Time Travel Adventures of The 1800 Club: Book 19

By Robert P McAuley

The 1800 Club is asked by a club member to allow him to bring a friend he met over one hundred years ago back to that time. The only problem is his friend is a Vampire!
Love, adventure and encounters with other ‘People Of The Night’ take place in the village, aboard a ship and in New York over the years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert P McAuley
• Release date: Apr 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463483084

Robert P McAuley

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, I now reside in Long Beach, N.Y. I worked in New York City as an Art Director for 3 different magazines one of which was UFO magazine. I've been writing short stories for the past 20 years and found Time Travel to be my favorite topic. After writing Time Travel Adventures of the 1800 Club: Book 1, I wrote books 2 through 18 and am presently working on book 19. In between I've penned a young adult time travel book, two aviation trivia books, a book about a family of vampires, a romantic western and another time travel book plus 'Sky Ship', a high-action thriller.

Book preview

Time Travel Adventures of

The 1800 Club

BOOK 19

Robert P. McAuley

Published By

Robert P. McAuley and Smashwords

Edited by J.D. McKinnon

Copyright 2020 by Robert P. McAuley

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which has been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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Contents

The Premise

Other books by Robert P. McAuley

The Premise

The 1800 Club is a 21st Century haven for people seeking to escape New York City’s frantic pace. Dressed in clothes their ancestors might have worn during the 1800s, members enjoy foods of the period and read periodicals featuring news of a particular date in the 1800s. However, the 1800 Club also has an astounding secret . . . Time Travel. Members travel back in time nudging famous persons and key events just enough to ensure history unfolds, as it should. Guardians-of-the-past, living in the future, send robotic probes back through the ages, discovered that, at critical time-junctures, pivotal figures stray from vital tasks and actions. These Time Watchers of the past can’t go back and fix the glitch in the timeline because the atmosphere they breathe has been cleaned up over the years and the air of the past is almost unbreathable for them. Then an 1800 Club member from the 2000s are sent back to guarantee that events get back on track. The 1800 Club’s members aid Lincoln, Roosevelt, Bat Masterson, Mark Twain and many others. Without subtle interventions by these unknown agents, the famous might have been only footnotes, rather than giants of history.

Dear reader, I once read a time travel book where the main character went back over one hundred years in the past to retrieve an object from a house. He entered the house, picked up the object and brought it back to his time.

To me it was upsetting that he took us back in time and never once said anything about the house! Never described anything! He might as well have just gone back to a park where things never change.

That is why I try to bring the reader along with me as I travel through time.

RPM

Vampire In Time

DATELINE: MAY 10, 2018 7:25 P.M. PLACE: EAST 102 STREET ENTRANCE, CENTRAL PARK, NEW YORK CITY

Although the average New Yorker avoided walking through the city’s Central Park at night, Kal Kurop stopped at the 102nd Street entrances and mentally tossed up a coin. Well it’s not completely dark yet and my subway is on the opposite side of the park so I’ll just do a brisk walk through and get home twenty minutes sooner.

He entered the park and immediately missed the lights of the city as bushes; shrubs and trees, which were beautiful during the day, now became a possible hiding place for every would-be robber or worse. The path he was on had lampposts’ spaced out so there was a feeble amount of light here and there.

Walk fast and keep those shoulders high, he thought as he walked as erect as his six-foot, three-inch height allowed. He knew that in the daylight his well-built stature made most would-be troublemakers cross the street . . . but in the dark they suddenly become courageous. He stepped off the stone path and onto the grass to became one with the dark night.

Kal was raised in the deep woods of Germany and like his father, grandfather and great grandfather he was an experienced game warden who easily became one with the forest. Growing up he worked his way through University and lived in a games keeper’s lodge attached to Castle Grundel in the Bavarian Alps. His job was to keep poachers away from the forest that surrounded the ancient stone castle. The poachers came mostly from the small villages that dotted the area and their favorite game was deer and wild boar.

Kal developed a love for the great forest and at a young age found that he could walk through the dense, leaf covered forest floor without making a sound. Many times he lay covered with leaves and twigs observing deer drinking from one of the lakes. That the animals never spotted him was more satisfying then getting an ‘A’ in class. Many times he watched as a poacher took aim at one of the animals and he deftly tossed a pebble at them. As the pebble bounced off their head or shoulder they looked around and seeing no one panicked and ran. He heard that many of the townsfolk considered the forest guarded by an invisible demon that when angry tossed stones.

It was now completely dark with the night’s sky a deep gray and he had only the lights of a building peeking through the trees on the other side of the park to guide him.

Kal was about one third of the way across the park when he heard a small sound, which made him stop and drop to one knee. He instinctively knew that should someone be following him the best thing to do was to drop and become part of the darkness rather than standing and become a silhouette against the gray sky. He slowly gathered his long black hair and tied it into a ponytail . . . an old habit he did when stalking a person or animal lest his hair get caught in a bush or tree branch.

He stayed low and scanned his surroundings with his coal black eyes and listened for five minutes before standing, and slightly hunched over, made himself a smaller target as he started off again. At about the halfway mark he again heard a sound and again dropped to the ground. His years in the forest gave him outstanding night-vision and while crouched he slowly did a 360-degree look-around.

Nothing! he thought, as he once again stayed low for another five minutes. This time, Kal sprinted noiselessly to the left of his track for fifty feet before once again dropping and listening.

There it is again! he thought as he scanned the darkness. It came from behind him, but this time it was to his right.

My sprint to the left worked, but whoever it is following me . . . he’s good. He instinctively reached for the hunting knife he had strapped to his belt, but realized it was just a reflex move as he was wearing a suit rather than his forest survival gear.

Kal waited two minutes then ran straight toward the building at the edge of the park, but after fifty feet he turned right and after another twenty feet, dropped again.

Once again he heard the sound, but this time it was further to his left and rear. Not wanting to give the person a pattern to follow he sprinted after just one minute and this time it was straight toward the feeble light of a park lamppost. He didn’t stop until he was into the darkness on the other side of the light. Again he dropped and watched hoping to see his pursuer become illuminated by the lamppost. But to no avail. Not only didn’t the person appear, but also the sounds of crickets and other insects began their nightly ritual of calling out to each other.

The cricket’s song tells me that whomever it was following me has gone.

Kal waited five minutes before quietly walking to the park’s exit and in a few moments went down the subway steps.

He took the downtown subway to his stop, 14th Street, exited the station and became one of the many walking the streets of Greenwich Village. He walked the few blocks to his apartment at 196 West 10th Street, checked his mailbox and went up the stairs to his three-room apartment on the second floor. Kal hit the light switch and shook his head when it refused to go on.

Need to put light bulbs on my shopping list, he thought as he entered the dark living room and pulled the chain on the lamp behind his easy chair. Really having a bad day, he thought as the lamplight refused to light as well. Kal sat on the couch and took off his shoes. He got up and opened the blinds on one of the two windows that faced the street and thought as the light from the street lights pierced the dark room creating horizontal bars on the far wall, Funny how the blinds I use to keep the morning light out now provide light in the