The symbol of Chabucu

The new girl

"Class, sit down, there is a new girl at school that I would like to introduce you to"
"This is Chiara Smith from California"
It was so embarrassing, standing up there in front of the class, as quiet as a mouse. The other kids were staring at me giggling and whispering amongst them about how "unposh" my clothes were.
"Now, now children settle down"
"Chiara take a seat" said the teacher pointing to the bench at the very back with a broken chair.
"Great" I muttered under my breath.

As soon as I sat down the teacher started mumbling on in that language that I could not at all understand.
So I started to draw and then I saw a shadow outside the window, I knew it, I must be hallucinating.

And for the rest of that day I kept on seeing shadows as if someone was following me.

When I got home, there was a letter on the doorstep with the same symbol that I had seen earlier that day, carved on to the cover of my yearbook. I ran up to my room and locked the door behind me. I started to read the letter but could not understand what was written for the ink was all smudged and the letter had been folded.
I started to feel a chill run down my spine. All these letters, what could they mean? Someone was trying to warn me about something but what? Why me?

Later on that day, when my dad came home I was deciding whether or not I should show him these letters because it was starting to scare me and I didn't know how to stop it. Maybe he would know what the symbol meant or what the letter might say. Yes I should tell him but what if...What if they start to threaten him too. No I had to deal with this myself, but how?

The next day, at school, the headmaster came into class and told us that we were going to have a replacement teacher called Mrs.Rosefeld because our teacher had the flu and was taking a week off. When Mrs.Rosefeld came into the classroom, there was a cold and fishy feeling about her. She introduced herself, which in my opinion, was not necessary because we just had a long speech about her from the headmaster so we kind of already knew her before we even met her . She had long golden hair, a long skirt, glasses and a pointy nose which made her look like a witch.

When classes started we got another knock on the door but this time it was not from the headmaster, it was from a person dressed in black with a mask on that handed her a envelope with the exact same symbol printed on it. That was when I knew that she was up to something and it wasn't good. I had to leave, fast. I asked to go to the toilet but she told me to wait until break time. Time seemed to have stop for that split second when I was wondering what I could do. My panicked face was to obvious, she must have known that I knew something.

Lunch. I sat down on my own as usual, had a chicken sandwich as usual and ate it in one go as usual. But the symbol was still in my head. Everywhere I looked I could see the symbol. Now I started to think that I had gone mad, completely bonkers.

After lunch I needed the loo. But when I was washing my hands I could hear this faint ticking noise from behind the wall. I put my ear to the wall to hear the noise more clearly. The noise was now very loud, like a police car's siren.
Where could this noise be coming from? The only room that was downstairs was the girls toilets and the janitor's closet. The noise was not coming from the girls toilets, I was certain. I turned the handle of the door, I crept inside and the door slammed shut behind me. I was terrified but I had to find out if this was tied to the symbol.
The noise got louder as I went further into the room. The noise did not sound like a police car's siren anymore but more like a ticking noise which was weird considering that the two sounds did not sound the least bit the same.
The light in the janitor's closet started to flicker and then it went out. I wanted to scream but I didn't for fear of being heard. Then I remembered that I had brought my "SOS" handbag with me, I always bring it with me in case of emergency. There was a flashlight in the handbag, purple with little white dots. I switched it on and I was surprised to see that it was an actual janitor's closet and that there wasn't anything suspicious in it, the noise had disappeared. Maybe I was hallucinating, hearing things, I had gone completely insane or maybe that's what they wanted me to think, maybe there was something here, right in front of my eyes, that looked so normal but wasn't. What was it? That's when I saw it, there was a symbol, the same symbol as on my yearbook printed on the front of a can of paint. I looked at the can and saw fingerprints all over it. I touched the can of paint and it started flashing red, I stepped back and ran out the door. I ran and ran, all the way home. When I got home I tiptoed up to my room because I didn't want my mum to hear me coming back home early, I am not supposed to be back home this early but I couldn't go back to school, not after what happened at school, I was too freaked out. I thought of what all of this could mean for hours on end and finally after eight hours it came to me suddenly it's a code! How could this not have not occurred to me before!

After a long while of thinking I got hungry, so I stood up to go downstairs to get something to eat when I heard these footsteps. "Mum is that you?", I called down the stairs but there was no reply. "Muuuum??" I called again but there was no reply. I started to panic as the footsteps got louder and louder, coming up the stairs, towards my room. What do I do?, what do I do?, I repeated to myself as the handle of the door opened but it was too late a dark figure covered my mouth with a cloth and then, darkness...