Ronnie Coleinger: A Winter Collection

by Coleinger, Ronnie

  Jeffrey laughed aloud as the lid on the box began to open mechanically. The lid continued to open until it rested on its hinges. Then a tiny light appeared from within the box and a hologram slowly rose from the interior. As the hologram continued to form, it rose to the height of about one meter and formed the image of his grandmother and grandfather in a dancing pose.

  Just when Jeffrey thought the hologram was complete, two small children appeared in Grandmother and Grandfather’s arms with a third child standing on the floor between her parent’s legs. After a few moments, the small female child in Grandfather’s arms disappeared. Then, a freshly covered grave with a small headstone appeared on the ground in front of the family. The image slowly rotated until he was able to read the engraving on the headstone. The words read:

  “In Loving Memory, Daughter, Katheryn Louise Mitchell, 1925-1927.”

  As Jeffrey sat watching the hologram, it completed its cycle and shrank back down into the box; then the lid closed. As he sat thinking about what he had just seen, he remembered seeing that exact same headstone in the local cemetery. It was located a short distance from the other Mitchell family members’ graves. He now realized that the child buried there was his mother’s sister (his aunt). He began to wonder why the family had buried the child so far from the other family members. Was it to place the child in a certain order as the others passed away, or was the child an outcast in some manner?

  Jeffrey decided to stop by the cemetery after lunch. Then he could look over his family’s headstones and locate Katheryn’s grave. It had been a long time since he last visited the cemetery. Maybe other burials had taken place and the plots he remembered as being empty now had occupants. He realized he simply had to return to the cemetery to find the answer.

  As Jeffrey drove into the cemetery and parked his truck, he spotted the family monument. As he walked to the place marked for the workers to dig his grandmother’s grave, he realized that his memory had served him well. There were at least six empty plots between Katheryn’s headstone and William’s plot. The reason for the separation between brother and sister burial sites mystified him. There were only three siblings and one would think the sexton would have placed them together.

  Jeffrey realized that there were no answers to his questions here at the cemetery and he would have to do some investigation to find the answers. The problem was that most of his family was now deceased. The only living member of the family was his father, and that posed another problem. His father now resided in a nursing home and could barely remember his own name, let alone explain why the family buried a child outside of the family gravesite.

  Since Jeffrey was in the process of cleaning out his grandmother’s house after her passing, he decided to continue digging through the many scrapbooks and picture albums in the home. Some he had looked at before, but many he had never seen. With any luck, he would discover a clue to Katheryn’s burial.

  On the final day of cleaning out the house, Jeffrey returned to his grandmother’s bedroom. It was the last room he needed to clean; a task he had put off until the very last. He had looked around in the closet, but had not wanted to open her dresser drawers or nightstand. It seemed as if he was intruding in his grandmother’s personal life by doing so.

  Jeffrey carried a large cardboard box into the room. He planned to put her clothing and other items that would go to the Salvation Army into the box. As he removed the socks and clothing from the closet floor where he had first discovered the black box, one of the rolled up socks caught on a wood splinter from a floorboard. When he pulled the sock to free it, the floorboard came loose and pulled free. At that point, he realized that three floorboards were loose. He removed all three and discovered a hiding place under the closet floor. There was just enough light in the closet to illuminate the hollow place and he could see that someone had hidden what looked like books beneath the floor.

  Jeffrey did not want to reach down into the void without first looking inside with a better light. He retrieved a flashlight from his truck and then kneeled down over the hole and shined the light inside. There he discovered a diary bound in brown leather and a photo album. When he removed the diary, he saw that the binding was tattered and indeed very old and worn. He unlatched the tiny slide lock and opened the diary to the first page. He took a sudden deep breath as he realized that what he had found was his grandmother’s diary from when she was very young. At first, he closed the book, not wanting to discover the secrets she had left hidden from prying eyes. Then it occurred to him that he might discover information about Katheryn hidden within the diary and photo album.

  Jeffrey walked out into the living room and sat down in an old recliner where the light from the window would help illuminate the faded text. It was obvious that Grandmother had used a fountain pen to write in her diary and the words had badly faded over time. As he scanned the pages, he found information about the birth of her brother William and information about sister Katheryn. Notes in the sidebars of the diary showed that Grandmother was born in 1920, William was born in 1922 and Katheryn was born in 1925; but Katheryn had died in 1927 from the measles. The fact that Katheryn died of the measles cleared up one of the questions that had been nagging him since he first found the tiny black box.

  Around lunchtime, Jeffrey realized he needed to finish cleaning the house and packing everything he wished to save into the enclosed trailer he had brought from home. He wanted to keep many of the air looms from the home and sort them in his leisure. As he packed the last box into the trailer, he placed the diary, photo album and the black box in the console of the truck for safekeeping. He would finish reading them when he got home. The photo album from the closet floor had some very interesting and exciting pictures in it and he needed to study them carefully. He now realized that hidden within the photo album and diary were many of the answers he sought about Katheryn’s burial.

  It was only a short drive home and Jeffrey thought about his grandmother’s funeral, which was schedule to take place the following day. He was relieved that he had completed cleaning out the house; it was now ready for the contractors to prepare for sale. Once the contractors had freshened up the paint and replaced the shingles on the roof, a realtor from the area would place the home on the market. Jeffrey’s Grandmother had lived in the home for almost forty years and he would miss his visits to the old farmhouse. As he thought about all the wonderful meals and memories he had enjoyed in that house, he felt tears run down his cheeks.

  Jeffrey backed the trailer into his pole barn and unhooked it from the truck. He would begin the process of sorting through the items he had packed up at a later time, right now he was hungry and in need of a shower.

  Later, after his shower, he put some chicken on the grill to cook. As he waited for his food to cook, he laid the diary and photo album on the picnic table. As he opened the photo album to the pages he had marked, he sat staring at the images. Someone had taken a picture of the holograph that he discovered in the closet; however, the image above the box was not the same one he had seen when the box first opened. Followed by that image were five more pictures of the box and each hologram suspended over the box was different. As he continued to stare at the pictures, a hissing sound to his left drew his attention. He jumped up and ran over to the barbeque grill that was now belching black smoke. He quickly raised the lid, discovering that his chicken was slightly singed, yet edible.

  Once Jeffrey finished his meal and cleaned off the table, he opened the photo album that contained the pictures that he discovered at his grandmother’s house. As he looked at the first picture, he studied the image carefully. When he looked at the background in the picture, he could tell someone had taken it at his Grandmother’s house. The picture showed the black box sitting on the dining room table with a few people gathered around it. That in itself was nothing surprising. What sparked his interest were the different holographic displays over the black box. Either this box was different from the one he had in his possession or
multiple images resided within the box. On the following pages in the photo album, he found ten holographic images, including the one he had seen.

  Jeffrey picked up the diary and found the pages where his grandmother had first mentioned the black box. What he read disturbed him. By the time he had read twelve pages, he had a new understanding about the life and hardships that Katheryn and her family endured. It turned out that some members of her family and community considered Katheryn an outcast or something evil; some might have even called her a witch. By the time he had finished reading the diary, he realized it was getting too dark to work outside at the picnic table. He packed everything up and headed indoors where he would have more light.

  Once he had placed the black box, the diary and photo album on the kitchen table, he decided he needed sleep. He turned out the kitchen light and headed off to bed.

  When Jeffrey woke in the morning, he lay in bed for a few minutes, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts kept coming back to the multiple holographic images he had seen in the photo album. If others had seen and photographed these images, why could his black box only display a single image every time he pressed the combination? Just then, the answer came to him. He had used a number from the back of the picture to first open the box and he had discovered that same number written in his Grandmother’s diary, where it was underlined. He had also seen some words underlined in the diary and had wondered why his Grandmother had highlighted them. They seemed to have no meaning at the time he first discovered them, but now he realized they might be passwords for the other images.

  Jeffrey jumped from his bed and quickly walked out to the kitchen. He moved the black box in front of him and opened the diary. He found the first highlighted word and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Then at the bottom of the paper, he wrote out the complete alphabet and then wrote the numbers for the English alphabet over each letter. He placed a number one over the letter A and continued placing a number over each letter up through the letter Z, which represented the number twenty-six. Then he wrote the numbers that corresponded to the letters of the first underlined word below each letter. Once he had all of the numbers written down, he began entering them into the keypad. When he pressed the last number, the lid began to open.

  After working for an hour or so, he had discovered ten different holographs contained within the black box. The sixth image was surprising. It showed a red Moses Basket covered with a patchwork quilt resting in the green grass of a meadow. The image showed his grandmother kneeling down over the basket and raising the quilt to check the contents. Then the holograph began to rotate again and it showed the face of baby Katheryn sucking her thumb and looking up at them. Tucked into the bottom of the basket was the tiny black box, which now set on top of Jeffrey’s kitchen table, or possibly one identical to it.

  As the first hologram continued to cycle, Jeffrey’s Grandmother handed the child to her husband and then turned the basket upside down. The image then zoomed in on an engraved message, obviously done by the maker of the wooden basket with a pocketknife. The engraving read:

  “This cradle built by baby Kathryn’s Grandpa and given to her on her fourth day of life. May 20, 2051.”

  The message startled Jeffrey when he read it. Certainly, there was a mistake made when the maker engraved the Moses Basket. The entry date at the top of Grandmother’s diary was March 19, 1925. The diary entry followed the entry made one day earlier, March 18, 1925, which described the day when an F5 tornado tore up the states of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. The diary entry went on to explain that the tornado was the deadliest in US history, killing 695 people. The tornado had strung debris all across the countryside and some of it had landed on Grandmother and Grandfather’s farm.

  While the image over the black box continued to cycle, Jeffrey thumbed through the diary until he found where he had left off reading earlier. The diary explained in detail how the Mitchell’s (Jeffrey’s Grandmother and Grandfather) found the child in the Moses Basket, hungry, cold and wet, yet unharmed.

  Some of the first images in the black box were of people Jeffery did not know. As he looked at the images, he decided that what he was looking at were the original holographic images placed into the black box just before and just after Katheryn’s birth. He had no way to verify what he suspected, but he was certain Katheryn’s birth Mother and Father had placed the first few images into the black box.

  As Jeffrey sat thinking about what he had discovered, he wondered if anyone had reported the disappearance of a child by the first name of Katheryn after the May 25, 2051 tornado outbreak. He typed in a search in his Internet search engine: Missing children from May 24, 2051 tornado. When the list propagated, he read down until he found what he was looking for. He clicked on a link and a newspaper article appeared. The article from a major newspaper discussed a four-day-old child that went missing during the F5 tornado. Apparently, the high winds had snatched the child resting in a Moses Basket from her father’s arms while he hid in a closet. The article gave the child’s full name; however, Jeffrey had no way of knowing if these two babies were the same. As he leaned back in his chair, considering a way to prove the girls were the same, he remembered seeing a note in the diary about a name embroidered on the corner of the quilt that covered Katheryn in her basket. When he found the entry, he took a deep breath and slowly exhaled. The surname embroidered on the blanket matched the surname of the missing child he found in his Internet search.

  Jeffrey got up from his chair and began to pace around the kitchen. He was certain these two girls were one in the same. He now understood why Katheryn was not included in the family burial site: she simply was not a blood relative. The parents who raised her were not her birth parents; they were foster parents that raised her as if she was one of their own. The Mitchell’s found her in a meadow after a violent F5 tornado passed through the area. Why she was there still seemed a mystery to Jeffrey, but his suspicions appeared to be true.

  The engraving on the bottom of the cradle inferred that the storm had somehow transported Katheryn from the year 2051 back in time to the year 1925, depositing the four-day-old child in the meadow.

  Jeffrey made an entry on the last five empty pages of his grandmother’s diary. He explained what he had discovered about baby Katheryn’s birth in the year 2051 and her death in the year 1925 from measles. He tried his best to explain how two F5 tornadoes joined in space and had allowed time to merge. He also explained how the black box holograms were commonplace in the year 2051, yet the technology remained undiscovered in the year 1925. Jeffery was certain that the residents of the small community considered the black box to be evil or the work of magic. That was most likely why his grandmother had hidden away her diary and photo album under the floorboards in her closet. The one remaining question in Jeffery’s mind was how the holographic images of Katheryn and her foster parents resided inside the black box. In the year 1925, the technology to create holographs did not exist. Jeffery feared that this one question would haunt him for the remainder of his life. He could not think of any way to find the answers to the question.

  Jeffrey remembered how he had discovered the place where his grandmother had hidden her diary. He remembered how the rolled up socks had caught on the sliver of wood from the loose floorboard. Why his grandmother had not also hidden the black box under the floorboards was puzzling to say the least. If he had never found the hidden diary and photo album, the mystery of Katheryn and the black box would likely have remained a secret. Katheryn’s very existence may have remained hidden from him.

  ***

  At the end of the funeral service, the guests waited outside for the pallbearers to move Grandmother’s casket into the hearse. It was then that Jeffrey retrieved a cardboard box containing the diary, photo album and black box from a private room. The pallbearers were out of sight in another room and the funeral director assisted Jeffrey in placing the objects inside the foot area of the casket. The act of hiding away the only evidence of how Kathery
n became part of the Mitchell family hurt Jeffrey deep down to his soul. His grandmother obviously wanted the story to remain a secret and Jeffrey had now granted her wish. The secret would be safe for all eternity.

  As the graveside funeral service ended, the two black ravens that had sat in a small tree near the gravesite during the service flew down and perched on top of the casket. They sat there a moment or two, then squawked and flew straight up into the sky. As they gained altitude, Jeffrey heard a voice speak his name. He turned around trying to locate the sound, but everyone else had walked away from the gravesite. Just as he was about to dismiss the event, he heard his name spoken again, this time the sound appeared to originate in his head. As he continued to listen, he heard his grandmother’s voice speak to him.

  “My little sister, Katheryn and I are now one with our God.”

  About Ronnie Coleinger

  As an author of fiction and science fiction novels and short story collections, I have begun to realize that some of you out there may not believe in the concept of time travel. I find myself speechless over this discovery, but I feel it my duty to guide my readers towards a time in Earth's future when time travel is commonplace. My collection of science fiction genre short stories deal with a time travel method that uses vessels (membranes) created from eleventh-dimension string energy to support human life as they travel through the cosmos. You will find a wealth of information on my website to support my design concepts for the time travel membranes, travel computers, and travel watches, along with information about the eleventh dimension and string energy.

  I have always been fascinated with the concept of time travel, almost to the point of obsession. I am certain that human time travel in the twenty-first century will never become a physical reality, but within the confines of the human mind, there are no limitations. There seems to be a fine line between sanity and lunacy when it comes to writers of science fiction. I may have crossed that line. I am certain I have crossed that line, as my mind lives somewhere between the 121st century and the 601st century AD, a time when the time travel ideas portrayed in the Star Trek series I watch on television became reality.