Amateur Detective Files On Paranormal Encounters

Duncan’s Curse

Going back a little to understand what was happening...

It all starts with Duncan’s escape plan, but ignoring everything else, we must focus on the core of it all on which Duncan’s escape completely hinges upon... which were his boots.

As already stated, Duncan’s boots were a pair of cursed supernatural objects that possessed special powers that are unimaginable to ordinary people.

This power is the power to move through and between any region of space freely and without restraint.

The emphasis here is on the lack of restraint!

These boots were so powerful that it didn’t matter what barrier or restriction was in place; it could traverse itself along with its wearer into any location it desired.

If so, why is such a powerful object considered cursed by Duncan?

The answer is simple really... because they were impossible to control.

A curse, in the simplest meaning of the term, is anything that carries the effect of misfortune.

Be it an item, a relationship, or even an encounter—as long as the eventual result of that phenomenon ends in misfortune, then that thing can be said to be cursed.

In the case of the boots, for all its power, Duncan could not control its abilities at will; instead, the powers of the boots randomly activate on their own without his knowledge at all.

Due to this, Duncan has found himself stuck in many unfortunate situations that could never have arisen were it not for the boots acting up at that moment.

That is exactly how Duncan has ended up here in the first place.

But if it was only that, then things wouldn’t be so hard for Duncan to bear.

All he had to do was discard the boots and never make use of them, but therein lay the true curse that Duncan was forced to endure.

Duncan could not get rid of the boots at all!

They were stuck to him like lice to unwashed hair, and everywhere he went, Duncan was forced to walk in those unfortunate boots and endure the misfortune their uncontrollable powers brought to him.

This was the same as with the rest of Duncan’s cursed objects—they were his burden from which he would never be free of.

And yet, there was a tiny sliver of a silver lining in all of this...

Despite Duncan’s cursed objects being mostly uncontrollable, there were times when he could use their powers freely for his own use—although the intended effects of what he wanted to achieve might not always be what he gets, but at least these were the only times that Duncan could claim he had any semblance of control over his cursed objects.

For instance, once a day, Duncan could use the boots' powers to freely teleport to any location within a two-hundred-meter radius of his original location.

The utility of this ability is pretty self-explanatory by itself, and even Duncan could agree that this was a powerful trump card to have in case of any emergency or danger that could present itself.

But of course, it wouldn’t be a cursed item if the boots didn’t somehow find a way to screw Duncan over.

This method is very simple and straightforward in that although Duncan could teleport freely in any direction, he could not choose the exact location or distance to teleport to.

This means that even though Duncan chose to teleport, he might find himself having only moved a few feet from his original location.

Once, Duncan was being pursued by a group of cultists whose ritual site he had stumbled into whilst they were in the midst of a ritual sacrifice, courtesy of his boots.

In order to get away after being driven into a dead end, Duncan had decided to use his one free opportunity to activate the boots' power, only to find himself directly on top of the altar that the cultists had erected for their ritual.

In the end, Duncan had only survived that encounter by using the ability of another of his cursed items, which had ironically saved him despite it too coming with its own share of misfortune.

Because of this reason, Duncan was always reluctant to use the abilities of his cursed items intentionally because they weren’t reliable at all.

But when Duncan had no other choice but to do so, he could only wish that his luck wouldn’t be so bad and he would end up with an outcome that was more favorable than his then current situation... or at the very least not worse off than it.

...

“I guess I can never hope to rely on my luck to get me through my predicaments, can I?” Duncan sighed.

Ending up inside another grave was not what Duncan had expected, but he was already used to things turning out like this most times so that he was already numb to it most of the time.

The only thing Duncan could do was just roll with it and try to make the most out of whatever he had.

So with that mentality, Duncan relaxed and tried to figure out his next step.

“I don’t know where exactly I am buried, but I’m sure it is definitely within two hundred meters of the exit.”

This Duncan was certain about—after all, he had made sure that when he activated the boots' power, the exit was within two hundred meters of him.

This was the entire reason for luring out most of the zombies from the exit.

It had never been to clear all of them away, but to make sure that Duncan was at least within the necessary distance for him to use the power of the boots to teleport close to the exit.

From there it was up to luck; if Duncan was lucky enough, he would appear right next to the exit and escape from here.

But if he wasn’t, then as long as there were not too many zombies left close to the exit, then Duncan would adapt to the situation and find a way to escape from there.

Of course, none of that mattered now since Duncan was stuck underground, so what he first had to do was dig himself out of here before he could think of doing anything else.