Chapter Ten
Mysterious Photographs
Lucy burst out of the wardrobe. She even forgot the wardrobe's floor was not ground level and ended up falling onto the ground once she ran from the wardrobe. Landing with a loud thud on the ground Lucy ignored the pain from her hands and knees and hopped on up so she could tell her siblings she was back. They must be so worried about her considering she was gone for so long.
"Nighty-eight, nighty-nine, one hundred! Ready or not here I come!" Lucy heard Peter yell throughout the house as she ripped the door to the spare room open and ran through the hallways.
"It's all right!" She yelled as she came from the room. "I'm back! I'm all right!" She exclaimed as she ran down the three stairs into the hallway where Edmund stuck his head out from behind the curtains.
"Shut up! He's coming!" He told her with a hushed voice and a nasty look on his face. What on earth was she doing? She was going to give them away!
Lucy's smile turned into a frown as she looked over at Edmund in confusion. Peter then having run up the stairs from the main entrance came into the hallway and stopped short when he saw the two of them out in the open. Edmund let out a loud sigh and Peter furred his brows and had a small smirk on his face. "You know, I'm not sure you two have quite got the idea of this game," He said to the two of them as Edmund threw the curtains off of him and started walking off.
Lucy continued looking baffled at her brothers, they seemed to have continued going about their day the whole time she was gone. It seemed like they didn't even realize she had ever left. "Weren't you wondering where I was?" Lucy asked them with a frown.
Edmund shot around towards her with a scowl on his face. "That's the point," he said sassily. "That was why he was seeking you," he told her acting like he was talking to a three-year-old.
During all this commotion between the three of them, Susan had crawled out of the coffee table she was hiding them and snuck up behind her brothers to join them. She had a smug smile plastered across her face. "Does this mean I win?" Susan asked smiling up at Peter.
Peter just slumped his shoulders and turned to face, Susan. "I don't think Lucy wants to play anymore," he groaned and Edmund rolled his eyes at Lucy and looked at Susan and Peter. Susan frowned at Peter's remark, why wouldn't Lucy want to play? She had only been begging moments ago to play and now when they played what she wanted she didn't want to anymore.
Lucy just stared at her three siblings standing beside one another in pure awe. They were acting as if nothing had changed. "I've been gone for hours," she gawked at them looking between all of them.
The three siblings looked at their sister in confusion. What on earth was she talking about?
"Lucy—" Susan started but Lucy cut her off.
"I was hiding in the wardrobe and found another world where the back of the wardrobe was supposed to be. I was there for hours and you must have been worried about me. I didn't leave a note or anything!" Lucy exclaimed.
Susan just raised an eyebrow at her sister while Edmund just rolled his eyes. What a load of rubbish. Peter stared at Lucy for a moment before deciding to play along, perhaps she was just imagining all of this and played a game with herself while she was hiding. After all, she was only ten.
"Will you show us where this magical wardrobe is then?" Peter asked Lucy. Before a second passed, Lucy grabbed Peter's arm and pulled him up the three stairs into the hallway with the three doors. All her siblings followed her into the empty spare room at the end of the hallway and saw a cloth lying across the floor with a beautiful wardrobe located against the back wall.
"Wow," Susan muttered when she saw the wardrobe. The craftsmanship on the wardrobe was simply stunning.
Lucy pushed past her siblings continuing to the wardrobe and rambling on. "I found the wardrobe and hid inside it crawling to the back wall so I could hide behind all the coats so Peter wouldn't find me, and realized there was no back! Instead, there was a forest with snow and I was in another world," Lucy beamed at her siblings. "I met a faun named Mr. Tumnus and he took me to his house to have tea and showed me my way back so I could get home. There was also a Witch who apparently wanted to kidnap me and Mr. Tumnus had to hide me from her to get back so she couldn't get me!" Lucy exclaimed with big eyes as she ran up to the wardrobe.
Susan and Peter just exchanged glances with one another before Susan turned back to face Lucy. "Well let's see if we can find the back of the wardrobe then," she told her as she walked up to the wardrobe and climbed inside.
Lucy was beaming at her siblings the whole time they searched the wardrobe. Her siblings would be so amazed once they saw it, and maybe they could all go back together! However, Susan crawled through the wardrobe pushing back all the coats and went to the back of the wardrobe to find a wooden wall. She frowned and knocked on the wood making sure it was there. Edmund, who was still inside the room was now behind the wardrobe looking at the back and heard Susan knocking on it so he knocked back. His sister must be pretty delusional to have been able to come up with that entire story within a minute of hiding.
Susan came out of the wardrobe and stood alongside Peter facing Lucy. Edmund came up behind them and stood with his older siblings all looking towards Lucy. This was ridiculous, Susan thought. She was not putting up with these imaginative stories the whole time they would be staying here. "Lucy, the only wood in here is the back of the wardrobe," she exclaimed as Lucy looked up at her in confusion. Just a moment ago she had come out of the wardrobe with no back and now there was a back to it. It didn't make sense to her.
"One game at a time Lu," Peter continued after Susan. "We don't all have your imagination," he said with a slight sigh and the three siblings turned on their heels and started to leave the room. Edmund stared Lucy down for a moment before following Susan and Peter.
Lucy watched her sibling walk away in horror. "But I wasn't imagining!" She yelled at them. Why wouldn't they believe her? She knew what happened earlier was real.
Her siblings all stopped in their tracks and turned around to face her. "That's enough Lucy," Susan told her and Lucy stared up at them in devastation.
"I wouldn't lie about this!" She continued to plead with them to believe her.
"Well, I believe you," Edmund stated with a slight smile towards her.
Lucy furrowed her brow at him. Out of all the siblings, she didn't think Edmund would be the first to believe her. "You do?" She asked with a hint of confusion and satisfaction that at least one of them believed her.
"Yeah of course!" He exclaimed looking at Peter and Susan who were looking at him with utter confusion and Susan was staring daggers at him for encouraging Lucy. "Didn't I tell you about the football field in the bathroom cupboards?"
Peter rolled his eyes at his brother and glared at him. "Oh, will you just stop? You just have to make everything worse don't you?" Peter reprimanded him.
"It was just a joke," Edmund said shrugging his shoulders at Peter and scrunching up his face.
"When are you going to learn to grow up?" Peter sighed at Edmund.
"Shut up!" Edmund yelled at him stopping up to Peter so that he was right in front of him. "You think your dad but you're not!" he spat at him before stomping away from him.
Susan stared at Peter and shook his head at him as Edmund left the room. "Well that was nicely handled," she exclaimed before turning from the room and leaving herself.
Peter sighed and looked at the ground, Susan was right. He overreacted. He was only trying to be the grown up but it wasn't really working for him.
"But...it was really there," Lucy continued with a sad face up at Peter.
Peter just shook his head at Lucy, he couldn't believe she was still going on about this. "Susan's right Lucy. That's enough," he told her with a nod before leaving the room as well. Leaving Lucy alone in the room wondering if she really had been to Narnia in the first place.
She turned around and closed the wardrobe behind her and stared at the carvings spread across it. Then she turned around and left the room.
"How did you find that room in the first place?" Peter asked Lucy once she had rejoined them downstairs.
Lucy, still devastated they didn't believe her, kept her eyes cast to the ground as she sat back in the armchair beside the window. "I found it when I was looking for somewhere to hide. The first door down the hallway was locked and I couldn't get the second door to open all the way," Lucy mumbled.
Peter and Susan exchanged a glance real quick. "What do you mean you couldn't open it all the way?" Susan asked her sister with a puzzled face.
Lucy frowned as she looked over at her siblings. "I opened the door but I could only get it opened a little bit."
Peter and Susan glanced at each other once more. "Why would a door be stuck halfway?" Susan whispered to Peter before he turned his attention back to Lucy.
"Where did you say this door was again?" Peter asked Lucy.
Lucy sighed as she stood out of the chair and walked out of the room. Her siblings were quick to follow her and Lucy led her them from the room and took them back up to the hallway where she found the wardrobe. Instead of going to the last room on the hallway she stopped at the second door. She raised her hand up and pointed at the door. "That one."
Peter placed his hand on the doorknob and turned it to open the door. The door made a creaking sound as it opened a crack before it caught on something behind the door and remained stuck in place. Peter frowned, this was odd. He placed his other hand on the doorknob and slammed his shoulder into the door before the door groaned open. A cabinet that was behind the door was now moved out of the way after Peter had slammed it over to get the door open.
The Pevensies all walked into the room. A window was the only lighting in the room like the room with the wardrobe. The window was located on the back wall and this room was certainly not empty like the wardrobes room. This room was covered with cabinets, desks, and papers everywhere. It must have been some sort of attic in the house. The siblings walked throughout the room and began looking at the various artifacts hidden in the room. The wardrobe had been momentarily forgotten as the family looked at this room Edmund walked over to a statue of what looked like a lion in one far corner of the room and stroked it's mane. Susan, was occupied by the old books in a bookshelf against the wall near the door and began taking books down and studying them. Lucy became overly thrilled at the dolls and stuffed animals in big treasure chest that was placed I front of a large cabinet. Peter however, headed over an older chest that had a lock on it, but whoever placed the lock there forgot to even lock it.
Pulling the lock off, Peter opened the chest and found the old wooden chest to be filled with vintage cameras, pictures, and newspaper articles of people who were either dead or certainly elders. There were numerous pictures among the chest, some in frames and some without, and Peter started picking up each one individually and looking at them. "Susan," he called looking at some of the frames. "You might want to see these."
Susan looked over at Peter and placed the book she was currently observing back into the shelf she got it from. Then she headed over to Peter and looked at the pictures. "They look to be a family," Peter told her handing her one of the picture frames.
Susan looked at the picture that held two young girls in the picture sitting on a bench with their dolls. One was clearly older than the other, probably an eleven-year-old and a six-year-old. The picture was in black and white but you could tell that the smaller girl was a blonde and the older one a light-haired brunette. You could definitely see the similarities between the two in the picture. "They must be sisters," Susan said as she placed the picture back on the desk and picked up another one. This one had a picture of a blonde haired little boy laughing at the camera on his little tricycle as he held onto his little sister behind him. The boy was riding down a rocky road and with a bright white fence behind him. He had small trousers with a little jacket on his shoulders. The boy looked no older than four, and his little sister holding onto him looked to be only three. The similarities in his face were clear as day though to the girls in the previous picture. "I think this one is the girl's brother," she said placing that one back.
Peter had already moved on to deeper into the chest, digging around and looking at some of the papers inside. Susan continued to look at the pictures and found one of a mother and her daughter, at least that's what it appeared to be. The mom had brown hair and the little girl had blonde, the two were smiling at each other and the sides of their faces were facing the camera. They had their noses touching and the mother was smiling at the girl who looked to be laughing. The girl looked maybe four and appeared to be the same six-year-old girl in the picture of the sisters with their dolls. Susan smiles at this picture, the two looked to be a happy little family.
Susan then found a folder and upon closer examination, found portraits of some of the children inside. The first portrait was of a father, mother, and their son. They were all dressed in their best outfits, the father looked to be some war hero or higher in status considering the rich garments of the family. The next was a young boy in his teens who looked to be Edmund's age. He wore a stiff hat and numerous medals adorned his chest, but the cold glare coming from his eyes were chilling even from a simple picture. A beautiful girl of about fourteen stared into the camera in the next picture with a small smile and a beautiful dress. If Susan had to guess, this would have been the same eleven-year-old girl in the picture with her sister on the bench all grown up. She was clearly the sibling of the cold glaring boy in the other picture but she certainly had a gentler domineer than her brother.
The next picture was a little shocking because it was the same beautiful fourteen-year-old girl and the cold stern boy in the picture together. By the way they were interacting, they were certainly siblings. They only appeared to be a year apart with the boy being older, and his dark cold look still clear as day in the portrait. The sister, on the other hand, lost more of her glow from her previous portrait and her small smile was long gone while her age had only enhanced. Their youth was certainly gone as they looked to be twenty and nineteen. The next picture contained the same dark-haired girl only this time, instead of being with her older brother, she held a long distant far off look with her younger brother, by the looks of the picture, his hair appeared much darker as opposed to his bright blonde hair from the tricycle portrait. Neither one of them looked exactly cold as their older brother, but more so just sad and much older than they must have been as if something terrible had recently befallen them.
There were only two more pictures that interested Susan within the folder. One contained a small girl with a smile that only caused you to want to small back at. The girl looked to be the same six-year-old girl from the portrait with the dolls, the same three-year-old girl on the tricycle, and the same little girl in the portrait with her mother. Her blonde hair was still clearly noticeable as well as her bright colored eyes even through the black and white filter. She sat still propped up on a chair with a book in her hands and a small smile upon her lips. At this point, Edmund came over as well to see what all the fuss was about and took a look at the same picture of the young girl Susan was looking at. "The blonde girl is quite pretty."
Susan rolled her eyes at Edmund before grabbing the last picture from the folder. This one was different than the other three. It had what looked to be a father with his son and daughter. The father had a mustache and was on one knee with an arm around his son and his daughter on the other side of the boy. The father and son both had stern looks on their faces but the girl was smiling a toothless grin at the camera. The boy must have been around fifteen and the girl around thirteen. Everyone in the picture was a brunette and the girl looked to be the same girl hugging the little girl in the first picture. Their picture was taken in front of a house with trees surrounding the property, the other little blonde boy must have been in the same area since the trees looked familiar and the family seemed to be on the same road as the other boy. The house the picture was taken in front of looked extremely similar to the house they were currently in. The more Susan looked at the picture, the more she was certain it was the same house they were in right now.
Susan got ready to call to Peter but he had beaten her to it. "Susan, look at this," Peter said frowning and handed her an extremely old newspaper article. As she looked up at the date in the top right corner it said October 13th, 1898. "Read it," Peter nodded towards the article underneath it.
Susan cleared her throat as she read the newspaper.
" The countries prized war veteran, wealthy factory owner, and father of four, Lord Digory Kirke lost his dear wife early October 13th. The victim, who is identified as 36-year-old Polly Kirke was pronounced dead at Bethlem Royal Hospital by the County Deputy. Authorities learned of the possible drowning at 3:51 p.m. when a 999 call came into the County Sheriff's Department. Kirke was discovered by her youngest daughter who was running around in the backyard when she saw her mother thrashing in the water. Her daughter ran into the house to get help, but by the time the first deputies arrived, they found Kirke floating face down, in about waist deep water being pulled out by the family's gardener. The emergency team tried to give Kirke mouth to mouth respiration but Kirke had already been long gone. The family of five now, is currently in mourning and a funeral service will be held on October 16th at the family's church eight miles from the Kirke family residence in memory of the dear mother of four and dear wife, Polly Kirke. "
Susan looked at the picture at the top of the article and barely was able to make out a brunette woman in the picture with a blonde little boy and girl standing with her. Susan frowned as she looked at the picture. "Peter, this is the same woman and children from the pictures," she said looking up at Peter.
"Well that's not slightly creepy," Edmund said with a gross look on his face, as he had been listening in on the article as Susan was reading it.
Peter didn't say anything, only handed her another article. Lucy now had gathered around as well, now interested in her sibling's new findings. Susan unwrinkled the next newspaper that Peter had handed her and saw the date at the top was June 25th, 1901. This was almost from forty years ago.
Peter nodded at it encouraging Susan to read this one too. Susan looked at it trying to make out the words before reading, this one was more difficult to make out that the other one was.
" Three Digory Kirke children – a 20-year-old man, his sister, 19, and his sister, 14, have disappeared. All-night searches by large squads of police and civilians have failed to trace the children who have seemed to vanish mysteriously five days ago. The siblings were last seen in the upstairs room of their house where they disappeared. Digory Kirke II, the fourth Kirke sibling came from the room moments after the children vanished making up crazy accusations about what he believed happened to his siblings. Believing his son to have gone mad out of grief of the loss of his three siblings, Digory Kirke I placed his son into a mental institution. Already grief-struck after the death of his wife three years ago, now three of his four children are missing. Names are not currently being disclosed as Mr. Kirke wishes to keep his children's name hidden from the public. If any sign of these children is discovered, please report it to the authorities immediately. "
Susan looked up at Peter after reading the article. "Flip the page," he told her. Flipping the article over, with Edmund and Lucy peering over her shoulders to see too, three pictures of the children filled up the page.
Susan gasped when she saw their pictures. These faces all looked strikingly familiar. "These are the same children from the pictures on the desk!" She exclaimed and Peter gave a grave nod.
"Wait until you hear this one," Peter stated as he pulled out one more article and unfolded it preparing to read it.
" February 1, 1918. The last known member of the Kirke family, now all grown up, has been given his father's house upon his passing. Digory Kirke I passed away late last December found in the residence of his home. Now, his only child and heir, the 33-year-old, Digory Kirke II, has been given the inheritance of his father's company and is also the proud owner of a beautiful mansion. Kirke currently lives alone in the home along with a few servants from his childhood. The mansion is the same home where he not only lost his mother due to a tragic accident when he was only 13 but also the same home where his three siblings vanished when he was 16, which is what supposedly caused him to make crazy accusations and sent away for many years. After having recovered from the mental institution and getting over the disappearance of his three siblings, he has dropped his previous accusations made on their mysterious disappearance. The man is now a graduate of Oxford University, and instead of following his father, he is a Professor. Kirke says he will continue to teach before he will retire to his countryside mansion. "
Peter set the article down and looked at his siblings. "This is the same little boy from the other article and I bet you it the same boy in those pictures," he said pointing to the pictures on the desk. "I'd even go too far to assume that it's the very same professor who owns this house."
Edmund made a disgusted face upon connecting the dots. "You mean to say that this is the house where the mother drowned in the backyard, where three of the children just vanished, and the current owner of the house had a brief maniac episode when his siblings disappeared?" Edmund let out a short laugh. "I don't know about you guys, but I suddenly don't like the idea of staying here anymore."
There was a sound coming from down the hallway and a shrill voice echoing throughout the hallways. Lucy's eyes grew as big as saucers. Susan shot around to face the door before turning back to her siblings. "That must be Mrs. Macready," she told them. While Lucy nodded in agreement.
"She must be getting us for dinner," Edmund said with a now pale face.
Peter looked at each of his siblings. "We were never here, we've never even seen these pictures, articles, or even this room. Everyone understand?" He asked as everyone gave quick nods in agreement. "All right, let's get out of here then," Peter said quickly as the four hurried to leave the room.
As they left Susan carefully shut the door, trying not to let it creak shut as it did when they were opening it earlier. "Where are you four? I won't say it again, dinners' ready and you best be gettin' it while it's hot," Mrs. Macready yelled and the siblings hurried to the dining room before she could ask any questions. The siblings didn't speak of the room again that night.
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A/N:
Good heavens!! Another extremely long and tedious chapter complete! I swear these chapters keep getting longer and longer even though I'm not meaning for them to . . .
Dog, if only y'all knew how long it takes me to write these chapters. I'll try not to make the rest of the chapters this long because I don't want to be boring you!!
But I hope you like the fact that I am giving more backstory to the Kirke family as a whole! Especially since I know I've pretty much turned Digory and Polly finding Narnia upside down . . .
But hopefully, you like this twist to the story or at least appreciate the creativity :)
Let me know what you think by voting and commenting!!!