She had lived on this property for decades as a young woman and just up until the late 80s, before she moved to London where she met her husband Jack Thorne. She knew its every wall, its every secret passage and all its hidden treasure, but there were two other's who knew the place even better: Barnabas and her cousin David Collins.
In her quiet movement, Carolyn became distracted while reading by her own thoughts and dropped the book to her lap and stared out the open French doors and watched the tree's sway back and forth in the elegant summer breeze.
"Refreshing isn't it? I had forgotten how fresh the air was here in the summer." A voice said from behind.
Carolyn turned and saw David, free from his torture at Windcliff, standing in the foyer looking into the drawing room. At first she thought she was dreaming but as he came closer and into the light of the drawing room, dim as it was, she knew he was real. David had finally returned home.
"Oh my god! David!" Carolyn said, bouncing off the sofa and rushing in for a hug. "It's really you!"
"Who did you think I'd be? I guess after 20 years away there's no one else it could be." David laughed.
"You'd be surprised." Carolyn quipped back,
"I guess I would." David giggled, remembering stranger things have happened at Collinwood.
"Caleb and Kat are sleeping, but I know he wouldn't mind if I woke them to see you, oh he's going to be elated when he finds out you're here!" Carolyn said starting off to wake Caleb.
"No! Don't. It's ok. I'll wait until morning. I don't want to wake him." David said grabbing Carolyn's hand.
"Well, if you're sure. ...David where have you been? What happened? We've been so worried for so many years and then Caleb finds this letter and they trace it back to Windcliff. It's all so confusing!" Carolyn asked pulling herself back to the sofa and sitting David down with her.
"It's a very long story. All I remember is that I was taken from here by two men to Windcliff and there I've been ...all these years. I'm actually very interested in seeing Kimberly soon. I take it she's living here too." David said.
"She is. Something I actually fought against, I assure you. But Caleb insisted. I am so glad you're home." Carolyn said. "How did you escape that place?"
"You'll never believe it, if I told you, but it's true. Maggie. It was Maggie Evans! Apparently she's been there for a long time too and she helped me. I tried to bring her here but she wouldn't come." David explained.
"What are you talking about?" Carolyn said with a shocked expression.
"Maggie helped me escape." David said again.
"Maggie Evans? No. You must have thought it was here, because that's not possible." Carolyn said now standing up and walking towards the open French doors.
"What do you mean?"
"David, Maggie died a long time ago, in 1998 or 1999. I can't remember the exact date. But I know that when I heard the news shortly after I moved to England. So it couldn't be her." Carolyn said.
During their conversation, which began to switch from happy to bizarre, Barnabas had come in from the old house undetected. He saw David and Carolyn talking and instinctively hid so that he could hear them talk freely. He came in at the right moment, the moment that mattered to him most. Maggie Evans.
"No, Carolyn, it was her. I know it was her. She told me.....well, I just know it was her. I felt her body. We hugged good bye. Maggie is not dead." David said sternly.
"I don't know what to tell you. But it's true. She killed herself in that hospital. It was a very terrible thing." Carolyn said bowing her head.
"I know what I saw Carolyn. I saw her. We touched. She broke into the room I was in and she helped me escape. I don't know where she is now, but I know that she helped me." David continued.
"Ok! Ok! Well, whatever, or who ever it was, Maggie or not, I'm certainly glad she came to your rescue. And you must be exhausted and hungry. The cook was about to make me some tea before she left for the evening, why don't I ask her to make you a sandwich? It wont take long. Sit down. I'll be right back." Carolyn said trying to calm David.
David nodded in agreement and Carolyn went off into a hallway the stretched all the way down to the main kitchen. She walked quickly and from out of a shadowy corner, his eyes wide and serious jumped Barnabas, startling Carolyn so much she backed into the wall knocking over a vase.
"Barnabas!" She yelled.
"Good morning Cousin." He said noting the evening hour as his morning.
"What do you want?" Carolyn asked, her fear was that he would find David, and for some reason she did not want him to.
"I do not like when things are kept from me, you know. And when I returned I felt that you and I were on the same footing, the same common ground and that I could count on you." Barnabas said coldly.
"That was before I realized that you hadn't changed and that you were still the same soulless creature from 50 years ago, or 100 years ago, or from whatever world or time you belong. What do you want?" Carolyn said sternly.
"Maggie." he responded
"What? Barnabas please, I don't know what you're--" Carolyn said before Barnabas stopped her.
"I heard you and our returned Cousin David speaking of her, and I know she's alive. I know it! Last night Kimberly took me to her grave. I saw it, but I do not believe it. Maggie is alive and i want to know where she is!" Barnabas said.
Carolyn took a deep breath a realized that now something was definitely a miss. If David saw Maggie at Windcliff and, Barnabas saw some sort of vision of her that didn't convince him she was dead, than Maggie must be a live and hiding.
"If you saw her at her grave then she's dead!" Carolyn said sternly.
"You forget, I know what the dead are like. I know what if feels like to have the blood in your veins grow cold. What I saw at the cemetery was something different. She shivered in the cold, Carolyn. Her skin was peach and soft, just like this...?" Barnabas said grabbing Carolyn's arm tightly.
"I can't explain why she looked the way she did, so let go." Carolyn said thrusting her arm out of Barnabas' cold hand. "Whoever David saw or who ever helped him get away from that place, I am grateful for. But I know that Maggie Evans died. So why can't you let that go?" She added.
"Because it's a lie. Because it's something that is being hidden from me. Now tell me, Carolyn, tell me now, where is Maggie Evans?" Barnabas growled.
Carolyn had to make another impossible decision but she knew it had to be done. Her old friend Maggie, alive or dead, needed to be found in order to protect David who Carolyn wasn't even sure was in the right mind space after spending all those years trapped in a mental hospital.
"I want you to know one thing, you will leave David alone. I do not want him seeing you Barnabas." Carolyn said sternly.
Barnabas thought for a second and agreed to not reveal himself to David, just yet in exchange for the whereabouts of Maggie Evans.
"Where is she?" Barnabas growled again.
"Windcliff Sanitarium." Carolyn said with reluctantly, and in truth, she wasn't even sure Maggie was there. But David believed it, so to her it must be somewhat true.
Barnabas' eyes turned pitched black and in a puff of the blackest smoke, the darkest Carolyn had ever seen, disappeared as soon as he got the information he so desperately wanted. He had no intention of following through with possibly ending his own life by stepping into sunlight and vaporizing into the air now that there could be a possibility Maggie was alive. Barnabas' instincts were right, he felt her life force and now there was no stopping him.
Carolyn stood in the hall just outside the kitchen for a second, the feeling of guilt slowly reaching for her throat like she was being buried alive. Tightening like a noose. If Maggie was really still alive, had just just given Barnabas, the one man Maggie feared most in her entire life her location?
What had she done?
****
The evening progressed within the walls of Collinwood, even with David's return still mostly unknown to the rest of the house. Kimberly was out somewhere, Christopher, Caleb and Kat had turned into bed early. Claudia on the other hand had a certain job to do in regards to her rivalry with Alexandra who had returned home earlier that evening from the Blue Whale Pub.
Claudia carefully walked up the main staircase and down the hall to Alexandra's room. The door had been left slightly open, enough that Claudia could peek in without being seen. There, Alexandra sat in a chair looking over a small table as Claudia looked closer she could see Alexandra was reading Tarot Cards.
Alex's eyes were rolled back and she had 8 cards on the table with her hand slightly over them, she was humming something, something Claudia couldn't understand, suddenly a burst of energy flung the door open and pushed Claudia inside of the room where Alex was waiting for her.
"It's rude to lurk in doorways." Alexandra said as she slowly turned her head to see Claudia standing firmly now in the room.
"It's also bad luck to read your own fortune, didn't mummy ever teach you that?" Claudia responded equally as tart. "Given everything that's happened in this room--you remember that whole mirror thing--I wouldn't peg you for someone who would want to dabble in the dark arts ever again." Claudia added.
"I'm not reading my fortune.......... I'm reading yours." Alex said coldly.
"Well, how kind of you, but I already know what my fortune will bring. Much happiness. With Christopher." Claudia said digging into Alex's heart.
"You stole him from me!" Alex said in raised voice.
"He wasn't yours to steal Alexandra! It's a shame you can't understand that. All you'r life you've been given the royal treatment, haven't you? No one has ever asked you to take responsibility; I never made Christopher leave you for me, he chose to." Claudia responded.
Alexandra didn't react to what Claudia's cold malicious insult. All she did was sit at table and flip her Tarot cards over one by one so that now 12 were revealed.
"Tsk tsk tsk..." Alex hissed in disappointment of the results of her cards. "Doesn't look so good for you Claudia. But this 13th card will tell me your final fate. The most important card of all." Alex said as she slowly turned the card over revealing THE DEATH card.
"Uh oh! Death! So dramatic!" Alexandra giggled.
"You're losing your mind. I should have never given you these powers." Claudia responded as she fiddled with the small bag in her pocket with the red leaves meant to poison Alex's tea.
"You destroyed me when you made me like this!" Alex said in a deeper more sinister voice as she remembered when Claudia possessed her and yielded some of her powers to Alex.
"The death card doesn't always mean death you know. It represents Change. Alteration. Adjustment. And even sometimes new life. After all when the winter ice thaws, new life grows." Alex added cryptically as she got up from her table.
Alex had surely changed as a person since obtaining all of Claudia's powers, even if it was by accident. When she first came to Collinwood with her mother, she was sweet and innocent. A young lady who was in love and who wanted to make the best things for her family. After the dark forces of Claudia passed into her body she had never ever been the same. She was consumed by jealousy and vicious anger. And now, she would unleash them all on her Claudia, the woman who made her this way.
"I know what you're hiding......give them to me!" Alex referencing the poison tea leaves as she lifted her arm in the air causing Claudia to feel choked and levitating off the ground.
As Claudia began to feel chocked and instinctively lifted her hands from her pockets to her throat. The removal of her hands caused the small baggy to fall out of her pocket and on to the floor directly under her.
Alex looked down at the floor and saw the red tea leaves Weyxi gave Claudia and she slowly walked towards them.
"Where these for me?" Alex said with an evil grin then picking up the baggy and letting Claudia fall to the floor coughing and gasping for air.
Alex went over a separate table across her large bedroom that had several glass bottles of water and a container of tea. She carefully picked out two leaves and placed them in a small tea cup of water. The redness began to slowly dissolve into the water leaving only a brown leaf in the center floating alone in the middle. A toxic tea.
"Why don't you have the first drink?" Alex said as Claudia regained her composure.
"You don't know what you're doing!" Claudia said jumping up from the soft carpeted floor.
"I'm doing what you were going to do to me! I know what these leaves do." Alexandra said and in a split second move Claudia kicked Alexandra who stood above her in the legs causing her to lose her balance and fall to the floor. The tea, poisoned with the red leaves given to Claudia to use on Alexandra, spilled on to Alex's face and hands.
Smoke filled the room, but a light smoke coming from Alex's body. She lay on all fours, her face towards the grown, there was no pain but there was smoke. Claudia, quickly stood up and watched as Alexandra's face and hands, arms and legs, begin to wither into old age just as Weyxi said it would.
Her hair turned to a dark grey, her face became wrinkled and ravaged by what looked like the hands of time only to have happened within seconds. In a way it shocked Claudia to see it happen so quickly.
Alex remained on the floor for a few seconds staring at her hands and not knowing what to do. She looked up and saw Claudia still standing over her with a glazed look on her face. Claudia it seemed was not prepared for what the poisoned tea leaves would actually do. It was a stark comparison to how Alex looked just seconds ago.
Alex, sniffling and with tears in her eyes got up and walked over to the mirror, the same mirror that Angelique Bochard once tried to take the souls of Carolyn and Barnabas into.
The woman's face looking back at Alex was not the same 20-something young woman she recognized as her self. It was now the aged, wrinkled face of a woman in her 80s.
The shock was too much, Alexandra fainted on the spot.
It seemed like Claudia's job was done. Alex had turned into a person no one would ever recognize. No one would ever even dream would be the same young beautiful vibrant Alexandra Thorne. It had been done.
It the midst of it all, Claudia quickly gathered the remaining tea leaves, and cleaned the room up. Grabbed several of Alex's belongings and put them in a suitcase. She then dragged Alex by the arms down the hall as quiet as she could into an upstairs study that once belonged to Quentin Collins. A room that kept every secret of every family member since the dawn of the Collins family.
In that study was a secret passage to a secret Collinwood turret that no one had gone into for over 200 years. Claudia dragged an unconscious Alex y through the tunnels that winded and turned within the walls of Collinwood, and pushed the turret door open. Inside was a room she had prepared to make Alex comfortable. A room Alex would never ever be able to escape.
Alex finally came to, confused and rubbing her head with pain; alone and in the turret. She scuffled around searching for some sort of light switch but found only candles and matches, so she lit a candle and looked around the room as the candle's light brightened up the turret.
The turret was the brightest room in the whole house, the first room to see the morning sun, as its two small windows pointed east over looking the sea. It was a room that for so many years no one went into except for centuries ago, when Barnabas' mother Naomi Collin' used it as her personal and beloved chapel. A room where dark magic couldn't be used. A place where Claudia knew it would be impossible for Alex to use her powers and escape.
Alexandra began to have a small panic attack when she realized no one knew where she went or when she left. She looked around the room hoping to find something she could use to alert whom ever was below, but then realized when she tried to push the windows open that they had been boarded up and closed off.
Then she walked over to a small mirror on the wall and saw what the tea leaves had done to her. Her face. Her hair. She had aged from a bright eyed blond beauty to a gray haired snarled old woman that she did not recognize.
Alex was a loss. She had lost her powers, lost her beauty and now lost her freedom. Destined to be locked away in a place no one would ever look to find her.
The tears fell from her face like water from a stream. And in the corner, on a dress form a 18th century black funeral dress with a long black veil.
Claudia carefully walked up the main staircase and down the hall to Alexandra's room. The door had been left slightly open, enough that Claudia could peek in without being seen. There, Alexandra sat in a chair looking over a small table as Claudia looked closer she could see Alexandra was reading Tarot Cards.
Alex's eyes were rolled back and she had 8 cards on the table with her hand slightly over them, she was humming something, something Claudia couldn't understand, suddenly a burst of energy flung the door open and pushed Claudia inside of the room where Alex was waiting for her.
"It's rude to lurk in doorways." Alexandra said as she slowly turned her head to see Claudia standing firmly now in the room.
"It's also bad luck to read your own fortune, didn't mummy ever teach you that?" Claudia responded equally as tart. "Given everything that's happened in this room--you remember that whole mirror thing--I wouldn't peg you for someone who would want to dabble in the dark arts ever again." Claudia added.
"I'm not reading my fortune.......... I'm reading yours." Alex said coldly.
"Well, how kind of you, but I already know what my fortune will bring. Much happiness. With Christopher." Claudia said digging into Alex's heart.
"You stole him from me!" Alex said in raised voice.
"He wasn't yours to steal Alexandra! It's a shame you can't understand that. All you'r life you've been given the royal treatment, haven't you? No one has ever asked you to take responsibility; I never made Christopher leave you for me, he chose to." Claudia responded.
Alexandra didn't react to what Claudia's cold malicious insult. All she did was sit at table and flip her Tarot cards over one by one so that now 12 were revealed.
"Tsk tsk tsk..." Alex hissed in disappointment of the results of her cards. "Doesn't look so good for you Claudia. But this 13th card will tell me your final fate. The most important card of all." Alex said as she slowly turned the card over revealing THE DEATH card.
"Uh oh! Death! So dramatic!" Alexandra giggled.
"You're losing your mind. I should have never given you these powers." Claudia responded as she fiddled with the small bag in her pocket with the red leaves meant to poison Alex's tea.
"You destroyed me when you made me like this!" Alex said in a deeper more sinister voice as she remembered when Claudia possessed her and yielded some of her powers to Alex.
"The death card doesn't always mean death you know. It represents Change. Alteration. Adjustment. And even sometimes new life. After all when the winter ice thaws, new life grows." Alex added cryptically as she got up from her table.
Alex had surely changed as a person since obtaining all of Claudia's powers, even if it was by accident. When she first came to Collinwood with her mother, she was sweet and innocent. A young lady who was in love and who wanted to make the best things for her family. After the dark forces of Claudia passed into her body she had never ever been the same. She was consumed by jealousy and vicious anger. And now, she would unleash them all on her Claudia, the woman who made her this way.
"I know what you're hiding......give them to me!" Alex referencing the poison tea leaves as she lifted her arm in the air causing Claudia to feel choked and levitating off the ground.
As Claudia began to feel chocked and instinctively lifted her hands from her pockets to her throat. The removal of her hands caused the small baggy to fall out of her pocket and on to the floor directly under her.
Alex looked down at the floor and saw the red tea leaves Weyxi gave Claudia and she slowly walked towards them.
"Where these for me?" Alex said with an evil grin then picking up the baggy and letting Claudia fall to the floor coughing and gasping for air.
Alex went over a separate table across her large bedroom that had several glass bottles of water and a container of tea. She carefully picked out two leaves and placed them in a small tea cup of water. The redness began to slowly dissolve into the water leaving only a brown leaf in the center floating alone in the middle. A toxic tea.
"Why don't you have the first drink?" Alex said as Claudia regained her composure.
"You don't know what you're doing!" Claudia said jumping up from the soft carpeted floor.
"I'm doing what you were going to do to me! I know what these leaves do." Alexandra said and in a split second move Claudia kicked Alexandra who stood above her in the legs causing her to lose her balance and fall to the floor. The tea, poisoned with the red leaves given to Claudia to use on Alexandra, spilled on to Alex's face and hands.
Smoke filled the room, but a light smoke coming from Alex's body. She lay on all fours, her face towards the grown, there was no pain but there was smoke. Claudia, quickly stood up and watched as Alexandra's face and hands, arms and legs, begin to wither into old age just as Weyxi said it would.
Her hair turned to a dark grey, her face became wrinkled and ravaged by what looked like the hands of time only to have happened within seconds. In a way it shocked Claudia to see it happen so quickly.
Alex remained on the floor for a few seconds staring at her hands and not knowing what to do. She looked up and saw Claudia still standing over her with a glazed look on her face. Claudia it seemed was not prepared for what the poisoned tea leaves would actually do. It was a stark comparison to how Alex looked just seconds ago.
Alex, sniffling and with tears in her eyes got up and walked over to the mirror, the same mirror that Angelique Bochard once tried to take the souls of Carolyn and Barnabas into.
The woman's face looking back at Alex was not the same 20-something young woman she recognized as her self. It was now the aged, wrinkled face of a woman in her 80s.
The shock was too much, Alexandra fainted on the spot.
It seemed like Claudia's job was done. Alex had turned into a person no one would ever recognize. No one would ever even dream would be the same young beautiful vibrant Alexandra Thorne. It had been done.
It the midst of it all, Claudia quickly gathered the remaining tea leaves, and cleaned the room up. Grabbed several of Alex's belongings and put them in a suitcase. She then dragged Alex by the arms down the hall as quiet as she could into an upstairs study that once belonged to Quentin Collins. A room that kept every secret of every family member since the dawn of the Collins family.
In that study was a secret passage to a secret Collinwood turret that no one had gone into for over 200 years. Claudia dragged an unconscious Alex y through the tunnels that winded and turned within the walls of Collinwood, and pushed the turret door open. Inside was a room she had prepared to make Alex comfortable. A room Alex would never ever be able to escape.
Alex finally came to, confused and rubbing her head with pain; alone and in the turret. She scuffled around searching for some sort of light switch but found only candles and matches, so she lit a candle and looked around the room as the candle's light brightened up the turret.
The turret was the brightest room in the whole house, the first room to see the morning sun, as its two small windows pointed east over looking the sea. It was a room that for so many years no one went into except for centuries ago, when Barnabas' mother Naomi Collin' used it as her personal and beloved chapel. A room where dark magic couldn't be used. A place where Claudia knew it would be impossible for Alex to use her powers and escape.
Alexandra began to have a small panic attack when she realized no one knew where she went or when she left. She looked around the room hoping to find something she could use to alert whom ever was below, but then realized when she tried to push the windows open that they had been boarded up and closed off.
Then she walked over to a small mirror on the wall and saw what the tea leaves had done to her. Her face. Her hair. She had aged from a bright eyed blond beauty to a gray haired snarled old woman that she did not recognize.
Alex was a loss. She had lost her powers, lost her beauty and now lost her freedom. Destined to be locked away in a place no one would ever look to find her.
The tears fell from her face like water from a stream. And in the corner, on a dress form a 18th century black funeral dress with a long black veil.
