Shadows on the Wall Chapter 90

CHAPTER 90:  Where the Wild Things Are

by Nicky

Voiceover by Christopher Pennock:  “Collinsport, in the dreadful and mysterious world of Parallel Time … a world that Barnabas, Julia, and Angelique have been able to enter via a warp in a room in the East Wing at Collinwood.  Now Angelique has lost her powers, and as she and Julia attempt to locate Barnabas, they find that this world is crawling with all manner of beasts … and that their lives are in gravest peril.”

1

 

            It was showing its teeth.  Angelique took a step back, assuming a fighting stance with her hands thrust out, her fingers crooked into the proper configurations, an incantation at her lips …

            Then she remembered.

            “Damn,” she said. 

            The creature looked like a werewolf.  It was hard to tell; sometimes demons resembled animals, but this thing, with its long snout and ivory-white teeth that were slick with slaver and amber eyes that glowed hot, could definitely be a werewolf, though she had never seen one with snowy white hair before.

            “Get back!” Julia screamed from behind her.  Angelique glanced over her shoulder and gaped.  Julia had wrenched a tree branch from one of the oaks that limned the edge of the woods and was brandishing it at the creature, her legs planted firmly, the branch cutting the air with a hiss.  “Come on,” Julia said to the thing that continued to bare it teeth.  A guttural growl rumbled in its throat and chest.  “Come on, you son of a bitch!”

 

            Go Julia, Angelique thought with growing admiration for her once-upon-a-time rival.

            Then the thing cocked its head and stood up to its full height, which was, Angelique estimated, at least seven feet tall.  “You aren’t Julia Hoffman,” the thing said in a guttural but perfectly understandable voice.  Its urine-yellow eyes flicked to Angelique and then narrowed.  “And you aren’t Angelique Collins.  Who are you?”

            “We will tell you nothing,” Angelique spat.  “Let us pass, beast.”

            “Angelique,” Julia said softly, and set the branch gently on the ground.  “He isn’t going to hurt us.  Are you,” she said to the monster.  It wasn’t a question.

            “That depends,” it said.  “I could tear you to pieces, the both of you.  Tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.  And why you look like –” and he raised a wolfish eyebrow –“that.”

            “Tell us who you are,” Angelique said, running smoothly over whatever Julia was about to say, “and what you are.”

            It grinned its lupine grin.  “I suppose that depends.  You aren’t from here, are you?  If I had to guess …”  And it laid its furry hand-paws on its furry hips and watched them appraisingly.  “I’d have to say you’re from another world, aren’t you.  A parallel dimension, something like that.  Our Angelique would never be caught dead in leather pants.  Plus she’s dead.”

            “How –” Julia began, but Angelique held up one perfectly manicured hand.

            “Be quiet, Julia,” Angelique snapped, ignoring the way Julia’s mouth narrowed and her eyebrows shot sky high.  But she shut up.  “I am a powerful witch,” Angelique said.  “It will be easy to destroy you, my friend.”  She held up her hands.  Her blue eyes flared.  “Very easy.”

            “You’re bluffing,” the creature said.  “I can smell magic, my dear.  Whatever magic you once possessed – and I sense that you did, once – is long gone.  So who –”  and its teeth now seemed very long and very, very sharp – “is going to destroy whom?”

            “We don’t have any choice,” Julia said.  She was studying the creature curiously.  Angelique rolled her eyes.  If only we had stayed in our own world, Angelique thought, then frowned.  A world where Sky is still dead, where no amount of magic can ever bring him back.

            Perhaps there is a Schuylar Rumson in this world … one I can find and love as I loved my own …

            But that was folly, as Barnabas was due to find out, she knew.  Parallel worlds, from what she understood, usually held occupants who resembled their counterparts in other places and times, but their personalities were nothing like them at all.  Sky would still be a warlock, Angelique sensed that, but he would be unremittingly evil.

            Like me, she thought, and closed her eyes for a moment.

            When she opened them, she saw that the sun had finally dropped behind the horizon.  Barnabas is waking up now, she thought, wherever he is.

            “You’re right, Julia,” she said at last, and looked at the monster in its terrible, intelligent eyes.  “You win, animal.  What do you want?”

            Its laughter was disturbingly like a howl.

2

             “Hoffman?” Barnabas whispered.  The sun was gone, and the shadows had fallen gracefully around the tombstones and mausoleums that dotted Eagle Hill like delicate lace; Barnabas had been relieved to discover that there was still a secret room in the Collins family mausoleum, and he had passed the day there.  But Hoffman was nowhere to be found.

            Guilt stabbed at him.  She didn’t deserve what he had done to her, even if she had survived the day.  He thought of Carolyn back in his own time, of his Julia, how he had tormented her, hurt her, hurt them both, deliberately.  And Vicki, he thought – if it hadn’t been for me, if I hadn’t encouraged her, she wouldn’t have used those powers, allowed them to consume her, destroy her –

            “Hoffman?” he called again.  He stepped out of the tomb and into the night.  It was warm, unusual for Collinsport, even in June, and little tatters of ground-mist swirled about his feet.  He sighed; though he wore his Inverness cloak, he cast no bat’s winged shadow on the ground.  I am not human, he thought, I should just stop fooling myself.  I will never be free of the curse.  Never.

            He would return to Collinwood and see Vicki … Victoria.  She seemed so different in this time, but perhaps he could help her.  Perhaps he could steer her away from the darkness, succeeding where he had failed in his own time.

            And there was the murderer to consider, and the vampire who had attacked Daniel and Amy.  There is no man named Damion Edwards in my own time, Barnabas thought, no one to base any assumptions on or any guesses or hypotheses.  Nevertheless, I will find him and destroy him.  The family must be kept safe at all costs.

            He paused. 

Why must they?  They aren’t really my family … are they?

            “I don’t know,” Barnabas growled, “I don’t know, I don’t know!”

            “Don’t you?”

            He froze mid-step.  That voice, he thought … my god, that voice –

            She stepped out of the shadows then, this new woman he knew but didn’t know, and he stared at her as if he had never seen her before.

            “Hello, Barnabas,” and the light of the rising moon glinted off her elegant fangs.

3

            “Hold the stake steady,” Victoria commanded, and Tom flinched a little.  “Don’t look at me that way.  Do it!”

            Damion Edwards lay in the coffin where she had discovered him this afternoon in a room deep underneath Collinwood that not even she had known existed; it had taken a great amount of her mystical powers to locate him at all, and by the time she had, it was almost too late.

            But the cross she had placed on his chest had immobilized him long enough for her to wait for Tom to awaken … and to find the stake and hammer.

            The former was positioned over the heart of the vampire in the coffin.  The latter was held by the vampire standing outside the coffin.

            Damion’s eyes blazed up at them, crimson with hate, and he bared his fangs.

            “Why is he like that?” Tom said.  “He can’t even talk.”

            “He is an animal,” Victoria said.  “I don’t know why.  He is vicious and inhuman.  Even more,” she said with an unusual flash of humor, “than us.”

            “I don’t wanna do this,” Tom whined.  He thrust the stake and hammer at her.  “You do it.”

            “You pansy,” Victoria hissed, and yanked them out of his hand.  He looked at her, abashed, like a bad puppy who had piddled on the floor.  “Honestly,” she said through clenched teeth, “you just can’t get good help these days.”

             “Grrrrr,” Damion Edwards said.

            “I remember you as much more eloquent,” Victoria told him.

            “How is he a vampire?” Tom said.  “Did you do it?  ‘Cause I didn’t do it.”

            “Of course I didn’t do it,” Victoria snapped.  She placed the tip of the stake over the vampire’s chest.  It glared up at her, the expression on its face black and murderous.  Its head began to lash back and forth on the pillow beneath its head.  “But,” she said suddenly, “we should find out who did.”

            “How?”  He looked at Damion doubtfully.  “I don’t know if it can talk.”

            “Hsssss,” Damion said. 

            “Listen to me,” Victoria said to the monster below them.  Its head ceased its lashing, and its lips closed over its fangs.  “Good.  You will tell me who made you what you are and you will tell me this moment.  Do you understand?”

            “Arrrrrrr,” Damion Edwards said.  His head began to lash again, back and forth, back and forth.

            Tom sighed.  “Useless.  You know, I think he’d kill us if he could.”

            “So do I,” Victoria said pensively.

            She raised the hammer.

            Damion shrieked as she used it to drive the stake deep into his heart.  The cords on his neck stood out; his eyes bulged and turned black; his head turned to the left and froze there, and blood ran out of its mouth in a thick mulch. 

            The mortification was nearly instantaneous.

 

            “Gross out,” Tom said, and turned away.

            Victoria couldn’t stop looking.  It was fascinating in some horrible way, as death always seemed to be.  He hadn’t been dead for too long, she thought; he hadn’t turned to dust.  Mostly he was just kinda … wet.

            Tom was right.  It was gross.

            “We’ll find out who did this to him,” Victoria said coldly.  “And then we’ll destroy him as well.”

            Together, they peered solemnly into the coffin.

           

            “Let’s get out of here,” Tom said after a moment.  “I’m hungry.”

4

            “Oh, Julia,” Barnabas said sadly, and shook his head.  “I never wanted this for you.”

             “I am not the woman you knew, Barnabas Collins,” Hoffman said.  Her voice echoed strangely now, holding within its tones the sweet sound of a crystal goblet lightly struck.  Her cheekbones stood out even more sharply than before; her hair blazed around her head in a wild crimson corona; her eyes threw forth sparks.  And her teeth …

            “No,” he said, then looked away.  “I suppose you are not.”

            She walked forward seductively, her hips swaying to a languorous beat.  “I am so much more,” she purred.  “I am the night now, Barnabas.  I am the darkness.”  She roared suddenly, a shattering sound like a lion.  The roar became low and throaty laughter.  She began to grin; now she was very close to him.  Her lips grazed his ear.  “I am going to eat everyone.”

            “Get away from me!” he cried.  He pushed her away and she took to the air, soared up into the sky, hung there, laughing still, the thin lavender gown she wore hanging before her like a cloud. 

           

            “Don’t cry, don’t cry, Barnabas!” Hoffman screamed.  Her mouth expanded and the fangs, thin and long like fish bones, protruded and slid over her lips.  “You mustn’t!  I’m not dead, I’ll never be dead!  When you’re bitten by a vampire you never die, Barnabas … you never ever die!”

            “Stop it, stop it!” he screamed … and then recoiled as something hissed by his ear, streaked through the sky, blazing like a comet, and tore through Hoffman’s dress.  She howled like a wildcat and began to beat at the flames that devoured the thin material hungrily.  As she began to blaze she dropped from the sky, howling still, until she struck the ground, and only then did the mad bestial sounds that erupted from her throat finally stop.  She rolled around frantically until the flames were extinguished, then resumed hissing.  “That,” she snarled, “was completely uncalled for.”

            A woman stepped from the shadows.  Her face was hidden by a cowl, but she did nothing to conceal the crossbow that she clutched with long white fingers. 

            Hoffman’s lips drew back in a cheated snarl.

            In her free hand, the other woman held an ax.  The moonlight glinted off it, sending silver spears to dazzle Barnabas’ eyes.

 

            “You –” Hoffman began.

            The mystery woman said nothing.  She threw the ax instead.

            Barnabas closed his eyes, but not soon enough.  Hoffman’s head tumbled from her shoulders and struck the ground with a dull thud like the sound of a watermelon.  Her body followed suit a moment later.

            “Oh my god,” a woman said behind him with a very familiar voice.

           

            “No,” Barnabas whispered.

            Julia Hoffman put her hands to her face; her eyes were wide and bulged in their sockets.  Behind her, Angelique watched with wide, inscrutable eyes.  At her side, a hulking, shaggy man-beast stared at Hoffman’s body; it said nothing, it made no sound, but its black lips peeled back and revealed its enormous teeth the size of piano keys.

            “Barnabas,” Julia screamed, “Barnabas, what have you done?”

            “Yes, Barnabas,” said the woman in the cowl.  She dropped it back onto her shoulders and revealed a face the color of porcelain framed by delicate drifts of curling red hair like feathers.  She smiled.  “That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”

5

             Julia wanted to die.  She had wanted to die before; when Cassandra fed on her, when Tom tried to make her his vampire bride:  those times had driven her to the brink of her sanity, but she hadn’t died.  She tried to hold onto that thought now as she watched the head of a woman who looked just like her – careful!  sanity! – topple from her shoulders and thud to the ground where it continued to stare, its mouth gaping, revealing needle sharp fangs.

            Barnabas … Barnabas did that to her.

            To me.

            Her eyes flicked up to the face of the man she loved … and held there.  He was stricken with horror, she could tell.

            And something else.

            Julia followed his gaze.  She was ice inside; she was torrents of lava.  Her eyes went where his did.

            The woman.  In the cape.  With the short – careful, Julia! – red hair and the proud, flashing eyes.  The woman who, even now, was pulling another wooden arrow from a belt around her waist. 

           

            She felt something twist inside her, dangerously close to breaking.  Not another one, she found herself thinking, oh please, god god, please, if you’re really there, and I’m sorry I never believed in you, but if you’re there … please don’t let him fall in love with this girl.  Please let him change.  Please.

            “It’s awful,” Angelique said quietly from behind her, “isn’t it.”

            Julia couldn’t bear to look at her.

            “Who are you?” Barnabas snarled to the stranger with the wooden arrows.

            The woman held herself up proudly.  “My name is Roxanne Drew,” she said.   “You are Barnabas Collins.  And you are a vampire.”

 

            “You don’t know me,” Barnabas said, and dropped his fearsome gaze.

            “I know enough,” said Roxanne Drew.  “I know that you turned Julia Hoffman into a vampire like yourself.  I know that she is dead this moment because of you.”

            “True,” he whispered.

            “And I know …”  She faltered for a moment, then tossed her head.  “I know that you couldn’t help it.”

            Barnabas looked up, speechless.

            Roxanne Drew continued to smile.  “That doesn’t absolve you of all guilt though, does it, Mr. Collins.”

            “No,” he said.  “No, it never does.”

            “Who are you, Roxanne Drew?”  Angelique’s voice rang across the cemetery.  “What have you to do with the people at Collinwood?”

            “I have a great deal to do with them,” Roxanne said with the barest trace of bitterness stinging her words.  “But you already know that, don’t you.”

            “I am not who you think I am,” Angelique said carefully.

            “I know exactly who you are,” Roxanne said.  Her eyes moved away from the witch to the creature at her side.  “Sebastian,” she called playfully, and the beast growled, a delicate purring sound like the tearing of cloth.  “You have done well.”

            “I brought them to you,” the were-creature said, “as you requested.”

            Julia heard these words dimly, as if her ears had been stopped full with earth.  I want to die, she thought; another woman, another me, what he did, what he did to me …

            “Why have you brought us here?” Angelique demanded.  “And who are you?  Answer me at once!”

            “You are in no position to be demanding answers from anyone,” Roxanne said.  “I brought you here to offer you a warning.  Leave this place.  Return to your own world, to your own time.  I am giving you a free pass, all of you.  You will not receive another.”

            “You dare,” Angelique said furiously, “you dare to tell me what to do –!”

            “How like her you are,” Roxanne mused.  “Wouldn’t you agree, Sebastian?”

            “I don’t want to play these games anymore, Roxanne,” the creature said.  “I want to find Chris.  I want to make sure he’s safe.”

 

            “He’s safe,” Roxanne said with a dismissive wave of her hand.  “And he’ll stay safe … as long as you continue to hold up your end of our little bargain.”

            “How do you know we come from another world?” Julia asked with a curious cock of her head.  The fog that had gathered around her was beginning to fade.  That wasn’t me, she thought, and willed the tears that burned behind her almond-shaped eyes to evaporate.  That was just another victim of the curse.  Not me … not me at all.

            “I know many things, Doctor Hoffman,” Roxanne said with a smile.  “I know that you came to this time through a warp in a room in the East Wing at Collinwood.  I know that your time is troubled as ours is.  I also know why the warp exists.”

            Angelique’s eyebrows shot up.  “You do?” she said, and took a step toward the titian-haired warrior.  “You must tell us!”

            “This world shouldn’t exist at all,” Roxanne said, and something sad came into her voice when she said it, something that tinged her words with melancholy.  “I shouldn’t exist at all.”

            “Then why do you?” Julia asked.

            “Roxanne,” Sebastian growled.

            Roxanne opened her mouth, then, considering, closed it again immediately.  “Leave,” she said instead.  “Now.  Immediately.  Go back to Collinwood and wait for the room to change.  That is your only hope.”

            “What if never does?” Julia cried.

            “Then you will die,” Roxanne said simply.

            And then she was gone.

            They blinked, the three of them, Barnabas, Angelique, and Julia; she did not fade or dematerialize, they would all agree on that later.  One moment Roxanne Drew had stood before them and the next minute she did not. 

            “What is she?” Angelique snarled, wheeling, and turned on the creature Roxanne had referred to as “Sebastian.” 

           

            “I can tell you nothing,” Sebastian said tiredly.  “If she had wanted you to know, she would have told you herself.”

            “Is she a threat to us?”

            “You are a threat to yourselves,” Sebastian said.  “There is something wild about you, as there is a wildness in this place, in this town … but your wildness is different.  I can’t put my finger on it, but perhaps Roxanne can.  Perhaps that is why she is so adamant that you all leave this place.”

 

            “Barnabas,” Julia said softly.  He stood before her suddenly; Angelique and Sebastian, quarreling still, seemed not to notice.  His eyes were red-rimmed and full of sorrow and grief, and he raised on finger and laid it delicately against the curve of her cheekbone.  She shivered.  She had expected his touch to be icy, but she had forgotten how cold it felt. 

            “Julia,” he said.  “Oh Julia, I am so, so sorry.  For everything.”

            “We came to bring you back,” she whispered.  “Angelique lost her powers trying to get us here.  I’m afraid that we’re trapped, Barnabas … forever.”

            “We’ll work it out,” he said.  “We’ll figure a way.”

            “We always do.”

            They smiled at each other.

            This, she thought, is the sun.

            “— power does she hold over you?  Is it Chris Jennings?  He’s your lover, isn’t he?  Has she threatened to destroy him?”  Angelique’s voice had grown sharper and more waspish; her eyes held sparks like tiny bolts of lightning. 

            “Chris Jennings?”  The creature cocked its head.  “I don’t know anyone by that name.”

            “Collins,” Barnabas said, and they both looked at him mid-snarl.  “In this time, he is Christopher Collins.”

            “As I told you,” the creature said.  “I can tell you nothing.  Return to Collinwood.  Leave this time.  It is an anomaly; it is an abomination.”

            “You can’t really believe that,” Angelique sneered.  “You couldn’t live if you believed that.”

            “You would be surprised what I can live with,” Sebastian said, and with that, he turned and bounded off into the deeper darkness that lay outside the graveyard.

            Angelique’s hands had curled into tight fists.  “These people,” she spat.  “Honestly.  And I thought the denizens of our Collinsport were weird.”

            “Angelique,” Barnabas said.  He was staring at her wide-eyed.  His lips had drawn together tightly until they had lost all color.  “Why are you here?”

 

            Angelique’s mouth opened and then closed.  She looked for a moment at Julia, who shrugged, and then she shook her head ruefully.  “I never learn with you, do I, Barnabas.”

            “What does that mean?”  There was an edge to his voice, and Julia didn’t like it.

            Neither did Angelique, apparently.  “It means that I could give up everything for you – everything – and it still wouldn’t be enough.  It will never be enough.”

            “You threatened to destroy me,” Barnabas said softly, “when last we met.”

            “Perhaps I should have,” she replied.

            They stared at each other.

            “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Julia snapped.  “I hate to ruin a beautiful moment, except in cases like this, when I don’t at all.  Doesn’t one of you have a cigarette?”

7

            And for Quentin Collins, hidden in the shadows, eyes wide, mouth a perfect O, the terror he felt abated as suddenly as it came, and his eyes began to gleam.  He turned away from the little trio gathered so tightly there by the gravestones and began to make his way back to Collinwood.

8

            Chris looked up from the notepad he was scribbling in furiously.  The shaggy white creature that stood before him, blocking the doorway, had been there for a long time, but he had been so engrossed in the notes he was making for the trial he had to attend on Monday morning that he hadn’t noticed his boyfriend’s reappearance.  He smiled crookedly.  I feel naked he thought, then realized – hilarious! – that he was.  “How long have you been standing there?” he said.

            The fur dissolved, the snout withdrew, the amber eyes became a gentle blue.  “Oh, awhile,” Sebastian said, and padded to the bed, then crawled in beside Christopher and snuggled up against him.  He peered up into his face and sighed.  “I love you,” he said gravely.  “I don’t think I tell you that very often.  But I do.  And I want you to know it.  You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

            Chris shook his head.  “You don’t get out much, huh.”

            “I’m not joking.”  And he wasn’t.  Chris had never seen Sebastian so serious before, not even the night he revealed his secret.  “You keep me tamed, baby.  That’s saying a lot.  Without you …”  He shook his shaggy head.  “I don’t even want to think about.”

 

            “So let’s not,” Chris said, and threw the notebook on the floor.  “Think about it, I mean.  Or anything.”  He took Sebastian’s chin in both his hands and guided their mouths together.  There was love then, and it was good.  It was the best.

            And afterwards, as they lay together, Chris dozing, Sebastian stared up into the darkness, and thought of Roxanne Drew, and hated her.

9

            “Get out,” Alexis said, and turned away from the front door of Collinwood.

            But the long white hand that shot out with serpent-like speed and clutched the door in an iron-grip stopped her in her tracks.

            “I don’t believe that I will,” Roxanne said, and smiled pleasantly.  “Miss Stokes.”

TO BE CONTINUED ...