It was a rainy day.
A cold wind blew towards my face, while I was slowly walking to my car.
It was a long day at work and all I wanted right now was to get home.
My life as a detective wasn't as exciting as it sounds like, I hardly got any special orders at all... The biggest one I got in the last 5 years was a lady who couldn't find her child. She came to me to ask if I could help her find it. Not even half an hour later we found it at an old playground, outside the town..
I started my car and drove trough the abandoned streets to the sound of the raindrops hitting my slightly tinted windows. I was so tired from all that draining paper work and the car ride just made me more sleepy.
Before I became a detective, I actually worked as a crime novelist and my work even got pretty successful. I earned lots of money and god I was one of the most popular novelists of my time!! But one day, my perfect little life ended with one blow.
After an horrible incident, a fire broke out.
Until today no one really knows why and what happened, not even I know..The only thing I can remember is that I was one of the few 'lucky' people who surrived. Maybe I even was the only one...
The fire made me lose all of my memory and not just that, but also all of my amazing writing skills.
Due to my memory loss I started drinking.
I drank so much that I started to get blackouts.
I woke up in places I have never been before, next to things I have never used before and I looked like a person I have never been before.
I'm clean now, but I see the crime novelist as an old personality of mine that I won't allow to come back ever again...
I finally arrived at my house , got off my car and unlocked the front door to enter it. The old door squeaked as I opened it. God damn, I wish I could just move out of here...
My wallet sadly disagreed with that idea.
I was about to take my shoes off until I noticed that I forgot to get the mail. It has always been the very first thing I did, after I got off my car...
I was a very organized person, so I thought that it was weird for me to forget such a thing..
But well, I was terribly sleepy , so it's not very unusual for someone to forget the mail, right?
I quickly walked to my mailbox, took out the newspaper and then... I suddenly noticed that there was a weirdly looking letter in my mailbox.
The packaging looked kinda dirty...
How strange, why didn't they just sent it to my office?
I never got any personalized letters...
The rain got worse, so I took the newspaper and the letter and hurried back inside. As soon as I closed the loudly squeaking door, I ripped off the letters packaging immediately to read it.
What I saw seemed even more weird, I only got requests from people in this town, but the sender of the letter, whose name seemed strangely familiar, wasn't from here.
But why would I get an order from so far away? I stopped thinking about it and started reading the letter:
Dear Detective Orpheus,
I have been reading all your stories, back in the day when you were still a crime novelist.I am a big fan of your writing and I know how smart you are. But this letter isn't about your novels, as much as I would love to talk about them, I have been struggling with a case, that only a good detective could solve.
I am sorry for my apruptness and I know that you should talk about a request as big as this one from face to face. But I am sorry, I don't have the time to do so. My wife is sick and I am slowly losing all my energy too. Our daughter disappeared, but it's neither just a 'normal' vanishing, nor kidnapping. She was at her aunts house, around the time she vanished. After my sister couldn't find her and we looked for her in the whole town, we got a message. A message that someone has seen her miles away around the woods. At first I thought it's fake, but it's the only clue we have gotten since then... Again, I am sorry for my apruptness. But please help us find our lost angel.
Best regards~
James Reichenbach
Attached to the letter was a huge check. I have never seen so much money at once in my whole career.
I needed to help this man.
I was shocked.
I have never gotten a request this big.
I was extremely excited, but this letter seemed so...odd? That was the right word for this.
Odd
It made me a little uncomfortable while I read it,
but I guessed that that was just the excitement.
I hoped so...
I ignored the feeling and decided to write a letter to the sender that I would help him.
I couldn't believe it.
Finally someone needed my help.
Finally someone needed me!
I thought that I will start my research as soon as possible, after my client would tell me more information, so I could start collecting clues.
My time has come.
A few weeks have passed and I already collected a few clues. I've consulted a few people that I thought seemed suspicious, but at the end of my survey, I came to the conclusion that they were innocent.
This sounds like I barely did anything in those weeks, but that's wrong!
My client told me something about a big villa,
a manor..
I didn't know why but when he told me about it, shivers rolled down my spine.
He sent me another letter about the big mansion.
He said, that his daughter was always fascinated with this odd but beautiful looking house,
he could understand that..
The enticement has always been big to enter it.
He wrote that it felt like a strange aura would encase the building. He couldn't remember the manors address though...
It felt like this manor was related to his daughter and her vanishing. I tried to figure out the location of it in all those weeks of hard work and I actually got a bit successful.
All of my clues led to a big, old and expired house far away in the forest.
It was 5 pm and I left my office, got to my car and started driving through the woods, trying to find the rotten mansion.
Hours passed, I thought I got lost. The path in the woods got smaller and smaller and my car almost didn't fit through it anymore. Thin angular branches brushed my windows and my sight got worse, since the night was arriving.
My car lights sadly weren't the brightest.
It started to rain.
Wow! Just what I needed in that moment...
It was just a little at first, until it started to get worse and worse, it felt like driving through a river. The urge of giving up crawled under my skin.
My tired eyes closed a few times while driving.
Shit! I almost hit a tree..
As I opened my eyes again hastily I saw something strange.
What was that?
My body filled itself with adrenaline, as soon as I saw a dilapidated chimney lit by lightning that joined the heavy rain.
I jumped out of my car and ran towards the direction of the chimney. The keys in my pocket almost fell out, due to the way how fast I ran on the bumpy path.
I finally arrived at the huge front door of the mansion. The stairs, that led to the door, seemed to fall apart. Just like the door itself and actually the whole house...
I found a few candles, which were laying on one of the stairs. I took one, got some matches out of my pocket and lighted the candle.
I looked around the mansion, sadly couldn't get away from the door, because the little canopy over the front door only protected the entrance from the rain. I needed the soft candle light to see a bit.
There was nothing suspicious laying around the manor. It just looked like it was hard to get out of the mansion, once your inside. There were huge barriers of fallen trees around the villa. It kinda looked like some sort of prison to be honest...
I wondered how I was even able to pass the way to the big old house.
I put the thought aside and tried to enter the mansion.
Weird,
It wasn't locked.
I only needed to put the door knob down to enter it.
No key, no nothing.
I entered the manor carefully.
Dark walls were surrounding me.
My candle light flickered, spiders crawled over the floor and mice were hiding in the corner of the hallway, squeaking angrily, when they saw my candlelight. I walked through the hallway.
There were two pairs of stairs leading to a small and narrow floor, which lead to other rooms and hallways in turn. A wooden railing surrounded the rectangular shaped floor, but one post in the middle was missing.
I then entered a huge dining room, multiple bedrooms, one disgustingly dirty kitchen, a few small bathrooms, a big common room and some sort of living room.
The living room got my attention.
I brushed my fingers over the broken door and started to look around the room. There was a fire place, an old chair and a sofa that was probably just as old, as the manor itself...
I noticed that the fireplace looked weird.
Really weird.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
I hope you all enjoyed the first chap
I know it's not much but we will get there.
Soon I will bring all the other characters into the story. Give me feedback and let me know if I make any mistakes with grammar or commas.
Have an amazing day and thank you for reading <3