Ontario, Maple Diamond town
November 9, 2006
"So Dixie and I are going on a trip this weekend, so your training will be done by someone else," a cop in his mid-30s said. The cop was my partner, and his name was Ben. Ben was very tall and looked very intimidating. In fact, when I first joined, I was terrified when he came to greet me, but after getting to know him. Primarily, when he started training me, I saw that he was a genuine, kind and charismatic guy. Seeing my silence, Ben patted my shoulder gently. "Don't worry, Vincent, I'm sure you'll get a girlfriend soon," Ben added sympathetically. "I'm not worried about that, I'm worried about who my new temporary partner will be," I responded. Ben laughed at my comment and said I was overreacting, which caused me to look away in embarrassment. Which only made him laugh more before adding that my new partner for those two days is Diego. Upon hearing that name, I grabbed my head in annoyance. Ben asked if I knew him, and I explained that I knew him from high school. We were the top two students in our school, with Diego ranked second and me ranked first. He was very competitive and made everything competitive. He made eating lunch a competition and cleaning the whiteboard the fastest. It was very tiring, and I found him the most annoying kind of person to deal with. Ben said that if this made me uncomfortable, I could always take those days off. I refuted the idea, as if I did, Diego will never let me forget it. Diego said, "Sounds like a piece of work". I nodded in response as the radio turned on. Ben took the radio and asked what the issue was. They explained that two kids went missing at the Pumpkin Theatre.
"Pumpkin Theatre: Home For Retro Movies and Video Games"
Vincent looked at the sign with nostalgia as if he were a kid again. His partner, Ben, soon exited the police car and, with a nervous expression, signalled for Vincent to enter the building. The two entered the building to meet with the owner, Jimmy Dafoe, who was relieved to see us. Both cops received a phone call from the theatre about two children going missing, Maria and Nicolas. The kids' parents came to us and explained in more detail what had happened to their children. The parents explain that they drop their kids off at the theatre to celebrate their friend's tenth birthday. The theatre had a fairly decent-sized room where kids would hold their birthday parties. The theatre will cater the food and cake for the birthday parties and will usually end with the kids watching a movie at the theatre. According to the parents, they were late picking up their kids after the party finished. Once they arrived there, they were nowhere to be found. According to Jimmy, the kid's friend's parents decided to stay with them until the parents arrived, but had to leave early to pick up their oldest son. So the kids were left waiting for their parents to arrive. Jimmy added that the security camera caught kids running outside and taking a photo with a bulldog animatronic outside. Soon after taking the photo, they seemed to be looking at something in the forest near the theatre and entered the nearby forest. This Theatre was located north of Maple Diamond Town. It had a decent-sized cornfield and a forest next to it. The forest was huge and was known to have wolves and bears in the deeper parts. while smaller animals, such as foxes and turkeys, were seen near the entrance. After hearing the details from the owner, Henry and Ben decided to look for the kids in the forest. Henry thinks of a question as the two are about to leave and asks Jimmy. Henry asks where the second owner is since he remembers two owners of the theatre, Jimmy Dafoe and Kosaku Kramer. Jimmy looked surprised when Henry said that Kosaku had left the company one month ago. Jimmy explains that Kosaku left because he no longer liked running a business. After all, it was too stressful, and he wanted a change of pace. He is now an office worker for a local department store and is doing well, according to Jimmy. After Jimmy explained Kosaku's whereabouts, he pointed at where the kids were last seen. It was near nighttime, so Vincent decided to look for the kids before it became dark outside. Vincent told Ben to stay with the family until other officers arrived, while he went to see if the children were still nearby. Vincent exited through the theatre's left exit, which led into the children's playground with the bulldog animatronic that takes photos to the right of the entrance. Vincent made his way through the cornfield, which was a pretty decent size with the corn stalks around my shoulder height. The cornfield wasn't big, so he didn't take long to get through it. Vincent was standing at the entrance to the forest when he saw a photograph lying on the forest floor, most likely taken by the children earlier with the bulldog animatronic outside the theatre. By this time, Vincent noticed that the weather was worsening, becoming windier and colder by the second. Vincent grabbed the photo, which showed the two siblings making dumb faces together. Nothing suspicious was seen in the photo, but Vincent decided to place it in his bag just in case it would be needed for an investigation if the children turned out to be missing. Vincent decides to head to the stream in the forest, as he knows that when he was little, he and his friends would go there to play and look for the many birds there. So there is a slight chance the two children saw a bird and followed it through the forest to the stream. The stream was located in the middle of the forest, and it usually takes 15 to 20 minutes to get there. Henry arrived at the stream in 14 minutes and was greeted by the two children throwing stones into the stream. Henry was relieved to see they were okay and asked them why they were there. Nicholas said something very odd. He said he saw a strange bird in the forest that looked like a raptor at the entrance of the forest staring at them for a second and then retreated into the forest, so he and his sister chased it into the forest before making it to the stream where they were stopped by a hunter there that told them it was too dangerous to go any further as they were a wolf pack in the other side of the forest. Vincent told them where the hunter was, and the kids said he had just left and told them to wait for someone to come to them. Vincent notified Ben that the kids were located, and backup can be cancelled. As they began to leave, he saw a strange footprint that seemed to move east of the kids' locations, at a tree line. The tree line seemed to have a clear view of the kids if you were at the tree, which made him suspect someone was watching them. However, one thing put a hole in the theory: the tracks were animal-like and not human. More specifically, it was an animal footprint; it looked like a chicken or bird footprint, like the ones he saw when he used to go to the petting zoo with his mom. Though something was off about it, it was too big, and while it looked similar to chicken footprints, there was a slight difference. The footprint had distinct markings which suggested the creature had a hook-toe claw. A tug at his jacket, brought by Nicholas, brought him back to reality. Vincent apologized and told the children they were going to meet their parents, which put a rosy smile on the two kids' faces. Nicholas and Maria soon returned to their parents, thanked me for the help, and left. Ben congratulated me on my first job, and Vincent responded, "It's not a big deal." Ben asked Vincent if he wanted to get a pizza since it was still kind of early, being 7:30 pm. Vincent agreed to his friend's request, but they heard rattling in the cornfield behind them as soon as they started to leave for the restaurant.