"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.
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.
"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."
