Chapter 33: Lord of Ghosts
by Kelthammer
Voiceover: (Nancy Barrett) "Sunlight devours the hiding shadows of Collinwood,
creating a sense of peace and calm. Only a few who live in the darkness know
how fragile that peace is. Soon a man who lives in the shadows of moonlight
will be revealed to those brave enough to be curious, and a woman will return
from more than death; she will return from oblivion."
Call it a habit, but Julia had forgotten how to sleep under the light of the
full moon. How many times had a tightly compressed, worried Tom Jennings
called her up asking advice about his little sister? Well, those were the rare
nights when Julia was able to get a nap in; the full moon meant extra activity
at Wyndcliffe.
Lunacy. Mania. Two words for insanity that meant "moonstruck" or "Moonmad."
Dreamers were full of "moonbeams" and "moonshine"--and the effects of local
alcohol were the reason why it was given that name. What was the moon good
for, if not for defining reality by her absence?
Thoughts like these floated through her mind as she went through the motions of
breakfast and then on to the blessed relief of the upstairs library, alone.
The Collinses were like buzzing insects around her. Inconsequential to her
heavy thoughts. Twice at the table, she had thought how irritating humans
could be when they were wrapped in false security. Was Vicki learning to ride
on Quentin's bike THAT fascinating? Roger had glanced over the sugar bowl
then, and the haunting in his eyes told her that his experience with Dracula's
Daughter still remained.
She felt badly for him, but was stretched tightly. She wondered if she could
bear one more demand upon her resources. Roger had already been here; she
recognized his large leather portfolio, a dark and sober blue with the state
Pinecone stamped hard into the corner. He used it for all his state-business
mishmash, and it was in the long overstuffed sofa overlooking the thick glass
windows facing the forest between Collinwood and the Old House.
She carefully picked it up, intending to move it aside to the little taboret,
when a smaller book revealed itself underneath, like a helgamite under a
creek-rock. She put the ledger in its place and picked up the smaller, brown
book with the same intention and of course, a waterfall of photos tumbled out
of the pages.
Julia muttered softly under her breath and began picking up the personal
effects of a family that was not hers. Sober and tight-collared artifacts
watched her tend to them with silvery tintype eyes. Newspaper so old and
orange she was afraid to touch them at all crackled like brittle linen. Oval
and framed portraits. She picked up entire decades in a single handful and put
them back in the book with as much care as she could and not spend all day
doing so.
(No wonder they fell out!) She was starting to get annoyed. (LOOK at all
these! There must be hundreds, crammed into an album no bigger than--)
Vicki was staring back at her.
Julia quite forgot what she was doing. The little photograph rested on
gleaming floorboards, its image before a wall-calendar that said 193- before
the dark spill of hair blocked out the last number...clothed in a blue suit
that was so sober and utilitarian that if even Julia had worn it, she would
have been accused of being facetiousness with her efficiency.
(That's Vicki.) Julia knew her mind was being very stupid right now, but...
But that was VICKI.
Vicki was staring back at her.
"I touch her. Is she real? Can I address her?" Julia whispered the words from
Euripides' play ALCESTIS. Her one bright spot of Greek Lessons in school.
Heracles battling Death Himself to bring the man's dead wife back to him.
"But how ever did you bring her back from dark to light?"
"By battling with the Lord of Ghosts..."
The woman was eerily ghostlike...it struck Julia how odd it was to hold the
image of anyone one never personally met, and assume it as proof that this
person actually existed. She was a little thinner than Vicki, but SO MUCH like
her...
Except for the eyes.
They were dark hollows, the eyes gleamed like firefly points inside soft gray
shadow inside the skull.
(Not long to live...) Julia thought. There was no allopathic reason for her to
know this: even the most staid and rigid of physicians admitted to following
instincts, and she had seen that look before, in people who would soon be
buried.
She turned the photo over. "Your silly friend, Elsie." Was written in sepia.
Squid wasn't the most permanent of pigments; it was growing faint even though
it was away from the sun's light.
(Elsie?) A little shaky, she finished returning the photographs to the book,
but kept the last one.
As the door opened, she acted on instinct; the photograph slipped out of sight.
"Julia?" Barnabas smiled faintly as she recognized him and slowly relaxed. "How
are you doing?"
As he watched, she relived most of her morning and dismissed it all with a
shrug. "Fairly well." Her return smile was slow in coming; something was
bothering her. "Yourself?"
He strode to the window without replying at first, taking in the breathtaking
view of the silver birches in the ripe morning sun.
"I was thinking of the other night," he said at last. "Julia, I wonder if
Quentin knows more about this than we do."
"Quentin?" Julia repeated. Now that she knew it was Barnabas...she was pulling
the photograph back out again and staring at it.
"I have nothing definite...only a feeling. But he..." Barnabas looked for
words, but there were none for him. "This does not feel right," he finished,
deeply unsatisfied by this.
Julia was thinking carefully. "Quentin is very reticent when he has to be,"
she told him. "He doesn't seem like it, I know, but he's not as open as he
likes people to think. And if he's quiet, it’s usually to protect somebody or
something." She tapped the stiff paper of the photo against her knee and then
held it up. Barnabas took it slowly, his expression of puzzlement changing to
something akin to alarm.
"That is the woman we saw at Widow's Hill!"
"I wondered. Well. Be careful who you show that to." She warned him to
another blank expression. "Barnabas, people seem quite determined to ignore
the possibility of a missing Collins around here."
Barnabas sank into the couch heavily. "Where did you find this?"
"In Roger's private stack of photos. I daresay he didn't expect me to poke
around in them." She briefly outlined her spill. "I've been in what was
supposed to be *all* the family albums." She sighed and stood, beginning to
pace for the nervous release. "Barnabas, when I first started working on the
Family History, I noticed rather quickly that large portions of information are
missing. I accepted the story that some records and photographs were lost. Now
I'm not so ready to do that."
"193..." Barnabas worked at the date just as Julia had. "Old enough to be
Vicki's mother," he barely whispered.
"Yes. Quite. I thought that too. But we need a little more proof than this
before we go to Vicki. You know Miss Winters--she'll fly to Liz with the photo
for confirmation and she'll hit the usual Collins Brick Wall."
Barnabas winced at Julia's scathing tone, but had to admit she was right.
"If there's one bit of evidence on Elsie's existence, then there's another
somewhere." He was confident of that.
Julia forced herself to stop pacing, and leaned against the bookshelves, arms
folded. "How can we find anything else?" She frowned heavily. "As small as
this town is, it would have been a simple matter for Liz or Roger or whoever to
saunter into the County Courthouse and rip up what they need."
Barnabas' eyes lit up. "The Family Bible. They wouldn't dare touch that.
They could only hide the evidence of a birth!"
"How in the world could you do that?" Julia was skeptical.
"Calligraphy!" Fired by his convictions, Barnabas stuffed the photograph into
his breast pocket and began searching. "Help me find it."
Julia complied, but slowly. "Barnabas, what makes you think that they would
still be recording births in the Family Bible?"
"Of course they would, Julia." Barnabas tossed over his shoulder as he began
pulling monstrous tooled leather books off the shelf. The pages were thinner
than rice paper, the print minuscule. "Why wouldn't they?"
"But...People usually don't DO that anymore," she protested. Forget the fact
that she was non-Christian by culture.
"These are Collinses. They would stick to tradition." And with that utter
faith, Barnabas yanked another tome out without regard to the overweight of the
pages against a frail spine and batted the hardboard lid open. "Jamison
Collins was Liz and Roger's father, correct?" Spartan and ugly handwriting
looked back at him. He shuddered and found another Bible to look through.
"What does Jamison have to do with it?" Julia was still lost.
"He was a Victorian child. They were taught fine penmanship, or I've missed
the point of your enforced history lessons." Not to mention, he felt that
period was the last holdout of elegance in the world. Three more books met his
disapproval--and none of them Bibles. He stuffed them back and settled upon the
largest example of all--COLLINS FAMILY was written in the flyleaf.
Julia watched his face fall from triumph and peered over his shoulder. There
were three pages of family birth and death, but Roger and Elizabeth were very
conspicuously the only names.
He exhaled in a sigh.
"Perhaps I was being foolish."
"No..." Julia's hushed voice alerted him. She was staring at the sepia with an
intent gaze he knew well. "Barnabas, you may have something."
He looked. "I see nothing."
"Look at the *writing.* She stabbed at the paper with her fingers. "They're
exactly the same. There are years between Roger and Liz' birth. But the ink is
ths same shade, the shapes of the letters identical. There should be some
difference between the two."
"But this is the Family Bible," Barnabas persisted.
"Barnabas, *look* at all these Bibles. This isn't the day when there was only
one book per family. People are given Bibles right and left as soon as they
enter church." At least, that was her experience with growing up around
Catholics, and from what she knew, about 4 out of 10 Collinses knew their way around a rosary. "Let's look for Jamison's personal Bible."
Both of them worked quickly, aware that the odds against their being
interrupted were high. Barnabas was the victor in the search.
It was a smallish brown thing, a schoolboy's study and buried deeply under a
stack of yellow newspapers. JAMISON looked back upon him, floral and delicate.
"Here we are..."
Again, the Family Tree looked back at them. Julia's eyebrows crimped to see a
flowing and graceful design at the bottom of the page after Roger's birth-date.
"There." Barnabas was rich with satisfaction. "I told you!"
"I...can't see a thing," Julia protested. Scenes from JOHNNY TREMAINE came
back to her: disowned members buried under loops and scrollwork so ornately it
took a practiced eye to see.
Julia could read Pennsylvania Fraktur at a glance: this organic style was
beyond her.
"I can see it," Barnabas said confidently. His large fingertip traced up and
down over something buried on the other side of the scrollwork. It was as
bewildering as trying to see a house through a briar maze. She had to take his
word that something was there at all. "L...O...U...I...S...E!"
"Louise?" Julia repeated as Barnabas' face fell.
Just as quickly, she stiffened.
"Who is "this?" he exclaimed.
"Barnabas, it's Louise--I mean, it's the woman in the photograph!"
"The woman says her name is Elsie!" Barnabas mangled his sentence comprehension
on that one, but it was understandable.
"No, look!" Julia was grinning now, a bright sunbeam. "The initials! Louise
Collins...L.C..."
"El-See!" Barnabas stared at the krypta. "'your silly friend...a pun upon her
initials!"
"Louise Collins," Julia whispered.
"Yes," Barnabas whispered back. "Now...should we tell Vicki?"
Quentin heard hushed voices from the library and was going to automatically
sail on through, but "Should we tell Vicki?" riveted his feet to the carpet.
His heart thumped once, strongly, and he stifled it into a semblance of calm.
Tightening his self control he twisted in his place and pushed open the library
door.
Barnabas and Julia looked up with twin faces of alarm, then grudgingly relaxed.
Julia was more happy to see him than Barnabas was; the older man was clearly
unsure of what he should be thinking about him.
Well, let him. Quentin wasn't exactly HAPPY that he had been forced to
remember a horrific past. He preferred to live in an utter state of
zen-here-and-now, and that was effectively blown to hell now.
"Hi there." He smiled his most innocent. "What's up?"
***
Church bells. When you stood in the tower room on a clear day, the village
chapel's summons rang throughout the air. Carolyn leaned her elbows on the
open windowsill, sniffing the odor of pines and seawater. When the wind
changed it would begin its familiar reek of fishy death.
Pettibones were one of the founding families. It amused her to no end that
tradition was being upheld--a toll for every year of her life. No doubt the
Missus would have been dreadfully embarrassed that the entire community knew her
true years.
Gong.
She smiled, enjoying the sober knell of bronze and iron. It went down, then
up, then down.
"Oranges and Lemons, say the bells at St. Clemet's..."
Gong.
"You owe me five farthings, say the bells at St. Martins..."
She pushed away from the sill and continued on with her journey, music rining
from the bells, inside and outside her mind.
"When will you pay me, ask the bells of Old Bailey?"
Dust floated with the draft across dim shadow and corpse-white cobwebs, briefly
illuminated in the glare of white northern sunlight, then gone. Dry
floorboards, time-worn until even the deep-worked oils had fled their luster,
creaked under her feet.
"When I grow rich, say the bells as Shoreditch..."
Dreamlike, the wraithlike figure of the tiny blonde woman slipped her pale way
through tired hallways. HE was there, of course. Where anything languished,
forgotten and unmourned, HE languished too.
Biding his time like the rat that scurried, the spider that hurried, the
candlewax that wound a winding-sheet around its slender column.
And with HIM lurked the power that she craved.
"And when will that be?" She sang, too faintly to be heard, unless you were the
dead. "Ask the bells at Stepney?"
A sad gust blew across her feet as she pressed against the door. A groan of
too-dry timber and browned brass hinges and she was inside. A feral smile,
frozen like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, smashed itself over her face and she couldn't
shut the door after her fast enough. Hide herself. A good secret. Never let
anyone see her. The glee made her giggle and she heard his stirring in the
back of her mind, tickling the soft skin under her chin.
Her secret. Her secret room. All hers, all hers.
"...I'm sure I don't know," said the Great Bell at Bow..."
Portraits. Battered photographs much younger than the antique frames that held
them, standing at attention upon the cobwebbed walls. Images captured with
delicate patience and trapped under the frames like insects in a killing-jar.
Roger Collins.
Elizabeth Stoddard.
Quentin Collins.
David Collins.
Carolyn Stoddard.
The newcomer's photo had been taken unawares. Barnabas had his back mostly to
the camera, his head beginning to turn in growing awareness of her eyes. She
enjoyed that one; it made her think of the victims she had killed just as
dawning horror fell upon them.
Barnabas Collins.
Whisper of promise, a thrill of blood, the need to kill and bathe in the
red...oh, HE waited, HE waited with her, and such delicious suspense it was,
until the day when she could smash all the portraits, bathe each image in its
owner's red...
"Here is a candle, to light your way to bed," Carolyn's whisper reached
fever-pitch with the foxfire gleam in her eyes. "Here is an axe to chop off
your head! Last, last, last, last, LAST MAN DEAD!"
***
(This,) Quentin thought, (is moving too fast.)
He didn't know if he should feel jealous or not. He and Barnabas had both been
trying very hard to help Vicki find the answers to her past--only they were
rivals in their helpfulness.
And now, thanks to a gross carelessness on the part of Roger Collins, Julia
Hoffman had stumbled upon the largest clue to Vicki's history. Quentin tried
not to think of this coup as Barnabas'. Those two were quite the team.
Julia was looking as uneasy as he'd ever seen her. Quentin wasn't certain why.
She traced a line of bubbles in an antique glass vase with her fingernail and
barely contributed to the conversation. Several times, Barnabas' speech had
stalled, aware of her silence before plugging on.
"You seem worried about telling Vicki about any of this." He remembered the
overheard conversation that had first garnered his attention.
Julia looked up for the first time. "I can't say I've known Vicki for long,
but I do believe she is predictable. Wouldn't you think it would be like her
to go to Liz or Roger with this proof and innocently demand answers?"
Quentin winced to his very bones. Oh, yes, he could VERY MUCH see that.
Vicki's wide, guileless eyes turned upward: "Please, Mrs. Stoddard, I just want
to know, I don't care about any skeletons in the closet..." Oh, yes. She might
have grown up in less-than-perfect surroundings, but she somehow believed that
the light of Truth would bear out in all troubles.
Quentin's thoughts must have shown on his face, for the other two were nodding.
"Liz and Roger have denied having a sister for this long." Barnabas picked up
the thread. "It would be more conducive, I believe, if this search for Vicki's
family continued to be quiet and unobtrusive."
"If that's possible." Julia protested. "Carolyn was pestering Roger and Eliot
nearly to death over the family album. What if she's on to something too?"
"If she is it's just because she is Vicki's friend, do you not think?" Barnabas
wondered.
"Possible." Julia admitted. "But she's not being 'quiet and unobtrusive'."
Quentin cleared his throat. "OK, I have to pick Vicki up in town today at
noon. What if I dropped her a few hints and clues, and let her find, say, this
photograph far away from the House?"
They didn't think much of that idea, but better ones weren't jumping up to bite
their noses.
"She's tenacious." Julia was staring at the vase again. "She's polite and
well-mannered, gracious and gentle, but she has GOT to be one of the most
stubborn human beings on this planet." Rueful and grudging admiration colored
her voice for the young woman. "She won't be easily satisfied with just a
clue. She'll track it down like a bloodhound."
"I just don't know what to do!" Quentin exhaled. "I don't want her to be
ignorant...but if what we're looking at is true, Vicki could be RELATED TO US!"
He shook his head. "And if Roger and Liz persist in being shutmouth about
this..." He stopped himself, clicking his teeth together. "Look, there are
three places where one NEVER picks up a date: At funerals, stock markets, and
family reunions. What if she's blood-kin? How could she not be if this is her
mother we're looking at?"
He felt more than uneasy at this thought anyway: Jamison was his nephew, and if
Louise was one of Jamison's children...He shivered all over.
For Barnabas, the family line was much more dilute, but he too was worried
about that. For him, the family tree branched with Daniel, his uncle's son.
Joshua had adopted Daniel as his own, which made the boy Barnabas remembered
be his adopted BROTHER.
Julia could have told him there was little chance of inbreeding backlash, but
she thought nothing of either of these points. She was considering that Vicki
might LIKE to live a simple life, but chaos swarmed fore and aft about her,
like the sharp coastal currents that churned froth against the unmoving granite
boulders.
Both Barnabas and Quentin had been fairly obvious in their interest with Vicki.
Yet Liz and Roger hadn't said anything. Without that name in the Bible, that
would suggest that Vicki's resemblance to Louise Collins was a fluke. But now
it was looking like the siblings were choosing to wait until the very last
minute to tell the prospective beau that he was barking up the wrong (family)
tree.
Quentin fidgeted, looking very unhappy indeed. "Damn. I have to go now to
pick her up..." He stared at his watch accusingly. "For now, I don't think
I'll say anything. But she needs to be brought into this slowly."
"I agree." Barnabas' feelings of Quentin as a trespasser was taken over by his
worry. Vicki had not dealt well with seeing Louise's spirit over Widow's Hill.
What if a new shock sent her to emotional breakdown?
Julia sighed, much like Quentin. "I have to go to Rose Cottage and see to
Chris." She sounded anything but thrilled. "Let us know how it goes when you
come back, Quentin?"
"Of course."
Barnabas looked uncertain for a moment. He thought of Vicki when he looked at
Quentin, and when he looked at Julia he remembered the too-recent collection of
hells she had been through. "I'll walk with you, Julia."
Julia didn't dare show her relief.
***
Man and woman slowly crunched through the dry forest floor. Behind them the
distant rumble of a sportscar told them Quentin was rocketing towards town with
his usual reverence for safety.
"He acts as if he's immortal." Barnabas growled, knowing that it made him sound
old and cantankerous.
Julia made a sound of agreement.
"You're very quiet," he said softly.
Julia wished he wasn't such an understanding friend right now. She hated to do
anything that made her think of Tom. Her face remained a still, unreadable
pool.
Barnabas studied her from the sides of his gaze as they walked. He wondered
about the link that stood between Julia and Chris' brother. Tom Jennings had
seen...felt something inside that too-calm face and been unable to exist
without it. She was a remarkable woman.
And no more remarkable as on the times when her face lit up in a smile,
crooking that grin in warm humor. That was sorely missing from her life now.
He hadn't seen such warmth in her since...
Not since Tom had taken advantage of her, and Cassandra had been very quick to
keep that going.
Would she recover from this? He hoped so. It was all too easy to destroy all
the good feelings inside a human heart. Odd how their stations were reversed.
She had been the one to be human for him when he had forgotten how.
"Julia," he murmured, and finally stopped.
She stopped too, quickly. Her dread at going to Rose Cottage was almost
successfully masked.
"Why do you have to go see Chris?" he asked softly.
The wind tugged at her hair, blowing fine strands against a high cheekbone. She
pushed them away with her gloved hand. Never once did her large, dark eyes
leave his.
"I need to talk to him about Amy," she stated. And that was what it was. A
statement. Her very directness was shielding her feelings from coming out.
"She was my patient, and he's wanting to suspend her treatment. I'm worried
about that."
"You're quite close to her, aren't you?" he divined.
She looked away. "As close as she lets other people get to her." Her voice was
strained.
"Is that all you're thinking of?" he probed. Would she admit to him that she
saw Tom when she saw Chris, and her body would remain locked tight as an iron
bar?
"No..." Julia gulped hard. "I thought of something about Vicki...I was afraid
to talk about with Quentin."
Barnabas leaned on his cane, dark brows knitting together worriedly. "What is
it?"
"Barnabas...what if we're wrong about Liz and Roger's reasons for keeping quiet
about Louise?" She barely whispered it, but he could hear it as loudly as a
shout. "What if they're trying to protect her? Or...protecting their
children?"
Barnabas opened his mouth to speak, but Julia's gaze, going past him, froze,
and she gasped in shock...
***
Roger Collins had no memory in his mind to tell him of what had happened since
he stumbled home, Carolyn's knife-wound in his side.
He had been looking for Julia, he reasoned. A doctor. Obviously that would
have been the logical thing to do. But had he even found her? If he
concentrated, he THOUGHT he could recall tiny fragments of breakfast with the
family, and she had been present. Or was it breakfast? Was it lunch and the
sun just abnormally bright for that time of day? The more he struggled to
think, the less he knew.
Carolyn was insane? If so she was contagious! He was hardly in his right
mind!
Roger rested his forehead against the chilly windowglass of his room and stared
without seeing the spread of lawn below. Absurdly, a memory came to him with
sharp and sweet vitality. A memory he hadn't even been looking for:
Springtime and the lawns were low and green. White clover was starting its
soft cotton-boll blooms. And Louise was laughing, swinging her Easter Basket
around her small fingers. Looking for eggs and flowers at the same time. It
didn't matter, it was all a grand game to her.
Father had said she would outgrow it, but she was eight years old by now and he
had made certain his other children were staid old adults by six. Liz had
thrived under his discipline; Roger had coped by bottling himself in. He was
now starting to explore the possibilities of the liquor cabinet. As long as
Father thought it was Mother's nipping, and Mother thought it was Father's
nipping, he would be safe.
"Look at this!" Louise ignored the wind blowing over her thin white dress and
stuffed a handful of green under her brother's nose. Roger smelled a
Peppermint Patty in the fumes. "This is mint!" she told him, expecting him to
be just as astonished as she was.
"Yes, it is." He chuckled dryly.
She stared. "You're not surprised!"
Roger found a leaf that had escaped mangling, and chewed on it. The stems were
dark brown--chocolate brown--but otherwise looked like ordinary dark
peppermint. "Our grandfather Edward planted it all over the lawns when he took
over Collinwood."
Louise thought about that. Disappointed that she had not stumbled upon a
terrific mystery, she was satisfied to have found a story instead. "Why did he
plant MINT? It grows everywhere?"
"Rich people used to grow mint, and other plants that smelled sweet in their
lawns. That way they could smell the perfume when the servants cut the grass.
He planted lemon mint, lime mint, horsemint, spearmint, lemon balm...and I
don't know what-all."
Louise jumped upon this subject the way he had known she would. "Let's look
for them!"
Roger resisted the grip on his sleeve. "Most of them are probably swallowed up
by the grass, Elsie."
"Come on! We found one! There's got to me more!"
"WE?" Roger repeated, but Louise was already yanking him along the sward, a
powerful little tug manipulating a stubborn freighter.
"We." Roger repeated to himself, his breath smoking his reflection away. A
memory he hadn't wanted, and certainly hadn't needed.
Elsie had grown up, taken over by the identity of Louise-the-adult, and had
remained Elsie only to Roger. And then Louise had been taken over by HIM.
Roger pushed away from the window, sick and bitter. Morrison was right, he
thought. Hatred IS a very understated emotion. It never died out on its own,
but simply crawled off in a dark corner. Not to expire like a rat should, but
to lick its wounds, rest and recover, and when you were least prepared for it,
the hatred would jump out and take you over again.
He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth. Too late he knew the only way he
could remain sane was to sacrifice his memory. The strength that had made him
survive Cassandra was protesting this new assault but a cool clinical voice
inside his brain was advising against heroics just now.
(Too tired.) He faced this knowledge in disgust. (Too tired to fight)
When he resisted violently, the crawling, nattering voices would return. When
he blanked out, they were gone. He didn't want to hear the voices; they
demanded that HE be free and Roger wasn't about to DO that. If Cassandra was a
horror, she was merely a pathetically small aspect of it compared to the real
thing!
(Rest.) That cool, objective voice was insisting. It was his own voice--the
one he usually managed to drink into inaudibility.
If he blanked out, though, wouldn't he be just turning himself into a
marionette for the voices?
(No, they need you to move on your own will.) If they had wanted Roger to just
be a poppet, they would have used him this morning when he was walking around
in his little gray cloud of stupor.
So they needed conscious human aid. And in order to do that, they would have
to break his will down to nothing.
Roger had no desire to be on another leash.
*******************************************************
"...One day my daddy stumbled in / All pale and weak / Said the woman down the
block / Just gave birth to a geek! / Sell it to the circus, Mom said, what the
heck! / Nope, says dad, this one's a pencil neck! / And if there's anything lower
than a sideshow freak / It’s a grit-eating, scum-sucking, pencil-neck geek!"
Chris nearly killed himself running to snap off the radio. Ok, maybe he was
overly sensitive but--god damnit, he didn't feel like hearing any songs about
freaks of nature.
Joe Haskell's smirk nearly drove Chris insane but he pushed it away--it was
just an image in his eyelids. Haskell had left after Chris had panicked over
David's discovery.
Chris hadn't thought it at all funny, and Joe had been quick to get bored with
his "stupid histrionics."
"What are you afraid of, Chrissy-sissy?" Joe had grinned.
Chris had not been called that since grade school, by bigger kids wanting to
prod him into a fight so they could kick the shit out of him. But Chris still
had to fight to keep from lunging at Joe's throat at that underhanded, smarmy
attack.
(Shut up, just shut up) he told his head. His hands had slowed, now they were
working faster--pulling clothes off the closet rack, folding them over one arm
and then putting them in his trunk. That was all. He had to leave. Things
were that simple.
(Can't stick around, God, Amy's got enough scandal hanging over her head. Her
last brother would--)
WHAM the door rattled on its hinges and Chris yelped, nearly dropping his spare
shoes.
"Chris?" Barnabas' deep voice, worried for him. FRANTIC, actually. "Chris are
you in there?"
Chris coughed to clear his throat. "J-Just a minute!"
Barnabas--and Julia--nearly tumbled into the living room, both looking pale and
a little sick. As one, they locked white-eyed gazes on him, and he stepped
back a bit.
"Uh..." he began.
"Chris," Julia cleared her throat. She and Barnabas looked at each other, as
if the sight of him being alive and well wasn't in their planning book.
"Chris, are you feeling all right?"
"Uhm, well..." He doubted that question covered affairs of the heart. "Yeah.
I mean, nothing unusual's going on."
Barnabas slowly relaxed. "We..." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a
white cloth. "Forgive me, Chris, but...we found this in the woods and we
thought it might be yours."
Chris felt his heart slam inside his ribs at the sight of his skull ring,
glaring back at him.
Then he frowned. "That's not my ring." He held up his hand, showing them it
was bare. "I just lost my ring, and that looks exactly like it, but look at
the size." He proved it by picking up the object in question and slipped it on
his finger.
Or tried to. The ring was grotesquely large and slipped right off again. It
was at least two sizes too big. Even Chris' thumb was too narrow to fit.
(Please, God,) Chris only prayed to a Higher Power when he was up against a
wall and cornered like a rat in a trap. (Make them believe this.)
Julia's face grew pink. She managed a weak laugh as Barnabas began to melt
with relief. "Chris, we're sorry. We...we jumped to conclusions. There was a
trail in the woods and we thought--"
Barnabas smoothly cut her off. "We thought this was yours. I am sorry. Do
you know who this might belong to?"
Chris made a show of thinking, and shook his head. "It's pretty popular among
bikers. I picked it up on a road trip. I lost it last night, and I've been
looking for it." He sighed.
(I gotta stop buying cheap jewelry.) This wasn't the first time his Change had
done something like this. The last time, it was a watch and it had been made
far too well. The band had taken its time about breaking when his bones
swelled, and the result had been painful to say the least.
In another minute, the silence would get very uncomfortable. But Chris didn't
feel like driving any more guests out today. When word got out about him and
Joe, he'd be leaving anyway. Might as well be pleasant.
"Well I'm glad you came by anyway! Come on in and have a real visit. I'm
making up some coffee."
Coffee. What would Americans do without it. With unanimous agreement, his
guests began taking off their coats.
Barnabas glanced down at his hands surreptitiously. "Would you mind if I used
your lavatory?"
Chris nodded at the tiny hallway. "Down there." He wondered at the sharp look
Julia suddenly threw at her companion. "I'm going to pull out the milk. Have
a seat."
"Did you wash your hand??" Julia's frantic whisper was not meant for human ears
at this range. But Chris heard it just fine over the heavy glug of milk pouring
out of the heavy jug.
"I wiped as much blood as I could onto the cloth." Barnabas whispered back.
Chris felt his knees turn to jelly but long habit kept him going.
"It's probably all the dog's blood anyway." Julia was weary, defeated. "I
suppose Collinsport can stop worrying about that stray-and-hostile mastiff."
"I know what we saw, but still." Barnabas gnashed his teeth. Chris could hear
that too. "It was ripped apart for all its power! I doubt if it took more
than five seconds to kill it!"
(Dogs and wolves don't get along.) Chris thought. He clinked silverware loudly
together, and just as noisily rummaged around for tray-trimmings.
"What about that hair?"
"I'm not trained in that kind of analysis."
"Do we need that? You know what we saw."
"Yes, I know. But...humor me in my thinking."
Barnabas sighed.
Clunk-wham, Chris set large mugs down on his tray between wedges of food. The
abruptly canceled lunch between himself and Joe wasn't a total loss after all.
"Julia, you stay here with Chris; as soon as its polite I'm going back for
another look."
"What do you think you'll find?"
"The light will be far better."
With that mysterious comment, Barnabas fell quiet. Chris hefted the tray and
opened the kitchen door.
"I was gonna have lunch with Joe but he canceled," Chris told them with an
utterly straight face. "So you might as well enjoy."
"Nothing wrong I hope," Julia said smoothly. She was perfectly comfortable
with taking a sandwich off the tray. After a moment, Barnabas did the same.
"No...we were trying to...catch up on history." Chris ducked his head down as
he poured coffee, certain his cheeks would burst into flame.
*******************************************************
Nicholas Blair saw Quentin before Quentin saw him, and smoothly slipped into
the flower shop as if it had been his idea all along. Collins, of course, was
too busy racing to his own agenda to look to the left of right of him; such an
attitude would not guarantee his getting killed, but it practically promised an
ugly traffic incident if he didn't think to glance at the crosswalk more often.
"What do you have in yellow?" He smiled to the nameless lady behind the
counter.
She had roses. Nicholas had always preferred that color for the pale suits he
enjoyed. He wound up getting enough for the lush green clay bowl in his living
room. The woman was of the working class, and she flinched ever so slightly at
the tally. No doubt she thought the price was quite high. He made a point of
paying for it with a careless manner.
(People are so tiresome.) He thought it a little sadly. (All wrapped up in
their tiny worlds, thinking money will solve all their problems. Life was so
much easier when the emphasis was away from material value.)
No doubt his enemies would be shocked to know of his ruminations. But Nicholas
was immune to the pleasures of the material For Its Own Sake. While he enjoyed
expensive clothes, it was because hand-tailored suits fit him better. His
books were expensive but they were the ones he needed for his studies. He ate
at the finest restaurants, for that was where the finest food was. What point,
he wondered, was there in skimping? If you were going to DO something, do it
to the best of your abilities and stop whimpering about the future. People who
complained about their lot in life should be executed. Cleanly and quietly
with as little fuss as possible.
That was one thing he enjoyed about Maggie. She hadn't been happy about her
lot in life, but had she complained? Certainly not. She had GOALS in
mind--goals to better herself, to attain the level she aspired to. If it took
years, so be it--she also had patience.
Nicholas was purposefully giving her unlimited access to his bottomless
bankbook in order to jade her on money. While she had suspicions that cash
couldn't buy happiness, she still needed to see that for herself. Everyone
did. And it wouldn't take long before her dissatisfaction sent her searching
for more...meaningful things. It was human nature to never be completely
satisfied; his success as a predator depended on it.
The warlock grinned over the soft flowers as he walked to his car.
*******************************************************
Julia was feeling rather tired and she decided to move in for the kill.
Barnabas had barely shut the door after him when she made up her mind. She
smiled as Chris returned to his seat and then spoke.
"We saw David running from here a few minutes ago."
Chris blanched white as a sheet, confirming one suspicion and dismissing
another.
"Well." Chris cleared his throat. She could see his hands trembling.
"He's...a little upset. I'm...leaving, you see."
"Oh? So soon?" she said evenly.
"Yeah. Well. It can't be helped."
Hmph. "What about Amy?"
"Oh, she's staying here." Chris realized too late he had said far too much--not
just with his words but his body language, tone and eyes had probably just
mailed his sister's physician a raft of bad information. "I thought about what
you said about her needing a stable life." Pause. "And you were right. She's
better off at Collinwood."
Those last five words were not uttered every day. As far as Julia knew, no one
had EVER discussed that possibility.
She sighed and set her coffeemug down, leaning back into a couch that was far
too comfortable. "Chris, may I put my cards out on your table?"
Chris swallowed. "Sure." It came out as a croak.
"David didn't say anything overt, but he was obviously shocked and distressed.
No doubt when Barnabas finishes his work he'll seek him out for a little talk.
You mentioned Joe had been by, and those his clothes you're wearing. Last but
not least, my brother killed himself because he couldn't live with the public
censure. Most of that censure was in his mind, but I wasn't able to convince
him of that. I'm not about to let you go off on a self-imposed exile in the
desert wearing a hairshirt you volunteered to wear for yourself." Her eyes
snapped like orange sparks off charcoal. "And if I seem angry at you, I'm
sorry, but when Tom said you lived apart from your family in the woods because
of 'personal problems' I thought it was something SERIOUS."
Chris slowly remembered to breathe again. But it took a while.
"Uh," he said. Intelligently.
"Normally I'm not this blunt with people," she assured him. "But it’s my own
personal experience coloring my feelings."
Chris was still processing. "You...don't...care?"
"Were you listening to me?"
Chris backed up his mental tape and replayed. "Your brother...killed himself?"
Remorse soaked in. "I'm sorry."
She shrugged helplessly. "So was I. And I still am. I wasn't even a medical
student when it happened, but I can't stop thinking of him as a patient I
failed to help." Her mouth crooked on one side. "I don't want you to leave.
It would be the worst thing for Amy."
Chris looked down. "You...you haven't really talked like this to me before. I
mean, in this way. You've been...well, doctor...you've been avoiding me."
She grimaced. "And that's my own problem. It has nothing to do with you."
"It has to do with Tom, doesn't it?" Chris' voice was hollow and empty as an
old nutshell. "I won't ask. It's nobody's business. But I'm kinda...used to
people reacting to me one way because of how they dealt with my brother." He
struggled to swallow. "I mean, I loved the guy but he was...he..." He tried
hard to laugh but it came out as a frightening sound. Tom and Joe...Joe
wanting Chris to be Tom...
And then he was sitting there, with Julia wrapping her arms around him like a
friend would, his shoulders hitching like a body under an electric current,
trying to remember how to dredge up feelings he had buried in order to save his
sanity, only in the process, he had forgotten how to cry.
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