(Note: The main character’s name is pronounced Jek-Will-In Hide.)
17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLcSiJJaoUO
“And then…” The woman couldn’t even finish her sentence without choking on a sob. “And then I saw his dead, burnt body right after they put out the fire!” It was surely a tragedy for anyone listening. Anyone but Jekwylln Haide, the young private investigator hired to examine the crime scene, who was too busy scribbling stars and other squiggles onto his notepad to pay attention. Haide giggled to himself as he drew a few more silly and obscene things, only to be interrupted by the woman.
“Hello? Are you even listening to me?!” She seemed rightfully upset.
“Uhm, yes ma’am! My apologies, I just, uh… remembered a funny joke. Like, really funny.” Jekwylln tried to cover himself up, was it working? He could only hope. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take a few photos and uhh… look at them when I get back to the uhh…” he snapped his fingers, trying to remember the word he was going to say.
“The firm? Where you work, I can only assume.” the woman scoffed, mumbling the last part. “Yeah, the firm! I’ll be on my way now. Keep your chin up, ma’am!” Jekwylln did a two-finger salute as he left, the idea of actually snapping photos of the crime scene had left his mind as fast as he darted out of there. Truth be told, he was absolutely incompetent at his job. He would’ve been fired long ago if he weren’t hired at his father’s detective agency.Though this time, his incompetence stemmed from something else.
Instead of the run-of-the-mill laziness, he had all his focus on another topic, the disappearance of his father. He had been missing for two months now, the same timeframe that Jekwylln had worked for his firm. His father, Jackson R. Haide, was one of the few people he had looked up to: a municipal engineer turned PI. Though Jekwylln always wondered why he abruptly left his job in the first place. When he asked, his father would always go on the same spiel of how he “never wanted anything to do with that job ever again”.
Jekwylln stepped foot into the busy downtown of the steam-powered city of New Boltshire. The steam that covered the city was more scarce these past few months. Trains were slower, airships needed more coal, and anything with even a singular cog had slowed down on performance. It was a miracle Jekwylln’s father had quit all those years ago, the engineers that made their usual rounds of the city had unionized and gone on strike. Though strangely, no one knew where they had gone off to, maybe not showing up for work was just enough of a protest for them. Twisting and turning and even bumping his way through the crowd, Jekwylln arrived at the pastry shop near his loft. Ordering his usual box of pastries and leaving with a grin, the scent of cinnamon whirled around him. Back when Jackson Haide was still around, he’d take his son out to solve cases over a box of brownies or cinnamon buns. Jekwylln was filled with a familiar sense of warmness he’d always feel when his father took him out for food. Whether it was when he was a young boy or in his teenhood, it made him remember that one person in the world truly cared for him. After Jekwylln’s mother, Maybell Lourie-Haide, left them when he was only five, it felt the whole world was just out to get him, all until his father would call him down to ask him about his day over some takeout food.
Lost in the comfort of nostalgia, Jekwylln looked up from his pastry box after feeling a tap on his shoulder. It was quite a crowded city so Jekwylln didn’t expect to see absolutely no one beside him. As he turned his head back around, he noticed that his pastry box, taped shut, had been opened with a cinnamon bun missing.
“...The hell?” he whispered before feeling something softly whack him on the back of his head. Turning around and looking down, it was the same cinnamon bun that disappeared from his box. Setting the dread of the stickiness probably stuck in his long black hair aside, he bent down to inspect it before something bigger caught his attention. The bakery was just right down the street to his house which gave him a good view of it. What he didn’t expect was to see the orangish-red hues glaring back at him, dancing violently.
His house was on fire.
He recoiled in shock and yelled out a curse before sprinting towards the end of the street, hoping it wasn’t real. Praying to whatever god was listening that it was just some sort of hallucination, maybe he inhaled too much chemical-filled steam on the way home in the streets? Of course, that wasn’t plausible. He skidded to a halt right in front of his loft. The pane on the window that he closed when he left was shattered, flames were threatening to spill out. The houses surrounding his were clean and untouched, it felt as if they were mocking him. He gripped the now closed pastry box in stress, Jekwylln felt the same way he always did back when his mother left: small, powerless, and weak. He couldn’t do anything but just stand and stare in horror and blink back tears.
Two hours later when the New Boltshire Fire Department finally finished putting the fire out, Jekwylln was absolutely miserable. He sat on the curb as he munched on the cinnamon buns, spacing out. Stress-eating was a bad habit he got from his father, a habit he didn’t think would resurge much since his life was pretty carefree. But sitting there, not knowing what to do while the only person he could ever turn to in dire situations was gone, was distressing to say the least.
“It’s all gone,” he whispered to himself, wiping tears that streamed down his face the same way a broken faucet would leak. “My whole life is gone.” That was true, it was the house he grew up in, stuffed with too many memories the same way an overflowing chest of keepsakes would be. To make matters worse, all his detective work, savings, clothes, and god forbid his collection of little knick-knacks were in there too, now lost to the blazing embers.
He reached for the last cinnamon bun to see it gone. Again? he thought. He then felt another soft blow to the head, it felt just like the cinnamon bun that was missing. Instead of softly riveting off of his head, it just rolled down, leaving a trail of sugar-icing to soil his hair. Jekwylln didn’t even care anymore, sinking his head into his hands while he sobbed profusely. Whoever had done that was just mocking him by now.
He felt as if all were lost, all until he heard a strange, almost inhuman voice over his bawling, cutting through like a blade through a wounded animal.
“Get up, you pathetic excuse of a detective.” That was exactly what he was thinking! How peculiar. However, the voice had some sort of truthfulness to it. He’d have to tighten up if he wanted to solve this case, even though that was the last thing on his mind. Jekwylln raised his head from his hands and did as the voice asked. He turned around to face the speaker but was met with nothing.
“Hello?” Jekwylln nervously called out, hoping for some sort of answer. Instead of his usual cocky and confident stance, he kept his head low and fidgeted with his hands while he searched. A stature of a broken man. “Just show yourself already!” he shouted with frustration. He felt another tap on the shoulder and turned around at the speed of light, he’d definitely catch them now! He could just imagine it, him tackling whoever this person was, beating them until they gave an answer, stopping whoever did the arsons, becoming a national hero with his own statue and government-mandated holiday, and both of his parents magically coming back. His plan was cut short when he finally turned face-to-face with the suspect. Jekwylln was in the middle of balling up his fist when he realized that the person, or rather entity, didn’t look remotely close to what he imagined.
Instead of some tough and intimidating looking fiend that Jekwylln would definitely break his spine in half trying to beat, it was… a shadow? Not one you’d see cast on the ground or a wall but rather some sort of dark matter in the shape of a human, two wide white holes as eyes stared back at him. Jekwylln could admit that it was absolutely terrifying, something out of his nightmares and yet, he didn’t feel the urge to run or fight. He wasn’t frozen in fear but rather… awe.
On the other hand, the shadow seemed furious, not at Jekwylln, but it seemed like there was something bubbling within him, some sort of rage that he had let loose.
“Awful sorry about your house, and your father.” the shadow professed.
“...Thanks, how did you know about that?” asked Jekwylln.
“That’s the least of our worries. All I can say is that I saw everything firsthand, the same way you did.”
“You… You saw everything? How?! Why didn’t you do something then?! Where even were you?!” snapped Jekwylln. It only struck Jekwylln that he had absolutely no clue who he was talking to. He decided it wasn’t that important right now.
“I’ll explain in due time. Right now, we need to solve this whole thing.” the shadow replied calmly, just standing there in a way that was harmless but still freaked Jekwylln out. On top of that, he wasn’t even sure if this thing was even a real entity. Had he finally snapped from the trauma of losing everything that he began imagining shadow creatures to talk to him?
“Right, right. But how? I mean, I’m an awful detective, barely even a detective!” the “PI” replied, shoving his hands in his brown leather trenchcoat, the one he had bought with the money from his very first solved case, which was just a missing dog. Looking down, he saw a rat scatter past him. He was terrified of rats but right now, he just tensed up and watched it hurtle past. In the back of his head, he wanted to do something like kill it but he just couldn’t care less at a time like this.
Again, as if the shadow read Jekwylln’s mind, he grabbed the rat with his hand, or whatever was the black-matter equivalent of a hand, and chucked it against a wall in a nearby alley, killing the rat by the sheer impact. Jekwylln’s jaw hung low in sheer horror at the sight.
“What is your problem?!” a rather freaked-out Jekwylln sputtered at the being.
“We were both thinking about it, weren’t we?” shrugged the shadow. “And for the record, you’re not that bad of a detective.”
“But didn’t you call me pathetic earli-.” he stopped and sighed. “So how should we solve this case? We don’t have any leads.” he asked. The shadow stood next to him, deep in thought.
“Did your father have any enemies? Rivals? Anyone who wanted him dead?”
“Not that I know of, he was a good guy, though. I doubt anything of that happened.” The shadow sighed in response.
“Alright then… How about we revisit this later tomorrow? We’ll start by asking people he knew.”
“Sure but… I don’t have a place to stay.”
The shadow pointed to a heap of trashbags in the same alley he had chucked that rat into.
“You- You can’t be serious, right?” nervously laughed Jekwylln. Unfortunately, the shadow was 100% serious. He sighed and removed his trenchcoat before he flopped onto the soft pile of trashbags and used his coat as a blanket. For a second, he could hear the shadow laughing at him. This was the lowest, most embarrassing, and patronizing point in his life. If anyone he knew saw him like this, he’d have to either kill them, himself, or the both of them. But hey, at least he had some sort of start to this hellish case.
Despite this, the strangeness has only begun. Witness the next piece Jekwylln’s tale unfurl in part two, currently in development.
17Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm8OT2ED1MO
