A Catch In Time: A Macabre Novella & Short Stories

By Christopher Alan Broadstone

If you love POE, BARKER and THE TWILIGHT ZONE, you'll love “A CATCH IN TIME“!

San Antonio Del Tequendama
Cundinamarca, Colombia
November 1938

‘My front door is broken, bleeding guts of shadows...’
‘...how do I find new skin...’
‘...among my desolate bones...’
“But this is nothing, right?” whispered Tatiana. “I’m still alive.”
These were her abstract thoughts as she stared like a saucer-eyed cat confronting a deluge––stared into her emerald green eyes in the large, heart-shaped crest-mirror hanging above the vanity table in her bedroom suite at Hotel “Bochica”, Salto del Tequendama.

Tatiana Marita Ospina has run away from her forced marriage to an aristocratic philanderer, and sought sanctuary at “Bochica”, a retreat for the rich and famous. The last thing she expected, however, was to discover a convoy of Nazi SS soldiers arriving at the hotel under cover of night, led by Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess.

In the darkest hours of the morning, Tatiana’s sleep is disrupted by strange, ghostly music and voices, which grip her imagination and compel her to explore the lower levels of “Bochica”, where she stumbles onto the true secret the hotel has been hiding: the occult mystery behind the rising Axis powers. Openly confronted by this insurmountable horror, she must decide if she can make the sacrifice necessary to accept her role in the secret history of World War II. But will it be destiny or damnation for Tatiana Marita Ospina, as well as for the rest of the world?

Weaving together psychological horror and alternative history with theater of the absurd, A CATCH IN TIME is a macabre yet genre-defying novella by dark fantasist Christopher Alan Broadstone. After you fall into A CATCH IN TIME, World War II and the demise of the Third Reich will never look quite the same again.

A CATCH IN TIME also includes two short stories from SUICIDE THE HARD WAY––SMILEYS' GRAVE and ROSEBLOOD––and also "CHAPTER 19" from the novel PUZZLEMAN.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BCP/Texas POĒtrope
• Release date: Sep 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005120818

Christopher Alan Broadstone

Christopher Alan Broadstone is the author of the macabre-thriller PUZZLEMAN. His novella A CATCH IN TIME (a dark alternative-history thriller) is now available on all eBook platforms and in trade paperback on Amazon and from Texas POĒtrope @ www.poetrope.com; the relative short film, A CATCH IN TIME: CHAPTER ONE is now available on the HUMAN NO MORE Blu-ray. SUICIDE THE HARD WAY: AND OTHER TALES FROM THE INNERZONE is an in-depth collection of Brodastone's never-before-released short stories, screenplays, and lyrics/poetry. Currently, he is completing his second macabre-thriller novel, HEATHER'S TREEHOUSE (due Summer 2022) and a new collection of short stories (and more) titled NOTES-TO-SELF: ACCUMULATED THOUGHTS, TRANSFERRED INTO WORD FORM (due Christmas 2021). Also, Broadstone has just released his first feature film HUMAN NO MORE, now available on Blu-ray from Amazon and at Texas POĒtrope––Books, Films, Music. Please find Texas POĒtrope @ www.poetrope.comServing as writer and director, C.A. Broadstone has also produced three award-winning short films: SCREAM FOR ME (Best Short Film: NYC Horror Film Festival, Best Underground Short: B-Independent.com), MY SKIN! (Best Horror Short: Shriekfest Film Festival [L.A.], Creative Vision Award: International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival [Phoenix, AZ], Best Film/Director: Cinema Edge Awards), and HUMAN NO MORE (Best Horror Short: The Indie Gathering Film Festival [OH]). Also, he has completed two feature length screenplays, COLOR OF FLAME, an erotic ghost story, and, with actor/writer John Franklin (Isaac from 'Children of the Corn'), R (Best Horror Feature Screenplay: Shriekfest Film Festival [L.A.]). In total, C.A. Broadstone's films have been showcased on several horror compilation DVDs, have screened at 30 international film festivals, and have won 15 'Best Of' awards. All three films are currently available on the anthology DVD, 3 DEAD GIRLS! at Texas POĒtrope––Books, Films, Music. Please find Texas POĒtrope @ www.poetrope.com.

Book preview

ABOUT THIS STORY –

All stories begin somehow and somewhere, within the writer or without the writer.

And most stories are born in the strangest ways and under the most unusual circumstances.

A Catch In Time is no different.  If anything, it has proven to be a paradigm. A paradigm that began at 1:24pm on February 4, 2015.

Quite unexpectedly, a private message popped up on my Facebook page, sent by a Maddie Holliday Von Stark.  She simply said, So, tell me about your movies...

I immediately thought, Who the hell is Maddie Holliday Von Stark?  But I politely responded with, lol  Hello!  Well, what would you like to know about them? A general synopsis? Website links? Trailers? Awards?  Why was I insane enough to spend all the money to make them? lol

(Yes, embarrassing as it might be, I ended up becoming a social media lol exploiter.  Anyway, moving on...)

Her strange response was, Why did you make them? Just wonderin’.

I launched into my usual TMI explanation for a paragraph or two, and then she interjected, I think you accomplished telling the stories. You did great work. What are you working on now? Besides writing for film, do you write stories at all? What is the status of Puzzleman? Feel like sharing?

As I researched who this Maddie person was, I told her about my video editing and doing all post-production work for the films of a few others, and that I was currently finishing up another book––a collection of personal work: short stories, the three screenplays for my three short films, plus extra materials, and lyrics I’d written for my band The Judas Engine.

She asked, Could you send me some of your writing?

Since our conversation began, I had uncovered that Maddie Holliday Von Stark was a horror author and graphic artist who was currently putting together projects for a publisher called Booktrope.   OK––and what the hell, I thought––then sent her a digital file of my novel Puzzleman to check out.  She read a bit of it and got back to me regarding a new project she was putting together that was titled Book 38.  After periodic shorter releases, Book 38 was ultimately going to be compiled as a single, comprehensive anthology of short stories with graphics, written by 38 different authors, each tale occurring in the highly-touted 38 most haunted places in the world.  She said she had a few locations left to cover and asked if I would be interested in choosing one and writing a horror story that would unfold there.  She sent me her official pitch package in PDF, which I studied, then began to do a bit of cursory online research into the handful of most-haunted places yet to have attached authors.  A few interested me.  After sleeping on the possibilities, my relentless fascination with World War II sparked in me a connection to escaped Nazis in South America which, in turn, drew my focus onto one very specific location that was in Colombia: Hotel Bochica, Salto del Tequendama, which is still perched on a ridge above a 433-foot deep gorge and overlooking the famous Tequendama Falls.

I told Maddie I would accept the project and wanted to write about Bochica. I also informed her I had a title I wanted to use: A Catch In Time.  She agreed to the location and title, contracts were sent from Booktrope, the papers were signed and returned, and I immediately started begging for a larger word limit than 2,500.  This limit was granted and expanded to 5,000 words.  Shwoo!  Next up for negotiation––what about extending the deadline beyond the contracted September/October?  Maddie kindly gave me until the end of November or first of December at the latest.

So I began to design my story involving Nazis and Hotel Bochica.  As I did so, and time progressed, Maddie and Booktrope fell into greater and greater conflict––over what exactly, I’m still not certain of, and which is also none of my business.  What did become my business on October 12, 2015 was that Maddie informed me she had resigned from Booktrope, who then dropped all her projects.  Maddie was deeply injured by this twist of events, but insisted she was hell-bent on completing Book 38 (which had now been renamed Dreadful Geographic, in homage to National Geographic magazine) on her own.  In good faith I continued work designing my story, which, at that time, was only pages of scrambled notes with no genuine story writing having been done.

As fate would have it, life continued to deliver more merciless blows to Maddie.  Serious health problems forced her to fight many battles that ultimately resulted in Book 38/Dreadful Geographic to drop away into the literary void.  For me, and A Catch In Time, this meant that my homeless tale was again all mine and I could do with it as I saw fit.  Over the next year, life also intervened for me, and A Catch In Time was put on hold for any number of reasons and on countless occasions.  But most importantly, I never stopped working on it, even if sometimes it was only in my head.

As I write this foreword today, the final draft of A Catch In Time has been uploaded to Kindle for pre-order on Amazon, only just beating the deadline of midnight on October 3rd, 2016.  The intense development and authoring of this story has been quite a journey for me, involving research and character exploration I thought would never end.  And as for that initial 2,500 word limit?  Well, it has exploded into a 30,000 word novella.  I have no doubt in mind it isn’t what most readers will expect.  Most of what I write never is.  But I believe A Catch In Time is some of my best work.  I hope everyone who takes a chance and dives into its pages will find there a wondrous diversion and worthy excursion––sometimes a bloodbath opium trip, as our heroine Tatiana labels events––as special and unique as I do.

Christopher Alan Broadstone

Los Angeles, California, October 5, 2016

A Catch In Time: Chapter One (Short Film)

www.poetrope.com/Films_CITv.html?spref=fb

For video of Tequendama Falls and Hotel Bochica, Salto del Tequendama, please visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrllhFU9OLo

For more info about Hotel Bochica, Salto del Tequendama, please visit:

https://moco-choco.com/2013/03/24/hotel-del-salto-colombia-the-haunted-hotel/

For more info about The 38 Most Haunted Abandoned Places On Earth, please visit:

http://blazepress.com/2014/07/38-haunted-abandoned-places-earth/

–

DEDICATION –

A Catch In Time is dedicated to Maddie Holliday Von Stark. Without her interest in pursuing me as a filmmaker and contributing author for Book 38/Dreadful Geographic, this story would never have even been conceived, let alone exist in this final form.

A Catch In Time is also dedicated to Michael David Bailes (1947-2016), and to all those who have been dealt a hand far harsher than they deserved, have been faced with great suffering and insurmountable odds, and have summoned the courage to make the ultimate sacrifice in passing on from this world, with dignity and in the hope of peace and a higher plane of existence.

Bless you all.

–

SPECIAL THANKS –

Once again I bow to BCP Team-UK.  A Catch In Time would not be the same story without you.

Thank you Lee Bailes, who is always on board with encouragement and forever keeping me current in matters of promotional trends and technology.  His insistence that I needed to be writing in the software Scrivener drove him to the very generous act of gifting it to me as I was only just beginning the writing of A Catch In Time. He was correct; I did need it.  Scrivener allowed me to organize my boundless research––which included Word docs, PDFs, photos, and video (adding up to the whopping project file size of 1.5GB)––for referencing directly within the writing software.  Also, his travels to Krakow, Poland, and his visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp afforded me some excellent firsthand pictures and an historical epithet that I had not yet discovered in my Nazi research––the German word untermenschen: underman, sub-man, subhuman.  This term plays prominently as A Catch In Time unfolds.

Next I would like to thank Matthew Sanderson, who has been my most persistent fan and critic, constant and repeated reader, as well as my daily editor, curator of story, and ultimate taskmaster for reeling in my poetic whimsy, atrocious spelling, relentless homonym curse, and over use of punctuation. He also heads up the moral support department, always quick to remind me that I’m doing great work––and that good writing is never easy––when all I want to do is throw it in the toilet and never type another word again.

Last but not least, I thank Judith Herdman, who has been my great pal and first-wave and last-wave reader, who tediously hunts for those overlooked mistakes and notifies me of technical fixes, as well as creative possibilities regarding questionable prose and those that just need a little more oomph.

Lee, Matthew, and Judith, you are all very special people to me.  You are true friends who have gone out of your way to cheer me up, bolster my creative efforts, and keep me from falling down.  BCP Team-UK, you may be small in number, but you are mighty!

Also, I would like to extend a special thanks to Iris Priep, for German translations, as well as Danilo Montejo for Spanish translations.

Thank you everyone!

– A CATCH IN TIME –

O God! O Divine Father!— shall these things be undeviatingly so?— shall this Conqueror be not once conquered? Are we not part and parcel in Thee? Who— who knoweth the mysteries of the will with its vigor? Man doth not yield him to the angels, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of his feeble will.

––Joseph Glanvill

From Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe

"When bad men combine, the good must associate;

else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle."

––Edmund Burke, 1770

Statesman and Philosopher

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– CHAPTER ONE –

San Antonio Del Tequendama

Cundinamarca, Colombia

November 1938

My front door is broken, bleeding guts of shadows...

...the blurring threshold I leapfrog to maybe...

...I’m falling, such wishful descent...

...from what was––was it no place––to nowhere...

...how do I find new skin...

...among my desolate bones...

But this is nothing, right? whispered Tatiana.  I’m still alive.

These were her abstract thoughts as she stared like a saucer-eyed cat confronting a deluge––stared into her emerald green eyes in the large, heart-shaped crest-mirror hanging above the vanity table in her bedroom suite at Hotel Bochica, Salto del Tequendama.

She stopped combing her wet hair and set down the pearl-inlaid, ivory comb next to the pillar candle.  With her fingers, she stroked the long, ebony strands over and behind her ears, as she always wore it.  Her silken, bronze complexion implied summer and golden sunlight, but tonight it belied the winter swirling inside her.

So cold, she thought.  The flame of the candle wavered, catching a draft seeping in through the double-doors leading to the balcony.  The large fireplace set into the opposite wall crackled and flared languidly with the petty gust, radiating a forlorn warmth that seemed a million miles away.

It was raining hard now.  Thundering at midnight.  Tatiana gently flinched with each crack and growl.  She had only just come in from the balcony, her nightgown as wet as her hair.  The November storms seemed to be following her.  Behind the hotel, the Río Bogotá was already raging over Tequendama Falls, bashing down on the rocks in explosive suicide, then reconstituting as ghostly white rapids rushing like a fusillade of banshees south, toward the Colombian rain forest.

Is this what a nervous collapse feels like, she wondered.  Is this mirror, mirror on the wall telling me I’m the most beautiful nervous breakdown of them all.  Or am I just another portrait of a hollow life?

The heart shape of the looking-glass brought her no consolation as it had always done in her previous visits.  Life had changed.  For the first time, Tatiana realized the mirror was frameless, except for whirls of fleur-de-lis cast in heavy silver at the bottom, sides, and upward-stemming coronet.

Been too much framework holding me for too long.

The white plaster walls of the room felt like they were melting in on her, deliquescing and flooding her existence away.

But how can I ever make a square life fit into a round hole...make new skin from my desolate bones?

Like the mirror before her, Tatiana knew her structured world had become a vignette, blurring into absolute darkness and uncertainty at the edges.  Again thunder erupted overhead and she tensed––remembered the waves swamping the yacht, like a broken record skipping and repeating mayhem, mayhem, mayhem...

Slip sideways, she muttered.

And run with the waves like I always do, she heard her fiancé shout as he locked off the wheel of the vessel, turning the Stefania into a giant cork bobbing through the hurricane strength squall off the coast of Cartagena, just two days ago.  What a surprise for that storm to have suddenly blown up out of clear blue skies.

Just like us, thought Tatiana.  Exploded.

A romance ruptured and vaporous in an instant, it seemed.  A volcanic ash cloud of amorous discontent and heartrending misery.

How, her voice quavered. How could he?

There was no running with the waves now that she was on dry land.  There was no denying the fact that Ricardo had fathered a child with his mother’s personal servant, while Tatiana had been away in Paris finishing her education in fine cuisine, poetry, literature, and art history––becoming the perfect woman at Le Cordon Bleu and the Sorbonne. There was no escaping the fact that a scandal was imminent; not even her parents would let her shy away from securing the scoundrel’s name in a ruse to bolster utmost righteousness and to protect the propriety of all. Simply put, she had to perpetuate their engagement and go through with marrying Ricardo to prove his innocence of indiscretion with ‘the help’.  A debutant––coffee, cocoa, and sugarcane bareness––with the reputation of Tatiana Marita Ospina––

Would never consort with a philanderer, she said coldly to the mirror.

Never! she could hear her father yelling and absolutizing, branding her with his insistence of what would become public knowledge and inscrutable truth, regardless of facts.

Too much at stake!––she shivered and shunned his words now, staring at herself wet and broken in the mirror. Our families’ interests must merge; you will consummate this union.

I must become a lie, she realized. I must be what everyone believes I am, to hell with reality.

Ricardo, why didn’t I just push you overboard, you bastard? wondered Tatiana now.  The storm would’ve simply wiped you away.

A murder awash with goodness and a higher ideal.

Erased, she whispered.

But that, she thought, would deny your eventual crucifixion at the hands of fate.

Time will get you, Ricardo.

And the merciless press, she imprecated. My father and his pretentious propriety be damned.

Nonetheless, it was her father’s control and the endless pressure of high society to save face, that shanghaied Tatiana, landing her onboard the Stefania with Ricardo.  A weekend out on the Caribbean was a high profile and euphemistic effort to isolate two prisoners in a floating cell; lock them away until they came to their senses––embraced the aristocratic Colombian etiquette and agenda––and embraced each other in love again.

Never again, whispered Tatiana.

Lightning shattered the sky above Hotel Bochica, and a blistering clap of thunder punctuated Tatiana’s words––words of resolution that had also driven her to jump ship once the Stefania escaped the raucous sea and slammed into port, the pier posts cracking the yacht’s hull from bow to mid starboard.  It was the proverbial leap of faith that had propelled Tatiana from the rising deck to the dock, before the Stefania whooshed back into the harbor––Ricardo reaching out to her from the railing––and began to slowly sink.

Tatiana had not looked back, didn’t even look at herself––or anyone she encountered, in the eyes––until she came in from the balcony tonight and sat down in front of the vanity mirror.  She was certain her parents and Ricardo were on a hunt to find her right this moment, but she didn’t care.  Although remote, Hotel Bochica was a noted retreat for the rich and famous and was not hard to find, only 32-kilometers southwest of Bogotá and positioned on a precipice diagonally across the gorge from the infamous and legendary Tequendama Falls.  Once again, however, life had now changed.

Forever, she said to herself.

Suddenly a ghoulish moan caught the hairs on the back of her neck, yanking her attention away from herself in the mirror.  Her eyes darted up to the heavy, ornately carved beams of the coffered ceiling.

There it was again.  The more Tatiana focused her hearing the more the distant, echoing groans became an ominous ranting––wait...

Is that the music of Wagner?

I really am losing my mind, she thought.  Germanic classical? Am I back in Paris with Hitler’s stormtroopers handing out propagandist leaflets while playing innocents-in-jack-boots on the side streets and back alleys?

Tatiana had looked down on them, not