Every night I do a quick walkthrough of our property before I go to sleep. Tonight I found an empty car parked in front of our school with this sign taped on the steering wheel.

How does this make you feel

and

How do you think this situation resolves?

I guess I'll draw this out into a dramatic thread since I have your attention now

Context: the school parking lot is very secluded. Right off a major road, but shielded from view by the school gym. Weird stuff happens there all the time.

This summer we had some teenage vandals who would arrive on Saturday night, ca. 3 AM, and very efficiently and officiously upend all the trash cans and take all the traffic cones and sand-filled cigarette disposals and throw them in the outside gym stairwell

I have no idea what the meaning of this bizarre ritual was: why they did it or what they gained from it. They did it about three weeks in a row. From what I could see of our door security camera footage it was a very well rehearsed process. Mercilessly efficient.

Okay, back to the horror car.

Last time there was a car parked outside the school at this hour there was a person sleeping inside of it. So I was relieved, at first glance, to see that this one was empty.

But it looked *very* empty. It was perfectly clean inside, like it had been recently detailed. No personal effects of any kind. An ice scraper in the back seat, that's all.

And then I saw the note.

The note made my blood run cold.

Nothing good could come from a note like that.

LOOK IN THE TRUNK,

and the Os are smiley faces?

No. No. No.

I hurry back to the rectory, ice running through my veins, and find the pastor watching TV. We call the police from the kitchen.

I don't really want to be there when they open the trunk because I already have a mental image of what's inside and it's not good.

What I imagine is in the trunk, ranked by likelihood:

1.) Drugs, probably.
2.) Some kind of explosive device. The car is parked outside a preschool.
3.) A dead body.
4.) Something totally innocent and unremarkable.
5.) A living body.

A part of me very much wants to remain in the rectory and have the police call me back when they find out what's in the car. But the part of me that absolutely has to know WHAT IS IN THE TRUNK volunteers to meet the police in the parking lot.

The school is right down the hill from the rectory but I go in my car. I do not want to be alone in the parking lot with that car, even at a distance, on foot. The sinister energy emanating from this car is immense. I loathe the sight of the car.

When I arrive, a police car is already there. (They probably just pulled out of the speed trap they operate in our upper parking lot.) I pull up at a distance. Four more cars arrive in short order.

The officers and I make some introductions and small talk. Everyone agrees the car is extremely suspicious. The note is horrifying. I hear the lead officer call a dispatcher and catch a snippet of the conversation: "the Os have smiley faces in them."

The first question is whether I've called the director of the preschool. No, I say, I hadn't thought of that, and I don't have her personal number anyway. I call the pastor. He doesn't have it either. (We should probably have it but she's a new director.)

The officers are trading stories about other "trunk calls" they've had. The last one involved a car with a poison symbol taped on the trunk and a message: "Run away as fast as you can." The owner had poisoned himself and locked himself in the trunk of his own car to die.

They run the plates.

The car is registered to the director of the preschool.

But she is not inside the school. The lights in the office are off. The school is totally empty.

Therefore I do not find this information consoling in the slightest. In fact, it makes me very nervous indeed.

An officer suggests that he might drive to the nearby homes of some of the teachers to knock on their doors and see what they know.

I notice that two of the officers have returned to the car. They're tapping the trunk. One of them jokes, in the manner of gallows humor, that he'll get to learn how to force one of these open tonight.

The lead officer has got the owner of the car, the director of the preschool, on the phone. This is good news; it means that she's alive and not stuffed into the back of her own car.

She says that they had lent the car to another teacher.

Where is she?

The preschool director seems surprised to hear that the car is at the school. She will call the officer right back.

lol okay I can't drag this out any longer.

The teacher returned the car to the school parking lot this evening and there's like, a thing of salt water taffy or something in the trunk as a sign of gratitude to its owner.

She also had the car detailed as a thank you.

BUT LISTEN—

The Os had smiley faces in them.

You would have called the cops too.

(However...)

(I have not actually seen what is in the trunk of the car...)

FINAL UPDATE: The parish business manager has revealed that the "salt water taffy" was actually a case of beer and a bottle of wine