Prelude
Prelude
Year 723
Today’s Shift – May 24, 1982
Dear Diary,
It has now been 50 years, and though the pain this will cause me to write this is still as fresh as my last entry, I feel that it is time for this to be recorded.
My last entry spoke of the disagreement with Caleb and Elizabeth about how to break the trap of time. We have tried to simply leave, and we have tried to move, but each time, when we wake, we find ourselves still here. Elizabeth was certain that the only way out is death, but Joseph and I are sure there must be another way.
We came home the next day, and walked in on a nightmare. Caleb and Elizabeth had decided to test their theory… and they took the children with them… all of them – even my babies. They left a half a bottle of the poison on the table. We found the children in their beds, looking like they were asleep, with Cal and Beth holding hands in death in their own bed.
We frantically tried to revive them, trying everything we knew, but we finally had to accept the fact that we were too late. So then we waited. That night, the shift took their bodies from us, leaving us alone. We held to each other, hoping the morning would bring the answer that my dear sister was so sure would come.
When we saw the shadows, we knew – we were in the 32nd century again. We went together to the archives – and searched the year 1982 and then we knew the truth. Their bodies had been found, dead. They were free… we had that at least… or so we thought.
Neither I, nor Joseph could figure out why we didn't just finish the poison, and join them in death. Perhaps, deep down, we just didn’t want to die.
Six years later, we shifted back to the year 1982, in the spring. That’s when Caleb returned.
He came in the form of a drunken man, sleeping off his haze in that year’s illusion of our empty house. We didn’t know what it meant at the time, and Joseph nearly shot him, but it seems the man made a choice to stay with us, and from then on, he was not able to leave.
Over the next few weeks, everything about the man changed – his hair, his eyes, the way he walked the way he talked and one day we noticed when he stood in front of Caleb’s picture on the wall, that there was no differences. He was Caleb.
We were sure when we found him in their room, staring grief stricken at their bed and asking us where HIS Beth was. He spent a month in self-exile when he remembered what they had done, living in the basement and refusing to meet our eyes.
And so diary, it is clear that we must now wait for the others to return. Our time in this house has taught us patience, but I find myself living with hope again, that I will see my sister and the sweet faces of our children again someday – death will not release us from this prison…
