All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora: Welcome to Brookville

By Michael Field

It's late. Duncan Carver walks the grounds of the local cemetery in search of an alleged grave-robbing creature. Suddenly, a yellowish gas engulfs the cemetery. Duncan chokes on the chemical cloud before being pulled to safety by Amanda Copeland. Amanda is a journalist with the Brookville Gazette, investigating the illegal venting of experimental gaseous chemicals around the town by Epsen Pharmaceuticals. She is a realist. Duncan is a dreamer. Instantly, they argue.

The next day, Duncan recovers and heads straight for All Things Weird, a local shop that deals in mysterious items and carries an overall knowledge of all things Brookville. Duncan again begs Grady Olsen, proprietor and Brookville expert, for a job. Olsen relents. As Duncan leaves the shop and runs into Amanda. Immediately, they argue about their nighttime encounter. Duncan tells her off and escapes to a local café.

Olsen is visited by a familiar face. His ex-wife, Evelyn Godfrey, arrives with dire news. Deacon, their son is on his way to Brookville in search of a secret power they've protected for years. She relays the story of the library and the discovery a mutual friend in New York City who was unable to conceal the location of the item from Deacon. Brookville.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Field
• Release date: Jul 16, 2022
• ISBN: 9798589337037

Michael Field

I directed a feature I penned in 2005 titled, "Save the Forest", which enjoyed a small run on Netflix as well as being released internationally through Echelon Entertainment. I created the short film, "The Hero", which was a finalist for TriggerStreet.com's annual festival in 2005. and developed two successful web series, The Puzzle Maker's Son and Scenes from the Movies From there, I published my two novels Adam Parker and the Radioactive Scout and Adam Parker and the High School Bully. In 2015, my script Kiddo was a quarterfinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship and in 2017, I was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for Outstanding Writing in New Media for my short Life Ends @ 30. Recently, I've published a novella, Paradoxed, and a YA-Adventure novella called All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora. I also have a short film, that I wrote and directed, on the festival circuit, Noppera-bō You can find me here: michaeldfield.com and Forgotten Cinema Podcast.

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This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in the manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher.

All Things Weird: The Jar of Pandora

All Rights Reserved

Copyright 2022 M.D. Field

V1.0

ISBN: 9798832965000

Cover Design by Penelope Field

All rights reserved – Used with permission

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without expressed written consent of the publisher/author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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All Things Weird

The Jar of Pandora

by

Michael Field

Chapter 1

Duncan and Amanda

It had to be a hoax. Some kid, playing a prank, dressed up like a creature. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity. These days, barn owls were everyone’s favorite animal-mistaken-for-a-mythical-beast. Usually, Duncan was able to debunk these sorts of the things from the comfort of his own home, but this mystery was different from the others. Something was off. There were too many anomalies surrounding these sightings that convinced him to, at the very least, take a walk through the Brookville Cemetery in the middle of the night.

Duncan Carver wasn’t an amateur sleuth. He was a journalist. A reporter seeking the truth behind the world’s more colorful mysteries. He didn’t work for a publication unless you counted Strange Tales as an official member of the national media, which no one really did.

Strange Tales was a website dedicated to all things unexplainable. Duncan had his own personal blog – Duncan Carver Investigates – and he would share his more interesting findings with Strange Tales to increase awareness. The readership for his own website was small, but devoted. While Duncan knew his articles were being read, it hadn’t yet translated to success for his own blog.

Usually, people rationalized anything out of the ordinary as being part of a natural order. They ignored what they couldn’t explain, allowing more digestible lies to fill the spaces where the truth was too painful to believe. Not Duncan. Duncan was a believer. He believed that the extraordinary and the ordinary co-existed in the same universe.

Duncan didn’t grow up in Brookville. His father moved to the small town because of a job opportunity, but Duncan was glad they did. Brookville had been on Duncan’s radar ever since he developed an interest in things that go bump in the night. There were dozens of unexplained stories, dating back hundreds of years, all centered around Brookville. When Henry Carver was offered a job in the neighboring town of South Haven, Duncan wasted no time pushing his father to find residence in Brookville. Duncan played the guilt card and he played it well.

Henry couldn’t find a good enough reason not to move to Brookville, especially since the mill rate was low and houses were reasonably priced. The realtor made mention of the town’s interesting history as being a factor for the low prices, but thankfully that didn’t dissuade Henry. He picked a small, two-bedroom home outside of the downtown area and with that, the Carvers became residents of Brookville.

Duncan quickly gained a reputation as the one to call if you’re looking to get to the bottom of a mysterious encounter. The only problem was that most of the encounters were neither mysterious nor supernatural, as was the case with Mrs. Palmer’s ability to walk through walls. Duncan was suspicious right away when he met the older woman and noticed the large bruises on her forehead. Turned out she was walking into the walls and knocking herself out, only to wake up thinking she had floated throughout her house.

Before the move to Brookville, Duncan researched ancient mysteries from across the globe. He even scored the occasional interview with a scholar. But after the move, he took a more active approach to his investigations by venturing out into the field. He knew Brookville was rife with supernatural mysteries and he wanted to experience these events for himself. His current night walk through the cemetery being the latest example.

Through his website, people were able to submit their strange experiences via a contact form. Most of the time, the submissions were pranks that Duncan was adept at sniffing out, but this recent one about a creature in the cemetery had been submitted by several people at different times over the past two weeks.

And all the stories were similar.

It was usually late at night - Midnight or maybe bleeding into the early morning hours of the next day. The graveyard would be disrupted by a low pitched, hissing sound emanating from the south side of the grounds. People would see a shape in the night. A large shadow that roamed through the graves. Some reports claimed this shadow had large, red eyes. Others claimed they heard growls and chomping noises like the creature was eating something, maybe the bodies from the graves. That might scare the casual spooky-story enthusiast off, but not Duncan. All it did was pique his interest, even if it was more than likely another barn owl sighting.

Duncan doubted the validity of the grave eating reports, so his first task was to confirm those suspicions. He chose to stroll through the cemetery earlier in the day. He focused his attention on the southern edge of the graveyard, where many of the sightings took place. He quickly discovered that no gravesites were disturbed. If a creature was eating dead bodies and destroying the cemetery, the evidence would’ve been hard to keep hidden.

Tonight’s visit was about debunking the creature itself. Duncan made his way atop a hill that overlooked the entirety of the southern edge of the cemetery. He noticed several spotlights situated along the walking path, highlighting the wooded area that bordered the cemetery. That struck Duncan as odd.

He checked his watch. Almost one o’clock. He made his way down the hill, side stepping the whole way down. The hill leveled out and Duncan found his footing. He didn’t have to wait long to witness the reason for his visit.

A wail came from deep in the woods. It was brief, but piercing, and it was quickly followed by a hiss. The same hissing sound mentioned in all the reports Duncan received through his website. He walked towards the hissing without hesitation. Towards the woods.

A low-level mist, yellow in color, pushed through the edge of the woods. It hung low to the