The night became later and later. And as the stars hung in the cloudy East coast sky, like tiny specks of sea glass twinkling in the distant blackness of space, a pair of cousins made their way to Windcliff Sanitarium to help find an old friend who's world was about to change forever.
David and Carolyn arrived at Windcliff Sanitarium in the middle of the night hoping to capitalize on the lack of staffing in the late hour so that they could maneuver through the halls and hopefully locate Maggie Evans who had been hiding at the hospital for over 30 years under the name Rose Glassburg. Rose Glassburg was a patient who died at Windcliff in 1998, the same year Maggie switched medical bracelets with her to conceal her identity after Rose died.
Maggie was the key to Nicholas' undoing, she was the only person who could save Alexandra from pure calamity if Nicholas got his hands on her, the same way his father did to Maggie so many years ago. This was something Carolyn was losing sleep over.
For Maggie, Windcliff was a sanctuary away from the evils of Collinsport and a safe haven from the one she feared most: Barnabas Collins. Barnabas had take so much of her life in the past. What Maggie didn't know was that another monster from her past had done something to her years ago as well; something she thought was all just a terrible dream...a nightmare.
Maggie became the mother to Nicholas Blair's child through a twisted devilish spell he placed on her during their Black Mass wedding. He took hostage the sanctity and innocence of her womb and mixed in his evil DNA. The child, born via a surrogate mother, was Nicholas Blair JR, who had come back to Collinsport to find his own bride and his biological mother Maggie and to finish off the Collins family, just as his father attempted 50 years ago.
Maggie was the key to Nicholas' undoing, she was the only person who could save Alexandra from pure calamity if Nicholas got his hands on her, the same way his father did to Maggie so many years ago. This was something Carolyn was losing sleep over.
Carolyn and David needed to find Maggie and needed to warn her. It was the best way to make sure Nicholas didn't get a hold of his mother and begin what was sure to be a disastrous set of events.
"Are you going to be ok?" Carolyn asked as she and David got out of the car, she bundled up in an elegant flannel cape, David in a thick jacket and scarf.
"It's weird to be back here, but if Maggie is still here we have to make sure she's safe. She helped me escape this place....I owe her." David said putting his arm around his beloved cousin Carolyn as they made their way up to entrance.
"You don't have to go in. I can do this on my own, David. If you're not up to it..." Carolyn responded with concern before David interrupted.
"I'm fine. I can do this." David snapped.
The two walked up to the door and looked inside, no one was around. The hall was empty and there were no nurses around. David looked over at Carolyn and nodded at her to signal that he was about to open the door, Carolyn took a deep breath and prepared herself. Windcliff was not a place she held in high regard. Many of her family members had suffered metal breaks and had come to Windcliff to recover.
David pulled the door opened and the whiff and stench of unwashed sheets and soiled bodies hit David and Carolyn like a ton of bricks. The walls were still their yellow dingy color, the floors still stained with years of gunk from shoes of a thousand visitors. The florescent lights flickered on and off and on and off creating a flashing effect that tormented their eyes as they slowly and quietly made their way down the main hallway towards the empty reception desk.
"This way." David whispered as he grabbed Carolyn by the arm and took her down an adjacent hallway to continue to search for Maggie.
"Do you remember which room was hers?" Carolyn asked looked around her surroundings with and a buzzing sound interrupting her sentence from the lights above.
"This way." David whispered back.
The continued down the new hall that was just as dingy and vial as the last. David kept hold of Carolyn the whole time knowing exactly where he first saw Maggie when they were both trapped there together. David's mind switched back and forth to memories of his time here. The sound of the lights flickering, the smells the taunting voices from the patients in their cells and Joanna's voice echoing in his mind during their many sessions of manipulative hypnosis to turn him against his own family.
"They've wanted you dead. They've wanted you gone. You're the one that should lead this family and yet you're here....they did this to you...." Echoed Joanna's voice in David's mind.
He shook his head and felt dizzy, small beads of sweat began to appear on his forehead.
"David...Daivd! Are you ok?" Carolyn asked squeezing his hand and forcing him to stop walking once she noticed.
"I said I'm fine. Come on, we have to find her before it's too late."
As the two continued to make their way down the hall, David still shook out all the haunting memories that continued to haunt him, making him feel uneasy, hot and dizzy.
"You don't look well, sweetie, we should go and come back in the day time." Carolyn said looking at David suffering.
"I'm fine...I'm..."
Just as David was finishing his sentence, he heard someone coming from the other end of the L shaped hallway. David and Carolyn stopped dead in their tracks, trapped and unable to open any of the doors around them. They stood in the center of the hall and prepared to be caught by an orderly or worse yet the attending physician of the night.
"Shit..." David whispered.
And as the person came around the corner from the hall David felt a relief. It was the bald patient with the piercing blue eyes that had helped him and Maggie escape the hospital. She was still there.
"...hello.....do you remember me?" David whispered to the woman in her hospital gown.
The woman looked at David and gave him a crooked smile exposing her rotted teeth then walked over to him and put her hands over his face.
"You do." David confirmed for her. "We're looking for my friend. Do you remember her too?" He continued to question.
The woman removed her hands from David's face and stepped back and looked at Carolyn with disdain. She walked over to Carolyn and grabbed her hair and placed it closed to her face and began to smell it.
"This is my cousin, we're both looking for our friend. Please, can you help us find her before someone comes." David said, as Carolyn stood frozen with fear.
The patient circled Carolyn some more poking and prodding, pulling and tugging.
"Miss, please he...help us." Carolyn said her body stiffening as the patient continued to look her over. "I don't know if she understand David." Carolyn said.
"No, she does, she's just fascinated by you. Miss, please we don't have much time and this is an emergency. Do you know what that means? Emergency? We have to find--" David said before the patient put her crooked and thin index finger over her lips, dirt and gunk were caked under her finger nail.
"Shhh." The patient said as she pointed the way around the bend in the hallway.
Carolyn finally took a breath and grabbed on to David's arm harder. She wasn't sure where the bald blue eyed' patient was going to take them but David seemed confident that where ever it was it would lead to Maggie.
They finally came to a well-lit part of the hallway where a door was open. The open door lead into a cell that belonged to the bald blue eyed patient who didn't speak. She stood in her own doorway then pointed to the cell across from hers.
"Friend." The patient muttered.
"Friend. Is my friend in here?" David asked.
The patient nodded nervously.
"Maggie.....Maggie, it's me. It's Carolyn, darling. Are you in there?" Carolyn asked as she rushed to the door. "Oh darling please open the door if you can. I hope you're there. We have to get you out of here." She continued.
"Friend. Friend. Friend." The bald patient said over and over.
"Maggie....can you hear us? Are you awake? Open the door." Carolyn asked again.
"Hear us!" The patient said again still standing nervously in her cell's doorway.
"Carolyn? Carolyn Stoddard?" A faint voice from the other side of the door said.
"Maggie!!! Maggie! You're there! You're alive!" Carolyn yelped, as David shushed her.
Maggie opened the dinner tray slot built into the door, David and Carolyn crouched down and looked in, and looking back at them from the other side of the door, where the soft green eyes of Maggie Evans. Alive and well.
"Maggie why are you locked in here? Why aren't you in one of the other rooms?" David questioned remembering that Maggie used to be able to walk freely around the hospital like most non-dangerous patients.
"When I came back after being with you David, they locked me in here for helping you escape. I haven't been out since." Maggie said putting her hand outside the slot and touched his scarf.
"Oh god." David lamented. "You've been trapped in here all this time!"
"Honey, we have to get you out of here and to a safe place. Something terrible has happened and you're not safe here anymore." Carolyn said.
"This is the only place I am safe, this is the only place I've ever been safe. I can't leave." Maggie said straightforwardly.
"You don't understand Maggie, this is quite serious. We have some news for you, that you may not understand at first, but we believe it to be true. It's about Nicholas Blair. Years ago he did something to you...and......well Maggie..." David said stammering.
"You think I don't know? I know. I know everything that's ever happened to me. I've always felt there was a part of me taken away without my consent by that monster. So its come true, the nightmares I've had for years have finally come back for me." Maggie answered.
"He's searching for you. We're not sure how long we can keep him from here. We don't know what he's capable of either." David answered.
"We have to take you. You can hid at Collinwood." Carolyn said.
"Over my dead body. I will never go back to that place." Maggie hissed.
"Darling....I promise you from the bottom of my heart, we need to take you there and we can protect you. It's your only hope. Now, how do we get you out?" Carolyn asked.
As David and Carolyn stood in front of Maggie's cell a thin little arm poked through from between them. It was the bald patient's arm, in her skinny bony hand a set of keys.
David looked down at the hand and grabbed the keys and stood up from his crouched position looking into Maggie's cell.
"Are these the..?" David said grabbing the keys from her hand.
"Friend." The bald female patient said with a smile.
"Thank you." Carolyn whispered to her.
David quickly shoved the key through the lock and turned it easily opening the heavy door.
"Maggie.....please. Please come with us. We don't have much time. We think your son, Nicholas, wants to take Alexandra just like Nicholas Sr. took you." David confirmed.
"Alex is my daughter." Carolyn explained.
Maggie took a deep breath and turned around to face her old friends. She took a gulp of air and reached over to her small side table and grabbed a rosary from the top and squeezed it in her hand so hard it left the impression of the small crucifix in her skin.
"I don't want that. I need to end this too. All of it." Maggie said looking down at her hand with the rosary squeezed inside. "Alright. I'll go back with you. I'll help protect Alexandra from the Blairs." Maggie agreed.
David and Carolyn grabbed Maggie and quickly made their way through the winding halls hoping no one saw them. The bald patient walked back into the middle of the hall, her hand in her mouth, her teeth biting the tips of her nails.
She waved goodbye and whispered. "Friend." one last time.
"They've wanted you dead. They've wanted you gone. You're the one that should lead this family and yet you're here....they did this to you...." Echoed Joanna's voice in David's mind.
He shook his head and felt dizzy, small beads of sweat began to appear on his forehead.
"David...Daivd! Are you ok?" Carolyn asked squeezing his hand and forcing him to stop walking once she noticed.
"I said I'm fine. Come on, we have to find her before it's too late."
As the two continued to make their way down the hall, David still shook out all the haunting memories that continued to haunt him, making him feel uneasy, hot and dizzy.
"You don't look well, sweetie, we should go and come back in the day time." Carolyn said looking at David suffering.
"I'm fine...I'm..."
Just as David was finishing his sentence, he heard someone coming from the other end of the L shaped hallway. David and Carolyn stopped dead in their tracks, trapped and unable to open any of the doors around them. They stood in the center of the hall and prepared to be caught by an orderly or worse yet the attending physician of the night.
"Shit..." David whispered.
And as the person came around the corner from the hall David felt a relief. It was the bald patient with the piercing blue eyes that had helped him and Maggie escape the hospital. She was still there.
"...hello.....do you remember me?" David whispered to the woman in her hospital gown.
The woman looked at David and gave him a crooked smile exposing her rotted teeth then walked over to him and put her hands over his face.
"You do." David confirmed for her. "We're looking for my friend. Do you remember her too?" He continued to question.
The woman removed her hands from David's face and stepped back and looked at Carolyn with disdain. She walked over to Carolyn and grabbed her hair and placed it closed to her face and began to smell it.
"This is my cousin, we're both looking for our friend. Please, can you help us find her before someone comes." David said, as Carolyn stood frozen with fear.
The patient circled Carolyn some more poking and prodding, pulling and tugging.
"Miss, please he...help us." Carolyn said her body stiffening as the patient continued to look her over. "I don't know if she understand David." Carolyn said.
"No, she does, she's just fascinated by you. Miss, please we don't have much time and this is an emergency. Do you know what that means? Emergency? We have to find--" David said before the patient put her crooked and thin index finger over her lips, dirt and gunk were caked under her finger nail.
"Shhh." The patient said as she pointed the way around the bend in the hallway.
Carolyn finally took a breath and grabbed on to David's arm harder. She wasn't sure where the bald blue eyed' patient was going to take them but David seemed confident that where ever it was it would lead to Maggie.
They finally came to a well-lit part of the hallway where a door was open. The open door lead into a cell that belonged to the bald blue eyed patient who didn't speak. She stood in her own doorway then pointed to the cell across from hers.
"Friend." The patient muttered.
"Friend. Is my friend in here?" David asked.
The patient nodded nervously.
"Maggie.....Maggie, it's me. It's Carolyn, darling. Are you in there?" Carolyn asked as she rushed to the door. "Oh darling please open the door if you can. I hope you're there. We have to get you out of here." She continued.
"Friend. Friend. Friend." The bald patient said over and over.
"Maggie....can you hear us? Are you awake? Open the door." Carolyn asked again.
"Hear us!" The patient said again still standing nervously in her cell's doorway.
"Carolyn? Carolyn Stoddard?" A faint voice from the other side of the door said.
"Maggie!!! Maggie! You're there! You're alive!" Carolyn yelped, as David shushed her.
Maggie opened the dinner tray slot built into the door, David and Carolyn crouched down and looked in, and looking back at them from the other side of the door, where the soft green eyes of Maggie Evans. Alive and well.
"Maggie why are you locked in here? Why aren't you in one of the other rooms?" David questioned remembering that Maggie used to be able to walk freely around the hospital like most non-dangerous patients.
"When I came back after being with you David, they locked me in here for helping you escape. I haven't been out since." Maggie said putting her hand outside the slot and touched his scarf.
"Oh god." David lamented. "You've been trapped in here all this time!"
"Honey, we have to get you out of here and to a safe place. Something terrible has happened and you're not safe here anymore." Carolyn said.
"This is the only place I am safe, this is the only place I've ever been safe. I can't leave." Maggie said straightforwardly.
"You don't understand Maggie, this is quite serious. We have some news for you, that you may not understand at first, but we believe it to be true. It's about Nicholas Blair. Years ago he did something to you...and......well Maggie..." David said stammering.
"You think I don't know? I know. I know everything that's ever happened to me. I've always felt there was a part of me taken away without my consent by that monster. So its come true, the nightmares I've had for years have finally come back for me." Maggie answered.
"He's searching for you. We're not sure how long we can keep him from here. We don't know what he's capable of either." David answered.
"We have to take you. You can hid at Collinwood." Carolyn said.
"Over my dead body. I will never go back to that place." Maggie hissed.
"Darling....I promise you from the bottom of my heart, we need to take you there and we can protect you. It's your only hope. Now, how do we get you out?" Carolyn asked.
As David and Carolyn stood in front of Maggie's cell a thin little arm poked through from between them. It was the bald patient's arm, in her skinny bony hand a set of keys.
David looked down at the hand and grabbed the keys and stood up from his crouched position looking into Maggie's cell.
"Are these the..?" David said grabbing the keys from her hand.
"Friend." The bald female patient said with a smile.
"Thank you." Carolyn whispered to her.
David quickly shoved the key through the lock and turned it easily opening the heavy door.
"Alex is my daughter." Carolyn explained.
Maggie took a deep breath and turned around to face her old friends. She took a gulp of air and reached over to her small side table and grabbed a rosary from the top and squeezed it in her hand so hard it left the impression of the small crucifix in her skin.
"I don't want that. I need to end this too. All of it." Maggie said looking down at her hand with the rosary squeezed inside. "Alright. I'll go back with you. I'll help protect Alexandra from the Blairs." Maggie agreed.
David and Carolyn grabbed Maggie and quickly made their way through the winding halls hoping no one saw them. The bald patient walked back into the middle of the hall, her hand in her mouth, her teeth biting the tips of her nails.
She waved goodbye and whispered. "Friend." one last time.
****
In the woods just outside of Collinsport, the spell Ezrabette had placed over Kat was spinning around and around in a whirl of cold air that started to create icicles and frost across the ceiling.
Loomis looked on in terror as his friend and partner Detective Kat Banning began to shift from this, the present time, to the year 1920 in attempt to reach her son Canan that had been taken there by Victoria Winters in a cruel kidnapping.
"Follow the lights of your ancestors child, follow them down the rabbit hole of time and space and find the mother. Find her and fill her with your light and soul. Bring your baby back to the land where this all begin, the land where Sea View Cottage will be built and the portal will open again...that is when you can come back home." Ezrabette instructed while holding Kat's hands and the spell began to take shape.
Kat fell back, her eyes turned white and the trans took over her whole body.
Loomis removed Kat's hands from Ezrabette's and picked her stiff body up and moved it over to a soft sofa and laid her down.
"Will she be ok?" Loomis asked concerned.
"She has no choice." Ezarabette cryptically responded. "This is what she wanted."
Kat fell back, her eyes turned white and the trans took over her whole body.
Loomis removed Kat's hands from Ezrabette's and picked her stiff body up and moved it over to a soft sofa and laid her down.
"Will she be ok?" Loomis asked concerned.
"She has no choice." Ezarabette cryptically responded. "This is what she wanted."
*** COLLINWOOD 1920***
In the dark of the night, the Collinwood mansion held a sense of anxiety and fear within its walls. The night fog surrounded the house so much that it looked as if a mote of low clouds enclosed the property like an isolated island.
Jamison sat in a chair, stone silent and still contemplating the visions he was having. He was terrified of what they might mean for his family. He had a small child to think about and was worried that curse his family had upon it had finally reached him and his own.
Sleep began to creep into his body and Jamison started to close his eyes. The warmth of the fire roaring in the fire place in the drawing room began to warm all around him.
As soon as his eyes shut and sleep took over a white flash blared in Jamison's mind and the visions began again.
This time in dream form.
Jamison awoke in his dream standing on a cloudy moody night on the lands of Collinwood. He could smell the sea as if it were just under his nose. He could feel the freezing ocean air brush up on his rosy cheeks like the icy breath of the unknown. Just off into the distance in the forest that stood before him Jaimson could see to figures quickly darting into the woods.
He followed.
As he got closer and closer it made out the figures and saw what they were doing. They were digging.
"Who's there?" Jamison yelled towards the sound of digging as he began to make his way into the misty woods. "I ask you again, who goes there?!"
As Jamison's patent leather shoes carefully made its way through the wet soggy ground and through the brush the digging got louder and louder, dirt falling to the ground in large fluffy clumps. He continued to hear it non stop even after he asked the person digging to name themselves. Unsuccessfully.
Jamison continued to come closer and closer in his foggy dream and finally came across a clearing within the forest and saw a man in all black digging.
"You there! What are you doing? Who are you?" Jamison asked of the man in black.
The man, who's back was turned to Jamison, stopped digging and lifted his head and slowly turned in the direction of Jamison's voice. The night, fog and darkness within the trees obscured the face of the man blocking his identity from Jamison's view.
"I'll ask you one more time, who are you? This is my land and you..." Jamison began as the man in black turned completely around, shovel in hand and lunged at Jamison. Jamison screamed and turned quickly blocking his face and falling to the ground cowering in fear as the man in black suddenly burst into what seemed like hundreds of bats that sprayed across the tops of the tress of the forest.
Jamison's breathing swallowed and he opened his eyes. He was still in his dream. Once he got up from the ground he went forward to where the man in black was. There were leaves stuck to his clothes, dirt marked his face and over his lips where he fell. He was terrified and cursed the minute he fell asleep. As he stepped forwards, there, in front of him was an open grave bare and gaping, its edges covered in the autumn leaves that had fallen from above.
Jamison hesitated but knew he had to look inside. Something deep inside him told him to look into the grave.
"What is it." He whispered to himself.
He slowly peered his head over, a chilly breeze blew away the fog above the mouth of the grave and inside was the body of Jaqueleen Walsh. Cold and dead, her skin a pale translucent grey, her mouth slightly open with a small beetle crawling out.
Jamison screamed a loud and blood boiling scream that immediately woke him from his sleep in the drawling room inside Collinwood.
He took a few breaths and grabbed the half empty cup filled with brandy then got up from the chair and looked up at the portrait of Barnabas Collins that hung in the foyer.
"He is this darkness. I have to stop him." Jamison said.
Jamison quickly grabbed a letter opener from the top of a cherry wood writing desk that sat at the end of the drawing room table and dashed up the stairs to find Barnabas Collins ...and kill him.
Jamison went down the hall he opened every guest room door as he past. The rooms were all empty but that did not detour him. He continued to search for Barnabas. All he wanted to do was end the curse that he knew Barnabas was the key to. As he opened the doors to the darkened rooms, he saw from the corner of his eye a bright light beam come from the end of the long hallway. The light came in a quick flash from under a door, hid bedroom door.
"Catherine." Jamison said as he noticed it came from where his wife was in there sleeping.
Jamison abandoned the search for Barnabas and quickly dashed down the hall to the bedroom he shared with his wife and pushed the door open to investigate the bright flash of light he saw.
Catherine was standing at her window in her nightgown staring out on to the sea.
"Darling, are you ok? I saw something ...some kind of a light. What was it?" Jamison asked walking over to his wife the letter opener still in his hand, sharp and ready to cut Barnabas' throat.
"What? Oh...yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine, I just couldn't sleep." Catherine said as she pulled a silky robe from her chair to cover herself.
"What was that light?" He questioned.
"There was no light." She answered.
Jamison looked at her, he wasn't sure she was telling the truth but wasn't sure he even really saw a light in the first place. His mind after all, was scattered and stressed.
"Are you sure you're ok? I have a bad feeling about tonight. I know you think I'm too superstitious but, honey I feel like something is about to happen. Something wicked." Jamison said as he put his hands on her shoulders.
"Yes! I'm fine. Like I said just couldn't get to sleep. But I'm fine. You should try to get some sleep too, the rest will help wit the stress." Catherine said in a frustrated voice.
"You're right." Jamison answered.
"What are you doing with that letter opener? " Catherine asked noticing the refection of the candle light in the knife.
"Nothing, nothing. I just thought I heard something downstairs before I came in here. Something strange, I guess it goes with my paranoia." Jamison laughed. " I'll leave you to sleep now. I'll be back up in a little bit, just going to check up on Elizabeth. I'll be right back." Jamison said fibbing.
Once Jamison closed the door to his room, Catherine took a deep breath and sat back on her bed. She felt relieved he was gone. She felt the anxiety slowly dissolve out of her body but knew it would return, because deep inside of her she was no longer Catherine Collins.
Ezrabette's spell had worked.
Catherine walked over to a mirror and looked in. The reflection looking back at her was Kat Banning from 2016.
Sleep began to creep into his body and Jamison started to close his eyes. The warmth of the fire roaring in the fire place in the drawing room began to warm all around him.
As soon as his eyes shut and sleep took over a white flash blared in Jamison's mind and the visions began again.
This time in dream form.
Jamison awoke in his dream standing on a cloudy moody night on the lands of Collinwood. He could smell the sea as if it were just under his nose. He could feel the freezing ocean air brush up on his rosy cheeks like the icy breath of the unknown. Just off into the distance in the forest that stood before him Jaimson could see to figures quickly darting into the woods.
He followed.
As he got closer and closer it made out the figures and saw what they were doing. They were digging.
"Who's there?" Jamison yelled towards the sound of digging as he began to make his way into the misty woods. "I ask you again, who goes there?!"
As Jamison's patent leather shoes carefully made its way through the wet soggy ground and through the brush the digging got louder and louder, dirt falling to the ground in large fluffy clumps. He continued to hear it non stop even after he asked the person digging to name themselves. Unsuccessfully.
Jamison continued to come closer and closer in his foggy dream and finally came across a clearing within the forest and saw a man in all black digging.
"You there! What are you doing? Who are you?" Jamison asked of the man in black.
The man, who's back was turned to Jamison, stopped digging and lifted his head and slowly turned in the direction of Jamison's voice. The night, fog and darkness within the trees obscured the face of the man blocking his identity from Jamison's view.
"I'll ask you one more time, who are you? This is my land and you..." Jamison began as the man in black turned completely around, shovel in hand and lunged at Jamison. Jamison screamed and turned quickly blocking his face and falling to the ground cowering in fear as the man in black suddenly burst into what seemed like hundreds of bats that sprayed across the tops of the tress of the forest.
Jamison's breathing swallowed and he opened his eyes. He was still in his dream. Once he got up from the ground he went forward to where the man in black was. There were leaves stuck to his clothes, dirt marked his face and over his lips where he fell. He was terrified and cursed the minute he fell asleep. As he stepped forwards, there, in front of him was an open grave bare and gaping, its edges covered in the autumn leaves that had fallen from above.
Jamison hesitated but knew he had to look inside. Something deep inside him told him to look into the grave.
"What is it." He whispered to himself.
He slowly peered his head over, a chilly breeze blew away the fog above the mouth of the grave and inside was the body of Jaqueleen Walsh. Cold and dead, her skin a pale translucent grey, her mouth slightly open with a small beetle crawling out.
Jamison screamed a loud and blood boiling scream that immediately woke him from his sleep in the drawling room inside Collinwood.
He took a few breaths and grabbed the half empty cup filled with brandy then got up from the chair and looked up at the portrait of Barnabas Collins that hung in the foyer.
"He is this darkness. I have to stop him." Jamison said.
Jamison quickly grabbed a letter opener from the top of a cherry wood writing desk that sat at the end of the drawing room table and dashed up the stairs to find Barnabas Collins ...and kill him.
Jamison went down the hall he opened every guest room door as he past. The rooms were all empty but that did not detour him. He continued to search for Barnabas. All he wanted to do was end the curse that he knew Barnabas was the key to. As he opened the doors to the darkened rooms, he saw from the corner of his eye a bright light beam come from the end of the long hallway. The light came in a quick flash from under a door, hid bedroom door.
"Catherine." Jamison said as he noticed it came from where his wife was in there sleeping.
Jamison abandoned the search for Barnabas and quickly dashed down the hall to the bedroom he shared with his wife and pushed the door open to investigate the bright flash of light he saw.
Catherine was standing at her window in her nightgown staring out on to the sea.
"Darling, are you ok? I saw something ...some kind of a light. What was it?" Jamison asked walking over to his wife the letter opener still in his hand, sharp and ready to cut Barnabas' throat.
"What? Oh...yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine, I just couldn't sleep." Catherine said as she pulled a silky robe from her chair to cover herself.
"What was that light?" He questioned.
"There was no light." She answered.
Jamison looked at her, he wasn't sure she was telling the truth but wasn't sure he even really saw a light in the first place. His mind after all, was scattered and stressed.
"Are you sure you're ok? I have a bad feeling about tonight. I know you think I'm too superstitious but, honey I feel like something is about to happen. Something wicked." Jamison said as he put his hands on her shoulders.
"Yes! I'm fine. Like I said just couldn't get to sleep. But I'm fine. You should try to get some sleep too, the rest will help wit the stress." Catherine said in a frustrated voice.
"You're right." Jamison answered.
"What are you doing with that letter opener? " Catherine asked noticing the refection of the candle light in the knife.
"Nothing, nothing. I just thought I heard something downstairs before I came in here. Something strange, I guess it goes with my paranoia." Jamison laughed. " I'll leave you to sleep now. I'll be back up in a little bit, just going to check up on Elizabeth. I'll be right back." Jamison said fibbing.
Once Jamison closed the door to his room, Catherine took a deep breath and sat back on her bed. She felt relieved he was gone. She felt the anxiety slowly dissolve out of her body but knew it would return, because deep inside of her she was no longer Catherine Collins.
Ezrabette's spell had worked.
Catherine walked over to a mirror and looked in. The reflection looking back at her was Kat Banning from 2016.
****
In the dark of the night Barnabas and Vickie made their way through the forest just outside of Collinwood, Vickie led them into the forest with a lantern and a shovel and Barnabas carried the body of Jacqueleen Walsh.
The made their way slowly and cautiously through the night until the made it to an opening in the forest. A small area that was mostly grass and leaves.
"Here. We'll do it here." Barnabas said.
Vickie put down the lantern on a log and Barnabas put down Jacqueleen's body and grabbed the shovel from Vickie's hands.
He began to dig slowly and meticulously into the cold hard earth creating a small grave for his victim.
"Why did you have to do this? Why did you have to take her life?" Vickie said tears in her eyes and shivering in the cold.
"Victoria, you of all people know that this is the last thing I want to do. But I had no choice. There is a nature inside of me that comes like the night; dark and cold and I cannot control it. Jacqueleen was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Think of her as a martyr. Because he life was taken, other's will be spared." Barnabas explained.
"It's sick. You're sick." Vickie said in a hushed tone.
"I wouldn't expect you to think anything else of me. You're mortal. You understand the world through the eyes of someone who has never seen the other side ...the side behind the veil." Barnabas said.
"But haven't I? You took me there more times than I care to remember Barnabas. You took me behind the veil and I almost died as a result. For almost 50 years I did everything in my power to stop those like you only to realize that it was all a lie. And now, because of my failure Jacqueleen is dead." Vickie said in tears.
"Victoria that's enough. We can't go through this argument again. We have to figure out what we are going to tell the family once they realize Jacqueleen is gone." Barnabas said grabbing hold of Vickie's shoulders to bring her back to the case at hand.
"Hide. You have to hide. In the basement, in the old house where ever but you cannot come back to the main house at Collinwood. I'll say that you and Jacqueleen ran off together to New York, you've both fallen in love and that I caught you two together." Vickie answered.
"Do you think they'll believe it?" Barnabas questioned.
"They'll have to. They'll be no other evidence to prove otherwise. Now.....put her in the grave and.....lets go. I have to hide her things once I get back" Vickie said as her words became difficult to leave her mouth.
"Love....the most dangerous emotion in all humanity. Men have gone to war for love, lost their lives for love and all I can seem to do is cause the opposite. The ones I love die and I remain. A stone relic of what I was, poisoned and cursed to be on this earth, in one for or another forced to watch how love will forever allude me." Barnabas said, his breath coming from his mouth like a tiny clouds of icy cold air.
Vickie wrapped her arms around herself shielding herself from the bitter Collinwood autumn air. She walked up to Barnabas and looked him in the eye. She could see there was still a small put of humanity in him even if she wanted to believe it was all fake, a sort of act that he would put on just to confuse those of the living world.
"I want to believe you. I really do, Barnabas, but there's always a way out of this place. And you know how to make sure you'd stop the suffering and break the curse. But you know deep inside, you cannot. Your grasp on this place is stronger than any love the world as ever seen." Vickie responded.
Barnabas lifted an eye brown, astonished at Vickie's candor.
Barnabas turned slowly and carefully put Jacqueleen in the grave he had just dug. As she lay there silently in death, dirt from Barnabas' shovel began to fall on top of her white flowing gown that was delicately beaded with pearls across the shoulders and down the back.
Once Jacqueleen had been covered completely Vickie and Barnabas grabbed the shovel and lantern and made their way back to Collinwood where Barnabas would hide in the dilapidated old house of 1920 and Vickie would go into Jacqueleen's room and hide some of her clothes creating the lie that she had run off with Barnabas, like to fools in love.
Down in a cold dark grave, the dirt clung to Jacqueleen's white dress wet and heavy. Her body lay with its arms across her chest.
And suddenly like the flick of a wrist, Jacqueleen's eyes opened.
And suddenly like the flick of a wrist, Jacqueleen's eyes opened.