Rachel Cheok was a proud woman. Not in the terms of arrogance or bullheadedness (although she had plenty of that), but in the terms of her life's accomplishments. She owned a studio apartment downtown, edited an article for the Arcadia Review, and was on the precipice of getting answers for the personal project she was hoping to become her big break in the journalism world.
She was so close too. She had pinned up blurry photographs and newspaper clippings to a wall in her living room like in one of those deceptive shows her hopefully-soon-to-be-fiancé liked so much. The pins were sparkly blue instead of read and they were attached with an ugly brown string she'd unravelled from that Christmas sweater her grandmother knitted that she'd never had the heart to throw away, but well, she had a budget.
Rachel was a proud woman, which is why her glorious-spectacular-how-on-earth-did-I-end-up-with-someone-this-amazing lover simply sighed and handed her a cup of coffee before rushing off to work with a troubled expression. Rachel burned her tongue on the hot coffee, spilling it on her Spiderman pajamas, and attempted to rub out the bags under her eyes. Deeming it useless, she called in sick (she wasn't), and fell dramatically onto the coach. Rachel squinted at the board (she couldn't see without her glasses), and steepled her hands underneath her chin like Benedict Cumberbatch on that show her awesome-amazing-what-did-I-do-to-deserve-this-absolute-angel of a partner had forced her to watch.
Okay, so maybe forced was a strong word. Coerced was better, strongly encouraged, traded in exchange for-
Ahem.
To be fair, she was calling in sick for a good reason. Rachel was on the verge of something big. Unless her sleep deprived brain had been creating hallucinations before she passed out from exhaustion at 5:00 am that morning, she had almost all the pieces. Almost.
Rachel had been studying the recent spike of raccoon sighting in Arcadia and the surrounding populations within the last 5 years. It was a strange phenomena that no one could quite explain. Her boss had scoffed when she'd asked for permission to research the story, saying that raccoons had simply migrated. It was a reasonable enough explanation except for the fact that Arcadia had gotten 347 raccoon complaints that month, and of those complaints, only an average of 23 were actually reported to have been seen.
It was… perplexing.
Rachel's boss told her to stop with the conspiracy theories and get back to work, but Rachel persisted. As a wise man once said, or rather, scratched onto the bus stop on 22nd street and signed "Blinky", if it's everyone it must be a conspiracy. And indeed, it was everyone. Or rather, the 324 people who had sent in complaints without actually seeing the raccoons themselves. Aside from the occasional get-off-my-lawn type person, people had to have it happen often enough for them to send in a complaint. Which meant that these animals, or people, or whatever they were, had come to these people's houses on multiple occasions. The question though, was why.
Why were there so many? Why return to the scene of the crime? Why Arcadia?
Rachel was on the verge of something. She knew it because in the past month, there was only 38 sightings. 38. Not to mention the weird light show a few weeks ago, or the almost humanoid broken statues that had appeared scattered in the town and forest the morning after. They were connected, Rachel knew it, so she had taken the initiative to borrow one of the stones from the cleanup crew. Okay, maybe steal.
The stone resembled a foot. A strange foot with spices sticking out of it, but a foot nonetheless. Carved into the gray were designs. Simple designs, a pattern that seemed to repeat, and yet Rachel knew there was something more to them. The lines were too delicate, too narrow and careful to have been put there by a weirdo cult. Not to mention that of the over 200 living and dead languages had researched (aka, googled) last night, not a single one seemed to match it. And yet the way the stone seemed to hum when she picked it up, as though it had once been a living creature, seemed nothing less than a language. She pulled up her laptop and googled 'dead languages', groaning at the lightened text at the top of page.
About 8,540,000 results (0.46 seconds)
Rachel rubbed the bags underneath her eyes. She had work to do.
Don't laugh, Arcadia has a serious raccoon problem. Jim, Steve, and Claire all mention it at some point in the show. I thought I'd address it while our lovely miss Áine is busy getting chewed out by the mysterious human woman.