Read Beyond This Time: A Time-Travel Suspense Novel for Free Online

Billy Lee Mitchell had been a racist, a drunk, and mean as a wet badger.
    On Mitch’s fifth birthday his father hauled the family down to the annual Ku Klux Klan rally. The hate spewing speeches, burning crosses, and hooded men in robes terrified the kindergartner. When a very drunk and belligerent Billy Lee decided to anoint his son with the white hood, Mitch had run away and hidden in the woods. There had been hell to pay when the old man finally located him hunkered down in a rotted out log.
    One year to the day, worn out from constant battles to keep Mitch from turning into a redneck racist, Pamela Mitchell packed one suitcase and took her six-year-old son north. Other than the court ordered two week summer visits with Billy Lee, Mitch spent the next twelve years on his grandparent’s farm in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.
    Thanks to his mother, his life turned out good. He’d never expected to end up right back where he started, but maybe sometimes a person follows a predetermined course. If not for the full ride football scholarship to the University of Alabama and his mother’s fondness for her alma mater, Mitch would never have returned to the Heart of Dixie. Fate? Or stupidity?
    Even though he’d lived in Tuscaloosa during his four years of college, which was only thirty miles from Maceyville, he’d never contacted Billy Lee. Mitch wondered if his father ever knew his son had played for the Crimson Tide, or later on, six years of pro-ball with the New Orleans Saints. The old coot probably stayed too drunk to have recognized Mitch if he did happen to see a Monday night football game.
    Pamela Mitchell had been proud of the son she raised alone, even if she didn’t remember him anymore. Mitch missed being able to talk with his mother. Several months ago a stroke had taken not only her ability to walk and speak, but her memory as well. A sad end to a sad life.
    When Billy Lee died of cirrhosis of the liver, Mitch had inherited his kudzu-covered farmhouse, decrepit barn, and the Impala. His father’s possessions weren’t all that impressive. Billy Lee had never taken very good care of himself or the farm, and both had died early from neglect.
    Mitch let the place stand for eight years, then when he and Lisa set a wedding date, they decided instead of spending money to make the house habitable, they’d have it razed and sell the land. The amount they’d received had made a nice down payment on the brick house in town.
    “At least you didn’t kill the car, you old boozer,” he mumbled.
    The only noteworthy thing Billy Lee had ever done in his whole pathetic life was to have a good time. Of course, his father’s idea of a good time involved ferrying bootleg whiskey all over the county. His long running game of chase with the ATF agents and the Alabama State Patrol had resulted in numerous wrecked transmissions and burnt out clutches. To this day, if Mitch tried to push the Chevy beyond 65 mph, she’d choke, smoke, and then die in the middle of the road.
    He tried to remember when the Impala’s quirky engine behavior began. He recalled Billy Lee complaining it started around Christmas 1962, shortly after he’d bought it. As the story went, his father had been trying to outrun a carload of ATF agents on the old highway the first time she quit on him. Billy and his sidekick, some redneck idiot named Floyd Barnes, ended up celebrating the holidays in the Maceyville lock up.
    Prior to raising the hood, Mitch ran the soft buffing cloth over the entire automobile body, periodically scrubbing at microscopic dirt specks. His face, reflected in the high gloss wax job, captivated his attention. He appeared haggard. The dark circles ringing his blue eyes made him think of a raccoon. Agitated, he ran a hand through his ginger-colored hair.
    He looked like an old man with one foot in the grave. Or one foot in the past. Images of dried up Egyptian mummies, which would blow away with the slightest breeze, raided his brain. He’d