Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

ok people, here is what i would like to call my first story that I'm presenting here that is a complete first chapter. Please leave any comments if you want.

Secrets

Chapter One:
The Phantom Train

Both Amilee and Jonah were prepared to go on their daily trip to the biggest library in all of England. Amilee was finally going to finish her summer project that every student at Queen Ethelburga’s were required to do for their English class. Amilee was rushing out the door with Jonah tagging along with his cell phone in hand.

Unfortunately Amilee was in charge of her younger brother Jonah. Jonah had finally turned eleven in the beginning of September and that meant parents dumping him at the boarding school. Neither Amilee nor Jonah was quite fond of the place, nor of their parents. Amilee, who was seventeen, didn’t really look forward to be going back to the school and going back and forth from different libraries in London; especially since it meant having to watch over her brother. Another thing was that Jonah used his cell phone to contact his neighborhood friends to always come to the location on where they were going to meet.

The bad part about this was that his friends were troublesome and curious, which caused certain things.

Amilee quickly whipped around to her brother and grabbed him by the shoulder saying “Look, please try not to cause some trouble today. I’m not in the mood to be once again kicked out of a library. I don’t want to make this trip our sixth time, and this means don’t bring your little friends.” “Since when did you care about getting into trouble?”

Amilee gave him a fierce look and opened her mouth to say something but all of a sudden a small tremor of footsteps came trembling their way. Out in the distance you could see a small boy and girl rushing towards them. The brother and sister had collided into Jonah making Amilee give them the most terrifying look that he ever saw from his sister towards him.

“I can’t believe you!” Jonah swallowed hard and was afraid of getting up just to get punched back to the floor. Amilee grabbed the collar of his shirt but both Seth and Lorraine held fast to her arm and started to plead for her mercy. “It truly wasn’t Jonah’s fault.

We just saw you’s from the corner while we were playing and-and we thought we would just say hi.” Lorraine was only seven and had dirty blond hair that was tied up in a pony tail. Seth looked at her and added, “We were also wondering if we could come along too”. Amilee was about to say no but both of the little blond haired children in unison said “please” for about 2 minutes. In response she nodded and finally gave up.

“But if one of you acts up and once again we get kicked out, I will beat up Seth and Jonah and I won’t make any more brownies for Lorraine.” Seth helped Jonah get up from the ground and they both looked at Amilee just imagining all of the things she could do to them. Lorraine had her jaw dropped and stared with amazement that she could do such a thing.

Amilee turned and started to walk again and stopped at the intersection of the street. Jonah had scratched his black hair and looked at Seth who turned to him and said “Did your sister wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning?”

“She’s usually cranky when she has a project to do, and she still didn’t get over about yesterday.” They only had to walk for 15 minutes and finally arrived at the biggest library in all of London. “I’ll be in the history section. You three stay together and please and I do mean please just don’t cause any trouble.” The children scattered to the different areas of the library.

Even though Seth was only nine, he and Jonah were best friends and practically had everything in common. They went towards the comic book section and started to talk about the latest event that had happened on their favorite series. Lorraine wasn’t at all interested and had to go to the bathroom. She didn’t bother to tell the boys and decided to just leave. Walking down the stairs she looked at the children books that were displayed on the tables. Getting off the last step she thought of how the word restroom was spelled but all she could remember was the ‘rest’ part. She paced back and forth searching in the front and the back. Finally, from an angle she spotted the word “rest” under the steps towards the private rooms.

Not knowing that it really said Restricted. Lorraine wandered through the doors and found piles of old musty books stacked upon each other on the tables. The idea of going to the bathroom had left her mind and curiosity found it’s way in.

She climbed up the chairs and started to rummage through the yellow paged books and tossed each one to the side. All the books were so boring, especially since they had not one picture. She was done with the first table and moved to the one farthest back of the room. Once again she tore some of the books and flung them here and there.

She moved aside a book that had big bulky letters and under it had revealed the most beautiful book Lorraine had ever seen. It was bulky in size but was filled with colorful illustrations and some inscription on the sides of the pages that weren’t legible. “Now this is my kind of book”, exclaimed Lorraine. The pages were illustrations of princes, princesses, kingdoms, landscapes, and about every mythical creature you could think of.

Suddenly Lorraine’s name had rung through the halls of the library and she realized it was Amilee calling her. Quickly, she kept hold of the book and dashed to where Amilee was standing. “You called me.” Amilee was frightened and jumped as she turned to see a little girl with a huge book in hand. “Oh, yeah uh we’re going. Where’d you get that book?” Lorraine pointed back to a law section unknowingly. “Whatever. So you’re going to check that out.” “Mmm” Lorraine was engrossed in the book that she didn’t really care what anybody was saying.

All four went to the check out desk and poured their books. The clerk looked amazed and one by one she checked them out. She had asked for Seth’s library card and grabbed it wearily and scanned it. “Um sir, your card has been declined”. “Oh, check this one. I think that’s the new one.” Once again the clerk slid it through the scan and the invalid message popped up the screen. The clerk gave him a serious look and quickly Seth was rummaging through his pockets to get his new card. “Uh I’m sure this is the new one.” Seth gave the old lady a quick smile but quickly faded as her piercing eyes never flinched. This time the card was valid and now the lady was able to move to check out the other books. Easily she went through a couple until Lorraine’s book next. “My, I’m afraid I never saw this book before.” The old lady put her spectacles on and examined every inch of the book. She couldn’t find the card slip in which you marked if it was checked out.

She flipped through the pages and to her it seemed it couldn’t hurt to just give it to her since it had no records in the library. “You can keep this book. It has no records in any of the libraries.” Lorraine had a look of glee on her face and took the book from her. Amilee got her books and everyone was off towards the streets of London. Lorraine continued to look at the book all the while they were continuing their trek towards their house. Amilee was wondering what made Lorraine so into that book that it made her for once became curious. She asked “Let me see it.” She held out her hands and Lorraine handed her the book. Jonah and Seth weren’t paying attention and were continuing the talk they had inside the library Amilee was flipping through the pages real quickly. She peered up to see they were only a block away from their street.

Once they reached the stoop of their flat, all four sank onto the concrete steps. Amilee saw that the drawings were very intricate and the coloring was faded. She read the legible words on the side of the picture that seemed to be the most detailed one. It read ‘The First Queen of Altana’. “This must all be fiction,” she declared as she was finishing looking through the remaining pages. Seth peered over her shoulder and stuck out his finger to stop the pages from flipping. Without becoming angry, Amilee said “What are you doing?” She suddenly realized his reason for stopping at this certain page. “Isn’t that the old abandoned train station that’s near here,” Seth looked at it wondering if the paper was glued into the wrong book.

Jonah came over and recognized the old building too. “What?” Amilee looked confused and began to read aloud the words that were on the side. “The Phantom Train is another one of my….something…devices to go back and forth. Er-I can’t read that part. Umm…at twelve o’clock midnight the something something will arrive and something something.” “This doesn’t make any sense at all.” Amilee was sure that this must’ve been some sort of mistake.

Jonah took the book away from her and got the same message out of the words too. “Hmm, maybe we should go check it out tonight.” “Yeah, that would be so cool if it was true.” Seth was all for it and ready to take on the scary adventure. “No way. Come on, this is just some little kid’s fairytale book. I’m sure you don’t believe in that rubbish, do you?” Amilee knew that this is just one of those spooky bedtime stories and wasn’t up for the challenge. “No we should go,” Lorraine said this with glee in her voice. Every time Seth was going to do something without being afraid, she wasn’t going to be afraid either. “Oh come on guys. Just think about it for one minute. This is a book that just came from the library; are you seriously going to believe what it says.” Amilee couldn’t believe what she was hearing out of these immature children’s mouths. “But it didn’t have any records remember,” said Seth.

“You’re just a big baby too scared to go on some adventure.” Seth was trying to make his words sting as much so she could go along. “Yeah”, said Lorraine and Jonah in unison. Amilee looked at all three with her right eyebrow raised. Her lips tightened and her gaze became fierce. Jonah and Seth weren’t going to back down away this time, for some reason this was different. It was like they could feel it as a sixth sense and knew that they should at least check it out. Lorraine wasn’t quite brave enough yet to stand her gaze. She cowered down and edged a bit closer to her brother.

“She just thinks she’s too old for some adventure.” Jonah said this with complete confidence and gave a little smirk across his face. “Oh Jonah, just grow up.” Amilee was tired of playing this game with them and wanted once and for all to win. “Well, since you’re not going to come we’ll just make preparations without you. Come on guys.” Just before Jonah was leading them away Amilee had stopped them in their tracks. “Look, I’ll play along in your little game since I’m responsible for anything that happens to you.” “Mom and dad don’t care what happens to us.” “That won’t stop them to yell at me though.” Amilee and Jonah’s parents were the ones that were crazy about extravagant parties and more about money. They only pretended to care about their children to showoff how perfect their supposed lives were.

“Ok, we’ll meet on the corner of this street at 11:30. That means don’t doze off Lorraine. This may be our once in a lifetime chance to find something this cool. So let’s try to make it the greatest thing ever, even if this train may not be real.” Jonah was serious about this. He didn’t doubt himself for one minute. Amilee was amazed that he said this with so much confidence and made it seem for the moment that it was possible to happen.

The plan was perfect. Both parents were going to be away later that evening for some party that was in Wales. This gave them a huge advantage in sneaking out of the house without a problem. But there were still some of the police officers that prowled the streets at night. Seth and Lorraine went home to eat an early dinner and say goodbye to their parents before they left for the night. The little ones ran down the street with huge smiles on their faces and Lorraine holding the book closely to her chest.

The other two went inside their flat and saw that their parents were in the study. Amilee didn’t bother to tell them that they were home and continued into her room to finish her project. Jonah on the other hand was going to prepare for dinner. His mother came out of the study and said to him “Oh don’t forget, tonight is your turn to prepare for dinner and take out the trash.” “I know mom”, he said with a bit sadness in his voice noticing that she didn’t even take a glance at him as she walked through the kitchen to check her list of people invited to the party.

Later that evening both Amilee and Jonah ate dinner by themselves. It was rather a silent dinner because both had many ideas running through their minds. Most of the thoughts in Jonah were all about how it would be like if they actually got on to the phantom train. After they were done each did their chores and waited until it was time to leave.