

‘’I feel sick,’’ declared Sandra suddenly. (That’s me, by the
way)
"No you don’t ‘’ muttered Jeremy, looking quite green
himself.
"You had better not do it on me!" shrieked Isabell,
shrinking away in horror at the thought of getting her best dress even slightly
dirty. Nigel said nothing. Jeremy and I are twins, but we look nothing alike. I
am tall and slim with long blonde hair and big blue eyes, whereas Jeremy is
short, stout and freckled with red hair and green eyes. On the other hand,
Isabell and Nigel are obviously brother and sister. Like me they are very tall
and very slim, but unlike me they are of a dark complexion.
We were on our way to a museum of
doll’s houses to collect information for a school project. None of us actually
wanted to go, but our parents had told us to do some school work, and Nigel’s
father had said that there was a museum of antique toys in a nearby town and so
we were on a train.
The museum was quite a disappointment.
Our map had led us to a narrow, winding street of old, dilapidated buildings
that seemed so ancient that they had to lean against each other for support.
One of them had a sign hanging above it that said ‘Museum’ in brown,
peeling paint. We stood in front of it, silently drinking in the roof that was
missing tiles, the prehistoric door that hung crookedly on its hinges and the
jungle of weeds that choked the front yard. Finally, Nigel took a deep breath
and said (in an attempt at an optimistic voice) ‘’Well then, in we go folks.’’
On the inside the museum was only
a little better. We wandered aimlessly through room after room of doll’s houses
that sat in glass cabinets that were coated in a thick blanket of dust. Their
labels were hand written and nearly impossible to read. We appeared to be the
only people in the whole museum, apart from an old lady who took our money when
we went in and called us ‘sweet children’ with a toothless smile.
After a surprisingly tiring morning of
looking at and taking notes of doll’s houses that after a while all looked the
same, we decided to go and have our lunch. Once we had eaten our meal of
sandwiches and biscuits in a quiet corner of the museum, we felt strangely
drowsy. “Anyone mind if I have a quick nap?’’ asked Jeremy with a
yawn.
“Not at all, in fact I think I might join you.’’ Nigel replied.
Isabell and I agreed that this sounded like an excellent idea and so, using our
coats as blankets, we fell into a deep sleep.
I was the first to wake. I looked
around and was surprised to find that it was dark. I drew back the blind on the
window and saw only darkness there too. My heart started thumping inside my
chest. “Isabell, Jeremy, wake up!’’ there was something comforting about
hearing my own voice penetrating the thick darkness, so I carried on, shaking
the others to wake them. “Nigel, come on! Wake up.’’ Thankfully, they
did. They looked around and were equally confused to see how dark the
museum was. When they saw the night sky outside, they started to panic. Nigel’s
watch confirmed that it was a quarter to nine in the evening. “We must have
slept all through the afternoon!’’ Whispered Jeremy, wide eyed. We said
nothing. Nigel, as the eldest, took charge.
“Well. We’d better gather up our stuff and catch the next train
home.” He said in a voice that had a definite wobble to it. We nodded mutely
and began to oblige. We put on our coats and picked up our bags, but when we
made our way to the front door, we found, to our absolute horror, that it was
locked! We stared at the door, silently imploring it to unlock itself, which of
course it didn’t do.
‘”What are we going to do now?” I asked in a high, panicky
voice.
“Sleep here?”--that was Isabell.
“Smash the door?” was Jeremy’s idea.
“We’ll look for a back door.” said Nigel firmly. And so we did.
We walked through endless corridors, up and down stairs that didn’t seem to
lead anywhere, until finally Jeremy called out “A door! It’s a door to the
outside!” We came running and found him standing next to a door that, sure
enough, looked like it led to the street behind the museum.
“Open it then!” cried Isabell. Jeremy did so and stepped outside
into…broad daylight.
We stared in amazement at
the incongruous scene before us. We appeared to have opened a door into a
street from the Victorian era. Horses pulled carriages along the cobbled road
and through the windows we could see gentlemen in top hats and jackets and
ladies in beautiful dresses of red, green and blue silk. Walking on the
pavements were people that looked more like servants of some kind, dressed in
checked frocks and shawls, or liveries in hideous shades of green. The
buildings on either side of the road seemed to be shops, judging from the various
items displayed in the front windows. There were also children, some even
younger than us, dressed in rags with faces smeared with dirt and grime,
pleading with passers-by. Some offered small, wilting bouquets of flowers and
some simply held out their empty hands, begging for a penny for some food.
“What…?” Nigel managed to splutter. “Where are we?”
“I honestly have no – what on earth are you wearing?” Isabell
broke off. Then she looked at us and down at herself. We had been so
surprised to find ourselves apparently whisked back in time, that we had
entirely failed to notice that we were all dressed as Victorians as well.
Isabell and I wore uncomfortable blue and white linen dresses and matching blue
caps, and the boys wore ugly shirts and breeches.
“Where did all this come from?” exclaimed Jeremy. “We weren’t
wearing this a moment ago.”
“We’re dressed as servants or workers or some kind,” I whispered
“we’ve gone back in time and now we’re servants! Nigel, you’re the eldest, what
do we do?”
“Simple,” said Nigel, “we’ll go back through the door and into
the museum.” But when we turned around the door had disappeared.
“What now then?” demanded Isabell, trying to conceal the wave of
panic that was rising within her. But before we could form an answer, a shout
rang out from across the road.
“There you are! Come on, quickly or else you’ll be late!” a lady
dressed the same as me and Isabell was waving to us. “What are you staring at?
Come to the mill, for heaven’s sake. They might have missed you already!” She sounded
impatient, almost urgent. After a quick whispered discussion, we decided that
if we had been whisked back in time as mill workers, then we might as well
follow this lady to the mill. Then perhaps we could find out a way to get back
to the museum.
The textile mill was a large, imposing
building. A stream of workers was making its way in through a side door. Some
were adults, some looked barely over five years old, but none of them looked
like they wanted to be there. The woman we had followed in (whose name we soon
found out was Jenny) was reprimanding us for straying out of the grounds of the
factory, but she sounded more worried than angry.
Inside the mill the noise was the first
thing that hit us. It was the noise of machines roaring and crashing and of
hundreds of people yelling orders at each other. It was so loud that it seemed
to be more like a solid thing, hitting our ears over and over again, but the
workers merely flinched, as if they were used to this sort of immense
clattering and crashing. The second thing we noticed was the air. It was stale,
as if the only draft that ever came into the room was when the workers came and
went. It was also dirty. There were so many bits of fluff, dust and dirt
floating around that it partially obscured our vision and made us cough. And
then there was the heat. It was sweltering in there, and the smell of sweat
made us want to gag.
“Scavengers over here! Oi, you two, scavengers!” An angry
looking man was yelling to Isabell and me and beckoning to us. Standing in a
line next to him were around twenty children, all of whom looked incredibly
scared. Jenny pushed me and Isabell forward with a sympathetic look on her kind
face. With one last imploring glance at the boys, Isabell and I shuffled to
stand at the back of the line. Nigel and Jeremy were called over to be
‘piercers’.
The man we had gone next to was walking
along the seemingly never-ending row of machines and each time he came to one
he would shove two children towards it. We looked at what the children did,
because we knew that when the man came to our place in the line, we would have
to do the same. It did not look like fun. The enormous machines were moving
back and forth, and each time it moved back, the children had to go on all
fours and collect as much of the fluff and dirt that was collecting under there
as they could. However, the machines moved forward again so quickly that the
children had to use every ounce of their awareness to scurry out of the way in
time to avoid getting sliced open by the blades on the bottom of the machines.
We dreaded our turn.
The boys had not fared much better.
They were taken to stand next to one of the machines, were there was a basket
that had a long string of cotton in it. Or at least it was meant to. There was
a child standing next to it who was fishing the cotton out and handing it to an
adult who would feed it into the machine. Every time there was a weak point or
a break in the string, the boys had to rub the two ends together until they
joined up. After only ten minutes their hands were sore and cut. They kept an
eye on us and saw that two girls were being pushed to each machine, but they
couldn’t see what we were doing.
However, we and the boys were immensely
relieved to find that purely by luck, we had been put to work at the same
machine. We stood staring at each other for a few seconds, so surprised were we
to find ourselves together again. Then one of the supervisors roared at us to
“get back to work, you ungrateful mites, or it’ll be back to the work’ouse for
you.” We got back to work.
After half an hour a lady came round
and offered us a cup of water. Although we were sweating prolifically and were
near parched we declined when we saw the black smears on the cup and the murky
water that had fluff floating around in it.
We were beginning to panic. It was
clear that there was no way into our time from here and me and Isabell had
nearly lost our fingers several times, not to mention the boy’s hands. The
constant roar of noise had given us splitting headaches and we had sore throats
from coughing constantly. Each time we tried to catch our breath; the
supervisor would force us back to work. After nearly two hours of horrific,
gruelling work, Nigel whispered to the rest of us, “We’ve got to get out of
here.’’ It was so loud that we had to lip-read, but we got the message
all the same. We all agreed, but how to do it? If we so much as paused, the
supervisor would bellow numerous threats at us, so how were we supposed to stop
working altogether and sneak out? We were at a loss. It was difficult enough to
communicate in such a noisy environment, much less form an escape plan.
Soon after our chance came, though it
was not for a good reason. At the other end of the row, there came a scream.
Isabell and I, peering between people’s legs and under the machines could see a
boy, only around nine years of age, lying sprawled on his back with a huge gash
on his arm. We gasped and stared at him, then pointed him out to the boys, who
turned a sickly shade of green at the sight of the gaping wound. The supervisor
was kneeling next to him, inspecting the cut. Jeremy was the first to recover
his wits.
“Look, this is our chance. Let’s run for it whilst they’re
distracted.” We blinked at him, and then nodded. We turned around in perfect
unison and sprinted as fast as we could towards the door. People started
shouting - someone had noticed us leaving – and we heard the thunder of
footsteps as people tried to catch us. Driven on by the awful thought of having
to go back there and face the wrath of the tall, strong and altogether
terrifying supervisor, we quickened our pace. After sprinting down the stairs,
out the door and under the fence, we dashed into an alleyway to catch our
breath.
We leaned against the walls, panting. “Are they following us?” I
asked. Isabell peered round the corner. “No.” She replied. We stood in silence
for a moment until the inevitable question was asked: how were we going to get
back home? We walked out of the alleyway and wandered through streets much like
the one we had entered from the doll’s house museum. Suddenly, Jeremy stopped
and stared up at the building next to
him
“What?”
“That shop’’
“Yes?’’
“It looks like the museum.”
“So it does’’
“And it’s got blinds instead of curtains.”
We all looked at it. We had not noticed it before, but Jeremy
was right. Each window had blinds, and now we looked, they seemed oddly out of
place in the Victorian street.
“Hey, and it’s got an electric doorbell too!”
“Oh, and look, a television aerial.” We were really excited now.
We looked at each other, nodded, and marched up to the door. We didn’t need to
speak, but we all had the same thing in our minds: maybe this was the portal to
the museum!
We open the door, stepped inside and…
nothing. We were in a Victorian shop. But then Jeremy gasped. We looked in the
same direction and saw that the old woman behind the counter was the same woman
that had taken our money when we went into the museum. “Can I help you, sweet children?”
she asked politely. And then there was darkness, and a feeling that we were
being spun around and dropped from a great height at the same time.
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