Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Monday, June 29, 2015
Sunday, June 28, 2015
Shadows on the Wall Chapter 126
CHAPTER 126: The Legions of the Damned
by Nicky
Voiceover by Kathryn Leigh Scott: “Long
ago betrayals return to haunt the people of Collinsport as fiends thought dead
live again and walk among us … and not everyone will survive this night …”
1
Maggie
wanted to scream, but the pain was too great.
She was filled, with the steel of Nicholas’ blade, but also with a
white-hot agony that filled her mind and scattered her thoughts. For a moment random images flashed before
her: Pop, pushing her on the rusty
swings at Collinsport Elementary School, and how the chains squealed like little
piglets, like young girls; her mother’s face, half forgotten, smiling kindly,
her eyes brown and full of love before darkness descended and filled them with
thick obsidian; Quentin stroking her bare shoulder; then Nicholas jerked the
dagger upward in an especially savage manner, and Maggie threw her head back to
scream.
“Dirty
pool, my girl,” Nicholas purred, and pulled the dagger out of her, then wiped
it clean of her blood, gently, oh so carefully, on a handkerchief he pulled
from his pocket. He didn’t even look at
her as she rolled off the couch and landed, both knees crying out, unnoticed
amidst the red cloud of pain that knit itself up around her, onto the hard wood
floor. She began to crawl, her mouth
gaping open, toward the door. “You took
me by surprise, which isn’t an altogether easy task. Still, I suppose it is rather my own fault, or, at least, I had a hand in it. I did teach you everything you know, after
all.”
Where
was she going, after all? To the
door? Why? Where would she go after she opened the
door? Nicholas wasn’t going to allow her
to live.
Cast a spell. A counter curse. Something … anything!
She
stopped and hung her head. The panting
of her breath was very loud in her ears.
“Aren’t
you curious to know how I’m alive?”
She
closed her eyes. Swallowing was an
effort. Her knees gave out, her arms
gave out, and she fell onto her side.
Everything hurt.
“It’s
rather an amusing tale, I must admit. Do
you know who I have to thank for the miracle?
Why, your old friend and mine, Dr. Julia Hoffman!”
Maggie’s
eyes were fluttering. She didn’t feel
cold, as she’d always thought she would when death finally came for her, but
heat. A dreadful, searing heat, like
pricking needles all over her body.
“Yes! Isn’t that fascinating, my dear? She
and our friend Barnabas and dearest Angelique time travelled again, I’m
afeared, and meddled quite spectacularly with events best left untouched. Can you guess which year they visited, as if
it were, oh, say, Disneyland?”
He
had knelt beside her, and the bristly hairs of his mustache were tickling her
earlobes. She wouldn’t allow herself to
moan; wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“Why,
1840! And you know I was there, of
course, living as a lawyer in the town.
I wanted the Mask of Ba’al, as I always wanted the Mask of Ba’al. I didn’t find it, but I did find something
else, even more precious, it seems – a way back to the mortal world!”
Her
eyes were open, she was fairly certain, but there was nothing but darkness,
then, out of the black, vague gray shapes, pulsing in and out with color. She was shivering despite the heat and the
prickling sensations that continued to jab at her relentlessly.
“If
Julia hadn’t spilled the beans, why, I’d still be a prisoner at Collinwood!” The amusement drained from his voice and there
was what she knew lay beneath the sardonic veneer all along: cold, cruel fury. “Because that’s what I was, you know, after
the little treatment you administered
me. Locked into the wood and the stone
and the goddamned glass, unable to
touch or to feel. That happened to me
before our friends dabbled their fingers into the waters of the past. But this time … oh, this time it was different.”
She
could cast a spell. She could stop this
from happening, or at least begin to heal, force the ball of guts that had
slipped from the wound Nicholas inflicted back inside her.
She
didn’t.
Let it be over.
“Julia
didn’t tell me who killed me, but she
did tell me how – by fire, of course
– and she even told me when. 1968.”
His voice grew musing, almost dreamy.
“I couldn’t stop it, as it turns out, and it never … never … occurred to me that you would be
my murderer, Maggie darling.”
I don’t deserve to live.
“Still
– I was able to make some
preparations. I had to die; that was
clear, and none of my counterspells were able to prevent my death. However – and this is the part I’m the most
proud of, dearest – however, I was
able to circumvent death … at least partially.
Something you wish you could do right about now, am I right?”
Let me die.
“Hmmmm. Perhaps I’ve been hasty. You do
wish to be released from the mortal coil, don’t you. Been feeling useless as of late, isn’t that
part of your problem? You needn’t fret,
my love. That’s why I’ve come.”
“Nicholas …” She managed, somehow, to say his name. She wasn’t sure how. Her strength was failing. She couldn’t see, could barely feel. The pain was gone. That was a blessing by itself.
“As
I was saying – the spell I cast that eventually proved successful and saved me
from my prison was contingent on our merry trio’s return to this time. The moment they re-entered this time, I was released from my
prison. I was made flesh again.
“And
the first thing I did was come to see you.”
She
was dying.
“But
not,” he whispered into her ear, “for the reasons you’re thinking.”
2
Valerie
Collins knew that she was the image of a long-dead witch; hadn’t Daniel said
it, over and over, after their marriage, even before the senility and the dementia
claimed him? “You have her eyes,” he had told her on their
wedding night, unconsummated, his touch gentle.
“The same blue, the same green, the same gray; they are the same.”
And he had a tiny picture, a sketch, by Barnabas Collins himself, that he’d
kept since his boyhood, and he proved it to her. Why, Valerie remembered thinking, she looks
just like me!
The
Witch. Angelique Collins. Rumors throughout her girlhood of witchcraft,
dark dealings, covens, murders, insanity.
Vampirism.
Daniel’s
own sister. Dispatched with a stake,
same as Valerie, eventually. Because, as
she learned, vampires were real.
And
her happenstance resemblance to a long-dead sorceress locked her tightly into
this nightmare.
Well,
she thought now, gazing at her new acolytes, I suppose it’s time I made the
best of a bad situation.
She
knew Samantha had hated her because she perceived Valerie to be weak, a
milksop; Gabriel hated her on general principle, while Quentin, after a failed
seduction in a dusty West Wing bedroom, only ignored her. As did Tad and the endless parade of
housemaids and governesses who actually returned attentions of both father and
son, for Tad was no innocent, no he was not.
Didn’t
matter. He was dead; Samantha was dead;
they were all dead, but Valerie
Collins remained.
She
felt the fangs like daggers in her mouth.
She was no milksop; not any longer.
She
had a purpose.
She
remembered Barnabas’ teeth in her throat, the love she felt for him, the
desire.
False,
false, false. All lies.
“Look,”
Tom Jennings said, and shifted uncomfortably on the tombstone upon which he
sat. The spring evening was lovely
around them, the sky melting into colors of deeper, darker blue; the
whippoorwills were singing somewhere near the edge of the cemetery, and Valerie
closed her eyes for a moment, just enjoying them. In her mortal life, she had loved the sound
of birds. All birds. She liked to watch them from her window at
Collinwood, when Daniel was at the peak of his insanity and Quentin locked him
away in the tower room. And wasn’t she
as much a prisoner as Daniel in the end?
Trapped in a loveless marriage, trapped in an endless house with people
who despised her? Not the birds. They sang and sang and called to her beyond
her prison. How she had longed to fly
back then. “Look,” Tom said again, and
beside him, Danielle Roget glared at him with distaste bordering on hatred,
“I’m not sure how keen I am to follow another vampire. Our dear Miss Drew has efficiently killed my
taste for teamwork in general, and anyway, I think I feel like setting out on
my own.”
“Imbecile,” Danielle muttered under her
breath.
“I’m
sorry?” Tom said, leaning over to her and baring his fangs. “What was that? Did you have something you’d like to
add?” He snuffled her like a beast. “I would love
to rip you open,” he purred, “and see what’s inside you, see what makes you
tick. And then eat it.”
Danielle
raised her stiletto. “One move in my
direction, pretty monsieur,” she
replied sweetly, “and I’ll gut you like a fish.
Your heart will be in my hand and you’ll be dust, so much useless ash.”
Valerie
said nothing. They’d bickered for the
past half hour and she had allowed it; why should they trust her? Do as she bade them? They were all that remained of Roxanne’s army, raised to fight something
called the Enemy, to prevent it from destroying the world. She didn’t much care. I don’t need much of an army, Valerie mused
as Danielle flickered her blade back and forth before Tom’s crimson eyes.
Which one?
Which one shall it be?
“You
selfish creature,” Danielle was saying to Tom.
“You fool. A brute, like all of
your kind. No style, no finesse. Just the kill. Well I savor my kills, monsieur, and I shall savor yours.”
Yes,
Valerie thought, yes.
Shaking
his head in disgust, Tom turned back to Valerie. “As I was saying: why should we follow you? Do what you say? You’re something of a newbie, aren’t you,
despite your age? Lay moldering in a
grave for a century, and now you’re back to do … what exactly?”
Valerie
shrugged, smiled prettily.
“You
don’t say much, do you,” Danielle said.
“Hmmm. I think the idiot vampir may be correct for once. Why should we do anything you say? What can you offer us that Roxanne could
not?”
Valerie
thought for a moment. Then: “An end,” she said. Her voice sounded rusty in her ears. “A true end.”
“I
don’t know,” Tom said, “I just don’t know.
This Enemy hasn’t made any kind of move, not at all. I’m beginning to think it was all some kind
of delusion Roxanne had. Maybe it isn’t
even real. I don’t know.” He began to pant, and his mouth grew larger,
longer, began to transform into a snout jostling with wolf teeth. “I do
know that I’m hungry. Starving,
actually.”
“I
shall feed you,” Valerie said. “I shall
provide. If you bow down to me; if you
do what I require of you.”
“What
makes you think you have enough power to –” Tom began, but Valerie was no
longer where she had been.
There
was a sound then, before Tom finished his sentence, a wet sound, a shredding
sound, and suddenly Valerie stood before him, smiling, her eyes red, her tiny
fang teeth red with blood and strings of flesh, and she was holding out to him
the head of Danielle Roget. The dead
woman’s mouth gaped open accusingly; her brown eyes stared with fury into
nothing.
“Take
it,” Valerie said. “Drink.”
“I’ve
never seen anyone move that fast,” he said, awed, and took the head. “How did you –?”
“I
am your god now,” Valerie said primly.
“I told you. I will provide. All I ask is that you do what I tell you.”
Tom
slurped and drank from the severed neck of the ancient murderess, and nodded
and smiled up at her while he did it.
3
“This
waiting is making me crazy,” Carolyn said.
The woman who looked enough like her to make her uncomfortable (almost
constantly) nodded. Carolyn’s mother was
having a far more difficult time dealing with her daughter’s doppelganger than
Carolyn herself, however; Elizabeth spent more and more time in her own room,
which also made Carolyn nervous. Despite
Elizabeth’s declaration that she was going to be involved in Collinwood’s
defense, Carolyn wondered if the constant parade of supernatural creatures was
beginning to wear on her.
“Me
too,” Leticia said. She picked absently
at the green arm of the couch she sat upon.
“I feel rather useless, love, to be perfectly honest.”
“Useless?”
“Julia
brought me here for a reason, only I don’t seem to be able to actually do anything. No one’s seen hide nor hair of Gerard in
months, right?”
“Right,”
Carolyn said. For a moment the events of
that night in late December flashed before her eyes: the séance, Eliot’s staring eyes, Gerard’s
hands all over her, preparing her for death …
She
shook it away with determination. “We’ll
find him,” Carolyn said. “And you can
destroy him.”
“But
when?” Leticia said, and stood up, pacing restlessly across the drawing
room. “When, Carolyn? Who else has to die before we do anything?” She noticed the pain that caused Carolyn’s
face to begin to crumple, because she strode to her side and put a comforting
hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to –”
“It’s
okay,” Carolyn said, and wiped away the useless tears that gathered in the
corners of her eyes. “I’m on your
side. I think we’ve wasted enough
time. We should take the fight to Gerard
instead of waiting for him to show up and slaughter us.”
“Excellent,”
Leticia crowed, and clapped her hands together.
Her
hands …
Carolyn
squinted. Why, she doesn’t look that much like me, she thought; her
hands are older, for certain; are those liver spots? Or the beginning of them? And there are lines around her eyes, I’m sure
of it …
But
Leticia had spun away from her in her moment of delight. “I can find him,” she sang, “I know I
can.” She tapped her forehead. “The Sight, don’tcha know.”
“Of
course,” Carolyn said. Her smile
faltered.
I thought Julia said Leticia was my age. Maybe I was wrong.
But Leticia had already
lit a candle and was holding it high, staring into its flame. Her eyes, the same turquoise as Carolyn’s
own, grew enormous as shadows flickered across her face. Outside, thunder grumbled. “Show ‘im to me,” Leticia growled in a low
voice unlike her own, at least as far as Carolyn had heard it. “Show me the bastard. Show me where he lies! Show me Gerard Stiles!”
Carolyn watched her
uneasily. Perhaps we should find someone
to help us, she thought, Barnabas or Julia or Quentin, maybe …
“Spirits that watch and
that know!” Leticia cried. “Guide me in
the proper direction! Show us where
lives the embodiment of evil! Show us
Gerard Stiles!”
Thunder
outside. Carolyn felt a spike of sudden
terror. The sky was clear only a few minutes
ago, she thought, a beautiful clear evening in springtime …
“I
know!” Leticia crowed, and nearly dropped the candle in the midst of her
fervor. “I know where he is!
Carolyn
took a breath. We’re making a mistake,
she thought, suddenly dizzy; a big mistake, a deadly mistake.
“He’s
been right under our noses this entire time,” Leticia continued. “He never left!”
“Rose
Cottage,” Carolyn said, guessing.
“Just
where he was the last time I vanquished him,” Leticia said. She seized Carolyn’s hand. “And we’ll do it again – just you and me!”
“No
you won’t,” Elizabeth Collins Stoddard said in her most imperious tone. She stood in the doorway of the drawing room,
one hand on the door, her eyebrows raised to a truly astonishing height. In her other hand she held a little clutch
purse that had belonged, Carolyn thought, to her mother.
“Mrs.
Stoddard,” Leticia began, while at the same time Carolyn pleaded, “Mother, if
you’ll just listen –”
“No,”
Elizabeth said firmly and strode into the room. “I won’t have you put yourself into danger,
Carolyn.” Carolyn opened her mouth to
protest, which was the moment Elizabeth reached into the clutch and brought out
a tiny revolver. Carolyn’s eyes
widened. Elizabeth’s mouth settled into
a prim smile. “Which means you won’t be
going to Rose Cottage alone.”
4
Maggie
was aware of heat and wetness on her forehead, and a dim howling sound
somewhere in the distance. She groaned
and tried to move, but her limbs were too heavy. She was lying on her back on something cold
and hard, like stone. Maybe it was
stone. She groaned again. Her guts ached dully.
Nicholas’
voice. He was chanting something above
her. She tried to open her eyes. Wherever the bastard had taken her, it wasn’t
completely dark. Dim though. Greenish light played off strands of foul
smelling mist that drifted about the empty air.
Maggie found she could lift one of her hands a few inches off the stone
if she tried. She squinted. Her hand, she saw with some astonishment,
emerged from a foam of delicate, antique-looking lace. I’m in some kind of fancy dress, she
realized; what the hell did he do to
me?
“Maggie
Evans,” Nicholas intoned, “I have anointed you with the blood of the owl … and
the raven … and the bat.”
Her
eyes widened. She recognized these
words. Where had she heard these words
before?
“You
will dwell with me forever as one of the damned.”
Her
lips formed one word over and over: no,
she tried to say, but she had no voice; the sonofabitch had robbed her of her
voice; no, she tried to say, no no no oh no please no.
He
leaned over and pressed his lips to hers, but it wasn’t a kiss he offered
her: his mouth was full of some bitter
fluid that he passed into her. Her
throat worked, and she swallowed it involuntarily.
“…
bound to me now and throughout eternity …”
All I wanted was death. I deserve to die.
But
she wouldn’t die.
Ever.
“Let
the legions of the damned salute you!” Nicholas thundered; she caught a glimpse
of him above her, his arms outstretched, hands splayed wide, black sparks of
magic dancing between his fingers and then, answering, the shrieks and howls of
fiends, undeads, creatures from the
depths of hell, and she could see them as they approached; terror rose inside
her but she was frozen, paralyzed; she could see their marble-white arms, their
clutching hands answering Nicholas, spider fingers, and they were all over her,
pulling her from the altar, and still she couldn’t scream.
They
buried her.
And
amidst the ice and marble and crawling slime of their flesh, she could feel
Nicholas’ mouth on hers.
And
she couldn’t even scream.
TO BE CONTINUED ...
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Happy 49th Anniversary, Dark Shadows!
"My name is Victoria Winters ... my journey is just beginning ..."
Friday, June 26, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
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