Shadows on the Wall Chapter 117

CHAPTER 117:  These Dreams

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Joan Bennett:  “Collinwood, in the year 1840 … a time of intrigue and terror … for Barnabas and Julia have managed to transcend time against all odds.  But they are unaware that the denizens of the great house in that time are dreaming … and their dreams may be a revelation of terror yet to come.”

1

            

            Flora Collins was dreaming.  She never dreamed (this was what she would tell acquaintances, or family members like her long-suffering son Desmond, or even strangers, should they engage her in conversation), “Which is so ironic,” she would twitter, “so ironic, since I live by my imagination.  That’s what a writer does, wouldn’t you agree?  And I am a writer, you know.  So one would think my imagination would simply be working overtime, but it doesn’t.  Isn’t that funny?”

            But she dreamed tonight, as she had been dreaming the past three nights.  Ever since – and she was, she would insist haughtily should anyone ask, she was clever enough to put these pieces together herself – ever since the arrival of Barnabas Collins, the cousin from England, with his sister, Julia.

            Desmond had grumbled.  “I spent time in England,” he glowered, sipping sherry Quentin brought back from one of his insane travels.  “I never met any branch of the Collins family living over there.”

            If only Leticia hadn’t run off, Flora had remarked with her customary titter, which she was well aware sounded witless, even if it wasn’t at all; “If only Leticia hadn’t run off,” she laughed, “perhaps she could tell us the truth about them.”

            “Leticia Faye,” Desmond murmured, and sipped his sherry and stared into the curling flames.

            But the dreams …

            In the dreams, Flora found herself in the drawing room at Collinwood … but how changed.  The furniture … hideous.  Without grace, shapeless, colorless.  Lamps glowed without candles and ended in black tails attached to the walls, repapered with grotesques.  And there she was, Flora herself, or a woman who looked just like her.  Only … only she was wearing the most indecent frock, a hideous lime green color, that revealed her ankles, her calves, and … oh good heavens … her knees.

 

            In the dream, Flora felt a trifle faint.

            “You’re watching me,” the woman in the dream said, and glanced around.  “Watching me again.  Who is it?  Who is in this room?”

            Fascinating.  Flora wondered if there wasn’t, perhaps, a book in all this.  Could this be – heavens – the future?  Did that make this woman a descendent? 

            The woman was pacing.  “My nerves,” she said to herself.  “Just my nerves.”  She scrubbed her hands together, much in the same way that Flora did herself.

            And then the strangest thing happened.  Roxanne Drew strode into the room, or a woman who looked like Roxanne, but changed as the room was changed.  Her hair cut indecently short, and was she wearing knickers?  “Mrs. Stoddard,” the woman said, “you have to listen to me before you scream.”

            “Miss Drew,” the other woman said, drawing herself up in a regal manner that Flora would never be able to even begin to consider attempting.  “I do not plan to scream.”  Their voices, when they spoke, sounded as if they came from a long distance, or as if they were somehow speaking under water.  The woman – Mrs. Stoddard, it seemed – revealed a tiny crucifix she wore around her neck and, connected to a chain, she apparently kept tucked inside the shameful, hideous blouse she wore.  She held it up now, and Roxanne recoiled with a low moan.  “I do, however, plan to use this delightful little implement to force you out of my house.  And once I do that, I will furthermore discover a means of preventing you from ever crossing its threshold again.”

            “I am here to help,” Roxanne said.  “Mrs. Stoddard, please try to understand.  This demon – this Enemy – wants to destroy us all.  It’s in our best interest to work together.”

            Mrs. Stoddard’s smile was wide … and icy.  Her eyes spit flecks of snow.  “It isn’t that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, Miss Drew.  But you’ll pardon me if I find your methods just the barest bit, shall we say, reprehensible?”  She took a step forward and held out her crucifix as if it were a weapon.  And now Flora knew she had to be dreaming, because this Roxanne Drew – and how funny it was that Roxanne was appearing in her dream! – this Roxanne Drew revealed fangs like a tiger’s and swatted at the air with fingernails grown hideously long and sharp. 

            “Barnabas is in the past right this moment!” Roxanne wailed.  “He and Julia are there, but they’ll fail.  Don’t you understand me; they will fail.  And they’ll die!”

 

            Mrs. Stoddard’s eyes narrowed.  “Unless what?” she said.  “There must be an ‘unless,’ Roxanne.  And that means you must want something.”

            “The Amulet of Caldys,” Roxanne said immediately.  “I know it exists; one of my … contacts went to retrieve it from the place where she hid it long ago, but it has since been removed.  This Amulet can be the key to all our salvation, Mrs. Stoddard.  Find Angelique.  In her current condition, she is unable to use it.  But I can make it work.”  Roxanne’s eyes flashed crimson.  “Find the Amulet.  Give it to me.”

            Dear me, Flora thought, scandalized; Roxanne is some kind of demon, and she’s working her spell over me!  Or, rather, a woman who happens to look like me.

            “Say it,” Roxanne hissed.  “The Amulet of Caldys.”

            “The … the Amulet of Caldys,” Mrs. Stoddard repeated.  Her eyes had grown wide and unfocused.  And she was beginning to lower the crucifix.

            Roxanne was grinning, and her teeth were still sharp and deadly.  “You will find it.”

            “I will find it,” Mrs. Stoddard repeated.

            “And you will bring it to me.”

            “And I will …”

            No! Flora shrieked in her dream, and …

 

            “No!” Flora’s voice shrieked, echoing throughout the drawing room, and causing both Roxanne and this Mrs. Stoddard woman to jolt out of their positions, the spell Roxanne was weaving, whatever dreadful thing was happening; Mrs. Stoddard shook her head and lifted the crucifix again while Roxanne, glaring, cried, “You!  It’s you!  This … this cannot be!”

            Mrs. Stoddard looked around, her eyes widened, and she screamed, “Why, you look … you look just like me!”

            “I’m Flora Collins,” Flora said, as amenably as she could, but even speaking was such a dreadful effort, and now she found that she was fading … fading … that the room was growing dark around her …

            … and she opened her eyes and found herself back in her very own bed at the Rose Cottage.  I’m not dead, Flora thought ferociously to herself; I’m not dead, I’m not a ghost, and I did not travel into the future.

            But the conversation … it sounded so real.  And what had Roxanne said about cousin Barnabas and his sister Julia?  That they were in the past?  Whatever could that mean?

            Flora chuckled to herself, then snuggled back down amidst her pillows.  What an imagination I have, she thought smugly.  Perfectly necessary for a lady novelist such as myself.  Still, she thought, as she drifted back into a sleep more typical of her, one without dreams, past, present, or otherwise, still, perhaps I should ask Cousin Barnabas about it after all.

2

 

            “I must see Flora at once,” Leticia sobbed as she and Daphne, the pretty dark haired governess, reached the front door of Rose Cottage.  She didn’t want to cry, but the sobs were of relief.  Everything would work out now.  Everything would be just fine.  “I have to tell her about … about Gerard.”

            “Flora is sleeping,” Daphne said. 

            “Then we’ll wake her,” Leticia said.  “Everyone must know, Daphne.  Everyone must know what he is!”

            “What is he?” Daphne said.  “I’m only curious.”

            “A murderer.  A monster.  He’s aligned himself with the power of Judah Zachery.  He killed those girls, all those poor girls from the village; he took their hearts!”  She could feel herself becoming hysterical again.  It wouldn’t do.  She must stay in control, at least until she and Flora could make their way to Collinwood and find Quentin.  Quentin would know what to do about mister Gerard Stiles.

            Daphne was frowning.  “Who is Judah Zachery?”

 

            “A warlock.  One of the most evil men the world has ever known.  He tortured people, killed them.  He wanted to control the world.  He was a madman, Daphne, and so is Gerard.”

            “But Judah Zachery is dead?”

            “More than dead.  He was destroyed somehow, I’m not sure how.  A long time ago.  Here, in Collinsport.  Quentin will know.  Quentin will know what to do.”

            “Yes,” Daphne said, smiling a little, “I imagine he will.”

            “You don’t believe me.”  She felt the air leaving her lungs.  They didn’t have time for this – Gerard was beginning to gather his powers; she could feel it! 

            And then there were the dreams:  every night for the past week they came, dreams where a woman with high cheekbones and dark red hair and a man who looked very much like that spooky portrait that hung by the front doors of Collinwood battled Gerard Stiles … and lost. 

            He took their heads.  In the dreams, he took their heads and paraded them through the town.

            “I do believe you, though,” Daphne was saying, and Leticia tried her best not to remember those staring eyes, the ragged cuts where their necks used to be, the blood …  “I believe that you have a wide array of most unusual powers, Miss Faye.  Perhaps you’d be willing to tell me about them?”

            “We don’t have time!” Leticia sobbed. 

            “Just for a moment,” Daphne said soothingly.  “See?  The door is unlocked.”

            “I got the Sight,” Leticia said as they stepped together over the threshold.  She glanced around, but the room was so dark.  And empty.  She thought it was empty, at any rate.

            “The Sight?”

 

            She tapped her forehead impatiently.  “It means I can see things, luv.  The future, the past … ghosts, sometimes.  I can look into your heart and know all sorts of things, dark and light and in between.”

            “Can you,” Daphne said softly.

            “Don’t make fun of me,” Leticia said warningly, and glanced around the room, but it was so dark.  “Where is Flora?”

            “Sleeping, as I told you,” Daphne said.  “So you can See, as you said.  What else can you do?”

            “I’m extremely empathetic,” Leticia declared, “now that’s all you need to know.  Where is Flora?”

           

            “You won’t see Flora tonight,” Daphne said, and suddenly seized Leticia’s arms, digging her fingers painfully into the soft meat beneath the pretty pink fabric of her dress.

            “Let me go!” Leticia cried, struggling, then froze, and horror blacker than deepest midnight flooded her.  She was chilled; it was icy water; it was black darkness, terror.  Her face, Leticia thought, dazed, her eyes.  “You’re … you’re in his power!”

             “Of course she is,” Gerard said, his big voice booming from everywhere around the room, and Leticia screamed.  He appeared in the far corner, a hideous emerald witchlight illuminating his features.  And he wasn’t alone.  Roxanne Drew stood beside him as well, dressed in a flowing gown of pale lavender.  Her hair was a wild tangle or titian curls; her eyes sunken, hollow; her face white as salt.  She wore a smile on her face to answer Gerard’s as he said,  “And so will you be.  And so will everyone at Collinwood.  Soon.”

3

            “And I only mention it,” Samantha Collins was saying as Barnabas entered the drawing room, “because you both played so prominent a role.  Oh, good evening, Cousin Barnabas.”

 

            “Good evening, Samantha,” Barnabas said.  His eyes flicked to Julia’s, then flicked away.  She sat a few feet away from Samantha on the sofa.  Barnabas felt dread stir inside him.  For a moment – only a moment, but still – he had seen the fibers of the couch through Julia’s mid-section.  He forced merriment into his voice.  “Where have I been playing a role?  Surely you can’t mean upon the wicked stage!  Why, there has never been an actor in the Collins family.  Unless you count poor cousin Devlin, who stood on the very boards of the Globe itself, perhaps toe to toe with William Shakespeare.”

            Samantha blushed prettily.  “No, cousin,” she said, laughing.  “You and your sister have appeared since the night before last night in my dreams.   Just since your arrival, in fact.”

            “Oh dear,” Barnabas said.  “I do apologize, cousin.  Julia and I can only expect the Collins hospitality to extend to the waking world, not your dreamscapes.”

            “I was just telling Julia,” Samantha said.  “It was the strangest thing, and you both wore the strangest clothes.  Shockingly immodest.”  She was blushing again, and waved a thin hand through the air as if to shoo away such disturbing images of immodesty.  “At any rate.  You both stood in the drawing room of Collinwood, as we are sitting here now.  But you were dead.  Isn’t that dreadful?  But I could tell you were dead.  Ghosts, I suppose.  You just stared.  And Flora was there, or a woman who looked like Flora, and a woman who looked like Leticia Faye, and my mother-in-law, and you were there to warn them.”

            Barnabas continued to force the merriment, though his hands were clenching and unclenching, and he couldn’t force them to stop.  Surely Samantha noticed; how could she not?  “Warn them about what?”

            “You said, over and over, ‘We failed, we failed, we failed.’  And Julia said, ‘She killed us.’  Just like that.  ‘She.’”  She shivered prettily.  “Doesn’t it make your blood run cold?”

            “Too much crab at dinner tonight,” Julia said, and Barnabas heard the same forced lightness in her tone.

            “I suppose,” Samantha chuckled.  “Still, it was strange, don’t you think?  Those people who looked like the people I know here, but they weren’t, somehow.  Flora, Leticia, Valerie –”

            “Did I hear my name spoken?”

            And Julia rose from the sofa and Barnabas’ eyes grew wide and he choked, “It’s … it’s you!”

            Neither of them noticed the shadow that passed over Samantha’s face.  “Cousin Barnabas, Cousin Julia,” she said.  “This is my mother-in-law, Mrs. Collins.  Valerie dear, these are Barnabas and Julia Collins.  They are the children of the first Barnabas Collins, who went to England in …” 

 

            “1796,” Barnabas said swiftly.  He reached out a tentative hand, and took the one the beautiful blonde woman offered him.  He took it, and kissed it gently.  “Mrs. Collins,” he said.  “A true pleasure.”

            “I’m sorry I was unable to welcome you when you visited us last night,” Valerie Collins said primly.  “But my husband is ill, you see, and I was in no condition to receive guests.  But Gabriel and Quentin have already told me volumes about you both.”  She looked at Samantha then, and her next words dripped, Barnabas thought, with distaste.  “Daniel wishes to see you, Samantha dear.  It may be the last time, you know, so you must hurry.  Hurry, hurry!  I’ll see to …”  And her eyes flashed in such a venomous way that even Samantha surely must have noticed.  “… our cousins from England.”

            “Thank you, Valerie,” Samantha said, frowning, and hurried from the room.

            The doors closed behind her, and they were alone.

            “So,” Valerie said, each S sibilant, each syllable trembling with fury, “here we are at last, dear Barnabas.  And I am finally to meet my charming sister-in-law!  Miss Collins,” and Valerie bowed mockingly, “it is truly a pleasure.”

 

            “Angelique,” Barnabas said desperately, “I don’t understand.  How are you here?  And human?”

            “I might ask you the same question,” she said haughtily, lifting her head to glare at him.  “And I am hardly human, Barnabas.  I still have all of my powers.  I want you to know that.” 

            “But you … how are you Valerie Collins?  Married to Daniel?  We … we only released you a few hours ago!”

            Valerie’s eyes narrowed into dangerous feline slits.  “How did you escape your coffin?”  She flicked her wrist at Julia.  “Did she help you?  Is she under your power?”  Suddenly Valerie recoiled, and horror washed over features, draining them pale as cream.  “No!” she whispered.  “It isn’t … it isn’t possible!  You’re … you’re human, aren’t you!”  Then the fury was back, and Barnabas knew, and despaired at the knowledge, that this was not the proper Angelique, the woman from the final day of 1968 who should have arrived via the I Ching to help them with their plans.  But she didn’t, he thought, cursing, she didn’t.  We failed.  We failed, we failed.  “Human.  I can see it in your eyes.  How is this possible?”

 

            “Angelique –”

            “Don’t call me that!” she hissed again.  “You fool.  Don’t you know that there are people here who still know the name ‘Angelique,’ the great and powerful witch who tore apart this family only forty years ago?  They mustn’t know who I truly am, Barnabas.  And if you tell them …”

            “But how are you here?” Barnabas asked weakly.  Julia sat where she was, saying nothing, her lips a flat white line, and her eyes flickered back and forth between them watchfully.

            “This is a body,” Valerie said with a certain amount of disgust, “nothing more, nothing less.  When you released my spirit from the wall where you imprisoned me so long ago, it merged seamlessly with poor, sweet, simple Valerie Collins.  She’s gone, Barnabas; hardly put up a fight at all.  And I am here again,” and she drew herself up proudly, “here to reclaim my role as Mrs. Barnabas Collins.  And after dear Daniel dies once and for all, you will be mine again, forever.  As it was meant to be.”

            “I will never be your husband,” Barnabas snarled, unable to help himself.  That old venom, that old flash of malice, of true evil … he had forgotten it.  She had changed so much.  Or I believed she had, he thought miserably.

            “We will see,” Valerie said grandly, and began to sweep regally from the drawing room.  But she froze at the doors, and turned slowly around.  “You,” she said, and her eyes were on Julia.  “Who are you really?  You’re as much his sister as I am.”

            “I am Julia Collins,” Julia said stiffly.

 

            “And there’s something else about you as well,” Valerie said, eyes narrowed again.  “I can’t put my finger on it.  Do you know what he is?  Do you know everything he has done?”

            “I know … enough,” Julia said.

            “Julia!” Barnabas thundered, and Julia glared angrily at the carpet.

            Valerie was smiling bitterly.  “Do you indeed.  And do you know who I am?”

            “I know everything about you that I need to know,” Julia said carefully. 

            “We shall see about that,” Valerie declared, threw open the doors, and stalked out into the foyer, up the stairs, and out of their sight.

            They stared at each bleakly.

            “We must act,” Barnabas said.  “We don’t have a moment to lose.”

            “We should have prepared for this,” Julia said bitterly.  “Barnabas, we don’t have time to deal with Angelique!  We need to find Leticia Faye and learn what she knows about how to destroy Gerard Stiles.”

            “But Leticia has been missing for over a week.”

 

            Julia drew herself up squarely.  “You go to the Old House.  See if you can find something in the attic … a charm, a spell, anything that someone who knew how to deal with witches might have left behind.”

            “What about you?”

            “I’m going to find Leticia,” Julia said.  She wore her determination face, the one Barnabas knew so well by this time.  He felt that old spark of admiration return for her … and something more.

            Impossible.  I am a fool.  Julia is my friend, and only that.  My sister now, for better or for worse.

            Still – those feelings didn’t remind him of anything even vaguely fraternal or sororal. 

            “Go, Barnabas!” Julia said, harsher, he thought, than perhaps she meant to.  “You’re right – we don’t have time to simply wait around for Angelique to reappear and destroy us!”

            And then she was gone.  She didn’t fade away; she simply ceased to be.

            Troubling.

            But no time to worry about trouble.

            Barnabas fled.

4

            Leticia forced herself to stop the flow of tears.  They do no good, she thought fiercely, though they burned behind her eyes nonetheless.  It was the fear, she knew, and the pain.  Daphne and Roxanne held her tightly, and they gave her no quarter.

            Gerard was setting up the table, just as he had that last nightmarish night a week ago, when he brought her to the Old House in an attempt to rekindle the seemingly dormant spirit of Judah Zachery.  But Gerard was a fool, and Leticia wanted to laugh and laugh.  Judah Zachery didn’t exist any longer.  Whatever terrible ritual he had performed more than a hundred years ago, it had wiped him from this existence forever. 

            They were not inside Rose Cottage any longer.  They had moved, instead to Collinwood, to a room deep within the East Wing.  Leticia didn’t understand how a house barely fifty years old could already hold abandoned rooms, entire wings of the house left unattended; this room was shadowladen and covered in cobwebs and thick, secret shadows.  She shivered.  She could feel something here as well, a power.  Something strange and unnatural. 

            Leticia turned to look at Daphne.  “Please,” she whispered.  “Please, help me.  You don’t want to do this.” 

 

            “I want whatever my master wants,” Daphne said.  Her eyes were wide, dark, slightly unfocused.  Her hands were icy, her grip like iron.

            “She responds to his will now,” Roxanne said.  “He cast a spell over her when he took her heart.”

            “Took her …”  Leticia’s voice trailed off, then she blanched.  No wonder Daphne’s hands felt so cold, she thought, sickened.  She was a zombie now … one of the living dead.

            “He has given me eternal life,” Daphne said, smiling.  “I am his now, forever.  You will be too.”

            “No,” Leticia breathed.  “No I won’t!”

            “He needs you,” Daphne said.  “He needs your power.  Your empathy, as you told me.”  Even dead, Leticia marveled that she could still mock, jibe.  Be horrible.  These were monsters.  Nausea washed over in her a roiling wave.  “Through you, he will attain the power of Judah Zachery.”

            “Judah Zachery has no power,” Leticia said, her voice rising.  “Judah Zachery is dead!”

            In the corner of the room, the air quavered, shivered, shimmered.  But no one noticed.

 

            “Quite to the contrary, my dear,” Gerard boomed good-naturedly.  He had finished his preparations, it seemed:  the candles were lit, the animal bones (she prayed they were only the bones of animals) scattered appropriately, the various herbs and potions standing in their jars.  He wiped his hands on the legs of his pants.  “The Master’s powers are here, in this house.  I can feel them.  So can you.”

            She opened her mouth to argue … then hesitated.  Because he was right.  She could feel it … something.  Something dreadful.  Lurking inside this house.  Way, way, way down deep, but it was there.  Like a freezing little seed.  Evil.  Patient.  Waiting. 

           

            “I knew you would be able to help me,” Gerard said, and placed a gentle finger beneath her chin.  “There is so much power here, such talent.  You just need someone like me to bring it out in you.”

            “I’d rather die than help you,” Leticia snarled.

            “Melodramatic, but ultimately unnecessary.  Daphne,” and he nodded at her, and she grinned back, hideously, “dear Daphne resisted my advances at first as well.  She learned.  She’s going to marry Quentin Collins after poor Samantha suffers a dreadful ... accident.  A similar accident will take the life of Tad Collins, and Gabriel, and Edith, and their brats, and the brats of their brats.  And when there are no living Collinses left, Daphne will marry me.  And then she will have fulfilled her purpose and will be allowed to return once again to the land of the dead.  Then this house will belong to the Master again.  And me.”

            “You’re mad,” Leticia said, disgusted.

            “I seek power,” Gerard said quietly, frowning.  “What’s so mad about that?  It’s what every great man has pursued since the dawn of time.  If am truly mad, my dear, I am in fabulous company.”

 

            “Let’s get this done, Gerard,” Roxanne said.  She licked her monstrous, reptilian fangs.  “I have places I’d like to go.  People to see.”

            “Of course, of course,” Gerard said.  “Bring her to the table.”

            Struggling, though she knew it was useless, Leticia was forced by her living dead captors to sit at one of the four chairs around the table Gerard had procured for his ritual.

            I should help her, the spirit of Julia Hoffman, observing, unobserved, thought, but held herself back.  Watch.  Wait.  To make a move now would be to change history.  Perhaps unravel it completely.

            “It was right here, where this house stands now,” Gerard said, his voice rhythmic, almost sexual, his breath heavy and near-panting, “right here where he did it.”

            “Judah Zachery,” Daphne sighed.

            “Yes,” Gerard said, his cheeks dimpling.  “He sought a demon to bring him power.  The demon required a sacrifice.  And who should bring it to him but Isaac Collins, the very founder of this nighted town, the man who brought down the curse upon his own flesh and blood.  It’s delicious, don’t you think?  Isaac was a fervent member of Judah’s coven.  He wanted power for himself, so he brought the girl for sacrificing.”

            “Who was she?”  Leticia was drawn in, despite herself.  Her enormous blue eyes were wet with her tears.

            “It doesn’t matter,” Gerard said, shrugging.  “Her name has been lost to history.  But this is where they did it.  Only a barn stood here, of course; the family lived in what was then called Collins House, the manor house.  They dragged her from the town, drugged her, brought her to the barn, and called forth the demon.”

 

            “But the demon was too powerful,” Leticia whispered.  She could See now, and Hear, and she knew it was true.  That poor girl, she thought, oh that poor, poor girl.  “Judah lost control of it, and it destroyed him.”

            “Unfortunately,” Gerard said in that off-hand, dreadful way of his, as if the suffering of others didn’t matter or, worse, was merely a means to an end.  “But if I can reach his spirit, I can fulfill his promise.  The curse.  And all the power that comes with it.”

            “You are a fool,” Leticia said sadly, but he didn’t hear her. 

            “Let us begin!” Gerard called, and took Leticia’s hand with his right; her right hand was taken by Daphne’s, and she shuddered helplessly in its icy grip. 

            Thunder crashed outside, and Leticia was unable to stifle a moan of terror.

5

            He didn’t have the first clue as to what he might be looking for, but he supposed Julia was probably right, and somewhere within the dark recesses of the Old House there lay a charm that could be used to defeat Angelique, or at least to keep her at bay until they could come up with some kind of viable plan.

            But the moment he stepped into the drawing room of the Old House he knew they had lost. 

 

            “Hello, Barnabas,” Valerie said from her chair by the fire.  She was smiling at him, that same old sweet smile that contained more venom, more malice, than any other mortal man or woman Barnabas had ever known.  “Welcome home.”

            “Angelique,” Barnabas said carefully.  He wanted to run, but he didn’t quite dare.  He wasn’t sure what she would do.

            “Valerie, please!” she said, and rose.  “Even when it’s just you and I, you must call me Valerie, my darling.”

            “Valerie, then,” he said, and sighed.  “You don’t understand this situation.  There’s no way you can.  You are from this time, so you –”

            She cocked her head, her eyes dancing with merriment.  “’This’ time?  Oh my darling Barnabas, there is only one time, don’t you know that?”

            “I am from the future,” he said uncertainly.  He hadn’t planned to tell her that, at least, not until they had time to talk.

            “I made you a vampire for a reason, my darling,” she said teasingly.  “So that you might live forever.  And I knew that, one day, my earthly body would be restored to me.  And then you and I might be together again.  That day has come sooner than I anticipated.  So of course you are from the future, dear Barnabas.  A future far beyond the year 1796, when we all came to so much grief.”

            “No,” he said.  Dear god, she was mad, wasn’t she.  He had forgotten that.  When she had come to Collinwood in 1967 and posed as Cassandra, they had had very few interactions.  It wasn’t until Tom Jennings made her a vampire that he had seen the truth the night he caught her feeding on Julia:  she was insane.  Absolutely insane.  It was only when her soul was restored to her the night Nicholas Blair changed her back into a human that she had begun to reclaim her sanity.  “Angelique – Valerie – no.  I’m telling you that I came from a year even more distant than this, from the year –”

 

            She held up a hand, and he found that he was frozen in place, unable to move.  Unable to speak.  “I’m sorry to use such base magicks on you, my darling,” she purred.  “But I need you to be silent for now.  You’re going to want to scream for help, or to run away, and I don’t want to take a chance on our being discovered.  You see, I have a plan for you so that we can be together again, as man and wife, because that is what I want.”

            He tried to speak, but he was absolutely frozen.  He wanted to scream.  He could feel his eyes bulging in their sockets.

            “And now … you are unable to refuse.”

            She was close to him … so close … her lips tickled the sensitive skin of his earlobes, and he found himself shivering with a dreadful sort of pleasure.

            And anticipation.

            “There’s only one way I can have you,” she whispered.  “You know what it is.”

            If only Julia were here to help.

            If only Angelique’s present-time spirit would arrive, possess her, stop her from whatever madness she was about to perform.  In the nick of time, he prayed silently, please please, let her arrive just in the nick of time.

            Because he knew.

            He knew what she planned to do.

            And then she said, “The curse,” and he wanted to scream and scream and scream.

TO BE CONTINUED ...