Shadows on the Wall Chapter 116

Chapter 116:  Flashback

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Virginia Vestoff:  “Barnabas Collins and Julia Hoffman have tried the impossible:  to cross the boundaries of time and space that have remained closed to them for the past year.  But now they have succeeded, and find themselves back in the year 1897, where Barnabas has become human again … while Julia finds that she is, once again, a dead woman.”

1

 

1897:  The East Wing of Collinwood

            “We can’t leave this room,” Barnabas said.  “Not now … not in this time.  If we do, we run the risk of destroying everything Vicki worked for.  Everything she gave her life for.”

            The ghost of Julia Hoffman flickered urgently with spectral luminescence.  “We need to leave this time,” she said.  “But how?”

            “This room,” Barnabas said, noting how unchanged it seemed, as filthy, as shadowed and cobweb-cast, as it was in the twentieth century.  “It sent you to the future after our return from Parallel Time, did it not?”

            “Of course!” Julia’s ghost exclaimed.  “This room could also take us backward in time …”

            “Or forward,” Barnabas said grimly.  “The fact is, we don’t know exactly what it will do.  We have no control over its powers.”

            “We might not,” Julia said instantly, “but I may.”  Her lips curled into a smile that bordered, Barnabas thought, on triumph.  “Somehow my spirit was able to travel back in time to help you.  That’s the reason the Enemy was so interested in me, and how it planned to send me back to you in 1968 after it killed me in 2014.”  Her voice, which echoed with etheric energy, grew louder and more powerful with her excitement.  “I can try to send us to 1840, Barnabas.”

            “Your energy reserves,” Barnabas said.  “It’s too dangerous, Julia.”

            Her eyes, spectral as they were, were flint.  “I can do this.”

            “I don’t want you to fade away forever.”

            “Trust me.”  Her eyes glowed now as well.  “Please, Barnabas.  I know I can make this happen.  I feel it.  I know it.”

 

            “Do it,” Barnabas said suddenly.  All his fears and doubts were forgotten.  Her excitement was contagious.  He could feel his heart hammering in his chest, and he exulted for a moment.  He was human again.  Her cure, he thought, Julia’s cure held across time and space.  What a wonder she is.  What a wonder indeed.  “Do it!” he cried.

            Julia closed her ghost’s eyes.  Her body rose into the air and hovered there.  “1840!” she cried, and threw out her arms. 

            Nothing.  They remained where they stood.  The room was unchanged.

Julia cracked one eye.  “Do you hear me, powers that be?  I am a ghost, which means I am not human, which means that I have special powers.  Well, you’re going to let me use them all, right this moment!  Do you hear me?” 

Barnabas felt a spark of fear.  “Julia –” he began, but something … something was happening.

She had begun to spin around, faster and faster.  Her face registered comic surprise, then giddiness, then glee.  “Yes!” she cried, whirling, whirling, and whirling.  “Take us to Collinwood in the year 1840, powers that rule this room!  Take us there … now … now … NOW!”

            There was a sound, some sound, horrible, a rending, tearing sound, a bird screaming, a million birds all shrieking with one voice –

            Barnabas held up one hand and covered his eyes to prevent them from being blinded by the glaring white light Julia’s spirit exuded as she spun, faster and faster, until the room was full of light, and that sound like alien shrieking, like the wailing of the damned –

2

            “The will does not include new and improved Collinses we have never heard of until a mere evening ago.”  Gabriel Collins, sandy-haired, mustachioed, nearing forty, and paralyzed from the waist down, steepled his fingers and then glared from behind them up at his sister-in-law.  “Just so we’re absolutely, a hundred percent clear.  Father made no provisions for surprise guests, no matter how many portraits they just happen to resemble.” 

 

For her part, Samantha Drew Collins, her titian hair tied up into tiny ringlets framing her face, instead of offering him a blistering rejoinder (which, she knew, was exactly what the sorry bastard wanted), spun away from him furiously, and stalked across the length of the drawing room.  She almost made it out the door, and then, at the last minute, spun around to face him again.  It was, she decided, too good of an opportunity.

            “You astonish me, Gabriel,” she said in her most imperious, most commanding tone.  “But then again, you never fail to astonish me.”

            “Thank you,” Gabriel said, nodding regally in her direction.

            Her smile grew withering.  “And you never fail to astonish me with the depth of your greed,” she said, hissing, “and your ineptitude.”  She enjoyed watching the smile fade from his mouth, and drew herself up proudly.  “Your father isn’t even dead yet, and already you and Edith are clamoring about the will, like … like a pair of jackals!”

            “We aren’t talking about Edith or me, dear sister-in-law,” Gabriel said, his smile having returned.  But now it was tautly stretched across his mouth in a sneer.  “We are talking about Barnabas and Julia Collins, the brother and sister pairing no one ever heard of until last night.”

            “Their story is perfectly legitimate,” Samantha said, sniffing.  “You only have to look at Barnabas to see how much he resembles his father.  And why would they lie?  They have their own money.  Barnabas told me so.”

            “And you believe him, just like that.”  Gabriel tittered.  “You are a fool, Samantha.”

            She sounded bored suddenly, he thought, which was infuriating, as she must have known it would be.  “Whatever you say, Gabriel.  You know best, I’m certain.”

 

            “Damn right,” he muttered, and ran his hands over the withered broomsticks hidden carefully by his darling wife beneath the thick knitted blanket dear Hortense, the governess who departed both Collinwood and the earthly plane around the same time, made for his birthday last year.  To hide them, his father’s shame, his brother’s guilt.  How Gabriel hated them both.

           

            Except that Daniel was almost dead now, wasn’t he.  Yes, almost dead, and soon it would be forever.

            Now if only dear sister-in-law Samantha would follow suit.  And, as long as he was wishing, why not wish away hateful wife Edith while he was at it.

            He opened his mouth to express exactly that sentiment, but Samantha was already gone, had left the room while he was petting his destroyed legs, and he hadn’t even heard the serpentine hiss of her hideous orange gown that matched her hideous orange hair at it must have swept, oh-so-imperiously, out of the drawing room.

            He wished her dead.  Oh, dear God  how Gabriel wished Samantha Drew Collins was dead.

            “It will do you no good, brother,” an amused, sardonic voice quipped from behind him, and he spun his chair around to take in the grinning visage of his brother Quentin, Quentin the handsome, Quentin the horse-hung, oh yes, had to hear about that all his life, Quentin the best-loved.  Quentin, Quentin, the son-of-a-bitch-bastard.  Daddy’s pet.  “Wishing her dead never does the trick.  Believe me, I’ve tried it more time than once.”

 

            And lest we forget, Gabriel thought, and Quentin is psychic; so psychic; Daddy’s little mind reader.  Why didn’t it bother dear daddy Daniel, exposed to volumes of witchcraft and demonology as a child, his own sister bearing the vampire curse after her death and – shh! we don’t talk about that – resurrection; why didn’t Daniel see through Quentin and know him as the monster he was?  The warlock?  There, say the word, Gabriel thought, teeth gritted; you are a decent Christian man who only occasionally wishes his in-laws into their graves, it isn’t as if you’d actually act on those desires; but Quentin, ah, now Quentin …

            Conspiring with that bastard Gerard Stiles, lately of Rose Cottage, whispering with similarly supernaturally inclined Desmond Collins, the idiot son of that nattering half-wit “lady novelist,” Flora Collins, dreaming up new ways to torment his little brother.  Crippled little brother, Gabriel thought, and felt one of his teeth crack as they ground together like stones.

            “You,” Gabriel said calmly, despite the sudden jarring pain in his mouth, “would be better suited using your talents for a more noble purpose than appearing from nowhere to tease and taunt me.”

            Quentin must have secreted himself behind a drapery, Gabriel thought as his older brother bounded into the center of the room, then draped his impossibly long – and impossibly mobile – legs over the arm of the sofa; certainly he can’t have concealed himself using magic.  That … that was insane.

            What isn’t around this house?

            True.

            “Such as what, dear brother?” Quentin grinned at him.  “Enlarging the Collins fortune?  We’re already the richest family on the coast.  Why ask for more?”  He winked.  “Could it be that you and Edith need some additional padding  in your purses?”

 

            The pain, Gabriel thought, concentrate on the pain, the pain, “No,” he said, smiling pleasantly, “no, that’s not it.  You are … quite generous with your allowance.  We lack for nothing.”  The pain, the pain, singing the pain.

            “And the boys?  Caleb, away at his boarding school?  Gregory, only a lad of sixteen but already with his new wife and their growing passel of brats?  They also lack for nothing?”  He chuckled.  “Besides, Gregory is already using my money to build Seaview, isn’t he.  Why don’t you and Edith go live there?”

            Bastard, bastard, sonofawhore, bastard; “I’m referring,” Gabriel said silkily, “to our newest addition:  Cousins Barnabas and Julia, appeared from nowhere, claiming to spring from an English branch of the family no one has ever heard of, just in time for the dispensation of Father’s worldly possessions and all his effects.”

            “Of which you care nothing, of course,” Quentin said airily.

            “I know well enough who is to receive,” he said, his temper flaring at last, and the flash in Quentin’s eyes told him that such a temper flare was exactly what he had been waiting for, and Gabriel cursed himself now as well as his brother.  “Just as I know that Tad stands to inherit should something happening to you or Samantha.”

            “I wouldn’t worry about me,” Quentin sighed, and crossed one leg over the other, one booted foot dangling lazily in mid-air.  “I’m not so sure about Samantha, but I can assure you that my assets are, shall we say, well protected.”  He chuckled.  “Well protected indeed.”

            Bastard, bastard, warlock bastard.  “And after Tad, then Caleb and then Gregory.  The line of succession is clear.”

           

            “Relax, Gabriel,” Quentin said, bored suddenly, just as Samantha had grown bored of him.  “You will always have a place to stay in this house. I won’t even require that you play nice or take down the religious relics you insist on hanging in every room in the house in addition to your own room or stop bringing Lamar Trask here with any hopes of …”  And he snickered again.  “Conversion.”

 

            “Lamar Trask comes from a long line of clergymen,” Gabriel said, with that same lump in his throat, the one that always seemed to arrive when Quentin poked, no matter how gently (or not), at his piety.  “He is a decent, righteous man.”

            “Certainly, certainly,” Quentin said.  “Who never ever spends any time with the whores down at the docks.”  Color rose in Gabriel’s cheeks, and Quentin laughed again.  “But don’t worry, little brother.  I’ll be sure to say nary a word to beautiful Roxanne, no matter how her own fiancé disgusts her, even without that stray bit of knowledge.”  His smile became sly, vulpine.  “Besides.  You’re forgetting Father’s wife in your scheming about lines of succession.  Our dear and much beloved stepmother.  Or have you ruled her out so soon?”

            Outside the drawing room, Julia Collins, nee Hoffman, gradually materialized, at least partially.  Eavesdropping was never easier than this, she thought with a pained smile, then faded away again, to reappear moments later in the drawing room of the Old House.  While it wasn’t nearly as destroyed as it had been when Barnabas and Willie began the restoration in 1967, it was still no picnic shaping it up again, especially since Barnabas was now a human, and Julia, technically, couldn’t touch anything without exhausting an obscene amount of energy.

            “Did you learn anything?” Barnabas asked, his hands worrying just below his breastbone, as they always seemed to do these days.  Faithful Ben, he thought, recalling how, only two days ago, the aged Ben Stokes, his old servant, remarkably unperturbed by his master’s sudden reappearance after nearly fifty years, as well as his claims of traveling from a future time, had secured him more appropriate clothing for a man of 1840. 

            “Nothing really new,” Julia said.  “Roxanne Drew is engaged to Lamar Trask, as it turns out.”

            “And she’s still human?”

 

            Julia shrugged.  “Neither Quentin nor Gabriel made any more mention of her than that.  And while Samantha has spoken of her, she hasn’t mentioned whether she has suffered any kind of accident, or a change.  Or if she’s ever seen during the day.”

            “This worries me,” Barnabas said.  “I don’t know how long we must remain in this time, or what we should or shouldn’t do.”

            “We don’t want to change too much,” Julia said.  “We could make the future bleaker than it already is.”

            “Which is why we must find Angelique,” Barnabas said.  “We must bring her out of the wall.”

            “I don’t know, Barnabas,” Julia grumbled.  “We don’t know if our plans in the future worked – if Angelique was able to project her astral self back to this time.  There’s simply no way to know.  And if she didn’t …”

            “…we’d be dealing with the original Angelique,” Barnabas said, and covered his face with his hands.  “Which would make the situation even graver than it already is.”  He peered at her from between the bars of his fingers.  “Still, Julia … she’s our only hope of returning to our own time.”

 

            “I could try to control the Parallel Time room again,” Julia said, but she didn’t sound at all certain.

Barnabas seemed not to hear her.  “My body is, for all intents and purposes, trapped here.  And I’m human, Julia.  If anything should happen to me …”  He allowed his voice to trail off.  His eyes were very large and full of pain.  “It’s the rock and the hard place.  There is no good answer.  None.”

            Julia wavered from sight suddenly, blinked out, and was gone.

            Barnabas’ eyes widened, and he reached out, fumbling through empty air. “Julia?” he cried.  “Julia!”

           

            I’m here, Barnabas.

            Her voice was faint, and contained a slight echoic quality, as if it came to him from the end of a long hallway. 

            It’s … it’s so difficult to stay.

            “Julia,” Barnabas said sadly.  “Dear friend.  Don’t … don’t strain yourself.”

            She reappeared suddenly, though she was pale and washed out, as if she were a glass filled with milk.  When she spoke, she sounded out of breath.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ll … I’ll be fine.”

            “I fear,” Barnabas said, niggling his lower lip, “I very much fear that we are disturbing the future by drawing your spirit back to this time.  Technically, it shouldn’t exist at all.  Vicki’s work in 1897 undid what Petofi did to you when he … when he killed you.”  Snapped your neck like a twig:  words unspoken.

            “If we bring Angelique back,” Julia said carefully, delicately, “her powers could help focus the forces in … in that room.  Send my ghost back to the 1897 before Vicki made the changes, and my present mind back to 1969.”  She shook her head.  Her lips twitched into a sudden smile at the absurdity of their discussion.  “This is becoming ridiculous, Barnabas.  I can’t keep track of what rules are what, what time is what, what what is what.”

 

            “This is a fool’s game,” Barnabas sighed.  “And we can’t keep it up much longer.  How long before you make some casual slip and reveal a little too much knowledge of the Collins family?”

            “Or before I’m required to shake a hand or lift a coffee cup.”  Her lips trembled into a colorless smile.

            Barnabas echoed her smile, but sadly.  “We’re going to fail.  Aren’t we.  We don’t even know why we’re here.”

            “We’re here to save them all,” Julia said.  “And if that means dragging Angelique out of that wall kicking and screaming …”

            “Cursing us all the way.”

            “And that would be literally.”

            They laughed together for a moment.

 

            Outside, lightning sliced the sky and thunder shook the foundations of the ancient house.

            Their smiles faded simultaneously, and they could only look at each other with exhausted wariness.

3

            Roxanne Drew stirred on the floor of Rose Cottage, a place she visited and stayed from time to time, along with Flora Collins and her son Desmond.  Her eyelids fluttered, and she placed two fingers gingerly to the sensitive skin of her throat, then groaned and pulled them back.  She blinked at them blearily, and saw that they were stained black in the dim light of the room.  Blood, she thought dazedly, that’s my blood. 

             “Welcome back to the land of the living, my dear.”  Gerard, she thought, and clambered her way to her knees.  She wanted to scream suddenly.  Even the rustling of the gorgeous yellow gown she had donned, foolishly, this morning when she was far less ignorant and a million times more naive, ground like broken glass into her ears. 

            She looked up, and there he was, grinning down at her, his enormous, sensual lips split to reveal his strong white teeth.  “It’s like that for a time, from what I understand.  Your senses have become … quite developed.  Far more than those of the average human.  It takes some getting used to.”

            She opened her mouth to demand information, to force him to tell her what he had done to her, what had happened, but instead her voice emerged from her cracked lips in a guttural, animal growl.  “I’m … hungry,” she said in that new, wolfen voice. 

            “Of course you are,” he clucked, “poor darling.  And don’t you worry your pretty new fangs about it.  I’ll find you a plump baby to eat,” and he waved a dismissive hand, “or something.”

            Fangs?

            But he was right.  She could feel them.  Her teeth had somehow become fangs.  She tested them gingerly with the tip of her tongue, and her stomach clenched tightly with simultaneous revulsion and satisfaction as a bloom of copper tanged on her tongue.

            What happened to me?

 

            “You know too much, dearest,” Gerard Stiles purred, examining his sleeves as he did so for invisible specks of dust amidst the florid cuffs of his dress-shirt that emerged like foam from his black frock-coat.  “Which is why you had to be silenced.”

            “But I’m not silent,” Roxanne growled.  “I can speak.  I can think.  I’ll tell everyone what I saw.”

            “I think you won’t,” Gerard said, smiling all the while his blithe smile.  “The moment you do, you will reveal yourself.  Or I’ll reveal you as the monster you newly are.  And there will be a vampire hunt at Collinwood, with you, dearest, on the receiving end of the stake.”

            Vampire?  I’m … a vampire?

            What did that mean, exactly?

            “No one believes in vampires,” she spat.  “Who would believe you?”

            “Quentin, for one,” Gerard said.  “He isn’t exactly a warlock, but he’s powerful enough, for a beginner dabbling, as he does, in the black arts.  And Desmond, his best friend, has actually encountered vampires before.  In the West Indies, it seems.  And the others?  Well, they’ll fall in line … do what they’re told.  And … there have been vampires at Collinwood before, you know.”

            “Samantha wouldn’t let them … do what you’re suggesting.”

            Gerard’s reply was smooth, quiet, dangerous, silk running easily from a spool.  “Samantha will do whatever I tell her to do, dear heart.”

 

            Roxanne’s eyes widened.  “You … and Samantha …”

           

            “Oh, you needn’t be so banal.  She doesn’t love Quentin.  She hasn’t for some time.  And, it seems, that of all the gentlemen currently housed on the Collinwood estate, I am the only one who can satisfy dear Samantha’s, shall we say, itch?  Yes.  Her itch.”

            Roxanne felt her eyes change, and knew that they had become different somehow, but she had no idea how or why.  She felt a sudden urge to rend and to tear, and the fangs currently occupying her mouth grew longer and sharper.  She lifted both her hands, and through a red haze she saw that each finger had lengthened until they grew several inches beyond the average human’s, and each one was tipped with a cruel, curved nail.  Perfect for gutting, this new part of Roxanne’s mind whispered; though she wasn’t anything resembling a shrinking violet, had never been anything so weak and vulnerable, she didn’t believe until now that a word like “gutting” even existed in her vocabulary.

            But now she could imagine gutting Gerard Stiles.  She could imagine doing this with no trouble at all.

            But he lifted his hand, and clutched between his fingers was a small totem, a talisman, two crossed bars:  of course Roxanne had seen a crucifix before, she was accustomed to wearing one most days.

            Now it flashed with a silver-blue light that seared her eyes and sent bile rising into the back of her throat.  She found herself uttering a wounded, whining moan, and she threw her arms up to protect her eyes from that dreadful dazzle.

 

            “I think not, Roxanne,” Gerard said.  His voice was stone, implacable. 

            “Why did you do this to me?” she whispered.

            “Because,” and his lips split into an even wider grin, if that was at all possible, “you’re going to help me get what I’ve always wanted.”

            She dared to lift her eyes, then moaned again.  The cross remained aloft, just within her line of vision.  “And what’s that?” she snarled.

            “Power,” Gerard Stiles said, and his eyes gleamed in the dimness of Rose Cottage.  “Absolute.  Enough to change the world if I want.”

            She remembered the bat that flew from the shadow at his feet; she remembered the guttural words he called to summon it; she remembered throwing open the door to the cottage and there he was, the dead woman at his feet, her heart held, dripping, in his hand, and she knew that she was in his thrall now, that whatever dark power Gerard Stiles possessed, it had swallowed her whole.

            The cross was gone.  He batted his eyes at her.  “What do you say?” he said.

            She took a breath, though she knew instinctively now that breathing was no longer necessary. 

 

            “Whatever you need,” Roxanne said.  She licked her lips.  They were cracked.  She was thirsty; god, she was thirsty.  “Whatever you need … I will help you get it.  Just … make the hunger stop.  Please.”

            He smiled and smiled still, and suddenly, horribly, god or whomever help her, she found that she was smiling back.

4

            The West Wing was alive with shadows; the house, Barnabas thought sadly, his father’s pride and joy, wasn’t even fifty years old, and already this wing was abandoned, and more and more of the rooms were sealed off, closed up … or bricked up.

            “This one,” Julia marveled, her voice soft and wondering.  She reached out with her spectral fingers.  “I can … oh Barnabas, I can feel her in there.  She’s … she’s trapped!”  Her almond hazel eyes were wide, and her nostrils, though they didn’t breathe air, flared in that typical Julia fashion with which he had become so familiar, and which he found he quite adored. 

           

            “I remember it like it was yesterday,” Barnabas murmured.

 

            “So do I,” Julia replied, and when he looked up at her, eyebrows raised, she smiled ruefully and said, “I was there too, Barnabas.  Though at the time I peered through the eyes of Natalie DuPres.”

            “Of course,” he said.  “I forget sometimes that you were there as well.”

            “It’s difficult for me to connect that Angelique with the one woman we’ve come to know.  Even Cassandra …”  And she shivered, remembering the torment Angelique’s vampire-self had visited upon her, how she had raped her mind and body repeatedly, feasting on her blood, commanding her to provide her with nourishment.  And the pain … she didn’t like to think of it.  “Even Cassandra feels like a distant memory.  A dream I had once.”

            “Or a nightmare,” Barnabas said.  “Julia, are you certain we should do this?”

            “It was her plan,” Julia said, but reluctantly.  “She knew that her powers would be restored once she inhabited this time, and that she might use them to make changes in the present.”

            “If the I Ching works.”

            “If.”

            They paused for a moment, and both looked intently at the wall, covered in cobwebs and layers of dust.  If you weren’t looking for it, Barnabas thought, you’d never even know it was there.

            Finally he lifted the pick axe he discovered in a shed behind the Old House. 

            Julia pursed her lips, then nodded.

            Barnabas swung the axe.

            They both winced at the sudden exhalation of icy air that flowed out at them from inside that room, Angelique’s when she had been a servant in 1796, and the room where Barnabas had discovered her witchery and summarily murdered her.

            The room of the curse, he thought.

            But I’m human again.

            We are taking a terrible risk, Julia had pointed out to him.  If this is the wrong Angelique, Barnabas thought now, as both he and Julia peered into the room … if she isn’t the one from the present …

            “I see her body,” he said in a strangled tone.  His gorge rose.  “The … the bones.”

            “I don’t see her,” Julia said.  “I don’t feel her, either.  She … I don’t understand this, Barnabas, but … but Angelique …”

            He looked at her then with wide, terrified eyes.

            “She’s already gone.”

5

 
            Leticia Faye was terrified and she was filthy and she hadn’t dared to step foot in Collinwood in almost two days, not since that frightening séance Gerard forced her to perform; not since he chased her from the Old House with the intent, she knew, to kill her.  The séance failed, she thought now, kneeling beside the little stream she discovered, cupping her hands, filling them with water, then slurping greedily; the séance Gerard thought would summon all the power of Judah Zachery.  It failed.  Think of that and take heart. 

            Carolyn … Carolyn Stoddard…

            That strange girl’s name … that strange girl.  She looked like me, Leticia thought, wiping the back of her mouth absently, but she wasn’t from now.  She was from … she hardly dared think the words.

            The future.

            Some future time.

            Certainly not what Gerard was expecting. 

            I can’t go back to that house, she thought, and trembled; her stomach pulsed and ached; she hadn’t eaten in nearly two days, and she was weaker from hunger than perhaps she realized.  I can never, never go back … not while he lives there.  He’ll kill me.

            I have to stop him.

            But how?  She had psychic powers, that much was true.  But what else did she have?

            He is near.

            Leticia froze.  She had the Sight, and sometimes she heard whispers (or Whispers) that told her truth:  what was and what might be.

            This, she knew, was the latter.

            Gerard.  Gerard Stiles.  He is near and he is close to reaching his goal.

            Must not be allowed to happen.

            How can I stop him though? Leticia thought, and began to sob.  I’m so tired, she thought, and so … so hungry … there’s nothing I can do …

            You have the power to stop him.  You can do it.

            “Leticia?”

            She let out a small scream, but it was only Daphne Harridge, the new governess, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and pretty of course.  She felt a stab of jealousy.  Quentin likes them pretty, she thought darkly.  “We’ve all been so worried!” Daphne said, and put an arm around her.  “Thank goodness you’re not hurt!  Where on earth have you been?”

            It was too much.  Too much kindness.  Or perhaps she was nearer to exhaustion than she thought.

            Leticia began to sob.

6

            Samantha stood before the fire and brooded.  She found that she brooded a lot these days, more than was probably good for her.  Even Tad, her beautiful son, the apple of her eye, had commented on it.  But not Quentin, she thought sourly, and felt her mouth twist hatefully so that her entire face went with it, turned into a harridan’s scrawl.  But she couldn’t help it.  Thinking of her husband at all these days caused such a reaction.

            Gerard has also noticed, a traitor’s voice whispered, and that’s what really galls you.  You don’t want anything to hurt your precious, precious Gerard.  You don’t want to drive him away.

            Like you drove Quentin away. 

            “That isn’t fair,” Samantha whispered furiously.  She felt tears bloom behind her eyes and blinked them back ferociously.  She wasn’t going to cry … not now.  Not ever.  She and Roxanne had made do their entire lives, taking care of their father after their mother’s untimely death when Roxanne was little more than a baby, and the last time Samantha had dared to weep was by herself, in the dark on the night of her mother’s funeral.  That was the last time.  And by god, she wasn’t about to start now.

            Her marriage to Quentin hadn’t been satisfying since … when, exactly?  Could she pinpoint a time?  She didn’t think so.  Surely not since Tad had reached adolescence, if not long before.  Quentin travelled, love to travel, and since their marriage began he always travelled alone.  Her face twisted again.  Except now he takes Tad, she thought, and clenched and unclenched her fists; now he takes Tad and he never wanted to take me, never asked.  And I wouldn’t have gone anyway.

            She felt horror bloom inside her.  My god, she thought, and her stomach clenched, my god, am I jealous of my son?  My beautiful, marvelous son?

            She wanted to sob.

            Why, oh why, did I marry a Collins?

            Money.  Prestige.  And more:  she had honestly loved Quentin Collins once upon a time.  Like a fairy tale.  The handsome scion of the Collins family, beautiful blue eyes, wild swirl of hair, so tall, so sweet when he wanted to be.

            And now this governess:  Miss Daphne Harridge, the latest in a long line of scullery maids and cooks and housekeepers, all doomed to be bedded and subsequently abandoned by her husband Quentin.

            There’s something different about this one.

           

            Samantha didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.  It didn’t make her feel any better about her own tryst with Gerard Stiles, either.

            Daphne Harridge, she thought. 

            Kill her.

            Her eyes widened.  Where had a thought like that come from?

            Still.  It was tempting.  Tantalizing, actually.

            Her fingers curled, tight tight tight, into a fist.

            The doors to the drawing room opened.  “Oh!” a woman exclaimed.  She was wearing a new frock Samantha had never noticed before, or had possibly never seen: a beautiful blue and white dress with a striking opalescent jewel pinned where the lace hung between her breasts.  Her hair, so blonde it was almost white, was pulled back into ringlets, another style Samantha didn’t recognize.  Her mother-in-law was not known for her fashion sense or even her ability to maintain a fetching hair style.  Samantha frowned.  Her mother-in-law frowned back.  “I didn’t know anyone was in here.  I’m so sorry.”

            Samantha offered the interloper her iciest of smiles.  “You needn’t worry, Mrs. Collins.  You may enjoy this room to your leisure.  I was just leaving.”

           

            The other woman didn’t smile apologetically or offer her usual attempt at warmth, faux though it undoubtedly was.  “If you wish.”

            Samantha hesitated.  “Are you feeling all right?”  Ordinarily, her mother-in-law – stepmother-in-law, that is, and Gabriel in particular would never let her or anyone forget it – would try to battle with her with every passive aggressive tool at her disposal.  Or she would cry.  Daniel Collins’ second wife, nearly thirty years his junior, was very, very good at crying when  she needed to.

            But she did not cry.  Instead, this new woman merely raised her eyebrows.  “Of course.  Of course I am.  Why wouldn’t I be?”

            Samantha placed one hand against one of the drawing room doors, and idly played with the knob.  “I … don’t know.  You look differently, that’s all.  Something … something about your eyes.”

            Mrs. Collins laughed, and that was a different sound now as well.  Harsh, grating, like the cawing of dark birds.  “I don’t know what you could possibly mean.  They’re the same as they’ve always been.  Why don’t you look into them … closer?”

            “No.  No, I don’t think I –”

           

            “Yes.”  Hissing.  Like a cat.  “Come closer, Samantha Collins.  Closer …”

            Samantha found herself leaning forward … forward … gazing into those eyes … gray … green … blue … so large … so very large …

            “No,” she said, and reared back, placing a trembling hand to her forehead.  She was dizzy.  Why was she dizzy? 

            There was another new look on her mother-in-law’s face she had never seen before … sadistic.  Vile.  Cruel.

            Horror filled her mouth like thick, black tar.

            “Come closer, Samantha,” her mother-in-law said, and grinned, and her eyes …

            …oh god, her eyes …

            Her eyes were black.

            Depthless.  Solid ebony. 

            No!  Oh god, no!

            Samantha choked back a sob and fled the room and its monstrous inhabitant without looking back.

            But the laughter of Valerie Collins followed her all the way up the stairs like a malevolent flock of ravens.

TO BE CONTINUED ...