Shadows on the Wall Chapter 87

CHAPTER 87:  Homecoming

 by Nicky

(Voiceover by Nancy Barrett):  “A dangerous night on the great estate of Collinwood in the strange and disturbing world of parallel time.  Barnabas Collins has come home … but not the home he knew in his own time.  For this world is peopled by strangers with faces he knows and loves, though the personalities behind them are different.  But the monster inside him may destroy them nevertheless.  And on this night, Barnabas will learn just how dangerous this world can be …”

1

            Sunset.

            “Is Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in?”

            Carolyn could only stare.  She felt drug-addled, true, as she normally did, and she only saw the world through a hint of mauve, a splash of blue-gray, but that voice … that voice …

            I’m going to tell his story, Carolyn.  Barnabas Collins is the reason that this town is even still here, rotting and disgusting though it may be on the surface, but because of him, Collinsport is one of the up-and-coming towns on the east coast.  We’ll make a mint, baby, a mint!

            That had been Will.  And he’d written the book – The Life and Death of Barnabas Collins – but there had been no mint, because no one bought it.  And why should they?  Who the hell was Barnabas Collins?  And further, where the hell was Collinsport, Maine?  It hadn’t been up-and-coming, had never been up-and-coming; it really was rotting and disgusting and so were the idiots who still lived here.

            So no one bought the book.

            And now Will was gone.

            And here she was.

            And now … here he was.

            “Elizabeth … Collins Stoddard,” Carolyn whispered.  “Is my mother.”

 

            “Is that a fact?”  Polite.  Eyes that burned into her, making her a liquid, a puddle … just like his eyes. 

            They’re the same.

            Fear leaped up in her throat.

            His eyes burned … they blazed.  They captured and held her. 

           

            The fear disappeared, faded like mist under the rays of the sun.

            “Won’t you come in?” she whispered.

            “Thank you.”  He stepped over the threshold and followed her into the foyer.  “You may tell her that her cousin Barnabas –”

            “I know who you are,” Carolyn blurted before she could stop herself. 

            He raised an eyebrow; in the light, she thought, he doesn’t look so strange, so pale, so ghostly –

            So much like him.

            “You do?” he said politely.

            “My husband – my ex-husband, I’m sorry – Will, that is, William Loomis wrote a b-book about you.  Him.”  She flushed.  “Him, I mean.  Your ancestor?”

            “That’s right,” and he smiled, still so polite, “my ancestor.”

            “He wrote a book about him.”

            “I have read it.”

            “You have!”  She felt delighted.  “How wonderful.”  She swayed unsteadily, and then felt her hand taken.  His was like ice, and he held it tightly and helped her steady herself.  “Thank you.  I’m sorry, I haven’t been well.”

            “Perfectly all right.”

            “Why do you want to see my mother?”

            “She is mistress of Collinwood, is she not?”

            Carolyn laughed before she could help herself.  “Mistress of Collinwood!  Who on earth told you that?”

            He frowned and his lips grew thin and pale.  The laughter died in her throat as quickly as it had come.  “I must be mistaken.  Forgive me.”

            “Quentin is master of Collinwood.  Which makes his new bride –” and her mouth twisted sourly – “the mistress of Collinwood.”

            “Maggie,” Barnabas whispered.

            “Yes,” Carolyn said.  “How did you know that?”

 

            “Yes,” a woman’s voice boomed from the top of the stairs, “how curious.  How curious indeed.”  Carolyn’s face fell while Barnabas’ lit up.  Victoria Collins, wrapped in a long green robe decorated with dancing purple butterflies and that revealed nothing about her body, flowed down the stairs, and her dark eyes never left Barnabas’ face.  “Mr. Collins,” she said, and extended one hand.  “I’m Victoria Collins.”

            “Charmed,” he said, and brushed his lips against her outstretched hand.

            She shivered.  “Your lips,” she said.

            “It is a chilly evening.”  Thunder crashed in that next second.

           

            “So it is,” Victoria agreed.  Her eyes flicked to Carolyn and narrowed.  “Carolyn.  Why don’t you be a love and find Quentin and Maggie.  I’m sure they’re dying to meet the newest addition to the Collins family.”

            Carolyn said nothing, but held her head high and flounced away.

            Victoria smiled.  “Nice girl,” she said.  “But so tragic.  Seems she can’t keep a husband.  Surprising, wouldn’t you agree?  Let me apologize for her behavior.”

            “You needn’t worry,” Barnabas said.  His eyes never left Victoria’s face.  “I understand there has been tragedy here as of late, yes?”

 

            “I suppose that depends,” Victoria purred, “on your definition of tragic.  Quentin’s first wife died ages and ages ago – a stroke, unexpected, and rather silly, if you ask me – but the rest of us have just …”  She shrugged.  “…carried on.”

            Barnabas looked taken aback.  Victoria would not allow her eyes to narrow.  Suspicion would be a weakness, she determined in that moment, and so smiled instead.  “I’m very forward, Mr. Collins,” she said, “I’m afraid to say.  I’ve often been told that.”

            Barnabas seemed to rally.  He smiled too.  “A virtue,” he said.  “I can appreciate a woman who speaks her mind.”

            “Yes,” Victoria purred.  “I imagine that you can.”

2

            The meeting with the rest of the family was a disaster.

            Quentin descended the staircase, his face a mass of thunderclouds, just ahead of a soaking dishrag of a woman who, Barnabas saw with a start, could have been Angelique, if Angelique never looked in a mirror or touched a hairbrush.  “I don’t understand where she could be,” Quentin growled.  “Why run off now?”

 

            “I can’t imagine,” said the woman who must be Alexis, Barnabas reasoned, the twin sister Hoffman had described to him.  Her hands met and dueled and parted, then met and dueled and parted, and she gnawed at her lower lip until Barnabas was certain it would bleed.  He could actually smell the blood below the surface, and felt his stomach twist with guilt and hunger.  He thought for a moment of Hoffman, her eyes glassy, her face absolutely devoid of color, unconscious still in the secret room where he had left her, and pain stabbed at him again. 

            “Quentin,” Victoria called, “oh Quentin, you simply must meet –”

            But Quentin had stopped short three steps from the bottom, so abruptly that Alexis had no time to recover and ran into him.  It might have been comical if the expression on Quentin’s face hadn’t been so thunderstruck.  “Not possible,” he whispered.

            “It is, though,” Barnabas said.  He forced his voice to be silky-smooth and stepped forward, extending his hand.  “I am your cousin, Barnabas Collins, from South America.”  If Hoffman didn’t lie about that as well, he thought darkly, and the guilt lifted for a moment.

            “We have no cousins in South America,” Quentin said.  He was still stunned, still frozen on the steps.

            “But we do,” Carolyn said from behind them.  “Or we could.  Didn’t you read Will’s book, Quentin?”

            “I skimmed it,” Quentin said.  He stepped into the foyer and took Barnabas’ extended hand.  “Quentin Collins.”

 

            “I know who you are,” Barnabas said.  “It has long been my dream to meet the Collinses of Maine.  My esteemed relatives.  I’m only sorry it took me so long to make it this far north.”

            “I’m sorry for the outburst,” Quentin said.  “My wife has gone missing, you see.  We had a fight –”

            “We don’t need to discuss this now,” Alexis said.  Her voice quavered, and those big blue eyes that had terrified Barnabas for so long were wet and harmless.  “I’m sure Mr. Collins isn’t interested in our .. domestic disputes.”

            “Perhaps,” Barnabas said smoothly, “I should call another time.”

            “Nonsense,” Quentin said.  “If she’s going to behave like a child, I will treat her like one.  I refuse to run after her every time she has a tantrum.”

            “That isn’t fair, Quentin,” Alexis said softly.  “I’m sure she’s just upset.”

            “Yes,” Victoria, but no one heard her but Barnabas.  “I’m sure that’s it.”

3

            The woman was dead. 

            Tom looked at her appraisingly, then rolled his eyes.  He should have known when he took her from her place in the shadows at the wharf that she had no real stamina.  He grinned.  So few women could handle his affections.  Victoria was one, but Victoria was different … special.  After all, he thought, and grinned, she made me the man I am today.

            The woman’s eyes were glassy, wide with terror.  Her mouth gaped.

            The rest of her was destroyed.

            He glanced around her apartment.  Dark.  Dingy.  He hated it.  It reminded him of the hovel where he had spent the rest of his teens and early twenties after he and Chris were ejected so unceremoniously from Collinwood, and where he had … well, “lived” wasn’t the proper word.  “Hunkered” was better.  Yes, where he had hunkered … until Victoria came along and freed him.

            He wouldn’t leave Collinwood again.  Not ever.

            Certainly not for a place like – and his nose wrinkled – this.

            He couldn’t help that he was a killer.  That was the price he must pay for being Victoria Collins’ beloved.  And it didn’t really bother him anymore, most days.  Not really.

            He sighed and turned away from the shredded corpse.  He picked up the phone and dialed.  “Christopher,” he said.  “Hate to interrupt.  Give my best to Sebastian.” He frowned.  “Brother, brother, please.  I’m trying here.  Really.  I just wanted to see if you’d thought about my suggestion.”

            Chris said something unpleasant.  Chris said something horrifically unpleasant.  It made Tom want to snarl and raven.  Instead he smiled.  He liked to smile.  Smiling made him feel powerful.  So he smiled and he said, “You’ll come around, brother, I promise you.”  And he hung up.

            Then he doused the apartment with gasoline, stepped outside, and tossed a lit match.  He was gone before the flames roared up and began to consume the entire building.

            Later, he enjoyed the wind as it rushed against his face.  He thought of Victoria.  Everything was easier when he thought of Victoria.  He closed his eyes and let the darkness wash over him.  And that was how he liked it.

4

            “It was Tom again,” Chris sighed, and turned to the window.  “Your timing is incredible, by the by.  Why couldn’t you have come up five minutes ago?  I wouldn’t have answered the phone if you’d been here sooner.”

            The creature poised in the window was covered from head to toe in white fur.  Its eyes were amber, and its snout curled back revealing black lips above yellow, slavering fangs.  It seemed to be laughing.

            “Not really funny,” Chris said.  “Get in here before someone sees you.”

            The animal dropped on all fours to the floor then rose to its full height, just over seven feet.  Its body was lithe, roped with muscle beneath the snowy fur.  It was panting, out of breath from its exertions.  It shook itself, and water from the rain still pouring outside flew in a spray.

            Chris laughed despite himself.  “You’re adorable.  Come here.”

            The creature came and transformed as it did.  The fur melted away, its body began to dwindle, the eyes shifted from yellow to blue, and by the time it reached him, the animal had become Sebastian Shaw again.  He was smiling as he wrapped both his arms around his boyfriend and pressed him close against him.

            “You’re naked,” Chris said.  His voice was muffled against Sebastian’s chest.

 

            “You noticed.”  Sebastian chuckled.  His voice was still deep, still raspy with the tones of the animal, the way it roared and bayed at the moon.

            “That was Tom,” he said.  “He’s still on this ‘move into Collinwood’ kick.”

            “So?” Sebastian said.  “Let’s do it, babe.  Why not?”

            “Because I don’t want to,” Chris said, and turned away.  “There’s something wrong with Collinwood.  I’ve told you that before.”

            “Hey,” Sebastian said, and looped his long arms around Chris’ neck, gently turning him back so they stood face to face.  “You’ve got me.  I can protect you, you know I can.  Look at me.”  He laughed.  “Werewolf boyfriend.  What more do you need?”

            “To not live at Collinwood,” Chris said. 

            Sebastian rolled his eyes.  “You take everything too seriously.  I’m sorry, babe, but you do.  If there’s magic there, even bad juju, who better to face it than someone else made of magic?  Curses were meant to be broken.”

            “Not by you,” Chris said, “and not by me.  We are not getting within a thousand feet of that house.”  He took Sebastian’s hand.  “Promise me.  Promise me.”

            Sebastian heaved a dramatic sigh.  “I promise, I promise.  Hey.”  He sank to his knees and grinned up at Chris.  “Here’s something else I promised you.”

5

            Roger Collins was crying.  Not where anyone could see him, of course; that would never do.  Never show a weakness, that was his motto.  Leaving Collinwood had been weak; attempting to settle with that vicious hellcat Laura Stockbridge had been weak; giving up the child he should have had the balls to stand by and raise himself was weak. 

           

            But I came back here, didn’t I? he thought.  He looked up at Angelique’s portrait and said, “Didn’t I, my darling?  That was something, wasn’t it?  That was brave, wasn’t it?”

            She said nothing.  Of course she didn’t.  He thought of the time when Alexis first came back after Angelique’s death at the ridiculous séance, came back and snuck up behind him as he held forth before the portrait of her sister, raising his glass and sloshing the champagne over its side and camping it up ludicrously.  “She won’t come back,” Alexis had said, and it had been liked needles in his ear, like broken glass shoved inside him, the way her voice shivered and quavered.  She was the weak one, with her eyes so wide and terrified, the way her hands trembled and chased each other like frightened animals.  “Angelique is dead,” she had declared.  She was as close to hysteria as he had ever heard anyone else dwelling within the walls of Collinwood, and he would have rolled his eyes at her if he hadn’t still reeled from the shock of her intrusion.  “She is dead, why does everyone insist that she’s coming back?”

 

            “Because she has to,” Roger said now, and looked up into her cerulean eyes.  He could drown in them, and he would, willingly, throw himself into the sea if it would just bring her back.  “You will return.  I’ve prepared the way.”  More tears fell in freshets from his eyes.  “And we can be together … at last.”

            Weak.

            “I’m looking for Maggie,” Carolyn said from behind him, and he whirled to face her.  His face was still wet, and he wiped the tears away hastily, but he knew that she had seen them.  The disgust on her face told him that she had.  “Have you seen her?”

            “No,” Roger said.  His voice sounded like a foghorn.  How humiliating.  “Why would she be in this room?  She doesn’t even belong in this house.”

            “I’m not here to argue with you, Uncle Roger,” Carolyn said.  Her voice was dead and flat as it had been since her precious Will had left her behind.  Never mind that precious Will had been sticking it to half the hussies in Collinsport for years.  Roger wouldn’t allow himself to admit that Angelique had been one of those hussies.  “Maggie and Quentin had a fight, and now no one knows where she is.  And we have a visitor, and Quentin wants her to meet him.”

            “A visitor?”  A him?  Roger wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve.

            Carolyn shook her head.  “Barnabas Collins,” she said.  “He’s a cousin from South America.”  She smiled nastily.  “He says.”

            “Why would he lie?”

            She shrugged.  “No reason he should.  He looks just like his ancestor.  The man Will’s book was about.  But I don’t suppose you read it, did you.”

            “Of course I didn’t.”  He drew himself up to his full stature.  He sneered.  He was good at sneering.  Sneering made him feel powerful.  He sneered at his niece.  “Why would I?  Will has no talent.  He never did.”

            Carolyn’s face crumpled, but she turned away from him and held herself perfectly still.  “You can stay here, for all I care,” she said.  “Crouch here before your beloved Angelique.  She’s the only one who ever listened to you anyway.  Why should that have changed?”  And she was gone.

            Roger’s sneer faded.  His eyes drifted back up to the portrait.  “She’s right, you know,” he said.  “But everything is going to be different now.  All the birds have come home to roost, so to speak … you’ll see.  You really, really will.”

6

 

            Barnabas had grown distinctly uncomfortable; his skin itched and he felt the urge to simply dematerialize, rematerialize in Angelique’s room, and just … wait for the room to change.  He couldn’t stand this anymore; it was maddening.  It wasn’t at all like when he had ventured to 1897 to help Vicki save the modern day family by changing time; those were his relatives, his descendants, his flesh and blood.  They were essential to the well-being of the Collins family he had come to love in 1968, and so he had helped to save them.  These people … it was unnerving, and more than that.  They looked like his friends and loved ones in his own time, but … they just weren’t.

            They were all … all so different.

Victoria continued to stare at him openly, not with curiosity, as he had first surmised, but with something … darker.  She isn’t my Vicki, he thought, but another part of him – the part that saw Josette in her to begin with, he supposed – that part rose up and snarled, You don’t know that, you haven’t had time to tell, you don’t know!

            But he thought about her eyes, how cold they were, and the things, the dreadful, terrible things she had said when he met her only an hour ago.

            Could she be a monster in this time as well?

            But that would be too cruel.

            “You’ll have to stay at Collinwood,” Quentin was saying.  “I’m sure that Maggie would offer herself –”

            “Quentin,” Alexis said reprovingly.

            “Of course,” Barnabas said without thinking.  Then he straightened up.  How could he explain why he wasn’t staying at Collinwood, why no one saw him during the day?  The Old House was gone; he couldn’t stay there.  His mind raced.  “That is,” he said, “I will, and soon.  I have … independent quarters at the moment.”

            “Wherever at?” Victoria said.  Her brown eyes danced.  “You don’t know anyone in town … do you?”

            “I am staying at the Collinsport Inn,” Barnabas said.  His hand tightened on his cane.  Julia had once pointed out to him how amazing it was that he hadn’t rubbed all the polish off that silly wolf’s head.  He missed her suddenly, surprisingly.  He thought of Hoffman again, unconscious in the secret room, and gritted his teeth.

 

            “That’s ridiculous,” Quentin said.  “You are a Collins!  You can move in tomorrow morning.”

            “Thank you, cousin,” Barnabas said, “but I’m afraid –”

            Carolyn’s drilling shrieks filled the drawing room.  Quentin’s face narrowed with irritation; Alexis looked up, an alarmed rabbit; Daniel rolled his eyes; Elizabeth frowned and opened her mouth; Barnabas leaped to his feet.

            Carolyn was poised in the doorway, swaying unsteadily.  Her eyes were wide and glassy with shock, and all the color had drained from her face.  “Angelique’s room,” she whispered.  “Angelique …”

            Then she dropped to the floor in a heap.

            “Carolyn!” Elizabeth cried, and rushed to her daughter’s side, but the other woman was unconscious.

            “Quentin,” Alexis whimpered, “what do you suppose she meant?”

            “There’s only one way to find out,” he said darkly, and strode out of the drawing room and up the staircase.  Barnabas and Alexis followed.

            They heard his howl of anguish before they caught up with him.  Alexis peered over his shoulder, frozen in the doorway to Angelique’s bedroom, then shrieked, pulled at her face with her long fingers, and shrieked again.

            Barnabas was paralyzed, utterly unable to move.

            The room was a shambles.  Blood soaked the tangerine curtains, the blue canopy on the bed, the pale cream carpet.  Blood had splashed onto the lined wallpaper.  It dripped down the lips of the image of Angelique, rendering her smile crimson and malicious.

            Quentin howled again, but seemed powerless to enter the room.  Alexis did, dropped to her knees, and looked for signs of life.

            But there were none.  Barnabas already knew.  The body on the floor before them was quite dead.  How could it live?  The heart … the heart was …

            He wanted to weep.  Somehow, he thought, and wanted to look away but couldn’t, somehow this is all my fault.

            And the dead eyes of Maggie Evans Collins stared – and would continue to stare, until someone mercifully closed them – upward in horrified, frozen fascination.  

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...