Parallel [ONC 2020] // Shortlisted

Chapter Nine

The three of us returned the Bible to the hole in the wall that afternoon but I couldn't shake it from my mind. That book contained details about my family beyond 1882, the truth about what became of Luke, Mother and Father in the aftermath of my supposed disappearance. Ricky thought I shouldn't look at it because of what it may contain, she thought it best I not discover the truth of what happened to them. Her reasoning being that my entire outlook on my family would be different if I knew the truth.

Yet she had been the one to decide that I had no hope for getting home and that I should get used to living in a century far different from my own. If she had been correct and I had no chance of returning to my own time, I did not see the harm in venturing a little further into the Bible and discover all the things I missed. There had to have been a reason no one knew that the Bible had been kept hidden in the wall of Father's office. Both Luke and I knew where it was, so why was it still there over one hundred years later?

That night, I tossed and turned in bed with no hope of falling asleep. I hated the prospect of being stuck in a place that was no longer my home with people who were so different from myself. After several hours of not being able to sleep, I kicked the blankets off my body and tiptoed across the room to the door. The hinges groaned as I opened the door and stepped into the hallway where a soft tinge of light travelled through the window at the end of the hall and the glowing emergency lights that were dotted down the hallway.

I made my way down the hall and in the direction of the Headteachers office. The journey felt different on my own, but when I reached the office, I used the same trick I had seen Ricky use with a hairpin just hours before. When the door clicked, I pushed it open and stepped inside but I left the door partially ajar so I could listen out for any footsteps. The moonlight offered enough light for me to take the same ruler as before and wiggle the brick free from the wall. I removed the Bible, replaced the brick and crept back down the room we had been in earlier that day.

Once inside the room, I flicked the light on and sat down one of the chairs in the room before flicking open the Bible. I read through every page of the Bible, from the births and deaths centuries before I had even been born. The details containing the construction of the house and the birth and marriage of my parents were still as clear as day. I skipped my own page, knowing exactly how it ended and bypassed straight to Luke's. I needed to know what happened to my little brother.

His page read:

Luke Johnathon Longdale.

Date of Birth – 9th March 1872                                                   

Date of death – 1st July 1916

Marriage – Miss Annabelle Victoria Jones                           

                        Date of Marriage 4th June 1894

Children – Harriet Marie Longdale – Born 17th November 1900

                       Charles Robert Longdale – Born 28th April 1902

                        Victoria Daisy Longdale – Born 7th February 1905 

                                                                               Died 8th February 1905

                         Elizabeth Jane Longdale – Born 24th March 1908

                        John Albert Longdale – Born 4th July 1912

                        Mary  Lucy Longdale – Born 1st July 1916

If the information recorded in the Bible was correct, Luke would have been forty-six when he died, the same day his last child would be born. The child he would never get to meet. Despite only being ten when I last saw him, Luke had always said he wanted a large family and live long enough to see his grandchildren, but he never got that opportunity and his youngest daughter never got to know her father. How could someone who was so determined to live long in life die at such a young age?

My eyes read through the page repeatedly, taking in the dates and names of his daughter and his wife. We had never seen eye-to-eye much as we grew up, yet he felt he could name his first-born daughter after me even though Mother and Father would have forbidden him from doing so after I supposedly eloped with the gardener. My brother, the only sibling I ever had, had disobeyed our parents to name a child after me. He did that after I had spent most of his life telling him to leave me alone. If only we had been closer.

I ran my hand over the page, feeling the roughness of the paper under my fingertips and the slight raised feeling of the ink on the page. This page contained information about Luke's family but nothing about the life he lived and the person he had become between the last night I saw him and the date of his death. On the other side of the page, someone had attached a photograph of Luke, but it was not the photographs I knew to have existed of him.

Instead, he looked far older. His hair was covered by a cap, but it had remained the light red colour he had been born with. Luke did not smile but stood staring at the camera with a look of pride on his face and in his eyes, no doubt related to the army uniform he wore. I never thought Luke would serve his time in the army, he was destined to take over from Father when he came of age and yet there he stood in an army uniform that looked so different from the one I had seen many times growing up.

The date on the photograph read November 1914, two years before he were to die without seeing his own child. I knew almost immediately that it had been an army incident that killed him, a wrong move in a conflict had ended my brother's life.

I slammed the Bible shut and slumped back against my seat, staring up at the lights on the ceiling until my eyes started to ache. Luke had never been violent, he had no reason to join the army and leave his family behind, no reason to return to the conflict when his wife was with child.

"Did you find what you wanted?" Ricky's voice came from behind. I spun around and saw her standing in the doorway with her arms folded over chest.

"How did you know I would be here?"

"It wasn't difficult."

"Is there more information then what was written in this book?"

"Yes. The biography on the house tells you everything you need to know."

"What do you know?"

"You really want to know?"

"Yes."

Ricky sighed and walked into the room, closing the door behind her and sitting across from me.