"This is bad…"
Inwardly panicking, Duncan watched as the single clock hand continued to tremble, with every passing second seeming like it would suddenly move forward another degree.
Thankfully, what he feared didn't occur, which allowed Duncan to breathe out in relief.
Completely forgetting about the foul odor surrounding him, Duncan's mind immediately wandered to the most pressing matter at hand.
"What was that just now?"
Duncan's mind spun, his memory going back to the moment before he suddenly fell weakly to his knees.
"Before it happened, I heard a howling sound like that of a passing draft without any wind accompanying it. Yet in the next moment, I suddenly felt something enter my body and pass through."
"That's when I suddenly lost all my strength and fell to the ground… what in hell could've caused this?"
Recalling everything that happened, Duncan found everything to be very bizarre and mysterious.
In fact, everything about this ordeal was bizarre and mysterious, yet apart from the initial scare and panic, Duncan remained relatively calm as he tried to figure out what was going on.
I guess it was about time now to introduce who Duncan really was.
A detective—that's who Duncan was. A man whose job it was to solve problems and unravel the mysteries that no one else could ever unravel.
Yet, Duncan was no ordinary detective; he was a supernatural detective who delved deep into cases filled with strange and bizarre elements, albeit begrudgingly so.
Simply put, Duncan—37 years old, tall with a lean muscular build with a mop of unkempt curly brown hair and a permanent morning shadow on his face—was the kind of man you would call when regular detectives were out of options in solving a case… and yet, he absolutely hated his profession.
To Duncan, cases like this were a dime a dozen—in his line of work, four out of ten times the supernatural was involved, yet for Duncan, the odds were stacked against him.
He was a perpetual magnet for supernatural encounters, with his chance of running into the strange and bizarre being eight out of ten.
And so, why, given all this and the fact that he completely hated his profession, was Duncan still in this line of work?
Well, the answer to that was pretty simple, and that was because he was fucking cursed.
Leaving Duncan's personal curse aside, with practiced ease, Duncan's mind quickly worked out what was going on with his situation.
For a detective, impatience was a taboo. In the case of the supernatural, this was even truer, and Duncan could not afford to mess up because of fear and impatience because, more often than not, the consequence of botching a supernatural case often meant death.
With his mind working frantically, Duncan thought back to everything that had occurred leading up to this very moment with him in this foul-smelling, desolate wilderness.
"First of all, there's the abandoned street… that's where everything began."
Still holding the pocket watch in his hand, his mind half focused on observing it so he could immediately detect if it ever changed, he let the rest of his mind go back to earlier during the day when he was standing in front of the abandoned alley right before he found himself buried alive inside a grave.
…
Regarding the street, it all started when Duncan heard a rumor about several disappearances that had taken place inside that very street.
Before he became a supernatural detective, Duncan was actually a regular detective holding a respected position in the local police station located in his district.
Having worked there for close to fifteen years, he had built a considerable network of connections both inside and outside his precinct, some of which he still maintained despite switching careers.
It was through one of his contacts that he learned of the several reports of people that had gone missing in the street.
At first, Duncan wasn't interested in this information, mainly because it seemed like a regular case to him.
Most likely, it was due to a syndicate of human traffickers abducting people in the area to smuggle out of the city that led to so many people going missing in the area.
This was actually substantiated by the fact that most of the people that went missing were young and fit adults of both genders that were in the physical prime of their youth, making them the perfect targets for those who needed strong people to carry out various unimaginable tasks.
It wasn't something new… human trafficking was one of the major issues plaguing the police force in Duncan's world which they constantly struggled with tackling. Yet, despite the harsh penalties associated with the crime, there were still many gangs and syndicates involved in such illegal activities.
This is why Duncan initially ignored the case in the first place—that was until he had heard a particular rumor that had piqued his interest.
According to the rumor, some of the people that had gone missing had actually ended up being discovered inside the street several days later, but the state they were found in was very bizarre and strange.
Firstly, these missing people, after showing up, had completely lost their minds, becoming nothing but mindless zombie-like entities that mindlessly attacked anyone in their sights—biting and scratching like animals.
Some had been found eating small animals like rats, cats, and dogs raw with blood dripping from their mouths, and one had even been caught feasting on the body of a young child that he had attacked and killed.
But the thing that truly caught Duncan's attention was the state of the victims after some time had passed.
For the missing victims that had successfully returned, none of them had survived for more than a few hours before they suddenly dropped dead like puppets with their strings cut, with their bodies rapidly drying up and turning into fleshless husks of their previous selves.
It was like this for every single one of them… without exception, all of the missing people had eventually ended up in this exact same manner, which signified that something more sinister than human trafficking was afoot. Due to this, the street was eventually considered to be haunted, with the police blocking it off entirely to prevent any more mishaps from happening.
It was this information that finally prompted Duncan to show an interest in the case, causing him to, against his better judgment, go over to the haunted street in question, telling himself that he would only look from afar without getting close to the place at all, thinking this would prevent him from being pulled into the entire ordeal.
Evidently, things didn't turn out as Duncan expected, and so here he was, knee-deep in the trouble he had invited himself into with his own two feet, all because he couldn't keep his curiosity in check.
…
"At the very least, it seems I've solve the mystery regarding where those missing people disappeared to."
After recalling everything that had led up to his entrance into desolate space, Duncan finally muttered to himself, joking crudely with a very sarcastic tone filled with schadenfreude.
Still, although crude and in poor taste, Duncan was certain he was right.
Not bothered much, he continued speaking to himself aloud, a habit of his that allowed him to clearly focus his mind and organize his thoughts.