by Inmon, Shawn
A Door Into Time
An Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure
Copyright 2020 by Shawn Inmon
Original Artwork Copyright 2020 by Jerry Weible
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One | The Door
Chapter Two | The Letter
Chapter Three | Kragdon-ah
Chapter Four | Hobbled
Chapter Five | Captured
Chapter Six | Dire Wolves
Chapter Seven | Winten-ah
Chapter Eight | Alex’s Decision
Chapter Nine | The World Spins
Chapter Ten | Near Death
Chapter Eleven | The Oath
Chapter Twelve | A Quest
Chapter Thirteen | A Quest II
Chapter Fourteen | A Quest III
Chapter Fifteen | A Quest IV
Chapter Sixteen | Letting Go
PART TWO
Chapter Seventeen | The Hunt
Chapter Eighteen | Stama
Chapter Nineteen | Stipa-ah
Chapter Twenty | Denta-ah
Chapter Twenty-One | Enslaved
Chapter Twenty-Two | Douglas Winterborne
Chapter Twenty-Three | The Journey Home
Chapter Twenty-Four | Blizzard
Chapter Twenty-Five | A Leap of Faith
Chapter Twenty-Six | Tidings of War
Chapter Twenty-Seven | Preparations
Chapter Twenty-Eight | The Fight
Chapter Twenty-Nine | Basic Training
Chapter Thirty | Janta-ak’s Journey
Chapter Thirty-One | Godat-ta
Chapter Thirty-Two | The Plan
Chapter Thirty-Three | The Children of Stipa-ah
Chapter Thirty-Four | Enslaved II
Chapter Thirty-Five | Manta-ak’s Army
Chapter Thirty-Six | The End of the Beginning
Chapter Thirty-Seven | The End of the Beginning II
Chapter Thirty-Eight | Trapped
Chapter Thirty-Nine | The Battle of Denta-ah
Chapter Forty | The Battle of Denta-ah II
Chapter Forty-One | To Catch a Fugitive
Chapter Forty-Two | Aftermath
Chapter Forty-Three | Nanka-tu
Chapter Forty-Four | The Somber Homecoming
Chapter Forty-Five | The Oath II
Coming in June 2020 | Book Two of the Alex Hawk Time Travel Adventure Series: | Lost in Kragdon-ah | Author’s Note
The Middle Falls Time Travel Series
Chapter One
The Door
Alex Hawke looked from one corner of his basement to the other. He closed one eye, a puzzled expression on his face.
“Something’s off,” he muttered to himself.
Alex had owned the house for more than a year, but until today, he had spent little time in the basement. Now that he was here, his subconscious told him something was amiss.
He reached for the measuring tape on his workbench. He had stuck the tape in one corner when his cell phone rang.
He glanced at the screen.
Mandy. Shit.
Alex took a deep breath and said, “Hello?”
“Just want to make sure you haven’t forgotten. It will crush her if you’re not here.”
Alex glanced at the old clock that hung above the workbench. 10:17.
“The party is almost six hours away.” He stopped, realizing that he was always on the defensive when he talked to Mandy. He started over. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll be there.” He thought of the massive stuffed teddy bear sitting in the living room above his head. “Why do you have to be like this?”
That was the opening Mandy had been waiting for. “Right, it’s not like you miss things constantly is it? Oh, wait, it is. You missed the first two years of her life. Her first word, her first step, everything. Half the time, you don’t make it here on time on days you pick her up.”
The grooves of this argument were well-worn and always ended in the same place—frustration, blame, and anger.
“Mandy, I was on deployment, I—” He stopped and gathered himself. There was nothing good that would come of going one more round of that boxing match. He knew he was over-matched, and the judges’ decision would inevitably favor her anyway.
“Hang on. She wants to talk to you.”
A moment later, the tiny voice of his daughter came on. “Daddy? You’re coming, aren’t you?”
“Sweetheart.” He wanted to say, ‘You know I’m always there when you need me,’ but that wasn’t true, and he couldn’t lie to her. Instead, he said, “I’ve got your present right in front of me. I can’t wait to give it to you.”
“Okay, Daddy.”
There was a shuffling sound on the line, then a moment’s silence followed.
“That’s a dirty trick.”
“Using your daughter to guilt you into showing up? I guess. All is fair, right?”
“Just—I’ll be there. Okay?”
He glanced at his phone. She had hung up.
It was a lot more satisfying when we got to slam the receiver down.
Alex shook his head, took a few cleansing breaths, and returned to the problem at hand. He hooked one end of the tape into the masonry at one corner and walked to the other side. The tape showed twenty-seven feet, two inches.
He pursed his lips, calculating, then headed upstairs and out the front door into the February sunshine. Central Oregon weather was unpredictable in the spring, but it was turning out perfect for Amy’s birthday party that afternoon—warm sunshine, blue skies, and just a few non-threatening clouds.
Alex stood with his face up to the warming sun—you had to take advantage of what Vitamin D was available in Oregon—then repeated the exercise he had done in the basement. One end of his fifty-foot tape hooked on the eastern corner of the house, then he stepped off to the western side, avoiding the rose bushes and rhododendrons.
The tape showed thirty feet even.
Alex let the tape roll up with a metallic snap. He ran his hands through his short hair, trying to solve the mystery.
How is the house thirty feet on the outside and twenty-seven feet on the inside?
“Because it’s not. It can’t be,” he said to himself as he jumped up the steps of his front porch, then double-timed the stairs to the basement.
The eastern wall ended next to a window, so he could see there was nothing but open space beyond it. The western wall was blank, though.
Alex had bought the little craftsman house once he had finally accepted that he and Mandy would not work out.
He didn’t want to be one of those dads who lived in a crummy run-down apartment with second-hand furniture and who took his kid out for Happy Meals every other weekend. He wanted to have a home that Amy would know was hers just as much as when she stayed with her mother.
Thus, the craftsman. He had gotten a steal on it because the owner had fallen ill and had been forced to move into assisted living. He’d let the place deteriorate over the previous ten years, which scared away a lot of potential buyers. Alex was happy to take it as-is. It gave him endless projects to fill his hours when he wasn’t at work.
All of which led him to the basement on a sunny day in April, and the mystery of the missing two feet, ten inches.
The entire western wall was covered in paneling that looked like it had been there for decades. Alex peered at the paneling, looking for nail holes. There were none.
“Glued on, eh? Well, game on, then.” He paused. “Is it a bad sign that I’m talking to mys
elf more and more every day?” Another pause. “Not until you start answering yourself.” He glanced around, but of course there was no one to laugh at his joke. One more downside to living completely alone. “Maybe I should get a roommate. Or a dog.”
Alex grabbed his claw hammer off the bench and tried to catch the edge of the paneling and pull it down. No luck. The large pry bar gave the same result. After a few minutes of frustration, he scrabbled through his toolkit and found his small pry bar. He jammed it into the line between the ceiling and the paneling.
He tapped on the end of the pry bar with his hammer until he felt it sink in a bit, then pulled. Finally, a piece of the paneling gave way.
Alex stared at the spot where the paneling had been but couldn’t see anything other than darkness. He glanced around for a flashlight, found none, then remembered the flashlight he carried with him everywhere. He thumbed his phone on, opened the flashlight app and pointed it at the corner.
Behind the paneling was red brick.
Alex slipped the phone back in his pocket and scratched his head.
Why would someone put up a false brick wall in a basement, then glue paneling over it? That doesn’t make sense.
He was intrigued. Shrugging his shoulders, he said, “Only one way to find out.”
With a piece of the paneling gone, it was easier to weasel the pry bar or the claw of his hammer behind it. It wasn’t elegant, but after twenty minutes of steady work, he had pulled down a six-foot section of paneling, piece by piece.
There was nothing behind the paneling but a well-made brick wall.
Since his discharge, Alex had worked in construction, mostly doing drywall for a contractor putting up a new apartment building one town over. A simple brick wall wasn’t going to stop him.
He grabbed his heaviest tarp off a shelf and spread it along the edge of the wall. Next, he grabbed his hammer drill and power saw.
Let’s do it.
He set to work cutting along the seams of the brick, then put a wedge tip on the drill and set it to vibrate.
When he pulled down the first section onto the tarp, he was flabbergasted to see what was behind the brick wall.
It was another brick wall.
Alex laughed at the ridiculousness of it all.
I guess if you’re gonna build a brick wall in your basement for no apparent reason, why not build two brick walls?
He glanced at the clock again. There was still plenty of time to take down both walls and have time to get cleaned up before he had to leave for the birthday party.
He went to work, taking an entire six-foot section of the first brick wall down before focusing on the second.
Soon, piles of bricks were stacked thigh-high on the tarp around him.
When he cut away the first section of the second wall, a blast of cool air hit him. He turned his head away, expecting a musty, pent-up smell, thinking that the air had been trapped for many years.
The wind was inescapable, though, and washed over and around him. It didn’t smell stale or musty at all. Instead, it was an unmistakably familiar smell.
The ocean. A hundred and fifty miles inland, Alex Hawk could smell the ocean.
The breeze continued to blow, though, and it was no-doubt-about-it the smell of marine air—cold, crisp and the unmistakable scent of salt on the air.
Alex went to work taking down the rest of the wall. Patiently, one section of bricks at a time.
Soon enough, he could see what was beyond the wall. At least, he should have been able to see beyond the wall. Instead, there was just an inky darkness that seemed to swallow whatever feeble light reached it. Alex reached his hand into the opening. There was at least a foot of empty space between the second brick wall and the outer wall of the house.
Alex’s light shone on the far wall of his house, right where it should have been. Everything looked like it should, with one exception. In the corner was a deeper blackness, delineated by a slight, shimmering outline.
He shone his phone’s flashlight against that corner. There was a shimmering outline of a door, if doors were made of the darkness of the deepest sky. Next to the outline of the door was an envelope, pinned to the exterior wall by a hunting knife.
Chapter Two
The Letter
Alex tried to move the knife to see how deeply it was stuck in the wall. It didn’t have any wiggle. Someone had driven it into the wall with a lot of force behind it.
Alex squinted at the envelope. There was no writing on it. The edges had curled a bit and turned slightly brown with age.
This has been here for a while.
He gripped the knife in his right hand, pulled and torqued simultaneously. The knife pulled out and the envelope dropped. Alex pinned it to the wall with his left hand before it hit the ground.
He stepped away from the dark space behind where the brick walls had been, walked to his workbench and set the knife down. It had a five-inch blade and a stag horn handle. Other than the fact that it was found in a sealed space, there was nothing unusual about it.
Alex turned his attention to the envelope, turning it left and right in the light of the window. It was a business-sized, and looked like every other envelope of its type produced in the last fifty years. The flap was loose.
Whoever put it there thought that jamming a knife blade through the middle of it was sufficient to seal it.
Alex took the envelope upstairs to his office. He opened a closet and pulled a pair of thin latex gloves out of a box. He also grabbed a pair of long tweezers out of the middle drawer of his desk.
He clicked on a gooseneck lamp, sat down and peered at the envelope. He used the tweezers to open the flap. The only thing visible inside was two folded sheets of paper.
He latched on to the paper and gently pulled the pages out. They had been tri-folded. No writing was visible on the side Alex could see.
Gently, he took hold of the edges of the paper and opened them, laying them flat enough that he could see the handwriting.
The pages were filled with a scrawling handwriting in pencil.
Hey, moron!
What the hell are you doing knocking down two brick walls? Did you ever stop to think that there’s an almighty good reason why those walls are there? Are you thinking at all?
I am guessing you are not, or you wouldn’t be reading this.
If two brick walls didn’t stop you, then probably nothing I can tell you will, either, but I’m going to try.
I bricked this space off so no one else will ever have to suffer like I have. The door that you have uncovered appeared one day in early 1977. I don’t know how it got there. One day, there was just the corner of my basement. The next, there was the outline of that dark space you no doubt have seen.
I was curious. You’re curious too, or you wouldn’t be reading this.
Curiosity didn’t just kill the cat. It killed my son. He was a good boy. He stepped through that door. A moment later, he stepped back through, telling me all kinds of unbelievable stories about what was on the other side.
I told him we needed to call the government, or just blow the whole damned house up, but he wouldn’t listen. We agreed to sleep on it and decide what to do the next morning. That night, while I slept, he took our rifle and as much of our hunting gear as he could carry and walked back through that goddamned door.
He left a note saying he would be right back. Said he had to see the rest of what was there, but that he would be right back.
I haven’t seen him since. I waited for him for ten years. I slept every night and ate every meal in that basement, waiting for him to come back through that door. He never did.
Finally, I faced the truth. My son is dead. Whatever is on the other side of that door killed him. If you go through it, I have no doubt it will kill you too.
If I thought it would help, I would have burned the house to the ground, but I think that would probably just bring more attention to it and more people would die.
Don’t be as
bull-headed as my son. You can still do the right thing. Brick that door back up before it’s too late.
There was no signature, but Alex was sure Benjamin Hadaller—the old man he’d bought the house from—had written it.
Alex’s first instinct was to dismiss the letter as a prank.
But who takes the time to build two brick walls on the off chance someone will take them down and find the letter? No one.
Alex leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling.
And how do I explain the smell of ocean air where there should be none?
When he had been a small boy, Alex’s mother had told him that someday his strong streak of curiosity would get him hurt. She had been right, of course. He had spent two summers of his youth in a cast—one on his left arm, the other on his right leg—because of his insatiable curiosity.
That same drive had been what had led him to enlist in the Army. There was a big wide world out there, and Alex had known if he was going to see it, it was going to be on Uncle Sam’s dollar. That enlistment, and the ten years he had given to his country, had been expensive in the end—it had cost him his marriage. At least that’s what he told himself.
And now there was literally an unknown universe close enough to him that he could smell and almost taste it.
He looked at the small desk clock. 1:30. Still lots of time until Amy’s party.
There was no way he could stand to do little busy work projects for the next few hours, knowing the biggest mystery of his life was waiting to be solved.
There was the letter, though. If Mr. Hadaller was right—if his son really had gone through the door and never come back, there was something dangerous on the other side.
I can just poke my head through and see what’s there, if anything. If there really is something, I can go tomorrow and really explore. Today, I’ll just satisfy my curiosity a little. Still, I should be prepared, even for a short peek. What if I stick my head through and someone or something is waiting for me? I’ve got to be ready.
Alex went to the bedroom at the back of the house, where he kept his gun safe. He spun the combination and opened the door. It wasn’t a complete armory, but it was well-stocked. His .410 shotgun hung in a place of honor on the interior of the door. It was the oldest and least expensive gun in the safe, but it had been a gift from his father on his twelfth birthday, and he had been the third generation to own it. Before too many years, he would make Amy the fourth generation. In many ways, it was his favorite gun, but it wasn’t appropriate for the task at hand.