Ch. 43: Over the Rainbow
by Nicky
(Voiceover by Grayson Hall): "Collinwood, in the year 1897 ... a young woman
has transcended time and space and now finds herself in a time not her own, a
stranger in a sea of familiar faces. There are evil forces gathered on the
great estate of Collinwood in this time just as there were in the time from
which Victoria Winters came. And on this night she will come face to face with
the man she loves ... and he won’t know her at all."
1
Magda Rakosi would never tell anyone her true age. Not even Sandor knew, and
they had been married by Gypsy law for more than twenty years. Nevertheless,
she knew she was too old to be wandering along the rocky, unforgiving beach
that lined the equally rocky and unforgiving Maine coast on a frosty evening in
early March. There would be snow tonight, she knew; the cards had told her, as
they told her much.
She brushed her tangled mane out of her face. She was proud of her hair, black
as a raven’s wing, black as precious ink, black as the eyes that flashed so
defiantly from the hollows in her skull. She was a proud woman, was the Gypsy
Magda, and she knew much. She knew, for instance, that the cards had tokened a
new arrival — and that it was her duty to meet said arrival. She knew nothing
about the meeting, save that the stranger was a young woman, and would find
herself in a world not her own. Magda had no idea what this meant, but she
knew it was her fate to meet the girl, and who was she to argue with the
Universe?
She hummed a bit of song under her breath, something her sister might have
crooned before she had disappeared from Magda’s life forever. She and Sandor
had lost track of Jenny more than a decade before, but their wanderings had
brought them to this barren strip of coastline. These were not here primarily to
find Jenny; Magda had given up that hope years ago, but there were always
rumors to follow, of a pale skinned woman with flaming hair that would set the
devil to shame, a woman who’s voice was silver as the moon when she sang, and
even if they didn’t find her, they did find opportunity; the Collinses of the
area were a rich family indeed, and one of their number in particular was very
taken with her fortune telling abilities. For now they dwelled just outside
the accursed village of Collinsport, in the decrepit Old House on the Collins
estate. A tranquil town from all appearances — outside appearances, Magda
amended, and you’re still an outsider — but an outsider saw much, and Magda
knew that there was much about Collinsport that was far ... far ... from
ordinary.
"Dammit," Magda snarled under her breath as a teasing finger of wind, icy and
sharp, managed to penetrate the many layers of shawls she had bundled herself
with and raised patches of goosepimples all over her body. Hurry up girl, she
prayed to no one in particular, show yourself so I can take you to Collinwood
like I’m s’posed to.
Why Collinwood? she asked herself now. The cards had said nothing specific
about the girl, or why she would appear when she did, or what Magda was to do
with her. But the old Gypsy knew anyway. Take the girl to Collinwood, that
was part of the deal; somehow she knew what she had to do.
What deal?
She didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to argue with the Universe on this point
either. Someone — something — wanted the girl at Collinwood, and this same
someone — or something — had designated Magda as her deliverer. What she would
find at Collinwood ... well, she could discover it for herself, and Magda
wished her lots of luck. Rich though they may be, the Collinses of Collinsport
were far from trouble-free.
The wind rose again, carried from the sea and redolent with the tang of salt,
but cold as a witch’s suck-mark. Magda shivered, and paused. "Hurry, girl,"
she whispered aloud, and glanced at the sky. A full moon rode the heavens above
her, watching the mortal below with a cold, icy eye. "Please hurry," she said
again. "I don’t know how long I can wait."
2
"Comes riding, comes riding, comes riding," the madwoman crooned to the bruised
and dirty doll she held in her gnarled, bony white hands. She placed one
fingertip to its colorless mouth and smiled, then held that mouth to her left
breast and rocked it tenderly back and forth, swaying in time to the
meaningless lullabye she sang. "Comes riding, comes riding to me," she sang,
and paid no mind to the other woman who stood so stiffly in the darkened corner
of the unadorned and shadow-cradled room.
Beth Chavez watched with what seemed to be a cold and uncaring eye, but inside
she wept. And wept. And wept some more. Had she allowed those interior,
secret tears that burned her heart so severely to fall from her eyes, Beth was
sure she could have filled a thousand seas a thousand times. Miss Judith’s
heart may be stone, Beth thought, though her lip didn’t tremble and her eyes
were hard and dry, but mine isn’t. This is killing me, a little at a time, and
I don’t know why I stay.
But she did. Deep in her heart, and as secret as the tears that never fell,
Beth knew why she stayed at Collinwood. She knew why she allowed herself to
don the foolish white mop-cap Miss Judith insisted upon, why she held her head
high and never let the tears fall, why she traipsed up these slippery stone
steps four times a day. Oh yes. Beth knew very well.
She was waiting.
"My love is like a red, red rose," the madwoman sang. Her eyes, after nearly a
year in the tower room, were sunken deep into her skull, and the skin of her
face, once porcelain and tinged with rose, was white as snow and papery. Her
hair stood out in a screaming crimson shock, and she wore all black. Miss
Judith insisted upon that as well. "Bright colors drive her to distraction,"
was all she would say on the subject, and Beth didn’t argue. She only watched
as Jenny rocked the baby and sang, and held its mouth to her breast, and sang
and rocked and sang and rocked and sang until Beth thought she would go mad
herself. "Newly sprung in June," the madwoman said.
"Jenny," Beth said gently when she could stand it no more. The madwoman paused
in her song, and looked up at the servant woman as if seeing her for the first
time.
"Oh," she said, and her voice was imperial, and her chin was thrust out. Beth
recognized this scene instantly; they had played it many times over the past
twelve months. She was playing Jenny Collins, Lady of the Manor, now
addressing her loyal maidservant just before tea is served. "It’s you. I
didn’t hear you come in."
"You were busy with the babies," Beth said. She hated herself. Jenny would
never see her babies again.
"Yes," Jenny cooed, and kissed the doll’s dirty forehead. "My babies."
"I’m sorry to disturb you," Beth said, and lifted the tray she carried where
Jenny could see. "I brought you your dinner."
"A poached egg?" Jenny asked eagerly, and her eyes shone like pennies. "And
milk for the babies?"
"A poached egg," Beth agreed, and her voice was tired. "And milk." She refused
to add "for the babies". I can’t do this much longer, she told herself; a
month at the most, then I’m gone, and I’ll let Mr. Edward give me an extra
thousand dollars for my silence and I won’t say a word. And I’ll never return
to Collinwood — to Collinsport either, for that matter — ever again. In that
secret place where no tears were shed, she knew this was a lie. But it was a
familiar lie, and a comfortable one. She had told herself this lie many times.
Because she was waiting, and she knew that the man she waited for must come
home eventually.
"He’s coming, you know," Jenny said, startling Beth. Her tone was so
nonchallant as she picked at the egg with her spoon that Beth wasn’t sure at
first that she’d even spoken.
"What?" Beth asked. "Who?"
"Like a red, red rose," Jenny snickered, then closed her eyes and sighed. With
her face still and not twitching as though a nest of baby snakes lay beneath
her skin, she was almost beautiful again.
"Jenny," Beth said more severely than she had intended, "who’s coming? Who are
you talking about?"
"The night sky is a blanket," Jenny said ominously, and traced strange patterns
in the air with her index finger. "It covers us with darkness, but there are
voices. They whisper to me, oh so many strange things." She sighed again, and
her fingers ran slowly over her nipples beneath the rough black fabric of the
dress she wore.
Beth knelt beside her and forced herself to remain gentle. This is his fault,
after all, Beth thought sourly, and said, "What do they whisper, Jenny?"
"Comes riding, comes riding, comes riding," Jenny said, and pointed out the
window. Beth followed the madwoman’s gaze, and found herself fixed on the full
moon, glowing imperiously in the late winter sky. "The moon told me. Psst,
psst, psst." Jenny giggled.
The woman was mad. Beth forgot that sometimes, as hard as that was when she
watched her, living out the rest of her life in a confined space with two
battered dolls for company. I’m going to get you out of this someday, Jenny,
Beth swore (as she often did), and looked at the once-proud and beautiful
woman, who now lifted the second doll from its crib and nursed it as she had
the first. "I need to go away again, Jenny," Beth said. "Is there anything
else you need?"
"Comes riding," Jenny said slyly, and laughed. "No. There’s nothing you can
give me, Beth." She waved a hand dismissively. "You may go."
Beth offered her once-upon-a-time mistress a tiny curtsy, then turned to go.
She felt that dull, bitter hate rise like bile in her throat as she turned the
key in the lock of the tower door, the same burning bile she felt everytime she
did it. She descended the steps as quickly as she could, for even though her
heart was heavy with pity for the creature that had been Jenny Collins, she
didn’t like to dally in that haunted room. Other things had happened in there
— a suicide and a murder and whispers of darker activities — that Beth was made
aware by the other servants who flitted about Collinwood like invisible
spirits. She did not like to tarry. Her quick, delicate footsteps carried her
rapidly to the base of the stairs, and from there she tread a bit more slowly.
Miss Judith wanted to be notified once the evening feeding was administered,
and Beth figured there was no time like the present. She had just turned in
the direction of the study when three rapid knocks sounded at the door.
She froze where she was, one hand outstretched, and felt an icy sheen of sweat
break out on her brow.
Comes riding, comes riding, comes riding.
It wasn’t possible. He couldn’t have returned.
My love is like a red, red rose.
Impossible.
She found herself at the door despite her doubts and sudden, mad terror, and
pulled it open just as three more knocks, more impatient now, were levied
against it.
She felt all the breath sucked out of her body, and her mouth hung agape. She
couldn’t move. He smiled at her, and his eyes were as sapphire-blue as always,
but cold. So cold.
She swallowed once, and found that she could only utter one word. "You!" she
managed to choke, knowing how stupid she sounded, how inane.
Quentin Collins chuckled deeply, and grinned at her, as wicked and sardonic as
he always was, and said, "Now, now, Beth. Is that any way to greet an old
friend?"
3
Judith Collins finished buttoning her petticoats, and adjusted her hair in the
mirror of the ancient wood dresser that had sat unused for god knows how many
years in the back bedroom of the carriage house crouched on the far
northeastern corner of the estate. After a moment’s careful tweaking no curl
hung out of place, and she smiled, satisfied. Her face was usually stern and
patrician, the result of her grandmother’s steady, decade long stream of
constant reproaches and barking commands, but tonight she looked soft and
feminine. For the time being. Judith reckoned it was almost time for her to
bring Grandmama her tea; if she left now she could just make it, and the old
woman would be pacified. She hoped.
"You don’t have to leave already." She stiffened at the sound of the
caretaker’s voice as he spoke behind her, but relaxed almost instantly. She
prayed that he hadn’t seen the look of distaste that had flashed over her
features at the sound of his voice, but thought that he hadn’t.
Dirk Wilkins was still naked, and lounged atop the sheets, idly toying with the
scant growth of hair across his chest. She could see a dark purple mark she
had left above his right nipple, and her cheeks flamed with shame. She preyed
he hadn’t seen that either.
It wasn’t that she didn’t like Dirk, per se; if she hadn’t, she supposed she
never would have begun what she must reluctantly consider an affair in the
first place. He was attractive enough, though she found she despised the tiny
slip of a moustache that grew above his lip, and she might have said something
about it if he hadn’t made it so perfectly clear that he thought it made him
look, by turns, rugged and clever. It didn’t, in truth, because he was really
neither, and no tiny growth of fine blonde hair, almost invisible and
resembling a caterpillar curled above his lip more than anything, was ever
going to make him rugged or clever.
She had carried on this little tryst for nearly three months, and now — she
supposed she could admit it to herself — she had grown bored. And she was
terrified that, once Grandmama died (and she hoped that blessed day would occur sooner
rather than later), he would propose marriage to her, and there was absolutely
no way on this green earth that she could — or would — accept him. In fact,
she was very much afraid that she would laugh in his face, and as much as she
wished she could send him away now, she didn’t want to humiliate him.
And besides, when he made love to her she forgot all about everything,
including her growing dislike for him.
"I’ll have to leave now," Judith said distantly, and noticed that a tiny crack
spiderwebbed across the upper-lefthand corner of the mirror. She frowned. It
distorted her reflection slightly, splintering her image into a confused
collection of sprawling facial features: shadowed eyes, now narrowed and
suspicious, a nose that was too long with nostrils that flared, and a mouth
that was, her grandmother assured her everyday, too red.
"Why?" Dirk asked plaintively. He was rubbing his penis unconsciously, and
Judith averted her eyes. She hated to think of it at all, even when it was
thrusting inside of her with his usual exuberance, and to watch him flop it
around without even being aware that he was doing so incited in her a dangerous
urge to laugh. Her head began to throb, and she wished to be out of this foul
little house.
"You know why," she said shortly. "It’s almost time for Grandmama’s evening
tea."
"The old bat is almost ninety," Dirk said. "She doesn’t know what time it is."
"She knows more than we think," Judith said, and hoped this wasn’t true. The
only person who knew anything about Grandmama’s mind was that accursed Gypsy
hag Magda, and she delighted in witholding any information about the will from
Judith. And there was, of course, the matter of the Secret. If Grandmama had
any idea about Dirk, Judith thought, invoking the familiar icicle of fear to
shiver its way down her spine, she could disinherit me like that. And then
what would I do? Would Edward allow me to stay at Collinwood? Her eyes
narrowed dangerously. I’m a fool if I believe that.
"Come on," Dirk whined. "It’s been more than a week since we —"
"No," Judith said firmly, cutting him off with expert efficiency, and wrapped a
shawl around her shoulders. There was no sign of spring in the air as of yet,
and the winter wind that wound around the estate this time of year could be
cruel.
She turned to face him and found that, incredibly, he was pouting. Her lips
twitched, but she would not allow them to smile. He crossed his arms across
his bare chest like a sulky child. "You don’t want to be with me."
It’s true, Judith thought, I don’t, but said instead with a patience she
thought she couldn’t summon in time, "You know that isn’t true. I ... I enjoy
this time we spend together. I just don’t want to arouse any suspicion. I’m
sure that some of the servants are already whispering about ... about us."
"It’s your brother, isn’t it," Dirk said. "Mr. Holier-Than-Thou Edward
Collins. You’re afraid he’s going to find out and have you disinherited,
aren’t you."
"I’m not afraid of Edward," Judith said shortly. That was true, too, but she
knew that although he expected to inherit the estate, he would delight in
nosing her out of the race he was certain he had already won. Edward shouldn’t
count his chickens, Judith believed, but felt that, all the same, it didn’t
hurt to be discreet. "Discretion," she told Dirk now, "is the better part of
valor."
He stared at her blankly, and she sighed and walked to the door. "I really
have to go," she said, and turned the handle.
He was next to her in a flash, his naked body pressed up against her, and she
fought the confusing dual waves of desire and revulsion that shivered through
her. "One kiss before you go," he whispered in her ear.
"Dirk," she said uncomfortably, but didn’t push him away.
"One kiss," he whispered, and pressed his lips to hers. She let him clutch her
to him, felt the heat that flared between them and hated that she responded to
the kiss with a passion that was suddenly genuine, and broke away from him
before the growing heat between them could explode. She stared at him severely,
and said in her firmest tone, "Goodnight, Dirk."
"When will I see you again?" His voice was sulky and petulant.
"Soon," she promised, and patted his hand. "Goodnight." She closed the door
after him, leaving him alone to brood and dress himself, and set off for
Collinwood.
What am I going to do? she asked herself as she shivered in the icy gale; what
am I going to do?
4
"We’re going to play a little game, Nora," Jamison Collins said to his younger
sister as they sat cross-legged in a dim, musty room in the West Wing. It was
packed with a hundred years of Collins junk, old birdcages, rotting leather
suitcases, boxes that had broken apart and spilled a cache of dusty letters
wrapped in strings that had once been crimson and had faded with a time to a
dull, ordinary pink. "Just you and me."
"What kind of a game?" Nora asked uneasily. The wind moaned in the eaves
around them, and she glanced around nervously. She didn’t like this part of
the house, and she didn’t particularly care for Jamison’s behavior. Ever since
their father had ordered Uncle Quentin out of the house last year, Jamison had
been acting really funny. She knew that they were close — and she told herself
that she wasn’t jealous about this at all, even if it did mean that Jamison
wanted to spend more time playing with Uncle Quentin than with her, and the
games they played, she knew, were decidedly strange in themselves — but she
hoped that he would recover. He was convinced that Uncle Quentin was coming
back, despite the fact that their father would brook no talk about his wayward
brother. Or our Mother, for that matter, Nora thought sourly.
"You’ll like it," Jamison assured her. "It’s very easy."
"Why do we have to play it here?" Her fear made her voice seem high and
babyish, and it clanged hatefully in her ears.
"Because I said so." Impatience began to show in cracks through his mask of
serenity. He fumbled in a bag behind him and placed three objects on the floor
between them.
She eyed them critically. "What are those things?" she asked at last. "Who’s
are they? Where did you get them?"
"You’re asking a lot of questions," Jamison said shortly. He arranged the
items in a little circle. Even in the dim light of this forgotten room Nora
could make out what they were. The first was an ancient handkerchief, yellowed
with time, and frayed around the edges. It was monogrammed, she saw, with the
initials "AC" in a fancy, curling type. The other two objects were equally as
interesting: a tiny doll made of yarn, and a pencil sketch of a young woman,
though Nora really couldn’t see her face.
"Where did you get these?" she asked again, and her voice was full of quiet
awe, because she thought she knew the answer, or part of it anyway. Jamison
had stolen them, of course. It fit his personality these days. And besides,
she thought in a voice that was close to the voice of the adult she would
someday become, it’s the kind of thing Uncle Quentin would do.
"From Mr. Hanley’s house," Jamison said nonchalantly. "I saw them the last
time Aunt Judith visited him. She dragged me with her to run some errands in
town. While they were talking I sneaked out of the room and explored his
house. These were in his bedroom. And I took them."
"Oh Jamison," she said sorrowfully, but wasn’t her own voice now tinged with
excitement too, this same excitement that now tingled like hot snakes in the
pit of her stomach? Wasn’t it? "Why did you take them?"
"I’m not really sure," he said, and frowned. "I just felt like I had to do it.
Like someone was ordering me ... and I had to obey."
"That’s a little scary," Nora said. She lifted up the picture and squinted at
it in the dimness. The woman was fair-haired, she thought, and had enormous
eyes. She was smiling, and Nora thought her smile rather cruel. And she was
wearing an old-fashioned dress, low-cut, with weird puffy sleeves.
Jamison snatched the picture out of her hand a moment later, snarling, "Don’t
touch that!" He glared at her with blazing, animal eyes and his nostrils
flaring, and she rose to her feet. Tears burned in her eyes.
"I don’t want to play your stupid old game anyway," she sniffled, and wiped her
running eyes with the back of her hand. "And I’m going to tell Father that you
took those things from Mr. Hanley!"
"Nora," Jamison said in a soft, pleasant voice, freezing her in her place by
the door with one hand hovering above the knob. It wasn’t his usual voice at
all — it was almost like a purr — and she turned slowly to face him.
"What?" she asked suspiciously.
"I’m sorry," he said, and she thought that what seemed like sincere regret in
his voice might be genuine. "Won’t you please sit down? I can’t play this
game without you, and it must be played. You’re a very important part. It
can’t happen without you."
"Good," she said, but found she really didn’t mean it, and couldn’t conjure up
even half the vehemence she wanted. "Maybe that’s for the best."
"You can’t resist her, Nora," Jamison said, and uttered a low, hideous kind of
laugh that wasn’t like him at all. "You know you can’t, so you might as well
sit down. Play the game, Nora. You want to. You know you want to. She wants
you to." And the horrible thing was, that she did want to play. She was
curious now. What kind of a game was it? How were they going to play? And
what did all those objects mean, and what were they for?
"All right," she said, but with a certain reluctance, and returned to her seat
across from him. "But who were you talking about, Jamison? Who is ‘she’?"
"I’m not really sure," he said, and his expression was dreamy. "I think we’re
going to find out, though. I think that’s what part of the game is."
"Let’s start," Nora said decisively, and felt a queer tingle in the air, as
though skeins of electricity were dancing over her skin.
They reached out across the space between them until their fingers touched, and
that queer electrical feeling bound them closely together. Nora closed her
eyes and seemed to hear ...
... the scream of the wind outside the walls of Collinwood, whooping and
wailing its misery, and angry voices, rising and shouting, a scream of agony, a
scream of something huge and damned ...
She opened her eyes but saw only darkness, and then she was falling, falling —
"Nora?" Jamison asked cautiously. Nora’s eyes were open but blank and glassy,
and her mouth hung slightly askew. "Nora, are you ..." He swallowed, and heard
a dry click in his throat. For all intents and purposes, his little sister
looked dead. "Are you all right?"
She moaned then, deep in the back of her throat, and twitched slightly. "Back
in the dark," she said in a hoarse voice utterly unlike her own, a voice that
was grating as though her throat were filled with gravel. "Locked in the
darkness for all these years ... the bat ... the bat —" Her head dropped,
then flew backwards at the ceiling, and she screamed, "Ia ia n’gaya, Hastur
danu! Yog-sothoth tu’atha, ia ia R’lyeh! Shogoth! Shub-niggurath! Hastur
danu!"
"Nora!" Jamison cried, his voice high and reedy. He was terrified, but he
dared not break the circle. He could still hear Uncle Quentin, his voice firm
and calm, as they played one of his little games: "This above all things,
Jamison. Never break the circle. Never." Her head dropped back, and her eyes
sparkled with a hideous, avid life. They were blue now, twinkling and icy, and
he felt a sick horror in the pit of his stomach, because Nora’s eyes had always
been brown.
"Release me, boy," she said in a voice that wasn’t Nora’s. "Come to me. I am
bound into darkness, and I need you to release me."
"Who are you?" he whispered.
She laughed, a high and evil sound, a witch’s cackle. "Do not ask me foolish
questions, boy. Release me. Grant me life again."
"I can’t," he moaned. "I don’t know how."
"You will," the woman speaking through his sister said. "Look into my eyes, as
deeply as you can, Jamison."
He leaned forward and swam in those evil blue eyes that had never belonged to
Nora. And was lost.
"You will come to me," she said. "You will find my room and you will free me.
You will know the room, Jamison."
"I will know the room," he said dreamily.
"Behind the wall, Jamison," the woman said from Nora’s mouth. "You must break
down the wall."
"How?" he asked, his voice slow and thoughtful.
"It will be easy," she replied, amused. "The wall is old and already beginning
to crumble. It only needs a strong boy like you to finally break it down. And
you must, Jamison. The time has come for me to be free. You have found those
things which once were mine and brought them to Collinwood, just as I hoped
someone would do. You have reached me, and now you will set me free again."
"I will set you free again," he said, and lifted his head. It took a great
effort, but he knew he had to ask. "What of Nora?"
His sister’s face registered disgust. "What about her?" she asked.
"I ... I don’t want her involved," Jamison said. "You can have me — use me
for whatever you want — but leave her alone. Make her forget. Please. You
only really need me."
The woman’s eyes narrowed, then her lips eased into a reptilian smile. "I will
bargain with you," she said at last. "I have no need for the girl after this
part of the ceremony ends. She will remember nothing, and I will not use her
again. But you ..." She laughed again, that tinkling, trilling sound like the
shattering of icicles. "You will know when the time comes, Jamison. You will
know ..." Nora’s head settled back on her chin, and Jamison stared at her,
frightened. Suddenly her eyes fluttered and she sat up, yawning.
"Nora?" he asked tentatively. She looked at him, and saw to his great relief
that her eyes were brown again, just like always.
"Well?" she asked him impatiently. "When do we play your game?"
5
Edith Collins was dying. She had accepted this fact, as she had accepted the
fact that she had died once before, fifty-seven years before actually, at her
last figuring, at the hands of the demented madman she had used to marry her
way into the Collins family. But though a resurrection had been possible at
that time, Edith had a feeling that now her time on this earth had almost run
out.
The thought made her even more tired, and her voice more querelous as she
called, "Judith? Judith, where are you?"
No answer. Her already creased and withered face sank into a frown. The
righteous anger that might have once flowed like fire from a tongue long-used
to administering punishments due and suitably horrible incantations was not
enough to spur her to a sitting up position, one where she could more
comfortably bawl out her miserable whore of a granddaughter’s name.
For she knew all about Judith’s "secret" liasons, oh yes she did. There wasn’t
much Edith Collins didn’t see these days, a woman of more than ninety though
she may be. And though I’m not capable of many of the feats I once was, Edith
thought, and her eyes were crafty, I’m not done with this family yet. Not done
by far.
If her grandchildren suspected she was little more than a doddering
responsibility who kept them at their tasks by virtue of the fact that her
withered hands still clutched the pursestrings of the Collins family fortune,
they still might not have batted an eye. Grandmama, as she was none too fondly
referred to these days and a name she privately loathed, might once have been
powerful (how powerful they would never know), but she wasn’t capable of
raising herself from her bed to totter to her chamberpot, much less raise a man
from his grave to exact vengeance on an errant lover, as she had once done in
her youth. How long ago that seemed.
Ill, perhaps, dying, certainly, but not doddering. Edith Collins did not
dodder, no matter what Judith and Edward might whisper between themselves over
their steaming cups of afternoon tea.
And speaking of tea, where in the name of hell was Judith? Certainly not still
rutting with that pig of a caretaker. Edith might once have approved of the
temerity Judith was exhibiting, but not at the expense of her evening tea.
Edith sighed, and even that cost her a measure of her strength. Judith was
going to have to learn a lesson.
She muttered a dark incantation beneath her breath and made a few passes in the
air, then waited expectantly. After a full minute had passed and no patterns
of emerald witchfire had materialized, suspended in air before her eyes, she
fell back against her pillows and gave up, defeated. It seemed she didn’t even
have the strength these days to conjure up a warning vision for her rotten slut
of a granddaughter.
"Damn this old body," she muttered. She thought briefly of her Pact, and
wondered why she had never thought to ask for immortality when she received a
full range of powers and another chance at life when she had freely given over
her soul to the Powers of Darkness. Idiocy on my part, she thought now.
Carelessness. Didn’t matter now. Soon everything would cease to matter. It
was nearly time to give the Devil his due.
Yes, soon she would die, but not before she passed on the Secret.
Ah, yes. The Secret. Her face, half-dozing now, grew greedy at the thought of
it. It was forbidden knowledge, stored in her ancient mind for nearly sixty
years ... and had been passed on to her quite by the simple virtue that both
sons of Daniel Collins, patriarch of the family at that time, had died.
Tragically, of course, but no one but her knew how tragically. She could still
hear Daniel’s voice, shaking and infirm but still noble, always noble, when he
had drawn her aside into his study. He had only hours to live, but only Edith
knew that fact.
"Gabriel should be the one to hold the dreadful knowledge of the Secret, Edith.
It’s for a man’s ears, really, but Gabriel is dead, and you are the only one
left. Daphne and Quentin are dead as well, and Tad is only a boy. Yes, it
must be you, Edith Collins. And you must keep this Secret until the day you
die, because the horror ... the horror must never be unleashed. It must be
contained, or it will bring suffering and death upon us all. The Secret is the
true curse of the Collins family, Edith, and it will destroy us if allowed.
Keep the Secret, Edith, and pass it on only when you must. Only when you must.
Because it will destroy you if you let it."
That was true, she had no doubt, but that didn’t stop her envy of it. Such a
power, she thought dreamily, such a magnificent store of dark power. If only
it could be tapped ...
Her old, rheumy eyes fluttered open. No, that would be impossible. Better to
be in her position and to know what fate lay in wait for her than to be trapped
forever in such a hell. A prison of flesh, really, she had thought at the
time, and she thought it now. Endless days and nights with the powers of a
god, but not at such a price. Her stomach grew sick at the thought of it, and
if nothing else, Edith Collins was a woman with a stomach of iron.
I cannot die until Quentin comes, she told herself, already slipping back into
a doze. They’re all clamoring to know the Secret — Judith and Edward especially
— but it will be Quentin I tell, for only he can truly understand its dark
beauty, its seductive power. Quentin knows the Black Arts, not as well as I,
but well enough, and to him will go this one last Secret, the best and the
blackest of them all.
She must wait for Quentin. Quentin would bring her salvation, and then she
could die, just slip out of this tired old body and into the arms of eternal
night. Whatever wanted her there could have her. The idea appealed to her very
much.
But first her tea.
"Judith?" she cried in a voice as pitiful as she could conjure, and was
rewarded when the door cracked open a bit. Her whoring slut of a granddaughter
had returned from her assignation, and was even now tip-toeing into the room.
Edith’s nearly toothless smile became wide and black. You’ve been a very
naughty girl, she thought, and asked, "And where have you been?"
"I went for a walk along the beach," Judith said colorlessly, and held up the
cup to Edith’s greedy, wrinkled mouth and stifled a grimace as it latched onto
the lip like pale leeches. "Grandmama, your tea."
6
The wind tousled her hair with mocking tenderness, for the final time, Magda
swore, and swept her cape imperiously through the frigid air hooting along the
beach below Widow’s Hill. She sneered at the overcast sky, where no stars
dared to glimmer, and shook her bejewelled fist at the tiny slip of moon that
was just visible through a tear in the cloud-sheath. "Old Magda done her
part," she called, and her voice buzzed with anger,"and she ain’t gonna do no
more. I come to this place, for what reason I do not know, to find a strange
girl that ain’t here. I do the work of someone who speaks only through cards
and visions, and I’m made a fool of." Her dark face twisted into something
obscene. "No one makes a fool of Magda Rakosi! No one! Do you hear me?"
"I hear you," a woman’s voice said calmly from behind her, and Magda stiffened
and whirled around. Fear supplanted the anger on her face, despite the gentle
tone of the stranger’s voice. She found herself facing a young woman with a
very pale face and long dark hair tied behind her head with a tiny slip of
green ribbon. Her eyes were dark, but they were haunted too, as though she had
just left behind a world of horror and pain.
This is the girl, Magda told herself, and was instantly ashamed. The only one
makin’ a fool of Magda Rakosi, she told herself scornfully, is Magda Rakosi,
and that is the truth. "Greetings," she told the girl with an inadaquate sense
of welcome, and wondered if she should offer her hand. "I was sent to ... ah
... get you. To bring you to Collinwood."
"Are you Magda?" the girl asked. She wore a high-collared blue dress with dark
buttons and little curls of lace at the sleeves. It might have been a
travelling dress; at any rate, Magda figured, this girl must’ve done quite a
bit of travelling.
Magda held her head high. "I am Magda Rakosi," she said proudly.
"Good," the girl breathed. "You’re the one I was supposed to find."
Magda narrowed her black eyes. "Who are you?" she asked. "How did you know
who to look for?"
"My name is Victoria Winters," the girl said. "I have an idea that you know
something about me."
Magda opened her mouth to reply, then her eyes fell on sand below the girl’s
feet and widened. Though Magda’s footsteps were clearly imprinted into the sand
for quite a ways backwards on the beach, the girl herself had left no tracks,
if indeed she had walked to find Magda, which Magda was now beginning to doubt.
It was as if she had simply materialized from thin air. Suddenly Magda
realized that was a very real possibility.
"I’m beginning to think I do," she said dryly. "I’m a Gypsy, Miss Winters, and
we do not expect the ordinary in nothin’ this life has to offer."
"You shouldn’t," Vicki said, and her voice was sad. "I have learned that there
is no such thing as ‘ordinary’."
"Where do you come from, girl?"
Vicki lowered her head and sighed heavily. "I don’t know," she said in a small
voice. "That’s been my trouble all along. I don’t know where I come from."
Spirit or not, Magda thought irritably, heavensent or from the depths of hell
itself, this girl don’t make no sense. "You had to come from somewhere, girl,"
Magda said, forcing the exasperation out of her voice. "You may have just
appeared from nowhere, but even then you had to come from somewhere."
Vicki looked up at the Gypsy before her, and her eyes were very dark, and they
filled with sudden resolve. It made her face ten years older, and Magda
wondered again about the horrors this girl — this woman — had endured. "Yes,"
she said, as though to herself, "I need to trust someone with my secret."
Magda brightened. "Then they sent you to the right Magda, they did," she said.
"Magda will keep anyone’s secret ... for a price."
Vicki looked at her, dismayed. "I don’t have any money," she said.
"You will," Magda said craftily. "You’re engaged to marry Edward Collins,
ain’tcha?"
Vicki looked surprised. "How did you know about that?"
"He’s been talking about you for weeks," Magda said. "All the servants are
talking about it. The children too. Their mother really isn’t dead, you know,
as much as Mr. Edward would like everyone to think she is, and no one is
really sure if they’re even legally divorced. But he sent for you, he did, and
here you are." Magda’s eyes narrowed. "But where did you come from, Victoria
Winters?"
"I have a letter here," she said. "It’s addressed to Edward Collins, and it’s
from my father in Boston, just before he died a week ago, promising his only
daughter to the oldest Collins heir. You see, Magda, I’m going to tell them
that my carriage overturned and that I can’t remember anything that happened in
my life before this afternoon. Simple amnesia. That way I simply cannot
slip-up if someone asks me a question I won’t know the answer to. I can always
blame my faulty memory and the accident that caused it. Edward will take me in
and comfort me, and then I can begin to find out what I need to learn to
prevent a tragedy."
"Girl, what are you talking about? What accident? What ‘nesia? What
tragedy?"
"Oh, there was a tragedy all right," Vicki said, and tears pricked at her eyes.
"It’s still happening, somewhere in the future, unless I can stop it. Time
has gone backwards, you see, and allowed me a chance to change the terrible
things that have happened in my time."
"What do you mean, ‘your time’?"
"Magda," Vicki said, and surprised the older woman by seizing her hands and
pulling her closer, "you are going to have to trust me, and I’ll pay you
anything I can get if you’ll keep my secret. Because I’m going to have trust
you as well."
Magda smiled, and Vicki was reminded uncomfortably of a crocodile. "I’m
listening," she said.
Vicki took a deep breath. "Magda, I was born in the year 1945, and I was a
governess on the Collins estate in the year 1967, when strange and bizarre
things started to happen ..." Vicki talked for a long time on their walk to
Collinwood, and by the time they reached the front door of the great house, it
had already started to snow. Magda wasn’t surprised. As this strange young
lady had already proved, Magda’s predictions had a way of coming true.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
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