In 1999, I gathered a group of writers together on the
Dark Shadows forum provided by the SciFi Channel's website to re-create the storylines we knew and loved, giving them our own particular (or peculiar) spins. We worked for five years, writing about the dark and sinister adventures of the Collins family and their friends. I'll be reprinting the chapters of the stories we composed, and who knows? Perhaps we'll begin writing again. Until then, on behalf of the writers of
Shadows on the Wall, please enjoy.
CHAPTER ONE: In a Locked Room
by Nicky
(Voiceover by Alexandra Moltke) “Collinwood has never been a peaceful
house through the two centuries it has stood above the angry sea, at the
edge of Widow’s Hill. It has seen despair, tragedy, and death in all its
forms and guises. But death is not always an end. There are many who roam
the halls of the great house that can be neither seen nor heard ... but
their presence is felt nevertheless. Yet these spirits may shriek in fear
at the terror that will befall all those on the great estate when a horror
as old as death is released into a world that is as familiar as it is
strange ...”
1
June 27th, 1967
Voices whispering, chattering, high and sing-songy ... a little girl?
Surely it couldn’t be a woman. Could a little girl sound that angry, so
full of pain? She wasn’t sure.
Victoria Winters moaned in her sleep, and allowed her head to rest against
the window of the train that looked out at the valley below the tracks, and
the winding river that snaked its way across Maine before reaching the
angry Atlantic only a few miles from the tiny seaside town she was going to
be living in for the next few years of her life. She was just twenty-two,
a pretty girl with flawless skin and great brown eyes, doe-like and full of
wonder, and a cascade of glossy auburn hair that fell around her shoulders
in gleaming curls. Right now her eyes were closed, the lashes lying
against the porcelain curve of one cheek as she dreamed away the last hour
before the train would arrive in Collinsport.
The sun descended in a great arc, its last rays reaching heavenward before
being extinguished altogether. Darkness stole over the land as it had
every night for countless millennia; the tiny townships in this corner of
Maine knew the darkness and were comfortable with it, Collinsport in
particular. Victoria had never been there, but she knew its reputation.
Unsolved murders dating back hundreds of years; strange disappearances;
rumors of Satanism and black magic; sea monsters, ghosts, hobgoblins; and
the Collins family themselves, living in that great old house overlooking
the sea, near the edge of Widow’s Hill. Spooks, shadows, bumps in the
night. A world she’d never known, populated with people she’d never met;
people who were still only shadows in her mind, but who would soon fill the
days and nights of her tomorrows.
“Don’t you speak her name! Don’t you ever speak her name again in this
house!” A woman, surely, hissing like a cat. A beautiful woman, though
the dream would become hazy and indistinct once Victoria awakened. Why was
she so angry, Vicki wondered. What could make a person sound so bitter, so
contemptuous, so full of hate?
“How can I love you? How can I love someone so evil, so devious, so
calculating? You played with us all like dolls. Josette hates me! She
will never return to Collinwood, now that Jeremiah is dead. And if she
knew who really killed him ?” A man this time. Handsome, with great sad
eyes and dressed in old-fashioned clothes with lace sleeves emerging from
his coat like foam on water. They were talking about Collinwood, the place
she was going to work. What a strange dream this was.
“The bat,” Vicki moaned in her sleep. “Watch out ... watch out for the bat
...” The old woman next to her glanced at her with something like scorn in
her weathered face, but it faded fast when she saw how the lines in the
girl’s forehead smoothed, and she smiled to herself and returned to the
green-gold gothic novel she’d picked up in Bangor.
“I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins!” The woman again, venom dripping
with each word she spoke. She was in pain, though, Vicki thought;
something awful must have happened to her to make her sound so hateful.
“You will never rest. And whoever loves you shall die ... shall die ...
shall die ...”
Vicki opened her eyes with a tiny gasp which she smothered quickly with one
hand. She looked around her, but none of the other passengers had seen her
rude awakening, and if they had, they didn’t care. She shuddered once, and
wrapped the gray sweater Mrs. Giddings from the home had given her before
she’d left this morning for the last time. Despite the fact that it was
summertime, it was still a chilly evening. And besides, Vicki observed, it
appeared that there were thunderclouds stewing on the horizon. It was sure
to rain tonight. She hoped it waited to break before she arrived at her
destination.
My destination, she thought, and continued to look out the window, although
darkness had since effectively smothered the land in a bleak pall of
shadows. My destination ...
She fingered the letter that had arrived the week before, from a Mrs.
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard of Collinsport, Maine. The handwriting was
elegant, all curls and spirals, flowing across the paper in an inevitable
tide. “Dear Miss Winters,” it began. Miss Winters. My name. My very own
name. Bringing me to a place where the dreams I’ve always had may finally
have a chance to come true. Collinwood ... Collinsport ... Elizabeth
Collins Stoddard ...
What a horrible dream, Vicki thought, turning away from the window and
stretching languorously. The details were fading fast, but she did
remember that it had been about Collinwood ... and a bat, somehow.
Something about a bat. She shook her head, as though to clear it. She
couldn’t remember. A nightmare, surely, but it must not have been terribly
important. Or, she thought with a frown, perhaps it was TOO terrible, and
that’s why I can’t remember it.
She was stroking the letter; it was composed on smooth paper, rich, like
vellum, obviously very expensive. She had heard of the Collins family
before, even in the foundling home in Bangor, but she had never in a
million years expected an invitation to visit them, even though it was only
an offer of employment. Only! she chided herself. Why, that’s a great
enough offer. I thought I’d never leave the foundling home, yet here I am,
on a train taking me to a small town I’d have never visited otherwise. To
live, for the next few years at least. Taking me to my new home.
Home. She mouthed it silently to herself, enjoying the feel of it on her
lips as they drew together and then apart. It sat on her tongue, waiting
to be spoken aloud. She couldn’t resist, and so whispered, “Home.”
“I beg your pardon?” the old woman next to her said haughtily, closing the
paperback for a moment and staring with something of a regal air at the
girl next to her.
“Just mumbling to myself,” Vicki smiled, not easily intimidated. “I had a
nightmare,” she added, “and woke myself up.”
“And a good thing, too,” the old woman said, settling a little. “We’re
almost to Collinsport.”
“Are you getting off there too?” Vicki asked, her eyes shining. Why, this
could be my new neighbor, she thought; I could see this woman every day for
the rest of my life.
“Good heavens, no,” the little woman said, puffing herself up like a
bullfrog. She raised an imperious eyebrow. “Do you mean to say that YOU
are getting off in that horrible little rat-infested, poor excuse of a
town?”
Taken a back, Vicki still managed to say, “Why, yes. I’m ... I’m employed
in Collinsport.”
“I can’t imagine where,” the woman said with a sniff. “Such a DEAD little
place I’ve rarely encountered in all my life. And I,” she added, “have
been around for a guh-REAT many years.”
“Actually, I’m to work at Collinwood,” Vicki said meekly. “As a governess
for David Collins. Have you heard of it?”
“Child, who hasn’t?” the woman said. “Collinwood, hmm,” she paused, then
closed her eyes, as if she were remembering a dusty age, long past. She
sneered nastily. “The high and mighty Collinses of Collinsport. You won’t
find ME visiting there.”
I suppose I wouldn’t, Vicki thought, but didn’t say it out loud. “I’m
rather excited,” she said instead. “I’ve never been anywhere in my entire
life. Nothing exciting has ever really happened to me.”
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you about that place?” the woman said. “Never
heard any stories?”
“I suppose,” Vicki said reluctantly, “I suppose I might have, but they
can’t all be true.” She thrust out her chin staunchly. “Besides,” she
said, “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“You will,” the woman said, and chuckled a little to herself. “You will.”
Why, Vicki thought, she looks like a great puffed up hen, settled in her
box on a nest of eggs, preparing to sleep for the night. She’s nothing but
a hen, and I won’t listen to her or her nasty gossip at all. Perhaps the
woman thought Vicki would reply, but when the girl said nothing at all in
response, she picked up the gothic and became absorbed, once again, in the
world of that wonderful Ross woman, whoever she was, and became lost again
in the adventures of a hapless heroine menaced by a faceless phantom.
Vicki rested her head against the window again and peered into the
darkness. A full moon had risen over the horizon, bloated and orange,
hanging eerily in the sky over the river and casting the entire land in a
red, feverish glow. It made everything look desolate and deserted, and for
a moment doubt overcame her, and she resisted the urge to sob. Maybe I’m
making the biggest mistake of my life, Vicki thought, and closed her eyes.
No, she told herself firmly. Get ahold of yourself, girl. This was your
own choice to come; you’ve come this far already, and there will be no
turning around. You’re going to find yourself a home at last, Victoria
Winters. A real home.
Home.
2
The sound of his heart ...
The sound of his heart is ...
The sound of his heart is deafening ...
Willie Loomis awoke with a start. He was a liar and a thief and employed
by the Collins family, and his fingers jittered and the cigarette he’d been
holding when he fell asleep dropped from his hand and vanished into the
darkness. He was sitting on the edge of one of the stone sarcophaguses
that rested side by side, like great loaves of bread he’d reflected once,
in the Collins family mausoleum up at Eagle Hill Cemetery. Eagle Hill
hadn’t been used in about forty years ; anymore the Collinses buried their
dead in the family cemetery on their own land that Joshua Collins had
established in the spring of 1796. No one was really sure why he had
discontinued the use of the mausoleum ; perhaps it had something to do with
the abrupt deaths of most of his family that terrible winter two hundred
years ago; but discontinued it they had, and it was damned lucky for Willie
Loomis that no one came up this way anymore.
He was a liar and a thief, and now his eyes rolled in the darkness. A
damned funny dream, he thought. His mouth tasted like gin-soaked cotton,
which wasn’t terribly ironic considering that he’d consumed several shots
of gin before making the jaunt out this way into the middle of absolute
nowhere. What kind of an idiot fell asleep on a kind of job like this
anyway, he wondered, but he had his answer a moment later. The kind of
idiot I am, he thought miserably. The Willie Loomis kind of idiot.
He was out of a job and he knew it, and that was why he was in this
stinking, freezing tomb just after sunset on a chilly night in June. He
had been the caretaker up at Collinwood after old Matthew Morgan died under
such mysterious circumstances, but he knew they didn’t like him too well,
especially that Mr. Roger. If there was a sorrier excuse for a human being
on this planet than Mr. Roger Collins, Willie had yet to meet him. But
Roger wasn’t the only problem. There was also that pretty little blonde
Carolyn Stoddard, the missus’ daughter. Pert and insolent and a real
firecracker, Willie reckoned, but grabbing her in the way he did when he
was drunk had never been a good idea, and now he found himself out of a job
and freezing to death in an old tomb on top of that. Boy, he thought with
a shiver, why is it so cold in here?
The sound of his heart, a leathery voice whispered in his mind, a foreign
voice, an alien voice, and Willie stiffened. “Hello?” he called into the
darkness, and felt relief douse him when there was no reply. But maybe a
reply would have been better, he thought, and paused in the act of lighting
up a new cigarette. That way he could know for sure if there was something
waiting with him, smelling his fear like rancid butter in the darkness,
scenting the sweat that doused his brow and dampened his armpits, watching
with amused reptilian eyes that glinted yellow as Willie tried in vain to
see who – what -- was creeping up on him slowly, oh so slowly, with great
sharp claws extended and teeth like razors dripping with foul spittle ...
“Stop it,” Willie whispered, really scared now. “Just stop it.” His arms
had broken out in gooseflesh. He put the cigarette back in the pack and
crammed the lighter back in his pocket. He was pretty good at scaring
himself. Damn but he hated dark places like this. He stood up, stretching
his legs and listening with satisfaction as his back cracked audibly. Now
he remember why he’d fallen asleep. He had come to the mausoleum at 7:00,
too early for sundown, and decided to wait for darkness, just to be safe.
He wasn’t really a fool, not really. He’d simply fallen asleep while
waiting for the darkness. Nothing foolish in that.
He glanced at his watch. 7:45. The sun had only set a few moments before.
He breathed a sigh of relief, then glanced at the tombs and rubbed his
hands together. The sound they made, a dry, crisp hissing sound like the
fluttering of dusty wings, echoed throughout the stone room that surrounded
him, and he glanced around him, nervous suddenly in the darkness.
There was wealth in this place, he thought, great wealth, a treasure for
someone smart enough to find it. And he was that someone.
Somewhere, in the dark and empty night, a dog howled. It was a lonely
sound, high and drilling, that gradually faded away into nothing.
Willie glanced up uneasily. He didn’t like dogs. He didn’t like the way
they whined and groveled, and he didn’t like their teeth. Dogs looked so
friendly, and maybe some of them were, but their teeth were sharp. He
shuddered. He’d been bitten by a dog once, a Doberman, when he was just
ten. The pain had flared in his arm as the bastard had sunk in his teeth
and shook his powerful head; it was tangible, a sheet of fire, huge, HUGE.
Pain, Willie Loomis had decided at that instant, was something he would
avoid again at all costs.
But there was treasure in this place, and had been since the Collins family
had forsaken the place. It had been here for almost two centuries,
moldering away in one of these crypts or in a hidden place in the floor or
wall or ceiling, and might never be found, save for the brilliant larceny
of Willie Loomis.
He smiled as he thought about all the dough those jewels would bring. The
Collins prestige that others coveted would be nothing compared to this, he
was certain. Willie Loomis, he was sure, would blow this sorry province on
a pile of dough, and he’d be laughing all the way.
The dog howled again, but Willie didn’t hear it.
3
David Collins was nine years old and curious about everything and liked to
break into abandoned buildings to find old things. His favorite abandoned
building had been the Old House, as he called it, which had been the first
house the family had inhabited when they’d come to America, until 1795,
when Barnabas Collins had it closed before he went to England. And closed
it had stayed, which had suited David just fine. But since then his Aunt
Elizabeth had forbidden him to play there (she claimed to be uneasy about
the unstable state of the floorboards), and now Josette didn’t come around
anymore.
Josette was his favorite ghost. Willowy and weepy, her portrait dominated
the drawing room of the Collinses first house in America with her somber,
expressionless eyes and face like carved marble. Her hair was a dark
auburn and hung in ringlets at her shoulders. Her hands were folded
placidly in her lap. But David had never seen the ghost of Josette’s face.
She kept it hidden behind a veil, and she was always crying. It made
David feel sad to hear her cry, but she never stayed around long enough for
him to help her. He remembered the first time he’d seen her. It had been
a balmy night in October, just after he and his father had returned to
Collinwood from living in England. Father and Aunt Elizabeth had been
fighting again, and so David had fled into the night and found his way,
gradually, through the thick underbrush and into a clearing that held the
Old House like a magnificent, glowing tombstone in the cold Autumn
moonlight.
He’d paused, breathtaken, as though he’d discovered the fossil of some
ancient dinosaur. It reared from the earth like a living thing sheathed in
moonlight like cobwebs, with the pillars protecting the door like bones
stripped of flesh and sinew. He had taken a few tentative steps out of the
clearing, and it was then that he first saw her.
She was elegant and beautiful in her white wedding dress as she stepped
delicately onto the porch out of the front door. He couldn’t see her face
behind the veil, but he knew that she was a ghost because he could see the
ivy behind her creeping up the wall. He could see it through her.
She was crying, but she threw her arms up in the air in a dance, and began
to twirl wildly around before scampering down the steps. She threw no
shadow in the October moonlight; she threw no shadow as she danced in and
around the pillars, crying all the time. He came close to her, and still
he could not see her face.
“Who are you?” he asked aloud, and suddenly he was alone, the only being,
living or otherwise, standing on the steps of the Old House. But he saw
her again, many times, until Aunt Elizabeth forbade him to ever go to the
Old House alone again. And Josette didn’t ever appear at Collinwood. Over
his short life he had managed to ascertain that ghosts were a screwy lot,
sometimes, although they seemed to have their own peculiar rules and
traditions.
Tonight he was on a mission. His new governess -- he hadn’t bothered to
learn her name -- was due to arrive in less than half an hour. Cousin
Quentin had been sent to the train station to collect her ten minutes
before. David knew this because he’d tried to ask Cousin Quentin if he
wanted to play a game of catch, and had been rewarded with a surly stare as
Quentin suggested, not unkindly, that perhaps David would want to play in
the street.
David, no fool, knew when he wasn’t wanted, and that was when he decided
that now would be a good time to explore the West Wing.
Abandoned and forsaken for almost a century, the West Wing had been
off-limits to David ever since he and his father had moved back to
Collinwood. So naturally, what with the Old House lost to him, what better
place for a nine year old boy to explore? He knew that the rooms had begun
to be bricked off sometime in the late 18th century, which seemed odd to
him since that was when the house had been built. Who would want to brick
up a room in a new house? However, he knew that the Collinses were a weird
bunch. After all, what was he if not a Collins through and through?
The West Wing had always been a Forbidden Place, one that Aunt Elizabeth
warned him about repeatedly, a magic place that must be really cool if his
father was so adamant about his not going there, ever. But “never” was not
a word that existed in David’s vocabulary. David really didn’t know much
about the West Wing, or why it was closed off, but he was more than
determined to find out. His father mumbled something about the roof being
rotten, and Aunt Elizabeth claimed that there might be rats -- or bats. But
David didn’t care.
And so he found himself, after his pleasant little visit with Cousin
Quentin, climbing the staircase from the second floor of Collinwood (where
his room was, and his father’s, and Carolyn’s, and the
soon-to-be-and-as-of-yet-unnamed-governess) to the third, and one special
door that was always locked. Until today, that was.
The key glistened silver in David’s hand.
He paused a second before the door, staring thoughtfully at its intricate
design. Several swirls rose from the dull cherry wood and moved in
graceful designs around and around and around until David felt quite dizzy
after tracing their devilish patterns with his eyes for too long. The key
slid easily into the lock, and turned simply, as he had hoped that it
would. After all, he’d never quite dared to enter the West Wing before.
Father had some sort of headache (David vaguely associated this headache
with the cup of sherry his father had in the evenings, but he couldn’t
understand why), Aunt Elizabeth was in the study, and Carolyn was visiting
her friend, Dr. Trask.
He placed his hand on the doorknob and shivered, drawing it back violently,
as if shocked by electricity. He stared at his hand in wonder. I imagined
it, his mind whispered, but then he shook his small head. I didn’t, he
thought, I didn’t imagine it. Something’s going to happen ... something is
going to really happen to me, and it will be much more exciting than spying
on Cousin Quentin when he kisses Maggie Evans, or trying to eavesdrop on
Aunt Elizabeth and Father when they argue. Something ... someone?
So he opened the door.
The smell enveloped him quickly in its musty atmosphere; it was the acrid
smell of ancient books being opened dramatically for the first time in a
century; it was the smell of the Collins Family Museum; it was death, and
rot, but it was exciting too. Intoxicating. The corridor was very dark,
and littered here and there with numerous debris. An ancient bird cage
stared blankly at him from its corner. Upon closer examination, David
noted with a grim fascination the bony occupant of the cage. He stepped
away from it, grimacing, taking notice of each door that lined the hall.
One was made from the same cherry-colored wood that composed the door that
led to the Wing; another was a dusty gray varnish that was utterly blank,
save for the doorknob, which twinkled benignly at him in dim light that
showed through the myriad cracks in the ceiling.
One door was bricked up.
David noticed it almost immediately, and sprang upon it eagerly. Bricked
up! he exclaimed. So it’s true after all! There really IS a bricked up
room! The brick wasn’t even red anymore; it had faded with age, and was
crumbling in some spots. I bet, he thought, I bet that if I pushed on it,
it would just fall right over.
I might as well, he thought, lightly caressing the brick with one finger
There might be some sort of treasure behind there! He wiped the dust and
grime onto his pant legs, then pressed lightly on the bricks. There was
some give. Careful not to make too much of a noise, David pressed lightly
on it again. A few bricks tottered and then fell inward with a dull thump.
Excitement made David glow like a fuse box. Much braver now, confident
that no one would hear him, he began to press in the bricks quicker and
quicker, relishing each new thump, anticipating the contents of the room
with bated breath.
4
“Well, Dr. Trask,” Carolyn Stoddard said with a quick arrogant toss of her
blond head, “I hope you’re proud of yourself.”
Tony Trask scratched his head and stared at his girlfriend in misery.
“Carolyn,” he said, trying desperately to keep the whine out of his voice,
trying fruitlessly not to plead. “Carolyn, I can’t help it if Mrs.
Pettibone’s liver is –”
“Mrs. Pettibone is a notorious hypochondriac and we both know it,” Carolyn
declared, overriding him as she always did. Why do I love you? Tony asked
himself for the hundredth time, the thousandth. What did I ever see in you
in the first place? What do I still see? But it was useless to ask
himself such questions, and he knew it. Boy, did he know it. He and
Carolyn Stoddard, the richest little heiress in Collinsport, probably this
side of Maine, had snared him with her big blue eyes and snared him good.
“Can’t you give her a placebo or something? Maybe a sugar pill?”
Tony smiled wearily. “Mrs. Pettibone is beyond sugar pills,” he said.
“She’s expecting an operation this time.”
Carolyn returned the smile. “Surely she must know that an operation is out
of the question. If there is nothing wrong with her, as we both know, then
an operation might make her worse.”
“I know that,” Tony said, “you know that, but does Mrs. Pettibone know
that?”
“I’m still angry with you,” Carolyn said petulantly. “I’ve been looking
forward to dinner at the Blue Whale with the esteemed Dr. Tony Trask for a
week now. And now you tell me that Letty Pettibone is more important to
you than me?” Her lower lip jutted out comically and trembled just a bit.
Tony kissed her, wrapping his arms around her. “Carolyn,” he said, staring
into her eyes and praying that she wouldn’t look away, “I love you. I have
loved you since the day I met you. I will love you until the day I die.”
She poked him lightly in the chest. “You’d better, buster,” she said.
“I’m going to reschedule our date for tomorrow night.” She kissed him
again. “Can you remember that?”
“Yes, dear,” Tony said with false abashment, then grinned. “I’ll tell
Letty Pettibone that her liver is going to burst and there’s nothing I can
do for her and that she will be forced to see a specialist in Bangor.”
“Besides,” Carolyn said, “I really should be home to meet the new
governess.” She rolled her eyes. “Some little scrap of a girl from a
foundling home in Bangor. Victoria Winters. An orphan. I hope she lasts
longer than the others.”
“I think you guys overestimate David,” Tony said. “He’s just a
lonely little boy with no friends.”
“Oh, he has friends all right,” Carolyn said cryptically. “It’s just that
none of us can see them.”
“Ghosts?” he asked, honestly surprised.
“Call them what you will,” Carolyn said, “imaginary friends or what have
you. He doesn’t need a governess. What he needs is public school, real
teachers, and real kids. It’s not healthy growing up in that big old house
all alone.”
“You did,” he said, teasing her a little.
“You’re right,” she rejoined, stonily. “I did.”
He wrapped an arm around her and hugged her close, planting a kiss on the
top of her blonde head. “I was only kidding baby,” he said. “You know
that.”
She thawed a moment later and snuggled in his arms. “You’re right,” she
said. “I do know that.”
“Dinner,” Tony said. “Tomorrow. The Blue Whale.”
“Tomorrow,” Carolyn said with a coy little smile, “I may need you to play doctor with me.”
“Again?” Tony asked, feigning shock.
She pursed her lips and batted her eyelashes. “Except, with you
sweetheart,” she said, “there’s no playing.”
5
Elizabeth Collins Stoddard seemed a portrait of regality as she stood,
silhouetted against the night sky like velvet in the heavens, in the great
window in the drawing room of Collinwood. Her masses of dark hair were
swept up and piled high atop her head, revealing the long, white curve of
her neck and the sweep of her shoulder. She was forty-nine years old but
could pass for thirty-five; her skin was alabaster and her eyes cool gems;
she rarely left Collinwood anymore; an appearance by Liz Stoddard on the
streets of downtown Collinsport was an event to be reported.
She was waiting for the governess to arrive. Victoria Winters was her
name, it was reported. Liz smiled wryly. This was no place for a young
woman; the great musty halls and darkened rooms of Collinwood had not known
light or laughter for years. Despite the vigor and fire that Carolyn still
seemed to possess, and even though she would miss her dreadfully should she
ever leave home, Elizabeth really and truly wished that she would move as
far from Collinwood as her legs would take her. Liz was an ardent student
of family history, and she knew that happiness was a rarity among the
Collins family. It was not doled out in great amounts, and too
infrequently to be of any real value. But then again, she thought,
despairing as usual, Roger tried to get away, and look where he ended up.
Right back home, with little David in tow and Laura nowhere to be found.
The disappearance of her sister-in-law, a woman Elizabeth usually regarded
with haughty contempt, was no real great loss, but the fact that Roger
remained so tight-lipped about her absence infuriated her. She knew that
they had moved to London a year before; she knew that difficulties in the
marriage had made David desperately unhappy; and she knew that she’d
received a wire from Roger less than a year ago, pitiable and contrite,
asking to be taken back to the bosom of his family. Elizabeth, being
Elizabeth, had of course agreed, and here they all were, back where they
started. Arguments almost every night, Elizabeth reflected dolefully;
things no growing boy should have to witness. At least Carolyn has her
dates.
“A watched pot never boils,” a cynical voice said behind her. She
stiffened the tiniest bit, but did not turn away from the window.
“Roger,” she said, and told herself that she had not peppered the word with
distaste. “Isn’t there business in some other part of the house for you to
take care of?”
“No, dear sister,” her younger brother chuckled. He was still handsome at
forty-two, with his fine white-blonde hair kept cropped short, swirling
around his high forehead at the bangs, and with his blue eyes still
sparkling and avaricious. But now they were tempered with an almost dull
hostility, as though he had seen too much of the world too quickly. “Your
daughter is out with her doctor this evening; Quentin, of course, has gone
off to the village to pick up that girl you’ve insisted on bringing into
this house; and my son ... well, I haven’t the slightest idea where David
could be.”
“Of course you don’t,” Liz said, more harshly than she really felt. David
was quite a precocious child, especially for nine, and as long as he stayed
away from the Old House, she was certain there was nothing in Collinwood
that could do him harm.
“Now, let’s not get snippy,” Roger said, and sipped delicately from the
snifter he held gently by the stem. A clear, cool liquid, Liz observed by
the reflection in the glass of the window off to her right. Vodka, she was
certain, or perhaps gin. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Brandy was
her only weakness, but she rarely touched the stuff.
“I’m sorry, Roger,” Liz said wearily. Her eyes never left the world
outside the window. They were dark eyes, and, some might have said,
haunted ones. Tonight they were stormy, reflecting the outer weather as
well as that of the inner. “You know I hate to quarrel, and I want to make
as good an impression as possible on this new girl.”
“I hope she lasts longer than the other one,” Roger said tartly. “We don’t
need any more screaming ninnies on our hands, do we?”
“I should hope not,” Liz said. Thunder rumbled in the distance.
6
The last brick fell away with a muffled clinking noise at it struck the
others below it, sending up a small mushroom cloud of dust before resuming
its previous silent condition. David stepped into the little room,
blinking owlishly in the dim, purple light. “Hello?” he whispered
ridiculously. He grinned, despite the fact that his entire body had just
broken out into gooseflesh. “Anybody home?”
He took a shuddering, tentative step further into the darkness. After he
stumbled and nearly fell over a brick, he decided that now was the time to
bring out the little pen light his father had given him for Christmas last
year. But, even as he brought it out of his pocket and began to finger the
little on/off switch, he was suddenly struck by a blast of the most
frigid air he’d ever felt in his life. It pushed him backwards, his brown
hair flying wildly around his ears, his eyes squeezed tightly shut. He
began to gag; the wind stank of carrion meat, of an animal long dead and
cooking slowly in the sun. He threw his hands in front of his face,
dropping the flashlight, and taking an involuntary step backwards. And
then he did trip over a brick and stumbled painfully to his knees, biting
his lip to keep from crying out. Even now, in the middle of this
inexplicable disaster, silence must be absolute.
The light, as it struck the floor, struck the on/off switch, and a small
beam shot forward, and what it illuminated caused David Collins to nearly
release his pent-up scream, previously from pain, now from terror.
The beam didn’t reach very far, and hadn’t much of a circumference, but it
was enough for David to see the moldering skull that grinned at him from
its resting place on the floor. He could see dull, rusty stains around the
chest as well as the knife that lay, harmless now, on the floor. He knew
very well what those stains were. He stood carefully, reaching for his
flashlight, reaching, reaching, knowing that he must leave now, it was
imperative, he must leave, he must, he must -
When the hand grasped him and a voice that couldn’t possible exist said his
name, the merciful darkness claimed him.
7
She was free now, just as had been prophesied all those years ago; witches
are not always clairvoyants, and her Master had only an inkling of what the
future held. The shimmering, transparent horror that emanated wave after
wave of destructive, frigid cold stared with icy blue eyes at the
unconscious boy before her. He had freed her from this prison, had
awakened her spirit from its long sleep in this darkened tomb, and she was
free again to roam the night.
She had come to this house one cold night in October of 1795 as a servant,
but even then her powers were growing. She had been introduced as
Angelique Bouchard, maid to Ma’amselle Josette DuPres, daughter of Andre
DuPres, the richest planter on the tropical island of Martinique, the
shining gem in the crown of colonial France. It was as Angelique that she
had fallen desperately, wantonly in love with the son of the master of
Collins House, a handsome rogue with autumn-kissed eyes and a careless
shock of brown hair. Barnabas Collins, scion of the future Collinwood,
master of deception. Her spirit's eyes flashed with anger at the thought
of all his pretty words, the flatteries he had heaped upon her in
Martinique, and the injustice he had done her once she arrived in this
cold, winter land..
She was nothing but a ghost now, an echo of the past, a shade, part and
parcel of the darkness. Yet she knew what was going on all around her; she
had watched and she had listened all these long centuries, temporarily
awakening from her long hibernation, and she what was happening on the
great estate and the land around it.
She knew what was happening at Eagle Hill Cemetery. Or what should happen.
She stared impassively at the unconscious boy at her feet and glided out of
the hole in the wall that had held her prisoner for almost two centuries.
It was 1967, and there were many changes. She would have to attend to
those eventually, she supposed, but before that, there was work to do. Was
Barnabas still entombed, as she sensed that he was? She had watched and
listened for two hundred years, helpless in her cage ... until that fool
boy released her. But now she could act ... now was the time for Barnabas
to be freed, to be reunited with his wife the witch.
Now was the time for her revenge.
“I don’t need your prophecies!” He had snapped that at her once in anger,
she remembered, shortly before he’d murdered her with that accursed dagger.
Her spirit’s mouth curled in a malefic smile. So, he thought her a
prophetess, did he? And who was the most famous prophetess in history?
Who had predicted the downfall of Troy? Who’s name would she take when she
returned to the mortal plane?
“I set a curse on you, Barnabas Collins,” the ghost whispered, and a moment
later she had gone.
8
Vicki shuddered a little and wrapped her long, gray wool coat around her
and tied the sash awkwardly with her one free hand. The other held her
small suitcase, which held everything in the world that belonged to her;
the few clothes from the foundling home that she really liked; a small
stuffed dog her best friend at ten had given her shortly before she was
adopted and never to be seen again; a silver-plated mirror she’d had since
she’d been a little girl; and the letter that had been left in the bassinet
containing her when it had been unceremoniously dropped off at the
foundling home when she was only a baby. “Her name is Victoria,” the note
read. “I can no longer care for her.” It was folded and creased and
stained with yellow spots from the time a pipe had burst and flooded the
first floor of the home, but it was readable, and Vicki treasured it as
something priceless.
The train had left her behind in this shadow-laden no-man’s land; the train
station was bleak and forbidding with no lights and no human contact of any
kind. Thunder rumbled menacingly in the distance, and Vicki shivered again
as a cool breeze enveloped her, testing her, tasting her, and passing by,
leaving her chilled and unnerved. Where are they? she wondered; have I
been forgotten? She felt suddenly very small. Is this a portent of my
future at Collinwood; is this what I’ve come so far to find?
No, she thought defiantly, frowning a little. You’ve arrived at night and
just in time for a storm, but that’s no indication of your future. Though
the shadows may be dark, they’re only shadows, after all, and someone will
be along soon.
“So,” a voice boomed from behind her, and though she didn’t jump, she
stiffened as though shocked. “You must be the pretty new governess they’ve
sent me to fetch.”
She knew who he would be even before she turned around. Quentin Collins,
or so she’d been told when making the arrangements with Elizabeth Collins
Stoddard; a cousin from a western branch of the family who had been
traveling abroad for several years. Quite mysterious, she gathered, and
named after a relative who had disappeared quite suddenly in the spring of
one year in the late 19th century.
She turned to face him and smiled, for he really was quite handsome, and
said, extending her hand, “My name is Victoria Winters,” and relished the
warmth and strength of his own grip as he returned her handshake.
“Quentin Collins,” he said. Even in the darkness she could see how blue
were his eyes, and how they sparkled in the dimness of the old station.
His teeth showed when he smiled, and they were pleasant and even and white;
his hair was tousled into a mop of brown curls, and two sideburns grew in
diagonals down his cheeks. His jaw was firm and square, and his face
dimpled when he smiled. “At your service,” he added, bowing gallantly, a
move she returned with an amused curtsy, bag and all.
“I’m very glad to see you,” Vicki said earnestly. “For a moment I thought
no one was coming.”
“Thought we’d forgotten you, eh?” he grinned. “Let me take your bag.”
She handed it to him wordlessly, and began to follow him out of the station
and into the chilly night. Overhead, a tiny tear in the clouds revealed a
slice of that huge, fat moon, now fading from orange to a bone-white that
was almost silver. A sleek moon, a summer moon that tokened warm weather
ahead.
“The car isn’t far,” he said, carrying her bag with no apparent strain at
all. “Was the ride to your liking?”
“I slept through part of it,” she admitted, feeling very useless with
nothing to carry. “The old woman next to me warned me away from
Collinwood, though. But she wouldn’t say why.”
Quentin chuckled. “You’ll get the same story from my girlfriend,” he said.
“Maggie Evans. Works as a waitress at the diner in the Collinsport Inn.
She hates Collinwood with a passion. Spooks, she says.” He snorted.
“Superstitious nonsense. Collinwood may look dark and gloomy, but it isn’t
a bad place. Not really. You’ll like it here, I think.”
“I really hope to,” Vicki said. “I’m so looking forward to meeting David.”
“He’s a handful,” Quentin said, and grunted as he set the suitcase down and
opened the trunk with one of several keys that he kept on a ring in his
pocket. “I believe he’s gone through three governesses in the past nine
months. Two of them were town girls, and just as superstitious as their
relatives in Collinsport.”
“Have you been here long?” she asked. “I mean, Mrs. Stoddard said you’d
been traveling abroad –”
“Not so long,” Quentin said nonchalantly. “Less than a year. Liz has been
quite hospitable. Collins blood and all that. She’s quite the
traditionalist, as I’m sure you’ll discover. Shess an avid historian of
the family history.”
“I’ve never had a family all my own,” Vicki said shyly as he opened the
door and beckoned her in. She slid into the car and sat with her hands in
her lap as he slammed the driver’s side door and ignited the car. “I’d
love to help her.”
“She hasn’t been very ... well, recently,” Quentin said. He glanced over
his shoulder as he backed out of his parking space and drove out into the
empty Collinsport streets. “A friend of hers, a Dr. Julia Hoffman, stays
at Collinwood occasionally. She’s good company for Liz, and she’s helping
her compile a family history as well, but she has her own hospital about a
hundred miles out of Collinsport. I think that part of your job
description will be as a companion for Liz. I honestly don’t think you’ll
mind.”
“It sounds fascinating,” Vicki said. Her eyes shone, and she couldn’t help
but smile. “I would love to delve into the secrets of the Collins family.
The past ... it’s all so romantic.” She sighed. “I can’t wait until I
actually get to relieve the Collins family history.”
Quentin smiled ... but it was tempered with caution. His hands were
gripping the wheel tightly, but Vicki didn’t notice.
9
Willie was becoming increasingly frustrated. He had managed to break open
all the stone coffins in the room, those belonging to Naomi, Sarah, and
Joshua Collins, and he had found nothing but moldering bones. It was
enough to turn one’s stomach. It was, he thought, a good thing he hadn’t
eaten before coming to this wretched place.
The dog howled again, and Willie’s face contorted with fear and anger.
“Would you shut the HELL up?” he roared, then collapsed, shuddering, onto
the face of one of the stone coffins. The floor beneath his feet was
littered with cigarette butts. With trembling hands he reached into his
pocket for the pack, but they were clumsy and he dropped them to the floor.
He cursed once as he bent over to retrieve them, but in the darkness he
couldn’t see them.
Dammit, he thought, and his eyes stung with frustrated tears. It just
wasn’t fair. Where were the jewels? Why couldn’t he find them?
He shivered suddenly. As impossible at it seemed, the temperature in the
tomb seemed to have dropped several more degrees. It was positively
frigid, he thought, rubbing his hands together and blowing in them. It did
no good. No wonder I couldn’t pick up my damned cigarettes, he thought
forlornly. My fingers are numb.
“I can help you,” a voice whispered in the darkness, a smooth, silky voice,
almost a purr, and Willie screamed.
His eyes bulged from their sockets as he looked quickly from right to left
and back again and again, but in the darkness of the tomb he could see
nothing. He was alone ... yet not alone. “Who’s there?” he managed to
croak in a gross parody of defiance. “Who’s in this room?”
“I can help you,” the voice said again, and then the room echoed with a
glissade of laughter, like the tinkling of a spoon striking a wine glass, a
clear note and a clean one, but hollow too, bitter with the taste of tears
and years spent in chilly darkness. The laughter echoed around him, high
and evil until he pressed his hands against his ears and thought he’d go
mad.
“Stop it!” he cried, squeezing his eyes shut tight. “Please, I beg of you
... stop it!” When he opened his eyes, he knew he wasn’t alone, and he
felt his heart stop cold in his chest before beginning to beat again,
sluggishly.
A woman stood before him, but she was no woman of flesh and bone. Her hair
was long and blonde, and curled around her bare shoulders in snake-like
coils. Her cheekbones were high and rounded; her nose was thin and prim;
her lips were arched severely, and were pursed in a smile of pure, mocking
malevolence. She was wearing a white, gauzy looking dress ... and it was
with a shock of pure horror that Willie realized he could see the sweating stone wall of
the tomb right through her.
He was looking at a dead woman ... and she was looking back at him. And
she was smiling.
“What do you want?” he croaked.
She took a step towards him, her hips swaying, and reached out a hand to
touch him. He flinched away from her. He didn’t want her to touch him
with her dead hand; he could feel that sickening, degrading cold flowing
off of her in waves; he could feel her rottenness; he could feel her
vileness; and he could feel how dead she was. “I want you, Willie Loomis,”
she purred.
“Go away,” he choked. Icy cold sweat stood out on his forehead. A drop
ran down the slope of his skull and slid directly into his eye, blinding
him temporarily and stinging horribly. He blinked several times, but when
he opened his eyes she was still there, smiling at him with cool contempt.
“I can help you,” she said for the third time. “Just look into my eyes,
Willie Loomis ... as deeply as you can.”
“No,” he said, but he was weakening. The lilt in her voice ... it
commanded him somehow, weakened him, made him feel less a man and more of a
... a ... a puppet somehow. Yes, that was right. A drowsy, sleepy puppet
with no will of its own. He realized with a terror that was gradually
dimming into nothingness that he was looking into her great blue eyes after
all, and was drowning in them. Her will is my will, he thought dreamily; I
have no will of my own.
“No will of your own,” she echoed his own thoughts. “Your will is my will,
Willie Loomis. You will do what I say. You will be my slave.”
“Your ... slave,” he repeated, and smiled drunkenly.
“There is a secret room behind you,” the ghost said. “To reach it, all you
must do is tug on the ring bared in the teeth of the stone lion. There is
treasure there, Willie, locked in a chained coffin. To find it, all you
must do is break the chains. Then you will have your ... reward, and it
will be one worthy of you, Willie Loomis, this I promise you.” She was
fading now, and so was her voice, and he closed his eyes and dreamed. “The
stone lion, Willie ... the ring ... the secret room ... the chains ... the
coffin, Willie ... and the chains ...”
“The stone lion,” he whispered, and opened his eyes.
He was alone. Well of course I’m alone, he thought peevishly, why wouldn’t
I be? It seemed a foolish question, and Willie Loomis was no one’s fool.
His eyes drifted over to the wall behind him, the one that bore the plaques
reading “NAOMI COLLINS, DIED 1796”, “SARAH COLLINS, DIED 1796”, and “JOSHUA
COLLINS, DIED 1820”. Growing out of the wall, as if it were the most
natural thing in the world, was a stone lion with a ring clutched in its
teeth.
Willie’s heart skipped a beat. Now I remember, he thought; how could I be
so dumb? That’s where the treasure is ... in the secret room behind this
wall. And all I have to do to get to it ...
But he had already begun tugging on the ring in the lion’s mouth before
that thought could complete itself. It was with total not-surprise that he
watched as the wall swung slowly opening, groaning with the effort as stone
ground against stone, screaming in protest. The open door revealed another
section of vast darkness; with his flashlight, he was able to determine
that it was, indeed, a secret room.
In the exact center of the room there lay a chained coffin. He had known
that would be there somehow too, although he couldn’t remember exactly how
he knew it. Deja vu, he thought with a shake of his sandy hair, and
stepped into the room. His eyes glowed with avarice, and a section of his
cheek above the left corner of his mouth had begun to tic violently. This
was it, he thought; this is where the treasure is. This is where my future
is made, where my fate is sealed. This is it, Willie boy, this ... is it!
Breaking the chains was easy, and soon the coffin lay before him, covered
in dust and cobwebs, tempting and beautiful. His breath caught in his
throat as his hands settled against the lid. As they touched its smooth,
unblemished surface he thought he heard a random cacophony of voices, and
not in his head this time either. They echoed around him in the darkness
of the room; men’s voices, and women’s too, pleading, begging, cajoling,
warning. They were like the voices of bats, high and insane, and he
released his grip on the coffin lid with a grimace of disgust and pressed
his hands against his ears. He released them a moment later, and breathed
a sigh of relief. The voices had stopped.
He paused for a moment, indecisive. What was he to do? There was treasure
here, but there was something else as well. He could feel it, and it
wasn’t good. And if it wasn’t good, then what was it? What could be
housed in a chained coffin besides treasure? Why would you chain a coffin,
anyway? To keep things in, he thought ... or to keep something from
getting out.
Willie swallowed. Suddenly he didn’t care if he ever found the treasure,
of if he ever blew out of Collinsport on a pile of dough, laughing all the
way. None of that seemed important. There was something here in this
room, all right; he could feel a force gathering around him like
electricity. The hair on his arms was standing up, and he could feel some
kind of energy dancing on his face and making his lips and nose tingle.
Something was very wrong in this room, and he didn’t want to find out what
it was.
That wasn’t the whole truth, a part of Willie whispered, and he knew it was
true. He had spent the entire day searching for this damned elusive
treasure, he had just discovered a secret room that no one had entered in
probably centuries, and he’d be damned if he was going to just turn tail
and run, whimpering like a damned dirty dog because of a case of the heeby
jeebies brought on by probably nothing at all.
Thus resolved, Willie opened the coffin.
And screamed.
And as the hand dragged him into the darkness of the coffin, he had time to
notice the black onyx ring on its finger ... a ring he recognized from an
old portrait that hung in the foyer at Collinwood.
Then all was darkness and pain.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
"Hmmm," Dr. Julia Hoffman mused, as she sipped her sherry with slow appreciation. "Your brother never was terribly good when it came to domestic matters, Elizabeth. Not that I'm one to talk. When I'm up at Wyndcliffe, Swanson's TV Dinners are about as close as I come to a home-cooked meal in the ordinary scheme of things, I'm afraid." She laughed--a husky, infectious, slightly Gothic degringolade
"Well," Maggie said, unable to resist a giggle, "I don't know how wholesome the dregs of the last day's pot of coffee will be, but, such as it is, you're welcome to it! Would you like a piece of apple pie with that?" 
