Shadows on the Wall Chapter 122

CHAPTER 122:  The Secret

 by Nicky

Voiceover by Donna Wandrey:  “Collinwood, in the year 1840 … a time Barnabas and Julia have managed to bring to life once again … a time of tragedy common to the other decades the Collins family has known.  And on this night, after a series of deaths, a witch and a vampire find themselves facing a familiar threat from their own time.”

1

 

            Roxanne ducked, and the black bolt of energy flew over her head.  She grinned, baring her fangs, and hissed, “Missed me, ducky.”

            Valerie Collins – the witch Angelique – scowled, then drew her hands back before her and began to weave them once again through the air.  Her eyes glittered obsidian.  Her lips stretched into a grin.  “Only once,” she purred, and thrust out her hands once again.

            In the background, Barnabas Collins could only watch helplessly, a bystander, a role he felt with frustration that he played more and more often these days.  Even with all the strength and skill of the vampire curse at his disposal, he was still relegated to this place:  against the wall, watching.

            They were ambushed the moment they entered the Old House.  “I will make a spell,” Angelique was saying, “something that will allow us to reach the spirit world.  If Julia Hoffman is still in this time, we should be able to –”

            Her voice had been cut off by a pantherish scream, and a reddish streak flying through the air struck her and knocked her off her feet.  Barnabas cried her name, but it didn’t matter; “Tego!” she shrieked, and the attacking creature was thrown backward by an invisible fist.  Angelique used her powers to pull herself upright; her eyes were black with her fury; “It’s Roxanne, Barnabas,” she gasped, and pointed, and Barnabas saw that she was correct.

            Wrapped in a dress of flowing violet, the woman they had both encountered in 1968 and knew as Roxanne Drew bared her fangs and hissed.  Angelique raised her right hand, contorting her fingers until black energy crackled between them and prepared to throw it.  “You shouldn’t be here,” Roxanne said, and Angelique paused.  The vampire’s face was streaked with blood-laced tears.

            “How do you know this?” she cried, and her eyes flicked to Barnabas’.

            “You are not Valerie Collins,” Roxanne said.  “And you …”  She sniffled and wiped the blood away with the back of her hand, then pointed with it at Barnabas.  “You are like me.  And I don’t understand.”  She pulled at her titian curls which, Angelique thought with a mental sniff, had surely seen better days.  “You shouldn’t be here!” she screamed, then lunged forward again.

 

            “Obruro,” Angelique said and held up one hand, and Roxanne stopped mid-air as if snared.  She struggled, but the air had become thick and held her firmly in place.  “I asked you a question,” Angelique said, daring to take a step closer to the wriggling vampire.  “Why do you say these things?  How do you know we don’t belong here?”

            Roxanne’s face glowed with hatred.  “I am immortal,” she said at last.  “And so, I assume are you.  Because I exist in 1968.  And so do you.  You don’t have to deny it; it’s true.”

            “You overheard us,” Angelique said.  “You heard us talking about the future, you must have!”

            “I didn’t,” Roxanne snapped.  “Even if I didn’t know, I would suspect.  You are different than you used to be.  Anyone with any connection to the powers of darkness could see it.  You are no longer Valerie Collins.”

            “No,” Angelique smirked.  “I’m really not.”

            “Angelique,” Barnabas said urgently.  “Please.  Send her away, do whatever you have to do, but we need to be alone.”

            “I should destroy you,” Angelique said, “for what you’ve done … for what you will do.”

            Roxanne’s face lit up.  “So I am to exist in the future?”

            Angelique leaned in close.  “Not if I destroy you right now,” she purred.  “I could light you up like a Christmas tree, Roxanne Drew, and then you would never get to 1968.”

 

            “Angelique,” Barnabas hissed, “you mustn’t.  You don’t know what you’ll change!”

            Angelique hesitated, then locked eyes with the vampire.  Hers were red-rimmed, feral.  Her face retained a grayish tinge; obviously she’s learned a beauty tip or two over the next hundred and thirty years, Angelique thought, and pulled away.  “True enough,” she said at last.  “You’ve been spared, Miss Drew.  For the moment.  Don’t anger me again, for I may forget myself and incinerate you without another thought.”

            “I dreamed it,” Roxanne said sullenly, and Angelique hesitated.

            “Dreams?”

            “Everyone at Collinwood has been dreaming of the future,” she said.  “Flora told me, and so did Desmond.”

            “You … you fed off them!” Barnabas cried, horrified.

            Roxanne licked her fangs.  “Only a small taste,” she said.  “A few drops.  They’ll never miss it.”  Her expression darkened.  “Do you think I would willingly pass on this curse?  That I would do to others what Gerard Stiles did to me?”

            “Yes,” Angelique said instantly.

            “You’re wrong,” Roxanne said, dropping her eyes.  “I wouldn’t.  But I’m not entirely me any longer, am I.”

            Barnabas and Angelique exchanged looks.  “That … that isn’t necessarily true,” Barnabas said.  “You can fight, Roxanne.  You don’t have to give in to it.”

Roxanne laughed, a terrible sound, dry, papery.  “But you don’t know … the power.  I have never felt such power before.  It’s like … it’s like I’m connected to this force.  A voice that whispers inside me.  And when I listen to it, there are no more doubts, no more questions.  I am free as no woman has ever been free before.”

            “Roxanne,” Barnabas said gently, “I do know.  I understand what you’re feeling.  I know what it is … the guilt … the pain … gnawing at you.  The hunger – it is everything.  A cruel master.  The whip lashes out.  And you obey.  But you cannot let it control you.  You are nothing but an animal otherwise.”  He paused, thinking.  “It isn’t freedom.  It is death.  Eternal.  And it will take away everyone you ever loved or ever will love.”

            “Samantha is dead,” Roxanne said.  “I know this.  But there others.  Tad … my brother Randall … I don’t want to lose them.  And the voice – that force, that power – it tells me that I can have them forever, if I choose.  I can make them like me.”

 

            “You could,” Barnabas said slowly.  “But my dear Roxanne – think about what this life would do to them.”

            “They could be young and beautiful forever,” she said. 

            “At what price?  You will offer them nothing but death.  Anyone you choose to bring over into this life:  that’s all you can give them.  They will kill.  You will kill.”

            “I didn’t kill Flora.  I didn’t kill Desmond.”

            “They will come to you,” Barnabas said sadly.  “Trust me.  They will come to you whether you will them to or not.  They will force you to drink.  That is part of the curse as well; everyone you love …”  And Angelique sighed heavily and dropped her eyes.  “… will die.  Unless you leave this place soon.”

            “I can be different than you,” Roxanne said with a toss of her red curls.  “I won’t make the same mistakes you made.”

            “Perhaps that is true.  But you will never know.”

            “Do you?”  Her eyes lit up.  “If we all exist in the future, you must know something about me.”

            “We don’t,” Angelique said shortly, then added furiously, “Except that you are vicious and cruel.  So you have learned nothing in a century and a half after all.”

            “Perhaps I can,” Roxanne said.  “Perhaps I’ll be different.  Perhaps that why you’ve come back to this time.”

 

            “I wish I could help you,” Barnabas said softly, and touched Roxanne’s cheek.  She pulled back and bared her fangs.

            “Leave me alone,” she said.  Her eyes glowed a sunken red.  “I want to destroy you both.  I know I should.  The dreams told me so.”

            “These dreams,” Angelique said.  “Tell me about them.”

            “I will tell you nothing,” Roxanne snarled.

            Angelique’s eyes flared black.  “Dicet verum ex mortuis,” she said.

            “In the dreams, I look differently,” Roxanne said instantly, though her face twitched black with hate, forced as she was by Angelique’s spell to speak the truth.  “I wear trousers like a man.  In the dreams, I wield a sacred dagger.  I use it to torture you,” and her eyes flicked to Barnabas, softened for a moment, then flicked back to Angelique.  “I wish I could use it on you.”

            “You can’t,” Angelique tittered. 

            “Oh, I would,” Roxanne said, then the spell overtook her again.  “In the dreams, I gather other immortals to me.  We seek to stop a great evil from rising.  But something terrible happens to them.  And I am left alone.”

            “Why do you want to destroy us?  What did the dreams tell you to do?”

            “To find you,” Roxanne said.  “And to kill you.  It was me, myself in the future, whispering to me.  That I should destroy you both and save the future.  That if you aren’t allowed to return to your own time, this great evil will lose its power and fade.”

            “She’s right,” Barnabas said softly, and Angelique spun to face him, mouth agape.  “Well, she is!” he said defensively.  “Think, Angelique.  The Enemy obviously needs me for some dire purpose that it will be unable to fulfill if I never come back.”

 

            “And … and me?”  Angelique’s lower lip trembled.  “Would you see me destroyed as well, Barnabas?”  He hesitated, and, her voice heavy with the threat of sudden tears, she cried, “You would, wouldn’t you!”

            “Some sacrifices are necessary,” he muttered.

            “Why do I always think you will change?  Why do I always think you’ll be different?  It doesn’t matter to you what I’ve given up, what I have sacrificed in the name of …”  She bit the words back.  “I should leave you here, return to the present by myself.”  She laughed, that old familiar laughter, and he looked away, his expression pained.  “It would be no more than what you deserve.  But I would not be so cruel.  Because I have changed.”  She softened.  “And I think you know it.  I’m not a fool, Barnabas.  You would sacrifice yourself for your family, wouldn’t you, which means you would sacrifice others.  Even … even your precious Victoria Winters.”

            He looked up, surprised.  “It is not like you to speak her name,” he said.

            “When you arrived in 1897 five days ago,” Angelique said, “Victoria Winters was alive.  You might just as easily have left that room and saved her.  Why not?  You could have gone away with her.  Turned her into what you are.  You might have lived together very happily.”

            “I couldn’t do that to her,” Barnabas whispered.

            “Exactly.  You sacrifice your own happiness time and time again, and I don’t believe it’s just for the world.  It’s for your family.”

            Barnabas said nothing.

 

            Angelique put a tender hand on his shoulder.  “Believe that I want to save them as well,” she whispered.  “For you, my darling.  For you.  I have made sacrifices.  And I will continue to make them.”

            “I won’t destroy you, Barnabas Collins,” Roxanne said suddenly.  “Will that even the score?  I know that I am fated to do something dreadful to you in the future.  I won’t allow myself to do it.  I’ll change it; I’ll stop myself.  Because you have been kind to me.”

            “That’s very big of you,” Angelique laughed.

            Roxanne’s eyes darkened.  “But you, witch,” she said.  “I will destroy you the first opportunity I have.”

            “Good luck with that,” Angelique said, and waved her hand.  Roxanne flew backward and struck the wall beside the fireplace.  She was up in a moment snarling, and Angelique threw another energy bolt at her head, and she ducked, and Barnabas found himself helpless, which was where this little melodrama began.  “Missed me, ducky,” Roxanne grinned, and Angelique, returning her grin, said, “Only once,” and more magical energy flew, and here they were, right back where they started, locked in their eternal battle.

            “Stop it, Angelique!” Barnabas roared suddenly, and threw himself between the witch and the vampire woman.  “Let her go!  We can’t change the future any more than we already have!”

            “Look well upon my face,” Roxanne hissed from behind his shoulder, “for you will see it again!  I swear it!”  And she faded away.

            Angelique relaxed.  “I hate when does that,” she said. 

            “What do we do now?” Barnabas said.  He was exhausted, and he needed blood.  The curse that Angelique placed on him before her present-time counterpart possessed her own spirit (already possessing Valerie Collins, and was this sane?  Was any of it sane?) was different somehow than the one she used in 1796:  the bat was inside him now, a living entity, and it starved, and so he starved.  What will happen when we return to 1969? he thought desolated, then, even more desolately:  if we return?

            “We will do what we came to this house to do tonight,” Angelique said, “and then we will return to Collinwood.  To the West Wing.  And then you know what we must do.”

            “I don’t,” Barnabas said.  “How will we release your spirit from the body of Valerie Collins?  You said it would require some great trauma; that, if your spirit felt it was in danger, it would flee …”

 

            She watched him silently.

            His eyes widened.  “Oh Angelique, no.  That is too –”

            “Dangerous?” she said.  “Perhaps.  But you feel the hunger now, don’t you?  And it’s my fault.  It’s always my fault.  Let me make up for it just this once, Barnabas.”

            “But Valerie …”

            “Once you leave this time, the wounds will disappear from her throat,” she said.  “She will be as she was before, and we will not have destroyed her life.”

            His eyes narrowed.  “How exactly will I leave this time?  You haven’t exactly been forthright …”

            Her eyes sparkled back at his.  “I have a plan, Barnabas, trust me.  But for now … I must leave a little token behind, something for a rainy day.”  She held out her hand, and Barnabas watched, amazed, as a tiny hand mirror floated toward her down the staircase.

            “Yours?” he asked, wide-eyed.

 

            “Of course,” she said.  “I used it for scrying when I was a servant in this house, and I hid it before we were married.  Nicholas schooled me well in the black arts, but I learned more on my own.  And as a girl, I was fascinated with mirrors.”  She smiled at her own reflection and traced the glass lightly with the tip of one finger.  “They can be very powerful.  Why, certain primitive peoples believed that a mirror could steal your soul if it captured your reflection.”  Her smile grew wider, more poisonous.  “Which is a theory I plan to put to the test soon … very soon …”

2

            “She must have killed him too,” Edith said, her voice trembling just the right amount.  Her father-in-law, his eyes narrowed with sorrow, placed a palsied hand on her shoulder and patted her gently.  She took his hand between hers and held it.  Tears ran freely down her cheeks.  “Just before you came down the stairs.  I was in our room, otherwise I would have been down there too, and then Daphne … Daphne w-would’ve …”  Her voice dissolved into more tears. 

            “You poor thing,” Daniel said. 

            “She wasn’t human,” Edith whispered.  “That’s the only answer I can possibly think of.  She was a monster.”

 

            “We will never speak of Daphne again,” Daniel said sternly.  “It will be as Ben suggested:  we will tell the rest of the family that Quentin and Daphne ran away after a whirlwind marriage.  They will never return.  Better that minor scandal than the alternative.”

            “And … and Gabriel?”  Her voice hiccupped perfectly.

            “He suffered an accident,” Daniel said.  His own eyes were wet in a way that his adopted father Joshua’s never were.  The man was stone, Daniel thought, when his children were taken away from him.  And mine … my beautiful boys, both my beautiful, beautiful boys …  “A terrible accident,” he said after gathering his strength for a moment.  “Trying to maneuver in the dark.  The boys will have to be told.”

            “And the rest of the family, of course,” Edith said.  “Valerie and Tad.  The contingent at Rose Cottage, of course.  And Barnabas and Julia …”

            Daniel frowned.  “Barnabas?  Julia?  What are these names?  Who are you talking about, woman?”

            Edith’s eyebrows flew up.  “Why, our cousins from England,” she said.  Of course, she thought; Daniel has been locked away in the tower the entire duration of their stay.  “I’d forgotten you hadn’t met them.  They’re staying at the Old House somehow, though of course it’s in terrible condition …”  Her words faded away as she took in the expression of horror on Daniel’s papery face. 

            “B-Barnabas,” Daniel wheezed, clutching his heart.  “No!  That isn’t possible!  He was never to be released!”

            Edith frowned.  “Released?  Daniel – Father – your heart …”  Inside, she was smirking.  Wouldn’t it be simply perfect if dear daddy Daniel dropped dead of a heart attack at this moment, right at her feet?  But no, she thought, sighing, after all the other deaths at Collinwood this night, surely the loss of the Collins patriarch would direct prying eyes in places she’d rather they not examine.  Namely, her.  It was easy enough to cover the purple bruises left in a ring on her throat in the wake of Gabriel’s strangling, but she mustn’t forget that a warlock had been burned to ashes on the beach this very night; it wouldn’t do, she decided, to rile the villagers any further. 

 

The old man gazed at her stonily for a long moment before he finally spoke.  “Gabriel should be the one to hold the dreadful knowledge of the Secret, Edith.  It’s for a man’s ears, really, but Gabriel is dead, and you are the only one left.  Daphne and Quentin are dead as well, and Tad is only a boy.  Yes, it must be you, Edith Collins.  And you must keep this Secret until the day you die, because the horror ...  the horror must never be unleashed.  It must be contained, or it will bring suffering and death upon us all.  The Secret is the true curse of the Collins family, Edith, and it will destroy us if allowed.   Keep the Secret, Edith, and pass it on only when you must.  Only when you must.  Because it will destroy you if you let it.”

“But what is the Secret?”  Of course she’d heard Gabriel speak of it – hidden knowledge, he told her, bitterly assuming; hidden knowledge withheld from him that would be passed to Quentin upon their father’s death, something of great power or value – but the fool had never been able to find out exactly what it was. 

            Daniel drew a breath.  “It is Barnabas Collins,” he said.

            “Barnabas Collins went to England in 1796,” she said.  “That’s what his son told us …”  Her eyes widened.  “Are you saying that this Barnabas is the same Barnabas who lived at Collinwood when you were a boy?”  Black sorcery, she thought; so Nicholas and I were not the only practitioners at Collinwood.

            “He was placed under a curse,” Daniel said, “set upon him by a witch.”

 

            Pieces were clicking into place.  Edith, who had grown upon in the village and who, long ago, set her sights on obtaining a place in the Collins firmament, knew the legends surrounding the great house on the hill.  The witch Angelique, for one; children whispered about how she would catch you in the dark and rip out your eyeballs and your tongue if you dared to walk down a certain deserted lane by yourself after dark; child Edith herself had told this story to her friends by candlelight, long after they should have been in bed, embellishing here and there.  And I never dreamed that I was destined to become a witch myself, she thought now, and wished madly that she could remember any actual details about Angelique.  Because Angelique is here right now, Edith thought, somehow possessing Valerie’s body.

            And I threatened to destroy her.

            “This curse,” Edith said slowly.  “What was its nature?”

            “Dreadful,” Daniel said instantly.  “A black stain upon Barnabas’ soul, upon the soul of the entire family.  I fought it my entire life, but obviously I failed.”  Tears, more genuine than Edith’s, spilled down his wrinkled cheeks.  “My poor sister Millicent succumbed, and my poor wife Harriet, and now my boys … my beautiful, beautiful boys …”  He put his hands over his face.

            Edith rolled her eyes.  “There, there,” she forced herself to say as comfortingly as possible, and patted his shoulder.  “But Daniel … the curse …?”

            He peered at her from between his fingers.  “The curse made Barnabas one of the living dead,” he said huskily.  “He died and was buried but he came back to us.  Poor Josette threw herself from the cliffs when he came to her, tried to make her … what he was.”

            Which was what? Edith wanted to scream, but she watched him with feigned patience instead.

            “Millicent became his victim.”  His breathing was becoming heavier, and his chest heaved.  “And after old Joshua had him chained, she died.  And … and she came back.”  His voice cracked.  “Oh Millicent … my poor, poor Millicent …”

            “Came back,” Edith said urgently, “as what?”

           

            “It’s too horrible.”

            “Tell me!”

            “We drove a stake through her heart,” Daniel wheezed, “Ben Stokes … he did it … burned her body … scattered the ashes …”

            “A stake through the heart?”  A terrible suspicion was dawning in her thoughts; more legends, whispered around the fire …  “What did Joshua do to Barnabas?”  She dug her fingers into his shoulder and he dropped his hands, staring at her with astonishment.  “Tell me!”

            “Edith, you are hurting me –”

 

            She felt her eyes wanting to darken to the same obsidian black that consumed Nicholas; an amazing development in the endless time that had passed while she and the Devil dickered in hell, but she forced the darkness back; mustn’t give away my hand now, she thought, and withdrew her fingers.  “I’m sorry, Father,” she said in as respectful a tone as she could muster.  “Please.  I must know.  You must tell me the exact nature of the Secret!”

            Daniel was shivering uncontrollably.  “The curse,” he said, and licked his lips.  “The curse made Barnabas one of the living dead.  But he could live only at night.  Each day, at cock crow, he was forced to withdraw into his coffin.  It was this coffin that Joshua chained and locked away in a secret room inside the Collins mausoleum at Eagle Hill cemetery –”  Edith’s eyes widened.  “— never to be opened again.  But if it has … oh, if he has escaped …”  He gritted his teeth against the pain that she could was now quite visible on his face.  “He must never be allowed to escape!  He must be destroyed, Edith!  Barnabas Collins must be destroyed!”

            The front doors of Collinwood were opening.  Neither noticed.

            “Why, Daniel?” she prodded him.  “What did the curse do to him?”

            “Barnabas Collins,” Daniel said, drawing a deep breath, “Barnabas Collins is … is …”  He looked over her shoulder, and his eyes widened, bulged in their sockets.  All the blood fell from his face.  Edith turned slowly, following his gaze, where two people stood in the foyer, staring at them with curiosity.  “Vampire!” Daniel shrieked, and leveled a finger at Barnabas himself, who stood beside Angelique, both frozen in horror. 

 

            “Daniel,” Barnabas whispered.  “No.  Oh no.”

            “VAMPIRE!” Daniel howled again.

            And Edith, despite herself, began to laugh.

3

1969

            The shadows at Eagle Hill Cemetery were long, as, he thought with a sigh, they were always long.  The sun had set only a few minutes ago, and there was still snow on the ground, which was not unusual for late March, and the chill in the air reached through his Collins-fancy top coat and pinched.

            What am I doing here?

            Roxanne.  Her command.  Back at the Old House, Nathan Forbes was still lounging where he’d left him, sleeping, sated.  “My god,” Forbes had gasped after their third go, the most ferocious – the most satisfying – of the lot,  “my god, you’re insatiable.”  Then, grinning, “Way worse than me.”  Sleep followed quickly, and Roxanne’s command took hold and pulled him from the bed (no one must see me), down the stairs, and out into the chill late-afternoon air.

            Now the sun set had set, and everything was blue.

            Why am I here? What does she want of me?

            “You will know,” she had said, her fangs glinting, “when the time comes. It’s a secret ‘til then.”  A quick kiss on the lips and she vanished, and with her the memory of her … until now.  Until he left Nathan sleeping as the sun began its descent behind the hills and the purple shadows came creeping.

            Dark, don’t catch me here.

            What did that mean?

            He thought of Barnabas, lost somewhere in the past, and he thought he understood.

            Snow crunched under his feet as he made his way among the tombstones.  Was there one in particular he should be searching for?  He didn’t know.

            Why did I let her catch me? he thought desolately; her and him, both?  Both vampires in their own way, he supposed, Roxanne a far more lethal species than Nathan.  But still.  Chris, if he discovered what they’d done, would be furious.

            It was nearly full dark now.  A night bird screamed somewhere over his head; the flutter of wings, a singing in this new night, a sound he knew very well.  An icy finger stirred against his heart.

            There it was.  The tombstone for which he’d been searching.  Ancient, the words very nearly wiped away by over a century of seasons. 

            His eyes widened.

            A shovel leaned against the pitted stone.

           

            “No,” he whispered, his breath a silver plume in the darkness.

            But his fingers were already encircling the wood of the shovel’s handle, lifting it, feeling its heft. 

            He glanced down again at the stone, and its name.  He didn’t recognize the name, but the date … the date …

            VALERIE COLLINS, the stone proclaimed.  1810-1840.  GOD GRANT SHE LYE STILL.

            He didn’t have time to think.  The wings fluttered above his head; he closed his eyes for a moment and sighed; the wings; then, as she had commanded, he sank the shovel into the grave’s stony, unyielding soil.

 

TO BE CONTINUED ...