Amateur Detective Files On Paranormal Encounters

The Plan

In the end, Grant agreed and decided to go along with Duncan’s plan.

As for what the plan itself was, it was quite simple actually.

“Very good,” Duncan said.

“Since you’ve decided, then let me go over the plan once more.”

As he spoke, Duncan turned around and resumed running with Grant trailing beside him.

Meanwhile, the zombies continued chasing after them relentlessly.

“So, the goal is to lure all the zombies away from the exit, and to do that, we have to split up, then circle back and forth between the exit and the wilderness.”

“Zombies are usually mindless beasts, so luring them isn’t going to be difficult. As soon as they catch a glimpse of either of us, they are bound to pursue immediately.”

“Like I said before, this plan is simple but very effective, with the only risk here being our stamina and the fact that we do not know exactly how many zombies we are dealing with.”

Grant nodded, realizing this fact to be the most crucial factor in determining their success or failure.

There could be hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of zombies gathered around the exit—although that number seemed like a bit of an over-exaggeration.

But the point still stood... even a hundred zombies would be difficult for Duncan and Grant to handle, much less a thousand.

If they were not careful and managed to judge the distance wrongly, they might find themselves trapped in the middle of so many zombies swarming them from all sides.

The best way to avoid this was to run very far away from the exit light before circling around once again—this would give Grant and Duncan just enough distance to avoid an encirclement when the number of zombies rose; but this would have a significant drawback on their stamina, which would rapidly decrease the farther they ran.

In that case, in order to minimize the risks to themselves while also getting the job done, Duncan and Grant could only pray that there weren’t that many zombies in front of the exit at all.

Only that way would they be able to safely pull through.

With the plan fully laid out before them, Duncan and Grant were about to begin when something suddenly came to Duncan’s mind, and he remembered a question he’s been meaning to ask all along.

“Hey, before we start...” Duncan said to Grant just as they were about to split up.

“...tell me this: how did you discover me back then?”

“What?” Grant looked at Duncan in confusion, wondering what he was going on about.

“I mean, when you were first being chased by those zombies in the beginning, how did you know where I was even though I was hiding very far away from you?”

“It’s almost as if you knew exactly where I was, as if I had a beacon pointing directly at my location.”

This was a question Duncan had been meaning to ask Grant ever since he was discovered, mainly because it was completely bizarre how it happened.

Duncan wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything on him that he hadn't noticed which might cause the plan to fail.

But after hearing Duncan’s question, Grant began looking at him in a very strange way, as if he couldn’t believe he was asking that question.

Confused, Duncan asked, “What? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Grant replied, “Can’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?” Duncan retorted, pricking his ear up and listening intently to discover what Grant was referring to.

But Duncan couldn’t hear anything. This made him feel like he was being toyed with, so he shot a fierce glare at Grant.

“What, you really can’t hear it? That noise, the constant incessant ticking of clockwork that’s been ringing constantly ever since I met you... you can’t hear it at all?”

“Did you say ticking?” Duncan asked, surprised.

“Yes, I can hear a ticking sound that’s been ringing nonstop for a long time now, and very loudly at that. That’s how I found you.”

“While I was running, I heard that sound ringing from a distance, and I instinctively followed it until I was close enough to realize what it was.”

“Hearing such a loud clock ticking in this horrific place, I wasn’t sure at first but figured that somebody must’ve had an unusually loud broken watch, so I began calling for help. That’s when you suddenly stood up and bolted out of there immediately without coming to help me.”

Hearing all this, that is when Duncan finally understood everything.

Reaching into his pocket, Duncan brought out his locket and opened it to reveal the watch inside it.

Indeed, this was the culprit behind everything.

The reason why Grant had discovered Duncan was because this watch had been ringing constantly because of the zombies gathered outside the exit, and it hadn’t stopped until then.

You’d think that as the owner of the cursed object, Duncan would’ve long figured out this mystery, but there was a perfectly good explanation why he hadn’t.

You see, the pocket watch alerted Duncan of danger whenever there were supernatural elements that could threaten him, but there was a hidden feature it possessed that Duncan didn’t always think about.

Because it needed to ring out loud in order to warn Duncan, this might cause Duncan’s position to be revealed instead; so apart from Duncan, any other supernatural entity could not hear the ticking of the watch at all.

It didn’t matter if it was an ordinary ghost, a cultist, an Eldritch horror, or a god; as long as they had even the slightest connection to the supernatural, then they were completely deaf to the ticking of the watch.

But the caveat here is that ordinary people could still hear it tick; but this was such an insignificant detail that Duncan almost never remembered it at all.

After all, supernatural events aren’t all that common, so for the most part, an ordinary person could live their entire lives without encountering a single supernatural event.

Even in the off chance that they did encounter one, an ordinary person that is not equipped to deal with the supernatural almost always ends up dying, or if they manage to survive, they become so traumatized by the experience that they become unable to function properly in society anymore.

Very few ordinary people who encounter the supernatural come out of that with a good experience, and even then, they are never the same again.

They either find themselves chasing after supernatural forces of their own volition, or they end up like Duncan, cursed for all existence and forever tied to the supernatural.

...

When Duncan brought out the locket, Grant opened his eyes in surprise.

“What is that? It definitely doesn’t look ordinary... Is it the reason for the ticking?”

“That’s none of your business,” Duncan replied while checking on the clock.

Compared to the last time Duncan checked it, which was when he first arrived at the exit and saw all those zombies gathered around it... compared to then, the clock hand hadn’t moved at all.

It was still ninety degrees from its original position, which was actually quite a bit of good news.

This meant that while the danger was significant, it wasn’t unsolvable, which made things a lot more easy for Duncan to handle.

Confirming once more that the watch hadn’t changed, Duncan was relieved and put it back in his pocket.

He was even more confident about his plan now, not only because Duncan had figured out how he had been discovered and knew it wouldn’t implicate him, but also because his earlier assumption was looking more and more real by the second.

Therefore, without any more hesitation, Duncan quickly said to Grant, “Alright, it’s time.”

“Let us begin.”

With that, Duncan’s plan finally commenced.

...

“You move left while I’ll go to the right,” Duncan told Grant, then immediately started running to the right.

“Got it.”

Meanwhile, Grant also ran to the left, following Duncan’s instruction.

While he ran, Grant looked behind him to observe Duncan’s actions as he left.

Grant still wasn’t confident in Duncan’s plan, and he especially didn’t trust him at all, so he wanted to make sure that Duncan wouldn’t try anything behind his back.

But as he watched Duncan running away until he was about to disappear from view, Grant didn’t notice him doing anything out of the ordinary; still, he remained vigilant and continued to watch his back.

This time, all Grant could see behind him were the hordes of zombies relentlessly pursuing him from behind.

Just as Duncan had said, as soon as the two of them ran in separate directions, the zombies immediately split up into two groups and began chasing the two of them.

This caused the number of zombies after them to sharply decrease, which greatly relieved Grant; yet because of the time Duncan had forced them to stop, the zombies were much closer than before.

Looking at the faces of these creatures that looked like ordinary people in his eyes, Grant grew increasingly frightened.

The more he looked, the greater his fear became. It wasn’t because the faces of the zombies were scary and monstrous, with rotting flesh sticking to yellow bones and held together by thin strips of decomposing skin, and blood and saliva dripping disgustingly from their open mouths...

Or that they howled with a terrifyingly bone-chilling sound that seemed to freeze one’s soul that made them scary... no, it wasn’t any of that.

Contrary to popular depiction, these zombies were nothing like what people thought at all.

Their bodies were perfectly preserved without any signs of decay or decomposition; and save for a few with gruesome injuries on their arms and faces that still appeared fresh like they’d only just gotten them, the rest looked like they had just stepped out of bed in the morning after a restless night of sleep.

They also didn’t roar or howl like frenzied beasts, but rather mostly grunted and groaned like starved puppies, abandoned and weak.

After the initial scare of encountering them for the first time, none of these were enough to frighten Grant anymore.

Yet those eyes... it was those eyes that greatly unsettled Grant. Those pale eyes that were completely blank and devoid of any light or life within them.

They were eyes that could not possibly belong to anything living, but belonged to some cold and lifeless creature with the power to suck your soul away from your body...

This was what frightened Grant and made his legs move nonstop to get away; and so, spurred by fear and terror, Grant increased his speed so that he could put as much distance between himself and the zombies as possible.