Series 4/Chapter 4: THE FLOWER OF FIRE

Within the walls of a cruel sanitarium, two old friend reconnect. David Collins, and Maggie Evans, two people who had lived their lives for so many years under the ghoulish shadows of Collinwood's past. Maggie had just broken into Joanna's office and the adjoining hospital room she kept David in ever since his arrival at Windcliff, many years after Maggie was admitted. And now, with Maggie's help, they were going to break out.

"Maggie!" David said finally recognizing an old friend and pulling her in for a tight hug.

She laughed a little, the comfort of a warm friendly touch was foreign to her after all the years spent hidden away in the sanitarium. It felt food, and she couldn't have expected anything better.

"Come on, we don't have much time, I dont know when Nurse Banning is going to check on you." Maggie said pulling David's hand out towards the hallway.

They quietly stepped out of the office, David still barefoot. They looked around. It was quiet. Most of the patients had already been given their sleeping aids and were knocked out until morning. The day nurses had been gone for hours, and all the night staff were out on rounds checking in on all the patients while they slept.

"Where do we go?" David said unfamiliar with the hospital's layout after being in the room for 20 years.

"This way." Maggie pointed.

The two carfully walked down a crudely painted yellow hallway past a supplies closet. Maggie opened and went in. David reached over to turn the light on for her but she quickly slapped his hand against the wall preventing him from doing so. She looked at him seriously, and shook her head.

Maggie carefully searched the supply closet and found a doctor's coat and some slippers for David to put on. "You'll need these. It's cold out there." She said with a smile.

David put on his stolen items and they both continued to walk down the hall towards the front entrance. The echos of those who were not asleep billowing through the halls like ghosts searching for their loved ones. Screams David would not soon forget. Suddenly another patient saw them and stepped in their path.

"No...no no no...no no no.....no...no!" The patient mumbled wagging her finger.

"Go to bed." Maggie whispered sternly.

"No. No. Noo ...No!!!" The patient said in a twisted frothy mouthed laugh.

"I said go to bed!" Maggie barked back.

The other patient, a bald woman who's eyes were a piercing blue just stood in the center of the hallway in a stained and wrinkled hospital gown. She had her fingers in her mouth, and she glared at David and Maggie with a sinister grin. All they could do was carefully walk around her and hope she was lost in her own thoughts enough to keep quiet.

As they passed her, she stepped up to David again blocking his way, his arm stretched forward attached to Maggie's. The patient then leaned in close to David and looked him dead in the eyes.

"No." She whispered, then pointed to the main exit.

David looked at Maggie then put his index finger over his lips.

"Shhhhh." He said trying to keep the mentally ill woman calm.

David walked around her and continued on his way with Maggie to the front exit. It all felt too easy. Maggie pushed the door open, and pulled David's arm so that he was now standing outside of the Sanitarium. It had been the first time had been out doors in two decades. The fresh breeze filled his lungs, crisp night air nipped at his exposed toes.

"Come with me." He whispered to Maggie.

Maggie gave him a half smile and shook her head again.

"Maggie, come with me! You can't stay here." David said extending his arm to her.

Maggie thought about it for a second and looked back at the hallway where the patient was still standing pacing back and forth from wall to wall. Then the patient suddenly turned and looked towards the exit and saw David outside.

"NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!! OUT! OUT! OUT!" She screamed, pointing to the front exit in a terrible yell that felt like it came from an animal.

Then from around the corner, far down the corridor, two burly orderlies darted out of a room and saw what was happening. They screamed for David to stop and began a swift paced run down the corridor.

With his quick thinking, David, grabbed Maggie by the hand and yanked her down the front steps. The two dashed into the parking lot and through brush that covered the ends of the street and ran like they had never run before into a wooded area with only the light of the half moon in the sky to guide them as they tore through the woods in search for a hiding place.

Back inside Windcliff, orderlies scrambled to calm down female patient who saw David and Maggie vanish and try to figure out what to do now that two patients have escaped and are no where in sight.

One of the orderlies dug deep into the pocket of his crisp white uniform and pulled out a phone then clicked the #2 on it's speed dial, the screen flashed the name "S.Banning".

"Sebastian, we've got a problem, it's Collins, he's escaped." The orderly said.

"What do you mean escaped? How did he escap---never mind, did anyone call Grayson?" Sebastian asked in a frustrated voice on the other end of the call from his apartment in Bangor.

"Not  yet, we called you first." the orderly responded.

Sebastian angrily hung up call and quickly dialed Joanna who was at  her own home in Bangor. She was casually sitting on a large white and pillowy sofa that matched her bath robe while sipping red wine from a jumbo wine glass. An opera record playing the background soothed her mind while she sat back and let the music burrow itself into her mind. Her cell phone neatly placed directly in front of her on a large glass coffee table, broke her state of calmness when it rang.

Joanna crinkled her nose, noting the odd hour of the phone call but when she saw that it was Sebastian, she knew something very bad had to have been happening for him to call her at home.

"This is Grayson." Joanna said cautiously.

"Dr. Grayson, I'm sorry to bother you so late, but there's a problem. David Collins has escaped. He's  out in the woods somewhere." Sebastian quickly explained.

"DAVID? How?!?" Joanna asked angrily, instantly turning off the opera music.

"We're checking on that now. I have people looking in each room to ..." Sebastian said before being cut off by Joanna.

"Forget that, find him Sebastian. Find him now!" Joanna said sternly as she clicked the call off.


Joanna bolted up from the fluffy sofa, knocking over the red wine on to the white carpet. She walked around the living room in a panic. "How could this have happened?" She thought. They were careful for so many years and David had never ever shown signs of this type of behavior. What was worse, is that Joanna's plan for David was still months away from actually becoming real. 20 years of work would surly go down the drain if he wasn't found immediately. She rushed over to her phone and picked it up and dialed Kimberly again--who had not returned a previous phone call.

****

The sleepy land around Collinwood remained peaceful and tranquil for the time being, but as with most things there, it was the calm before the storm. 

Kimberly's nerves were on edge knowing that there was a possibility that Caleb's discovery of his father David could unravel a deep secret she had been hiding since David went away. But until she actually knew the details, she could do nothing but wait. 

She sat in her bedroom on the third floor of Collinwood somewhat at ease, but that ease was quickly taken from her when her cell phone rang. She leaned over the table to look at the screen: there it was again, the number she never wanted to see coming from Bangor, Maine. It was Dr. Joanna Grayson again.

Kimberly took a second to compose herself then picked up the phone and answered it.

"Joanna?" Kimberly asked.

"How good of you to finally take my call. How are you Kim?" Joanna said sarcastically. 

"I got your message. I just haven't had time to call you  back." Kim tried to explained.

"You'd think being the family woman as you are, you'd call your sister back, but then again we were never really close were we? Anyway, this isn't a social call. This is about David." Joanna said, raveling her family relationship to Kimberly. 

"I know, Caleb told me, he's found him. But what do you want me to do? I can't keep exactly tell Caleb to stop searching for his father, how would that look?" Kimberly asked, nervous tears beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Oh, little sister, it's gotten much, much worse than that! He's gone! Escaped, and he's  probably on his way back to Collinwood as I speak! You cannot allow him to." Joanna said sternly. 

"What? There's no way ... David cannot come back here Joanna. It'll destroy everything!" Kimberly responded.

"That's exactly why you have to stop him before anyone sees him. There's nothing I can do from here either. Sebastian has men out looking for him in the woods. but it's pitch black out there, I don't know if we'll be able to find him in time....listen, what we've done here is very special. It's very important that I continue my work with David, do you understand me? If we're exposed Kim, I swear to you, I will not go down alone." Joanna warned. 

"What do you want me to do?" Kim asked softly.

"If David shows up at Collinwood, do not do anything to jog his memory. we can't risk him remembering how he was taken in the first place, and he certainly cannot start remembering people's faces. Your job..." Joanna explained before Kimberly interrupted. 

"No, wait. Joanna, I can't do this. This has to end. If David comes to Collinwood, I don't know. He won't remember. I'm sure of it. Everything will be fine." Kimberly said.

"Are you out of your mind? I haven't been able sedate him and run the hypnotic tests on him in over a week! Anything will start jogging his memory.  You have to get him back here Kim, because if you don't I don't know what The Organization will do to us." Joanna answered cryptically. 

"I left The Orginization when Victor died, Joanna, that has nothing to do with me anymore." Kimberly explained.

"And you think that matters to them? We were given instructions long ago, and we have to fulfill them. They don't care that you've suddenly grown a conscious. You have to finish what you and Victor started. It's not The Organization's fault he died because the two of you could't control your furry little son Christopher! Those are your experimental errors. Your guilt will not interrupt my experiments. Just get David back here." Joanna said as she hung up the phone leaving Kimberly staring in a panic and unsure of what to do next.

****

Through the murky woods, surround by cold fog, David and Maggie kept a good pace, even dressed the way they were in hospital clothes, freedom from pain inflicted on their minds by Dr. Joanna Grayson paled in comparison to pain their bodies were feeling from the chilly air scraping at their faces and hands.

David, much larger and stronger than any normal patients at Windcliff, helped Maggie over fallen tress, and through brush. Their constant movement away from the sanitarium got them closer and closer to freedom, but still too far away from Collinsport, which was still two hours away.

And they had to find shelter.

The forest around Bangor was thick and lush. Filled with some of the tallest tress in all of Maine that blocked almost all of the moon light that helped them on their way. Animals ran wild and hid beneath the guise of the night watching David and Maggie make their way though their uncharted paths. With every step they felt freer, yet with every step there were even more in danger. The woods were a beautiful place, but the slightest mistake, and nature would snatch the life right out of them. The terror they felt was two fold.

As they walked for hours through the forest hand-in-hand and totally unafraid of what was around them in  the darkness, they came upon an abandoned cabin. This would be their shelter. This would be their safe haven for the night until they could get up and move on to Collinwood and get themselves back in any sort of life they left behind.

David found an old book of matches and knelt down and started a small fire in the fireplace by breaking up pieces of old chairs that were strewn around. Maggie scavenged for any kind of clothes and better shoes that she could, and actually found some. The two changed and sat down on the floor next to the small fire, hungry, and wondering what was to come next.

"I never thought I'd get out of there, you know. I never thought I'd see the sky again, or breath fresh air again." David confessed.

"It's a terrible place, and I hated to see you there. To be honest I never really expected this day to come. I always wished, that some how there would be a window; an opportunity and when I saw that someone was finally looking for you, well, that was my sign." Maggie said as she cuddled in an old blanket.

"How did you get there?" David asked.

"Oh, years ago, probably very late 70's. After everything happened, and my father's death, I had nothing left. I was a broken woman. Confused, and shattered. All those years of mental terror just added up and I had no choice but to come here. It was for my own good---at least I thought." Maggie said.

"I'm sorry about your father. I can barley remember the night I first came to Windcliff. Just the part of the men coming into Collinwood and taking me." David said adding his own back story. "Did Grayson do tests on you too?" He asked.

"Here and there in the beginning, but when you came.....everything changed." Maggie answered.

"How so?"

"She started asking about him after you came. She started trying to get me to remember everything there was about him. She wanted all the answers. What he was...where he came from....were there more being like him. She had an obsession with him, it was almost obscene. Eventually I just had to make things up, just to keep my mind sane. I wanted nothing to do with any actual memories of ...." Maggie said before stopping herself.

"Of who?" David said, briefly forgetting Maggie's past.

Maggie got up and walked over to a bookshelf. She carefully looked over all the titles and smiled.

"I haven't read a book in over 30 years. They didn't allow us to." Maggie said changing the subject.

"Maggie....who was Joanna trying to get you to talk about?" David asked as he stood up and went over to the bookshelf where Maggie was.

Maggie's facial expression instantly went from warm and kind of worried and fearful. She didn't want to say his name, she didn't want to even think about him. Any mention of him and she felt like she could feel his cold touch all over her skin.

She looked at David and grabbed his hand and pulled him over to an old desk that had torn up papers and old scribbled letters from the previous owners of the abandoned cabin. She opened the drawer and found a single black colored crayon and scrolled out a name for David to read, a name he had not consciously thought of in over 20 years.

"Barnabas."

****

Sitting alone in a dark maroon velvet chair Barnabas stared deep into a fire that raged inside the fireplace in the old house. His eyes fixed on the flames sparking and burning inside. He knew something was different. Something had changed in the air. Something had changed inside of him. 

The heat from the fire swirled around him. He closed his eyes and saw dreams of Maggie, her innocent face, her kind eyes. The face he once saw as the reincarnation of his lost love Josette. 

"She's alive." Barnabas said with a whisper. "She's alive!" 

Back at the Cabin David grabbed the paper that had Barnabas' name written on it and balled it and threw it into the fire. He knew exactly why Maggie was frightened. For years Barnabas did all he could to warp Maggie's mind into thinking she was someone else, all for his ghoulish pleasures, not to mention all of the horrible and twisted things that had happened within the Collins family all because of Barnabas: the deaths, the ghosts, the spirits that haunted Collinwood. David placed the blame squarely on Barnabas for all of it. 

"Maggie, he's dead. He died. Carolyn found him years ago dead on the floor in a room at Collinwood. He can't hurt you anymore." David said placing his big hands on Maggie's small shoulders.

She only smiled and looked David in the eyes.

"David, he will never die. I can feel him now. Wherever ever he is, he still has a bit of control over me. I was safe at Windcliff." Maggie said. 

"No one is safe at Wincliff, and I assure you, Carolyn found him dead. I remember! I remember that!" David insisted. 

But Maggie knew better. She and Barnabas had a connection that surpassed time, space and even death.

"Tomorrow, you'll go back to Collinwood. You'll reunite with your son and family." Maggie said, changing the subject again.

"Not without you." David demanded.

Maggie only smiled and sat back down near the fire, David followed. But inside she knew, there was no way possible she would go back to Collinsport or set foot on the Collinwood land ever again. It wasn't written for her that way.

Back at Collinwood, Barnabas saw a strange ember, or coal in his fire. It was a ball of black smoldering within the hearth that seemed to be burning from the inside out. He stared and stared at it, and eventually, something inside him made him actually reach into the fireplace and pick it up. 

The coal was soft and parts of it was falling off like a wilting petals made of ash and fire. Barnabas cupped his hands and the coal began to bloom like a rose, opening up to reveal that it was made of paper, and on that paper was Maggie's handwritten "Barnabas", just as she had written it for David to see. 

"I knew you would never leave me. I will find you Maggie. I will find you, and we will be together again. Forever. If its the very last thing I do."

Series 4 Chapter 3: THE OTHER PATIENT

The sun slipped beneath the clouds calmly taking its place lower and lower in the sky paving the way for a starry sky to come forward over the town of Collinsport. The sea was calm, yet crashed fiercely against the cliff side of Widow's Hill, calling out to all who could hear.

Standing in a window, just off in the distance at the old house was Barnabas Collins, now reigning over his childhood home of 3 centuries alone. Now the only one of his kind. His plan to rid Collinwood of Leopold Divernet had worked, he felt calm, collected and even content.

"The sky seems to go on forever, doesn't it father?" Claudia said from the foyer leading into the main parlor of the old house where Barnabas stood.

"Claudia! How good of you to come see me, please come in, come in." Barnabas answered. "I can't imagine a sky more beautiful." He said as he sat down on one of the chairs.

"You're oddly in a good mood. This wouldn't happen to be because you're free of Leopold's ever present glare now that he's dead and all." Claudia said sarcastically.

"Now, now, what kind of man would I be if I started to speak ill of the dead." Barnabas quipped back with a Cheshire-cat grin.

"You'd be the man who had him killed." Claudia said with just as devilish a grin as her father.

Barnabas just smirked uncomfortably.

Besides their friendly back and fourth over Leopold's demise, Claudia felt a gnawing feeling in the pit of her stomach. After all, she knew that Kimberly's tests had revealed that not enough blood from Leopold's body entered into Christopher's system; in realty only half of Barnabas' promised plan worked....the part the suited him. That rubbed Claudia the wrong way. She felt Christopher was left out to dry.

Then there was also the subject of how Kim planned on getting blood from Barnabas to help cure Chris. A plan Claudia didn't feel comfortable keeping from her father Barnabas, and equally didn't feel comfortable telling him.

"I'm sensing something off putting about you this evening, Claudia. What is it?" Barnabas asked as he poured himself a cup of what looked to be red wine.

"It's been a very trying week. I'm just very tired." Claudia answered quietly, noticing the wine flowing into Barnabas' glass seemed thicker in texture, and of course, wasn't really wine.

"No, there's something more. Something you're not telling me. What is it?" Barnabas asked suspiciously as he sipped the red liquid from the glass.

"You know I often think about what I've done. I think about how I turned Jack Thorne into Leopold, trying to recreate something from my past. And for what? The past is over. I think of going back and finding you choking on the floor when you killed my mother....and then saving your life to bring you to this time. I think I should never have done that." Claudia said bluntly.

Barnabas' face stayed stone cold, no emotion, no reaction. He got up and walked over to an empty fire place and looked inside and with a snap of his fingers a raging fire lit inside the fire place glowing hot with an exuding an orange light all around him and his daughter Claudia.

"That's a pity. You know, you're much more like me then you realize Claudia. You're feeling guilt, and guilt is a very mortal emotion. What you don't see is that for some reason our paths crossed again after everything that has happened over time, and for that, you and I should be thankful." Barnabas said turning his back to the fire and facing his daughter.

"Everything just feels so uncertain now. I've never felt this way...I've always had my powers to surround me and protect me and without them I can't seem to make sense of things." Claudia confessed.

"The mortal life is a daunting on, but doubt too can bring you to the brink of madness. Whatever happens from now on, will be left up to the fiats." Barnabas said as he kissed his daughters cheek and walked back over to the window to look at the brilliant night sky.

Claudia for a moment felt again that she needed to tell Barnabas that if Kim could not gather enough blood from him during one of their sessions Chris would take matters into his own hands and possible kill him just as he did Leopold. She was torn between the father she was just getting to know and the man she was falling in love with. A truly terrible place to be.

Claudia got up and walked over to Barnabas at the window gazing out to the dark of the night. She could see herself in his eyes, but there was something about him that was still very secretive and mysterious, something even human.

"What was it like to live here as a child?" She asked him.

"Collinwood was like a magic fairly land when I first came here. My father build this exact house almost 400 years ago. It was his masterpiece. That was all before everything changed." Barnabas said with a slight deepening of his voice.

"What changed?" Claudia asked.

"When my sister Sarah died, our word here at Collinwood turned dark. There was no more laughter. No more loving. No more happiness. It was the first curse of our family, the true beginning of the end." Barnabas explained.

"And then?" Claudia prodded,

"The rest is history Claudia. Everyone who has ever lived here has bore the brunt of these curses...Sarah was first; it has never been lifted. Everyone we have ever come in contact with, friends, neighbors, lovers, have all been effected." Barnabas continued.

"Lovers...have you been able to love?" Claudia asked.

"I have, though, it's been a painful experience for the most part. But it's special while it lasts. Are you asking me because you feel like you are falling in love with Christopher?" Barnabas asked pointedly.

"I don't know if I'm capable of love. Once I believed I was in love, but ......tragedy struck. Which led me to where I am today." Claudia said, glossing over the fact that the real Leopold Divernet killed himself over 100 years ago when he discovered his fiance Claudia was a witch.

"Love has a way of gripping us by the throat whether we want it to or not, and now, you're mortal. You're powers are all gone. Now you can actually feel love in its true are rarest form. In a way, I am envious of you." Barnabas said.

"So you believe that Christopher and I can make a life for ourselves?" Claudia questioned.

"Let nothing stand in your way." Barnabas said as he turned away from Claudia again to look out onto the starry Collinsport sky.

Claudia smiled and kissed her father on the side of his cheek and walked out of the Old house leaving Barnabas with a faint smile on his face. He was happy with the direction their relationship was going but he knew she was hiding something. It wasn't just his fatherly instincts either. He could feel it in her body language, in her blood flow, and in her heartbeat.

As she walked back to the main house through the foggy courtyard she knew that something was standing in her way of living a normal life with Christopher like she so wanted. It was Barnabas. She needed enough blood from him to cure Chris in hopes to make him normal again too, and she wasn't sure Kimberly would be able to do it on her own.

Barnabas watched as his daughter made her way from the old house to the main house in the dark of the night. And as she crossed through the courtyard that separated the two mansions, he went over to an closet he kept locked. He pulled a key out of a secret door and opened the closet where a large painting of a woman, her face kind, the grin she expressed warm.

"Love.......it had a strange effects on us, didn't it?" Barnabas said to the painting as he started deep into the woman's brown eyes. "And yet, I feel those effects never really went away, my sweet sweet Maggie." He added noting the painting was of his lost love Maggie Evans, the woman he once beleived was the reincarnated soul of his first true love, Josette.

But that was 50 years ago. As for Josette, her life was taken away over 3 centuries ago, in a similiar way that the original Leopold passed: a victim of the painful darkness that surrounded Widow's Hill. 

Barnabas just stared at the painting that brought him so much joy and memories of two women he loved and held so dear.

****

As the night got later Caleb and Kat finally returned home from visit to Bangor to search for David at the Windcliff Sanitarium. They were both talking to each other a mile a minute making noise as they walked in. Their entire demeanor were filled with energy of what they saw and what possible could be the out come.

The noise caused Carolyn to come out of her room and walk down the hallway to the end of the staircase to see what the fuss was all about.

"It's like the two of you have seen some kind of ghost! What's the matter?" Carolyn said carefully coming down the stairs in a fashionable white pant suit.

"You'll never believe whats happened. I think we found my father!" Caleb said excitedly.

"What?? Oh my god! Come on, come into the drawing room!" Carolyn said equally as excited as Caleb as she ushered the two into the main drawing room where Alex was reading. "This is amazing. Just the other day I felt like I had a dream where my mother told me David was alive!" Carolyn added, not realizing that it actually wasn't a dream.

"Whats going on?" Alex said putting down her book.

"Caleb and Kat found David!" Carolyn answered with a smile.

"How!?" Alex asked.

"Kat had this great idea, she asked me to give her a letter my father sent me 10 years ago and we zeroed in on a zip code in Bangor. What's really strange is that that zip was from inside this mental hospital." Caleb explained.

"Your father was in a mental hospital?" Carolyn asked surprised.

"It looks that way. What's even stranger, is that we think he's still there. The woman running the place wasn't exactly fourth coming on information about where David might be today. It leads us to believe he's till there." Kat explained like the true detective she was. "I'm going to call Loomis at the station and see what kind of background he can give me about this Dr. Grayson person." Kat added as she dashed off to the nearest phone.

"Oh Caleb, I'm so happy for you. I'm  happy for all of us. Finally some good news. But what in the world would David be doing in this mental hospital?" Carolyn asked confused.

"I don't know. The last time I spoke with him in person was when he sent me to visit you over Christmas break, just before he went missing. Do you remember?" Caleb asked as he sat down next to Alex on the sofa.

"I do. God, 20 years have gone by since then. I can't believe this is really the first time we're hearing anything about him in 20 years." Carolyn said also sitting down but across from Alex and Caleb in a big fluffy chair.

"Another thing, while we were leaving, a woman grabbed my arm and said that my dad was there. ...she actually said he was there! So now we know for sure that my dad is alive and at this hospital. We just have to figure out how we can get the doctor to let us see him!" Caleb said.

"Your dad? Where's your dad?" Kimberly asked as she walked into the room.

"Mom, you'll never believe this. Kat and I think we've found dad in some hospital. It's in Bangor and---" an excited Caleb explained as he was interrupted by Kim

"--Caleb what are you doing looking for your father? If he wanted to be found, we would have by now, don't you think? You shouldn't have gone after him." Kimberly said to a shocked room.

"What? What are you talking about? This is great news!" Caleb said surprised at his mother's reactions.

"I just don't understand why you felt like you had to go ....I don't know...snooping around. You're father left you alone, don't you remember that?" Kim said in a harsh tone.

"Yes, but not before you left him...and this entire family, Kimberly, for just about the same amount of time with your lover Victor. What are you trying to do here?" Carolyn said standing up now next to Caleb. "If David is at this hospital, we're going to get him out." She added.

Kimberly felt the temperament in the room change when Caleb, Alex and Carolyn were all staring at her with confused expressions trying to make sense of her reaction to the news that David had been, somewhat, found. She quickly tried to back peddle.

"If you're sure that you really want to find him, and he's in some kind of mental break down, then by all means Caleb, do what you'd like. I only want whats best for you. That's all I meant." Kimberly said.

"Kim when was the last time you saw David?" Alex asked.

"I don't remember. Probably when I left Collinsport." Kim answered.

"Left him for Victor!" Carolyn snapped, to Kimberly's displeasure.

"These last years have been a mix of tragedy and pain I just want you to be careful with what you find." Kim responded. "But listen, Caleb, again....Whatever makes you happy and whatever makes you feel most complete. I'm sure it'll all work out. I have a lot of work to do in the lab, let me know if you need anything. Ok?" She added as she stiffly hugged her son and quickly made her way out of site.

"That was bizarre." Alex noted.

"Yes, she's never had a very good poker face, that Kim. What do you think that was all about?" Carolyn asked Caleb.

Caleb's face looked heartbroken. All he ever wanted was his family back together in one form or another. It always seemed like either one parent was missing or both all his life and now he had the chance at having both of them back at the same time and it didn't' feel as good as he expected. Especially given that his mother Kim's reaction was such a negative one.


"Maybe she's embarrassed or something. I don't know. I think after the divorce and after we all found about about her and Victor and Chris that maybe she would rather my dad not come back." Caleb said.

"This is where your father belongs. And I for one, am very happy he's been found. Caleb, whatever you do, bring him home. Bring him back to Collinwood!" Carolyn said giving Caleb a big, deep hug, giving him the support he always knew he could count on from her.

Just around a corner wall, Kimberly listened in on Carolyn and Caleb...panic set in. She quickly made her way down to her office. She stammered through her pockets frantically searching for her office keys, finally unlocking her office door.

The flicked on the dim office lights that created a warm inviting comfortable mood within her office, flattering the dark brown leather furniture and deep green drapery that hung like large oak trees in the corners of each side of the main wall.

She ran over to her desk chair where she had flung her lab coat over the back and quickly grabbed her cell phone from it's pocket. And there was the proof. A missed call from Dr. Joanna Grayson, and a voice mail explaining to Kim that David's whereabouts had been discovered.

Kim's panic turned to dread and she slumped down in her office chair and began to think of ways to get herself out of what was to come. A secret that she had been hiding for over 2 decades was very close to being raveled. All her work getting her two sons back, all her work getting back into Collinwood was at risk if this secret was to be exposed.

Kim knew she had no choice but to make sure it wouldn't.

****

At Windcliff Sanitarium in Bangor, Maine, David Collins sat on the floor of his tiny hospital room, the cold mettle from his bed frame pressed deeply into the skin on his back. It wasn't painful, but it gave him the only kind of psychical sensation he had felt in years. Its what made him know he was still alive and not in some strange hell, frozen in time. 

He watched a small roach creep into his room from under the door and scurried across the floor under and into the mettle grate of a air duct. David crawled on all fours and looked into the air duct, and thought for a second that if he could pry the grate of he could shimmy into the airways of Windcliff to freedom. But that was a fruitless fantasy. The space was too small for David's large framed body. His shoulders were too wide and strong to squeeze into the small opening he would make. 

David took a deep breath and exhaled. There had to be away for him to escape. 

As he toiled away processing what had happened to him over the years, and how Dr. Grayson had forced him to go over some of the terrifying things that happened to him as a child, over and over again in his mind. He remembered how she almost found pleasure in the terrible things he was talking about, how she almost found delight in the descriptions of ghosts and spirits and mysterious activity he was surrounded by all his life. 

The painful memories of his childhood were only warmed by the thoughts of his son Caleb, and his wife Kimberly. Unfortunately for David, those warm memories of his small family were clouded too. How soon he forgot about Kimberly's extra marital affair, and how she left Caleb and him alone at Collinwood all those years ago. 

Going through his past David started to try to piece together how he even got to Windcliff in the first place. He remembered being at home one night, Caleb was away at school, Kimberly had been gone for at least 5 years. He remembered a break in, fighting with two men. One man seemed familiar. He swore he knew at least one of the faces of the men who broke in and attacked him, but couldn't remember from where.

The fight during the break in ended quickly, as the other man who broke in stuck David with a needle filled with some sort of tranquilizer. The next thing David remembered he was at Windclff. And the rest is history. 20 years of locked away history. 

As David reminisced his anger over started to bubble up, he was angry because he couldn't fight off the two men who broke into Collinwood that night. He was angry because it took him 20 years to get a clear head and to finally have this break through and now he sat in a darkened hospital room with no freedom inside.

Then his door knob began to jiggle, but the lights in Joanna's office that adjoined David's room were off, it was the middle of the night and no one should have been there. David stood up and stuck out his chest believing that it could be Sebastian coming to check on him, David was ready to pounce on him.

The jiggling continued. But no one gained entrance. 

David soon realized that if this person trying to get into the room was Sebastian he would  have had a key, and would have entered much faster. He relaxed his body and stood down and waited. The person on the other side of the door was clearly trying to break into his room. He remained silent. And waited.

It took what seemed like forever to get the lock on David's door to open, but finally, after half an hour there was success. David braced himself for a fight or some kind of attack, for he had no idea what awaited him. And as the door opened, a small little woman in a bath robe with the initials M.E. on the lapel stood there. With a very kind, warm grin.

"Hello David." The woman said in a whisper. 

"What are you doing?" David said to the woman.

"When I found out you were here too, I knew that one day I would have to help you out of here. I knew that one day we'd have to wait for this day....your son was here David. We have to get you home." The woman said.

David looked at the woman who was now standing aside, giving David a clear passage into Joanna's office and out into the hall past the office door that the woman had also broken into.

"Who are you? I feel like I know you from somewhere." David said, seeing something familiar in the woman's face.

"Oh David.....it's been so many years. So many lost years. You've already forgot me. I don't blame you, you were so young the last time we saw each other. David, It's me. I'm Maggie Evans!"

Series 4/Chapter 2: INSIDE THE ASYLUM

The smell inside the halls was of human waste and garbage. The little Caleb and Kat knew about Windcliff Sanitarium was exposed by the conditions of the hospital and it's staff, especially the off-putting chief of staff Dr. Joanna Grayson, who's personality was as cold and ridged as the rocks that clung to the side of Widow's Hill.

The yellow walls felt like they had never been cleaned, the sticky linoleum floor grabbed on to the bottom of shoes and made a sticky ripping sound as each foot pulled itself free from the floor, a feeling Caleb and Kat were very uncomfortable with. She grabbed on to his hand as they stood at the nurses station listening to the sounds of feet unlatching from the stickiness all around them.

They came to Windcliff on a hunch that Caleb's father, David Collins, had been at the hospital sometime around 1996, when David mailed a letter from a private zip code from within the hospital's campus. And now, they were there for answers.

"Dr. Grayson, these two are here to see ya." Said a snarky nurse with her Boston accident as she took paperwork from Joanna was signing at the station and scratched her scalp with the end of a pen.

"What can I do for you?" Joanna asked, noting a familiar resemblance in Caleb.

"About two decades ago my father disappeared and just recently we found a clue to his whereabouts. I received a letter from him that came from this hospital. Can you tell me when he left? We're trying to track him. His name is David Collins." Caleb asked, assuming his father couldn't possibly still be at the hospital 20 years later.

Joanna's eyes seemed to almost pop out of her head when she heard the last name, and realized the resemblance. Instantly she knew that she had to make sure no one knew where David was until the right moment; until she was ready to pounce on the goldmine that was the Collins family and their fascinating connection to the world of the supernatural and psychotic, all the things David mentioned of his life inside the walls of Collinwood.

"Unfortunately, I am unable to give you any information about our patients here. Under absolutely no circumstances." Joanna said bluntly.

"But you can tell us if he was here once, can't you?" Kat asked.

Joanna paused and licked her lips, the dishonestly dried out her mouth so much it was like she had been licking stamps all afternoon. "Mr. Collins might have had a history with this establishment. But that's all I can tell you. Details of whether or not he was here are under the strictest doctor/patient confidentiality." She quipped.

"But, Doctor, you have to understand, I'm his son, I should be able to know where he went after he--" Caleb said before he was interrupted by his detective girlfriend

"Unless he's still here!" Kat said abruptly. "If David is still a patient here then of course you wouldn't be able to talk about him, he's still your patient."

"I'm going to have to ask you to leave. As you can see we're a very busy facility and there are lots of patients we need to tend to ." Joanna said abruptly as she gathered papers on the Nurse's station.

"You can't tell his own son if he's still your patient? That's absurd. I have a right to know if my father is still seeking your help here at Windcliff." Caleb shouted.

As Caleb argued his point, patients began to hear the commotion and started to walk out of their rooms and into the halls in night gowns, cautiously making their way closer and closer to the talking.

Some seemed to have never been washed, other's seemed to just stare at the walls. As soon as they noticed Caleb start to get animated and demand any sort of answer from Dr. Grayson they all started to crowd into the nurses station, like moths to a flame. Where there was any kind of commotion or chaos they would gather.

"Mr. Collins I am going to have to ask you to keep your voice down." Joanna said in a sort of half whisper noticing the patients dragging their feet, just a short distance now from them.

"I want to know!" Caleb shouted again.

"I WANT TO KNOW!!" One patient mimicked.

"I WANT TO KNOW! I WANT TO KNOW!" Another mimicked louder then laughing an evil laugh.

Kat scooted closer to Caleb and wrapped her arm around his, keeping an eye on the enclosing patients as they all sent menacing glares her way, like tigers pacing and circling their prey.

"That is information I cannot give you, now if you kindly leave. Your presence is upsetting the mood of my patients and I cannot have any kind of out bursts." Joanna said.

A female patient in her 70s walked over to Kat and plucked at her hair, staring at it with a sort of nostalgia and saddness mixed with jealousy and rage. She then got very close and primped her own hair; red with white roots.

"You look familiar. Like a movie star. Are you a movie star. Do you make movies. I was a movie star. I made movies. Do you like me? I was a movie star. I made movies." she said in Kat's ear.

"You're lovely.............I HATE LOVELY!!!" Another patient screamed at Kat.

"I WANT TO KNOW!!!" Screamed a fourth patient again from a corner, still mimicking Caleb.

Caleb and Kat begin to feel nervous with everyone floating around them, it was beginning to feel dangerous being there especially not knowing what was really happening and if they were safe.

Joanna grabbed a phone and called for some hospital orderlies to come and take the patients back to their rooms and Caleb grabbed Kat's hand and they begin to leave. And just as they did, Kat turned and in a split second saw someone peek their head out from Joanna's office door then hid again when they noticed that Kat saw them.

The face Kat saw was a blur to her, but in a way she felt she recognized it. But Caleb pulled her along trying to get them safely outside before she could see that it was her own brother Sebastian hiding David in Joanna's Windcliff office.

They made their way down the long, stinking corridor to the front entrance. The nurses station, Dr. Grayson, and the rowdy patients all behind them. Except  there was patient, an older woman, thin and frail, dressed in robe that had embroidered letters on the lapel: M.E. She  popped out of a corner doorway and grabbed Caleb by the arm. Her eyes, seemed tired but lively, big and brown exuuding a sense of kindness that Caleb did not see in the other patients.

"Inside this place ........he's here. Your father is here." The woman said.

And just as quickly as she grabbed Caleb, the older woman, with dark hair and wisps of white roots dashed off down the corridor back into the chaos of the Windcliff.

 Caleb and Kat burst through the entrance and dashed off into their car parked under a giant willow.

"What the hell was that?" Caleb said relieved that they were now safe in their car.

"It's not over. She's hiding something." Kat said sternly. "That other patient said he's there. And I believe her."

"But what do we do? She wont tell us anything." Caleb asked.

Kat looked at Caleb, her glance was one that he had seen before, but he couldn't exactly know what she was thinking, all he could tell was that she had a plan.


Back inside Windcliff, the patients had all been cleared from the hall way and Joanna was back in her office with Sebastian, both feeling a sense of relief themselves.

"How did they find him?" Joanna said angrily.

"I don't know! I heard Caleb say he got a letter from David years ago from here. Is that true?" Sebastian asked.

"It could be. If it was sent in the first weeks that he was here it's possible he was lucid enough to have sent Caleb a letter. But why would they come looking for him now, after all these years? We're not ready to put the plan in motion yet. Nothing is ready!" Joanna said pounding her fist on her desk in frustration.

"What do you want to do?" Sebastian asked.

Joanna looked at Sebastian but said no words, all she did was pick up the phone and dial. The phone rang once, then twice, then three times but there was no answer. Just a voice mail beep, allowing Joanna to leave a message for the person she called:

"This is Dr. Joanna Grayson. I understand it's been quite sometime since we have had contact with each other, and I can understand if you would wish that I had never called, but the moment we wished never happened, has happened. I need your help. David has been discovered. You can call me back here at your convenience." Joanna said before hanging up.

And inside his small little hospital room cell attached to Joanna's office, David listened but could do nothing. All he could do was sit by the door and hope that for one second Joanna and Sebastian would be off their guard and he could escape. His sat there, his back up against the door, his arms tucked between his legs and thighs, his eyes starting at his bare feet. All he needed one a second, just one second, and he could free himself. It was his last hope of freedom, and it could possible come with a little help from someone with the initials M.E.

***COLLINWOOD***

While Caleb and Kat were away in Bangor searching for David, Collinwood was uncharacteristically calm. Most of the residents took to their respectful rooms and rested, read, or chatted quietly. Since Leopold's death, the quiet seemed to come. Or was this the quiet before the storm?

Kimberly, however, had a lot of work to do in her laboratory. Not only was she working on a blood research and therapy for Barnabas but her son Christopher also needed tests done to see if Barnabas' experiment on him had worked: Had all of Chris mutated genes reverted back to normal as Barnabas promised after drinking Leopold's blood?

Barnabas, even Claudia, had known that werewolves who kill vampires, like Chris did Leopold, would be free from the moon curse, but no one knew for sure, and Kim had painstakingly stayed up for two nights testing Chris tissue samples.

As she worked, Chris and Claudia came in to see if the results were ready. They were hand in hand, nervous and hoping for the best. Claudia, now void of any supernatural powers after using a final spell on fellow witch (her mother Angelique), was hoping that Chris too would be free of his curse, and they would be free to live normal lives together, forever. 

"How's it going?" Chris asked his scientist mother apprehensively.

"I should get results soon. How are you feeling?" Kimberly asked her son.

"I feel fine, but I dont feel different. I mean, I dont even know if I'm supposed to feel different. I've never not felt this way." Christopher said noting that all his life he's been used as a test subject; Kimberly's test subject. 

"I saw Leopold's blood all him the other night. It had to have worked." Claudia noted.

"What happens if I'm still this way? What will we do?" Chris asked.

"You won't be. This has to work." Claudia mentioned.

"But.....if by chance something went wrong and there wasn't enough blood to go into your system, we'll figure something else out. We'll do something different. Some how, we'll get this fixed Christopher, I promise you." Kimberly said.

Then finally, the tests were ready and Kimberly walked over to the table where the results were being sorted through blood tests and vials all scanning and searching for traces of werewolf DNA that had been genetically inserted into Christopher when he was a baby, altering his genes to mimic those of a wolf when the moon touched his skin. 

Kimberly scanned the blood again, and printed them out for her to read. She carefully went over the tests, reading them twice to make sure what she was reading was definitive and correct. 

She removed her glasses and walked over to Chris and Claudia with a glum face.

"I'm sorry. It didn't work. There are no signs that Leopold's blood effected you. The DNA mutations that we created and placed in your cells as a baby are still present." Kimberly said to a shocked Christopher.

"How??? How can this have happened?" Claudia said equally as shocked. 

"There may have not been enough blood to go into Christopher, after all he was interrupted by Carolyn when she scared him off." Kimberly explained.

"So I killed someone I barley even knew for nothing. Barnabas had me murder someone for nothing!!" Christopher screamed.

"No! Not for nothing! Chris, Leopold was dangerous and could have done so much more damage to us had you not listened to Barnabas' plan. You did the right thing." Kimberly explained.

"This is insane. I should have never listened to you, I should never listened to Barnabas!" Christopher said with tears in his eyes.

"There was no other way to ..." Kim said as she was interrupted by Chris.

"NO! Stop. I don't want to hear anymore. I was supposed to be cured. I was supposed to be free, and now I'm exactly in the same place I was before any of this ever happened. What's worse is that I've killed two people now. I can't keep doing this." Chris said in an emotional break.

"There has to be another way Kimberly." Claudia said tears welling up in her eyes.

"We have to find my notes from when Chris was just a baby. Those notes have the recipe for the serum that will cure him. Without them, I don't know what we could do." Kimberly said.

"What about Barnabas. What if we used his blood." Chris asked. "He's just like Leopold. What if we used him."

"Chris what are you asking me?" Kimberly questioned even know she knew what he was asking.

"If it was a good enough plan to kill Leopold on a full moon so that I could use his blood to cure me, then why couldn't we try it with Barnabas?" Christopher asked nonchalantly indicating another death.

"Chris you can't do that." Claudia said shocked at Chris' notion.

"Why not? What does Barnabas have over everyone here? He's just as cruel as Leopold was." He answered.

"He's my father, Chris." Claudia answered back.

"And Leopold was Alex's dad.... at one point. But no one stopped to think about that." Chris snarled.

"We don't have to go to those extremes. I have tested Barnabas' blood here in the lab. The amount of vials I have here aren't enough to cure you, but we can try and collect more." Kimberly explained.

"Then get more." Christopher said in a deep angry voice. "You made me this way, now you figure out a way to get more blood out of Barnabas to cure me. Either you do it, or I do it, but trust me, you wouldn't want me to get Barnabas' blood my way. So figure it out." Chis added as he grabbed Claudia's hand.

Kimberly was left in her laboratory in a very hard predicament. She had to figure out how to get blood out of Barnabas, enough in quantity to cure Chris and still keep Barnabas alive. She knew she had to do it, she knew she had to make sure she made things right for her son, especially since she was responsible for making him  the creature that he hated. In Kim's eyes, Chris had to be made whole again, no mater what.

Kimberly took a deep breath and went back to her work on Barnabas' blood samples with no resolution in site for his own ailments. A cure for his curse for craving of human blood was no closer to being solved.

Kim  toiled away analogizing side after slide and as she did, over in a darkened corner of the lab, sitting deep in side a lab coat pocket was Kim's cell phone. Blinking a reminder message that Kim had missed a phone call and had a voice mail waiting for her to listen to... from Windcliff Sanitarium.

 

Series 4/Chapter 1: MOTHERS & DAUGHTERS

The cold afternoon sea air crept over the Maine cliff-side and on to the green pastures that surround both houses on the Collins family land. It's an icy and salty wave or air that burrows into your nostrils and leaves you tasting the Atlantic without ever touching the water.

Alexandra felt this wind carry her feet as she burst into the old house after hearing the single gun shot from the gun filled with 6 blessed silver bullets that Carolyn used to attempt to kill Barnabas for his role in Leopold's murder.

Alex wasted no time in getting into the old house and dashed through the darkened hallways all the way down to the room where Barnabas, Kimberly and her mother Carolyn were laying after the gun went off.

Barnabas slowly lifted his head, allowing the flickering candle light to hit his gray skin. He looked up and saw Alexandra in total shock as a small crimson river of blood carved it's way towards Alexandra's feet.

Barnabas got up and instantly looked down to check himself and see where the blood was coming from. He was unharmed, Kimberly who lay unconscious on the floor after hitting her head in the fall had blood on her too but it did not belong to her, it was all Carolyn's.

"What's happened?" Alex said kneeling down next to her mother, blood circulating her knees.

"She tried to kill me....with this." Barnabas said kicking the gun over to Alexandra with his foot, not allowing any part of the blessed silver to touch exposed skin.

"Mother? Mother wake up. Wake up mother!" Alex said tapping the side of Carolyn's face.

But Carolyn could not be woken, she was inches from death, the cold air from the sea now seeping in from outside into the hallways and into the room slowly swirling around Carolyn's limp body that psychically was at Collinwood but soon would  be spiritually was lifted away to somewhere no one alive could explain.

In her mind Carolyn could hear Alex's voices echoing further and further away.

***IN THE UNKNOWN PLACE***

It was perfect all white. Light surrounding everything. Yet there was nothing. Simply whitness, and Carolyn walked alone. She heard no sounds. Just complete and utter silence all around her. She looked down and the white had completely surrounded her body, from the ground to the air.  It was as if she were standing in white cloud of nothingness; there was no up there was no down. Just blank. 

"You've made it." A voice said from behind her. "You've finally made it." 

Carolyn turned around and to her surprise, there standing dressed just as Carolyn remember her: demure pastels and perfectly quaffed hair and droplet pearl earrings dangling from her perfect ears   was Carolyn's mother Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard who died over 15 years ago.

"Mother? Is that really you? Where....where am I?" Carolyn said confused.

"You're nowhere, yet you're everywhere, darling. This is where we go when we leave the psychical. Well...it's the first place we go. Oh I've missed you Carolyn." Elizabeth said embracing her daughter.

"Leave the psychical? Do you mean.... Have I died?" Carolyn asked with tears in her eyes. 

"In a way, yes. And I've come to make sure you're entrance into the unknown is peaceful, and quiet." Elizabeth explained. 

"I don't understand, this wasn't meant to happen. I only wanted to stop Barnabas. This isn't right, I have to go back. Maybe I'm inside the mirror again! Or maybe it's all a dream." Carolyn said looking around for a way to leave.

"It's no mistake, it has happened." Elizabeth said taking Carolyn's hand. "Come we need to wait here." She said bringing Carolyn to a different place in the white space.

"I remember. I was ........ I had a gun and I accidentally fired it. I was shot, wasn't I?" Carolyn said finally remembering her last moments as Elizabeth moved her further into the void.

"We don't talk about how we leave the psychical here, Carolyn. It's irrelevant. All that matters is that when the light finally comes, that you walk towards it. Once you're inside you're free." Elizabeth said.

"Mother I'm not ready to be here...this is a mistake!" Carolyn said terrified.

"There are no mistakes Carolyn. I wish this were...but you have come here for a reason. I know that there has been much tension surrounding you in the physical but now you're able to let that all go. Nothing here can hurt you," Said Elizabeth.

"But what if I'm  not ready to let it go. There's too much at stake, mother. Can't I go back. Just for a little while! I'm not ready!" Carolyn explained.

"That's not up to me Carolyn. It's up to the fates that control when and where our time begins and ends. Once they decide -- it's done." Elizabeth said.

"And what about Alexandra? Jack's gone and now me....she's all alone. I can't stay here. Please, I can't stay." Carolyn said heartbroken over leaving Alex so suddenly.

"These things aren't always planned. Alexandra will be alright." Elizabeth said cuddling her daughter.

"Are you here alone? Where's Daddy and David?" Carolyn asked curious of the way things worked.

"Daddy is here too...somewhere. I was chosen to greet you first, once the light comes to take us back, you'll see everyone. Except David." Elizabeth pointed out.

"Why not David?"

"Darling, David is not here. He belongs still to the psychical. He has been all this time. His time has not come. Look...there....the light is coming! Are you ready?" Elizabeth said putting her arm around Carolyn.

As Carolyn looked on towards the light in slight confusion over Elizabeth's revelation over David, she saw small crack in the white background revealing a speck of light that was growing larger and larger, like a single star that was getting closer and closer and brighter and brighter as it came nearer. Carolyn dried her eyes from small tears that rolled down her fair skin and smiled at her mother who was comforting her as she began to walk her towards the the opening sphere of bright white light.

"If David is alive I need to go back and...." Carolyn said trying to delay the inevitable. 

"You're here Carolyn.... that is all there is." Elizabeth answered.

***COLLINWOOD***

Kimberly finally came to and rubbed her head where the bump popped up from her fall during the fight over he gun. She then noticed the stain of blood on her hands from where it seeped out of Carolyln's body.

"Oh my god, is she ok?" Kimberly said crawling over to Carolyn and Alexandra.

"She's dead." Barnabas said coldly.

"He's right, I don't feel a pulse....oh, Alex I'm so sorry." Kimberly said now sitting next to Alexandra who had Carolyn's head in her lap.

"No, this is not how my mother is supposed to die, I won't accept it!" Alex said, the tears streaming down her face.

"There's nothing you can do Alex." Kim said stroking her hair.

"Alexandra, your mother is gone from her body, that is true. But As we did in the seance we can still pull her back from the brink. But it's up to you." Barnabas said reluctantly giving Alex a clue to use the powers she inherited from Claudia to pull Carolyn back.

"Barnabas, what are you talking about?" Kimberly scolded. 

Alex took Barnabas' queue  and carefully placed Carolyn's head on the floor as she got up from the ground. She looked over and Barnabas who didn't make a move and Kimberly who was still on the ground looking over Carolyn's body.

Barnabas looked over again at Alex and Alex looked at Barnabas as if to say he was ready for whatever magical spell she had cooked up. This time she wouldn't use Angelique's book, just her instincts and magic from deep inside her soul, a soul that had bee tortured for weeks over Chris, and Claudia, and her father, Alex pulled from that tortured grief and took a deep breath.

 With her exhale she let out a bewitching scream of a banshee that broke windows and sent out vibrations all across Collinwood shaking the buildings and the trees, causing a vocal wave the burst through all time and space. 

Suddenly everything started to move backwards within the ripples of sound coming from Alexandra's scream. Kimberly moved back to the floor, Barnabas then sat down, and then went back into his position on the floor next to Carolyn and Kimberly all while Alex's scream caused the minutes to track backwards, the hours to tick counter clockwise, and soon she was seeing everything that happened before Carolyn was shot--all in backwards motion. All before Carolyn died.

She was turning back time to stop the shooting from happening to begin with. And it was working. 

***THE UNKNOWN PLACE***

As Alex's voice began to turn back the hands of time, the sphere of Light Carolyn was waking towards suddenly began to shrink back into a the darkness that once surrounded both Elizabeth and Carolyn.

"What's happening? Why is it going away?" Carolyn's asked her mother.

Elizabeth smiled and took her daughter Carolyn by both hands "The only reason the light would begin to retract is because it is no longer needed, darling, you got your wish!" Elizabeth said with tears in her eyes as she looked around the darkness and saw that indeed the light was dimming and Carolyn would be able to go back, thanks to Alex.

"I don't understand!" Carolyn confessed. "What does that mean?"

"Carolyn! You're being called back! You can go back to your life in Collinwood!" Elizabeth said excited for her child. "Take this as  is your chance to make things right. Make things better for everyone in our family." She added.

Carolyn felt a sadness for leaving her mother, but a relief that it looked like she was going back to Collinwood all at the same time.

"I wish I could take you with me. Collinsport isn't the same without you." Carolyn said still wiping the tests from her cheek.

"Oh my time has come and gone. I'm no longer needed in that world, but don't worry, I see everything. I'm there, all around you. This is Your time, but Carolyn remember, our family's legacy is paramount you must protect it at all costs. No matter what." Elizabeth said, her words resonating deep inside Carolyn.

"That's what Barnabas was doing wasn't he? Protecting us." Carolyn realized.

"He has his own way of doing things doesn't he." Elizabeth smirked

"Will I ever see you again?" Carolyn asked holding both of her mother's hands in hers.

"You will. But hopefully not for a very very long time. Carolyn, you are the torch holder of our family now, you and David. Remember .....you're family." Elizabeth said as she reached in and pulled Carolyn in for a hug.

As they embraced Carolyn slowly began to fade from inside the darkness and away from her mother's arms. Soon all that was left was a ghostly Elizabeth standing alone with tears streaming down her face.

***COLLINWOOD***

Alex saw the gun go off backwards time, the bullet retreat back into the silver piece her great great great Grandfather once owned. Then the initial scuffle of Kimberly and Carolyn over the gun, then Barnabas jumping back into his coffin. It all went backwards all while her powerful scream reverberated through time and space.

Then she followed, as her mother crept backwards down the hall and out of the old house where she got the gun, in that moment Alex stopped the screaming spell and time resumed. 

Carolyn started her walk towards the exit of the old smoking room inside the main house to see Barnabas but was stopped by Alex.

"Don't do this mother!" Alexandra said stepping in her mother's way.

"God! Alex you startled me. What are you doing? Following me?" Carolyn said in a gasp as she didn't see Alex come in behind her.

"Just hand me the gun. Hand it to over." Alex said reaching for the gun behind Carolyn's back. "Whatever you do, do not do what you had in mind. We've come so far and I've already lost Daddy, I cannot lose you too. You're all I have left, and....and if we're going to live here in this place then I want to have you as long as possible. So, just hand me the gun mother." Alex said in the most mature moment of her whole life.

Carolyn took the gun from behind her back and looked at it and then looked at her daughter who was in tears in front of her. She could see that something inside Alex was telling her to do this, having no memory of what hadn't happened yet, she complied and handed over the gun to Alex.

"I was about to make the biggest mistake of my life, wasn't I?" Carolyn said causally walking over to one of the large brown leather sofas and adjusting the single strand of thick pearls around her neck.

"Yes. You really were." Alex answered as she put the gun back in the black lacquered box. 

"Your grandmother was a lot like you, you know. She always had a way of making sure I made the right choices in life--I didn't always listen, but something told me I should listen to you now. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for almost going off the deep end." Carolyn said as she looked over at a large painting of her mother Elizabeth.

"What were you going to do?" Alex cautiously asked. 

"It doesn't matter now. What matters is.....well, is what matters is that we are going to start fresh from this moment on, ok. Whatever happens here on out, we'll stick together. A mother and daughter team!" Carolyn said enthusiastically. 

Alex laughed and sniffed her nose and gave her mother a big tight hug. Carolyn dogged the bullet. Literally. 

****

In a darkened hospital room in Bangor, Maine, an illusive member of the Collins family slept in an induced sleep that he had fallen under for weeks. The feeling of calmness at Collinwood and Alex and Carolyn's emotional reunion reverberated through the air and sky all around and into David Collins' room and broke him from his deep medically induced sleep.

He gasped for air and shot straight up in his bed, sweating and panting. His eyes were blood shot, his breath still short, his thick chest heaving for air, it was like he had been asleep for two decades. 

He looked around, his mind felt foggy. He wasn't sure he knew where he was, or if he was still dreaming. He carefully got up out of his bed and stepped on to the floor. His big bare feet slowly reaching the ground. He tried to get up but was still woozy from whatever medicine he was under.

It had been a long time since his mind felt clear, and now, it was an odd sensation. It seemed that at every turn in his sessions with Joanna something would set off his memories of this past and Joann would then give him a sedative to relax him, calm him down, and sedate him.

But today was different. She hadn't come in to see him. Maybe she forgot? Maybe something had happened to her. He was locked in this room and his mind was beginning to clear from the dizzying for he had been subjected to for years and years. 

He slowly raised himself from the cot he slept on and walked over to a door and turned the knob. It was locked. The door's small square window looked into Dr. Joanna Grayson's office. The office door was wide open and David could see through into a hall way, and in that hallway stood Joanna at a nurses station looking over papers, signing them, flipping to more papers, and signing those.

As David looked though his door window and into the office and through the door that was opened to the hospital hall way, he saw two weary people walking up to the nurses station where Joanna was looking over her paper work. One a stranger, the other a very very familiar face.

It was Caleb and Kat coming to check up on their lead that David had once been at this hospital.

David's eyes watered. He recognized the man's face. But he couldn't say his name, or where he recognized it from, but something deep in his psyche was telling him this was his moment. 

As he stood there pacing back and fourth in this room, trying figure out what to do, it finally came to him. A memory finally broke free from the chains of two decades trapped behind steel doors.

David went back to the small square window on his door and whispered "Caleb."

And just as he was about to pound on the door to make noise, Sebastian's face popped up from the other side of the small window giving David a cruel scowled look.

Sebastian then smiled cruelly and wagged his finger in David's face, a silent teasing gesture that David had disobeyed the rules then placed a large black card over the window, blocking David's view.

David was trapped.