The Missing Hour

The clock on the wall read 2:47 a.m. When Detective Julia Sanchez looked up from the crime scene photos spread out on the desk in front of her, she noticed something strange. The clock was still ticking, but it felt like time was slipping away.

It had been a long night—too long—but this case had her hooked. The victim, a local journalist named Liam Carter, had been found in a quiet apartment downtown, his body sprawled out on the floor. No signs of a struggle, no fingerprints, and the door was locked from the inside. The only thing out of place was a small, ornate pocket watch resting next to his hand, its face frozen at 2:47 a.m.

“Another hour missing,” Julia muttered to herself, rubbing her temples. The strange detail had been nagging at her for hours. The time on the watch matched the last recorded time Liam had been active on his phone. But what was odd was that there was nothing after that—no messages, no calls, no internet activity. The time gap between 2:47 a.m. and 3:47 a.m. was completely unaccounted for.

The case had been baffling from the start, and now this.

She picked up the phone, dialing her partner, Detective Marcus Reed. It rang three times before he answered, his voice thick with sleep.

“Sanchez, it’s almost 3 a.m. What’s up?”

“I think I’ve found something,” Julia replied, her voice urgent. “I need you to pull the security footage from the building where Carter was found. I have a feeling we’re missing something big.”

“Alright, I’ll meet you there in twenty.”

She ended the call and turned back to the desk, eyes falling on the pocket watch again. Something about it was off. It wasn’t the sort of watch that belonged to someone like Liam—young, driven, with a modern taste. This watch seemed… out of place. Antique.

Suddenly, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. A noise—faint but unmistakable—came from the hallway outside her office. Someone was there. She gripped the edge of her desk, silently moving toward the door, her gun in hand.

Her pulse quickened as she heard footsteps approach. The door swung open just as she prepared to step back into the shadows, but it was only Marcus.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he said, glancing at her weapon, which she quickly holstered.

“I might have just found one,” Julia replied, keeping her voice steady. “Let’s go. I have a theory I need to test.”

Marcus followed her to the elevator without another word. As they rode down in silence, Julia explained her theory.

“It’s simple, but it’s the only thing that makes sense,” she said. “Liam was killed right around 2:47 a.m., but I believe there was something—or someone—that caused him to miss that hour. It’s almost like… well, like something erased that part of his night.”

“Erased?” Marcus repeated. “What are you suggesting? That someone altered the timeline?”

“Not altered,” Julia said. “That the hour just… disappeared. That there’s something we don’t know about this building.”

When they reached the lobby, Julia led Marcus to the building’s security desk. The guard on duty that night was still awake, looking like he’d been waiting for them.

“Do you have footage from last night?” Julia asked, tapping her badge lightly against the counter.

The guard nodded, pulling up a screen. He rewound the footage, showing Liam entering the building at 2:40 a.m., looking no different than any other time he’d come in. He went up in the elevator alone, as usual.

But then, as the camera flickered to 3:47 a.m., something strange happened. Liam was shown again, exiting the elevator, but his face was different. Pale. Distraught. As if he had seen something horrific.

“No way,” Marcus said, his voice low.

Julia stepped closer to the screen. “But there’s still no footage of that hour. No security footage, no sign of movement…”

The guard shrugged, clearly just as confused as they were. “We’ve had a few… interruptions with the cameras in the past. But nothing this bad. I’ve never seen the whole hour go missing before.”

“Interruptions?” Julia asked, narrowing her eyes. “Are you saying this happens often?”

The guard paused, clearly uncomfortable. “I’m not supposed to say anything, but… we’ve had other… odd things happening in this building. Weird stuff. Lights flickering. Some tenants hear strange noises late at night. It’s always been written off as ‘building issues,’ but… I don’t know. It’s strange.”

Marcus leaned in, his expression tight. “What do you mean by ‘strange noises?’”

“Some of the tenants say they hear footsteps, or voices, like someone’s walking through the hallways in the middle of the night. A couple of them even reported hearing a clock chiming, even though there’s no clock on this floor. It’s all dismissed as paranoia or faulty pipes, but…” He trailed off, giving them a meaningful look. “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Julia felt a chill crawl down her spine. She had no idea what was going on, but the pieces were starting to fall into place. The missing hour. The strange occurrences.

But one question remained. Why had Liam been targeted?

The answer hit her all at once, like a punch to the gut. Liam had been researching an old building that had been abandoned for decades—a place tied to unsolved disappearances. What if he had uncovered something dangerous, something that had made someone want to silence him? The key to the mystery was not just the missing hour—it was the building itself.

“Marcus, we need to get to the building. Now.”

Without another word, the two detectives rushed out of the security office, their footsteps echoing through the empty lobby. Whatever was hiding in the shadows of the building was no longer a mystery. It was a threat.