Page 2 of Caught in Time
Charlotte walked thethree blocks from the Marshall House to dine on classic Southern cuisine at the Old Pink House in the warm sixty-degree evening in the third week of December. She had been to the beautiful, charming, and elegant mansion many times before.
After returning to the Marshall House, she turned in the direction of the stairs and walked up to her room on the fourth floor. Charlotte turned her key in the lock and opened the door, then went and sat out on the balcony to relax and enjoy the mild evening. However, she started to panic as intense flashes of light illuminated the sky and the blanket of stars shattered into thousands of pieces of spectral light.
A scream built inside her, but an even more horrifying sensation of being paralyzed swept over her, blocking her throat, making it impossible for her to scream. Charlotte could not even move. In desperation, she fought to tear herself away from the hellish chaos of the weird commotion that had come above her. Intense light flooded the world around her and the sights and smells of the night merged in a stunning collage of sensation and color. The world was even more distorted, altering her perception of everything around her. The earth, the grass, even the Marshall House, changed before her very eyes. Then all at once she could feel the ground beneath her feet on the balcony. Terror coursed through her veins...
Chapter One
The Marshall HouseHotel, December 1864
Charlotte came to her senses to the sound of a familiar woman’s voice coming from far away. She quickly learned that the professor she had met earlier in the evening shook her. The woman looked much younger. She threw a dark cloak over Charlotte’s shoulders and led her down the stairs and out the front door to a nearby carriage waiting to quickly take them to Annabelle’s red brick townhouse a few blocks away.
After they had arrived, Annabelle helped Charlotte down from the carriage.
“Let’s get you into the house, my dear.” She spoke kindly and her refined southern drawl had a soothing quality. Her pale blonde hair did not have the slightest hint of gray as it had when Charlotte had first met her.
“We were very fortunate that no one saw us leave the Marshall House with you dressed in the clothes you were wearing,” said Annabelle.
She took Charlotte by the arm and led her behind the house toward a back door.
“Don’t worry, darling,” she whispered emphatically. “You’re not crazy, that much I can promise you.”
“What?” Charlotte spun away from the woman, dumbfounded.
“You are not crazy,”
Annabelle stopped and turned to Charlotte, excitement sparkling in her kind blue eyes.
“I have to ask, my dear, what is the year where you come from?”
Charlotte’s eyes widened in alarm. “Well, I come from here,” she hedged, unsure of how to respond.
“Yes, but what year is it?”
“2024.”
Oddly terrifying as the declaration seemed, she sensed Annabelle already knew.
