Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel

Beyond This Time ©March 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously.

Also by Charlotte A Banchi

Payton Claymore & John Raines Suspense Novel
:

The Whole Enchilada (Book 1)

Coyote Wind (Book 2)

Diamondback (Book 3) coming soon

Time-Travel Novels:

Window In Time

Children Of Time (Young adult romance)

Echoes Through Time

Our Place In Time

Beyond This Time

This book is for Michael. My knight in shining armor.

Thanks to: Jennifer, Mark, and Angela for your never-ending support.

The Friday Re-Writes: Peg Lachine, Jeanne Lane, Doug Drummond.

Couldn’t have done it without you.

PROLOGUE

1963

April 05—Friday

The enormous oak
roots along Brook Street lifted the sidewalk in so many places Lettie Ruth Rayson’s rusty and dented American Flyer wobbled precariously. Her cargo, lilies for the Palm Sunday church service, sat in the red wagon like members of a royal family. The white bell-shaped blossoms nodded to the passing flowers as they rolled along. Unfortunately, with each sidewalk rut half the plants toppled over and Lettie Ruth had to stop the wagon to sit them upright again.

Lettie Ruth let the handle drop to the ground and blew on her palms to ease the stinging. The blisters, from the constant chafing against the handle, were raw oozing sources of pain. Tiny flecks of rusty metallic paint stuck to the open sores. As a nurse she knew she needed to find something to wrap around her hands before the wounds became infected.

Knocking on a door and asking the homeowner for several Band-Aids was not an option. One block back she’d crossed the invisible boundary dividing the white and colored parts of town. In fact, by stopping in the middle of the sidewalk Lettie Ruth had most likely broken three or four segregation laws.

People of her color didn’t parade up and down in this area, and this made her third trip this morning hauling lilies from her house on 3449 Brook Street all the way to Webster Avenue Freedom Methodist Church.

She picked up the wagon handle, grimacing at the pressure. At the next corner she would cut down the alley. With any luck, she might find some discarded newspapers or maybe a car washing rag to use.

It was the cleanest alley Lettie Ruth had ever seen. All the trash tucked down inside the aluminum cans, nothing slopped over or littered the ground. Up ahead she spied a cardboard box set out for the Goodwill. That ought to do it, she thought.

Bent over, with her head stuck inside the box, she didn’t see the three men until they slipped up behind her.

* * *

Marlene Stephens found the red wagon filled with lilies when she opened her back gate. She looked up and down the alley, but the only thing moving was a white stake-bed truck turning the far corner. The flowers were pretty, so she pulled the wagon into her back yard. She could give one of the plants to her mother-in-law for her birthday. Exactly what the old biddy deserved—a gift Marlene had found on trash day. With all the money she’d save by not buying a present, she could go to the beauty shop in downtown Birmingham and have a real manicure.

CHAPTER ONE

YEAR 2000

Maceyville, Alabama

March 02—Saturday

MACEYVILLE POLICE OFFICER
Kathleen Templeton leaned to the right, which allowed her a partial view through the large front window. From the odd angles and disproportional rooms, it appeared someone had laid one house on top of the other. It reminded her of the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. According to legend, Sara Winchester designed the house to fool evil spirits. Over the years the structure continued to grow until it held more than one hundred-sixty rooms, two thousand doors, ten thousand windows, and so many secret passageways and staircases leading to nowhere that Sara Winchester required a map to find her way.

At the moment, Kat wished for a map of her own to explain what she saw. Curiosity finally overruled caution; she stepped in front of the window, cupped her hands, and pressed her face against the glass. Her hope that the new perspective would dispel the sensation of being caught between colliding realities quickly faded. For a second or two the interior looked vacant, and then from the corner of her eye she registered a subtle shift within the shadows.

The previously empty room now held two different sofas, which overlay each other. In jerky sequence she saw a stone fireplace appear, then just as quickly disappear. And inches from her nose, a see-through table replaced a see-through rocking chair.

Confused by the conflict between eyes and brain, she felt disoriented.
Physics 101: Two objects cannot occupy the same space at the same time.
Yet wasn’t that exactly what she saw? Two objects … same place. Kat backed away and clicked the button on her walkie-talkie signaling for her partner, Sergeant James Mitchell.

Moments later Mitch, who’d been canvassing the rear of the residence, turned the corner of the wrap-around veranda.

She gestured toward the house. “You look through the windows out back?”

He stopped several feet away, on the opposite side of the large picture window. “One or two, the place appears to be empty. Why?”

“Because I’ve seen more than enough Halloween tricks for both of us. It’s three o’clock in the morning and we’ve caught another prank call. Let’s get out of here.”

“What are you yammering about?” he asked.

“This house is playin’ with my eyes and brain.”

Mitch looked at her, his expression shouting he thought his partner had gone round the bend. “Care to expand on that statement, Kat?”

“See for yourself,” she said, pointing to the window. “Take a peek through the looking glass, Alice.”

He cautiously approached the glass, out of habit his hand rested on his side arm. After several seconds he turned around and shook his head.

Kat’s hopes plummeted. Apparently she was the only member of the team to see visions.

He shrugged. “Empty.” He stared at her for a second longer, and then called the station. “Unit 20, 10-8. Clear on that emergency transmission.”

* * *

March 07—Thursday

“Maceyville Police Department.”

“Whole peck of ‘em raising Cain. Gonna kill me.”

“What is your name and address ma’am?”

“801 Mountain View. I hear them out front!”

“Officers are on the way. What is your name?”

“Alice. Alice Carpenter. Gonna burn me out!”

“Ma’am? Hello? Ma’am can you hear me?”

Kat impatiently punched Rewind on the tape recorder. “Mitch, this time I want you to listen to her voice. Her tone.”

“I’ve already listened to that damn tape four hundred times. I told you, it’s another prank call,” Mitch grumbled. “In fact, tonight makes a grand total of three bogus calls in six days.”

“She sounds scared.”

“Kat, it’s a snipe hunt. You know, send all the overworked and underpaid cops racing through the streets, sirens blasting, while the joker sits back in the shadows and laughs his ass off.”