying to put out flames.
I was happy it was over and nobody had been killed, and that they could not use the equipment.
Yet I noticed Orwell and Higgins and some other scientists were not concerned, and I saw them at the equipment, and a scientist holding a sheet of paper, and I moved over.
The scientist explained that the energy blast had damaged the equipment, as they had predicted, and their swift instantaneous scan of below the building had worked, and that they had used the instantaneous rough scan below, with a fast enough speed capable of checking there, before the equipment was damaged, and he showed us the sheet of paper with the rough scan, and at first I thought it had not worked as it looked like a blur of lines, but as I examined it further in more detail I grasped a strange image in it of an unusual formation.
Chapter 29
I stood blinded by the black abyss below me, as I searched into the depths of the tunnel, as though it led into some strange region of space, outside normal space, and I saw the stone steps below, which were the same as they had been in the tunnel going under the hospital, which had been accurately made.
They were in a hole, below the woman’s hall, at the exact point the occurrences had originated, and it had been uncovered by the archeologists, with help from the scientists, who were all standing along the hall in a line, with the woman standing at the end, with them all standing with their mouths partially open, with a slight look of horror, waiting for me to descend down into its depths, and I knew I was the chosen one.
I gripped my light, and shifted down the stone steps, looking for any obstacles ahead, and moved a little faster, and watched their faces vanish behind me as I went down, and saw the two paranormal scientists enter behind me, and the others watch as the three of us descended, and left them behind, and I wondered what the hell I had done and if I would someday regret what I had done.
At a point deep below I heard scientists, which seemed magnified by the tunnel, as they conferred on what was below, after so much they had found so little so far, and they had been arranging the exploration of it for a long time, and I had been unchallenged in going down, and the scientists and archeologists had insisted, and had done everything to help.