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.