Symbols of the Unknown

Chapter Two: Strange Happenings

As soon as he arrived at work he was greeted by his secretary with a welcoming, "You're five minutes again, Mitchell!" He walked into his office and poured a cup of coffee. He was tidying up his desk when his deputy, and life-long friend, Gabriel Dunjen entered the room. "Rob.." he hesitantly started.

"Yeah Gabe? What's so urgent I had to rush here?" Robert asked.

"Well the old secretary Mrs. Smith up at the school gave us a call this morning," Rob raised his eyebrows at this, it has to be serious for her to call him. She had hated his guts ever since she lost her husband in a crash a long time ago, and Rob couldn't find the drunk driver she claimed had ran her off the road. "And she wants you to come down there to look at some footage of the football field."

"Well I guess we better get going then." Rob said, putting his hat on and holstering his 44.

As soon as they got to the school, Rob could tell something was off. He couldn't quite describe it, but it was as if there was this feeling in the air. He put his hand on his gun and opened the door to the school. "About time you boy's got here." Mrs. Smith's voice almost scared Robert out of his skin.

"What do you need us here for?" Rob asked, "You know we have lots of work back at the station."

"Like what, figuring out which kid through toilet paper at old McFarland's house?" She sarcastically remarked walking into the security office.

"Yeah, yeah, just get to the point," Gabe said.

There was a loud whirring noise as she pulled up the security footage on the old computer they had. They need to update their equipment around here. Mrs. Smith finally got the footage up.

"Now before I play this," she started, "I know its weird. I'm hoping one of you fellas got an explanation, because frankly, I have no clue what to make of it."

She pushed play on the video and sped up the footage. There was nothing happening for a good bit and then the video went static for a couple of seconds, and when it returned, Rob couldn't believe his eyes. There was a strange looking symbol, burned into the field, still smoking.

"Alright now what kind of prank is this Mrs. Smith?" an annoyed Rob asked.

"This isn't a prank, I thought so too. Follow me to the field."

Robert and the others walked down to the field to investigate, and things kept getting weirder. Rob knelt down and examined the scorch closely. There was an eerie look to this symbol, almost otherworldly. The symbol depicted what looked like an eye with a rounded shape behind it, and swirls coming from around that. "These edges are perfect," he noted, "no normal fire could have done this."

"What do you think?" Gabe asked.

"Frankly, I have no clue." Rob replied.

"Boy's, look." Mrs. Smith pointed toward the middle of the symbol. In the air there were strange sparks that randomly went off. There was no pattern to it. It almost seemed as if something was trying to happen, but was failing.
"Gabe, go call the station, I want officers on 24 hour surveillance of this." Rob instructed.

"What's wrong?" Mrs. Smith asked as Gabe was leaving.

"I don't know, but I intend to find out." Just as he was saying this, Rob noticed some movement underneath the bleachers across the field, and moved to investigate. He drew his gun, and slowly entered underneath. There were lots of crates around, lots of places to hide. He finally went around one corner and found a young woman at the end of his barrel. She yelped and he put his gun down.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" Robert demanded.

"My name is Rachel Gomez, and I have something you'll want to see," she answered, "Sheriff Mitchell, if you'll look in my sketchbook, you'll see that weird things are happening around town." She opened the sketchbook to a page with the symbol on the field on it.

"Okay, so you copied the symbol down, congratulations you're good at art, what's the big deal?" Rob asked. She replied by flipping through several pages with similar symbols on all of them.

"What is all this?" he asked.

"These are all around town, just in more hidden places than this one, and they all appeared last night. If you'll let me, I'll lead you to all of them.

Robert took Rachel out to meet Gabe and Mrs. Smith, and had her tell them what she told him. Rob told Mrs. Smith they were going to leave and they were on their way.

After leaving the school, Robert, Gabriel, and Rachel went to the local diner for a bite. Rob wanted to get to know Rachel before deciding if he could trust her, because this was getting really weird really fast. They sat down and after a while Thomas Hamilton, the previous sheriff and owner of this diner, sent his daughter Alyiah to take their order. They exchanged pleasantries, and then ordered some pancakes when Robert finally addressed Rachel, "Alright so what do you know about these symbols that we don't?" Upon hearing that police business was being discussed the waitress scurried away.

"Right now all I know is where they are and that ever since they appeared weird things have been happening, animals going crazy, static electricity in the air up to the roof. Just overall crazy stuff" Rachel replied.

"Well, we need to figure things out, before whatever it is gets out of hand," Gabriel added. The small trio got up and as they were heading outside there were several simultaneous lightning strikes, one taking place in the direction of the school. "So Rachel, what are the odds that those other lightning strikes seemed to be in some of your locations?" Rob asked.

"Very high, let's get going." Rachel replied, sounding very nervous. What the hell is going on with these symbols? Robert thought to himself as they got going.