Kat was the first to come to on the floor. She shook her head dizzy with the drop to the ground after what had just happened. She shook Caleb's body to wake him and he bounced up.
"What happened?" He said drowsily.
"Canan!" Kat exclaimed as the baby's cries continued. She quickly made her way up the great staircase and dashed down the hall to his room.
One by one the Collins family members and their friends woke up and dusted themselves off from the explosion.
Even though the felt the tremors and force of power that came from Barnabas crushing the powerful locket around Anna's neck, everything in the drawing room and in the foyer and the even the whole house was miraculously untouched and undamaged.
Anna's implosion had not destroyed the mansion, to the family's surprise it was in fact, in tact.
Carolyn adjusted her clothes and rushed into the drawing room as her memory of the moments before slowly crept into her mind. All she could think of was what Barnabas had done. He saved them. But where was he?
"Barnabas!!!" Carolyn exclaimed as she realized he wasn't with them.
"Carolyn! Wait!" David said grabbing her hand as Carolyn darted into the closed off drawing room from the foyer.
The group followed, but the room was empty. There was no Anna. No Jacqueleen.
And no Barnabas Collins.
"Where are they? Where's Anna???" Sebastian said in a panic running into the room searching all around.
"It's like the vortex around Laura sucked them in. Just like that, gone." David remarked.
"How can that be? Where'd they go?" Siobhan asked David who shrugged his shoulders.
"They can't just be gone, not just like that sucked into God knows where. They were just here. They were just here!" Carolyn said confused and looking around the room with Sebastian.
"Calm down, calm down." David said patting Carolyn on the shoulders.
Maggie walked over to the door where Kat was entering with her baby. Their eyes met with tears. It was the first time Maggie had seen her grandson. Maggie smiled and extended her arms. Kat smiled and passed the baby off to her mother.
"He's an angel." Maggie said in a whisper.
"Is he ok?" Caleb asked as he rushed over to wife and child. Kat nodded he was.
"He's just an angel." Maggie repeated.
"There's literally no sign of them. They're gone like a puff of smoke, almost like they were never her in the first place." Loomis said examining the widows to see if they had perhaps made a quick escape.
"Whatever my mother's control over Anna was, it seems to have ended. Barnabas must have done something when he closed the door that interrupted with the flow of my mother's energy and caused it to collapse on itself. The vortex must have imploded and taken them all with it." David said trying to piece together what had happened.
"Barnabas basically shut the flow of power off...he stopped it from destroying us all." Loomis concluded.
"So they're just gone? Anna too?" Sebastian asked, tears welling in his eyes.
"They're gone." David confirmed to gasps of sadness from Carolyn and Siobhan.
"I don't sense him. I don't feel my father anymore. You know we've always had such a strong connection. And I don't know, something is different. I don't feel that anymore." Siobhan said as Carolyn came to her side..
"I don't want this feeling to end. I never want this feeling to end." Maggie said to Kat the other end of the room while holding her grandson Canan.
"Why don't we take him upstairs. He's probably hungry." Kat said as she and her mother Maggie walked together up the stairs.
"Are you ok?" Carolyn asked Sebastian who was staring out of the drawing room window.
"I never got to say goodbye to Anna, I never got to live my life with her, or experience the good things that come with a new love. How can this have happened?" He asked her in a sad voice.
"I don't know Sebastian, I can't answer that. Whatever happened when that door closed..." Carolyn said not knowing how to finish her statement.
"I thought I had finally found it Carolyn...I thought it was real. She promised me. She promised we'd be together after all of this." Sebastian lamented.
"Found what?" Carolyn questioned.
Sebastian paused and looked over at the matriarch of the Collins family and simply said one word
"....love."
****
The day progressed and things became calmer around the great mansion. In a small bight, naturally lit room just off the kitchen, a room the family called the tea room, David and Siobhan snuggled on a sofa.
"Will you stay?" David asked.
"What do you mean? I have a lot of work to do now that I'm in charge of Windcliff. Why would you ask that?" She asked.
"Your father is gone, I just thought maybe you'd go now too, people have a funny way of coming in and out of my life in rather strange fashions, I just thought...." David said before being interrupted by Siobhan.
"You thought I'd do the same. Well I can tell you that I am not going to do that. As of right now, David Collins, I'm not going anywhere. This is my father's most beloved place and I want to feel close to him forever....I'm not leaving. Being here at Collinwood will make my loss better. There's nothing more I want then to be apart of this family and here, where my father would have wanted me to be.....of course, if you'll have me." She said with a grin.
David smiled back and planted a deep romantic kiss on Siobhan's pouty pink lips. He kissed her like she had never kissed anyone before. She made him feel like no one had ever made him feel.
For David and Siobhan. This was the real deal.
****
Later that night, Maggie and Carolyn sat in the drawing room together. Finally a calm moment of time for the two friends to re-connect. The days of darkness and curses oddly seemed like a far off memory. It had been decades since they had felt this way. The quietness. The sereneness of the house felt strange and alien to them.
"I don't know if I can get used to this, can you?" Maggie joked as she sipped her tea.
"What do you mean?" Carolyn giggled.
"Normal. What in the world is normal? Is it this? I don't even know if I've ever felt it before." Maggie asked.
"It's something like this. How's Sebastian?" Carolyn questioned.
"Sleeping. He's been through so much. Loomis is going to make sure the D.A. doesn't bring up charges for what happened. He asked that that be the last favor the Collins family ever asks of him." Maggie said again with silly grin.
"If only." Carolyn said as she opened up the French doors of the drawing room letting in the fresh sea air from the crashing waves on Widow's Hill.
"I keep hearing little bits of conversation from everyone in the house, and I wondered if maybe you had any idea....do you think he's really gone?" Maggie asked.
"Do I think Barnabas is gone? For good? Maggie, I learned a long, long, long time ago that Barnabas Collins isn't just a man that came into our lives and turned it upside down then right-side up again. He's apart of the whole fabric of this house, of this land. He's more than just someone who lived here once, he...." Carolyn said pausing when she saw a small glimmer of light sparkle from the ground under a sofa.
"He's what?" Maggie asked as she continued to drink her tea.
Carolyn crouched down and put her hand under then reached for the glimmer of light coming from underneath. She searched around blindly for a few seconds, her arm going back and forth along the carpet until she finally hit something.
"Honey? What is it? What are you doing?" Maggie asked sitting up now from the sofa.
Carolyn grabbed on to the object and stood back up. She sat down next to Maggie. Carolyn's face stone and serious.
"What? What is it?" Maggie asked again now noticing Carolyn's strange reaction.
Carolyn opened her hand to reveal the onyx ring of Barnabas Collins.
****
Kat and Caleb were putting their little son to sleep in the nursery that once belong to Carolyn, and David and even Caleb when they were babies. It was a brightly painted blue with images hand painted maritime images on the walls.
"Do you think he'll remember any of this?" Kat asked Caleb in a hushed voice as they hugged above his crib.
"Do you think he'll remember any of this?" Kat asked Caleb in a hushed voice as they hugged above his crib.
"God now. He's tiny. All of this will be nothing but a dream...to us too, just you watch." Caleb said as he kissed his wife on the head.
"I'm just glad it's all over, you know? We can start something fresh and new and not have to worry about whatever is lurking in the shadows. I can literally have a good night's sleep now." Kat said in a quiet giggle.
"No kidding." Caleb joked as the two both turned and walked out of the baby's room.
Canan, the baby, the next generation of Collins lay sleeping in a blue woolen jumper. His crib mobile of boats, whales, dolphins, ocean waves, spinning above his head and a sweet lullaby of Row Row Row your Boat singing him to sleep.
Canan, then opened his eyes up at the mobile revealing a flash like spark in them. A flash of fire, a flash of light. Then suddenly ....it stopped.
The baby giggled at his mobile again and soon went off to sleep to dream of flames and birds of fire and one day...of freedom.
The baby giggled at his mobile again and soon went off to sleep to dream of flames and birds of fire and one day...of freedom.
****
In the wilderness just outside of Collinsport, the mystic hermit Ezrabette sat back in a chair that faced the glaring open windows of her living room. The spring breeze fluttered through cooling the room and kissing the exposed skin of her arms. She smirked. It was a welcomed harmonious feeling that she had percolating throughout her whole body, the same feeling that could easy disguise that of nerves.
She reached into a pocket in her black linen skirt and pulled out a deck of tarot cards. She fiddled with the edge of one card the she had removed from the deck. It was face down. She thought to herself should she turn it over and read what it had to say. Were the jittery feeling she was sensing truly those of happiness or the nervous system predicting another fate.
She turned the card over raveling the upside-down THREE OF WANDS...meaning Time. Distance in could be in reverse. Something was in reverse sequence.
She turned the card over raveling the upside-down THREE OF WANDS...meaning Time. Distance in could be in reverse. Something was in reverse sequence.
"But....how?" Ezrabette said to herself as she looked at her wall clock.
The clock flicked backwards then forwards again, then backwards, then striking midnight then backwards again until it came back to the actual time of the day. Ezrabette needed to know who this card was meant for, she pulled another, this one, an upright EMPEROR.
****
It was the final piece of him. It was the last connection she had to Barnabas Carolyn, and she believed it deserved to be here...in the empty mausoleum where he once rested.
The clock in the main foyer ticked away the minutes until midnight. Candles lit down the hall flickered a glowing orange light that bounced off the faces of the many portraits of Collins family members from the past.
There was Naomi Collins. Her raven dark hair, her beautiful deep brown eyes dressed in a black gown dripping in diamonds. Her smile just a hint of glee, much like the famed Mona Lisa.
There was Quentin Collins who's stoic and powerful face loomed over the hall like he was standing guard. His trademark sideburns and thick dark hair made him stand out among the portraits. He was a protector, a rebel, a fighter.
Further down the hall, the portrait of Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. A more recent addition to the family's art collection. It had been commissioned by Carolyn and painted by her artist friend in London 5 years after Elizabeth died. It was Carolyn's favorite piece. Elizabeth sat in the painting like a queen on her thrown. Her hair tied up in intricate knots speckled with pearls. Her face, a tad sad and lonely, the way Carolyn remembered her. The way she was.
The family had come a long way. Curses, twists of fate landing them in places no one ever dared go, or even believed real. With every good and happy calm the family enjoyed, in the back of their minds they knew, the shadows would always creep back in turn their lives upside down again. That's what it meant to be a member of this family, the deal with the dark and the light, the good and the evil. It was their destiny. it was their way of life.
The midnight chime clanged away on the grandfather clock in the foyer first brought to the house by Edward Collins. A clock crafted in Ireland and brought to Collinwood in pieces then reassembled bit by bit for all the family to enjoy.
At the top of the stairs listening to the clock: Carolyn Collins Stoddard-Thorne dressed in black trench-coat, leather gloves and a black beret, her luxurious blond hair shooting out from under like rays of sun.
At the top of the stairs listening to the clock: Carolyn Collins Stoddard-Thorne dressed in black trench-coat, leather gloves and a black beret, her luxurious blond hair shooting out from under like rays of sun.
She slowly made her way down the staircase and into the foyer. She looked into the dim drawing room to see if anyone was up. It was empty.
She slowly walked around the corner to see down a small servant's hall towards room Julia Hoffman, and later Kimberly, used as an office. Empty now, and silent.
The coast was clear.
She opened the great front door and standing there waiting for her was her driver Powell dressed in all black for their midnight ride. He smiled at her and opened the back door for her to enter.
"Thank you." Carolyn whispered as the mist from below Widow's Hill sprayed all over the front of the house and on the car's windshield.
He started the car and the radio began playing The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel. Powell rushed to turn it off so it wouldn't bother Carolyn but she put her hand up to stop him.
"No, no....it's ok. Leave it on." She said.
They drove through the sleepy town while the song played, it's slow guitar pinged along in time with the bouncing of their tires on the cobble stone streets. The fog rolled across the front of their car like smoke billowing from a fire. Carolyn sat in the back seat silently, stoically, her hands clenched tightly in the black leather gloves. She looked out of her window as the small quaint homes passed them by, street after street. Fog filled neighborhood after fog filled neighborhood.
"No, no....it's ok. Leave it on." She said.
They drove through the sleepy town while the song played, it's slow guitar pinged along in time with the bouncing of their tires on the cobble stone streets. The fog rolled across the front of their car like smoke billowing from a fire. Carolyn sat in the back seat silently, stoically, her hands clenched tightly in the black leather gloves. She looked out of her window as the small quaint homes passed them by, street after street. Fog filled neighborhood after fog filled neighborhood.
Finally they drove up a Eagle Hill Cemetery. The gate wide open. The burial plots smokey with the fog spilling over the ancient tombstones. The car curved around the windy access road caved in the cemetery and finally it came to a stop.
The Collins family mausoleum. Carolyn stepped out.
"I'll only be a minute Powell, just one minute." She said softy, he nodded.
Carolyn walked up the path and came to the front gate, she removed a key from her pocket and slipped it into the lock that bound the intricately welded gate shut.
Carolyn smiled at the gate, she remembered a family joke about the gate and it's purpose. Was it there to keep people out or to keep people in. Of course, the answer was really both.
She turned the key, and unlocked the gate. The midnight horn shaped moon just above her head lighting her way in. As she walked past the dusty, spider-webbed entrance, she came across some of the old family members tombs.
NAOMI COLLINS and her husband JOSHUA COLLINS
Naomi and Joshua's daughter SARAH COLLINS
their great-great-nephew JEREMIAH COLLINS
His wife CATHERINE WELSH-COLLINS
Jeremiah and Catherine's son ROGER COLLINS
and of course, Roger's sister Carolyn's mother ELIZABETH COLLINS-STODDARD
Carolyn smiled as she passed her hand over her the letters of her mother's name. She walked slowly past the tombs and came to the back of the mausoleum where two iron lion's faces hung. One with a ring through it's mouth. Carolyn, knowing the history of the room, knowing the secrets of her family, pulled the ring and slowly pushed open a stone door that opened and lead her to a secret room, that wasn't so secret.
A hail of dust fell to her feet from the inside. It was dark. It was damp, and frankly, Carolyn felt a shiver go up her spine and settle in the back of her head. She hadn't been here in years. She hadn't seen the inside of this place since she was a young woman. The memory of it still haunter the corners of her mind, nothing could remove them. The screams. The terror. The death.
She took a breath and stepped forward.
She took a breath and stepped forward.
For a room that hadn't been open, in what Carolyn believed to be years, it oddly smelled of flowers. Roses to be exact. She walked forward and pulled a small candle and match book from her trench-coat. She lit the candle and walked to the back corner of the room where a stone sarcophagus lay. Chains that once locked it's lid were strewn on the ground with broken links from decades past. Chains from 1967. Carolyn moved the chains with her foot so she could get close to the sarcophagus.
It was all symbolic now. It was just a piece of her family history sitting in a dusty room inside her family's burial champers. What it represented was the life and the man that was Barnabas Collins. The man who changed her life forever. The man who, good or bad, came into her world and became the father-figure she loved and hated all in one person. A man who was haunted by a curse and wanted nothing more then to find love and peace but knew the battles within him were otherworldly, supernatural.
His was an experimental existence.... of being human while at the same time inhuman.
His was an experimental existence.... of being human while at the same time inhuman.
As Carolyn stood in the damn cold room, her right hand was tightly curled into a fist. She finally relaxed it and release what was inside. Barnabas' onyx ring that Maggie found on the floor inside Collinwood after Anna's vortex collapsed.
It was the final piece of him. It was the last connection she had to Barnabas Carolyn, and she believed it deserved to be here...in the empty mausoleum where he once rested.
"You left this behind." She said, with tears rolling down her face as she placed it on top of what once was Barnabas' coffin in the lonely empty room.
It was her way of putting Barnabas, where ever he was, to rest once more.
Carolyn took a deep breath of air and grabbed the candle and started to make her way out of the secret room behind the Collins family's remains. but as she got to the entrance she turned around and looked back one more time to the coffin and smiled.
It was her way of putting Barnabas, where ever he was, to rest once more.
Carolyn took a deep breath of air and grabbed the candle and started to make her way out of the secret room behind the Collins family's remains. but as she got to the entrance she turned around and looked back one more time to the coffin and smiled.
She then took the candle and placed it at the foot of a stone urn that decorated the room.
"No more darkness." She whispered to herself as she closed the secret door behind her and left the candle burning in the room. The candle's wax created a pool of wax at the base of the urn and ran down to the floor pooling again and hardening.
The onyx ring sat atop the coffin of Barnabas Collins, like the crown jewels on the coffin of a dead monarch, bestowing it's rarity with pride, the candle light flicking in it's dark stone and silver band.
Suddenly a chill came upon the room. An icy air breeze that felt like a winter storm overtaking every bit of oxygen.
The candle went out in a puff.
The wax at it's wick cooled and hardened at the base of the stone urn.
Then, the creaking sound of something opening, like an old door slowly being pushed open, it's hinges bending and twisting with agony after years and years of solid decay.
It was Barnabas' coffin.
Deep inside the coffin and the silent blackness came a hand. It crept at the lid like a spider slowly stepping off it's web onto a surface searching for prey. The hand, grey in color, but strong with thick fingers, carefully pushed the lid up further and reached over to the top of the sarcophagus and grasped onto the ring. The hand, cold and icy, curled and held the ring tight in it's grip then slowly retracted back into the coffin....
It was Barnabas' coffin.
Deep inside the coffin and the silent blackness came a hand. It crept at the lid like a spider slowly stepping off it's web onto a surface searching for prey. The hand, grey in color, but strong with thick fingers, carefully pushed the lid up further and reached over to the top of the sarcophagus and grasped onto the ring. The hand, cold and icy, curled and held the ring tight in it's grip then slowly retracted back into the coffin....
The candle suddenly sparked a flame And the lid closed to the empty sound of dead silence.