Shadows on the Wall Chapter 113

CHAPTER 113:  Laura Pendleton Stockbridge Murdoch Collins Collins Collins

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Diana Millay:  “A missing member of the Collins family has returned to the great estate, and, as she always has and always will do, she has brought the fire with her.” 

1

            He was safe now, and that was all he knew, all that mattered.  And warm; wherever he was, and the warmth was close, the warmth was everywhere, all around him.

            And her:  her scent.

            Darling.  You knew I would never leave you.  You knew I would come back.

            Yes.  Of course he knew that.  He had never doubted her.

            You know how special you are, not just to me, but to the world.

            He hadn’t known that.  Not exactly; not the part about the world.

            You are, darling.  You’ll know it soon, and so will they:  all the world, the whole of the world. 

            Where are you?  he wanted to cry, but he had no mouth in this place, this void, but it didn’t seem to matter, because she could hear him, or feel his thoughts, at least.

            I’m inside you, darling.  And you’re inside me.  We are together, as I promised we would be. 

            There was a tone, though; a discordant note.

            What is it? he tried to cry out in terror.

            It isn’t permanent, my beautiful boy, my son.  That’s the trouble.  We can be together like this – talking without our mouths, using just our thoughts, just we two – and we can be together in the world you know … but you know by now that I am a stranger in your world – your father’s world. 

            A note of bitterness; a trace of hatred she could not disguise.

 

            He doesn’t stand in the way any longer.  No one really does; no one important.  Very soon now, my darling, the time will come when you will have to choose.

             I don’t want to choose anything! he cried.

            But that is the way of the world.  Her voice, still lilting, was soft now, and sad.  I don’t make the rules, sweetheart.  But you will have to choose, and the time for the choosing will be here very, very soon.

            But until then …

            He thought she said something about “sleep,” but it might have been a different word, and as he turned over and over in the warm darkness that was a void and was nothing and was all at the same time, he thought the word might have been “become.”

2

 

            “You’ll have to forgive me,” little David Collins said in the lisping, chiming voice of his mother, “that I do not appear to you in the expected form.  You see, I have learned my lesson.  Haven’t I, Miranda dear?”

            Angelique scowled.  “You are a fool, Laura Collins,” she spat.  “Do you think that you can hide from us forever?  We will find you and destroy you, have no doubt of that.”

            David laughed Laura’s mocking, chiming laughter.  “You are the fool, my dear Miranda.  Or is it Angelique now?  Or Cassandra?”  He waved a dismissive hand.  “It matters little, I’ve learned.  You have defeated me twice, darling.  But I have learned from dear, departed Roger’s insipid love of baseball that one is allowed three strikes before one is counted out.  And I have one strike left.

            “And you have no power to defeat me.”

            Angelique gaped at the little boy with his glowing white eyes.  “And how on earth do you know that?”

            David tittered.  “That will be my little secret,” he said.  “For the time being.  For now, I only wanted to pop my head in and see how all my little friends were faring after my gift to you this morning.”  He frowned as he circled the drawing room.  The others watched him with a wary eye.  He gestured angrily.  “But it seems as if you didn’t receive it.  A pity.  Perhaps I’ll have to send my regards to you in a more … specific manner.”

            “Leave David alone,” Julia said.  Her voice sounded stronger than she expected it would.

 

            David stopped his pacing and squinted in her direction.  “Dr. Hoffman, is it?  I’m so sorry we didn’t have much to become acquainted when last I visited this pathetic excuse for a fishing village.  I do so look forward to long winter chats with the woman who is supposedly bosom chums with my sister-in-law, dear Liz.  You … do remember her, don’t you, Doctor?  Or haven’t you spent much time at Collinwood lately?”  David tittered slyly.  “You see, I do know your secrets.”  His laughter faded, and his eyes ranged over them coldly.  “All of them.  Even yours, Mr. Shaw.  And yours, Lieutenant.  Oh, yes.  I know them all.”

            “Why show yourself now?” Julia said.

            David considered this, and tucked a finger away between his teeth, nibbling gently at the nail.  “Let’s say I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse,” he said brightly.

            “Whose?” Angelique said between clenched teeth.

            “I suppose you are wondering,” David said with a blithe smile.  “I would be too, if I were you.  Enemies to the right of you, enemies to the left, and here you are, stuck in the middle with me.  The proposal came from a Miss Roxanne Drew, if you must know, though I was forced to decline her offer of the Hand of Count Petofi.”  David shuddered and made a moue of distaste with his face.  “Indebted forever to that puling excuse for a magician?  No thank you.”

            “Then how are you back?” Angelique demanded.

 

            “For me to know,” David said sweetly, “and for you to never find out.  I know your tricks by now, Miranda.  Or have you forgotten?  This will be, at last count, our … let’s see, our fourth go around, am I right?  I think I am.  And I know that, by hook or by crook, you’ll have your revenge on me, powers or no.  Or you’ll try.  Suffice it to say, I’m here, and I’m here to stay.  And you needn’t worry, doctor dear,” David said, shooting a look in Julia’s direction.  “David will be safe.  Quite, quite safe after his consciousness returns.  His safety is my top priority, you might say, which is why I accepted Miss Drew’s offer instead of that of the Enemy.”

            “It spoke to you as well?” Julia said.  Her lips felt numb with horror.  Was there no end to the dark powers surrounding them?  Were they doomed to be forever at the mercy of these supernatural mercenaries? 

            “Of course it did,” David said with a coquettish toss of his head.  “It needs power, and I have power.  In spades.  Unfortunately, it also needs my son for whatever it has planned, and since I don’t trust it especially much, I have decided to side with Roxanne and her merry band of miscreants.  Sadly reduced in number, as you must know by now.”  They stared at him blankly.  “Oh, come on!  Surely you must realize that someone – and all right, so maybe I don’t know exactly who – but someone cut through them like a knife.  Took out the witch –”  Angelique’s eyebrows rose sky high.  “— and sent the others into a tailspin.  That’s why they’re especially needy right about now.”

            “So you’re not infallible,” Julia said softly.  “You don’t know everything after all.”

            David’s eyes, normally a soft fawn brown, glared at her through the white flames that blazed there.  “I would suggest you watch your tone, Doctor,” he spat.  He held up one hand; the flames in the fireplace Sebastian had been stoking for the past hour or so as the early winter chill had come over the Old House suddenly reared up like orange, flickering cobras, and hissed balefully.  “You have never tasted my power.  No matter.  I suppose now is as good a time as –”

                        “You do not touch Julia,” Barnabas Collins boomed from his place near the doorway that led to the cellar; startled, David’s head whipped around and the flames fell back into the fireplace.

            “Why, Mr. Collins!” the Collins scion chimed with delighted laughter.  “Poor dear.  It seems you’re looking a bit more ragged than you were the last time our paths crossed.  How unfortunate for you.  I suppose you are unaffected in your bat form, however; what is it they say about the three rules of bat real estate?  Echolocation, echolocation, echolocation?”  And the horrible little boy chimed more laughter.

            Barnabas held out one hand, and smoothly, calmly, swiftly, said, “Extrico, privo, solvo, relevo, spiritus malus, sempiternam virtutem in nomine bonitatis.”

            A shadow of hatred scrawled for a moment across David’s face; there was a flash of white non-light that tattooed not-so-random patterns across Julia’s eyeballs; and then they were all thrown backward as the fire in the fireplace roared up again.  Julia, shielding her eyes, caught the impression of an enormous bird-like creature, transparent, and yet its wings as it beat the air were real enough to knock Barnabas’ portrait from its place above the mantle; and somehow, worked into the rending beak and tearing claws was the image of the woman Julia had only a passing acquaintance with:  Roger Collins’ former wife, the phoenix Laura Collins.

            Then it was gone, and David lay moaning on the floor.

           

            Julia rushed to his side and immediately laid her head against his chest.  “He’ll be fine,” she announced.  “Barnabas, where on earth –”

            “A little trick I picked up,” Barnabas said with a meaningful glance at Angelique, who, flushing, dropped her head and picked distractedly at the hem of her dress.  “In case of an emergency … or should someone I care for ever become possessed by an evil spirit.  I wasn’t entirely certain it would work.”

            “Your vampire powers are strong,” Angelique said quietly.  “Which means your connection to the darker realms is also strong; strong enough to banish Laura Collins.”

            “Temporarily, at least,” Barnabas said.  Behind, Audrey was tentatively peeking her head through the cellar door.

            “Is it gone?” she said, uncharacteristically, Julia noted, nervous-sounding.  Sebastian and Nathan, avoiding eye contact, had moved together to lift David from the floor and place him gently on the sofa. 

            “For the moment,” Barnabas sighed.  “Laura is responsible for this morning’s conflagration, I take it?”

 

            Julia nodded.  “She’s sided with Roxanne and the others,” she said.  “Oh Barnabas, what are we going to do?”

            For a moment, Barnabas said nothing.  The others looks at him expectantly.  “Whatever we have to,” he said at last.  “To endure.”

            “That’s not good enough,” Angelique said immediately.  “Not this time.”

            “Angelique –”

            “Be quiet, Julia.  I’m sorry, but you must be quiet now.”  She stood before them now, trembling.  She still wore, Barnabas noticed, and noted also how much it confused him, her simple green servant’s dress; her hair hung in the same 18^th century ringlets he remembered so well, from both their time together in Martinique and later, on their wedding night.  Her eyes ranged over all of them.  “We haven’t any hope.  Not this time.  Not with me – the other me, I mean – and not with Laura or Roxanne or the Enemy or any of its minions mucking about.  And I’ll tell you why:  for one very simple reason.”  She pointed one marble-white finger, and they all followed its direction:  to where little David Collins slumbered on the sofa, his face pale and exhausted.  “Because of him.  Because of the boy. 

            “They want him.  The Enemy and Laura both, and though their reasons differ, I will tell you now that in the end it doesn’t really matter.  The Enemy plans to use David for some dreadful purpose; the end of all life on this earth, I suppose.  And Laura’s master will require of her the same condition.  When the smoke clears, it will be the same.  All of us.  All the world.  Gone.  Dead.

            “Unless.”

            They looked at her, no one daring to speak.

            Finally, Willie croaked, “Unless?”

 

            Her eyes were hard, unforgiving.  “You know,” she said at last.  “You know the only way to stop the Enemy.  The only way to stop Laura Collins and Roxanne and all the others.”

            “No,” Julia said immediately; she had leaped to her feet before she knew she had flexed her leg muscles to lift her.  She could feel color flooding her cheeks.  “No.  You’re insane if you think that we would ever –”

            “I’m not insane,” Angelique said in that same calm, rational tone.  She hadn’t moved; hadn’t flinched at all as Julia approached her; why?  To slap her for the umpteemth time?  She didn’t move.  “And neither are you.  We both know – we all know – that the only logical step would be to kill David Collins.  Now.  And quickly.”  Now she smiled; now emotion flooded her voice as tears burned in her eyes for them all to see.  “And that’s why there’s no hope.

            “We can’t kill him.  I can’t; you can’t; none of us can.”  Nathan and Audrey opened their mouths at the same time, and Angelique overrode them smoothly, “And Barnabas would kill you both before you were able to move so much as a finger in the boy’s direction.  Just,” and she swallowed painfully, “just as he would kill me if I tried.

            “But I can’t.  I can’t do it.  And neither can any of you.

            “And you know it.

            “And that,” she said, and sank wearily back into her chair, “that is the reason that there is no hope.  And that is why we are all truly, finally doomed.”

 

            They looked at each other.  No one said anything; there was nothing to say.  And David, dreaming on the sofa, looked very small indeed.

3

            “Get out of this house,” Elizabeth said immediately.

            Laura, already inside the house and well into the foyer, only shook her head and sighed with mock sadness.  “Liz, Liz, Liz,” she said chided, “I suppose it was too much to expect graciousness, but outright hostility?  Where are those famous Collins manners that Jamison ground into your head?”

            “You didn’t know my father,” Liz said tartly.

            Laura burst out a short machine-gun spray of laughter.  “Sorry,” she said, wiping a tear from the corner of her while Liz glared at her stonily.  “Private joke.  No, of course I didn’t know your father.  And we aren’t related.  Not even a little.  Because that would be crazy, wouldn’t it?  I think so.  How would that even be possible?  It’s not, so let’s not even bother to mention it again.  Okay with you?”

             “I have an idea why you’ve come back to Collinwood, Laura,” Elizabeth said, “and I’m telling you now I’ll have none of it.  I am David’s legal guardian; you were declared dead; Roger has been declared dead –”

            “But I’m not dead, as you can see,” said Laura with the tiniest of smiles dimpling her lips.

            “You’ll have to prove that,” Liz said tartly.  Laura’s eyebrows shot up, and now it was Elizabeth’s turn to look smug.  “I suppose my eyes have opened a bit since last you visited, Laura dear.  I don’t believe you really are alive –”

            “I am,” Laura muttered.  The smile had utterly abandoned her lips.

            “— and even though I don’t know what you are, exactly, it doesn’t matter to me.  I don’t care to even begin to find out; that’s how little you matter to me.”

 

            “If you don’t believe I’m human,” Laura said through gritted teeth, “then aren’t you just the bravest thing to speak to me in such a tone.”

            “I’ve been through a lot lately,” Liz said, laughing.  “You don’t scare me, Laura.”

            Laura took a step forward, and suddenly she and Liz were only inches apart, so close that Liz could see the tiny dancing white points of flame in her eyes.  She tried to back up, but it was too late.  Laura’s hand closed, vicelike, around her sister-in-law’s wrist.  “Let’s see what we can do about that,” she said.

4

Collinsport, 1955

            “I can’t, Burke,” Laura said.  Her voice was tinny and frightened in her own ears, and she pulled herself up and out of the other man’s muscular arms, fumbling with the buttons of her blouse as she did show.  Her cheeks pulsed with patches of heat, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to smooth down her frizzled blonde hair.

 

            Burke Devlin grinned up at her.  He laced his fingers together to support his head; the effect was boyish and strangely sensual and caused his pectorals, dusted with a fine trace of black curls, to bulge.  She hated him in that moment as much as she wanted him.  She burned for his kiss.

            Her fingers ghosted across the flat, taut muscles of her stomach.

            The fire inside her went cold, became ashes, gray and dim.

            Burke’s grin faded.  “What?” he said.  “Suddenly the boy who brings your father his groceries and mows his lawn and clips his hedges isn’t good enough for the likes of you?  Huh?”

            She drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.  Her face was a thundercloud; she felt queasy, unsettled; electricity roiled around inside of her like lightning.  “It isn’t that,” she said.  “I’m a married woman.”

            “That’s never stopped you before.”  A patch of sunlight appeared as the leaden sheath of clouds that usually darkened Collinsport ten months out of the year parted.  She could sense its warmth from where she sat, on an ancient, dusty bed in a long-ago forgotten room deep within the West Wing.  This had been her trysting place with Burke since a month or so after Roger had moved her into Collinwood, his ancestral home.  It hadn’t felt like a prison immediately; no, she reflected now bitterly, it was more than a week before the invisible bars began to slam down around her. 

 

Then the sunlight disappeared.

            She closed her eyes as if pained, then forced herself to open them.  Burke was waiting for her answer.  “And it isn’t really the reason I’m stopping you now,” she said.  She thought of her husband, and the one time he’d made love to her, on their wedding night.  Once; and then never again.  I guess that’s all it took, though, she thought, and her fingers, nervous, began to trace tiny concentric circles over her abdomen again. 

            Burke sat up on his elbow.  He reached over the side of the bed for his work jeans, the ones he wore every day while working for her father, Ambrose Murdoch, one of the wealthiest men in town … besides the venerable Collinses of Collinsport, of course.  And the Murdoch family fortune was already dwindling by the time little Laura came along.  (“I don’t know why,” her father would tell her, “but your mother insisted on naming you ‘Laura.’  I could never make her tell me why that was so important to her; and of course, I never figured it out on my own, after she died …”  And he would trail off and his face would grow dark and thundery, and he would slap her on her behind or lightly on the breasts until they ached, oh how they ached, and she would run, crying, from the room.)  She watched him now, Burke, the muscles of his back and shoulders working under his skin as he reached for his jeans, caught them, pulled them up onto the bed, and, with no seeming modesty at all, sat cross-legged while he fished inside the pockets for his lighter and his smokes.  His penis dangled unconcernedly between his legs.  She felt a sudden desire rush over her to grab it, stroke it back to tumescence, and then twist it and twist it until he screamed.

            She felt lightheaded again, as she had lately and with increasing regularity.  What had she just been thinking?  What in god’s name had she just been thinking?

            “Laura?” Burke said.  His voice was fuzzy and sounded far away.  Unimportant now.  “Laura, are you …?”

            Great god Ra … astua aa …Amun Ra … ia ia astua shuggoth … Ra! 

            Those voices … those voices chanting, as they had every night since … since …

            A tiny moan escaped her lips.

 

            Burke was beside her as she swayed on the bed, just beginning to swoon.  His powerful arms wrapped around her and he pressed her against him.  “Baby, baby,” he crooned in the shell of her ear, “baby, it’ll be all right.  Just tell me.  Tell me what’s happening.”

            “I’m going to have a baby,” she whispered, and there were tears on her face, scalding, running in heated rivers over the gentle swell of her cheeks.  “And it isn’t yours.  It can’t be.  It’s Roger’s.  Roger is my husband and a Collins, and my baby must be a Collins, he must.”

            Burke didn’t move, didn’t push her away or recoil.  But his face was stone; she could hear it in his voice.  “Why?” he said.  “Why is that so important?”

            “I don’t know,” she said, gazing up at him.  Her eyes were wide and terrified.  “Don’t you understand?  I don’t know.  There are so many things I don’t know.  Oh Burke – hold me.  Hold me, please, and don’t let me go, don’t ever let me go –”          

            But when he tried to make love to her again she pushed him away, and she cried as she did it, but she pushed him away nevertheless.  And he snarled out a curse for her and left her alone on the bed, where she rolled over onto her side and wailed and curled into a fetal position and thought about the warm flicker of life, this child inside her, and the voices that chanted and demanded something so terrifying that she couldn’t even begin to think what it could be.

            Then, for a time, as she and Burke avoided each other, even when they were forced to cohabitate the same space, and, frustratingly, as Roger decided that Burke was his new drinking buddy – for a time the dreams stopped.  Until David was born.  Then they began again, and with a vengeance.  Priests, men in long robes with long white beards, calling for the Phoenix of the Ages.  Wasn’t a phoenix a bird?  Some kind of legendary bird?  She seemed to recall her mother telling her the story when she was very small – “The Phoenix builds its nest at the top of the highest tree in the desert … a spark, a tiny hint of fire … the Phoenix fans the flame with its wings …”  And hadn’t the story been terrifying somehow?  Laura couldn’t remember, just as she couldn’t remember much about her mother.

  

            I have no history, she realized one day, sitting up in her cold bed, Roger in the next room (she could hear his snoring), the baby beginning to stir in his crib.  Who was her mother?  Where had she come from?  Laura had been born in the village, but of her mother’s people she knew almost nothing.

            Strike that.  She knew nothing.  Her mother was a cypher, dead of a heart attack when Laura was ten, her father’s face, blank and moony, and he knew nothing as well –

            Thunder walked outside, and the room was illuminated for a moment by a flash of silver lightning.  Laura rose from the bed and crossed the room, too big for one small woman, her white nightgown trailing behind her, gauzy, as if she were a heroine in some centuries old gothic novel.  All I’m missing is the candelabra, she thought with a crooked smile.

            She stood in the window and gazed out.  She could see the ocean far away, and the tridents of lightning that stabbed down from the heavens every three seconds or so.  That same, strange smile refused to leave her lips.  There was so much power out there, just flickering away in the darkness.

           

            You don’t have to be lonely.

            That was a new thought.

            You don’t have to live this life.

            Of course she did.  She was Mrs. Laura Collins, and she had just given birth to the Collins scion, the last direct descendent, the only remaining Collins heir.  Was this related to the dreams, then, the men with their robes and their firebrands?  What, she thought smirking, was some new personality emerging out of nothing, this angry and powerful young woman she might have been if she had only … if she had only …

 

            The smile faded.  If she had only what?  What could she do?  She had no money, no skills of her own, and no real interest in anything that would help her make a living … support her child.  No history of her own, no real personality, nothing to distinguish her from the rest of the world.  She didn’t even particularly want to leave Collinsport.  How sad was that?  How pathetic and, let’s be honest, disturbing?  I am useless, she whispered to herself; I am nothing. 

            David whimpered in his crib.  She went to him.  She looked down at him, and her face smoothed out.  She allowed herself to reach out and touch the fine blonde fuzz dusting his skull.  He was beautiful, wasn’t he?  And hadn’t she made him?  She was good for something, it seemed.  She could be useful.  Productive. 

            “You deserve better than me,” she whispered, and, suddenly furious, drew her hand back.  Her eyes hurt and her face was wet.  Tears.  Stupid, useless tears.  She clawed at her face suddenly in a futile attempt to get rid of them and stumbled away from David’s crib with a feral snarl.  The pain was bright and horribly real, but it didn’t stave off the tears; it created more of them.  Sobbing, Laura sank to the floor and struck it with her fists.  She hated this house, this goddamned house that had entrapped her as surely as it had all the Collins wives. 

            This house has always held unhappy women.

            Another one of those ghost-thoughts.  What did it mean?  She couldn’t possibly know that for a fact; she was just a townie, really, a little more privileged perhaps than the other girls at Collinsport High, but she didn’t have private tutors and governesses and boarding schools.  No one ever saw the Collins children, and they rarely saw Elizabeth, the latest lady of the manor.  Roger sometimes came to work at the cannery almost as a formality – the real work, everyone knew, was performed by Bill Malloy – but even little Carolyn attended school in England nine months out of the year.  And Laura knew next to nothing about Roger’s own mother, Rebecca Collins, dead in a fire when he was a teenager.  To be honest, Laura knew next to nothing about the Collins family history in any of its eras, remarkable or not.

            Sniffling, she pulled herself off the floor and dragged herself into the tiny bathroom that accompanied her cavernous bedroom.  She blinked in the sudden flash of electricity as she pulled the chain attached to the light bulb above the mirror, and then looked quickly away from her reflection.  Her eyes were hollow and haunted and over-bright, a madwoman’s, her face bloodied by the five sharp scratches dragged across her cheek.  She wanted to begin crying again, but she wouldn’t allow herself.  She really would go mad if she did, she was certain.

            Instead, she left the bathroom behind.  There was a bottle of Jamison Collins’ best sherry she had squirreled out of the drawing room after one particularly bitter fight with Roger on a blustery day last November.  She didn’t bother to pour it; she pulled instead from the mouth of the bottle, just as she had the past several nights; she wasn’t certain how many; she wasn’t keeping track.  But the burning in her throat relaxed her instantly.  She knew it would.  She was experienced now, a Collins woman in a Collins house.  And this is what they did.

            She lay back on the bed and thought, I want to leave this house.  I could; I could do it easily; I could just take David and go; or I could leave him.  A cold thought, but a true one.  I could leave him, and it would be easy.  She closed her eyes.  So easy.

            But the voices rose out of the dark, and maybe they were real, she wasn’t sure anymore, but she nestled down into her pillows and listened to them, and they said, You have to stay, you have to stay, you have to, you have to.

5

 

            Elizabeth screamed once and turned to run.  This amused Laura endlessly; she chuckled and held out one hand, and a ring of fire began to blaze around Elizabeth in a perfect circle.  She screamed again, this time out of frustration, and whirled around to face her sister-in-law.  “Let me go!” Elizabeth cried.

            Laura sidled up to her, rubbing her hands together.  “You have always been one of many flies in my ointment,” she said, “and please forgive me for the use of cliché, but it’s true.  I wanted my son and you stood in the way; you never wanted me in this house and so you did your very level best to make me feel as unwanted as you could.”

            Liz drew her head up; her eyes reflected back the fire that crackled around her.  “Perhaps I did,” she said.  “All right; there’s no ‘perhaps’ about it. I did.  I didn’t think you were right for Roger.”

            “You don’t have to tell me that; I know that –”

            “But what you don’t understand,” Liz overrode her smoothly, “is that it didn’t matter who you were.  No one would have been good enough for Roger.”

            Her lower lip trembled.  “You’re only saying that.”

            “I’m not.  I didn’t know you, Laura, and after I met you I didn’t even try.  Nor did I give you the chance to get to know me.  I didn’t think you’d last.  I didn’t think you’d really stay here.”

            “I didn’t want to,” Laura whispered.  She felt frozen inside; the heat was gone, fading, it was all gone, gone.  She wanted to bolt or to fade away or to disappear in a blaze of fire.  But she couldn’t, couldn’t move.

 

            “And perhaps,” Liz said, reflecting, “perhaps I didn’t want anyone to be happy if I couldn’t be happy.  Oh, it would be easy to say that I wanted privacy – that protecting Louise’s baby from the shadow that lies over this house and this town made me shut you out, that protecting my own daughter was a priority … but that’s not it.  I was unhappy, Laura.”

            “That isn’t an excuse,” Laura said through gritted teeth.

            “I know.  But I want you to understand.  I was unhappy, and you were an alcoholic, and a … a whatever it is you really are –”

            Laura threw her head back.  Her eyes flashed.  “I,” she said grandly, “am the Phoenix of the Ages.”

            Liz stared at her blankly.

            Laura narrowed her eyes.  “Never mind,” she said at last.  “I am immortal and powerful, that’s all you need to know.”

 

            “Were you always like this?” Liz asked curiously.  Laura’s eyes narrowed a fraction of an inch.  Was there … was it possible that Elizabeth Collins Stoddard sounded … respectful?  Of her?  Lowly Laura the alkie?  “When you married Roger, did you already possess these powers?”

            “I didn’t know about them then,” Laura said after a long, suspicious beat.  “That came later.  Everything came later.”

            “I wish I’d known,” Liz said glumly.  “I wish I’d known a lot of things.  So much was happening around me in this house, in this town, and I kept my head buried firmly in the sand.”

            “It wouldn’t have mattered,” Laura said.  “Some things are predestined.”

            “I don’t believe that.”  Liz shook her head.  Sweat was beginning to glow on her forehead from the heat of the flames surrounding her.  “I think we can change if we want to.  I could have changed myself, perhaps, if I’d tried harder.”

            “Tried to do what?”

            “To talk to you.  To get to know you.  To learn the slightest thing about you, if only to make you feel welcome.  And … I’m sorry, Laura.  I’m sorry I didn’t try harder.”

            Laura stared at her.

            Liz wiped a tear away from her eye.

            And:

            The flames around her flickered.

            And fell away.

            They stood together.  Liz’s breathing was a bit heavier than usual and her forehead glowed, but other than that she retained her regular, regal bearing. 

            The women looked at each other.  Behind them, the ancient grandfather clock chimed the hour.  Neither woman blinked; neither moved.

            “Now what do we do?” Liz said at last.  Her voice was steady, almost, Laura thought, disturbing normal, as if this were an everyday occurrence in the great house.  “I sent Mrs. Johnson away, but I’m not completely incapable of making a pot of tea with my own two hands.”

            Laura, who fully intended to decline the offer in favor of immolating Collinwood, surprised herself by saying, “Tea would be lovely.”

 

            “I’ll be right back,” Liz said, and walked briskly toward the kitchen.

            Laura watched her go.  What are you doing? a part of her screamed.  Get rid of her!  Burn her until her bones are black and then burn down this house and take your son and go!  Forget Roxanne and the Enemy and all the rest of them!  When you’re safe in Naqada with David, none of this will matter.

            Except it would.  Roxanne had made that very clear, and Laura believed her.  Whatever the Enemy meant to do, the exact steps it would take meant destruction, not just of this world, but of all the worlds.  And that included Naqada – the world outside this one, its existence profound and revered, so revered that inspired the name of the town that glowed, a gem beside the Nile – where all her children waited for her, thousands of years of offspring.  They needed her.  They were precious.  And she wouldn’t risk their immortality.

            She had to remain.  Like before.  It was just like before.  She put a hand to her forehead, which burned with heat, singing her fingertips. She wished she could forget.  Damn it, she thought, damn it, why can’t I just –        

6

Collinsport, 1956

            Roger was blind.  The blood streaking his face that gushed, continued to gush even as she watched it, from the gash in his forehead had flooded his eyes so that he couldn’t see, and so he staggered about the roadside in the darkness, alternately roaring like a bull and weeping incoherently.

            Burke was dead.  He sat where he had when they began this nightmare ride from Collinwood out along the back roads, shadowed by the reaching, skeletal branches of the desiccated trees that lined this particular forgotten highway:  in the passenger seat.  Beside her, of course, where she wanted him.  “I want you,” she had said to him, only an hour ago?  Only an hour ago.  “I always want you.  I will always want you.”  Roger had sat in the back.  Laura drove.  The bottle she sucked from every few minutes since they left the great house behind them was still clutched in one hand.

            Flames continued to lick at the car.  Burke was beginning to turn black.  She caught a glimpse of his teeth frozen in an eternal grin, glinting at her in the light of the moon.  She smelled the heavy stench of motor oil and the upholstery from the seats as it scorched and the sweet, repugnant odor of cooking human flesh.

            She turned her head and vomited.  She closed her eyes while she did it, and there beneath her eyelids she saw her son, her beautiful son rising up to her, his big brown eyes full of warmth and innocence and love for her, his despicable mother.  She closed her eyes tighter, choking on the bile searing her throat, and David’s image was replaced by the bearded, cloaked men; as always, they clutched their torches, and their faces were a confusing mixture of hatred and awe.  They jabbered at her in that foreign tongue, whatever it was.  “Astua aa,” she whispered.  “Amun Ra.”  She was unaware that she had spoken.

 

            The car behind her exploded.

            Roger screamed and threw himself to the ground, still wet after the week of spring thunderstorms Collinsport had endured.  That was the real reason for the crash, Laura thought distantly, and stood, wobbling to her feet; not just that I was drunk as a skunk, not just that I don’t care about Roger or Burke or even me, but it was the road, the roads, the wet wet roads. 

            She took a step toward the car.  The fire was enticing, wasn’t it.  Attractive in some terrible way.  She wanted to walk into it.  It would consume her, as it should.  Predestination, she thought, and liked the word, so she spoke it aloud.  “Predestination,” she thought.  Fire.  She wanted the fire.  And the fire wanted her.  She could feel it, couldn’t she.  She was a murderess.  Burke was dead because of her.  David would die eventually because she was such a terrible mother – tell the truth and shame the devil – and so she’d be responsible for his death as well as the miserable life she knew lay before him.  All her fault.

            “All my fault,” she whispered, and took a step toward the burning wreckage of the car where Burke’s skull still flashed out at her amidst the flickering ropes of flame.

            The Collinsport fire patrol arrived in time to stop her from immolating herself – Roger, still blind, still wailing, would never have stood in her way – and had to pull her forcibly back from the burning car, screaming and clawing like a feline; finally one of the fireman had simply struck her with his heavy fist in that delicate place where shoulder meets neck, and Laura Murdoch Collins collapsed, unconscious, at their feet.

            They institutionalized her, of course.  Liz insisted they send her to Windcliff, the lovely old asylum run by her good friend Dr. Julia Hoffman, but she wouldn’t be attended to be Julia, unfortunately, who was performing some research on an obscure strain of blood disease in Haiti with another doctor, her friend, Dave Woodard.  They put Laura in a little room and people came to visit (not her family, of course, not her father nor her husband nor dear sister Liz; no one, no one she really really knew) and they injected her with chemicals and gave her pills, but nothing stopped the dreams where Burke grinned at her with his skull blackened and his fleshless fingers reaching for her, where David smiled and cooed from behind a wall of flame, where men with torches thrust them at her and she screamed and she burned –

            She was an alcoholic, she was a dangerous lunatic; if she were ever released, she knew, she would stand trial for manslaughter.  Burke Devlin’s death was on her hands, quite literally; her fingers, when she stumbled from the car that night, were sticky with his blood that had struck her with soft, wet heat when they crashed into the tree and his body had undergone a sudden, radical reduction. 

The Phoenix is a beautiful bird. It comes from Paradise, the most wonderful place ever; a place with all kinds of flowers and spices and perfume...

            Burke was dead.  Then her father was dead.  Roger hated her.  And Liz hated her.  And her son would never know her.  So living – especially like this, confined once again, and Windcliff wasn’t so different from Collinwood, not when you came right down to it – so living didn’t make a whole lot of sense, did it.  And she would think of the fire.

Every one-hundred years it decides it must go to a very special place. So the Phoenix gathers up all the herbs and spices and flowers and flies to find a new place. The Phoenix has to fly to a place where he can build his nest, a nest that will be its very last one.

            It wasn’t so hard, in the end.  The escape from Windcliff.  No one really cared, it seemed, not enough to actually find her.  She hitched a ride out of Collinsport, then to another town, and another.  She ended up in the West.  That figured.  Phoenix, Arizona.  A joke.  She was a joke; her life was a joke.  Why not end it all in a joke place?  The punchline.  Hilarious.

 

            She begged for money; she stole money; she sold the jewelry they let her keep at Windcliff; enough money, in the end, to rent a filthy room in a filthy boarding house.  Didn’t matter.  She wouldn’t be there long.

And so the Phoenix finds the tallest palm tree where it begins to make a beautiful nest. The Phoenix watches the sun rise, higher and higher into the sky.

            Enough money to buy the cigarette lighter and the kerosene.  From there it was easy, so easy.  To splash it around the room.  To soak her clothes, those she had purchased and the beautiful lily-white skirt she wore.  Appropriate.  It would turn black soon enough.

When the sun begins to send its rays down to the nest, it gets hotter and hotter. Then a little flame begins in the nest.

            A deep breath.  The lighter in her hand, burning like a little coal.  The room had no windows; the only light was pale and sickly from the ugly bedside lamp that came with the room.  She closed her eyes and there was no more light.  No images came to her; not David, not Roger, not the men with their firebrands.  Only darkness.  That was what she wanted.  Just darkness.

And the Phoenix fans the fire with its wings and the flames begin to rise … and higher … and higher…

           

Then the spark, and it wasn’t from the lighter, she was sure of that, the spark came from her, from somewhere inside her, and that was clearly impossible, but it didn’t matter; then the heat; and finally the pain, oh god, she hadn’t considered the pain; she felt herself running about the room in a kind of panic, and everywhere she went fire erupted, and she was screaming, screaming and burning –

And then the Phoenix, the beautiful Phoenix, begins to burn.

 

            It came back to her with the darkness.  Countless incarnations, thousands and thousands of years backward, ever backward, and children, oh the children, but even the children were nothing compared to the flickering golden glory that was the great god Ra, omnipotent, living flame, more than the sun, sustaining her always, always, always –

            And the images.  The names.  The memories.  Solidifying, because she was pulled to one particular place eventually, and that had never happened before.  The Phoenix was a wanderer upon the face of the planet; it had no real home after it left Naqada.  And yet … Collinsport.  This little town.  This terrible little place.  The first time as Laura Pendleton, the wife of Amadeus Collins, and then, after that, after her time at the stake … why?  Why did she continually return to that place?  Next as the lover of Joshua Collins, as Laura Stockbridge, then as the wife of Edward, and here again as the wife or Roger, her previous incarnation’s grandson.  It didn’t make any sense. 

            Bound to this place by some dark power, the Phoenix began to understand.  Was it Miranda DuVal?  That didn’t feel right, though of course Laura had encountered her twice before, once in 1692 and again in 1897.  Was that witch then connected to whatever force it was that seemingly held Laura herself in its thrall?

            Ultimately, she supposed, it didn’t matter.  She would claim her son and she would bring him back to Ra.  He loved her above all his other children, which was why she was forgiven for failing with Jamison and Nora.  And then she and David would live happily ever after, basking in the glory and the warmth of her god.

            Until she returned to earth again for the next cycle …

7

            “Dwelling on the past, my dear?”

            Laura stiffened, dragged from her reverie by that familiar – and hated, oh how she hated it – voice.

            “Miranda,” she said as she began to turn her head.  “Didn’t we just –”

            But it wasn’t Miranda.  At least, not the Miranda Laura had encountered three times before.

            This was a different being altogether, and Laura knew instantly that it wasn’t a witch, wasn’t even made of flesh and blood.  But it was smiling, whatever it was, and that infuriated her.  “This,” Laura said, “isn’t possible.”

 

            “Of course it’s possible,” Angelique said.  “You of all … well, you’re not exactly ‘people’ anymore, are you – you of all creatures should know that anything is possible in this world.  You yourself are living proof of that.”

            “I’m going to destroy you,” Laura snarled.  “Gloves off.  You have interfered in my plans for the last time.”  Grinning, eyes glowing white, Laura thrust out her hand –

            Angelique continued to smile.

            No fire.  Not even a spark, nor puff of smoke.

            Laura lowered her hand.  “You’ve obviously learned some new tricks since last we met,” she said.  “But they won’t save you in the end.”

            “I don’t need saving,” Angelique said.  “I don’t really require anything from anyone save myself.  The rules of the game have changed, my dear; surely you can sense that by now.  And rule changing means that alliances may shift as well.”

            “I will never align myself with you.”

            “Never say never, Laura dear.  Again, you of all creatures should know that.”

            “We are enemies.  We have always been enemies.  We will always be enemies.”

            “The world is changing.  Haven’t you noticed?  We’re all new and all different, and both of us are included for once.  And I think, also for once, we both want the same thing.”

            Laura glared at her.  “And what is that?”

 

            The being before her revealed its teeth in it smile; they were, Laura saw, tiny glowing stars.  “The end of everything.”

            “That isn’t true.”  She turned away.

            “It is.  That’s the price Ra has given you, isn’t it.  He’s as tired of this world as I am.  Take your child, bring him home in a blaze of glory, but this time that blaze will take out this sorry world.  Ra requires a holocaust, isn’t that true?”

            Laura whipped her head back to face her one-time enemy.  “How can you know that?”

            The thing was serene.  “I am a goddess now, even more powerful than Ra.  If it pleased me, I could destroy your Naqada and everything else you know and love.”  Laura gasped despite herself.  But Angelique raised a somehow gentle hand that sparkled silver and blue.  “But it doesn’t please me.  I would be rid of this world, that is true.  It holds the human part of me, and I despise that more than anything else.  Once this world is gone, I will be free.  And so will you.”  She giggled.  “But I don’t want a holocaust.  I want to take it apart slowly.  Disassemble it.  So they all feel it.  Every terrible moment of the end.  I want it to last.”

            “Roxanne Drew wants me to save the world,” Laura said.  Her eyes stung; was she about to cry?  That didn’t feel right.  And yet she was.  Those were tears that burned her now.  “She doesn’t know about Ra’s plan.”

            The Angelique-creature laughed its wicked, ringing laughter.  “Of course she doesn’t.  Roxanne Drew is a fool.  But useful in her own way.  She freed me from my own bondage, though nothing after that went as she planned.”  She sobered.  “Because my human self continues to exist, I continue to make foolish plans … like saving Barnabas Collins and his friends.”

            Laura exhaled.  “Why do you need me?”

            “I want your help when the time comes,” Angelique said.  “I want no opposition.  Help me and I will help you.  I will secure your son and I will preserve Naqada … but that is all.  Everything else – everyone else – is doomed.”

            Laura studied her carefully.  “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you,” she said.  “But if you’re so damned powerful, why do you need me at all?”

 

            “I am not unwise,” the being said.  “I realize that no one is infallible, even goddesses.  That even the best laid plans of witches and men have a way of going awry.  I want to even the odds a bit.  And you would make a powerful ally.”

            “You’re afraid you might lose.”

            The witch-goddess shrugged her glowing, silver shoulders.

            “I want you,” she said after a moment.  She purred.  “I need you.  Isn’t that nice, Laura?”  Her voice was velvety, caressing.  “Isn’t it nice to be wanted?”

            Laura watched her, this strange, impossible creature before her.

            And then, after a long moment, she began to smile.

            And, five minutes later, when Elizabeth Collins Stoddard entered the drawing room with the tea tray in hand, she found it empty.

            Laura and Angelique had gone.

            Together.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...