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 shockwave, from deep below, and somewhere else, like another dimension, emerged all about the place, with so much force it threatened to smash the cavity, and I recalled the earthquake and McMurdo’s warnings and I went back to wondering what it really was and what damage it could do, and I watched parts of the equipment explode into flames, and the scientists quickly turning it all off and putting it out.
When it was over I was glad to be alive, and that nobody had been killed, and the cavity and roof overhead had not come crashing down on top of us, and I was happy they could not use the equipment again.
Yet I noticed Orwell and Higgins and some other scientists were unconcerned, and I saw them at the equipment, searching through the recorded data, and a scientist had removed a sheet of paper, and they went around him, and I moved over to them.
From what they said I gathered that they believed something was stopping them from seeing what was really below and that their swift instantaneous scan of below had been so fast they had been able to get an unaltered view, and that they had used an instantaneous rough scan, before the equipment was damaged, and they showed us the sheet of paper with the rough scan, and in the blurred image I spotted strange images and forms of tunnels that had not been there before.
Chapter 21
The Mist Visitation
On our way back to Reality Investigations’s headquarters Marple surprised me by telling me that the scan had been his idea and he had asked the paranormal scientists to do it, and had done it to search for the rest of the tunnel, and if they should uncover it, and he left it there, and I realized he had a certain happiness and I knew he had something.
Later while I walked home I saw a strange look to the streets, which at first I thought was my tiredness, but I then noticed the place looked far emptier than I had seen them about that time and I wondered if something had happened, or if it was some event, and tried to recall the date and anything happening.
It was incredible I felt like I was the last person to set foot on the Earth, and watched a thin fog engulf the area, and realized it was the famous London fog, and I watched it thicken around me, and I just thought of it as part of my hazy tired vision and felt like going to sleep early that night.
It was like seeing another time in the past, and I expected to see ancient people in their ancient clothing.
Fog rapidly engulfed me and thickened up until I had barely any sight of anything left.
It was shocking how easily I lost my way there, and realized I could be stuck there for hours.
I was sure that I was somewhere else at times, and I occasionally saw through gaps in the thick fog and saw distant regions of strange places. Yet I stuck to the same route and never altered direction, and I wondered if I could get out of it by going back and remaining there until it went away, but I realized it was now everywhere.
Out of nowhere I saw a powerful light’s emergence through thinner mist and watched its radiance pulsating like an entity, magically illuminating the fog around it everywhere, and I stopped and studied it, wondering what the hell it was, and watched strange shadow formations around it, which I could not see what they were from, from things I could not see, and I just took it that it was an optical illusion and tried to work out what they were from the shadow shapes, and watched their mind-bending shapes shifting and weaving, and probed their way around.
In the distance I heard sounds like some form of animal was there, causing them, buried away deep in the fog, and I wondered if it was a real animal reacting to the sudden blinding mist.
For a short time I moved away, blindly through the fog, and stopped when I heard humans and thought I saw them shifting through thin areas of mist, and was surprised to see them, but as dark ghostly figures, and stood wondering what they were doing, as they looked strange, and like ancient people.
For one moment they looked as if they spotted me, and observing me, wondering what I was doing, and I just ignored them and moved on, and later they reappeared and their sounds were angry, and that there were people having a confrontation with someone or something, and they grew silent.
Later out of nowhere I saw people with their limbs missing or hanging from them, and wondered what had happened, and the mist seemed to separate at the same time, and I saw their features clearly and stood staggered as I realized they were zombies, and I also saw strange unearthly creatures.
The zombies turned barely human looking, and looked like something else altered to look like them, and were barely human looking, and I rushed over to one and was about to throw it on the ground to examine it closely and realized it was like the Santa that had been emerging in the houses, and scaring and killing people, and I rushed away, wondering how we could handle them.
While I moved away from them and thought more clearly about what was happening the fog thinned more and more and I recognized the route home, and moved away, and realized something deadly had been occurring there.
It was like being in someone else’s dream and I started to spot an immense shadow spread right through an area of the fog, where sounds exploded out!
I was tired and sleepy and stared blankly, at the dark shape shifting about through the mist, and I realized I still had not found any conclusions to what was occurring or was there, or back at the cavity, and was sure I was missing something, which was there but I just had not grasped, and I saw a colossal ghost demon shape float through the last of the mist, before it vanished.
Chapter 22
The Natural History Museum
The Natural History Museum captivated me as I made my way through the exhibitions eating a meal, and I thought of staying longer, and was surprised when I spotted the exhibition of one of the life forms from the cavity and its glowing shape under the bright lights, and people standing around it speechless.
While I had been returning to the cavity that morning I saw all the newspapers and headlines with amazement and were of ghost and zombie formations appearing all over London out of a mysterious fog cloud.
I was staggered to read of deaths occurring, and people having been found mutilated, and there was a major police and army investigation presence, and I was amazed to see the army on the streets in armed military vehicles, and wondered what the connection of the incidences were, and in one newspaper I had seen the exploration association scientists and archeologists had one of the life forms in the cavity put in the Natural History Museum, and I had rushed over to see it.
It was incredible, as it looked nothing like the prehistoric creature it was described as, and I stood glaring at it in amazement, and laughed at it, and studied it over and over trying to grasp some vague unseen detail to it, and I realized it was the only time I had properly seen it up close in proper light, and without the muck covering it, and I realized this one was of the early Earth as it did have some characteristics and features of it, but it seemed like some form of mutant, and looked like a hideous monster when viewed at angles.
How the thing even survived left me confounded, as I never seen any form of mouth or anything, and I wondered what the museum had made of it, and why they had put it there, and I recalled the influence of the members of the exploration association, and I realized that the newspaper had suggested it might only be a temporary exhibition, and I continued to march around it, before tourists and other visitors arrived, as I had to grasp something about it, and I even thought lives could be at stake as it be could of great danger, or what was in the cavity could be, and there might be a connection between them, and where they originated from, and what their origins were.
I stood, staggered, wondering what the hell it was! And what strange place had it come from!
What wonders of the universe could exist out there in space? Where had it come from?
I imagined space and mind-bending visions of worlds, and o
f a turquoise ocean of a world with a wild crazy rotation, and a long mass stretching out, and imagined the life form’s greenish shape darting about through the sea of chemicals.
Yet there was no proof it was from anywhere else, and there could easily have been similar strange conditions on this world very early on, when the surface of the world was turning solid.
I stood fixed there, and finally moved away from it, and watched crowds of tourists, from all across the world, approach it with astonishment. Unable to recognize what it was. Where it came from. If it was real or put there by the museum.
The atmosphere was breathtaking! Its visitors almost always tried in vain to bestow logical explanations to explain its incredible lifelike features, and I realized there that I had to solve the case, and investigate what was there.
Chapter 23
The Tunnels
While I was returning to the cavity I watched the army at work on the streets and tried to see what they were doing, and searching for, and in military vehicles, and wondered what they expected to discover, and if they believed the things were humans.
I strolled down the underground railway line and saw army personnel leaving there, and at the top of the cavity I entered the elevator wondering what was happening.
I was surprised to see the military below, and armed, and I wondered what happened, and I saw Marple talking to the head of the military, and wondered if they went there or they had called them in for something, and I realized it was probably both.
The whole cavity was full of activity, and things had clearly been occurring, with something new, and I realized I had nearly missed something, and had luckily arrived when I had.
At the bottom I watched the paranormal scientists and technicians rushing excitedly back and forward checking equipment all over the place, and I tried questioning them but got little, and wondered what was going on, and I soon realized that they were about to activate new equipment they had brought in to scan precise areas below the ground, and I braced myself, and watched Marple, and wondered what he thought the zombie and ghost formations were, and knew he had an explanation, and I was amazed from what the soldiers said and that there were sightings of ghost, zombie, and creatures formations there, and I realized that the Santa formations had been connected to there all along, and I realized that they had detected them appearing from there.
The military head officer talking to Marple amazed me, and his accounts of the occurrences were astonishing, and surprised Marple, and he occasionally laughed at them, and I overheard his conversation with another officer over attacks at highly confidential military bases, and the theft of large amounts of a highly confidential deadly high explosive material, and that the whole of the military was searching for its whereabouts.
It was incredible as the scientists at their laboratories at the military bases claimed the ghostly formations had been sighted and something had taken it from them, and the military officers insisted it was someone who had used it to take it.
They wished to investigate things further there, and if they had found something, and had heard of the occurrences with McMurdo and the earthquake, and wanted to solve what had happened.
Yet nobody seemed to know what was behind it, and it seemed to be the source of the occurrences, and it was getting dangerous!
I tried to detect any differences in the surrounding environment, and I silently gasped when I noticed some of the life forms the archeologists had uncovered had moved to new positions again, and looked as if they had at one point attempted to do something.
I stood with my mouth partly open trying grasp what the hell they were and if they had come alive, and how the hell they would handle it there, and it felt as if some incredible event was going to occur, or was starting to occur.
I watched all the scientists standing around waiting for something to happen, viewing things differently now, and I realized many were standing near particular places and watching some archeologists actively digging deep into the ground.
Suddenly Marple approached me and showed me the cleaned up scan they got beneath the cavity, and showed me what looked like tunnels below there.
Yet many were faint tunnels that had collapsed, and he showed where the archaeologists were digging and that there was a tunnel below, and I realized they were on to something, and trying to enter it.
I realized it went in the same direction as the tunnel we had followed, but the view of all the tunnels was muddled and I could not see where they were going, and why none of them seemed to lead anywhere, and it looked like something had been removed from it.
Suddenly a vast unstable energy shockwave, from deep below, somewhere, blasted out and vanished, with such force it threatened to smash the cavity, and some rocks fell down across the ground in areas.
I recalled the earthquake and McMurdo’s warnings and I wondered what the hell it really was, and what really was going to happen, and I watched parts of the equipment explode and burst into flames nearby, and scientists quickly turning everything that was undamaged off, while gasping at the power of it.
When it was over many looked glad to be still alive and that nobody had been killed, and that the cavity and roof overhead had not come crashing down on top of them, and most were happy that they could not use the equipment again.
The major scientists were only concerned in what they had found, and I saw them searching through the recorded data, and I moved over to see it.
From what I gathered was that they believed something was stopping them from seeing what was really below and that the new instantaneous scan still showed little that they had not previously seen, and that they had to search below themselves to find it, and I spotted strange reactions from the archaeologists who were digging down to the tunnel, and I saw them starting to break through into what was below.
Chapter 24
The Lost Ancient Tunnels
White radiance streaked through clouds of dust in the cave from Marple’s bright torch as I shifted down, and Oswald climbed down, and we shifted away into the tunnel, startled at what we were doing, and how far we were going.
Nobody else wanted to join us, and the people who never thought it was too dangerous had no reason to enter it, and only the three of us had firm enough objectives to check it.
It was incredible! I was glad to even see spiders and webs hanging from the rocks, and going over me, as we strolled on through, entering its dark confines, as it seemed so deadly and hideous, with demons lurking in its dark regions.
Once I thought I saw something watching us, from behind us, in the darkness, and carefully listened behind me, for anything, and the slightest clue of it being real.
It surprise me when the tunnel changed direction, and took us in the opposite directions, and I wondered why, as the people who had built surely would have built it straight lines, and we found another cave below, where its roof and our floor had caved in, and we entered the cave below.
When we entered it I sensed something strange, as though there was something else there, and that we were getting closer to where we wanted to go, and I was surprised at the new cave as it was made far better, and had clearly been made by someone else.
It was in a long straight tunnel going downwards and my dreamy sight probed into its confines, and into an abyss going deep into the ground, and I watched silky dust fall down from the roof and blow about in light beams, and the unmarked dust on the ground as we rushed on.
Faint echoes of our noises and breathing could be heard in its extraordinary silence, and I wondered where it led to, and what we were doing, and what the outcome would be.
It was incredible at one point I felt like we were the only people alive, and I was surprised to see a thin fog in an area ahead, and I watched it hover there, and could not grasp why it was there, and wondered if it was gas, and was surprised that Marple just ignored it and marched straight through it, and I realized there was no smell from it, and saw it was little.
It was like enteri
ng another time in the past, and expected to see ancient tunnel builders, in their ancient clothing!
I was confused by its length and wondered why it went so deep, and why the builders had gone there for whatever it was.
Out of nowhere I saw a powerful light appear and vanish ahead, and we stopped and studied there, and Marple wondered what it was, and we eventually ignored it.
Later I started to realize the dangers, and if what was there was the same as the killer Santa, and I realized we should not do anything, and ignore it, and I realized whatever it was it had been attempting to copy things, and it was as though it could not properly grasp what it was copying, and I recalled McMurdo’s warning, and his belief it was the devil!
Chapter 25
The End of the Tunnel
In dimness at the front of us, just in the light’s range, I watched dim gleams from things in the stone reflect dim light, playing with my hazy tired sight.
Faint echoes of breathing and occasional murmurs could be heard in its extraordinary silence, and by Marple’s sudden frantic reactions I sensed that he believed that something was actually ahead, and I wondered what.
I watched the light probe what was there, and it beamed out over a circular cavity ahead, which had been created using the same method as the tunnel.
The cavity was strange, when I entered it, and never seemed to fit in with what we had already seen!
The roof was at a height of twenty feet, and I caught glimpses of where things had once been, and I listened to surreal echoes of our movements, and as I entered its central region I conjured up vague visions of spooky ancient Roman ghosts in its confines.
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