I feel anxious because I have been hearing shouting voices through the ceiling past few days. They are arguing about something up there, perhaps about me. I do not think they know what to do next. After keeping me down here for about fourteen years with absolutely no one knowing about it.
How do I manage living here, my life as a prisoner, is it my curse? I have no desire to live. No happiness flowing through me. I know that I will never be free, I will never be able to educate my self nor will I feel love. What have I done to deserve this horrible life. They will keep me here until I disappear, until I am dead rotten and eaten by mice. What is the purpose of feeding me year after year, maybe I am just part of some plan. Why am I here?
There is a strange scent of smoke coming from above the staircase. Someone is screaming, I will hide you over here. See you tomorrow. Take care.
Alice
Book of the dead Part 2
June, 1940
I found you years ago hidden in a crack in the wall here in my shop. It has not been the right moment until now. Today I need you desperately. I want to write you my thoughts, as this girl who wrote you before. It is strange though that I found you here. My family has lived in this house for generations ever since it was built. Any family called Blackwood has never been spoken of. However I think it is my destiny to write you, and how can I avoid my destiny. I am not a writer so please do not bother about my lousy formulations and thoughts. Actually I do not even know what to start with, so I will just jump in to reality.
I will have to close the shop, we have not got any profit in days, weeks. What am I going to do? If there only was a way to get rid of my debts. When Ben is in France fighting off those bloody Germans, there is no one here to help me out and I can not find a reason to continue. For twenty satisfying years I have been running this shop and it has worked fine until now. We get no groceries at all at the moment, just bombs. With bombs everywhere and alarms going off every single hour I simply can not work efficiently. Last year when my lovely wife Elizabeth died in pneumonia we all seemed to start our own lives separated from each other. I am running the business, Ben is fighting in the war and Maggie is married to that young bloke William Jones. Who is going to spread our family name?
I have listened to these live reports from France on the radio and all I can think of is Ben. What if he does not make it home alive, I can not stand this anymore! I wonder how it feels to be out there. It must be cold when the sun goes down. Every night I pray for him to come home safely and every morning I hear the number of dead soldiers on the radio and it seems to me that they are constantly escalating every day. But no, not my Ben. I will not be the one who sees his kid dead in a box. Somehow I know that he will make it home. He is my boy.
They are sounding the alarm, again. That means bombs are coming this way, and that everybody must take shelter. I will write you soon.
M . Hughes
Book of the dead Part 3
June, 2010
I am on my way to Oxford street. We got a letter this morning that said my mother had inherited an old house there. Apparently from a distant relative who died seventy years ago in the war. We were all very surprised that we have not known about this before today. Mother is ill so they sent me to deal with it. I am going to meet up with a man called Thomas Jones who has the keys, then I am going to the old house.
It seems like it has been some kind of store down here. But there is nothing left, except these dusty shelves and an old book. There is not much light here, if it was not for that door it would have been pitch black in here. I will sit down and take a closer look.
It says “June, 1760”. That is pretty old. Oh my god, it is a diary! It says that the one who wrote this was a prisoner in here, below the house in her own basement, this is frightening. She said she would write again but she never came back, some one else wrote here instead. 180 years later in the same place. It seems that neither he came back all though he wrote he would. This must be our relative! This is who my mother got this house from but there is still some things to explain.. This man wrote that his family was the very first to live in this house. Hopefully my phone has got a few answers.
Here is an old parish registration book on Wikipedia. Apparently there was a fire in 1804 and it was rebuilt on the same ground and same old basement beneath the house. This would mean that even if there was a fire the book would not been harmed and the Hughes family moved in when it was rebuilt. It also says there was a Mr. and Mrs. Blackwood who lived here in 1760 but there is no daughter by the name Alice registered. What this means I will never know. She is gone forever.
It seems that this diary has two former owners and that at least one of them are related to me. Now when I posses this most confusing book it feels like I should use it too.
Dear diary.
