Shadows on the Wall Chapter 97

CHAPTER 97: Come Around Again

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Alexandra Moltke:  “Time is fractured at Collinwood.  For one woman has been thrust forward in time, while the others, those she left behind, struggle desperately to summon her back to the life she has known.  And meanwhile, faces from the past emerge again, bringing with them the possibility of more terror and more evil than the Collins family has ever known.”

1

1968:  Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains

 

            The underbrush on this particular mountain trail was thicker than Quentin Collins was prepared to handle, but, grinning with sudden dark humor, he reminded himself that he had vowed to tear through whatever impediments resolved themselves before him with his teeth, if necessary.

            He held up a machete.  It was duller than it had been when he had purchased it in Missoula a few days ago, but still sharp enough to allow him to continue carving his way through the branches and grasses and weeds that sought relentlessly to prevent him from reaching his destination.  He had searched for nearly two months now; as June bled seamlessly into July and then August and finally became, only a day ago, September, he felt more resolve than ever to continue his quest. 

            He was far from home, but he had been far from home before.  He had never called Montana home, but it wasn’t a personal thing.  It was a beautiful state, he had to concede, thick and green now at the height of summer, that fabled sky as big as he’d ever heard, the entire state, as they said, high, wide, and indeed, handsome. 

            But the vegetation here sought to keep him from his purpose, and, beauty aside, that was unacceptable.  He had a duty.

            He thought for a moment, as he did several times a day at least, of Vicki.  Not the way she was on that last day, not the stretched, bleached monstrosity with the white shag of hag hair blooming on the top of her head and her teeth like knitting needles, her eyes black globules of oil, but Victoria Winters – Victoria Collins, he amended; she really was a Collins, even at the end – as he had known her a year and a century ago.  The mysterious young girl, an ingénue really, with the fall of dark hair that allowed him to bury his hands up to the knuckles, the wide brown eyes that captured him –

            Jamison’s granddaughter.  Your great-grandniece. 

            He remembered something Roger had said once, a slip of the tongue, something like, “My incestors … ha, my ancestors –” and Quentin had rolled his eyes and they had laughed together.

            But it was true, wasn’t it.

            He stopped slashing at the underbrush and allowed the machete to fall from his hands.  He put them, instead, over his face.  His heart shuddered in his chest; his forehead was soaked with sweat.

            He was disgusting.

            And Vicki is dead.

            It really was his fault; he knew that, accepted it as fact.  He allowed her to use those powers whenever Julia or Stokes or Barnabas insisted, “for the good of us all,” oh, how he remembered that excuse, and it didn’t matter to them that those same powers that would save them all had nearly destroyed them, had sure as hell destroyed Vicki, and he let it happen.  Had stood back – literally – and allowed the woman he loved to become swallowed by the darkness inside her. 

            This was no good.  He sighed, wiped away the sweat, ignored the hum of the mosquitoes around him, and picked up the machete.  His hands throbbed, but that was good; it meant that he was alive, that he was real, that he wasn’t dreaming this quest, the drive to Boston, the flights, first to Colorado, then Montana, the questioning, the driving.  Always, always moving on.

            And she haunted him anyway.  He woke up to her face; her face was the last image he saw when he bedded down and slept at night.

            Jenny. Laura.  Beth.  Maggie.  Victoria.

            Women he loved were undone by him; he knew that was true.  They always died, didn’t they.  Because of him.  Because he was a coward.  A bastard.  And weak, oh yes, don’t forget that:  weak, weak, weak.

            He would have welcomed the voice of Magda now, hell-hag-sister-in-law, something dreadful and inappropriate but true, her tone raucous, but there was nothing.  He was alone in the deep heart of the mountain woods.

            He sighed.  No good indeed, this dwelling on the past.

            And Vicki is dead.

            His fingers wrapped around the haft of the machete, and Quentin began to hack and hack and hack again at the endless trees and grasses and weeds around him.

2

1968:  On the grounds of Collinwood

 

            “You aren’t the first person I’ve confused today,” the young woman said, and extended a hand, and Elizabeth couldn’t help it, she had to flinch back.  A shadow passed over the young woman’s face, then she rallied, dropped her hand, and smiled.  “My name is Alexandra March.  I’m sorry if I startled you.”

            “Alex – Alexandra?”  Elizabeth realized that stammering made her sound weak, but she thought that the momentary surge of emotions she had felt at the sight of this astonishing young woman, a very confusing mélange of terror, exhilaration, hope, and wrenching fury, was a perfectly understandable excuse for her truly rude behavior.  And stammering.

            “Alex,” the woman said and smiled again, “please.”  Elizabeth thought she seemed unsure as well.  “People call me Alex.  It sounds less hoity toity, I think.”  Her smile widened, became more sure.

            “You must forgive me, Miss March,” Elizabeth said, and reached out her own hand.  The young woman – Miss March – Alex – smiled and took it.  “I am Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.  This is my house.  My family’s house, I suppose.  Collinwood.”

            Alex looked up at the imposing structure before them.  “Big,” she said.  “And it has a name.”  She whistled a little, impressed.  “I’ve never been to a house with a name before.  Do you live there by yourself?”

 

            “No,” Elizabeth said.  “There’s my daughter Carolyn, my cousin Quentin, our friend, Dr. Julia Hoffman, my nephew, David, and my brother Roger –”   She broke off and felt that familiar misery settle over her again, that serpentine wave of pain that slithered down and down and down into its accustomed place in the pit of her stomach.  “I’m sorry,” she said; surely the young woman had noticed the hesitation, the spasm of pain.  “We’ve had a … a tragedy here recently.  My brother passed away unexpectedly.”

            “My condolences,” Alex said softly.  Elizabeth would not allow her eyes to narrow in suspicion, but had she – this woman who could be the very twin of Victoria Winters, herself the image of Elizabeth’s own sister Louise – but had she sounded … unsurprised?  Was that at all possible?  “I didn’t mean to trespass, Mrs. Stoddard,” she continued.  “I saw the house from town as I was checking into my room at the Inn.  I didn’t think anyone lived here.  The windows were all dark, and …”  She shrugged.  “It’s so old looking.  You can tell that from far away, even.”

            “It is an old house,” Elizabeth said, nodding.  “This is the first time I’ve been back in, oh, weeks.  After the accident,” and she was proud of herself that she didn’t stutter or hesitate, “after the accident, we decided to stay at our family’s original home in America.  It’s a smaller house on the estate, but it’s more than a century older than Collinwood.”

            “It must have been something terrible,” Alex said.  She added, suddenly, as if she didn’t wish to remind Elizabeth of recent events, “At any rate, I am sorry for showing up unannounced.  I have an interest in old houses.  And Collinsport has a reputation for being …”  She hesitated.  “… perhaps not as ordinary as other towns.”

            Elizabeth felt her spine straighten, and her voice grew decidedly frosty, as it tended to whenever the town, which was her namesake, after all, or the namesake of her people, and that was really the same thing, wasn’t it, whenever the town or her family were criticized.  “I suppose that it isn’t,” she said.

            Alex must have noticed the chill in the older woman’s voice, for she lowered her head and seemed to stare at the ground.  “I don’t have any family,” she said in that same soft, almost musing tone, “I never did, not really.  I’m so used to being by myself.  I have this … oh, it sounds crazy, I suppose … this urge, this desire to know all about other people’s pasts, their histories.  Old families – old houses – sometimes occupied, sometimes not – they fascinate me.  So I’ll ask you again, Mrs. Stoddard:  please forgive me.”

            Elizabeth felt herself begin to thaw after a moment of token resistance.  Perhaps it was because this girl looked so very much like Vicki, or perhaps because she seemed so genuine. 

            She is Vicki.

           

            That was insanity. 

            She wasn’t like other people.  Certainly not at the end.

 Maybe she never really died.

            “Mrs. Stoddard?”  The young woman with the dark hair cocked her head; a worried expression danced across her face. 

            “Woolgathering,” Elizabeth said, “you must pay no attention.”  Then, after a hesitation, “Would you … would you like to see the interior of the house, Miss March?”

            “Please, call me Alex,” she said.  “And … I think I’d like that very much.”

3

2014:  In the Woods

 

            “You are one lucky bastard,” Quentin said, and struck Gerard Stiles with a tightly clenched fist across his fleshy lips.  The man went down again, and this time he stayed down.

            Quentin wasted no time with him.  He knelt beside Julia, who was sitting up and clutching her throat.  “Oh, Quentin,” she moaned, “oh thank you, thank god you were here, thank god you were in time.”

            “I almost wasn’t,” Quentin said grimly.  “Julia, are you sure you’re all right?”

            “I am … now,” she said.  She coughed, a ragged, retching sound, and stared blankly at the spatters of blood dotting her fist.  Her enormous almond eyes flicked up to him.  Her skin was pale, papery.  She licked away the blood that flecked her lips.  “He would’ve killed me.  He almost did.”

            “Who is he?”

            “I don’t know.”  She glanced over at the fallen man beside her and shivered.  “I’ve never seen him before.”

            Quentin glared at his unconscious face.  “I should kill him,” he growled.

            Julia put a hand over his.  “No, Quentin,” she said.  “Get me out of here.  Take me someplace safe.  Please.”

            “Which also begs the question,” Quentin said, helping Julia to her feet, “and please don’t think I’m not glad to see you, but Julia … what are you doing here?  And how did you get here?”

            “You know as much as I do.”

            “You’re not a ghost.”

            “Not … not now.  Thanks to you.”  She smiled wanly as they moved together through the woods.  “Where are we going?”

            “The Old House.”  His voice was terse as he hurried her along.  “We have to move quickly.  They’ll be back soon, and the Old House won’t be much of a fortress for long if we’re not careful.”

            “A fortress,” Julia said through numb lips.  “Against Barnabas.”

           

            “Among other … things.”  Quentin sounded tired.  “But yes, Barnabas is part of it.  Julia, how are you here?  I haven’t seen you in almost forty years, and yet –”

                                   

            “I look just the same as you do,” she said dryly.  “Because I come from that time – from 1968.”  Quentin grunted.  He sounded, Julia thought, unsurprised.  “I joined Barnabas in Parallel Time a few weeks after you left, but something went wrong.  We came back to our own time, and the others left the room, but I was slower than they were, I suppose.  And something happened.  I can’t describe it.  A sudden shock, pain, like ice, like intense heat, like I was being pulled out of my body and compacted at the same time; when I opened my eyes, I was at Collinwood, now, in 2014, and Carolyn was standing over me.  Carolyn, but older.”

            “Carolyn,” Quentin said, and passed a hand over his face. 

            “What’s happened here, Quentin?” Julia asked.  Her voice held traces of that old familiar steel, and he was glad to hear it.  “To Barnabas, to Collinwood, to the town?”

            “Why, we’ve all gone to hell!” Quentin boomed.  He laughed, but to Julia, the sound was suspiciously like a sob.  She looked closely at his face, but his eyes were shadowed.  He swept out one long arm and said, “We’re here.”  They came out of the woods and into the glen, and there was the Old House, a huge, gleaming skeletal structure, white like bones under the moon.  Casting glances over both his shoulders, hurrying, hurrying, hurrying her along, he drove them both up the steps and through the door, slamming it quickly behind him.  As Julia watched, gaping, he raised both his arms, extended his fingers, and chanted, “Obex est sanus. Obex est validus. Obex est ferrum. Nusquam malum crux crucis obex!”  He collapsed, breathing heavily, and wiped a trembling hand across his brow.  “There,” he said.  “That should hold, for awhile anyway.”

            “You were saying,” Julia said, dragging her eyes forcibly away from the door; she resisted wiping at her dry lips with her own trembling hand, “that we have all gone to hell.”

 

            “I wish it were a metaphor,” Quentin said.  He crossed the room quickly with his long scissor legs and began to light a fire in the fireplace.  Glancing around the room, Julia could see that no one in the past forty-five years had managed to wire the place with electricity.  And the portrait of Barnabas Collins, painted in 1967 by Sam Evans before his untimely death and hung by Barnabas himself above the mantel, was nowhere to be seen.  And nothing  hung in its place.  “But no, Julia, I’m afraid I’m being quite literal.  The forces of darkness we’ve been trying to beat back all these years finally rose up.  And they’ve destroyed almost everything I hold dear.”

            Now she licked her dry lips.  “And Barnabas is a part of it.”

            “Yes.”  Quentin bit the word.  “He gave in.  I suppose there’s a part of him that’s always wanted to.  He fought against it for so long, and with you gone –”  He flushed.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to imply that you were in any way –”

            “Never mind,” she said quickly.  “What in god’s name happened?”

            “If you’ve seen Carolyn, then you’ve seen Angelique.”

            “She’s calling herself Cassandra again.”

            “Yes.  A rose by any other name, etc., etc.  Only with thorns instead of a sweet scent.  They told you of the Enemy?”

            “A little bit.”

            He grunted again.  “And they blamed me for part of this madness.”

            “Not in so many words.  But Angelique said –”

            “Angelique referred to them as my children or something, I suppose.”

            “Something like that.  Nightspawn.”

            “A good a name as any.  There.”  He stood up, rubbing his hands before the crackling flames, then flashed his sharp white grin in Julia’s direction.  “I’m good for something, I guess.”

            “Nightspawn, Quentin?”  Her voice was sharper than she intended, but despite her reprieve from … from whatever the man in the woods had attempted to do to her, she was overwhelmed with the feeling that time was running out.

            “My children,” he said, and laughed.  It was a bitter, scraping sound, mirthless.  “I suppose in a way they are.  I told you things have been terrible here. 

            “Barnabas.  He took my blood.”  He raised the sleeves of the black leather jacket he wore and exposed his wrists.  She leaned forward, squinting, and could barely see the thin white lines that straggled up and down both his arms.  “Due to the beneficence of Count Petofi, Petofi and his damned portrait, this is the worst you can see.  He bled me, Julia, for his own savage purposes.  Strung me up, slashed open my wrists, and drained the blood into buckets.”  He was trembling, Julia saw.  “For days, Julia.”

            “To create more werewolves,” she murmured.

            “An army.  They aren’t human.  Not anymore, not even remotely.  They never change back.  He controls them.  Him and his master.”

            “The Enemy?”

            “The Enemy.”  He sighed.  “A shapeshifting creature of some sort.  Or a ghost.  I don’t know.  It comes and goes, whenever and wherever it feels.  And it becomes whoever – whatever – it wants.”

            “Which makes it even more dangerous.”

            “Indeed.  It controls Barnabas.”

            “How?  How did he allow this to happen?”

 

            “Because the Enemy promised him the one thing none of us could offer him.”  He closed his eyes for a moment and whispered, “Peace.  He feels nothing.  It took away all his emotions, his despair … his guilt.  His soul, you might say.  He is pure creature, pure evil.  A devil’s bargain.”

            “What does it want?” Julia cried.  Her frustration drove her to her feet, across the room, and to the mantel, where she slammed her fist against the marble, ignoring the shards of pain that through her hand.  “This Enemy?  Why is it playing with us this way?”

            “We’ve never been able to find out,” Quentin said.  “It wants us alive.  Most of us, anyway.  Roger died, as you know.  And Elizabeth.  But Carolyn … David … Barnabas … even me – it keeps us alive.  It won’t …”  He glanced at his wrists again, the silver-thin scars there, and his voice became thick.  “It won’t allow us to die.”

            “Oh Quentin,” Julia said.  Her eyes burned with tears of fear, exhaustion, and deep, burning sadness.  She fell against him, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her for a long moment.

            Finally, when they broke apart, she said, “We have to go to Collinwood.  Right this minute.”

            “That would be a death sentence.”

            “Don’t be a coward,” she snapped, “not now.”

            “I am not a coward,” he said, his voice rising, “I just know when the deck is stacked.  They’ll kill us, Julia.  Or you.  The Enemy wants you dead.”

            Her chin thrust forward; her lower lip trembled.  “That is a chance I’m willing to take.  Carolyn and Angelique were in terrible danger when I left them.  Angelique said you could help them, that you were the only person who could.”

            “They won’t harm me,” he said desolately.  “They never harm me.”

            “Then we’ll go,” she said, and her hand on his was like iron.  “Now.”

            And Quentin knew that she would not be denied.

4

1968 – Collinwood

            The Master was displeased with him.

            That wasn’t surprising though; the shade that had, once upon a time, preferred to call itself “Nicholas Blair” (though of course he had been known by many other names in many other places), had felt the Master’s displeasure before.  But he was also a favorite of the Master, and so found himself rewarded with more chances than the average devil.  Occasionally the Master would amuse himself with petty tortures, like the years near the end of the nineteenth century when Nicholas had lived for a time as a lawyer named Evan Hanley, with his memories of all past incarnations wiped clean, forced to suffer the indignities heaped on him by a blonde witch named Miranda DuVal (though that wasn’t really her name either). 

 

            He had suffered death again, but it wasn’t Miranda – or Cassandra – or Angelique, whatever she called herself now, who had dealt him such a hand.

            It was a woman – and oh, how this grated – a woman he thought he had loved.

            Love was, of course, anathema to the Dark Ones Nicholas served.

            And so he found himself in hell.

            Or a hell; there were, after all, so many.

            This one, though, he was familiar with.

            Collinwood.

            He was trapped at Collinwood.  Locked in the wood and stone and glass of the great house, allowed to watch, allowed to listen, but not free to move or manifest.

            Angelique suffered the same fate for nearly two centuries.  And he knew that the Master was well aware of this, which was all part of the joke, of course.

            And Angelique …

            The Mask.  The Mask of Ba’al.

            What he’d searched for all his lives.

            She destroyed it.  Or used it up.  Or whatever; it didn’t matter; the Mask – or mask, diminutive – was useless now.  Its powers tapped.

            She was the power now.

            Nicholas had missed that little showdown, consigned to the flames as he was by his one-time paramour, the beautiful and deadly Maggie Evans.  Angelique versus virginal Vicki Winters, for all the cookies.  Only Miss Winters proved that she was multi-faceted, to say the least.  She had trumped the Leviathans, trumped her own godforsaken father, and risen higher in the echelon of evil than even Nicholas himself could aspire.  She was pure power, pure darkness, a destructive, wild, untamed force.

            Ah, but Angelique …

            The one-time witch cum mortal had donned the dreaded Mask of Ba’al and thus absorbed all its mystical power.  She was, one might imagine, the most powerful being in the universe; or, possibly, all the universes.

            The thought would make Nicholas’ mouth dry, if he actually possessed a mouth.

            Angelique had dispatched Miss Winters with cool efficiency, and the earth – the very house itself – had swallowed her whole.

            She’s back.

            That was impossible.  Even Nicholas, cut off as he was from the Dark Ones, knew that, wherever Miss Winters was now, wherever Angelique had sent her once and for all, there was no coming back.  Victoria Winters was more than dead.  She had been destroyed. 

            And yet, here she was.

            Or someone who looked very much like her.

            Nicholas, who could watch from the glass window eyes of Collinwood, saw her far below him, chatting with the mistress of Collinwood, another woman who had drawn his eye.  Didn’t matter now.  She could never be his; instead, dear Lizzie was even now chatting gaily away with the very image of the defunct Miss Winters who would, now and then, gaze up to the windows of Collinwood as if she saw him.

            Like she was doing now.

            He withdrew his spectral gaze quickly, almost guiltily.

            She saw me.

            Not possible.  There was nothing to see.

            Nevertheless, she did see me.

            Who was she, this dark-haired mystery woman?  Was it Victoria Winters, returned from the grave?  A visitor from a parallel world?  A shapeshifter? 

            Can’t … reach her!

            He would contact her, though, if she came into the house.  He’d reach out to her and attempt to analyze her powers, if indeed she possessed any.  Find out who – or what – she really was.

            He grinned with his empty, non-existent mouth.

            Miss Winters … oh Miss Winters …

            And while the very powerless ghost of Nicholas Blair attempted to summon a woman he thought was just as dead as he, other familiar faces came out of the woods and approached the house, all freezing in their places as they came.  And saw.

5

1968: On the grounds of Collinwood

 

            “I’m not who you think I am,” Alexandra March said to the wall of very white faces that gaped at her.  “I know I look like this person, whoever she is –”

            “Vicki,” Barnabas whispered, his face ashen.  “Oh my god.”

            “I’m not,” Alex pleaded.  Her voice rose slightly into the range of hysteria; as she heard the tone, she clapped her hands together and held them tightly against the chic khaki coat she wore.  “I promise you I’m not.”

            “Jeb Hawkes,” Elizabeth breathed, then her eyes skittered to Angelique and widened.  “And Cassandra!”  They narrowed ferociously.  “How dare you return to this house after all the things you’ve done.  How dare you—”

            “Mrs. Stoddard,” Angelique – Cassandra now, for better or for worse – said in a voice like the smoothest silk, and slid gracefully to the side of the Collinwood matriarch.  She clasped one of Elizabeth’s hands in hers, and before anyone could protest (Stokes and Barnabas, who had more reason than anyone else in that moment), her eyes fixed on the other woman’s; in that instant, both widened.  “I am sorry for just appearing like this, after everything that’s happened.  But you should know how sorry I was to hear about your brother – my darling Roger –”  Elizabeth, whose eyes had grown dazed and seemed to gaze into some distant horizon, could only nod “— and I wanted to tell you how grateful I am to see you after all this time … almost a year,” and she accented this word deliberately, and watched, pleased, as Elizabeth silently mouthed the word after her, “that you would invite me to spend a few weeks at Collinwood with you.”

 

            “Spend a few weeks,” Elizabeth murmured.

           

            “Cassandra –” Barnabas growled, but the witch didn’t break her gaze with her victim.

            “This,” Cassandra said carefully, “this is the first time you’ve seen me since I left Collinwood last autumn.”

            “The first time,” Elizabeth agreed, her voice level and somnolent.

            “And you want me to stay.”

            “I do.”

            The dark-haired woman beside them narrowed her eyes.

            “And you bear me no ill will.”

            “None at all.”

            “Excellent,” Cassandra said, released Elizabeth’s hands, and stepped backward.  Elizabeth staggered for a moment, and Alex thrust out an arm to catch her.

            “You must excuse me,” Elizabeth said in her own voice.  “I don’t know what’s come over me.  I feel faint, I suppose.”

            “Are you all right, Mrs. Stoddard?” Alex asked.  She cast a worried, complicated glance at Barnabas, then allowed her eyes to skitter to Stokes.  “I don’t know who you all think I am, but I’m not that person, I promise.  Mrs. Stoddard and I were having a simple conversation –”

            “I’m fine,” Elizabeth said firmly.  Her lips pursed.  “Barnabas, you mustn’t think these things.  Vicki is … Vicki is gone.  This is Miss March.”

            “Alexandra,” she said, and offered him her hand.  “Alex.”

            Barnabas, eyes wide and mouth tightly closed, hesitated only a moment.  Then he took her hand in his.

            Alex pulled it away almost immediately.  “Cold,” she said.  She tilted her head curiously.  “Very cold.”

 

            “Mr. Collins has circulation problems,” Stokes said, smiling hugely.  “Allow me to introduce my friends.  Miss March, this is Barnabas Collins, Mrs. Stoddard’s cousin.  Carolyn Stoddard, her daughter.  Sebastian Shaw, a … a friend of Mr. Collins’.  And Cassandra Collins, wife of Mrs. Stoddard’s late brother.”

            “It’s nice to meet all of you,” Alex said, though her brow was furrowed, and stayed furrowed.  She withdrew, clasping her hands again, and stood a little ways apart from them.  “I’m only visiting Collinsport for a little while.  I may be meeting family here.  An uncle.  I don’t know anyone, and I thought I’d see what I could of the town –”

            “You are welcome to visit Collinwood,” Elizabeth said warmly.  “When it is ready to be welcoming, I suppose.”  Her eyes lighted on Barnabas, and her eyebrows shot up.  “Is that time now, Barnabas?  Now that you have … returned?”

            “That depends,” Barnabas said nervously, but Cassandra, smiling sweetly, overrode him.  “We can find out right this moment, can’t we, Barnabas?” Her eyes widened, her lips tightened, and her nostrils flared with the secret urgency in her voice.  “Right … this … moment.”

            “Yes,” Stokes boomed with faux good cheer.  “I think we really should get inside, Elizabeth.  Collinwood is quite safe now.”

            Elizabeth started to say, “But you told me –”

           

            But they were already making their way into the house.   Sebastian stopped for a moment to shake her hand, muttering his thanks for her hospitality, and then he followed the others.  Perplexed, Elizabeth turned to the stranger who still stood beside her, and smiled apologetically.  “Our lives are far from common, Miss March, as you’ll find out inevitably.”

            “Inevitably,” Alex said.  A small smile dimpled her lips.

            “Would you care to come inside?”

            Alex hesitated for only a moment.  That small smile remained on her lips.  “I believe I would, Mrs. Stoddard.  I believe I would like that very much.”

6

2014:  The grounds of Collinwood

 

            They stood outside the house, gazing up at the darkened windows, barred against the darkness.  But the darkness had come creeping regardless, and now it ruled the great house.

            Julia wondered if anyone inside was still alive.

            “It’s so quiet,” Quentin whispered. 

            “I wonder what that means.”

            He slid his hand into hers.  “We don’t need to do this, Julia.”

            She stared at him silently, expressionlessly in the growing gloom swelling around them, then pulled her hand from his.

            “Damn it,” he growled, and glanced away.

            “Something is pulling me back to Collinwood.  I can’t explain it.  I should run a million miles away from this house.  But I can’t.”

            “It’s your death, Julia.  A quick reprieve, that’s all I offered you.  You’ve come back here to die.”

            “I don’t think so,” she murmured.  “I think I can save them.”

            “Even if they’re –”

            Her eyes had begun to shine with a look of purpose that Quentin had seen before.  He knew what it meant.  “I don’t belong in this time.  Even if I died here, I would have gone back to 1968, appearing just when I left.  Cassandra knew that in this time; so did the Enemy.  I’m being pulled back there, Quentin.”

            “How will you get back?”

            “That room,” she said.  “I have to get to that goddamned room.”

            He sighed.  “Might not be as easy as you think.”  He nodded in the direction of Collinwood.  She followed his gaze.

 

            Barnabas Collins stood in the doorway.  He was grinning; he spread his arms, and they saw he wore no cape, but a thin, black membrane grew from his arms and made them wings, and each one was tipped with a hideous, chitinous claw.  He opened his mouth and released a dreadful shriek, inhuman, the sound of sheets of metal rending. 

            “That isn’t Barnabas,” Julia said firmly.

            “It isn’t anything anymore,” Quentin agreed.  “But it will kill us if we try to get into the house.  If we – damn it, woman!” he roared, but Julia was already stomping in the vampire’s direction.

            “Barnabas,” she called.  The thing in the doorway cocked its monstrous head; its long, pointed ears twitched, one, then the other.  One … then the other.  But she came on and on, never slowing.  “Barnabas, it’s me.  Julia.  You remember me, don’t you?  It’s Julia!”

            It growled, a quiet, purring sound, a seam released, a thread pulled.

            “Julia!” Quentin cried from behind her.  “For god’s sake, get away from him!”

            But she moved forward relentlessly.  “Let me inside.  You must.  You don’t want to hurt me.”

            “I’m afraid he does.”  The air shimmered beside her, and Barnabas Collins appeared.  Handsome, human looking, his face flushed, his eyes dark and wet with his sadness.  The other, monstrous Barnabas recoiled for a moment, then chuckled dark laughter at the sight of its doppelganger.  The doppelganger – the Enemy, Julia knew – didn’t spare a moment to look in its direction.  All of his – its – attention was focused on her.  “I don’t know how you survived, my dear Julia, but I’m afraid I can’t allow you to continue your rather pathetic, if not persistent, existence.  We’re going to kill you, Barnabas and I.  Then you will return to your time, a spirit bearing my message, as you are destined to do.”

            “You aren’t Barnabas,” Julia said coldly.  She leveled a long, pale finger at the slavering beast before her.  He stood only inches away now, glaring at her with eyes like globules of blood.  “He is. And I love him.  And he knows it.”

            The doppelganger-Barnabas threw back his head and laughed.  “Rich,” he said.  “Oh, Julia, Julia, Julia, that is –”

 

            She lifted a leg and, in the most unladylike gesture of her life, aimed a kick at the thing masquerading as the man she loved, and impaled it with the heel of her shoe.

            There was a moment of resistance, a feeling of sinking into thick, wet air, a rush of heat, substance but not –

            Snarling, hissing like a great cat, the Barnabas-thing beside her gnashed its shining teeth and faded away.

            She was panting.  Undignified, she thought to herself; really, Julia. 

            She found, amazingly, that she was smiling.

            “Barnabas,” she whispered tenderly to the monstrous thing blocking the door.  She reached a hand out.  “Oh, Barnabas –”

            The crimson eyes softened.

            They looked at her.

            Into her.

            Her breath caught; she held it, tremulously.

            The eyes widened.  It was Barnabas, this creature, this thing.  It was.  Her Barnabas.

            Then it lunged forward, roaring.

7

1968:  Collinwood, the Parallel Time Room

 

            “Obex est absentis. Posterus est laxo. Nostrum universitas fio universus.”

            Anxious faces, pale in the darkness, hands clutched tightly.

            “Addo nos nostrum diligo unus. Addo suus ex alius universitas. Addo nos nostrum diligo unus sic is ago.”

            Julia Hoffman … Julia Hoffman …

            …they chant under their collective breaths …

            Julia, Julia Hoffman …

            “The way opens, the veils fade away, obstacles melt – spirits, reach your wizened hands into a time yet-to-come – bring back one who is lost to us – guide her back to those who love her and who need her to live – show me your power, spirits, loa, ghosts, ancestors and those who are as of yet unborn – show me –”

8

2014:  Collinwood

            There was blood.  A great deal of blood, actually.  It writhed in her mouth, and she coughed, choking, and spat it onto the ground.

            Barnabas was roaring.  His hands worked, those claws worked –

            Julia sobbed.  It wasn’t her blood coppery on her tongue and in a slime across her teeth.

            It was Quentin’s.

            His eyes were still open.  They saw her, even as he stuttered to his knees.  A black stream continued to gout from the enormous wound that opened and closed and opened and closed again like a gaping mouth in his throat.

            As she watched, Barnabas licked the blood from his claws and uttered a feline, purring sound of contentment.

            “No!”  There was another Quentin beside the dying one, whole and unscathed, but his face worked and became wolfen, a snout pressed wetly from his mouth and, “No!” he howled, “Not allowed, not allowed –”

           

            Quentin made a horrible gargling sound.  He thrust out his hand.  He was gesturing; he was pushing her forward.  “Juuuu,” he said.  “Ruh.  Ruh.”

            “You fool!” the faux Quentin raged, and struck out at the Barnabas monster, but he merely roared his laughter.  “You fool, you fool, you idiot, you can’t do that, you can’t –”

            Barnabas laughed and laughed.

            The Quentin doppelganger faded like smoke and was gone.

            Julia.  Run.  Run.

            The Barnabas-monster, growling, stalked toward her, grinning.  Black ichor fouled its saber-fangs.  She opened her mouth to scream.

            Quentin launched himself at Barnabas.  Blood flew in thick ropes and spattered against the vampire’s wings.  He stopped, surprised, and his eyes widened. 

            Julia.  Run.  Run.

            Barnabas growled questioningly.  He was torn, Julia suddenly understood, between his desire to tear open her throat and the bloodbath already at his disposal, at his very feet, as Quentin, eyes dimming, groped for him with trembling, paper-white hands.

            Hunger won out.

            Barnabas dived at Quentin.  His mouth became a snout, furry, jostling with fangs.  It latched onto the hole in Quentin’s throat and shredded it.  Bone snapped; the flesh tore away, and Julia heard the wet sounds of Barnabas inhaling Quentin’s blood as his heart pumped it up and out of the hole in his neck where his jugular and carotid once lay.

            Julia.  Run.  Run.

            Quentin’s blue eyes, wide, locked on her own.  He was trying to smile.  Barnabas grunted.

            The light in his eyes was extinguished suddenly.  Old age followed rapidly, dissolution, utter, complete, a moment after that.  Barnabas held a suit in his hands, and dust ran in gray clouds from the neck and sleeves.  He snarled questioningly, then furiously.

            He turned to her.  His eyes were crimson, bloody globules in the bestial landscape of his face.

            Julia ran.

9

            The foyer was not empty.  “Oh no,” she whimpered, but did not allow herself to stop.  Despite the fact that Carolyn Stoddard lay before her, her head twisted at an obscene angle, her eyes blue and as glazed as Quentin’s were, Julia Hoffman did not allow herself to stop.  She launched herself onto the stairs and pounded up the steps, turned, slammed through the door that led into the depths of the house.

            … chanting, somewhere, a voice, pulling at her, tugging, guiding her …

            “I’m coming,” Julia said through gritted teeth, “I hear you, I’m coming.”  She wasn’t aware that she had spoken.

            A door opened.  A nightmare stood inside.  David Collins – it had to be, she recognized him; even though he was a man in his early fifties, she could see the boy he had been in his face, swimming up like a ghost through murky water.  He stared with eyes that were dimming, groped for her with hands stained with blood and chunks of flesh.  His throat was mottled, torn.  In the room behind him, werewolves growled and snapped.  “Help … me,” he managed to wheeze.  Julia screamed and screamed again as a furry hand-paw reached from the darkness behind the man and pulled him back into the room.  The door slammed.

            Carolyn stood before her, perfect, impeccable.  She was trying to smile.  “So I’m not perfect,” she lisped, “so I’m not a good little girl.”  Her eyes were vacant and blue.  “I’ve lost, Julia Hoffman, and you are responsible.  They’re all dead.”

            … Julia, Julia Hoffman …

            Carolyn stepped toward her, reaching.  Her face became a death’s head.  “And so are you,” she grated.

           

            Sobbing, Julia ran.

10

            Why would the Enemy allow Carolyn and David to die?  The question occurred to her as she forced herself under control, forced the tears to stop, to freeze in her eyes.  It wanted the Collins family, had gathered and controlled them for years, only to allow three of the last remaining members to die now, like this?  It didn’t make any sense.

            That’s why it needs you, a voice inside her mind answered her, dryly, grimly.  That’s why it needs you dead, Julia.  It wants to change things as well.  It wants you to help it, to guide the family so that Carolyn and Quentin and David live … until it needs them to die.

            It lost control of Barnabas and his nightspawn. 

            It makes mistakes.  It miscalculates.

            Good to know.

            She ran through the darkness of the house as if drawn toward a light that she couldn’t see, but that she could sense. 

            Where was Angelique?  Had she fallen, been destroyed by Barnabas or by the werewolves? 

            Doesn’t matter, she told herself; run, woman!

            Julia.  Julia Hoffman.

            …pulled…

            The room – the room in the East Wing – it was before her now, the door slightly ajar.  A silver light pulsed from the crack.  She could feel its coldness against her face.

 

            The air shimmered; Cassandra Collins stepped into existence.  Her eyes were cold and blue; her arms, long and bare, were the alabaster of marble.  “I can’t let you go in there, Julia,” the witch said sadly.  “I’m sorry that you’ve come all this way, but I can’t let you.”

            “Get out of my way, Angelique,” Julia said.  She was fed up.  She had survived god knows how many cycles or loops or whatever her mysterious savior had called them, coming to the future, dying, returning to the present as a ghost, over and over and over, to lose it all to her former enemy now … not when she was so close.

            “I made a bargain,” Cassandra said softly, reasonably.  “The Enemy and I had … a long talk.”

            “Really.”  Surprise, Julia thought wearily, surprise.

            “Yes.  We … made a deal.”

            “You’re insane.”

            “Possibly,” the other woman admitted.  “Possibly.  The Enemy will spare Barnabas – return him to the way he was – if …”  The words faded, and Cassandra bit her crimson lip.  Her eyes were wide, her cheeks high with color.  It has her, Julia realized; it has her in some way.  It holds her.

            And she has allowed it to do this.

            Julia’s face hardened.  “If you kill me,” she said.  “That was the deal, wasn’t it.”

            Cassandra said nothing.

            “I won’t let you,” Julia said, and thrust out her chin.  “Barnabas will know, and he’ll hate you.”

            “He will love me,” Cassandra whispered.  “That’s all I want, all I’ve ever wanted.  His love.”

            “Not this way.”

            “This way.  I know him.  I know his heart.”

            “You don’t know him well enough, not now, not ever.”

            Cassandra’s face hardened.  She raised her hands.  Dark magic swirled and sparkled between her fingertips.  “We have been friends in the past.  I will be your friend now.  I will kill you quickly.”

            With a sudden primal scream, Julia launched herself at the witch, hands hooked into claws, and these claws pinwheeled across the startled face of the other woman and drew long lines that quickly filled with blood.

            Cassandra stuttered down to one knee, then looked up at Julia who stood over her, panting.  “You’ll be sorry you did that,” she declared.

            Julia opened her mouth, wanted to say, “Go back to hell,” but she never had the chance.

            A sudden wind raced down the hall, knocking Cassandra backward off her feet.  She opened her mouth to shriek her fury … and found herself facing …

            …herself.

            What appeared to be the ghost of Cassandra Collins flickered like a candle flame in the hallway.  Her eyes were black, empty holes.  Her long hair flew about her head in that spectral wind.

            NO, her voice boomed.

            “This cannot be!” the very physical Cassandra shrieked, and held up one hand.  “I charge thee, corrupt spirit,” she began, “by the judge of the quick and the dead –”

            NO, the Cassandra of the past boomed again, and made her own gesture.

            Her future counterpart burst into flames.

            “Oh, this is a nightmare,” Julia muttered.

 

            Shrieking, the flaming Cassandra rag-doll lurched to her feet, ran immediately into a wall, rebounded, struck the wall again and, sobbing, began to pound and beat at the flames.

            The Cassandra-ghost-thing turned to Julia with those terrible monster’s eyes.

            YOU HAVEN’T ANY TIME.  GO NOW.

            Julia did as she was told.

            She threw open the door to the Parallel Time room.  That cold silver glow enfolded her, and she held up a hand to shield her eyes.

            The light pulsed as if it were alive.

            “One step,” Julia murmured.

            And took it.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...