Series 5/Chapter 8: A FULL MOON (Part 4)

The murky evening sky above Collinsport brought a cold snap. The Town-folk usually reserved these late summer months for last ditch swimming in the many quaint seaside escapes this part of Maine was known for but not on this night. This night was different.

At 2356 Harper Street, the house Christopher once shared with his father, the late Victor Reed, the clouds opened up in the sky preparing for a summer full moon to shine down and illuminate the things that go bump in the night.

Christopher and Alexandra had no time to waste. If they were going to find the notes Kimberly took while she did the various DNA experiments on Chris all those years ago, they had to do it before the moon shifted to it's highest point in the sky. The time was now.

The couple searched high and low throughout the house that Chris had now practically abandoned since his father's death on the night of one of Chris' transitions. Chris still felt terribly guilty for his role in Victor's death. He picked up a photo of the two of them on a fishing trip when Chris was only 10. The memory was like a stabbing reminder of guilt. He could still hear his own laugh as they joked with each other that day on the little boat. He could still smell the sweet air around the river bed. He could still feel his father's strong hand pat him on the shoulder when he caught his first catch.

"It wasn't your fault." Alex noticing Chris' glazed off gaze while she sifted through a box of papers they pulled from the attic.

"Just because I wasn't in my own mind doesn't mean I still didn't kill my own father. I'll never forgive myself for that." Chris said putting the photo back down on the table.

"Chris, Victor knew the dangers of what he and Kimberly were doing to you when they started these werewolf DNA tests to begin with. You, the human side of you, would never have done what the monster side of you did. You have to learn to separate the two." Alex advised.

"That still doesn't help much. I mean think about it, no matter how many ways we slice it, I killed my own dad Alex. In cold blood!" Chris said busting open a new box from the attic that had been taped up with an odd amount of tape.

Alex digressed. She knew that his guilt was too painful, and there wasn't much she could do to make him feel better. Not about this, not about the way Victor died. She knew she just had to let him live with whatever feelings he was dealing with and support him. No matter what.

As the two reconciled lovers continued to search for the missing notes on the serum Kimberly had created to reverse his DNA from morphing into the werewolf they noticed time was running short. In just a few more hours, the moon would rise again over Collinsport, and if they weren't careful, Christopher would turn back into the wolf; out again to ravage the city with his wild hunger for human flesh.

Alex continued to frantically search through her box while Chris finally made his way into the box with the severe amount of tape around it.

"Oh my god, I think I found something. I think this is it!" Chris said pulling through paper work.

"What does it say?" Alex asked.

"It's just a bunch of notes, and formulas. Things I don't understand, but the paper work is stamped with my name and my birth date. This whole file is on me. This has to be it!" Chris said excitedly.

Alex crawled through the endless amounts of papers on the floor, like she was rustling around in them like a pile of autumn leaves. She reached over and grabbed Chris by the neck and pulled him over and planted a happy giant kiss on his bearded cheek leaving a stain of lip gloss on his face. As she looked into  his deep brown eyes, she also noticed a second folder in the box.

"What's that one?" She asked grabbing the folder. "Do you think this is more stuff on you?" She continued.

Chris looked down at the birth date on the folder and noticed it wasn't his, but before he could open the folder to check he started to feel strange. He started to feel the bones in his feet start to crack, the hairs on his arms and legs begin to thicken and lengthen. His teeth began to turn razor sharp and he began to sweat profusely.

"Chris...?" Alex said taking the file folders away from his shaking hand.

"I ...... think it's happ....." Chris said, the words barley making it out of his mouth.

"Oh god. You're changing. But the moon isn't even at the highest point yet? Stay with me." Alex screamed as she slowly backed away from Christopher.

"Alex. Take me outside." Chris said, his eyes now turning into deep yellow rings. "For your safety, please take me outside!!" He growled.

Alex put the papers they needed on a table and quickly turned back to grab Chris's hand that now started to resemble some sort of hand/paw hybrid. Chris,  now walking hunched and breathing heavily, was sweating from every part of his body. He was snarling and huffing. His insides twitching and agitated and pushing and shoving as if the human part of him was trying to fight off the power the moon had over his other more monstrous side.

Alex carefully walked Chris to a back door that lead to the yard that lead to a back meadow that lead to the forest. The sky, now a dark gloomy grey, was now filled with the light of the full moon that had yet to rise to it's center point. She looked down at her own hands hold Chris' arm and saw her own skin flash and change into color of Chris'. Her own body was now twitching and pulling and turning into a wolf then back to normal then back to wolf then back to normal, she was shape shifting again like she had the other night after the spell was broken on her walk through town.

She screamed at the sight and let go of Chris. He howled horrible deathly howl and turned back to Alex who was standing in shock on the back steps.

He growled, foam spewed from his mouth, his teeth eager for fresh flesh. But something was different. He saw Alex from the part of his mind that was still Chris. The werewolf side howled again and ran off into the meadow then into the forest just outside the boundaries of the house.

Alex stood alone on the back porch. Her mind racing. Her heart pounding. She realized what was happening to her. For whatever reason when she was at the peak of the most stressful moments in her life, she would shape-shift into whatever was causing her the stress, a lasting and final effect of the powers she once had. But she couldn't think of that now, she had to take the notes she and Chris found to Kim and hope that Kim could recreate the serum to save Chris.

She quickly turned back into the house and grabbed both files they had found. Then grabbed her car keys and dashed back to Collinwood hoping Chris' human side could stall the hungry beast within for as long as possible.

****

Carolyn stared into the mirror of her vanity, the light of the moon gleaming through the window. The glow of blue and grey brought out the blue in her eyes. She stared deeply into those blue eyes. She could see her mother's face looking back at her. It made her happy. After Caleb's death all she could think of was the loss of her family members of the past, mainly her mother Elizabeth. She thought of all the pain her mother endured on earth and she thought of all the difficult decisions she had to make, mainly putting Victoria up for adoption. That guilt probably never left Elizabeth her entire life.

Carolyn believed she was alone that evening, but watching from the other side of a heating vent in the wall, was the man in the mask: Victoria's henchman who was stalking the family and collecting as much information as he could while his mobile phone, the one connection outside of Collinwood, had died. The man in the mask knew he had to somehow find a way to get to Vickie and tell her what he had over heard earlier while Carolyn and Alex were having breakfast. The truth. Vickie was Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard's daughter and therefore a Collins too. But he was trapped within the various secret passage ways in the walls of Collinwood, with no where to go and nothing to do but listen.

As Carolyn got up to go to her bathroom for a new hair brush, a shadowy figure began to grow from the corner of her room hidden away in the drapes. If flowed like smoke from a volcano just about to erupt. Carolyn, gasped and began to walk backwards toward her vanity, she continued to step backwards until she could no longer move, her hands grasped the edged of the vanity. Her eyes grew large her breath became shallow, she struggled to find something on the desk to grab to protect herself and knocked down the contents of the desk to the floor in the process.

As the shadow began to become clear, Carolyn began to realize it was only her oldest cousin alive Barnabas Collins. The man in the walls saw the smoke build up too and begin to form a figure, his eyes widened. To him this was the strangest most terrifying thing he had ever seen. Or so he thought.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" Carolyn said sarcastically as she began to regain her composure and pick up the fallen items.

"I only came to thank you for late last night." Barnabas said as he grabbed the back of Carolyn's hand to kiss it.

"Well, you would have done the same for me, I guess. After all you're the one always marching around here talking about family and how much we need to stick together. What kind of Collins woman would I be if I let Victoria just ....do ...whatever she wanted to do to you." Carolyn said stammering with what she wanted to say.

"It would have been the end of me, Carolyn. I am deeply greatful." Barnabas reiterated.

"So you were finally telling the truth, huh? Vickie really is out to get us." Carolyn asserted.

"It appears so, but from what you have told me, she's incredibly misguided. If She really is your half sister, we must find a way to tell her before it's too late." Barnabas said.

"We don't know where she is. We don't know what's she's up to. How in the world...It's just at this point we should worry about that bridge when we cross it. I don't want any of us running around looking for and falling into any more of her traps." Carolyn said not knowing Vickie had planted the man who was hiding in their walls as she spoke. The man's soul mission was to kill the Collins family on Vickie's order.

"There may be a way. We'd have to lure her to Collinwood and then confront her with the truth." Barnabas said.

"Lure her? How?" Carolyn asked.

"Kathryn's child." Barnabas said coldly, knowing just how interested Vickie was in Kat and the new Collins baby she was carrying.

"Barnabas you can't be serious. We can't use an innocent life as bait. There is no way I can allow that. No way in hell." Carolyn said refusing Barnabas' idea.

Even though Carolyn stomped on his plot to get Vickie to Collinwood, deep down he knew nothing would stop him once his mind was made up. He had to get Vickie before she got him. That was a fact.

Then masked man in the walls knew he had to find his way to Vickie before he was discovered. As Barnabas and Carolyn continued their conversation he slowly crept through the walls again down an air ducts that allowed him safe travels through the many floors and quarters of the mansion. He had to get out and find Victoria now!

****

After returning to Collinwood from the doctor's appointment with Kat, Kimberly retreated back to her office in the west wing of the house. The other night she had broken a glass in her hand after a terrifying vision of her dead sister's ghost appeared to her again as a reflection in the windows.

Kim carefully picked up the shards of glass and walked back over to the bar where she had poured two brandies, one for her and one for David. She carefully placed the shards in a small oval shaped garbage bin next to the bar and reached into a crevice at the side of the small mini bar and pulled out an empty vial she had tucked there after pouring it into David's drink. The vial was marked "Liken Represent".

It was the serum she had created to repress the genetic Liken, or werewolf, DNA from becoming aggravated on a full moon. A full moon like tonight.

"You're doing so well Sister." A voice echoed from across the room.

Kim quickly turned and it was again the vision of the dead Dr. Joanna Grayson, Kimberly's sister staring at her with blood covering her face.

"I promised I wouldn't tell." Kim said almost in a trance.

"When will you begin the next step of the process?" Joanna cryptically asked.

"Soon...I'm trying to gain his trust again. It's a slow process." Kimberly responded equally mysteriously.

Joanna and Kimberly had always been close sisters growing up and their separation now, one living and dead did't seem to stiffle their underhanded plotting. No matter how many times Kim tried to put herself in the good graces of the Collins family, a family she belongs to by marriage, she could never escape her wicked sister Joanna, who's thirst for power was much stronger than Victoria's ambitious mission to destroy the family for the made up Organization.

The truth was, while Joanna held David captive at Windcliff Sanitarium in the name of the organization, the two sisters had gone rogue from their task and had done something unthinkable to David.

"David must never know that he too possesses dormant wolf DNA like Christopher. He must never know the experiments we did on him at Windcliff. No one must know." Joanna pressed in her eerie echoing voice.

"I won't tell." Kim responded.

"Now that Christopher is out of reach and aware of his DNA change, David is our last hope against the Collins family. It's our sisterly secret that you must keep." Joanna's ghost said again.

"I promise. What about Victoria Winters? Should she know about David?" Kimberly asked naively.

Joanna didn't say a word and only put her blood stained finger up against her lips again. 

As Kimberly stood staring into the glass of the windows of her office speaking to Joanna who quickly disappeared, Alexandra burst in. Her mind racing, sweat dripping from her face. She had raced home to give Kimberly the notes for the serum that would cure Christopher.

"Kim!! Kimberly!!!" Alex screamed breaking Kim from her sister's haunting trance.

"What? Alex, my god what is it?" Kim replied back to her normal self.

"The notes. Here. We found them. You can cure Chris now!" Alex said out of breath.

Kimberly snatched the notes from Alex's hands and began to read them over. She flicked through the pages, and a giant grin began to stretch across her face. These were the correct notes, and now she re-create the serum to cure Christopher before it was too late. All was not lost and maybe she could do the same for David, that is if Joanna would just leave her alone.

"Where's Chris?" Kim asked impatiently.

"He ran off. It was too late for him, the clouds parted and the moon light came in, he changed right in front of me. We have to hurry, maybe we can find him after the serum is made." Alex said hoping for a miracle.

Kimberly nodded in agreement and grabbed Alex's hand dragging her off to her laboratory, and as they did, Joanna's spirit resurfaced in the glass of the office window's. Her blood still pouring from the Barnabas' bite wounds on her neck. Her skin a glowing pale color. Her eyes angry and furious that the notes on the cure were found.

****

At Seaside cottage, which was formally owned by the Collins family but Willed to Victoria by Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, Vickie sat at a small table in compete darkness with only the flickering of candles behind her. She slowly removed a  dark blue silk cloth covering the top of a fine pine box. Inside the box an old Ouija board from from the 1920s.

The wooden board was thick and old, with letters and drawings carved deep into its smooth surface. The elegant oracle with its clear glass eye was light and ornate. 

Vickie placed the oracle on the board and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath and slowly moved the oracle across the board to the center.

"Are you here.....announce yourself." Vickie said as a cold ocean breeze filled the room pulling the sheer curtains up around the chairs in front of Vickie on the other side of the table. Vickie waited, for an answer but did not receive one.

She tried again and asked the same thing, but this time she carefully lifted her fingers from the ornate oracle just so that it could move on its own if it needed to. And it did.

The salty air swirled around Vickie blowing through her raven hair as the oracle crept over to the YES carving.

Victoria opened her eyes and smiled a dastardly grin. She had successfully contact a different dimension.

"Have you prepared for our arrival?" She asked the board as she watched the oracle circle around the word YES again.

"Tell me the year!" Vickie asked as the oracle carefully moved across the board to the bottom where the line of numbers were where it went over four distinct numbers clearly and cryptically pointing out:

1          9                2               0

Vickie smiled and knew it was finally time set the final stages of her plans to destroy the Collins family. Finally the revenge she sought out for almost 50 years, since she met with the men at the orphanage where the told them The Collins family was responsible for the death of her birth parents.

But Vickie had unknowingly ignited a war based  on the elaborate lie created by her birth father the Priest, Father Joseph, who hoped the cover he created for Vickie would be the way for her to reconnect with her birth mother Elizabeth. No one knew just how far this lie would go. Except Victoria who's entire life since then had been to live and breath the demise of the Collins family...her family.  

Vickie walked over to a taller table in the corner of the room and picked up her cell phone. She clicked her messages and wrote out a text message for Sebastian, her main henchman who was visiting with  his pregnant sister Kat.

"It's time. Inject Kat with the meds. NOW." Vickie's message read.

Then Vickie wrote out a message to The masked man who had been hiding in the walls telling him to take out any Collins family member he saw. That message however was never received. The masked man's phone had a dead battery. He too had a message for Vickie, a warning but there was no way to get it to her. 

Sebastian who had been patiently waiting the "go-ahead" to induce Kat's labor carefully walked over to his sister who was standing on a balcony looking over the Collinwood land talking to Sebastian about how large her belly had become and how they doctor said she was about 8 months. 

Kat's voice was happy and surprised like any new mother would be. She looked out on the beautiful grounds that Collinwood had to offer, the full moon filled the dark sky in the distance over the ocean. 

Sebastian slowly and meticulously walked over to Kat, still going on about her excitement for the new baby, pricked the back of Kat's arm with the needle that had medication that would induce her labor. And within minutes, Kat's eagerness to be a new mom turned to concern. As she stood on the balcony next to her brother she grabbed her arm in the area Sebastian had injected her.

"What did you do?" She asked as she opened her hand a tiny stain of blood from the prick mark.

"Helping you." Sebastian said cryptically.

And as quick as the injection happened, Kat's stomach began to cramp violently. Her labor had began. 

"Bash....... I...I think ...my...."Kat said looking down at her belly. 

Sebastian grabbed Kat's hands and walker her over to a chair inside the room. 

"We have to get to the hospital. It's too early." Kat said started to rush off back into her room from the balcony. 

"Wait here, I'll go and pull the car around and have Alex come up to be with you ok?" Sebastian said now started to feel nervous about what he had done.

Kat sat on her bed breathing hard as the labor pains got stronger and stronger. The pain was like nothing she had ever felt before.  Her mind racing and filled with confusion over what was happened. Did Sebastian do this to her? she thought.

 She lay back on the bed, and grasped on to the bed's comforter tightly, so tightly that she began to tear holes in the lining with her finger nails that dug in.

As Kat lay in agony on her bed with labor pains, Alex rushed in from the hall way where she heard Kat's screams.

"Kat! Are you ok?" Alex asked as she grabbed Kat's hands and pulled them off the bed spread, noting the holes.

"The baby's coming!" Kat said in and out of breaths. "Sebastian is getting the car." she added.

"Just breath Kat, breath! Sebastian won't be too long." Alex said wiping Kat's sweaty forehead.

Downstairs, Sebastian had brought his car to the front of the main entrance to Collinwood. He leapt from the drivers side and flew around the front of the car to leave open the passenger side door for Kat. 

As he made his way across the headlights of the car he heard feral growl just off in the dark distance beneath the brush that closed off an entrance way to a courtyard that lead to the old house. At first Sebastian thought it was Barnabas spying on him. He turned and slowly walked in the direction of the growl allowing the headlights of his car to guide his path.

"Come on, come out of there." Sebastian called out towards the bushes. 

The growl Sebastian believed was Barnabas continued and got louder. His headlights, now a good 50 to 60 feet away, were shining brightly on the green bushes. The high moon too lit the area behind the bushes so much so Sebastian could see all the way to the old house and to his surprise saw Barnabas pass in front of the main windows going into a drawing room.

With a confused look on his face, Sebastian lifted the lower parts of the bushes to see what was behind them. Two large yellow yes looked back at him and squinted from the brightness of the car headlights. 

Sebastian's screamed and fell backwards. It was Christopher in wolf form slowly revealing his large hairy monstrous body out from under the bushes. Chris snarled, and snapped his great claws at Sebastian who was now on the floor frantically pulling himself backwards towards his awaiting car.

But it was too late. Christopher the werewolf lunged at Sebastian and pulled his body up. They struggled for brief moment, but Sebastian was no match for the strength of Christopher's incredible power. The wolf dragged Sebastian off into the dark shadowy distance of the woods away from Collinwood, leaving only marks in the dirt path in front of the main house from Sebastian's struggling body and an empty car with its motor and lights turned on.

The rumbling of the car's engine and smashing of the ocean on the rocks just below the cliff side were all that was left. Nothing more.