Parallel [ONC 2020] // Shortlisted

Chapter Two

Something seemed different.

The hallway appeared brighter than usual and the candelabras were no longer fitted with candles but with small glass balls that appear to emit light, like the sun. Gone were the flowered wallpaper and paintings of the country. Instead, the walls were covered in yellow paper and the paintings had not been replaced. Down one of the walls sat a thin red box connected to a larger red box labelled 'Fire Alarm'.

I walked a little further down the hall, tightening my shawl around my hand. It looked like my hallway, it should have been my hallway and yet it wasn't. I had been in my room for a matter of minutes and yet it felt as though more time had passed, long enough for the hallway to be redecorated. Those minutes might have been an eternity.

Floorboards creaked underfoot as I made my way down the hallway and started down the stairs; at least they were unchanged. Mother no longer stood in the entranceway as she had been when I had walked up the stairs only seemingly minute before-hand. On the wall to the left of the door sat a large board with sheets of paper seemingly pinned to it. There were brightly coloured posters, lists and all manner of things I had never seen before.

My first thought as I reached the bottom step had been of Luke, I hadn't seen him since he had left my room that morning. If Mother and Father were gone, did that mean he was too? I wanted to turn around and head back upstairs, to scour his room in hopes of finding him under the bed or curled up in his wardrobe with a book. Yet something told me to keep moving through the house, to find out just what had happened.

I turned away from the entranceway and started towards the drawing-room. On the wall just beside the door sat a large portrait lined with a bronze frame, it took up most of the wall. I took a step back and examined the painting. Father stood to the right with Mother on his left and Luke in front of them, yet I was not there. Luke appeared older, not the same ten-year-old boy I had seen only hours previously. I looked at the small plaque on the front of the painting.

'The Longdale family – 1889'

That couldn't have been right. We were only partway through 1882.

"You off to a fancy-dress party or something?" a voice said behind me. I turned and almost tripped over my own foot.

"I beg your pardon?" I exclaimed.

"The outfit, you look like you're dressed for a ball or something."

"I could say the same thing about you."

The boy in front of me wore a pair of dark blue trousers, though they hardly resembled the ones Father wore. He wore a shirt with sleeves that stopped partway down his upper-arm and it looked as though someone had spilt paint on it. His shoes were laced loosely and covered in mud. Whoever this may have been, he certainly didn't look like a respectable gentleman.

"What are you doing in my house?" I said.

"Your house? This is a school."

"Mitch? Are you talking to yourself again?" From the drawing-room, a young girl walked out. She had red hair cut short and wore a skirt far too short and far too revealing for anyone, let alone someone approaching their years in courtship. "What on earth. Who's that?"

"I have no idea."

"My name is Harriet Longdale, and this is my house."

"Yeah, funny." The boy, Mitch, took a step towards me. "Harriet Longdale was their eldest daughter; she ran away from home in 1882 and no one heard from her again."

I turned back to the painting; my eyes were drawn into the date written on the plaque. The painting had been made seven years after the time I remembered being in, yet how could that be? How could the two people standing before me know more about my own future then I did since I had yet to live it? How did they get hold of a painting down years after the last date I remember? None of it made sense, none of it could make sense and yet it was happening.

The two of them exchanged looks and the girl approached me. Her eyes scanned my entire outfit, as though amazed that I wore such a thing, yet her outfit would have been the height of impropriety. I tightened my grip on the shawl. Just moments before I had been preparing for a seemingly ordinary trip to the theatre with my parents and now everything had changed.

"This doesn't make sense. I was only in my room for a few minutes, how could everything be so different? How could a painting be painted in 1889 when just five minutes ago it had been 1882?" I started to ramble.

"You're taking this cosplay a little too far, don't you think?" Mitch said.

"I don't think she's cosplaying."

"Don't start on your ghost theory, Ricky."

"I don't think she's a ghost either. She looks real enough to me and I don't remember reading anything on anyone being able to see a ghost as clearly as we're seeing here. Also, why on earth would Harriet Longdale haunt the house she ran away from?"

"You're not making any sense."

"Do you remember that theory we came up with the other day in science, the idea of parallel universes?" Mitch nodded. "What if we were right? What if she somehow stepped through her timeline into ours and can't get back? It would explain the outfit, the confusion and why Harriet Longdale was seemingly erased from her own family history back in 1882. What if she didn't run away? What if she got trapped here?"

"That sounds insane, you know that right?"

"Yes, but it makes sense. What was that Einstein quote? The one about time Mrs Likens said to shut down our theory?"

"The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once."

"What if he was wrong?"

~~~

A/N - Chapter Two is here! A little over the 1000 word marker for each chapter, but oh well xD More to come!

First Published - February 3rd, 2020