Series 7/Chapter 2: RAVAGES OF THE UNCONSCIOUS MIND

It was a sunny pre-spring afternoon. The crisp salty sea air swirled around the hills on the land the great mansion of Collinwood stood on like the sprinkles of pixie dust. The child that lived at the mansion was just waking up from a mid-day nap when his mother Kat came home for a quick visit before returning back to work at the police station.

Kat, dressed in her gray slacks and tight leather jacket cradled baby Canan in a warm rocking chair in the corner of a nautical themed nursery. She looked down at his olive toned skin and his big brown eyes and hummed softy to him, soothing his fussy nature. 

"You're just a lazy guy today, aren't you? You just want to go right back to sleep don't you?" Kat said teasing. "Is auntie Carolyn letting you sleep all day?" She continued.

Kat hummed a song very familiar to her. It was the same song her own mother used to hum to lull her to sleep as a child. It was one of the few vivid memories she had of her mother who died when she and her brother Sebastian were very little. 

Kat hummed a soft renditon of London Bridge just like she remembered her mother singing it to her. She cuddled with Canan until his big brown eyes began to get heavier and heavier and until they were completely closed and he was fast asleep.

As Kat continued to rock her son, the new visitor to Collinwood, Anna Tate, was coming out of her room after taking a long rest herself, the trip to Collinsport took a lot out of her and caused her some great fatigue. As Anna turned the corner from her bedroom door she heard Kat's humming. The song called out to her like a siren in the sea. The soft sound floated in the air in the hallway and filled Anna's ears. She closed her eyes and took in the sweet humming and slowly made her way to the door of Canan's bedroom.

"Oh, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt. I just couldn't resist. I had to see who was humming so soothingly." Anna said in a whisper as to not awaken Canan. "I'm Anna. Carolyn's guest. You must be Detective Banning." She added.

"Oh...Anna, right right. Caleb mentioned Carolyn had someone visiting. Pleased to meet you." Kat in a similar whisper of a voice laying Canan back in his crib.

"He's an angel." Anna said looking down at the baby.

"He really is. He's never a bother." Kat said still glowing over her adorable baby.

Anna looked down at the child, a warm feeling began to grow inside of her like she had seen this crib before. Like she had been in this situation before, looking down at a happy baby boy with big brown eyes laying in a crib. She froze for a second and grabbed on to the rails of the crib with both hands.

Kat broke from her baby-ogling and noticed the sudden change in Anna's facial expression that changed from joy to instant pain.

"Anna? Are you ok? Anna? Anna?" Kat asked, her brow furrowed in concern trying to loosen Anna's fierce gaze on the baby's crib.  

"What? I....oh... uhh, yes, I'm fine. When I got to town I started to feel a little ill, maybe I'm still not 100%. It's nothing." Anna said brushing of her strange moment.

"Are you sure? You look a little flush?" Kat replayed.

"I guess I'm also having a little bit of deja vu. It's weird." Anna said with a slight smirk, but then noticed she may have said too much.

"Really? Do you have kids?" Kat questioned trying to figure out what Anna meant.

"No, No, I mean-- I just meant ...anyway. I'm just tired." Anna stammered. 

As the two women had their conversation the baby slowly opened his eyes and looked up at his mother and Anna talking above him. In his foggy haze of half asleep/half awake Canan broke in an instant tantrum, and for some reason Anna's presence made it much worse.

"Ohhh poor little cabbage. What's the matter?" Kat said reaching down to pick him up again.

The baby was screaming, his eyes were red and tears were streaming down his face like water from a stream but his eyes were fixated directly on Anna.

"He must be so tired." Anna said nervously, noticing the baby wouldn't take his eyes off of her.

"I don't understand, he's had a nap today, he shouldn't be this fussy! Shhh...shhhh it's ok cabbage, it's ok mommy's here." Kat said nuzzling Canan's soggy cheek. 

Anna began to feel uncomfortable. 

"Maybe I should go." Anna suggested.

"Oh it's ok, you don't have to, he's just cranky." Kat replied.

Canan's frustration started to burrow into Anna's mind, his cry was piercing, she started to feel dizzy as his screams got loud and louder echoing in her mind like a seagull circling the open sea, round and round the baby's cry went in her mind, a merry-go-round of sound spinning in her brain. 

"Canan, what's the matter? Shhh, shhhh quiet... its ok." Kat said again tried to console him. 

As Kat tried without success to quiet her baby Anna fell to the floor in a sweaty heap her mind floating off into a white space of memory.

In her unconscious state Anna saw herself in a long soft white coat and white dress walking in a white space, void of objects and physical items. It was just her, alone in the space with just the sound of a crying baby in the distance.

"Where are you?" Anna said looking all around her searching for the crying baby. "Where are you? Please, help me find you! Where can I find you?" Anna said as she began to run further into the white space. 

She ran and she ran and nothing appeared, but the baby's cry persisted. She turned left she turned right in the maze of white nothingness to find the crying child, but to no avail. She looked all around and finally at the end of a long stretch of what seemed like white fog and clouds was a baby's light blue crib.

Anna felt elation, she dashed across the white ground towards the crib, but just as she got close enough to touch the crib and the crying baby inside, it burst into flame. 

The flames began to engulf the crib within seconds. The flames were so hot, Anna could feel her skin blistering. The pain was like being skinned alive. She reached into the flames, and suddenly her whole body absorbed the fire from the crib leaving it as if nothing had ever happened, blue, perfect and un-burned

Anna became the fire and the fire became her. She felt it turn her blood to molten, her bones to red hot pokers. As her body burned with the flames from another time she reached into the crib to grab the baby that was crying but there was no baby.

It was gone.

"MY SON!!!!" Anna, The woman on fire, screamed at the top of her lungs.

"ANNA! ANNA!" Carolyn said slapping Anna's face in Canan's nursery.

"Is she ok?" Kat said walking back into the nursery after taking Canan to a safe place.

"What happened? I, don't feel well." Anna said in a sweaty pulp on the floor.

"Get David, we need him to carry her to her room." Carolyn ordered of Kat.

"David....." Anna said softly. "David." She repeated again with a proud smile then her head fell back and she fainted again.

****

In a wooded area just outside of Collinsport, the mystic Ezrabette Baptiste calmly stroked the fur of her black cat Calpurnia on the porch. Calpurnia's large yellow eyes gleamed up at her owner as she purred with comfort from Ezrabette's neck massage. She stretched herself long on Ezrabette's lap exposing her claws then curled back up into a cozy little black ball.

The warm Maine sun fell on Ezrabette's skin and in her small chair on her cottage's wrap around porch she fell asleep, but her mind would not be at peace for long. 

In her dream state Ezrabette could smell the potent stench of lilac and rose water mixed with the burning of incense. She turned around in an empty room filled with people dressed in black who had their backs turned to her. There were women in long black dresses with thick black veils hiding their faces. The men in long black coats, their faces too blurred by the lack of light in the room.

Ezrabette walked closer to where the people in black were turned to, she walked slowly noticing the dangling crucifix's between the leather gloved hand of one woman, it sparkled and glistened catching Ezrabette's eye. 

She wondered over and the white silk lined coffin open, a body inside, cold yet regal. This was an omen. This was a message. This was a sign. As Ezrabette's eyes moved from the edge of the coffin closer to the face of the person inside she suddenly heard what sounded like the engine of a car. She turned back around and all the people in black, the mourners, were gone just one man remained. 

She looked over at the man who's face was still hidden in the darkness of the room. 

"Who are you?" She said to the man.

All he did was point to the person in the coffin, and as Ezrabette turned back around to the look inside the coffin at the person lying inside the engine of the car got louder and woke her up ....she was back on her sunlit porch at her small cottage in the woods outside Collinsport and there was a car at the end of her long driveway. 

She looked up and saw a man coming down out of the car, a large strong built man. Dark hair, dressed in a dark pants and a white shirt. She stood up from her chair and opened her screen door shooing her cat Carlpurnia back inside. 

This was the moment she had been waiting for for a very long time. The man walking up her walk was Thatcher Banning, Sebastian and Kat's estranged father and Maggie's former abusive husband. A man who turned cruel and viscous during his marriage to Maggie in the late 80s.

Becoming the other dangerous man Maggie would run from forcing her to lock herself at Windcliff Sanitarium and fake her own death there in order to find peace.

Ezrabette swore she would protect Maggie's children from Thatcher, no matter what the cost and she had kept her promise all these years keeping the secret of Maggie being alive. 

"Hello old friend." Thatcher said leaning on Ezrabette's porch banister. 

"What do you want?" Ezrabette said coldly. 

"Is that anyway to great one of your own? It's been a very long time since we've seen each other, I was expecting one of your double cheeked kisses and a warm hug." Thatcher joked.

"I asked you what you wanted. Now tell me." Ezrabette responded even colder.

Thatcher saw that Ezrabette was in no mood for happy reunions, and relented to her demand.

"My son. I haven't heard from him in over three months. Kat isn't returning my phone calls. I'm pretty sure you can tell me where he is." Thatcher replied.

"I have not spoken to Sebastian. I can't speak for Kathryn. You'll do better finding her at work, at the police station." Ezrabette answered.

"Now, Bette, you know I don't do well in police stations. They don't really like me there." He joked.

"Leave those kids alone. They don't deserve a father like you." Ezrabette said.

"Now what does that mean? Do you think I haven't had any contact with them? At all? All this time? Come on now Bette. They're my kids. Of course I've reached out to them. And they're adults, they can call me if they want. Nothing you can do about that now either." Thatcher said.

"You've been gone all these years. Do really think you can call yourself a father?" Ezrabette asked.

"Maybe its too late for fatherhood. But I got a new grandson. Didn't think I knew that one huh? You're the psychic, doll, you should have know I knew of little Canan. I'm going to be there for my kids now...and my grandkid." Thatcher said to Ezrabette's anger.

"You're right, I can see things. And what I see for you is no good, mon cher. It's not good at all." Ezrabette warned.

Thather rolled his eyes and looked off into the distance with annoyance.

"I expected some of your voodoo hocous pocus but I was hoping it'd be better than that." He answered sarcastically.

"Don't tempt me." She hissed.

 "If you see my daughter, please ask her where my son is, won't you? I know you'd do that for me." Thatcher added turning back around towards his car. But there was something different about Ezrabette that he noticed. Something strange as if she wanted to tell him something but could not say it. He could sense it in her. He could sense that she was holding back. He squinted in suspicion and took a few steps up onto the porch and got close to her. 

"What is it Bette? Hmm? What's this feeling I'm getting from you, eh? There's something....something you're not saying isn't there?" He questioned.

"You should leave. Leave now." Ezrabette said stepping away from him.

Thatcher nodded, and stepped back down onto the walkway and began his short trip back to his car, but kept his head turned towards Ezrabette on the porch. 

"I'm back in town Bette....so I'll be around." He said with a sly grin as he started the car's engine and drove off.

Ezrabette had a sinking feeling her dream, the omen, was a warning that some sort of death was near and the fact that Thatcher appeared at her door steps moments after she received this message was no coincidence. Her heart began to beat in her chest like a drum, it thumped and pounded against her sternum. She had to get a hold of Maggie, Maggie had to know of Thatcher's return.

Thatcher's car was now just a spec, a dot in the distance and Ezrabette dashed inside in time with the beat of her own heart. She blasted through the screen door terrifying Calpurnia who was sleeping on top of the back of the sofa. She rushed past the cat and grabbed her phone and dialed a phone number that was written on a small slip of paper on her dining room table that read "new mobile". 

"Margaret? Margaret, it's Ezrabette. Where are you?" She asked Maggie frantically.  "Your father's old cottage, good. Stay there. Do not leave. Something has happened...... It's Thatcher.....he's returned." 

**SINGAPORE**

Dr. Siobhan Morgan looked over the costumes paper work Mr. Chow, the costumes agent, left at her desk. After seeing the exhumed remains of Dr. Hoffman, Siobhan's mother, Mr. Chow did not stick around to take the signed paper work with him. He left her a stamped envelope...and rushed away.

Later Siobhan sat at her desk filling out the rest of the form to take the coffin back to Collinsport where her mother would be layed to rest again at Eagle Hill Cemetery when there was a knock on her office door.

"Come in." She said to the caller. 

As the door opened, Siobhan's face lit up, a smile from ear to ear.

"Come in! Come in! Sit down." She said rushing over to help the person in to her office. "How are you feeling this evening?" she questioned.

The white haired man, old and frail walked in with a cane and puttered over to one of the fluffy chairs Siobhan had in her office. He looked around and noticed all the paperwork on her desk and shook his head.

"I know, you always tell me I work too much, but I have to make sure we have all this ready for the trip tomorrow morning. How are you feeling about going back to Collinsport?" She asked with a soft smile.

The old man smiled too and muttered out in a breathy small voice "nervous."

"I wouldn't be. You haven't been back in so many years, I think you'll be well received, after all it's your home too, you're whole family will be so excited to see you." Siobhan responded.

The old man had been in Singapore for over 40 years, he had made this place, in the far east his home and had been here ever since he left Collinsport. His departure from America was under great duress, however. It was almost a self imposed exile, but he didn't travel alone; no the man came here with the woman in the coffin. The woman who died in the late 80s, he came here with Dr. Julia Hoffman in the beginning of 1972 and had been here ever since.

"Have you made any contact with anyone back at home?" Siobhan wondered.

The man shook  his head.

"And why not? I'm sure they'd love to hear from you. It's been so long." She replied.

The old man, now in his 90s,  took a deep breath and spoke again. "Not so long." He whispered.

"What do you mean?" Dr. Siobhan Morgan asked.

The man just shook his head again, knowing the explanation he carried in his mind was too difficult and complex to speak out loud at this point. Siobhan, of course, only knew pieces of the old man's past, most of his life was shrouded in secrecy or was covered up. That's how he and Julia preferred to keep his past.

"Well dad," she said sitting on the arm of the chair he was in, "I can understand you're nerves but trust me. Whatever happens in the next few days will be worth it. Your family will love you no matter what and now that you're so advanced in your age, I'm sure they'll be thrilled to have you home. Where you've always belonged, and mom too." Siobhan said to the old man with white hair, her father.

The man with the white hair and cane looked up proudly at the daughter he fathered with Julia Hoffman, and patted her knee.

"I have cook bringing in some dinner for us before you're off to bed, so let me take this so that we can set up a nice little table for us to eat around you here." Siobhan said, kindly moving the old man's cane to make him more comfortable.

She walked directly across from the man in his chair and hung the cane from the small wooden arm the stuck out from the overstuffed sofa in her office. And there hanging in brilliantly in the evening light and hooked on to the arm of the sofa with it's silver wolf faced handle was the cane of Barnabas Collins.