TGM: Chapter 1 - Eloise

 My mother owned a 400 year old book that hasn’t been written yet. I don’t mean not published, I mean not written. It is a journal with dates starting at 2050.  But I’m getting ahead of myself. If I could prove this story wasn’t fiction then I’d probably win a Pulitzer. It would definitely change how the world views a few historic if not all events in the past along with the ideals of parallel dimensions. However I feel I have to get this story out there, get it to readers, get it into minds, get it debated and attempt debunking. People already talk and have theories, but what if they discovered their theories were true?

Where to begin? Do I start with my discovery of the manuscript? Do I begin with the USS Eldridge and my grandfather? Do I start with the history of the manuscript showing up four hundred years ago? I want to include everything in this story, including the narrative of Paul Gunnleifsson Jr. My mother’s brother who does not exist, who at the writing of the manuscript would have been 104.

I suppose I’ll start with how I got involved with the manuscript. My mother passed away ten years ago. A few days ago my father was cleaning out the storage shed and came across my mother’s hope chest. For those that are too young, a hope chest was not necessarily an actual chest, although my mother’s was. A hope chest was a collection of things, usually linens and silverware that a young woman would collect to bring with her into her marriage.

My mother’s hope chest was an old black steamer trunk. It was made from leather and wood, with a large lock on it. My father decided that being the only girl child that I might want my mother's hope chest. He claimed he had no idea what was inside of it, and had no clue where the key was to the lock. He was certain it contained my baby blanket, my christening gown, since those items have been put away since I was a toddler. Her linens and china were in other boxes, which he also gave to me, and I was as curious as the next person to the locked trunk. It did move like it did contain something. I wanted to shake it but in the event something was breakable in it, I refrained.

It took my husband a few days to cut the lock off and inside was mostly what was to be expected. Yes, my pink baby blanket that my great aunt crocheted. Not only my christening gown, but my brother’s and mother’s. Various keepsakes like that. However on the very bottom was a small box, a very old FedEx box used to ship documents. I was expecting things like birth certificates, or photos, or immunization records or perhaps something from her childhood.

What I didn’t expect was the typed manuscript and the thick leather bound journal. I immediately got dreamy and giggly thinking the journal was my mother’s and I’d now read about her secret crushes or just random events in her life. However upon opening the journal I could only frown as it was written in shorthand, and I couldn’t read it.

My mother did a career change when I was about ten years old. She went from being a nurse to a secretary, or what would now be called an executive assistant. She studied shorthand, learning it from books and attending a few classes at the local community college. I do remember reading in one of her shorthand books that once you learn shorthand and begin to use it fluently, that because of your own style only the writer of the shorthand can translate it. The journal was basically another Voynich Manuscript, and looked just as old but lacked all the crazy drawings. It was just pages of shorthand, mostly written in pencil or charcoal maybe. It was odd, but not like the Necronomicon which was inked in human blood and written on human skin. The diary did seem old, even had some torn pages, some stained pages and a few pressed flowers and plants between the pages. A few sketches of people I’d never seen before.

I set the diary aside and picked up the typed manuscript that had been in the box with it. It was dated 1977 and written by Paul Gunnleifsson Jr. My grandfather was named Paul Gunnleifsson, but he was not a senior, and had only had a single child, my mother. And she was not even named Paula. I wondered if Paul Gunnleifsson was somehow related to my family or maybe my mother had written it and was using a pen name. However that didn't explain the 400 year old paper that was oddly, though faded, lined like modern notebook paper.

However when I began to read the manuscript, I was shocked to my core about what it contained. My husband tried to convince me that now having read the manuscript that it had to be a fictional story written by my mother, and if it was real, then the government would definitely be interested in it. With the manuscript was a document of carbon dating that stated the journal which was referred to as the Gunnleifsson Manuscript was over four hundred years old. The other oddity was inside the cover of the leather journal was a family tree. I recognized the names of my grandfather, his brothers and sisters including the name of the aunt who crocheted my baby blanket. Only my mother was not listed, nor my grandmother, but a woman’s name I didn’t know was listed as Paul Gunnleifsson Jr’s mother.