Marple continued brushing away thick dirt from it and about it, while some crumbling bits of gray rot fell off the skeleton.
I grasped its hideous outline, and I stepped back wondering what the place was, and why it was there, and why everything I expected now kept turning out differently.
We checked everything we could in the cavity and found little, and a large boulder against a side wall, which looked mysterious, and out of place.
Eventually we started resting, and I rested near the skeleton, after making some close examinations of it, and I realized that if the large black boulder in front of it had fallen down and blocked the tunnel ahead that something could be behind it, and I started wondering what the hell could be there, and why they had been making human sacrifices.
Epilogue
Gigantic eruptions blasted out everywhere, woke us from our sleep, in unadulterated horror, with such force that with my eyes shut I thought I was in some form of early state of death.
When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but blinding light, and energy exploding out everywhere, threatening to do damage to the physical universe, and for some reason I imagined space and time going out for light years, going across vast reaches of space, and I wondered what the hell it was!
Echoes of our last conversations and occurrences, before we had gone to sleep, went through my mind as I tried to grasp what happened, and as I did my eyes altered to the unadulterated dazzling light, and I wondered where the hell the cave and cavity had gone, and I felt the ground beneath me with my feet, and I considered what could have happened, and looked about for my companion explorers, and saw their vague shapes further out.
The vast powers surrounding us were staggering and I wondered how we could escape alive, as surely we were still underground somewhere, and I started searching everywhere I could see, and saw that the cave and cavity had vanished, and all about me I realized I was surrounded by strange energy formations, energy formation, and I watched its energy in vast complex formations doing strange things, and some regions altering to other formations, as though reforming, and I watched Marple and Oswald examining it.
Away in the distance I incredibly saw a cavity wall, and I saw it going around us, which I measured it at around four miles away, going across our front, and the roof a few hundred feet above.
I realized if I was going to die that I was best being on my own, and having the others away at a distance, and I wondered if I would get what we were up against, and what we were actually investigating, and what had just happened.
After a long time I realized it had a definite state, and had been in another state, and it was close to completion, and I was surprised to see we were actually at its edge, with Marple and Oswald at two different positions at my side, and I tried to realize what it now was.
It had formed a perfect energy formation of some sort, clearly of transcendent origins, and pulsated in the center of it and the cavity, and I examined the rim of the cavity all round me and saw that it held, and never looked as though it would collapse.
I sensed something would happen and I saw it happen and an immense whirlpool of energy lines magically shifting around it, and I studied it for a long time fascinated and realized that it had no proper presence in this universe and was some form of force formation, perhaps going through many dimensions, and I saw signs of a vortex within it, and its energy patterns!
I suddenly realized the black boulder that had been blocking the cavity had been its edge, and subconscious region, in the dormant formation it had taken, and it had not actually been solid, and made of matter, and it had mixed rock atoms within it and over its edge to hide itself, and that it as the black boulder had actually stretched out for nearly four miles, under central London, and the cavity had been built in front of it, which I looked about behind me and saw, in the cavity wall there, and for some reason I realized I had actually activated it.
I was left staggered and recalled going to sleep beside it, and recalled touching it once and feeling a strange energy from it, and pulling away my hand, and I realized my touching it had done something and activated it.
I realized that I had seen it as the rock formation and a vague line in the last scan the scientists had taken in the cavity above, and that they had described it as something else.
I realized something in me had activated it, and revived it, and I sensed its communications with it, and I gasped at the vast complexity of it, and that it was exchanging information, and suddenly I realized it was in communication with the thing we had discovered under the building at Battlefield Road, which was in the basement in the museum, and I realized it had been part of it, and the lost section of it, which it had used for exploration, and it had been unable to leave the universe without it, and it had split itself into two, and the other half was far smaller than it in this universe, and it had put part of itself in me with the aim of locating it, and I realized that both parts of it had been trapped there, unable to do anything, and had been too far apart to detect each other in the state they had been in.
I also realized it had created a subconscious part of it, when it had gone dormant, and that it had created it to protect it and awaken it if it detected its other half, and it had been it that created the Santa and other formations, in its weakened state, from being activating and deactivating over vast amounts of time, and I realized it had been activated by McMurdo in the cavity at the underground railway line, and had been in its weakened state after being there for so long, and had been almost crazy, and had been protecting it, and was stopping people discovering it, and scaring them away.
In the past it attempted to discover what it needed and let people build tunnels, and it had created tunnels and cavities, and many had later been hidden or destroyed.
I realized that it had found a way to leave the universe to where it had come from, but it had never been able to go through with its plan, and I was left staggered at the sheer power and forces of it, and magnitude, and I realized it had even created humans to achieve its goal, from other species, and it had genetically altered them to advance.
It had originally been unable to even define what existed in this universe, and its first attempts at making and altering species were left in the cavity McMurdo uncovered, in suspended states, and many had been found on other worlds, in the depths of the universe, and it had determined humans would progress far enough to give it what it wanted, to complete its mission, and its subconscious state had helped humans progress.
It had detected humans creating plutonium atomic bombs and had realized they had enough power for it to leave the universe!
I recalled two of the scientists secretively talking about the atomic bombs, and the sheer power of them, and I recalled the army officer mention there had been a break in at their secret military bases, and that something had been taken, and I was sure they might have traced something to there, as its Santa entity had been detected being transmitted under the buildings, and it had later been traced to the cavity region.
I was left staggered by everything and at its real history, and that it had been trying to survive in this universe, and wanted to someday escape from its confines, and I was sure I sensed it react as it prepared itself to leave, as though it had thought of leaving, and escaping from its imprisonment and eventual destruction, and I thought of where it came from and I realized that I still never had a clue what was there and where it was.
Everything around me seemed to explode with energy and alter, reviving it, putting life back into it, and it pulsated furiously with more energy than it ever had since it arrived, and appeared on this desolate world, with its strange existence.