"Should I consider myself lucky for not ending up like this poor fellow?" Duncan said to himself, referring to how he was able to escape while this person hadn't.
"No, there isn't a single element of luck that was responsible for how I was able to escape the grave. The only difference between me and this guy, besides the fact that he's dead while I'm still breathing, is that I am better equipped to handle these kinds of situations and happened to possess the right tools for the job."
"This isn't luck... it's a curse!"
While thinking this, Duncan looked down at his hands—specifically speaking, he was looking at the worn-out gloves that were tightly wrapped around his hands.
Fingerless and drab-looking, they resembled a pair of plain old leather biker gloves without all the bling and shine.
They were thick, covering the palm and back of his hands like armor, but offered little in the way of protection for his fingers, leaving them looking vulnerable and exposed... and yet, despite digging through eight feet of dirt and soil with his bare hands, twice, Duncan's fingers remained clean and unscathed without the slightest nick or wound to be seen at all.
These were definitely no ordinary pair of gloves, that was for sure... like the locket, they were a pair of supernatural objects that were bonded to Duncan as part of his curse.
Of course, when talking about cursed objects, one couldn't forget to mention the main culprit behind this entire expedition in the first place... the pair of raggedy boots Duncan was currently wearing on his feet.
Including them, the gloves, and the locket, they completely made up the triad of cursed items currently in Duncan's possession.
"I guess I have you to thank for enabling me to escape from the grave," Duncan said, speaking to the gloves as if they could hear him.
Regarding the functions of Duncan's cursed objects, the locket had two faces: one with a clock on it and another with a compass.
Each face possessed a different power, with the clock face having the ability to detect and warn Duncan about the presence of any supernatural forces that could endanger his life.
As for the face with the compass, its ability allowed it to locate areas with rich supernatural energy like ghost realms and others such as it.
This ability, instead of simply acting as a supernatural detector, was also able to locate the entrances and exits of such places.
Normally, secret areas like ghost realms were supernatural worlds that existed alongside the real world but were completely detached from it.
Unless the right conditions were met, gaining access to these realms was difficult; and short of stumbling into these areas by sheer misfortune, special abilities or objects are usually required to locate and gain access to them.
The compass was one such object that could locate the entrances to these secret realms, and it could also discover the exits should one ever find themselves inexplicably trapped in a secret realm and needed to escape.
Undoubtedly, the locket was an indispensable tool for someone in Duncan's line of work, and it had served him on many occasions in helping to escape from dangerous situations that would've left anyone else six feet under.
Yet, the locket could've hardly helped Duncan overcome whatever force prevented the other victim from digging himself out of his grave.
No, that honor was reserved solely for the pair of worn gloves Duncan wore, which had the ability to ignore and bypass any restrictions and locks, granting him access into any location at all.
In short, it was basically the master key of all master keys—a universal master key.
With the gloves, Duncan successfully bypassed the supernatural force in the grave and had dug himself out of there.
Finally, as part of the unholy trio of cursed items, the boots were directly responsible for Duncan being here in the first place; in an almost similar manner to the gloves, they could unrestrainedly bypass any restrictions to access any supernatural location regardless of whatever condition was required to access it.
Together, the three items were Duncan's lifeline in this supernatural world, as well as his ultimate curse.
But be warned... one should not look at the abilities of these items and think they are marvelous.
As miraculous as the abilities are, the items themselves bore a terrible curse, and like all cursed objects, their abilities come with powerful consequences that not many could afford to bear.
...
Returning to the matter at hand...
Now that Duncan understood what had happened to the victim, he was able to answer one of his questions.
"But there's still one more question that I haven't figured out yet," Duncan said to himself.
"The people that suddenly appeared again after going missing... what had happened to them?"
Having just solved one mystery, another presented itself. Such was the way with anything related to the supernatural. They were never so simple, and there was always an underlying layer of mystery lurking underneath that was usually very terrifying to behold.
Just when you think you've got it all figured out, reality hits you in the face and you're suddenly dead before you even know it.
Duncan thought, "The rumors clearly say that some of the people that had gone missing suddenly showed up again displaying mad and hostile behaviors and attacking everyone they encountered. Does this mean that somehow these bodies suddenly came back to life and began walking again?"
Sometimes, it was better not to delve too deeply into the supernatural—just having part of the answer is enough, and one should never be too greedy in uncovering the mystery of the supernatural.
This was a saying that Duncan understood all too well, and he tried to abide by it as much as he possibly could... but most times, it is hard to do so.
One of the ways of combating the supernatural was understanding everything there was to know about it, which more often than not ended up unleashing something very dreadful into the world.
Duncan understood this; that is why when the corpse that was lying next to him suddenly began to twitch and tremble like it was going through a bad case of post-mortem rigor mortis, he reacted quickly and immediately sprang to his feet as if he'd been sitting on hot coal.
At the same time, the locket suddenly started going haywire all over the place, ticking like a bomb was about to go off.
Duncan didn't stop to pull out the locket as he usually did, though; he was focused instead on quickly hightailing it out of there and disappearing from sight.
Quickly climbing out of the pit he'd dug, Duncan immediately looked for a place to find cover, but it was all open field everywhere as far as the eye could see.
Already, he could hear some rustling coming from inside the grave, and Duncan's heart began to beat wildly.
He didn't know what was happening to the corpse inside the grave, but Duncan wasn't going to sit around and find out. However, it wasn't wise to run around aimlessly and in a panic in this wilderness because you didn't know what you could run into in here.
Time was running out, and Duncan needed to think of something fast or he might not get the chance to do so again.
The clock was ticking—literally—whatever was inside the grave was about to emerge at any second now.
---
Grawhhh!
A low growling sound came from within the pit, sounding rough and menacing.
The corpse within twitched slightly, its body beginning to jerk as time passed, as it gradually became reanimated.
Suddenly, one of its arms moved upward slowly and jerkily, followed by the other as they began clawing at the air in a motion similar to digging, its raw fingers and knuckles scraping at nothing but air.
Graaa?
As if realizing this, the corpse's movement abruptly stopped, a strangely confused growl escaping its throat as its arms hung in the air.
All of a sudden, the corpse's eyes flew open, the stiff lids retreating to reveal the eyes of a dead man that were permanently frozen in abject terror, perfectly capturing the expression of a man whose final moments had been cruel and tortured.
Those frozen eyes stared lifelessly at the empty sky overhead, its gaze piercing through nothing but gray skies and white fog, which seemed to have thickened at some point.
Just then, a sharp howl pierced through the dense fog, causing a great disturbance as it suddenly rushed into the pit from all directions.
The fog, like a sentient being, surrounded the reanimated corpse and began entering its body through its nose, mouth, and eyes, forcefully filling its body until there was nothing left outside anymore.
Everything stopped, and the loud howling disappeared, leaving only a persistent ticking sound ringing loudly in the air.
As soon as all the fog disappeared, the corpse, which had lain on the ground unmoving throughout this process, suddenly sat upright with a powerful spring, after which it gradually got to its feet.
Standing in the middle of the dug pit, the reanimated corpse immediately started climbing out.
Its movement was slow, but it steadily climbed until it was finally out of the pit and standing in the open wilderness.
Once out in the open, the ticking persisted; but as if it couldn't hear the sound, the corpse turned, facing a particular direction, at which point it proceeded to trudge ahead stiffly into the distance without sparing a single glance behind it.