It was all a conspiracy Xavier had come up with in his head during class, looking through the history textbook. He would flip to a random page, and flip until he found a picture of people, and then figure out which one's he'd seen before. Some people just happened to be related, but others were random. There would be no name for them to the side, and it was almost like they never existed in the first place.
Xavier thought it would be too cliche to be real, until he kept seeing the same man. He looked exactly the same in every picture, except he had different clothes on. The same square jaw, and strong build, with the same eyes that never moved like old paintings do.
"Guys, I think I'm going crazy," Xavier finally admitted, slamming the textbook on the desk. Both his friends looked at him, amused.
"Is this something new, or something you're just admitting?" Dan laughed.
Noah chuckled, shaking his head at Dan's comment. "Is this about why you've been frantically flipping pages all class?"
"Yes! There's this guy that shows up in all the pictures, but he's only ever mentioned," he exclaimed, pausing to open the book to a tabbed page, "here. It's a portrait of the Duke of some town way back when that went missing a few years after his cousin was crowned queen."
"You think this guy died and became a ghost?" Noah asked, leaning to check out the paragraph on the page.
"Not exactly. I just think there's some link to him going missing, and reappearing in all these pictures."
"Dude that's kinda freakin' me out right now," Dan said, eyeing the picture. "My grandma has some pics with this dude in a box somewhere."
Xavier stopped scanning the page to look at Dan. There wasn't a hint that he was joking. His face had gone white, and his eyes were wide, staring at the man on the page. "Dan. How recent are the pictures?"
"Uh, probably around thirty years ago."
The trio looked back at the page, glancing at the date printed in blue under the page. 1899. Xavier let out a breath. "Maybe you're just thinking it's him. Maybe it's just some guy."
"Weren't you just saying he's been in pictures he couldn't have been in," Noah said.
"And my grandma shows me those pictures all the time. I know that guy by heart."
All three boys stood in silence before closing the book. They all looked at each other, and nodded. They were going to figure out who this man was, and why he was in every picture.
