Series 1/Chapter 4: THE DARK ROOM

The dark hall throbbed with the thumping and pounding from the room at the end of it. Alexandra trembled like an autumn leaf. She latched on to her mother's arm and stayed close behind her.

They walked slowly to the room at the end of the hall feeling an intense pressure on their bodies as they grew closer and closer to the oak door that had been locked for over 30 years, a door Carolyn herself locked the night before she left Collinsport, for what she thought was forever.

This was the room she last saw her ancient relative, the vampire Barnabas Collins, a man who inserted himself into her life on his supernatural quest to rid himself of a curse, a curse for blood, a curse that he thought would never end.

Caleb put his hands around the door knob and as he turned it a surge of energy shot through his body like a thunder bold, swirling and stinging him from the top of his golden blond head to his feet. It was energy that lit up the hall so bright that it looked like the sun burst right there in their presence.

Alexandra screamed and grabbed Caleb's hand to pull him off and as she did  the energy sparked and the two were thrown to the end of the hall tossing Carolyn to one side.

Then the sounds stopped, just as they quickly and mysteriously began.

Simply just stopped.

"What the hell was that?" Caleb said dusting off his leather jacket and helping Alex up.

Carolyn composed herself and went up to the door and turned the knob

"Mother no!" Alex screamed fearing the worst, but the only thing that happened was the door opened. And inside was darkness, and stillness.

Carolyn walked in showing no fear, but inside her stomach was turning.

Caleb, Alexandra and Carolyn carefully inspected the darkened room at the end of the hall, a laboratory style office that used to belong to a woman who lived at the home for many years, Julia Hoffman. In that room Julia had attempted to cure Barnabas of the many terrible things that plagued his life--to no avail. 

"I thought he was dead." Caleb said clearly aware of the legend of his ancestor.

"He is, but the powers he had over this house is more than you know. It's more than I can even understand. Barnabas is Collinwood....and Collinwood is Barnabas." Carolyn explained.

"What do you think it actually was?" Alexandra questioned.

"This house is filled with sinister and angry energy. Things I ran away from almost all my life. Caleb's father David too hasn't been back for the same reasons--- I assume his disappearance could be for the same reason. And now it's taken Jack."  Said Carolyn.

"Do you think we'll be ok here?" Alex asked.

Carolyn looked at the fear in her daughter's eyes. She could see the same terror that ruined her life was now starting to take a strangling hold on Alex. The cycle could not continue, she would no longer run away from everything that frightened her. Carolyn straightened up and stood firmly in the center of the room.

"This is our home. I won't leave without Jack." Carolyn confirmed turning around in circles so that every spirit in the house would year her "Do you hear that! I won't leave this time!!!" 

The night progressed without further incident, and around 9:30, two detectives finally arrived.

Detectives Loomis McGovern and Katherine "Kat" Banning both grew up in Collinsport, they were an odd paring, Loomis in his mid 40s and Kat, a rookie cop in her late 20s, hadn't had much experience, but made up for in street smarts and hard work. Loomis however had seen it all. A jaded soul that needed to see to believe. 

As the two surveyed the house from the outside Kat questioned the history of the Collins family. It was local folklore, the strange family that the town was named after and all their mysterious family members.

"So what do you think? Just another Collins family mystery!?" She said readjusting her scarf around her neck.

"Hope not. Thought this town was rid of all this. But what do ya know, history repeats itself." Loomis said knocking on the great oak door.

"A missing person is a missing person. Collins or not, but this should be interesting." Kat said with a smirk.

"Now, now, don't start getting all Scooby-Doo on me, this is real life stuff. There could be a very logical explination for why Thorne vanished without telling anyone." Loomis responded.

"Right. Aliens." Kat said jokingly to tease her partner who glared at her with disdain.

Carolyn's personal butler and driver Powell answered the door and led the two detectives into the main drawing room where Carolyn had laid out tea and small cookies for their guests that Caleb had picked up. There was an odd calmness in the house, especially for a family missing a family member under bizarre circumstances. 

Powell left the room After introducing the detectives to Alex who took it from there.

"This is my mother Mrs. Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne and our cousin Caleb Collins, Caleb was the one who called you." Alexandra said introducing everyone.

"Caleb, it's nice to see you again." Kat said, recognizing her old high school fiend, much to Loomis' surprise.

"You two know eachother?" Loomis asked.

"High School pals, but then he took off to Paris around the middle of 11th grade. Never to see him again." Kat smirked.

"London." Caleb corrected as he shook Loomis' hand.

"Would have been nice to know that." Loomis said to Kat in a whisper under his breath.

"Thank you both for coming." Carolyn said, as she poured tea. 

"Mrs. Thorne, from what I've read this is your old home." Loomis enquired.

"Yes. My mother Elizabeth inherited it from her father Jamison Collins, and he from  his father Edward and so on. This land has been in our family for centuries."

"And what about the other homes on the land. Did everyone check to see if Jack had gone there?" Kat asked.

"The cottages were empty when I checked." Caleb answered.

"And the other home? The one towards the back of this one?" Kat said writing things down.

"The old house?" Carolyn questioned mentioning the second, older mansion on the Collinwood land that had been the original family home until the mid 1800's when the newer mansion was finished. "There's no way Jack would have gone there. He was just supposed to come here and pick up a few things to bring back to London."

"I wonder though..." Kat begain again.

"I assure you Detective Banning, my husband is not at the old house." Carolyn said cutting off Kat.

"Why are there two larger homes on the property?" Loomis asked.

"The family never had it in them to demolish the old house. It stayed around for decades sentimentally, until about 1967." Caleb answered.

"What happened in 1967?" Kat asked.

Carolyn and Caleb looked at each other. They knew exactly what happened, or better, who moved in to the old house making it inhabitable again.

"A family member from London moved in and repaired it, but by the mid 70s, they moved away and from then on the house again was left empty. We boarded it up in 1985 right before I left to London for good." Carolyn answered.

"For good?" Loomis asked, his question leading to the obvious notion that Carolyn was indeed back in Collinsport.

"Well at least I thought for good." Carolyn answered.

"Well, under the circumstances, I'd say welcome home but I can understand its been rather difficult for you, and you can trust us, Mrs. Thorne, we are going to find your husband as soon as we can." Loomis said.

"Mrs. Thorne, do you remember the exact time and day you last heard from Jack ...?" Kat asked getting right to business.

"Two days ago, the day before he was to meet Caleb." She answered.

"And I text messaged him that day too. But he never responded." Alex added.

"And we are sure he came here?" Kat questioned again looking around the dark mansion noting some of the furniture still covered up.

"When we got here I found the keys he was supposed to bring me in on the floor just by the staircase, so we know he was here. We know he came in but we don't know where he went after." Caleb said.

"This house is rather large, could he still be here? Maybe he'd fallen and is somewhere hurt?" Loomis asked.

"No, we've checked and there's no one in the house." Alex answered.

The two detectives left the drawing room and asked to look around the home for clues, but nothing seemed odd, at least not what they'd imagine Collinwood would look like inside. The house was indeed disrepair but for the most part the only parts that had been touched were the parts where the family had been in, the two main rooms on the first floor and the kitchen. 

Alone now, taking notes in a side study, Kat looked out of the window out across the frosty grass and stared at the Old House just beyond the yard. There was something about it that made her skin crawl.

"Expecting ghosts and goblins to pop up?" Caleb staid startling Kat as he entered the room she was in. 

"Still the comedian I see." Kat said with a shy grin. "But seriously, this house had been boarded up since I can remember and the first person that sets foot inside in over 30 years suddenly disappears...without a trace...suspicious." Kat said with a grin. "But honestly, tell me has anything else odd happened since you've been back?"

Before Caleb could answer Carolyn walked in the room with her cup of tea still steaming from the saucer into the brisk air inside the home.

"Nothing at all." She said closing the library door. "I can assure you, Jack's disappearance is the only thing we can't explain. Which makes it all the more painful Detective Banning. I wish we had something to explain it."

"Something or someone?" Kat said as she collected her notes to Carolyn's displeasure. "We'll leave you now to get some rest. We'll be in contact tomorrow morning, Mrs Thorne, let us know if you hear anything before."

"Yes, thank you." Carolyn said as Kat opened the study door and turned back to Caleb.

"Goodnight Caleb." Kat said as she went to meet Loomis at front door.

As soon as Kat and Loomis returned to their car they knew something was off about the family. Of course it was. They were Collins. But what they were hiding wasn't clear, Kat for one felt she could smoke it out of at least one one of them, her old high school friend Caleb.

Inside the house Caleb and Alexandra questioned Carolyn on her motives for keeping the episode in the hall outside of Julia's old lab attributed to Barnabas from the detectives.

"They mustn't know of that." Carolyn said sternly.

"But why mother? You don't think it's related to daddy?" Alex asked.

"I know it's related. The problem is I don't know how. Darling, Barnabas Collins was ... he couldn't do what we experienced in that hall.... He didn't have that type of power. No, there's something much more living within these walls, and I have to find out first before the police do, its the only way."

And within those walls listening to Carolyn, Alexandra and Caleb  was indeed an entity, the woman in red with dark hair who had one objective: to keep watch over Collinwood for her perch inside the old house where she was keeping Jack. She had been there for decades waiting for this very moment.

And what she had done to Jack would turn Carolyn's stomach inside out. 

                                        

Series 1/Chapter 3: THREE BEATING HEARTS

A stately black SUV curled around the corner up to the front gates of Collinwood Manor. By this time the sun had gone down  leaving only the ghostly silhouette of a Gothic mansion sitting behind the rusted gates monogrammed with the letter C. 

Carolyn and her daughter Alexandra had flown from London on the first flight available to help Caleb locate Carolyn's husband Jack. Both women were terrified of the thoughts of what may have happened to Jack, albeit for different reasons. Alex was naturally worried about her father's disappearance, Carolyn was too, but the added paranoia of whom -or what- was in involved in his sudden vanishing gave the new Collins family matriarch a sinking feeling. She had seen this before, all her life she knew the dangers and treacherous ways of the mansion. This was a family history Alexandra only heard about in stories from Caleb was they grew up, she had yet to experience her mother's terror first hand. 

A droplet covered tinted window of  Carolyn and Alexandra's blacked out SUV rolled down revealing Carolyn's blue eyes staring up at the house of horrors she once knew. She stared intently at the mansion she grew up in as their driver, Jude Powell slowly removed their bags from the car.  Memories of murder, mystery and of one man in particular flooded her mind.

"Mother....." Alexandra said as she and Powell started on their way in to the house. "Mother..." Alex said again, Carolyn still staring at the house as if she couldn't hear Alex's voice. "Mother!" Alex yelled again finally getting Carolyn's attention.

"What? Did you say something honey?" Carolyn answered, her mind in a fog.

"Are you coming in? It's cold out here." Alex said, the frosty sea air swiping her pale skin. 

"I never thought I'd be back here again." She whispered to herself.

"Everything is going to be ok. Whatever happened in the past is over. I promise." Alexandra said helping her mother out of the car and trying to reassure her nervs.

"I'd usually agree with you, but the ironic thing about Collinwood is just how much the past seems to come back to life...." Carolyn said her sentence trailing as she stepped into the foyer of the house for the first time in almost 30 years.

Her eyes looked all around. The smell was the same, older but the same. It was a mixture of pine and dust. Every piece of furniture and surface was covered with white sheets to protect the antiques from damage.

Alex pulled down a sheet to reveal the old grandfather clock closest to the door of the main drawing room, it ticked the minutes away as no time had past.

"Its .....its amazing." Alex said in awe of the beauty of the old Gothic mansion.

They stepped into the drawing room, a room where many supernatural events had occuried, stories that Carolyn felt if she retold out loud, surly those ghost would come back and remind her why she left in the first place. 

Alex pulled down another sheet, this one from a painting on the wall revealing a very young Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.

"That's your grandmother...." Carolyn said, beaming with pride.

"You have her eyes." Alex said, noting Carolyn and Elizabeth's ocean blue eyes.

As Carolyn started a fire, Alexandra continued discovering countless artifacts the Collins family had left in the drawing room over the years. Books, and letters that were stuffed in the pages, a letter opener monogrammed E.C.S., a set of tumblers that made Carolyn giggle... "Those are Uncle Roger's."

"And who's this?" Alex asked pulling down one more drape from a painting.

Carolyn turned from the fire to see Alexandra had found the painting of Barnabas Collins.

Carolyn's eyes gazed up and saw the man she once loved as a surrogate father. A man that held a secret so dark, so twisted and so evil that when the truth was revealed to her decades ago, it shook her to her core. And here again, faced with this image, her blood ran cold.

Carolyn rushed over and yanked the painting down off the wall without explanation just as their cousin Caleb Collins walked into the mansion.

"Carolyn, Alex!" He said hugging and kissing them both. "I'm so glad you made it."

"Darling, you look wonderful." Carolyn smiled, seeing Caleb as her own grown son.

"I have a detective coming." Caleb said entering the room.

"Where could Daddy be? When was the last time you spoke to him?" Alexandra asked.

"It was yesterday morning. I called him at his hotel and we made arrangements to meet back at the realtors with the keys." Caleb explained as Carolyn walked over to a set of French doors on the opposite side of the drawing room.

Carolyn drew back  the drapes and looked out in to the dark of night. She was quiet, her mind still filled with the terrors that would befall them if they stayed in the house....but they had to stay.

"You know, we can make arrangements for you to stay at the hotel Carolyn. If this is too much---" Caleb said, noting Carolyn's discomfort. 

"No! This was a long time coming." Carolyn interrupted. "I noticed some of the other sheets on the furniture were removed before we came in. Someone was here. It must of been Jack. Carolyn said walking over to warm by the fire.

"I agree. I found these when I walked over by the staircase as I came in." Caleb said handing over the lost keys to the mansion to Carolyn.

Just then a noise came from down the hall. It was a loud thud that shook the paintings on the walls. Alexandra screamed and ran over to her mother for comfort. The noise came again this time louder and it felt closer.

"What is that? Where is it coming from?" Alexandra said terrified.

Carolyn knew exactly where it came from, the room down the hall had been sealed off many years ago. It was room no one was to ever enter. But now there was clearly life in the home something that had been in house sensed the beating of three hearts of pure Collins blood. 

The sound came again this time as if it were a loud thunderous knocking teasing  and daring them to come close.

"I'm going down there!" Caleb said dashing to the door.

"Caleb stop!" Carolyn screamed.

"It could be Jack! He may need our help!" Caleb returned.

"Its not Jack. " Carolyn said.

"Well who is it?" Caleb questioned beginning to feel frustrated with the whole situation.


"It's Barnabas." 

                                    

Series 1/Chapter 2: CURSE OF COLLINWOOD

There was a feeling in the old Collins' mansion that would make the hair on your skin stand at attention. It was the kind of feeling of a chill in the air, a frosty  bite of cold wind that swished by your bare neck.

In a back bedroom on the second floor, the setting sun peeked through the shuttered window in an orange glow casting strange shadows on the draped furniture, abandoned by the family it once served. Jack Thorne suddenly awoke, drenched in sweat feeling the icy cold air all around him. The dark room his instant prison. He looked around and saw that someone...or something...had tied him to the bed and left him in the dark.

"Leopold." A voice whispered from one of the room's shadowy corners.

"Hello? Who's there?" Jack replied, slightly lifting his head to see where the voice came from.

"Leopold, You've aged. You've come so far, and you've aged." The female voice replied.

"I'm sorry, there must be some misunderstanding, my name is Jack Thorne, I came here to just quickly pick somethings up for my wife. Her name is Carolyn...she used to live here!" Jack said, stretching the ties around his wrists and ankles to their limits while he spoke.

"You've forgotten who you are too. I had a feeling one day this would happen. " The voice said.

"I don't ---understand. Who are you?!" Jack said struggling with the restraints to release himself.

From the shadowy corner a beautiful wavy Raven-haired woman in a scarlet gown slowly appeared out of the blackness, her lips Crimson and full. She began to levitate over jack, her hair swirling in an enchanted breeze that froze the air around her, the windows suddenly burst open and an icy sea air filled the room. The terror in Jack's heart froze him in fear.

"You have forgotten who you are dear Leopold, but now you have returned and I shall have what I have been waiting for for over 300 years." The woman said opening up her arms.

She chanted: "From the depths of the sea and the sky above I bring you back to earth my love, my love. Come forth to me aged back like new, here in this time our love renew! 

The woman's mouth opened and a dark red mist poured out of the woman's mouth and fell over Jack like a fog, covering his face, covering his body, seeping into his skin, soaking in like a sponge to water. Jack screamed, there was a pain filling every vein in his body like thousands of small daggers stabbing him over and over and over again. 

 Then, the wind blew in and the red mist from the woman's mouth disappeared. A flash of light sparked and lit the bedroom like the sun turning all it touched to white. 

Suddenly silence.

****LONDON, ENGLAND****

In a stylish townhouse in Shepard's Bush, a ritzy London neighborhood, Jack's 25 year old daughter Alexandra sat reading an 1897 novel by Bram Stroker. Her eyes were glued to the pages at every sentence. The rush of Adrenalin filling every vein like a raging river. At the center of the chapter, a monster of man, wicked and dangerous slowly crept up on an unsuspecting victim from behind. His hands reached around the female victim's neck and slowly, the twisted smile of a vampire closed in on the warm flesh of the woman's neck... suddenly Alex's phone rang startling her in her chair, the book falling out of her hands and on to the floor face down revealing the cover and title of the book. DRACULA.

Alexandra chuckled at her silliness and rushed over to answer the ringing phone.

"Hello? ... No this is her daughter Alex. Who may I ask... OHH! Caleb? How are you? How's daddy?" She asked the person on the phone.

Caleb was the son of David Collins, Carolyn's first cousin who had gone missing 20 years before. When Caleb's ex wife divorced him shortly after his disappearance, Carolyn took it upon herself to raise Caleb as her own in London. It was only in recent years that Caleb had returned to Collinsport to find out, unsuccessfully, what had happened to his father. No one knew where David was, and the family fishing company needed a CEO; with Carolyn's blessing from London, Caleb, now in his early 30's took over and had been the only Collins in Collinsport for over 5 years.

The family had lost millions from the business, and the only way to gain some capital back was to sell off the mansion, but now, Jack had disappeared too...and Caleb could feel something just wasn't right about the entire station.

"Well that's why I'm calling. Jack was supposed to meet me back at the realtor's office to bring back the keys to Collinwood but he never showed.  Have you heard from him?" Caleb, asked.

"What!" Alexandra said worried. "No, we haven't heard from him at all. Have you tried the hotel?"
A worried Alexandra questioned.

"No. Alex, listen, I know this maybe difficult, but I'm getting very concerned. I think you and your mother need to return to Collinsport as soon as you can. I don't know what else to do. No one has seen or heard from him." Caleb said standing in the Realtor's office on his cell phone.

Just then Alexandra's mother Carolyn walked into the room. Carolyn had lived in Collinsport her whole life. The terrible things that happened to her and her family when she grew up had traumatized her, and when Collinwood was set to be sold by the surviving members of the Collins family she gladly gave her blessing allowing Jack to go as her proxy to collect whatever items were salvageable. 

"Caleb, I'll call you right back." Alex said, seeing her mother walk in. "Mother." She began in a somber tone.

"Hi honey, who was on the phone." Carolyn said removing a wicker hat  tied around her chin with a lily white sash as she placed a basket of fresh blood red roses she had picked from the garden on a table. 

"That was Caleb on the phone. He rung to speak to you about daddy." Alexandra said still numb from the news. "He's ...he's missing mother."

Carolyn's eyes turned to stone and her face froze, one of the roses fell to the floor. 

"Missing? What are you talking about?  How could he be missing, he just got to Collinsport a day ago." Carolyn asked confused and in denial. 

"Caleb said he never met him back at the realtor's office to return the keys from the mansion. He said we should get to the states right away. He's very worried." Alex added.

Carolyn paused before she spoke. She warned everyone that the house should have been left alone. that nothing good could come from that house of  horrors. No matter what any one said. She begged Jack no to go.

Carolyn reached down to the floor and picked up the rose. She looked at and lifted an eyebrow. 

"It's happening again!" Carolyn said with tears in her eyes. "It's all happening again."

"What is mother?" Alex asked.

Carolyn turned and looked at her daughter, there was a fear in Alex's eyes that Carolyn had not seen before.

Jack was in trouble,  that they knew, but just how much trouble was in Carolyn's deepest fear.

"Call the airlines. Get us two tickets to Bangor." Carolyn said. "We're going back." 

                                               

Series 1/Chapter 1: HOMECOMING

Abandoned drawing room at Collinwood

Every family has it's secrets.

Every family hides something they don't want the rest of the world to know. Some do it to protect a loved one, some do it to hide their shame, but others ... others have no choice but to hide their family secrets, for if revealed the outside world would be too horrified to even understand them.

Some of those secrets can lay buried forever; never to see the light of day. But for one family in a small Maine fishing village named after them, those secrets were exposed long ago by terrible curse placed on all who used that name: Collins.

No Collins bore the brunt of tragedy and pain more than one family member called Barnabas. He traveled over time and space, over centuries to find a way to break the curse of living a life of the un-dead; forever trapped in cycle of immortality and regret. He saw many of his family suffer the consequences of his actions, but continued to press on hoping that one day this curse would be broken, and they would all be free of the dark shadows that haunted every single generation after him.

Barnabas Collins learned the hard way that nothing stays buried forever, his experiences being the perfect example of that.


The supernatural curses that haunted the first family of Collinsport, Maine over 50 years ago continued down through generation after generation.  Their vary existence as a family has been a daily battle between the dark and the light, love and hate and most of all between good and evil. Barnabas' legacy left them shattered and tormented and his disappearance decades ago left them wondering what was it all for?


Over the years their beloved family mansion and the surrounding homes that made up then compound known as Collinwood lay empty and abandoned on it's perch on a cliff named Widow's Hill, ready to be sold to the highest bidder.

The surviving members had fled years before, the others are dead or are missing, each one of them escaping their own demons, ghosts and shadows in one shape or form.

That was until this very day. Today, someone comes home. Someone connected to this family of the damned, someone who's life will never be the same again.

****

An older gentleman opens the rusted gates of old Collinwood manor and pushes them back. The over grown weeds pulled and tugged at the gate  with the giant “C" monogram; flexing and tightening around the iron bars like a noose. 

The gentleman, a man in his 70's walks up the foggy main path and makes his way to the front door.

"Not quite what I expected, but charming none the less." He says to himself in a tight-jawed British accent.

The realtors handed the man, named  Jack Thorne, the mansion’s keys. All had weary and cautious eyes; too terrified  of the ominous look of the house to join him..  No one, not even Jack’s wife’s young cousin who had been living in Boston but came back to Collinsport to meet with Jack, would  come with him to survey the property. This was something  he completely understood, after all this was Collinwood Manor. He knew it's history. He knew it's story, and he knew it well.

Inside the old 16th century mansion, all the furniture had been cloaked with white coverage to protect it from dust and the elements from decades of neglect. Jack was here to note all the home’s salvageable items for a very important woman back in London. His wife of 36 years: Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne.

Carolyn was terrified down to her bones of the town in Maine her maternal ancestors founded, Collinsport, and would not return with Jack to take stock of the remains of her former childhood home. The terror and memories were just too much. Jack opted to do it alone.

In one of the drawing rooms Jack noted glassware and knickknacks Carolyn might be interested in. Then above a hearth taller than he stood a painting covered in a white cloth like everything else. Jack reached up and pulled it quickly off  to reveal the one thing Carolyn said she did not want to see.

Barnabas Collins, the stoic, painted figure of the man who brought his wife Carolyn and her family so much turmoil almost 50 years ago.

As Jack stared up at Barnabas' painting a loud noise came from the foyer and almost simultaneously the clock struck 5pm, ushering in the New England evening fog. Jack furrowed his brow and walked back into the foyer to see what made the noise.

"Hello? Anybody there?" He called.

He walked slowly to the other side of the foyer and looked into another darkened room. Nothing.

The sound came again, this time from behind him with a swooping of cold air that rushed up the back of Jack's neck.

Jack spun around and saw nothing again. With his hand on his neck and his eyes like saucers he slowly crept over to the mouth of the staircase the went to the second floor.

"Who's there! Who are you?" Jack said seeing a darkened figure at the top mezzanine.

The blackened figured said nothing.

"I ask you again! Who are you? What are you-----"

As Jack demanded to know the identity of the intruder the figured seemed to jump from the mezzanine in a large black mist floating from wall to wall covering the entire foyer and fell upon Jack, completely covering him.

All he could do was scream, but nothing came out. His body froze in terror as the black mist morphed into the body and face of a woman, her eyes ice blue were filled with sadness and tears yet they went into Jack like daggers.

She opened her mouth and tearfully spoke only one word.

"Leopold?