Chapter 62 - Chameleons
By Nancybe
“Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon
You come and
go
You come and go”
"Karma Chameleon" by Boy George
Voiceover (David Selby): It is a night of transition
at the Great House of
Collinwood. A
witch who has reigned over the Great Estate in the past, the
future and in the present takes desperate measures to
ensure her survival while
a member of the Collins family learns that beauty is
only skin deep.
Meanwhile, a young traveler from the future must stand
and prepare to face her
destiny.
In her dream, she was beautiful again. Her long blonde hair was piled
elegantly atop her head with perfect ringlets framing
her smiling face. Her
gray eyes shone brightly as she surveyed all of the
handsome suitors who
anxiously sought to dance with her. Swaying in her velvet gown, she cast her
gaze on the lucky gentleman who would be allowed to
take her into his arms for
the next waltz.
She almost laughed at him, that tinkling laugh that could be
so musically cruel, when she saw how much like a puppy
he looked, a puppy who
bounces up and down at his mistress’ feet for a scrap
or a bone. Perhaps it
would be amusing to let him try to kiss her-
It was the nauseating smell of her own vomit that
wrenched her from the dream.
And once she was conscious again, the smell was
overshadowed by the vile taste
in her mouth.
She coughed and hacked and spit trying to rid herself of that
taste, but she had all of the strength of a newborn
kitten. She snaked out a
hand and weakly scratched at the dirt and leaves,
actually rubbing them over
her cracked and bleeding lips and into her mouth in an
effort to taste
something, anything, different than that of her own
regurgitation.
*I am lying here, a heap of garbage, with dirt in my
mouth. I have never been
so thoroughly vanquished, so completely
humiliated. * She started to sob
bitterly, but the motion caused her excruciating pain,
and she sank back down
trying to remain as still as possible. This was the end, finally and utterly.
Angelique was done.
Laughter. Deep,
mocking laughter that built until it reached a crescendo in
her ears. She
knew he wasn’t really in this time, but he was laughing at her
from outside of time and place, laughing at her
failure *again.* It was
infuriating.
“Damn you, Nicholas Blair,” she murmured in as defiant
a voice as she could
muster.
She was now not much more than smoking ashes in a
fireplace, but his
condescension was enough to spark the last ember of
survival instinct that
remained within her.
She would not give up. There had
to be a way.
*Jamison…*
*~*
The year 1897 had lost all of its charm for Count
Andreas Petofi, also known as
Victor Fenn-Gibbon, also known as, well, he had
forgotten all of the personas he
had adopted in his many years. His current favorite had to be Petofi, The
Great and Powerful.
(He was certain that if that Baum fellow he had met in
Chicago would publish his Oz stories that he would be
quite successful. But in
the meantime, the Count was happy to purloin the
“Great and Powerful” moniker
for himself.)
But the *man* known as Petofi was now in danger, and
chameleon that he was, he
needed to change his colors yet again. He needed to change from green to
plaid, to become someone else and go to *someplace*
else. He had come too far,
regained too much, to lose it now in the backwater
town of Collinsport, Maine
at the end of the 19th century. It was time to move on.
He knew but one man who could help him, who could
provide both the new face and
the unique means of transportation he needed. It was time to locate that dear
boy, the beautiful Quentin Collins.
*~*
Just to say the words, just to make the small
necessary motions with her hands
took every ounce of strength and willpower she
possessed. But she refused to
listen to that self-satisfied laughter for a moment
longer. In her mind, she
could see the smirk of delight on his face and the way
he rubbed his gray
silk-gloved hands together in glee at her
predicament. The vision reinforced
her desire to survive, and she did what was needed,
although when it was done,
she lacked the ability to stand.
She clutched at the bedpost for support and glanced
around the bedroom at the
furnishings, the things that were the pride and joy of
a young boy. Her eyes
settled on the replica of a sailing ship, and it took
her back to the sultry
days in Martinique when she would watch the
brilliantly white sails of the tall
ships appear on the sun-soaked horizon. She remembered the warmth of the sun
on her face and the sand on her feet, the excitement
in her heart as the
vessels brought strapping young men to her island. And
she vividly remembered
the day that a dark-haired, dark-eyed man had appeared
on the deck of one of
those ships.
His handsome face had looked down into hers and had smiled, his
eyes going gentle, and she had been lost. And finally, the long nights spent
in his arms – nights that had eventually brought her
here, to this. If she had
had the strength, she would have swept the toy ship
from its shelf and laughed
as it shattered into splinters on the floor.
Where was the brat?
Shouldn’t he be in bed? She
needed him now, desperately.
She needed his essence to repair what that demon
Petofi had stolen from her.
“Jamison,” she hissed softly. “Come to me.
I need you.”
She listened carefully for the sound of his step
although it was difficult to
hear above the uneven beat of her failing heart and
the hitching of her ragged
breath. But the
mansion was silent, unnaturally silent, without even the usual
settling sounds of so large a structure. Spying a dilapidated rag doll that
sported sagging and torn rabbit ears, she clasped it
to her, using its
connection as a beloved toy to lure in the prey that
she needed. She wrinkled
her nose at the smell of it but knew that she herself
must smell even worse.
“Jamison,” she repeated. “Come to me NOW.”
She closed her eyes and waited. A satisfied smile spread over her face as she
heard the door opening.
“You!” From the sound of it, young Master Collins was
none too pleased to find
her waiting in his room for him. “What do *you* want? Get out of here! This
is *my* room!”
“You won’t need it much longer, young man.” She
cringed at the sound of her own
voice – its usual lilting tone had been replaced by a
cracked and slithering
sound that sounded vaguely reptilian. “Come closer to me.”
Just his presence had reinvigorated her, and she moved
toward him. The boy
gasped as he got a better look at her, and he shrank
back with a cry of disgust
“What’s happened to you? You’re a monster! Get away from me!” he screamed.
Angelique reached out and grasped Jamison’s shoulder,
and he fell to his knees
with a whimper, paralyzed by her touch. “What has happened to me is nothing
that you cannot cure.
Look at me, Jamison Collins.”
The boy tried to resist, but the witch’s voice was as
hard as ice; her command
caused his head to jerk up like a puppet’s on a
string.
“All that you are, Jamison Collins, all of that which
allows you to live, now
belongs to me.”
His eyes grew wide as his jaw involuntarily fell open
at her words. She loomed
over him and began to chant words and names that meant
nothing to him except
for one final command: “Come forth!”
A silver mist began to rise from the boy’s mouth,
spiraling and twisting much
like a cobra dancing to the tune of a snake
charmer. As the boy’s strong and
vital life force climbed higher, Angelique opened her
own mouth to capture and
utilize it to heal her debilitating wounds. She wanted to laugh as she felt
the strength and power begin to seep back into her
body; Petofi would never
defeat her. She
would always-
“My * God *!
Jamison! What in * hell * are you
doing to him?”
The harsh cry from the doorway caused her to lose her
concentration and thus
her hold on the child.
The weakened boy slumped face first to the floor, and
the loss of his life force made the witch fall
backward away from the advancing
Quentin Collins.
“Get away from him, you witch!” he screamed at
her. “Have you killed him?”
“Quentin, I…I-” The effort to defend herself along
with the abrupt loss of
Jamison’s life-giving essence was too much for the
struggling Angelique. Her
last stand had failed.
Collins watched in horror as her flesh rapidly faded
from her body. In mere
seconds, all that was left of her were stark white
bones which promptly fell to
the floor with a crash. Miranda, the witch Angelique,
was no more.
And somewhere, a debonair creature with a gray silk
handkerchief in his pocket
was rocking back on his heels in laughter.
*~*
Quentin Collins wiped the sweat off his brow with one
arm. He wasn’t used to
such physical work, but this time, the effort had been
well worth it.
“Good riddance, witch,” he said, rubbing his hands
together to rid them of the
dust and mortar as he surveyed his hasty but effective
work. He was anxious to
get back to Jamison who was now safely tucked into his
bed.
He turned and promptly sucked in his breath. Two oversized eyes glowed back at
him through the gloom of the West Wing.
“Well, well, well,” boomed a voice laden with
gravel. “I didn’t know you were
a bricklayer, my boy.
And a fine job, I must say. Do
you think it will hold
her?”
“What do you want, Petofi?” the tall man growled. Quentin Collins was not
afraid of very many things, but the man before him was
one of those things.
“It is time to pay the piper, Mr. Collins.
And I am the piper.
“I want the I Ching.”
*~*
Petofi ran one thick, gnarled finger over the smooth
surface of the wand. It
reminded Quentin of a lover’s touch, and he struggled
not to gag.
“So these are the I Ching. Fascinating.”
The set of mystical wands were laid out on a small
cherry end table in
Quentin’s room. How he wished the whale of a man in
front of him would just
take them and be gone.
But the old Count did not seem to be in any hurry.
Instead, he turned his attention from the table to the
handsome Collins’ face.
The younger man felt his flesh crawl as Petofi’s eyes,
magnified to an
unnatural degree behind the thick lenses, caressed him
from head to toe.
“You really are a magnificent specimen, Quentin. What more could a man ask
for?”
Collins struggled to keep his voice and his fear of
this abomination under
control. “You’ve got the wands, Petofi. Take them and go. I need to see to
Jamison.”
“The boy will be fine.
She didn’t get what she needed from him.
Such an
arrogant, silly little witch.” He brought his hand –
The Hand – up to his face
and surveyed Quentin again as if trying to make a
decision about something.
“Yes, yes,” he murmured to himself, “ I know I should
hurry.”
Quentin’s hopes rose at these words but were quickly
dashed when Petofi spoke
again.
“But there is still too much fun to be had here. Don’t you agree, dear boy?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about, and I don’t
care. I’m busy, and I-”
“Oh, but you should care,” the old man said, wagging a
waxen finger at him.
“You *really* should care.”
Quentin’s eyes fixed on the intricate silver ring that
Petofi wore on that
finger, its robin egg-sized ruby mesmerizing and
drawing him in. *Look away!
Look away!* his mind cried. But it was already too late.
With a speed that Collins would not have thought the
Count could possess, he
had crossed the room and placed his hand – that
horrible appendage – on
Quentin’s head.
His grip was like a vice, and his victim cried out in pain.
Efforts to free himself from that loathsome hold were
fruitless; Petofi held
him in place like a bug on a pin.
“Have you any idea what it is like to survive in a
body such as mine, Mr.
Collins? Of
course, you would not. You have been
blessed by nature with
beauty and grace, with a charm that has no doubt
granted you entrée into an
infinite number of ladies’ boudoirs. Well, you are
going to know now, sir, what
it is like to go through life as I have. For what you have is going to be
mine, and you will inherit that which you see
here. To the victor go the
spoils, Quentin, and after all, I *have* been known as
*Victor* Fenn-Gibbon!”
His laugh ground into the younger man’s ears. It was surpassed in its horror
only by the foulness of his breath which invaded
Quentin’s nose and mouth like
a contagion.
Petofi’s hand suddenly closed into a fist, pressing
his atrocious ring against
Quentin’s forehead.
Collins was aware of a sucking sound and then vast
darkness. A
freezing cold paralyzed him making it hard to breathe; he thought
that this was what it must be like to fall below the
ice of a lake in winter
and not be able to find your way out. In the next moment, he had been
propelled out of a cannon, and the impact sent him
sprawling into the chair
behind him, out of breath and covered in stinking
sweat.
Only there had * been * no chair behind him. The chair had been behind
*Petofi*.
Disoriented, he pushed his glasses (*I don’t wear
glasses*) up his sweat-
slicked nose and looked around the room. The mirror in front of him showed a
Quentin Collins with a broad grin spread across his
face - but he knew that he
definitely was *not* smiling.
“Oh, this is marvelous!” the Quentin in the mirror
laughed at him with gusto.
*Since when do mirrors talk back to you?* he wondered
for a moment.
He watched as the mirror Quentin twirled and preened,
almost giggling as he did
so. *Bad whiskey,* he told himself. *Must have drunk some bad whiskey.* He raised
his hand to rub his aching forehead, and that is when
he screamed.
*~*
Something was wrong.
Victoria Winters could feel it in the air at Collinwood,
could feel it under her skin. It was a buzzing – not like bees but like the
hum of a current coursing through electrical
wires. It was making the fillings
in her back teeth ache. She wanted to talk to Quentin, to be with
him, but the
closer she got to his room in the West Wing, the more
she was sure that danger
was nearby.
Her fears were alleviated for a moment when she heard
his raucous laugh
floating down the corridor toward her. She cocked her head and listened
closely. It
*was* Quentin’s laugh - yet it wasn’t; it had the wrong
inflection. Her
momentary relief disappeared. There was something almost
unnatural about that laugh, something
almost…*inhuman*.
She quickened her pace and arrived at Quentin’s
partially open door where she
stood hidden in the gray shadows. His back was to her, and she started to call
out to him. But
when she realized what was happening in his room, his name
died in her throat.
*~*
“How do you like it, dear boy?” his own face taunted
him. “How do you like
being a bloated old man?”
Quentin/Petofi was staring at the liver-spotted hands
he held in front of his
face, listening to himself scream in Petofi’s
voice. He couldn’t seem to stop.
“You can scream all you like, Quentin. Or shall I call you “Count” now? I
suppose I should for appearances although it won’t
matter for very long.”
Quentin/Petofi lumbered out of the chair he had fallen
into, and just the
effort of standing made his heart race in his new
horror of a body. “You’ve
stolen my body, you bastard!” he yelled at his
adversary. “You have no right
to it!”
“Ah, but you knew there would be a price to pay for my
services when we made
our bargain,” he heard what used to be his voice
say. “There is always a price
to pay, Mr. Collins.”
It was surreal; he thought he would go mad. He took a shambling step toward
himself (*Not me, not me! Petofi!*) and swung his fat fist awkwardly
toward
the handsome face, but Petofi/Quentin sidestepped him
easily.
The old man in the young man’s body began to laugh
uproariously. “You are
trapped, Quentin.
Trapped forever,” and grinning, he scooped up the wands and
put them into his pocket. “While I, on the other hand, am off to a new
century!”
“You can’t…you can’t just leave me like this!” his
victim rasped. “I’ll stop
you! I’ll get
some help – my family won’t stand for this.
You are not the
only one with powers.
I’ll find-”
The body snatcher’s face had darkened to a dangerous
shade of crimson, and in
that instant, Quentin became aware that the man who
now inhabited his body was
hopelessly insane.
“Your family!” the thief roared. “They are powerless against me. Do not
harbor any hope from that front. But, I will tell you a little secret, my dear
Quentin,” he chuckled monstrously before lowering his
voice conspiratorially.
“I am going to delay my departure just long enough to
slaughter your entire
family and all who live at Collinwood, including that
meddling pig of a gypsy.
Ah, yes, I will enjoy squeezing that whore’s neck
until my fingers – your
fingers actually – puncture her skin and her thick
blood flows down my arm.
Her tongue, twisted and black, will pop out of her
mouth, and I will bite it
off and-”
A horrified gasp interrupted his reverie, and the thing
that would be Quentin
Collins whirled around. Victoria Winters stood framed in the doorway,
her
white face a mask of fear and disgust.
She had arrived in time to understand all that had
happened in this room of
funhouse mirrors.
Petofi had taken over Quentin’s body; her own father now
lived inside of her lover… *Oh God, this *did* just
happen, didn’t it? He
wasn’t in Quentin when we…I didn’t really sleep with
my own…What if he got me
preg-…Oh GOD!*
And she had gone from that horrible possibility to
listening to this demon
pledge to destroy all of the family… It was too
much. She had tried to stay
quiet, to see what she could do to help Quentin get
out of this mess but
hearing this atrocity speaking with the voice of the
man she loved, hearing him
planning to turn Collinwood into an abattoir… Her
terror had bubbled out of
her, and she had not been able to contain it. And now, he had her fixed with
those terrible eyes, eyes that still seemed to swim on
his face despite the
fact that it was no longer *his * face at all.
Vicki did the only thing she could. She ran.
*~*
She flew down the hall, down the stairs, all the while
damning the long skirt
this century’s fashion mavens decreed that she must
wear. She could hear him
behind her, right on her heels it seemed. She knew that as Petofi’s daughter,
she had the ability to stop him. It had to be her. Oh, why did it always have
to be her? Why
was she so lucky as to be the offspring of that creature of
iniquity?
Magda had told her to stop feeling sorry for herself,
that the tears wouldn’t
help, and the gypsy was right. Yes, she could stop her father, but she
needed
help. She
needed more magic than she knew how to muster by herself, and so she
had only one thought as she ran pell-mell from Collinwood:
* Find Magda.*
*~*
He did not have time for this interruption. He needed to catch and dispatch
this foolish girl and get on with his plans. It was liberating to run in this
young, lean body, but as he found himself careening
through the woods in search
of the troublesome Miss Winters, he realized two
things. Number one, Quentin
Collins had a lovely physique, but it was not
accustomed to sustained strenuous
physical activity.
The girl was fleet of foot, and he was quickly becoming
fatigued. And
number two, transferring into this body was not quite as
effortless as he had assumed it would be. He felt a little clumsy using this
vessel as if he hadn’t yet acclimated himself to
maneuvering Quentin’s long,
lanky limbs.
He stopped in a clearing – Victoria had veered off the
worn path and had headed
through a dense copse of trees – and bent over with
his hands on his knees
trying to catch his breath. He had little chance of catching her, he
realized
now. He did not
know these vast woods, and she obviously did.
He had no idea
where she was headed.
Perhaps she was headed nowhere at all considering how
she had bolted from Quentin’s room in a blind panic.
She did not matter; she was inconsequential. If she reappeared, he would
squash her under his heel like an insect. He started back toward Collinwood
(at least he hoped he was headed in the right
direction) intent on carrying out
his promise: he was going to annihilate the mighty
Collins family - tonight.
As he walked along placing Quentin’s legs one after
the other, he reassured
himself that Victoria did not matter. Just an insect to be crushed. But he
could not rid himself of the nagging feeling that she
was more dangerous than
that. That she
was an insect that could, perhaps, * sting *.
*~*
“Vicki, Vicki, dear, you must calm down,” the wizened
gypsy crooned to her.
Victoria had collapsed on the divan in the Old House
drawing room, her hair a
wild nest of ebony, her dark eyes dilated with
terror. Magda had never seen
her look so desperate, and the older woman was
struggling with the fear that
was inching its way up her throat. She’d had a soft spot for the girl since
she had first welcomed her to this time, and more than
a little of her
affection stemmed from the courage this young one had
shown from the beginning.
To see her this frightened scared Magda more than she
cared to admit even to
herself.
“Oh Magda, he’s going to destroy us all! He has so much power; I could feel it
flowing out of him!
The feeling – it’s horrible, filthy.
It’s pure evil,
Magda! I have
no other way of describing it.” Vicki sucked in her breath and
clamped a hand to her side where a vicious stitch from
her sprint through the
woods was sawing at her insides.
A brown hand extended a glass of brandy, and Vicki
swallowed it with a grimace.
Why did everyone on this estate always assume that
liquor could solve all of
their problems? She took a deep breath, and it was the
scent of candle wax
burning in Barnabas’ house that soothed her more than
the brandy ever could.
The gypsy woman sat down beside her and gently took
her hand, trying to still
her own trembling.
“Now you tell old Magda what you are talkin’ about.”
And so Vicki told her what she had seen and heard in
the West Wing. When she
was done, Magda’s copper skin had turned an ugly shade
of gray, and Victoria’s
hand ached from the gypsy’s increasingly tight grip on
it.
“Magda, I know that I am the one who must stop
him. But I don’t even
understand the powers that I have or how to use
them. Is there an amulet or
something, *anything*, that you know of that can help
me?”
“Poor gadje,” the gypsy whispered. She knew the young woman was holding her
fear –and her tears – at bay, but the effort was
taking a toll on her. Magda’s
admiration for this creature from the 20th century
grew as she watched her, and
she knew that if they got out of this alive, that she
would miss Miss Victoria
Winters when she returned to the future. She briefly wondered if the old tales
were true – could people be reincarnated as someone
else? Might she know Vicki
again in the future?
She had always wanted to be a healer…Maybe, just maybe
she would see Vicki again someday…
Magda, wife of Sandor, sister of Jenny, enemy of Count
Petofi, turned her
crocodile smile on Victoria and stood in a swirl of
purple skirts. “Magda
knows just the thing!” she announced, tapping her
chest vigorously with her
fist. “You,
Victoria Winters, are going to send that fiend, that *Petofi*,”
she spat the name like the vilest of curses, “into the *nowhere*!”
“The nowhere?”
“I am going to teach you a binding spell, Miss
Victoria, to trap him someplace
where he can’t get out. You is going to bind him so tight that he
will wish he
had the prune juice to drink!” The gypsy threw back
her long, black locks and
barked out a wicked laugh.
She just hoped that she sounded more confident about
the spell’s success than
she felt. For Vicki’s sake.
*~*
The man who now breathed with Quentin Collins’ lungs,
who now saw with
Quentin’s eyes and heard with his ears, burst through
the front door of
Collinwood. His
blue eyes blazed with a madness and a hatred that Quentin’s
eyes had never possessed. He stood in the foyer with his arms
outstretched
above his head and extended his hand – his Hand –
toward the sky. It was
Quentin’s Hand now that throbbed with the power, but
it did not totally
resemble the hand that the handsome Collins would have
recognized as his own.
The blood that coursed through this Hand was black as
a bat’s wings and writhed
with an identity all its own.
A growl started low in his throat. He shook his fists while the savage noise
that he made steadily built into a roar. The walls of the sturdy mansion began
to rattle, and the foundation quaked. Sparkling chandeliers fell from the
ceilings with ear-splitting crashes scattering crystal
and glass over rugs and
polished wood.
Portraits of long dead, sour-faced Collinses were ripped off
their nails and skittered down the walls tearing their
canvases into thick
shreds. Those
inside the house fled from their rooms in terror while below
them, a crazed madman bellowed his revenge:
“Woe to all who bear the Collins’ name! For it is I, The Great and Powerful!”
TO BE CONTINUED ...
