In the drawing room, the family gathered but there was a strain in the room. Detective Loomis McGovern had finally come at his partner Kat's request about the kidnapping of her new baby and the disappearance of her brother Sebastian who went missing at the same as the kidnapping.
Carolyn sat nervously while Kat filled Loomis in on all the details, but deep down she knew that the police could not be involved, especially if Barnabas had plans to take on Vickie. She would have to make sure Loomis stayed off of Victoria's trail so that Barnabas could handle the situation as he wished.
"And you didn't see Sebastian come in and take the baby?" Loomis asked trying to connect the two missing people to a tearful and worried Kat.
"No, when I went into labor he went out to get the car and then never came back. When I fell asleep he must of come back for the baby, but I don't know why. I don't know whats going on with him." Kat answered as Kimberly tried to comfort her.
"The last time you and I spoke you mentioned you felt something was going on with him. You said that he might be keeping something from you. Did he act strangely again?" Loomis continued to probe.
"Loomis, I think it's time we let Kat rest, don't you? I'm sure the police are doing all the can; can't we pick this up later in the day?" Carolyn said trying to get rid of Loomis.
"Are you serious right now?" Loomis asked as he and Kat looked at Carolyn like she was crazy.
"I insist. If Sebastian was in any way involved with the kidnapping, I'ms sure has't gone far and Kat really needs to rest, she just gave birth! Kimberly hasn't even had time to examine her fully." Carolyn continued.
"I'm sure Dr. Collins can do that after I get all the information I need, isnt that right?" Loomis asked Kim.
"Well..." Kim began before being interrupted by Carolyn again.
"Detective. I don't want to be rude. But again, I insist, Kat needs to rest. Please come back later." Carolyn said sternly.
"It's fine Loo, Carolyn's cousin Barnabas is out looking for them too, maybe you can catch up to him and see if he's found anything." Kat said to a stunned room.
"Barnabas?" Loomis asked suspiciously. "Is he in law enforcement? I'm confused...why would he be out looking?" the detective continued.
"Detective, I'd really like Kat to get some rest. She's had a very traumatic night it would be really be better if you came back. You have enough information don't you?" Kimberly asked, picking up where Carolyn left off.
Loomis looked over at his detective partner Kat who had her head buried in Alex's lap and in tears. He noticed that she was very distraught and felt felt that he needed to go.
But Loomis' gut was telling him there was more to the story, as there always was when a Collins was involved, but there was nothing he could do. Carolyn and Kimberly were adamant on his departure.
"I'll put an A.P.B out and an Amber Alert. As soon as I hear anything I'll call you." Loomis said as he looked at each family member.
As soon as Loomis closed the front door to the house, Carolyn let Kat in on what was happening.: they were buying Barnabas time to get to Vickie before any law enforcement got involved.
"I'm sorry, Kat, I had to make sure Loomis was gone." Carolyn said making sure the coast was clear. "I know that all of this seems insane, but Barnabas went after the person who took the baby." Carolyn explained.
"Sebastian? Was it my brother?" Kat asked as she sat up on the sofa.
"No, darling it wasn't your brother. Alexandra and I saw last night Victoria Winters leave with the baby. We interrupted her in the moment but we weren't able to stop her." Carolyn continued to explain.
"Victoria?! Who is that? What does she want with my baby?" Kat asked confused.
"Vickie is an old family ....well, Vickie is my estranged sister; and for some reason she believes taking your baby will settle a score between her and the family. I'm so sorry darling we should have told you.... the baby is with her.
"Why would your cousin go after her?" Kat asked still trying to piece the story together.
"They have a long-long-history and we cannot involve the police if we're going to get the baby back safe." Carolyn continued.
"I don't understand any of this!" Kat said jolting up and going towards the window that stared out into darkness, the sea air flowing in from the open window and brushing up in her hair. "If Vickie took my baby, then where's my brother? Where is Sebastian?" She added.
"Oh, Kat I wish we had all the answers." A consoling Kimberly said.
"Barnabas....can we trust him?" Kat asked of the family.
David and Carolyn, who knew Barnabas the longest confirmed that, yes, Barnabas was a trust worthy member of the family despite knowing what they knew about him.
Kat then looked over at Kimberly, a former member of Vickie's made up Organization, a woman who had centered almost her whole life's work into infiltrating the family by marrying David and using all the information she gathered against them had second thoughts. All Kim was taught about Barnabas and those like him was to never trust them, never love them, and make sure they never had a chance to corrupt another living soul.
Kim's heart was beating fast. Her years and years of working and training with this so called organization burned inside her and all she wanted to do was tell Kat to grab her things and save herself from the clutches of the Collins family...a family she was herself a part of. But with all her might, Kim kept her composure and grabbed Kat's hand.
"There's more more...Vickie faked Caleb's death. She had him this whole time." Kimberly added to the mix.
"What?...... Caleb's alive?? Where is he??" Kat screeched at Kim for more details.
"He's in my laboratory resting. It's been a long night for everyone." Kim explained.
"I want to see him! I need to see him!" Kat screamed.
Kim nodded in agreement and grabbed Kat's hand and carefully walked her to the laboratory to see Caleb who, from all Kim knew, was still fighting off his restraints. Kim had no idea what state Caleb would be in when Kat got there, but she knew she could not keep them apart any longer.
As they came to the laboratory door that once belonged to Dr. Julia Hoffman, Kim turned and stood in Kat's way and grabbed her shoulders.
"Now listen, he's been through a lot. There is a lot of mental trauma and brainwashing that has occurred and we're working on reversing it, he may not respond to you all that well. Also, Christopher is in there too. He had ....an episode last night. So just be prepared." Kim warned.
"An episode? What do you mean?" Kat questioned.
Kim took a break and knew she couldn't lay any more on Kat, she was going through enough. Telling her Christopher was a werewolf might just throw her over the edge of hysteria. Another lie had to be spun.
"Well, he has epilepsy and sometimes he has these violent episodes. It's something we're taking care of. That's all." Kat said twisting the truth.
As the walked into the lab, Alex was watching over a sleeping Christopher who was in a cage now in his human form, still sleeping after he dragged off Sebastian to parts unknown that same night when he was in wolf form. Alex comforted her sedated boyfriend while caring for her own bruises from the tussle with Victoria just hours early.
David was standing over a woozy Caleb and ushered Kat over his bedside with a warm smile.
Kat's eyes were bombarded by confusing images of cages, dart guns and medical equipment as she looked around the lab. Why was Chris in a cage if he just had epilepsy? But none of that really mattered because tied to a bed was the love of her life, the father of her new born son and the man she thought had died in a plane crash.
Kat rushed over to him and collapsed at his side burring her face in his chest. Her tears ran down her face, the happiness, the saddens had all taken it's toll on her to the point it even effected David and Kimberly who comforted each other at the site of such love.
Even after their own ugly divorce, David and Kim still felt love for each other, and seeing their son and his girlfriend so much in love, warmed their hearts.
"I know your face. I saw it. I saw it over and over again. I know your face." Caleb whispered.
"It's me, It's Kat." Kat whispered back as she grabbed his face as if to feel he was real.
"Kat." Caleb repeated knowing the name was right.
"I thought you were gone forever. I thought we'd never see you again, but you're back. And I will never ever let you go again." Kat cried.
"Kat. I love Kat." Caleb answered and smiled as his mind began to connect the dots.
****
Meanwhile, through the foggy mists of the shore and as the sky remained in its purple pre-dawn haze, Father Joseph slowly walked up to Seaview house, the former Collin's seaside residence that was Willed to Victoria by Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard.Father Joseph knew that he was solely responsible for all of Vickie's actions thanks to his fabricating the death of Vickie's "real parents" and the creating the biggest lie of them all: the make-believe Organization of hunters of the undead. All of it a rouse he created just to get Vickie back into Collinwood so that she could be with Elizabeth, her real birth mother.
Father Joseph, had no idea it would have gone this far and had never expected the myths and fables of the secrets of the Collins family to be true.
But they were, and Vickie had been battling them for over 50 years under the guise she was battling them for a cause. She wasn't.
Now, as he stood at the door of Seaview he was going to end it. He was going to tell Vickie the truth: He was her father, and Elizabeth was her mother. Vickie was conceived by virtue of love, but under a circumstance neither Elizabeth nor Joseph could foresee. He was a priest, and Elizabeth was betrothed to Paul Stoddard.
With this information revealed to his biological daughter, Father Joseph was going to make Vickie stop what she was doing and rightfully join her family. He had to do it, for Elizabeth's sake, for Vickie's sake, and for his own moral conscious.
Father Joseph turned the door knob and was surprised that it was unlocked. He pushed the wooden door open that had been battered by years of salty ocean winds and slowly walked into the front room that was just as Elizabeth had left it. Comfortable. Clean. Welcoming.
He continued on his way and turned down a narrow hallway the lead him to a kitchen where Victoria was standing holding a baby and feeding it with a bottle.
She looked up and saw the priest and quickly pulled a gun from an open kitchen counter drawer.
"Who are you? What do you want?" Vickie said with one arm holding Kat and Caleb's baby the other extended pointing a gun.
"Victoria don't you remember my face? I came to you many years ago while you were in New York. I told you about your family. Do you remember?" Father Joseph said raising his hands in the air.
Victoria squinted and suddenly the tiny blue eyes on the man in front of her were the same tiny blue eyes of one of the men she remembered who came to her to tell her about The Organization and how she could help them. He was the first man who showed her the photo of the painting of Barnabas Collins who Vickie wouldn't meet until a full year after she was David's Governess.
"You're with The Organization. What are you doing here?" Vickie said putting the gun down.
"No, I'm not. Vickie there is no Organization. I'm sorry. It was all a lie. I've come here to confess this...to tell you that it was all lie and that your birth parents were never killed by some malevolent make-believe being the Collins family was hiding. I made it all up! It should have never gotten this far." Father Joseph quickly confessed.
"What? What are you talking about? How could it all have been a lie? The things I saw and experienced were real. The torture I went through 50 years ago...none of that was a lie." Vickie demanded.
"No Vickie, it was....I was hiding a secret ...I made it all up to conceal the truth. Your mother and I wanted to make sure our daughter was close but without a story, a sort of reasoning for you to come to Collinsport I didn't know how I could get you back. It's all my fault." Father Joseph answered.
"My mother? Did you know my parents?" She questioned.
"Yes. Elizabeth was your mother Victoria, and I am your father. We had an affair shortly after she became engaged to Paul Stoddard and after I joined the seminary. My name is Father Joseph Helsing. You are my daughter." Father Joseph continued to confess.
"NO! That's not true! You told me the Collins family was responsible for my birth parents death. That they had everything to do with it, now you're saying you made it all up? Everything I have done has been for nothing??" Vickie questioned in a loud voice as she cradled the baby.
"It's true Victoria. Everything has been for nothing." A voice said from behind Father Joseph.
Standing behind him, dressed in his signature black pea-coat and cane was Barnabas. He was there to return the baby and right the wrongs of so many things Vickie had done.
Vickie raised her gun again and pointed it at Barnabas but she knew that she didn't have silver bullets. Nothing in that gun would take down Barnabas and he knew it too. His mind was linked to her's like a laser. He knew her thoughts and could feel her pulse beginning to race. He stepped forward and slowly crossed Father Joseph who instantly recognized him from the portrait he once showed Vickie.
A portrait of a man he believed to be long dead, a portrait of a man the people of Collinsport believed lived among them almost 50 years ago as a man of the shadows, a man of the darkness. A vampire!
"Dear God, it's you. YOU'RE ALIVE?" Father Joseph explained.
"That's right, this is the demon I thought you were warning me about 50 years ago. Go on, show him your crucifix." Vickie instructed the priest.
Father Joseph looked at Vickie in total confusion. He pulled out the cross from around his neck slowly and pointed it at Barnabas who quickly hissed and pulled the corner of his coat over his face. The bright sparkle of the cross shined so bright in his eyes it seemed to burn.
"Dear god!" Father Joseph yelled.
Barnabas, still covering his face dashed over and started to pull the now crying baby from Vickie's arms. In the struggle the baby bottle fell to the floor breaking open and spilling the whitest milk all over the small kitchen floor.
Father Joseph stood in shock and awe at what he was witnessing. All these years he believed the fables of the Collins family were all just small town gossip but now in his heart he could feel the ungodliness in the room floating around them like the heavy mist of the sea.
"Help! He can't take this baby back!" Victoria yelled at her birth father.
Father Joseph quickly ran over and grabbed on to the baby that was now in a tug of war between Barnabas and Vickie, Barnabas opened his mouth revealing his fangs. He hissed and turned his head and snapped at Father Joseph who screamed and fell to the floor in utter terror of the site.
In his struggle, Barnabas somehow lost grasp of the baby who was utterly hysterical. Vickie then pushed Barnabas aside and dashed out of the room. Her plan wasn't to leave with the baby at day-break to a place no one would find. She could no longer wait.
They were waiting for her on the other side.
****
The morning sky was still dark and the manager of the Blue Whale was just coming in to start his shift. He walked up to the back door and slowly turned his key. He stepped in and turned on the lights and watched them as they flickered one by one on the ceiling. He walked over to the back of the bar and put his things down.
He began his morning prep of the bar for the early morning fisherman who would be coming in for before their next trip out to sea for the next big catch. He started the coffee machines, wiped down the tables. Suddenly there was a knock at the main entrance.
"Who the hell could that be?" He said as he threw his cleaning rag over his shoulder.
He went over to the front door and lifted the shade then unlocked the door and opened it.
Standing there was a handsome man with a short beard and tight dark beard with a full head of thick brown hair. The man turned, shivering in the pre-dawn chilly Collinsport air. He threw a cigarette from his mouth and to the street.
"Hi-ya!" the handsome man said.
"Mornin', listen we don't open 'for another 2 hours." The manager of The Blue Whale said.
"Oh! Shoot, sorry about that, I'm kinna knew around here. I didn't really know. Mind if I come in and keep you company? Just until you open?" The man said.
The manager thought this was odd but given the stranger's kind face, he let him in.
"Just don't tell anyone will ya? I don't want a rumor going on around town saying I'm a softy for a shivering stranger." The Bar's manager joked. "So, just passing through or sticking around?" He continued as he cleaned a fresh coffee mug up for the stranger..
"That all depends really. I'm looking for someone that I think might be in town." The stranger said.
"Oh? Well they're aint anybody in this town I haven't seen at least once. Who ya lookin for?" The bartender asked as he poured a the hot coffee into the white mug.
"Well, that's just it, I don't really know if she's here. It's a possibility. She used to live here for many years but went away....anyway, I thought maybe I'd look for her here, in Collinsport, before I went anywhere else." The stranger explained.
"Oh? Come on now! Don't be coy...like I said I've seen and heard it all. Who ya lookin for?" The bar manager asked again.
"My mother. Maggie Evans, have you seen her?" The stranger asked to a shocked bar manager who hadn't heard Maggie's name after she supposedly died at Windcliff Sanitarium.
No one in Collinsport had known that Maggie had faked her death by switching identities with another patient that died at the sanitarium.
At hearing Maggie's ghostly name the bartender dropped the other glass he was cleaning to the floor shattering it. He reached down and picked up some of the shards and looked up at the stranger with a face that was pale and cold looking.
"Are you ok?" The stranger asked noting the bartender's sudden change in appearance and behavior.
"Son, I think you're looking in the wrong place." The bartender responded cryptically
The bartender then placed the broken pieces of mug down and grabbed a pen and a cocktail napkin from behind the bar and drew three straight lines that intersected and one long winding and curved line that led to the far corner of the napkin. At the end of the long curvy line he placed the letter C in a circle and slid the napkin over to the stranger.
"Here, take this. It's a map. The people at the end of that map, right there, where that letter is, they'll know all about your mom." The bartender explained.
"I don't understand, where does this take me?" the stranger asked.
"It takes you to Collinwood."
****
Back at Seaview cottage Barnabas chased Vickie into a room that she had locked. He pounded and pushed his body to open the door.
"Leave her!!!" Father Joseph screamed.
Barnabas turned back to the sound of Joseph's voice and instantly regretted it. The priest was standing directly behind him holding out the crucifix directly in Barnabas' face.
Barnabas yelled a pain an inhuman scream and instantly fell to the floor covering his eyes, the feeling of a deep burn tearing at his corneas.
Joseph continued to hold the cross over Barnabas with his right hand, and with his left shoulder pushed and pounded on the door Vickie was behind, eventually gaining access and what he saw in that room would change him as a man of the cloth forever.
The room was ice cold with ice hanging from every corner. As Joseph looked into the room in horror his heavy breath could be seen floating in the icy room like the steam of a locomotive.
There standing before a giant time vortex of white and blue light swirling in cold air in the center of the room coming from the small oracle from Vickie's Ouija board. The same board that a only a few weeks ago she contacted someone or something on the other side.
Her plan was to jump through the vortex that would instantly plunge her into a different time saving the baby from what she thought would be a life of terror and pain at the hands of the Collins family and their ties to the supernatural, thus once again shifting through time and dropping them safely somewhere Barnabas or anyone else could ever get to them.
Vickie, after all, was no stranger to time travel. She had been subjected to it's perils many times in her past.
"Victoria!!!" The priest screamed at Vickie as she and the baby inched closer and closer to opening time channel vortex.
The powerful winds swirled around yanking at Vickie's hair and clothes. The room began to feel like a giant frozen vacuum pulling papers and thing that weren't held down into the vortex with Vickie and the baby.
"This child must never know the life of a Collins. I have to keep it safe." Vickie said as she turned slowly around to Father Joseph.
"Vickie no!" Father Joseph screamed as he saw Vickie slowly go closer and closer into the swirling pool of light and suddenly get swallowed up entirely.
Father Joseph braced himself against the door frame. He could now only see the outline of Vickie and the baby get smaller and smaller as the opening of the vortex which began to contract and get smaller and smaller closing the time portal to the other side.
As the portal began to close, Barnabas got up, still writhing in pain from the Priest's crucifix. He pushed Joseph aside and ran towards the opening. It was closing quickly and if Barnabas was going to keep his promise to the family and save the baby, he had to get into that portal too.
The portal began to shut faster and faster. Barnabas made two quick skips and jumped into the vortex following Vickie and the baby milliseconds before it closed leaving the room dark, cold and in a total icy disarray.
Father Joseph stood at the door way, his hands clutching his crucifix so tight that it broke the skin in the palm of his hands. His mind could not compute and process what he had just witnessed. He stood there, alone, in shear disbelief.
Vickie, the baby and Barnabas were gone.
