frozen within time

Chapter six

Alex got his uncle to put his head down between his knees until the faintness passed, while Kristen made another mug of stweet tea.
'Are they still there?' Uncle Johns voice was weak muffled by his corduroy trousers. 'Have they faded from view yet?'

'They're still here----and they're not fading at all,' said Alex. 'They're not ghosts. How do you know their names?'

'Have they made contact?' Asked uncle John.
'Ask them to knock three times if they can see us.'

'There not ghosts!' Said Alex 'honestly, uncle j----I'm suprised at you! You're a scientist!'

'How does he know your names?' Asked Kristen but Karl and holly just shrugged. Distracted from their own grief and shocked by the arrival of the man who was insisting they weren't real.

'Uncle, please!' Said Kristen, sounding as much as she could like her mother (uncle johns younger sister, who never did take any nonsense Fein him). 'This is Karl and holly----we found then in an underground vault in the woods.'

'They're not ghosts,' repeated Alex. ' That would be rediculous. They've just been held in cryonic suspension for fifty three years.'

Uncle John shot his head back up from his between his knees. 'What did you just say?' He gasped.

'I said, they've been in a some sort of cryonic suspension . . . . Down in the vault in the garden . . . . Since 1956. We just dug them out.'

Uncle John looked across at the brother and sister, who were regarding him nervously across their half drunk tea, and suddently he have a wild chuckle and a tear rolled down one cheek. 'I knew it . . . . I knew be couldn't have done it. I knew it!'

'What? What do you mean?' Alex shook his uncle's shoulder.

'Everyone said he did----but I never believed them! Never! And I was right!'

'What are you talking about?' Said Alex.

'Alex----be a good boy and bring the wooden chest in from the sitting room,' said uncle John, who was now getting in his feet, still chuckling, his moist eyes fixed upon Karl and holly. 'Hurry up!'

When Alex returned with a small chest, uncle John was sitting at the table, shaking his head in amazement, looking from Karl to holly and then back again. Kristen was trying g to get him to drink his sweet tea. 'You look exactly----exactly----as I remember you,' He was murmuring.

'I'm sorry, sir,' said holly. 'But I don't remember you. Ought I to?'

'Not like this, certainly,' laughed uncle John.
'You need to knock fifty three years odd. I was only six when it all happened.'

'When what happened?' Asked karl. 'I want to know what happened. What happened to father? Where is he?'

Alex dropped the chest at his uncle's feet and uncle John quickly undid it to reveal books and old faded papers. He pulled out a grey foolscap folder and put it on the table. Inside were yellowed newspaper pages. 'Prepare yourself,' He said, quite gently for uncle John, and opened up what turned out to be the front page of the local daily paper. Across it, in thick black headlines, they read:

SCIENTIST BELIEVED TK HAVE MURDERED CHRILDREN AND FLED

holly cried out and put her hand to her throat wile Karl inhaled sharply and pulled the elderly paper close to him, staring down at it in horror.
Alex and Kristen peered over his shoulder and read the story. of course, they had heard about it, long ago. . . . . Everyone had.