Caught in Time: Doorways to the Past, #2

By Maggie West

Once again Ali finds a note, this time on her car at the town lake. 

Ready for another adventure, she takes the bait and enters the old boathouse. And another time: back to the seventies, her parents’ heyday. 

A big corporation wants to tear out the heart of her town, and Ali must decide if she must break the law to preserve the future. 

The three books in the Doorways to the Past Time Travel series are clean reads. These short stories are suitable for most ages so come along on the adventure! 

Caught in Time is Book 2 in the time travel series, Doorways to the Past. This short story is a clean read, suitable for all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maggie West
• Release date: Jul 5, 2015
• ISBN: 9781536590203

Book preview

Chapter 1

Not this again, Ali thought as she read the note. Come to the boathouse.

Ali Cummings had come to realize that dimensions weren’t just measurements of a room. She’d traveled to the past once already, to 1944. What a trip that was! She shook her head and wondered if this would be another trip and if so, not where, but when exactly she’d be going.

Five minutes earlier she had been standing on the dock at Grand Junction Lake watching the clouds in the afternoon sky after her walk around the trails at the lake. Then she’d bounded up the path and across the gravel parking lot. She’d unlocked her car and as she was opening the door, noticed a paper folded under her windshield wiper. She lifted the wiper to retrieve the lime green sheet and almost wadded the half sheet into a ball, but some writing along the bottom edge caught her eye.

There it was:  Come to the boathouse written in large block letters, and since she had learned that sometimes a note wasn’t just a note, Ali had studied the sheet again, turning it over and examining every inch. Nope, that was all there was. No name, no time, nothing else. She tucked the note in her jeans pocket and leaned back against her car and sighed.

Chapter 2

Before deciding what to do, Ali grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the small cooler she kept on the floor behind her car’s driver’s seat. She chugged half of the water remembering that if she hadn’t traveled back to the 1940s and helped events move in the right direction she might not even exist. Then she recapped the water bottle and thought ‘what the heck’ and decided to see what was in store at the boathouse. Maybe Jeff or Bethany or someone else left the note when they saw my car. But Ali didn’t believe that for a second. Any of her friends would have simply called her to see if she wanted to hang out. Climbing the small path that led to the boathouse, Ali wiped her hands on her jeans and tucked her blue V-neck tee shirt into her pants that had come loose while she hiked. This Sunday in April was unseasonably warm, and she slowed her pace and took another slug of water.

As she approached the boathouse, Ali noticed that the door appeared to be locked but as she got closer saw that padlock was hanging open. In its heyday, the boathouse was a popular spot for renting boats and life jackets, but Ali personally couldn’t remember a time when the place had actually been functional. Now the boathouse building was boarded up to keep kids and vagrants out.

Ali gave the door a gentle push and was surprised when it gave way, opening with a creaking sound from its rusty hinges. Stepping over the threshold, she blinked several times at how bright it was inside. For a boarded up building, this doesn’t seem right. With each step on the wooden floor that sported as fresh a layer of stain as any deck she’d seen, Ali decided she had indeed not just stepped through the doorway but into the past. Not again was her first thought, then When is this?

Chapter 3

Ali quickly glanced around the large open area to see if anyone else was inside the building. Two small rowboats, one painted red and white and one a bright orange with green accents, sat in the sluice ready to hit the water. Several pairs of oars balanced on the walls along with bright orange life jackets hanging from hooks on the side of the wooden walls. She’d seen photos of her parents wearing these old-style life jackets with wide strips of thick, white ribbon that fastened in the front with black buckles. In the photos she’d thought the people resembled orange Pillsbury Dough Boys and had laughed along with her brothers at the photos of her parents, young and thin and clearly having a ball sitting on the dock and in boats. The boats looked just like these.

Doing the math in her head, Ali wondered, Am I in the 1970s? It was obvious by now that she was alone as she meandered through the boathouse, looking around the walls for a clue to what year she’d walked into. Clearly it’s not 2015. The building’s in good shape, open for business, not all boarded up and nasty.

The sound of oars cutting through the water brought Ali out of her daze and into