Chapter 45: Hearts & Bones
by CollinsKid
Voice-Over (Grayson Hall) "Collinwood, in the year 1897. The precipice of a
new century, and a house of full of secrets, and fractured hearts. In the
midst of this tempest, one young woman has traveled backwards in time on a
desperate mission to salvage not only her existence, but that of the entire
Collins family of the 20th century..."
It was somewhere in that light/dark nethertown, that balmy, post-storm spot
between night and day, when Quentin Collins finished his third cigarette --
cheap, overly sweet, Parisian -- and stubbed it out on the gazebo floor under
his heel. A light drizzle was all that remained from that previous night's
storm, and in the sky, the black clouds hid away a still-growing dawn, their
secret to keep -- and below them, Quentin and his.
The living dead, he muttered inwardly. Clearly, Grandmama is no longer the
sharp serpent I'd always known her to be. The things she'd said were a bit
left-of-center, even for her. When Edith Collins had finally finished her grand
statement, she took a long, phlegm-rattly heave of oxygen, and settled back
into a dreamless reaper's sleep. Quentin at first had thought her dead, and
had waited there for four uncertain minutes, trying to discern what had just
happened. Then she snored, and he swiftly exited. He'd paced the grounds,
this drenched grove of avarice, in the hours since. Smoked. Pondered what
she's said. And here he was still.
The living *dead,* he scoffed again. What lunacy.
(madness.)
(except...)
....Except for everything else about Grandmama that he and Sister Judith knew,
and no one else had ever bothered with -- or dared to think about. She was no
ordinary rheumy old crow, eyes milky and blood purple, oh, no; ever since he'd
been little, Quentin had always sensed the 'off'ness in his dear Grandmama, and
as he grew, and learned of things that his parents spat on, he came to
recognize that strangeness as not strangeness at all, but in fact a black
nimbus enveloping this 'poor, frail' old woman who sipped tea and read tawdry
romances; a halo of the darkest magic, always shimmering, always protecting,
always consuming. His Grandmama was no ordinary Grandmama, oh, no; she knew
all and saw all. At least, she had, for now twilight was falling upon her
black stage, and she was not going quietly.
Was it madness? Delerium? All-too-human frailty finally winning out over
arcane mysticism? Could Quentin take the chance of dismissing her ranting?
Edith's time was almost up; he doubted she would finish out the week.
(Barnabas Collins...the living dead...)
Quentin had seen the portrait, of course. Looked like a rather stiff gent,
likely to no sooner drop that cane than rip his own arm off. One of the living
dead? He'd looked like he was already there.
(Can I take the chance of believing in you, Grandmama? Or is this your last
joker's joke?)
"What's with you?"
Quentin spun. Under a curtain of leaves, Magda leaned against an oak tree, out
of the rain.
Quentin chuckled. "What's always been with me, Magda m'dear, light of my
life," he said jovially/desperately. "The foulest luck."
Magda folded her arms, her brown face crinkling with a sly smile. "Don't tell
me your precious Grandmama was not swayed."
"My precious Grandmama is about to do high tea with Mary, Queen of Scots,"
Quentin grumbled, slapping one of the gazebo's supports with an open hand. "In
the meantime, I'm still broke."
"You always broke."
"You wound me, Magda," Quentin pouted. "Can't you spare some of that gypsy
luck of yours, and sprinkle it on me?"
"How was Europe?" Magda asked, sashaying over to him in her crimson robes and
deftly changing the subject. She slung an arm around his waist. "How many
fortunes you make and lose in one day, eh?"
"Thousands upon thousands," Quentin mumbled, a hand over his eyes, shielding
him from the missing sun. He rubbed the bridge of his nose.
"Jenny woulda never stood for that," Magda said, baleful. "She woulda set you
right long ago." Melancholy overtook her. "But..."
Quentin clenched her weathered palm. "But Jenny isn't here," he said, softly
but swiftly. "That's the way things are, Magda; you know that. And you know
I'd change it if I could."
He saw her face soften and knew he could still operate her, too, like he always
did. "I know," Magda said simply, voice a little stuck. "I know." She patted
his palm, maternal. Then, clearing her throat, she pulled away, swaying a bit
around the gazebo, flapping her robes idly. "So, what? Edith give you the
big, bad secret?"
"So she thinks," Quentin said, rubbing his nose again.
"Well, what was it?!"
Quentin paused. Then, he spun on his heel, fixing Magda with a wolfish grin.
"It's that all the world's a puppet show, and we are Grandmama's marionettes,"
Quentin murmured. "And this puppet is getting his own solo act -- cover charge
and all. You wait and see, Magda; I'm not played yet."
Magda folded her arms, smirking. "You been played all your life." Quentin
laughed boisterously at that, and she did too, and then he took her arm and
they strolled through the grounds, damp from the rain, watching the sun rise.
And as Quentin felt that mottled light bathe his brow, he looked up into that
incandescent nova and thought, your games are very charming, Grandmama, but
your age is over. And I no longer have any patience for antiques...
*/*/*/*
Vicki was sitting on the divan in the drawing room staring at a cup of
translucent, thick tea and feeling the sun on her back and wearing 19th
century clothes, still trying hard to take it all in as Edward Collins droned
in her ear, a protective -- a lover's -- arm around her waist:"...can't stress
how sorry I am that you had to witness that, my darling, my brother chafes me
so; he's been impossible for years and we all so hoped he would go to Europe
and not return; maybe that's wrong of me I don't know but it seems that things
are so much more peaceful when he's not about how was your trip you look as
though you have a chill may i help you with your tea?" and as she looked at him
and his ruddy cheeks and that Roger-face she thought is there an animal in that
moustache, and if so, what kind, and does it bite and is that why he's so tense
all the time? and they don't expect me to actually marry him do they?
Out of her reverie, she stirred, smiled, and said, "Thank you...dear...I'm
fine," and picked up her tea and sipped it. It was somewhere between lemons
and oil. Vicki thought of the Industrial Revolution, and then corsets and
ribcages. Her heart cringed.
"So your trip was decent, then?" Edward asked delicately, as though tiptoeing
around his rather out-of-sorts bride. It must be the travel, he thought.
"Very," Vicki said. "Except, except for a bit of a storm, I'm afraid. I
suppose that's why I'm a bit peakish today."
Edward's grin was wide and relieved. "Perfectly understandable!" he said.
"Even in this modern age we are unable to tame the weather; an awful pity, if I
do say so myself. And to go from a metropolis such as New York to all the way
out here...well, I can understand the culture shock. I've experienced it a time
or two myself, on my trips. You'll get used to it, darling, see if you don't.
You'll be a world traveler before you know it."
Vicki pursed her lips. "Ah....yes." Please God, no, she thought silently.
"Oh, look!" Edward exclaimed, and his voice was so booming Vicki winced and
almost dropped her teacup. Did he *have* to shout everything like a carnival
barker? "The children!"
Vicki wanted to disappear. There, at the suddenly-opened drawing room doors,
stood the maid, Beth, pretty and wilting in a house such as this -- Vicki knew
the look -- and below her, indeed, were Edward and Laura Collins' children.
With a sort of detached non-surprise, Vicki recognized Jamison and Nora Collins
as mirror images of David Collins and Amy Jennings. Oh, how amusing, I see,
what a kick, her mind mumbled tiredly, then checked out.
Jamison and Nora stared at her like she was Hitler himself. Vicki struggled to
move her legs and rise as Edward stood and went to embrace his children.
"Jamison! Nora! Good morning, you two -- come meet your new mother!"
Vicki's heart squeaked like a greasy wheel, and died. Could he have introduced
her as *anyone else?* Anyone at all? Mickey Mouse, perhaps? She somehow managed
to stand and smile politely -- I am *so sorry* her brain desperately tried to beam
to them -- and say, "Um, hello...Jamison, Nora. It's very nice to meet you.
My name's -- " Mud? Hitler? YourNewMother? "-- Victoria."
The children flash-fried her with their eyes, then simultaneously looked up at
Edward. "Have you heard from my mother?" Nora asked her father. "Has she
written you lately?"
Edward hemmed and hawed, shrinking away bit. "Er, uh, no, Nora darling; I'm
afraid not...but, but do, do come sit, and meet Victoria!"
Oh, Christ, Vicki thought. Victoria, the Eighth Wonder of The World!
Jamison zeroed in on Vicki with his ray gun eyes. "Is she going to be staying
here? With you?"
Edward folded his arms. "Now, Jamison, don't make me become impatient with
you. Miss Winters is very important to me; I love her a great deal, and I will
be marrying her very soon. She will be a part of my life, and a part of yours.
Now you've only just woken up, and she's had a very long trip; please come
meet her and see if you can't make friends."
"We can't," Jamison snapped, and then added:"Have you sent Quentin away again?
I won't have it!"
"I have done no such thing," Edward exclaimed, suddenly finding himself on the
defensive, and hating it, and so he puffed up his cheeks and roared back:"I
will not be spoken to in that tone, young man!"
"Grandmama wants Quentin to stay and I do too!" Jamison spat. "I don't care if
you hate him! I want to see him and I want to see him now! I'm not having tea
with you and *Victoria!*" With that, he tore out of Beth's grasp and up the
stairs, with Nora soon nipping at his heels.
Edward stomped after them, but instead settled for howling at them from the
foyer. "Jamison! Nora! Come back here this instant!"
"I'll tend to them, Mr. Edward," the put-upon Beth mumbled, and hurried up the
stairs.
"See that you do," Edward growled, and with a huff, headed back into the
drawing room, his face red, his chest heaving, and his moustache twitching. To
Vicki, he looked like an impotent bull.
Edward suddenly realized who was there, and broke into sunny smiles again,
sweat on his brow. He opened his arms. "Well! Darling!"
Vicki shuddered.
*/*/*/*
"But she's so normal," Jamison Collins grumbled to thin air, and a spectre only
he could see, as he kneeled on the floor in that dusty old West Wing storage
room. "Everything about her; her face, her clothes -- she's not my mother.
She never will be." He had gone through three sets of reprimands ever since the
debacle that morning -- one prim one from Beth that he shook off, one stern one
from Judith that left him meek and slightly abashed, and one furious, raving,
spittle-flying rant from his father that he couldn't remember very much of
because he had been furious, raving, and spitting right back. Jamison Collins
and his father had not gotten along very well since his mother left, and it was
only getting worse as the years ticked by. After enduring all the reprimands
and a confinement to his room, Jamison had puttered around with books and his
old toys until late afternoon, where he heard that siren call in his mind, and
had been compelled to shake off the shackles of tyranny and head for the West
Wing.
"Poor Jamison," the face made of light and fire simpered, those burning diamond
eyes glimmering eldritch-style. "Familial strife becomes you, I think. You
have flush in your cheeks again. It would seem that you enjoy doing these
little chores I give you."
Jamison swallowed. "You know I don't," he muttered. "I do it because you make
me."
"Make you?"
"Yes."
"And how do I make you?"
"You just do," Jamison said, pouting.
"Is it a spell, then?" the woman made of magic asked teasingly. Jamison felt
like he was her palm, waiting to be crushed. "What is this magic I've placed
on you, Jamison darling?"
"You say things, and I do them!" Jamison snapped, irritated and flushed. Then,
blurting:"It's your eyes. It's in your eyes. You know it. You told me
yourself to look at them. And I always do, a-and look -- here I am."
A smirk. "Here you are," the ghost murmured. "Just one more question,
Jamison."
"Yes?"
"If I wanted to, I could make you my doll. You would turn on and off when I
wished. You would kill your sister in her sleep for me. I could make you do
anything I wanted. There would be no discussion, either; no banter, no
*bonhomie.*" She spat the last word out, like poison. "You would not prattle on
and on about your fool father's new woman. You would not become impatient with
me. You would not be sullen. You would not be anything. You would simply be
a vessel, waiting to be filled. But you're not. You can discuss. You can
question. You can speak. You can think. I've allowed you that. I didn't have
to make you a toy boy, Jamison, because somewhere, deep down, there is a kind
of consent between you and I -- somewhere inbetween you and me, I offered, and
you took."
A sublime smile. "Why do you think that is, Jamison?"
Jamison felt like he was made of ice. The blood was gone from his face. "I
don't want to talk with you like this anymore," he stammered. "Tell me what
you want to do, and I'll do it."
The eyes glittered, and there was a laugh made of broken china. "Very well.
No more talk." She fixed Jamison with those cobra's eyes, and he felt a blessed
warmth return to his veins, a white-hot ether. "Listen to me, Jamison. Listen
very carefully. It's almost time for you to break that door down..."
Jamison listened, and as the sun began dipping below the trees again in the
day's endless cycle, he understood.
*/*/*/*
It was almost evening when Edith Collins roused again, from that dead man's
sleep that threatened to no longer be figurative. She was sure it had been her
time last night, when she had unburdened herself upon that awful grandson of
hers, so like her but so doomed, and now here she was again, damnably awake and
alive in this damned bed. She smelled must and lace, and old tea. She
struggled to sit up, and peer out the nearby window, and saw only red hues of
sunset.
"That's right, Grandmama. You slept this whole day."
Edith turned and saw him there, in Judith's easy chair -- Quentin, legs
crossed, mock-reading one of Edith's novels. He stopped, then smiled at her,
perfect white teeth glittering like a rabid dog's maw.
Edith harrumphed. "You again. Aren't you satisfied? I gave you the secret."
"You gave me a madwoman's joke," Quentin said through a clenched, smiling
mouth. "And it's all been very funny, Grandmama, but I'm afraid the ride has to
stop now."
Edith chuckled with a creaking noise in her breast, and shook her head. "Fool
boy. I gave you what you sought, and you will not take it. You are the joke."
Quentin rose in a flash. "I am NOT a joke!" he snarled, furious. "That's for
Edward, Grandmama, or Judith; not you! You know better!" His hands, curled
like claws, shook violently. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild. "Or at least,
you will...in Hell..."
"Do what you will," Edith croaked. "You think I'm afraid to die? You think
I'm afraid of you? The only thing that frightens me anymore is the thought of
living long enough to see God get around to turning his eye onto me. You're
the one that should be afraid, rejecting my hand now! Do you have any IDEA
what comes next? Death is not the end, Quentin. You'll need a patron -- "
"And will it be you, Grandmama?" Quentin laughed spitefully. "From beyond the
grave, in your lace and petticoats, cold and in dirt?" He kicked the side of
the bed. "I won't spend the rest of my life as nothing! I'm worth more than
the luck I've been given thus far! You know it, I know it!" In a flash, his
hands had seized a spare pillow. "Now tell me the secret, Grandmama, the REAL
secret, or so help me God I'll bring Him down upon you quicker than you could
scream -- "
Edith laughed, long, and loud, and grating -- nails on chalkboard. Then,
gasping, heart rabbiting:"YOU would bring God down upon ME," she spat, voice a
thick death rattle. "I was born to love fools." Then, hoarse, hiccuping:"i
see...an animal...in you."
Quentin Collins stood over his Grandmama, pillow in hand. "You see me," he
said softly.
He brought the pillow to her face.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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