Parallel [ONC 2020] // Shortlisted

Chapter Seven

"As far as I can tell, there are no known documented cases of this phenomenon. I did find something that suggested ghosts could be tears in the fabric of time which might be what we have on our hands. The only question is how do we get you back the same way you got here?" Ricky said.

She had spent over the allotted half an hour routing through books on ghosts and time travel in an attempt to find something that might have helped us. When Mitch and I had joined her, her table was covered in books. Some had been propped open whilst others were closed and stacked in a way that almost obscured her from view. Her research had come up empty and ours hadn't been any better, though I didn't really know what we were looking for.

"How did you go?"

"Nothing that we didn't already know. We might be able to find the family Bible, though." Mitch turned to look at me.

"Father kept it hidden in his study, behind a stack of books and inside the wall. If the hole was never closed, it's likely it is still there."

"His study is now the Headteachers room. How are going to find it?"

"He's away on a course over the holidays so he won't be there," Mitch said.

"Breaking and Entering? I like this idea."

"Of course, you do."

Mitch shook his head and smiled slightly. I sat back in the chair and looked at the small collection of books the two of them intended to check out to see if they had something else hidden in their pages. Father used to say that books were the secret to everything, that every known piece of information could be found in a book. I had believed that and yet no book could give us an explanation as to how I could get home.

Once the search had ended, Mitch and Ricky went to sign the books out whilst I lingered in the doorway to the Library and looked out across the once quiet village. In my day, there had been horse-drawn carriages or people walking around with parasols to protect them from the sun. Now, the village was packed with metal vehicles that smelt odd, the old cottages that remained were overshadowed by new buildings with large windows that looked more like a London factory than anything else.

My once quiet and beautiful home had been transformed by the same people who turned London into a smoke-filled city where more people lived in a workhouse than anywhere else. Everything I loved had been torn away and transformed in an instant and I doubted I would get any of it back unless we could come up with a plan. I didn't want to be stuck in a world that was not and would never be my own.

With the books checked out, the three of us started the walk back to the house and to the headteacher's office where we hoped to find the Bible. Father had always been a somewhat paranoid person and wanted our family Bible to kept safe and protected for years to come so he would keep it hidden in the same place he kept photographs of myself and Luke and locks of our hair from when we were children. If the house went up in flames, all of our things may have been destroyed but the items hidden in the wall would be protected by the brick.

"If the Bible is still there, do you think everything else is?" Mitch asked as we climbed the stairs towards Father's old study.

"Possibly. There might be more items in the space, but I cannot be certain though he rarely took anything out of the hole if he could help it. Someone else had to have signed the Bible so chances are it will not be there anymore," I said.

"Do you think someone in your family has it?"

"I don't know. Father's sister died in childbirth, as did the baby so the family lineage relied on myself and Luke. If I was classed as missing, the lineage followed Luke so any descendants of him would have the Bible or it was returned to space in the wall after Luke's children were born."

"It must be a strange feeling to know that your brother grew and had children when yesterday he was just a little kid."

"Just a little," I mumbled.

We climbed the rest of the stairs in silence and Mitch and Ricky watched out for any passing teachers and students who saw us creeping into the headteacher's office. The door was locked when Mitch tried it and didn't appear all that surprised when Ricky pulled a lock-pick set from her pocket and worked to try and jimmy the lock open. When it clicked, she turned the door handle and allowed the door to swing open before grinning and gesturing us inside.

The office had been transformed from Father's study into something unrecognisable, like the rest of the house. The oak desk that had been the staple of the office was gone, replaced with a smaller desk made of a lighter wood that I couldn't identify. Most of the desk space was covered with a large computer and the chair behind it looked like the ones in the library, black and on wheels.

Father's portrait, which used to hang on the wall to the right of the desk, had been replaced with a painting of the lake near the village. Luckily for us, the shelf that hid the hole in the wall remained as it had been over a hundred years previously. It was a step in the right direction, but the changed to the office and the village stayed at the forefront of my mind.

Everything we had built, everything we had worked so hard to create had been altered or changed beyond recognition in favour of things that seemed more modern and advanced. To me, they all seemed plain and lacked any sort of character whatsoever.

Our legacy was being removed brick by brick.

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A/N - Chapter Seven!!! WOOOO