Monday, November 14, 2011

Shadows on the Wall Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter 25: Unpleasant Truths

by Kelthammer

VOICEOVER (Alexandra Moltke)

"Night falls over Collinwood, and with it, an instinct of dread.  Tonight
several women are coming to learn unpleasant truths about outside forces...and
of each other.  Without outside aid from those who care, both are doomed to
perish."


"...but it was absolutely fantastic." Quentin's voice slurred ever-so- slightly
as he poured more brandy into Chris' glass.  Chris' silver skull ring caught
the reddish tints to the drink and gave it all a hellish effect that made Julia
want to look away.  "Every single one of of those tool-hooks were pure
applewood.  You could smell it when you rubbed them.  How could they be so
small and be so strong?"

"Oh, that's simple enough." Chris took a sip with lips that had surely gone
numb by now. "The old-timers used the elbows of tree branches when they made
the hooks.  The wood is naturally much stronger there."

Quentin's face cracked a grin.  "Very clever, our ancestors."

Eliot Stokes practically rolled his eyes upward in his sockets from sheer bored
exasperation and went to go do something important--add a log to the fire.
Julia wished *she* had thought of it. Chris and Quentin couldn't possibly get
any drunker, she guessed.  At least an hour ago their self-involved
conversation had been NOMINALLY interesting--mining white cedar stumps out of
ancient bogs was definitely a topic Julia had known nothing about--but Lord,
she was half out of her mind and had no idea how to escape.  All attempts were
met with Quentin's refusal to do without her company. Everyone's company. 


Julia Hoffman's neck ached at a very important spot and she tried very hard to
ignore it. Unfortunately, her only course of distraction was to pay closer
attention to the hum of conversation around her.

Was Collinwood ever capable of anything simple?  Even a casual evening with
drinks?  It might have been Quentin and Eliot Stokes' intention to have this
very thing, but Chris had stopped by on the excuse of, "wanting to just say
hi." Julia thought that as flimsy as foolscap, but Quentin had been glad to see
him.  Julia didn't think she needed her psych degree to recognize Chris was
seeking answers about his brother's death.

So, somehow, the evening had twisted Chris into Quentin's personal Man of the
Hour, and she and Eliot were slowly turning into fifth wheels while Carolyn
flipped through the family albums in a bored manner.  Several times Julia
thought about queing up with her (woman to woman), but something about Carolyn
of late was violently discouraging anyone getting too close to her.  Julia had
no idea if it was yet another boyfriend-breakup or what.  But she'd had warmer
feelings come off of prison convicts.

This was all getting embarrassing.  There was something...well...  avuncular in
the way he was acting towards the other man, and that behavior didn't fit.
Quentin wasn't *that* much older than Chris...


Julia listened to Quentin ramble on over the brandy bottle.  She didn't have a
clue as to why he was so determined to take Chris under his wing so obviously,
but Chris seemed willing to get a little toasted with him.

Maybe more than a little toasted...Julia thought of Tom, and the gaping hole he
had left in all their lives.  She shivered suddenly, and there was more than
one reason for her slowly reaching up to touch her neck.  The collar was only
slightly high; it did the job without making her look like a librarian.

Eliot was being truly heroic, Julia decided.  He had given up his beloved place
by the fire (the property of all scholars) and was going through the album with
Carolyn.  Even though Carolyn initially had all the interest of a walnut,
Stokes was slowly drawing her out, and the spoiled pouty-easily-angered face on
the girl was turning into flashes of startled humor as the good professor
commented on yet another shocking scandal that had to do with this family and
that. Julia somehow doubted that Elizabeth had instructed her daughter on the
various family peccadilloes.


Julia wasn't paying much attention to anything.  She felt every bit as pliant
as the leaf she had listlessly played with earlier in the garden.  It crossed
her mind to wonder if Cassandra felt as empty when she toyed with the leaf that
was Julia.

But she wasn't certain such things mattered.

Cassandra would be summoning her...soon...or perhaps not.  As of late, the
vampire was taking her time about that, perhaps enjoying being unpredictable.
She had to know how the apprehension had Julia knotted up into tight balls of
nerves the longer she remained uncalled.

The strain of it alone could kill her before Cassandra's physical depredations
would.


Julia drifted to the window, and chose to ignore her reflection as she stared
at the sinking sun. Barnabas and Vicki were having another evening together,
and she couldn't really feel about that either.

Eliot for his part, was being polite by ignoring Julia's mild display of
concern.  He was not accustomed to being wrong, and he imagined that Barnabas
was the reason for Julia's behavior. Therefore he respected her privacy and
continued his socializing with Carolyn.

"I'm astonished your mother or uncle never told you about your great-aunt Nora,
Carolyn.  She was a mythical raving beauty and well respected by the
townspeople."


Carolyn shook her head.  Now that she had been given a line of juicy gossip,
one would call her reeled in, hook and sinker, but that was only for so long
that Stokes could keep talking in an interesting manner.  "She looks so mild."
She giggled.  "Like she's never done anything more scandalous than pick
flowers."

Stokes chuckled.  "Oh, there was more to her than that, I assure you.  Why, she
was a notorious patron of the arts, something not well approved of by the staid
majority...her father certainly disapproved!  Edward was a very Victorian sort,
all wrapped up in what was proper. When Nora's mother deserted her children he
told everyone Laura was dead so that the children would have the better stigma
of being partially orphaned, as opposed to having a wild spirit for a mother.
That was always a risky thing to admit, you know.  The gene for independence
could be inherited!"

Carolyn's laugh flowered over the Drawing Room, but it was amazing how few
people noticed it.

Eliot gnashed down on growing annoyance.  He felt very much trapped in a vice;
it was Quentin's brilliant notion that they start keeping an eye on Carolyn,
and the last he checked, Christopher Jennings hadn't been in the equation!

But no, Quentin was so wrapped up in every word that came out of Chris
Jennings' mouth he probably didn't know anyone else existed.

He was wrenching his tired eyes from a static page of yet more stiff and
unnaturally poised photos when he caught a faint movement from Julia.  An
alertness had stiffened her spine and she was turning her head to one side.
Eliot could almost hear her frowning as she perceived something in the now
charcoal-colored woods.

"Quentin...!"

Julia barely whispered it; but something about it froze them all.

"Quentin, get the door!"

***


Barnabas hadn't quite expected Quentin to be the one to let them in Collinwood.
 Startled shock as blue eyes met brown, and the cousins enjoyed the briefest
flashes of territory before Quentin jumped aside, letting Barnabas carry a very
hysterical Victoria Winters to the couch.



Carolyn only barely recovered in time to hop to her feet; otherwise Barnabas
would have tumbled Vicki into her lap.  Julia jumped too, in the opposite
direction.  Any more, her medical bag was *never* far away.

***


A soft creak of wood and brass hinges.  Pale moonlight gleamed sickly over the
dirty windowglass and spattered over a crawling spider.  Equally spiderlike,
Cassandra Collins' small fingers slid over the rim of a gaudy pink coffin.

With disturbing grace, she dismounted from her resting place in a smooth motion
that was like a long, languid stretch.  Her glittering eyes slid over the
gloam.

She always woke up in a good mood.

She always woke up hungry.

Her foamy white dress ghosted over the last rim of the coffin and she curved
her back, sighing.  A few more nights with Julia, when she was certain the good
doctor's will was thoroughly broken down.  And then she would kill her.

And Julia, no doubt, would go straight for Barnabas Collins.  Cassandra was
extremely confident of that scenario.  And she would be there to enjoy the
sight.

But until then...

Cassandra closed her pearl-pure eyes, concentrating.  (Julia, it is time.  Come
to me.)

No response.

Cassandra began to frown.  It was very dangerous.  Her world was a languid and
serene landscape of spiders and dust and starlight; she had no idea of the
turmoil that was harrying the main part of the House.

(Julia, come to me now!)

***

Julia gulped under her breath; Cassandra's summons stung her aching mind.  But
the only thing that was keeping her from obeying was the victim's need to
protect their vampire.

And if she up and ran out the door, someone might follow her.  Even though it
was a pretty good version of Hell going on right now.

(God-DAMN-it.) Julia thought with a very very very silent grinding of her
mental teeth.  (If Chris keeps pacing and twisting that stupid ring on his hand
I'm going to have to scream.)

Chris continued on, oblivious to everything but his own worries.
Twist-pace-glance around-twist-pace.  He was only adding to the frantic air of
the room.

For some reason, Julia found herself hating that ring on his finger.  Probably
because it was ridiculously large and ostentatious (and Julia considered
herself an expert on such accessories; they gave her the air of being harmless
in an eccentric way.) But she couldn't stand to look at Chris' silver skull.
It reminded her too much of a Nazi Award Ring.


(Almost like he has to prove something with the macho ring and macho lumberjack
plaid shirt, macho poverty-level denim jeans and steel-toed work boots!) It
was difficult, but Julia forced her temper to cool.  Chris might be getting on
her nerves, but *he* wasn't her Patient of the Hour, Vicki was.

Barnabas was hanging worriedly upon every pore on that sweat-streaked, teary
face.  For all his concern, Quentin didn't seem to know he was there.  He too,
was busy with watching Vicki.

And Vicki...

Julia was chilled to the bone at Vicki, because Vicki wasn't what you would
call "there." She hadn't spoken a single word, and to hear Barnabas, hadn't
since they had encountered the screaming ghost off Widow's Hill.

(They actually invited something to come to them!  God, the fools that live
here!) Julia bit down on her lip and dug in her kit with a vengeance while
Barnabas continued his explanation somewhere above her head.

"...But it was the WAY the spirit looked that truly frightened her." Barnabas
was shaking his head from side to side.  "It looked just like her!  In all
aspects!  They could have been twins!"


Julia's fingers, closing around a plastic-capped hypo, paused at that.  The
words sent a slight frost around her heart, a chill of dread.

"Just like her?" Quentin's higher, younger voice, cutting sharply and
protectively. Reasonable or not, he was holding Barnabas responsible for
Vicki's state.  "Are you sure?"

"She was right in front of us!  How could I not be?"

"Interesting." Eliot cleared his throat thoughtfully.  That the men were not
listening to him bothered the professor not at all.

"Sht." Chris hissed.  "I think she's coming around."

Babble halted, but Chris was right.  Julia continued preparing the shot.  She
had a suspicion this wasn't the end of the hysteria.  Gulping sounds emerged
from Vicki's throat, and wet gurgles as she forced herself to swallow more air.

"Mmmm..." Sounds now.  Julia held her breath.

Julia's eyes slipped away from the teary streaks of the very frightened Vicki.
The young woman's pain made Julia embarrassed.  Witnessing it didn't
feel...right.  As if she were intruding on her privacy.  Her gaze instead went
to the worried-looking Chris Jennings.

Chris.  Julia silently heaved her lungs full of air and swayed under the
dizziness.  He was a great deal like Tom...and yet not.  Julia searched for,
and found, the look of hidden sorrows in the man's eyes.  Tom had looked like
that.  He pretended (and for days on end) that things were good, always good,
and it had driven Julia half mad with exasperation.

(What is *he* hiding from?) She wondered.  (All the Jennings...they all seem to
be hiding something.)

A woman threatened by a twin-ghost.  A man shadowed by his twin-death.  It made
her feel confused and weak.

Vicki arrested Julia's gaze from Chris.  She twitched in one final, soft
choking cry and fell into a sleep that was anything but easy.  Quentin's
angular face creased to hear it, and his large hand stroked her long waterfall
of hair.  Even asleep, Vicki's tight fingers tightened around his wrist.

And Barnabas saw.

And now Julia *really* wanted to turn away, because she was starting to feel
emotions again, and her behavior in the garden was reprehensible.  Her staid
apathy lashed back in her face like a brief wave of cold water.  It was one
thing to remain distant and detached from the world; doctors were supposed to.
 Especially women doctors, who had three times the suicide rate of men.

(What did that...thing...do to me?) Her face remained collected and cool while
her thoughts labored to run free.  People's upsets hadn't bothered her at
all--she had been too involved in how she was existing in a limbo.

Chaos still mumbled around her.  Bodies walked across her vision,back and
forth, the women were knotted up in the corner talking (Good Lord, when did Liz
and Maggie come in?  Had they materialized out of nowhere?) and the men were
everywhere else.  Only Barnabas remained separate from it all, trapped on the
outside, only able to look in.

Just like she was.

"We need to get her upstairs." Quentin finally took the matter in his hands by
lifting the young woman up.  "She should be much better off in her own bed,
sleeping off the terrors." His blue eyes sought Julia out, and drilled through
even more apathy.  "Julia, what do you think?"

Julia deliberated a moment, aware that everyone was hanging on her permission
to do something perfectly sensible.  "Of course." She said slowly.  Behind her
mind, someone was clamoring angrily and she didn't want to meet the source.
"But someone should stay with her in case she wakes up."

Barnabas could barely wait to get to her alone.  She was still watching up the
stairway after Quentin with a clinical eye.


"Julia." He spoke her name softly, touched her arm and was rewarded by her
blink.  "I must talk to you."

Almost instantly, that vague, unfocused look returned.  She almost looked as
though she were elsewhere than here, or listening to something outside his
hearing.  "What is it?" Impatience threaded her voice.  "Barnabas, I can't
stay."

"Why not?" He asked in all innocence.

She blinked again, and he was struck by a rare insight; harmless her words
might be, she hadn't MEANT to pop out and say that.  So she didn't want him to
know she couldn't stay...

"I have to go get some air." She was already pulling away, her hand lifting to
rub her neck as if it were stiff and painful.  "It's too hot in here, and
Quentin was pouring the drinks too freely. Just ask Eliot...I'll be back...Just
let me go get some air..."

Without a further word of explanation, she was out the door.

Barnabas stood in the foyer for a good half-minute of time, deliberating in
surprise.

Despite what his unmourned, unloved and much-reviled wife might say, Barnabas
was not a stupid man.  And the evening was not so chaotic that he couldn't
notice the oddness of Julia's behavior.

And after what happened to Vicki, he was not about to take chances and assume
everything was all right.

Eliot Stokes sighed and closed his mouth.  Too late to say anything to Collins
now, he mused as the door shut.  First Julia, now Barnabas.  People popping in
the House, and vanishing just as quickly.

Chris was standing around and looking very lost.  "I...I guess I'd better get
going." He offered lamely.  "Things are uh, really busy around here."

"I'll see you to your car, Chris." Carolyn offered with all sweetness and
light.  Eliot sighed again. Poor Jennings.  He could only hope the young man
was romantically engaged in other directions. Carolyn was clearly out for
another fish.


***

Barnabas stopped in the middle of the path, leaned on his cane a moment, and
filtered out the sounds around the beat of his heart.  A stick cracked further
on.  Julia was taking the old horse-trail's loop back to the estate's garden,
and that made no sense.  Why take such a roundabout way when all she had to do
was take a straight line to the East?

Julia was not by nature unpredictable, and Barnabas was growing deeply
suspicious. He had thought it his imagination the way the doctor had paused
over his description of the ghost.

By now, he was convinced it was not a figment.  Julia had known SOMETHING about
that ghost, and she had not seen anything.

He hurried on, knowing the loop would end in a few minutes.

Aha...

Barnabas instinctively flattened himself against the rippling shadows of
lattice and rustling leaves that made up the gazebo, becoming a part of it with
his dark wool clothing.  The pale skin and dark hair and eyes of his mother's
family never came so in handy as when he wanted to be invisible on a moonlit
night.


Unaware of his presence (and that really was unlike her, he reflected with a
frown, as if she was weighed in the mind by other matters), the doctor had
stopped in the center of the intricate garden. Night-blooming tobacco guarded
her way along the walk, large creamy white trumpets desperate to survive the
killing frosts of autumn.  As he watched, she lifted her head, the frown still
there.  Her shoulders were tense and slumped in a lack of spirit.

"You're late."


Angelique's glass-sharp voice slivered painfully through them both; Julia was
no more prepared for the sound than Barnabas, and she knew what to expect.
Barnabas felt as though an icicle had pierced his heart, and lodged tight.

Brown eyes wide under the dark umbrella of tended grapevines, Barnabas could
not help himself. He inched forward in order to see better, despite every cell
of his being screaming that such an action went against the most basic rules of
common sense and self-preservation. Angelique's voice was heavy with
disapproval, charged with danger, and Barnabas was so accustomed to being the
target of such venom that he could not bring himself to believe that someone
else was the focus of punishment.

"Well?" Said the silvery voice again.  "Julia, you *know* that it's not a good
idea to wait. Because if *I* wait then I have to let my poor dear Roger wait
too." Worlds of malice in the tones. "And we don't like that, do we?"

Julia had stopped shivering at the sound of the voice; a prey accepting the
inevitable. Resigned, she simply spoke the truth.  "It couldn't be helped.
Something tried to kill Barnabas...if that's the right word for it."

And, clothed in an impossibly white dress, Angelique emerged from a black smear
of shrubbery, her guise still as Cassandra.  "The right word?  What do you
mean?" She demanded.

"An angry spirit.  It threatened both Barnabas and Vicki." Julia reached up and
with disinterested fingers, brushed something off her shoulder.  It was
identical to the way he had seen her toy with the leaf earlier, in this very
same spot.  Julia without emotion was not Julia, not much of anything, and
Barnabas shivered all over again to see that in her.  "No one can say who she
is except she's tied into the Collins family."

Cassandra inched closer, a cat upon something much smaller.  "No one can say?"
Suspicion sent crystals frosting upon the shimmering cobwebs.  "I sense you're
telling me the truth, Julia Hoffman, but not completely...I know how precise
you are with words...'no one can say'...can it be you can't say because you
have no proof of what you might suspect?"

Julia's fox-like features grimaced, whether in distaste or basic unhappiness,
Barnabas could not tell.  "I can't prove what the ghost might be."

"That's perfectly all right." Cassandra was purring, and it was by far worse
than any anger or contempt.  She circled around the rigid doctor, and Barnabas
felt sickened; he had once circled his own victims in that way, gloating in the
power he held over them, smug in his superiority.  Julia's eyes were flat and
still; she understood where she stood in this warped dance, and could not raise
herself from the demeaning position.

The witch-vampire lifted a finger up to lightly touch a small fresh water pearl
earring depending from the other woman's earlobe.  "Now, tell me, what are your
suspicions?"

Julia was slow in answering.  Her reluctance might have been her hatred of
speaking without solid fact.  Or...it was the only way she could resist the
other.  "The ghost looked like Vicki." She swallowed.  "A lot like Vicki."

"I see." Cassandra said thoughtfully.

Julia waited, but so did Cassandra.  At last, Julia gave in.  "Vicki and the
ghost could be twins.  But the ghost...Barnabas said...was dressed in slightly
older clothing.  Vicki...thinks she sees a vision of herself as dead, but..."

A soft silence, and then Cassandra laughed, itself soft in the night air.
"Ver-ry interesting.  How intriguing if this is true...how delicious." When
Julia's frown deepened, so did the other's laugh. "The Collinses must be the
most unfortunate family in the Tropic.  A sister, perhaps?"


"There's...no proof." Julia grated out.  She was staring off upon the fountain.
 "I looked."

"Come, come...surely as a researcher you should know, the absence of proof is
no proof...only the proof of absence." A last chuckle escaped from the throat.
No one but she knew that she was chuckling because it amused her to quote her
oft-unlamented brother in hatred, Nicholas Blair. "And as a researcher of the
family, surely *you* noticed all those gaps in the family trees?  Surely you
must have.  It helped you forge Barnabas a respectable, if compeletely false,
lineage for dear Roger and Liz."

Disgusted at herself, Julia looked away.

"Now, Julia..."

"Angelique, why do you--"

"Cassandra." The sudden anger made the hidden Barnabas jump as much as Julia.
"My name, Julia, is *Cassandra.*"

"Why?" Julia whispered.  The vampire was approaching, and perhaps the death
that reeked off the fangs would finally finish her off tonight.  But she had to
know the truth of something that made no sense.

"Why what?"

"Why do you have to be Cassandra?"

"You wonder about names?  Angelqiue is no more real to what I am, than
Cassandra. That's why I'm Cassandra now.  Do you understand?"

"No." Julia muttered.

"You will." Cassandra promised, and her lips parted wide...


TO BE CONTINUED ...

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