The Open Doorway
Madeleine Mitchell
Author Bio
Madeleine Mitchell lives and works in Manchester, UK as a holistic therapist, graphic artist and writer. Her love of writing began at a very young age, short stories and essays written to entertain the family, then progressing into being published in the small press independent horror genre and magazine and newspaper articles. A lull in writing occurred in the 90’s when she became a professional belly dancer, but after 16 years of performing and teaching the dance, her energies revolved once more towards writing fiction, this time in the form of a full length novel. The Open Doorway is inspired by the life of Lincoln Assassination Conspirator, Lewis Thornton Powell.
Description
Time travel hurts. You don’t need machines or black holes or event horizons – just Shawnee magic, an electrical storm, and a dose of good old fashioned agony. It’s the summer of 2015, as British dancer, Leigh Boswell, flees her abusive husband, Daniel, on a vacation trip to Gettysburg, USA. If the creepy child she meets at the Devil’s Den isn’t enough to freak her out, the storm the girl summons blasts Leigh into the aftermath of one of America’s bloodiest battles on 3rd July 1863 where, sick and disorientated, she’s helped by a young confederate soldier, Lewis Thornton Powell, whose simple act of compassion has repercussions across two centuries. In the Federal field hospitals of Old Dorm and Camp Letterman, and the notorious West’s Building Prison Hospital in Baltimore, Leigh is taken under the wing of confederate sympathiser, Maggie Branson, and endures the horrors of Civil War nursing as she struggles to adapt in an alien world. Fate and circumstance take her deep into the Virginian countryside where she’s adopted by Daniel’s ancestors; the Chandlers, and meets once more with the enigmatic Powell, with whom she seems unable to escape a mutual destiny. Tormented by her knowledge of the future, Leigh is driven to the sprawling metropolis of Washington DC in a desperate bid to alter fate and change history; but as her nightmare unfolds, she finally uncovers the terrible truth about the man she loves. The Open Doorway is a novel of struggle in adversity, timeless love, and karmic absolution. It pits the past against the future where for everything given in life, a price must be paid; and for everything taken, something wonderful is offered in return.
Book excerpt
Leigh left the trees resolute in the thought that being struck by lightning was infinitely preferable to returning to Daniel. The antique combs were gone, lost in the wild dash, and her hair flowed over her shoulders blowing into her eyes as a wind got up from nowhere. Fifty feet from the trees she froze.
She’d read about ball lightening but until now, never seen it in action. Not six yards in front of her, three incandescent spheres snaked slowly to and fro in mid air as though seeking a victim. Two were no brighter than lightbulbs and glowed white and yellow and orange, but the third was smaller and the colour of bright blue neon. Even from this distance, she could feel its heat.
Slowly, she backed off and stepped to the left. The blue orb shifted trajectory and oozed towards her leaving a light trail. The others followed.
Are they tracking me?
She backed up again and equally slowly the orbs followed her with their strange weaving motion. Leigh’s nerves, already at breaking point from what she was doing, the implications and possibilities and insanity of it all, jittered and jagged with each thunderclap overhead.
She felt inexplicably tearful and cast about in her mind for some strand of errant faith. David! What would he do? He’d say balls to the Colonel, that’s what! But somehow, thoughts of him were too much to bear and tears spilled from her in heartbroken sobs.
‘Leigh!’
She whirled to see Daniel coming out of the trees. His body language said it all – he was seething. She wondered if he was angry enough to kill her. He’d nearly done so once before on that terrible night three months into their marriage. But then she realised that she no longer really cared. All that mattered was getting away from him. She turned and stared at the ball lightning, then back at her husband. A crazy thing occurred to her. A movie she’d seen once where a heat seeking missile had been out-manoeuvred by its target. She wondered if she could run at Daniel, duck at the last minute and send the lightning balls into him. An ugly sobbing laugh broke from her, and Daniel barked her name again.
‘LEIGH!’
She ran. Bolted down towards the Emmitsburg Road and away from her husband. Ran with all the desperation of a hounded deer. She felt the heat of the lightning balls as she passed them, and her long toned thighs pumped hard and fast to carry her beyond their reach.
Dan shouted her name again, only this time it sounded more like a shriek. Then something like an ice cold pickaxe bit into the small of her back with such force that all the air punched from her lungs with a pain so excruciating she couldn’t even scream. White light filled her senses, incandescent phosphorous and crawling static and she felt her cells suffocating as her ability to absorb oxygen was sucked away along with any conscious ability to control her trajectory.
She was falling into the void of an endless abyss, and all around her something wailed and whined like a hurricane keening through the naked masts of a ship.
The agony in Leigh’s solar plexus was all consuming and it burned even as her extremities felt scorched by an unbearable cold. Then something hit her, a ferocious impact that should have hurt but didn’t and suddenly everything was warm and dark and silent.
He shot me, she thought crazily. This is what it’s like to die…
Author Website
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Madeleine-Mitchell/357120791139659