Shadows on the Wall Chapter 96

CHAPTER 96:  Loop

by Nicky

Voiceover by Thayer David:  “The Collins family has known terror … centuries of terror.  But one woman, having traversed the centuries backward, has now accomplished the impossible.  Julia Hoffman has become a resident of the future, and while those she left behind in her own time become reacquainted, Julia will learn that the family may be doomed forever … trapped in an endless cycle they will never escape.”

1

 

1968

            “Eliot,” Barnabas said warmly and took a step forward … then hesitated.  Stokes noticed the hesitation and frowned, but said nothing.  Barnabas glanced at his hands once, saw that they were as they had always been, human, slightly pale, chilled, but nothing like the monstrous clawed horror he had seen only a few moments ago.  He strode forward then, and clasped both of the Professor’s hands in his.  “Oh Eliot, you have no idea how good it is to see you.”

            “The same, old friend,” Stokes said.  His eyes traveled to the people behind Barnabas and widened somewhat.  “No,” he whispered, “no, it isn’t possible!”

            Angelique, her hair black as sin, thought for a moment that the Professor’s fear – justified as it would be, given the circumstances under which they had last parted – was for her, but then she saw where his eyes rested.

            “Jeb,” Stokes choked, “Jeb Hawkes!  But … but we destroyed you!”

            “Eliot, no,” Barnabas said, but Sebastian had already stepped forward, one hand extended.

 

            “My name is Shaw,” he said, “Sebastian, that is.  And you must be Eliot Stokes.”  His hand remained, hanging in the air, but Stokes continued to regard him with some suspicion.  “Look,” Sebastian said, “I don’t know anything about anyone named Jeb Hawkes –” and his tone, directed at Barnabas, was tinged with accusation – “but I assure you, I am who I claim to be.”

            “You come from that other time,” Stokes said, and finally took Sebastian’s hand.  “That’s it, isn’t it.  That’s the difference.  You come from Parallel Time.”

            “I guess I do,” Sebastian said, grinning despite himself and shuffling his hand through his shaggy tangle of blonde curls.  “Although, for me, this is Parallel Time.”

            “Cousin Barnabas?” Carolyn, forgotten by Stokes in the moment, whispered from behind them.

            “Carolyn,” Barnabas said tenderly, and then she ran forward and embraced him, pressing her face against his chest.  “My dear, it is good to see you again.”

            “We were so worried,” she said.  Her eyes were wide and blue.  “I feel as if you were gone for so long!”

            “It’s only been a few weeks,” Barnabas said, his voice gentle.

            Carolyn opened her mouth to respond, then her eyes fell on Angelique, and she clutched Barnabas even more tightly.  Her breath came in short pants.  “Y-you,” she said.  “Cassandra!”

            “Carolyn,” Barnabas said, shooting a trouble glance at Stokes, “this is –”

 

            “Cassandra,” Angelique said, and took a step toward the frightened heiress.  “You are quite right, Carolyn.”

            “But you aren’t,” she said.  “You’re more than that!”

            “Much, much more,” Angelique said.  Her lips dimpled into the evil smile Barnabas knew only too well.

            Carolyn’s eyes grew wider and hazy.  “Your name is Mrs. Rumson,” she said, “but it’s Mrs. Collins too … Angelique Collins … Angelique Bouchard … and Miranda … Miranda DuVal …”

            Angelique’s eyes flashed with fury.  “How do you know this?” she cried.  She lifted one hand, and silver sparks flew from her fingertips.

            “Angelique!” Barnabas roared.

            “Miss Stoddard has been training with me,” Stokes said quickly and stepped between them, “honing her psychic skills.”

            “Psychic skills!” Angelique cried, then tittered.  She also dropped her hand; the sparks sputtered and vanished into nothing.  “Oh, excuse me, please” she said, “but Carolyn … a psychic?”

            “It’s true,” Stokes said.

 

            “You needn’t laugh,” Carolyn said, flashing anger.  “I know what you are … what you’ve done!  Witch … murderess!”

            “So Carolyn is in the fold now, is she,” Angelique continued to giggle.  “Marvelous.  If we need someone shanked or decapitated, we’ll make certain to call on you, my dear.”

            “That’s enough,” Barnabas commanded, his voice like a gunshot.  It hurt him to see the look of pain that flashed across his cousin’s face.  There had been such pain there as of late, and he knew that he himself was the cause of much of it.

            “Perhaps it is,” Angelique purred.  “You know, I believe she’s right.  If I must look like this –” and she tossed her blackened hair – “then perhaps it is safer that, from now on, I resume my guise as Cassandra Collins, grieving widow.”

            “Uncle Roger,” Carolyn whispered.

            “Our marriage was never officially dissolved,” Cassandra observed.  “Yes, I feel it is very appropriate.  Angelique Rumson is gone.”  Her voice softened. “Like Sky is gone.”

            “Cassandra was cold and devious, need I remind you,” Barnabas growled.  “A woman driven by her need for revenge.”

            “I have changed, Barnabas,” Cassandra said, “you’ve seen it for yourself.  Cassandra, Angelique, Miranda:  I am the sum of my experiences, and I am different now.  I helped you in the past –”

 

            “You did,” Barnabas admitted, but reluctantly.

            “—and I will continue to help you.  If you do not reveal my secrets –” and she glared at Carolyn, who returned her glare spark for burning spark – “then I will help you preserve the Collins family.  We’ve shared love before, Barnabas.  Perhaps …”  Her voice dwindled, wistfully.

            “Where is Julia Hoffman?” Stokes asked to bridge the sudden awkward silence, uncomfortably aware of the looks Cassandra sent Barnabas, and how he was just as determinedly ignoring them. 

            “We … aren’t certain,” Barnabas said.  Stokes and Carolyn exchanged glances.  “She returned with us from Parallel Time, but then, just as swiftly, she vanished again.”

            “Inside that room?” Carolyn whispered.

            “Yes.  That room.”  Barnabas bared his teeth, and his grip tightened on the head of his silver wolf’s head cane. 

            “We will find her, Barnabas,” Cassandra said.  “Just because I can’t sense her now doesn’t mean I won’t be able to find her.”

            “Your powers –”

            “My powers are as strong as they’ve ever been,” Cassandra said.  Her eyes flashed.   “I will find Julia Hoffman … and I will bring her back.  I promise you that.”

2

2014

 

             Barnabas was a monster.

            Julia wished she could quash the thought, but it was too late, and she had thought it.  Besides, it seemed to be true.

           

            “Juuuuuuuulia,” Barnabas said again, his voice hissing, serpentine, the words sliced and disjointed by the saber-fangs that jutted at horrific angles from his gums and curved over and down his lips.  They were slick, gleaming with drool.  His skin bulged and danced constantly, as if there were living animals beneath, just over the bones, worms maybe, writhing.  What little hair still clung to his scalp grew scant and wiry over scaly patches that appeared pink and raw-looking; his ears were those of an enormous bat, and twitched constantly at even the slightest sounds:  the wind outside, the snarl of the wolves at his side, each of the three women’s tortured gasps of breath.  His fingers had grown impossibly long, and each ended in a curved yellow predator’s talon.  One of these monstrous hands still clutched his wolf’s head cane. 

            “That isn’t Barnabas,” Cassandra hissed. 

            “What’s happened to him?” Julia groaned.

            Barnabas chuckled dark laughter.  His Inverness cloak swirled around him.  He held up one of those dreadful, gnarled hands, and the wolves behind him crouched low to the ground and froze there, growling.

            “Cousin Barnabas,” Carolyn said, and her voice trembled with fear, “you must leave now.  You can’t come in.  You don’t want to hurt us, and you can’t come in.”

            “Juuuuuuulia,” Barnabas said again.  His nose was pig-like, a bat’s horned snout.  It snuffled at the air.

 

            “This has been a transformation of years,” Cassandra told Julia.  Her voice was grim.  “He hasn’t been able to make anything beyond basic one or two syllable words in almost a decade.”

“Juhleek,” Barnabas said darkly and snarled, brandishing his cane.

            “His humanity may be gone,” Cassandra said with a wry smile, “but he does retain his basic memories.”  She held up a warning hand; black sparks and spirals of magic danced between her fingertips, and she called to him, “Leave this place, Barnabas.  I will destroy you, have no doubt of that.”

            “Juhleek,” Barnabas said again, but his voice was gentle now, purring.  He was grinning, and freshets of foam collected at the corners of his mouth.

            “You must return to your own time,” Cassandra said suddenly; Barnabas feinted, made as if to dart forward, and the air before him shimmered with heat, and a perfect circle of flames appeared before him.  He recoiled, growling like a wounded animal, and held one arm up to shield his face.  “And you must return there alive, Julia.  Whatever happened before must not be allowed to happen again.”

            “But I don’t know how to get back there,” Julia cried.  “You make it sound so simple, Angelique.  I can’t just open up any door in this house hoping to find a gateway to another time instead of a linen closet.”

            “I can try to help you,” Cassandra said, and snapped her fingers.  The circle of fire lengthened, grew, and resolved itself into a cruciform shape.  Barnabas’s cries of agony grew louder and more frantic.

            “You’re hurting him!” Julia barked.

            “He will kill us without thought,” Cassandra snapped back.  “Don’t be a fool.  That isn’t Barnabas anymore.  It hasn’t been for a long, long time.”

            “But why?  How … how did this happen?”  Julia’s eyes narrowed.  “Was it you?  Was it something to do with your magic?  You know that your powers have never been terrifically stable –”

            “How dare you?” Cassandra said.  “How dare you even suggest such a thing?  I tried to help Barnabas, Dr. Hoffman –”

            “Yes,” Julia said, her voice sharp with the force of her sarcasm, “and we all know how committed and genuine your attempts have been in the past.”

 

            “This is not the time!” Cassandra shrieked.  One of the wolves at Barnabas’s feet suddenly leaped forward, through the cross of fire, and struck Carolyn in the chest.  She went down with a scream, the wolf’s yellow fangs snapping at her throat.

            “Carolyn!” Julia screamed and took a few steps towards the other woman, but a bolt of green energy flew from Cassandra’s fingertips and knocked the ravening beast away.

            Barnabas boomed his wicked laughter.

            Cassandra held a sobbing Carolyn in her arms.  Her arctic blue eyes spit furious sparks at Julia.  “We can bandy words later,” she said, “if there is a later.  Right now I want you to get out of this house.  I will deal with Barnabas and his little pets.”  Her lips curled into a smile.  “I’ve done it before.  Get to the Old House.  Find Quentin.  He’ll be able to –”

            But she was cut off as the wolves thronged into the room, snapping and snarling.  Carolyn’s face grew chalk-white; her blue eyes swallowed her face; her arms were locked in a vice around Cassandra’s waist.  “Go, Julia!” Cassandra shrieked.  “Find Quentin!”  She waved an arm and the first wave of wolves fell backward, but there were more, and more behind them, and more behind them.  They streamed through the door, and the electric foyer lights gleamed leadenly on their sleek and silver coats.  “GO!” Cassandra shrieked again.

            Julia ran for the drawing room.

3

1968

 

            “It’s amazing,” Maggie Evans said, and had to focus with as much of her powers as she could to prevent her eyes from darkening to a heartless obsidian.  But she was trying – had been trying all summer long, ever since she had destroyed Nicholas then voluntarily handed over the Mask of Ba’al to Professor Stokes – had been honestly trying to change.  No more spells.  Cold turkey.  No more teleporting from her bed to the bathroom in the middle of the night because it was so much easier and because she hated the feel of the hard wood floors chilling her feet at three in the morning; no more floating high above the ocean simply because she could, summoning the iron waves beneath her to champ and roil with her fury; no more levitating, no more incanting, no more anything.  Cold turkey.  “Just amazing,” she added.  “You look … so much like her.”

            The woman before her smiled, but it was a cold smile, without any trace of her doppelganger’s warmth (or, Maggie amended, her once-upon-a-time warmth, before she went on her infamous killing spree).  “Isn’t that interesting,” she said, and even her voice, though identical in every other aspect, lacked that fundamental warmth and concern.  “Do you work here?” she asked.

            Maggie glanced down at the cup of coffee sitting before her on the yellow table that was identical to all the other tables in the Collinsport Diner.  When this woman had walked through the door, Maggie had stood bolt upright, nearly overturning her cup.

            It’s not her.  It’s impossible.

            She reached out with her mind, just the barest feather touch – barely magic at all, barely – and …

           

            … and …

            The woman before her recoiled a bit, and her eyes went flinty.  “Did you say something?” she said, her voice as hard and sharp as steel scrapings.

 

            Maggie cleared her throat.  “I said, no.  No, I don’t.  I used to,” she added quickly, then attempted a genuine laugh.  It didn’t sound terribly genuine.  “Once upon a time.”  Another life, she wanted to say, but that would make her feel even more depressed than she already was.  Barely a year ago she had been simple Maggie Evans, girlfriend of Quentin Collins, hash and coffee slinger at the fabulous Collinsport Diner, Collinsport’s only dining establishment, unless you counted the Embers just past the town line, but that place was too ritzy for most of the fishermen and their girls.  That was a year ago.  And now she was … what exactly?

            A witch.  An ex-witch, maybe.  And a murderess.  Mustn’t forget Pop.  Mustn’t ever, ever be allowed to forget about Pop.

            It would be easy to say that Nicholas made her do it, but he hadn’t.  She was honest enough to admit that to herself.  She was responsible for every awful thing that had happened to her over the past twelve months.

            “Hmmm,” the woman said, bored, already looking around the Diner.  Suddenly she grinned, and with a flash of what seemed to be genuine humor, she said, “I suppose there’s room at the Inn, then.”

            “Always,” Maggie said, and returned the woman’s smile.  “Say, what brings you to Collinsport?” The woman’s smile faded.  Oops, Maggie thought.  Guess we’re not as bosom buddies as I thought.  “That’s okay,” she said swiftly.  “None of my business.  I’m a gossip, you know.  Probably the biggest gossip in Collinsport.  You know what they say:  you got nothing nice to say, come sit next to Maggie Evans.”

            The woman smiled again, but it was still tight.  “I’m here to conduct …”  She shook her head, and her long fall of auburn hair trembled like eddies of dark water.  “Let’s call it an investigation of sorts.  I’m looking into an … affair.”

            “Sounds romantic.”

            The other laughed.  “Hardly.”

            “Do you know anyone in town?”

            “Not yet.”  The woman shifted the weight of the large duffel bag she carried from her right shoulder to her left.  “Listen,” she said, “I’d better –”

            “Of course, of course,” Maggie said quickly.  “I need to finish my …”  And she gestured at the remains of her hamburger.  It gleamed pinkly up at them, half-consumed.  She had been trying to enjoy cooked meat again, but it was difficult.  She craved raw meat; had, pretty much without cessation, since Nicholas brought her into his coven.

            “Well, thanks,” the woman said.  She paused near the door.  “Maybe you can help me, after all,” she said.  “I’m looking for Eliot Stokes.  He’s a teacher or a professor –”

            “At the college in Rockport,” Maggie said, and raised an eyebrow.  “Do you know him?”

            “Not yet,” the woman said.  “But I’d like to.  And soon.  Do you know him?”

            “I do.”  Now Maggie felt cautious, and she wasn’t at all certain why.  It wasn’t witchcraft; she was sure – sure­ – that it was just good, old-fashioned perception.  “Would you like me to –”

            “No,” the woman said instantly.  Maggie’s eyebrows rose another inch.  “No, but … thank you.  I’ll … I’ll get ahold of him myself.  In my own time.”  She moved toward the door, then paused again, and turned so that Maggie could see her face only in profile.  “Listen,” she said, “it’s going to get better.”

            “It –”

            “Yes.  That.  What you’re thinking.  Please.  Trust me.  Listen.  It will get better.  It won’t take as long as you think.”  She turned away, opened the door of the Diner, and disappeared into the lobby of the Inn.

            Maggie stared after her, her mouth slightly again.  She sat this way for some time, unmoving.  It took several more minutes after she did move again to realize that the spots of heat on her cheeks were actually trails of tears.

4

2014

 

            The woods hadn’t changed, at least.

            Julia’s lungs felt seared, and each new gasp of night air increased the burning sensation.  She had slammed the drawing doors behind her, and immediately fled out of the French doors, past the fountain of Diana, and made for the trees that had advanced with a certain sense of menace toward the great house for two hundred years.  They still felt menacing, but they were a shield as well, and as well-known to her in this year as they had been almost fifty in the past.

            But the darkness did nothing to alleviate her terror.  Had she been right to leave them alone back there, Carolyn and Cassandra and David, somewhere, perhaps mad, perhaps useless, perhaps already dead?  Maybe they’re all dead, Julia thought wearily, and suddenly wondered the last time she had slept – really slept, not passed out during a jaunt forward in time – or the last time she had eaten.  She couldn’t remember.

            Angelique is strong.  Even without the powers she took from the Mask of Ba’al, even after fifty years, she’s still strong.  She’ll be fine.

            Would she?

            You aren’t a coward.

            That was probably true.  But the sight of Barnabas like … like that, like the monster he had become – was that the real reason she had fled so easily?  She thought the answer was probably yes.  What happened to him? she asked herself as she tried not to sprint through the darkness, pushing tree branches that grasped at her like skeletal hands out of her way as she went; what could possibly have transformed him like that?  She hadn’t been terribly successful with her cure, much less figuring out the exact circumstances behind his return to vampirism after he was jerked unceremoniously out of 1897.  She suspected it had to do in equal parts with the I Ching, which had allowed Barnabas’ spiritual essence to make contact with and essentially take over his 19^th century body, and the Leviathans, who possibly wanted him evil and murderous for their own purposes.

            Now the Leviathans were gone.  But did that necessarily mean their influence should have ended as well?

            This wasn’t the only transmogrification Barnabas had endured, Julia remembered; at one point, he had aged suddenly and without warning to his true two hundred years; only Carolyn’s timely appearance had caused him to revert back to a semblance of youth.  Was this transformation into something so inhuman, something so … so repellant related to his aging?

            She stopped suddenly, and her breath caught in her throat.  This, none of this, she realized, had to happen; the future was changeable, wasn’t it?  Having experienced it, having learned what she had, didn’t that means she could change it if she tried?

            “I just have to stay alive,” she whispered, and began to smile.  That didn’t sound so hard.  “If I can just stay alive, perhaps –”

            “That,” a horrible metallic voice behind her grated, and suddenly she was assailed by a heavy stench, the smell of graves broken open, of rotting flesh exposed to heat and strong humidity, “that might prove more difficult than you think.”

            And a pair of icy cold hands descended over her throat and clamped down, clamped down and turned her to stare into two burning eyes.

 

5

1968

            Cassandra’s eyes opened, and they were black and empty.  “She is going to die,” her voice rumbled in its inhuman timbre.  “Julia Hoffman is in peril of her life at this very moment.”

            She sat, cross-legged in her black leather pants, and, at Barnabas’s very vocal (and roundly ignored) protest, on the top of the antique table in the Old House’s drawing room.  Her hands were held up and the fingers contorted into a shape that Barnabas was beginning to find frustratingly familiar; magical sparks flared up and danced continuously on her fingertips.  Stokes, Carolyn, Sebastian, and Barnabas all stood, ringing the table. 

            “What do you see?” Barnabas asked in a voice barely above a whisper.

 

            Cassandra’s eyes flickered to him and narrowed.  “Nothing,” she said.  “Only darkness.  But I can feel her now, and I know that she will die.”  Her eyes closed, and she sighed, an exhalation of … what, Barnabas wondered, sadness?  Was that emotion even possible for a woman – a creature – like this to exhibit?  “It has happened before,” Cassandra said.  “Julia Hoffman has gone to the future many times.  And each time she has died there.”

            “You must stop it!” Carolyn cried.  “Use your … your powers or whatever to stop it!”

            “I cannot,” Cassandra said.  “I am forbidden.”

            “Aren’t you a god?” Barnabas snarled.  “What about your powers?  You told me yourself that they were like those of a deity.”

            Her eyes remained closed, her expression beatific.  “I warned you,” she said.  “We, none of us, are allowed to meddle with the past.  Even a deity has limits.”

            “But the future –”

            “The future isn’t real, Barnabas,” Cassandra said dreamily.  “None of it.  It hasn’t really happened … not yet.  Therefore I cannot reach it.” 

            “And yet, Julia did,” Stokes said thoughtfully. 

            “So how is it not real?” Barnabas said.  Panic sharpened his voice; he wanted to rage, to roar, to fly out of this nightmare house on leather wings; when he glanced down at his hands, he saw that the fingers had stretched, that his fingernails had taken on a distinctively yellow cast, and he shoved them inside the pockets of his coat miserably. 

            Cassandra, still lost in her magical trance, said, “And the doors to the past are closed.  Otherwise I would fly there now and prevent Julia from ever entering that room.”

 

          

            “I think you are all deeply stupid,” Sebastian remarked.  They turned to stare at him, gaping; even Cassandra opened her monster’s eyes.  “That room,” he said, sighing, “that room is where we came from.  Where Julia disappeared.  And if she really was spirited off to some year distant from this one and not to another time or world or universe or something equally idiotic in that room, then doesn’t it stand to reason that Angelique – or Cassandra – or whatever it is you want to be called now –“ and he sighed again – “doesn’t it stand to reason that this witch should be able to use these magic powers to manipulate that room as she did a few hours ago and bring Julia back … using that same goddamn room?”

            They looked at each other, identical gapes on their faces.

            Sebastian chuffed and rolled his eyes.

            Thunder rattled the ancient glass in the window frames. 

            “I suppose,” Cassandra said eventually, “I suppose that’s a thought.”

6

2014

            “I … don’t know … you,” Julia gasped, and her fingers clutched and then danced against the stronger fingers that even now crushed her windpipe.

            The man looked dead.  He certainly smelled dead.  The full moon in the sky cast his face a sallow, greenish color; his full, heavy lips, cracked and dry-looking, revealed strong, yellow teeth in his grin.  “Gerard Stiles,” the man said, “at your service.”

 

            “Let … me … go,” Julia croaked.  The world was pulsing out in and out, glaring bright, the moon, then swimming away into darkness, then bright again, shards of light, the moon, the moon, the moon –

            “Oh,” the man said smoothly, “I don’t think I will.  The master requires your death, so …”  He shrugged, never losing his grip on her throat.  “… I guess that means you die.”

            “M-master?”  She sank her teeth into her lower lip, praying that the pain would grant her a few extra seconds to … to …

            Oh, but it was easier to just swim away into the darkness, to allow that merciless night-tide to carry her out …

            This has happened before, and will happen again … this is the way it goes – and you’ll go back to your own time where you belong, but you’ll be a ghost, a shade, a shadow, a spirit—

            Barnabas, she wanted to whisper; her tongue protruded from her swollen lips; Barnabas, where are you?  It’s so dark …

I need you dead, as you already know; your spirit has already proven incredibly adept at transcending time.  You will want to warn your friends of this tragedy, of course –

Yes, she would.  She wanted to already.  There was a doorway, wasn’t there, and it was opening, but only a crack, and there was light behind it, glaring, burning her, but pulling her inexorably forward; I want to go back, she thought, please, please, please, let me go back –

           

Stiles was talking, but his words were difficult to comprehend.  “—tell them, Dr. Hoffman, make sure you tell them what you know must happen:  magic is the problem, magic will destroy them all, magic –”

            He was right, wasn’t he?  Magic was at the root of the problem, surely; it had corrupted Angelique –

            Angelique!

            What had she said?

We were all doomed, you told us, unless we gave up everything magic.  Every magical device, every spell, every herb, incantation – all the powers we each possessed.

That was it, then.  She would warn them.  Magic would be the end.  The Enemy – she had to tell them of the Enemy –

It was happening again.  She was dying.  She always died.

It was a cycle, she realized, as the lights began to dim forever –

 – and they were trapped in it.

           

            For all eternity.

7

2014

            Gerard Stiles continued to grin.  It seemed that was all he did, now that he was dead.

            Soon – in just a few seconds – Julia Hoffman would be dead as well.

            Her chest stopped rising and falling.

            Her eyelashes had ceased to flutter.

            Her mouth gaped the slightest bit, the tongue protruding.

She was dead.

            The Master would be pleased.

            Gerard laid the still-warm body of Julia Hoffman on the forest floor, gently.  He wasn’t certain why he was treating her with such consideration; he’d never truly been a bastion of compassion in the past, and besides, she was just a corpse now, wasn’t she.

 

            He froze.  His brow wrinkled.

            Or was she?

            The air shimmered before him.

            The Master.

            Finish the job, Stilesssssss …

            “She’s dead,” the corpse-thing that had been a man, once upon a time in the mid-19^th century, named Gerard Stiles, “she is dead, Master, she is –”

            Sssssssssomething is wrong …

            “Wrong?”  Gerard frowned.  What could be wrong?

            Ssssssssssssomething is different … now … ssssssssssomething is changed …

            … is changing …

            Gerard felt a wave of icy terror wash over him, because he had just observed something on the Master’s face he had never seen before.

            Fear.

8

            She was swimming backward – or forward, or up, or down; it was nearly impossible to tell, it was a void, she thought, or felt – but whatever the direction, it was difficult.  Like being under water, she thought (though was she thinking?  she wasn’t sure; everything was so goddamned muddled), or remembered, perhaps; she felt that she was all memory now, that there would be no more moving forward, never again, because she was finished.

            But that wasn’t exactly true either, was it.

            She wished that she might go back home, to Philadelphia, back to the warm arms of Mother and the strong whiskey laughter of Father, of jealous Harriet, her sister, and Raymond, her baby elven brother before he could die.  Or medical school, perhaps reliving some of those days, laughing on the quad with Dave Woodard; or falling for Tom (watching Tom fall for her), of caressing him, allowing him to caress her; tea with Elizabeth, coffee with Vicki, sherry with Roger, and Barnabas

(o Barnabas)

            swimming

            swimming

            swimming

            and the swimming was easier now; the light was brighter now; she didn’t need to revisit those memories because she had a Purpose

(You will want to warn your friends of this tragedy, of course –)

and that purpose had to be

(We were all doomed, you told us, unless we gave up everything magic)

fulfilled, yes fulfilled, and she was the only one, the only one in the whole wide world who could –

            NO.

            Something stopped her.

            She stopped.

            JULIA HOFFMAN.

 

            She wanted to make a whining, unhappy sound, but she had no voice with which to make it.  She wanted to lift her hands, had she possessed them, to ward off the sudden explosion of bright light; she would squint her eyes away from the glare, and then she would be able to see the figure that stood at the center of it, and it was a figure, wasn’t it, a person, someone she knew, someone she knew very very well –

            YOU MUSTN’T GO BACK.  YOU MUSTN’T GO BACK THERE.  NOT JUST YET.

            Let me sleep, the spirit of the woman who had once been Julia Hoffman wanted to moan, please, let me sleep, let me sleep, let me die –

            YOU WILL NOT DIE.

            NOT THIS TIME.

            THIS TIME, I WILL SAVE YOU.

            Who are you?

            RETURN, JULIA HOFFMAN.  I WILL UNRAVEL TIME.  I WILL CHANGE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE … JUST THIS ONCE.  JUST THIS ONCE, I WILL HELP YOU.

            How can you do this?

            I NO LONGER EXIST IN YOUR WORLD.  I HAVE CROSSED BOUNDARIES OF TIME, JUST AS YOU HAVE DONE YOURSELF, AND I HAVE SOME KNOWLEDGE OF ITS … INTRICACIES.

            You make little sense.  My head hurts.  I don’t have a head, I don’t want one again, let me go please let me goooooooo –

YOU HAVE BEEN TRAPPED IN A LOOP.  I AM REMOVING YOU FROM THE LOOP.  I HAVE THE POWER TO DO IT BUT ONCE. 

           

Who –

But the voice was implacable.  Man?  Woman?  She almost knew …

SO:  YES.  I AM REMOVING YOU FROM THE LOOP.

            You can’t; I have a job to do, I have a Purpose –

            OF COURSE YOU DO.  AND YOU WILL FULFILL IT.

            NOW.

            That voice … so familiar …

            But the light was bright, and she was rushing backward, she was shoved backward by familiar hands, a familiar face, a familiar smile, sadness and love and love and sadness, and she was rushing faster and faster and faster

            and faster

            and

9

2014

 

            “GET AWAY FROM HER!”

            Gerard recoiled, forgetting, momentarily, that the powers given him by his benefactor – probably – far outweighed those of his attacker.  Unfortunately, his attacker was built like a linebacker (a very tall linebacker), and he freight-trained into Gerard, shoulder to the other man’s chest, and slammed him down onto the forest floor.

            Quentin Collins scrambled to his feet and then stood, knees slightly bent, hair mussed, cold blue eyes thinned to angry slits, hands balled into enormous fists.  His nostrils flared; his teeth ground together.  “Get up,” he panted, “you bastard, you killed her, whoever you are, sonofabitch, get up, get up, get up!”  His voice rose to an angry scream.

            The man on the ground wiped a trickle of blood away from his nose, lifted his handsome face, and grinned a salty grin.  “Mr. Collins,” he said, “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure.  Gerard Stiles.”  He rose, limping, to his feet and brushed himself clean of pine needles and clods of dirt that clung to his clothes.  “I would extend my hand, but I don’t believe you’d take it.”

            “She’s dead,” Quentin said.  His voice tightened; his chest strained.  “You killed her.”

            “I did,” Gerard admitted –

            – as Julia’s eyes flew open like window shades, wide and hazel, and she sat up, gasping, clutching her chest, and her mouth opened, and she screamed –

10

1968

 

            Elizabeth Collins Stoddard was exhausted, could feel the exhaustion digging its reptilian fingers, clinging, clinging, and pulling, deep into her heart, but she wouldn’t allow the exhaustion to stop her, of course.  She was who she was, and even if she remembered the woman whom she had been – that murderess, that woman who fed a bloodthirsty revenant the corrupted meat it required for over twenty years – she would still recognize her no matter what.  Fundamentally they were the same, after all, and it was that sense of determination that would have united them, if the original still existed.

            She stood outside Collinwood and looked up at its darkened windows.  The family had spent the past few months at the Old House in Barnabas and Julia’s absence, and it was, she had been attempting to convince herself, just as well.  Collinwood was a haunted old house, she had remarked to a surlier than usual Mrs. Johnson only a week or so ago; too much death, too much violence, too much history, and Mrs. Johnson only sniffed and asked if she wanted a brandy.

            I won’t drink my problems away, Elizabeth told herself.  She smarted still from Roger’s death, and from Vicki’s, and from Vicki’s part in Roger’s death, but she was still here.  Still alive.  Still the strong woman she attempted to convince herself that she was.  If only we could escape, she used to think, if only we weren’t trapped in this house.  Well, for the past few months they hadn’t been … and nothing was really solved, or fixed.  Roger was still dead.  Vicki was still dead.  Carolyn had her work with Professor Stokes, but David flitted through the rooms of the Old House like a ghost.  And the cycle continued. 

            “Excuse me,” a familiar voice said from behind her, and Elizabeth stiffened.  Not possible, she thought, and for just the barest moment her heart seized and stopped in her chest.  I won’t die, she thought now, and gritted her teeth, and from behind her, that woman’s voice continued, “I’m new in Collinsport, and I think I may be trespassing.  Could you tell me who lives in this house?”

            “Vicki,” Elizabeth said, and turned to face the startled young woman with the long fall of dark hair, “oh Vicki, you’re alive!  You’re alive!”

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...