COLLINWOOD
COLLINSPORT, MAINE
-1897-
"What is this? Where am I?" Gregory thought as he lay face down in blood red carpet in a room he did not recognize at first.
Judith stepped back from the wall. She looked down at the mounds and mounds of bricks she was about to lay over the already build wall. A second and maybe third layer of bricks to block his screams. She picked up a mettle tool and slathered the cold grey sealant on the long side of the brick and began the second layer of Gregory's tomb.
"There was a time I thought we could have been happy here. I did all I could to make sure my family accepted you, but....it was never enough. Nothing I ever did was ever enough." Judith said out loud as she continued to build the second layer of bricks.
"Woman, I demand you stop this at once! Get me out of here!" Gregory said, his head still spinning from the medicine in the drink he was given just hours before at dinner she had so lovingly prepared.
"You'll start to feel sleepy again soon. It's not the kind of medicine that wares off, you see. I wouldn't allow that, no, I wanted you to wake up where you were and realize what was happening to you just before you fell back in a final sleep...I can thank you for that knowledge. All those months trapped in that hospital with the mentally infirm helped me understand the uses and perfect mixes of sedatives. Yours was a special blend. Tasteless and masked by the gorgeous smooth feeling of your nightly brandy." Judith said coldly explaining her process for added cruelty.
"You're mad!" The entombed husband yelled, his eyes going blurring.
"Mad." she whispered to herself as she pulled a folded paper from the slits in her skirt that formed large pockets on the front.
"JUDITH!! JUDITH!!!" Gregory continued to scream from behind the thick layers of brick. But no one could hear him. "People will come looking for me, you'll never ever get away with this." He added.
She stepped backwards from her work of cruel karmic brick art; a small tear fell from her eye. She slowly turned and unfolded the letter, one Gregory had written to her.
"No, they've already forgotten you. You see, once they all see this letter they'll discover your infidelity. They'll assume you've ran off with ...." Judith explained before she began to get choked up.
"You're wrong. They will come for me and when they discover what you've done, they'll bury you right next to me. Is that what you want? Eternity next to the man you hate so much?" Gregory threatened.
"No one will ever look for you. There aren't enough people in this town much less this family that care enough about you to go looking for you after you leave." Judith said cryptically.
"Leave?" Gregory questioned, the heat from the sedative beginning to swell up again in his veins.
"You're going away Gregory, at least that's what everyone will think after they discover what you've done." Judith bristled.
...find her, his lover....Marie Clotilde.
Marie Clotilde knew she was in the wrong, but the truth was Judith had no power over her. She thought she did, after all being a Collins gave her authority in name only, but that was it. No one in this town would allow Judith, a woman who's mind was so obviously ill, to seek revenge as a means of justice.
"What's in there? Did Gregory give you things of mine that you are hiding in that room that you're so interested in? Are you a thief as well!??!" Judith said grabbing hold of Marie Clotilde's arms.
She looked down and Marie Clotilde had been knocked unconscious in the fall.
The fire gained mass quickly and was already crawling up the wall and creating a canape of flames on the ceiling. Judith had to get out before she too was swallowed up by the fire.
COLLINSPORT, MAINE
-1897-
"Just a little of this.....mix it well. Mix it all." A woman said to herself standing in a large 19th century kitchen pouring a strange bright liquid into a tumbler of brandy.
She mixed it and put it on a silver tray and brought it to her husband who sat smoking his pipe in the drawing room of the Collinwood mansion. This was her home, no matter what he tried, no matter the scheme or the plot to take it from her, no matter how many times he tried to destroy her life by locking here away in insane asylums and driving her out of her mind.
She stepped into the drawing room surrounded by plumes of smoke from his pipe, the noise of her her puffy purple dress brushing up against the door frame got his attention and he turned from the paper he was reading and looked up. His wife, Judith Collins-Trask stood there with her silver tray and his late night brandy. She smiled at him and extended her harm with the tray perfectly centered in the palm of her hand.
He took a sip. The cool refreshing liquid slid down his throat coating it like honey from a bee hive. It didn't take long after that. As he looked back down at the paper, the letters began to lift from the pages, they began to swap places on the page and move in a dizzing dance. He shook his head as if to stop them from moving but it was too late. The liquid had entered his blood stream, then within seconds of a single taste of brandy his eyes closed into a blurry darkness.
The sound again of her purple dress shuffling across the drawing room floor was the last thing Gregory Trask heard in that moment. .
The sound again of her purple dress shuffling across the drawing room floor was the last thing Gregory Trask heard in that moment. .
****
"What is this? Where am I?" Gregory thought as he lay face down in blood red carpet in a room he did not recognize at first.
He was on the floor unconscious for hours. The room he was in was dark and had been prepared for his stay, a stay that would last for eternity, except he didn't know that yet. As he came to on the floor, he stretched his strained neck. His shirt collar felt like a noose, tight too from being dragged across Collinwood's many hallways and staircases to his resting place in the west wing.
He slowly got to his feet, still dizzy from the tainted drink that knocked him out in the first place. He looked around in a blurry fog and there was nothing he could make sense of. Just a sparsely decorated small bedroom with bricked up windows. Then the fogginess in his mind started to dissipate and reality of what was going on seeped in; slowly the panic set in.
"Judith. ...Judith?? JUDITH!" He screamed as he ran to the door, clumsy and awkward the drugs in his system from a spiked cocktail still wearing off.
He tried to pull the door open but it was locked. He remembered this room, he remembered there had to be another key. He moved about the room tearing books from book cases, drawers from dressers and finally found the second key. He twisted the key into it's lock then pulled the door ope.
On the other side, not an opening to a hallway but a brick wall with two layers already built and just one small opening in the center ...for the final two bricks. He went to the window--another fresh layer of crimson bricks. He could still smell the cement that bound them.
On the other side, not an opening to a hallway but a brick wall with two layers already built and just one small opening in the center ...for the final two bricks. He went to the window--another fresh layer of crimson bricks. He could still smell the cement that bound them.
"JUDITH!!!" he again screamed at the top of his lungs to his wife.
"Let that be the last time you scream at me Gregory." A strikingly beautiful raven haired woman in a dark purple dress said from the other side of the wall. The free side.
"What have you done? Get me out of here at once!" Gregory screamed at his wife.
Judith stepped back from the wall. She looked down at the mounds and mounds of bricks she was about to lay over the already build wall. A second and maybe third layer of bricks to block his screams. She picked up a mettle tool and slathered the cold grey sealant on the long side of the brick and began the second layer of Gregory's tomb.
This abused, mistreated wife had had enough, her mind was mad, her heart was cold and her intentions were vengeful. He was to suffer. Suffer more than she had when he locked her away in a mental hospital to further his plot to take all her money and her power of the Collins family empire.
Gregory's greed and vicious treatment of his second wife was just the tip of the iceberg. His betrayals ran deeper than the monetary, they ran of the flesh. There was another woman, someone who kept his bed warm when he locked Judith away in a sanitarium, forcing her to believe she had lost her mind. He made a fool of her once, but now, as the last brick was placed, he would be the fool.
Gregory's greed and vicious treatment of his second wife was just the tip of the iceberg. His betrayals ran deeper than the monetary, they ran of the flesh. There was another woman, someone who kept his bed warm when he locked Judith away in a sanitarium, forcing her to believe she had lost her mind. He made a fool of her once, but now, as the last brick was placed, he would be the fool.
"There was a time I thought we could have been happy here. I did all I could to make sure my family accepted you, but....it was never enough. Nothing I ever did was ever enough." Judith said out loud as she continued to build the second layer of bricks.
"Woman, I demand you stop this at once! Get me out of here!" Gregory said, his head still spinning from the medicine in the drink he was given just hours before at dinner she had so lovingly prepared.
"You'll start to feel sleepy again soon. It's not the kind of medicine that wares off, you see. I wouldn't allow that, no, I wanted you to wake up where you were and realize what was happening to you just before you fell back in a final sleep...I can thank you for that knowledge. All those months trapped in that hospital with the mentally infirm helped me understand the uses and perfect mixes of sedatives. Yours was a special blend. Tasteless and masked by the gorgeous smooth feeling of your nightly brandy." Judith said coldly explaining her process for added cruelty.
"You're mad!" The entombed husband yelled, his eyes going blurring.
"Mad." she whispered to herself as she pulled a folded paper from the slits in her skirt that formed large pockets on the front.
"JUDITH!! JUDITH!!!" Gregory continued to scream from behind the thick layers of brick. But no one could hear him. "People will come looking for me, you'll never ever get away with this." He added.
She stepped backwards from her work of cruel karmic brick art; a small tear fell from her eye. She slowly turned and unfolded the letter, one Gregory had written to her.
"No, they've already forgotten you. You see, once they all see this letter they'll discover your infidelity. They'll assume you've ran off with ...." Judith explained before she began to get choked up.
"You're wrong. They will come for me and when they discover what you've done, they'll bury you right next to me. Is that what you want? Eternity next to the man you hate so much?" Gregory threatened.
"No one will ever look for you. There aren't enough people in this town much less this family that care enough about you to go looking for you after you leave." Judith said cryptically.
"Leave?" Gregory questioned, the heat from the sedative beginning to swell up again in his veins.
"You're going away Gregory, at least that's what everyone will think after they discover what you've done." Judith bristled.
"I swear to you, if you don't release me..." Gregory said, the fogginess returning slowly into his brain. "I'll....if you don't.... I'll..." he continued, the words just not spewing from his mouth. The drug rushing around in his bloodstream clouding his motor skills.
"Sleep Gregory. Sleep. It's all your good for." Judith said, filling in the final brick in her wall.
She dusted off her hands and opened the letter again. Her devastation manifested like a pricking feeling all over her hands. She opened the letter, and like read it again to make sure remember what why she had to do what was coming next.
"Sleep Gregory. Sleep. It's all your good for." Judith said, filling in the final brick in her wall.
She dusted off her hands and opened the letter again. Her devastation manifested like a pricking feeling all over her hands. She opened the letter, and like read it again to make sure remember what why she had to do what was coming next.
...find her, his lover....Marie Clotilde.
****
There was the crack of a whip! A gate flew open and down a dark grassy knoll in the middle of the night Judith rode on horseback, clutched tightly in her hand at her chest, her philandering husband's letter to his lover, who was not a stranger to her. In fact, Gregory's lover Marie Clotilde had once been a house servant at Collinwood many years ago, but left as soon as Judith returned from the insane asylum.
The horse rode through the thickets and down the slopes of Collinwood at such a speed that the tight pearl pins holding in Judith's hair in it's bun fell out and onto the grass. Her dress flowing behind her like a maroon cape flapping in the wind. She wanted to confront her husband's lover. She wanted to show this woman the kind of pain that Gregory had inflicted on her for so long. She wanted to show Marie Clotilde the face of the woman who's husband she had stolen.
As the continued to ride through the village, the towns people gasped at the speed the woman was riding. Her face blurring in the misty night as she passed them only leaving the sound of echoing clomps on the cobble stone streets.
Judith was getting closer now, so close she could taste the revenge on her tongue like acid burning it's way into her body. She would not be made a fool ever again by anyone.
Judith was getting closer now, so close she could taste the revenge on her tongue like acid burning it's way into her body. She would not be made a fool ever again by anyone.
The fog slowly melted away in a small cottage across town. The warm night air slurred it's way into the cracks and crevices of the cottage , the house Marie Clotilde lived in. Marie Clotilde quietly made her away around to the front room and lit some candles, then the silence of the night was broken with the neigh of a horse from outside.
"What the devil? Who comes at such an hour?" Marie Clotilde said to herself as she looked at the tall grandfather clock near the door.
Before she could go to the door to check, it burst open. There, standing in her thick purple dress, her hair fallen and disheveled from the brutal ride was Judith Collins-Trask, the letter from Gregory to Marie Clotilde still clutched at her chest.
Marie Clotilde gasped and stepped back from the vision of Judith's angry face in her door way. The candles beat down an orange glow on Judith's face reflecting a woman who was on the verge of self-destruction, her expression cold and evil, like something Marie Clotilde had never seen.
"What do you want?" Marie Clotilde asked needing no introduction. As much as she hated to admit it, she had been waiting for this face-off for a long time.
"Perhaps the question should be what did I want? I wanted love. I wanted trust. I wanted so much, but none of that came to me. Maybe I'm unlucky. What say you? Is love a matter of luck or fate?" Judith asked as she made her way into the house slowly one step at a time.
"Judith, I don't---" Marie Clotilde began before being interrupted.
"You will not speak, no, not until you read this letter. I'm here to hand deliver it to you. He would have wanted you to get it as soon as possible after all." Judith said releasing the clutched letter in her hot hand.
Marie Clotilde, shaking in her stance, stepped forward and grabbed the unsent letter addressed to her from Gregory. She knew all along that Gregory would never leave Judith for her, and after all, she knew he was a bastard too, but for what it was worth, he gave her protection, he gave her security and he gave her one special gift she had been wanting for years and years. A gift she had kept secret from everyone, even Gregory himself.
Marie Clotilde crumpled the letter in her hand.
Marie Clotilde crumpled the letter in her hand.
"You must think me ill, or vial. The things you must think of me Judith, but I assure you, I...I wished this not on any of us." Marie Clotilde said as tears welled up in her eyes.
"No? What did you wish for then? For him to whisk you away like some fairy-tale princess to some far off place where you'd live happily ever after....with my money! That's what you wanted, wasn't it? Money, lord know that's what he wanted." Judith scolded, circling Marie Clotilde.
"I never asked for any money, ma'am. None." Marie Clotilde insisted. "What he gave me, what I wanted from anyone that somehow Gregory was able to provide was something so much more personal, something priceless." She added.
"Spare me the details of your love affair with my husband, none of it really matters now. He's locked away forever. He'll die alone in dark room with only his thoughts and the rats as his company. And what should I do with you? Hmm? Should I lock you away too? Should I put you on the next ship to some God forsaken land so that I never see your face? What should I do! Tell me! I'll allow you to pick your punishment." Judith screamed. .
No words came from Marie Clotilde, only sobs.
"Speak Adulteress!" Judith again screamed pointing at Marie Clotilde.
No words came from Marie Clotilde, only sobs.
"Speak Adulteress!" Judith again screamed pointing at Marie Clotilde.
Marie Clotilde knew she was in the wrong, but the truth was Judith had no power over her. She thought she did, after all being a Collins gave her authority in name only, but that was it. No one in this town would allow Judith, a woman who's mind was so obviously ill, to seek revenge as a means of justice.
"You can't hurt me." Marie Clotilde said, eyeing a door that was on her right side, to which Judith noticed.
"What's in there? Did Gregory give you things of mine that you are hiding in that room that you're so interested in? Are you a thief as well!??!" Judith said grabbing hold of Marie Clotilde's arms.
They began to struggle. Pulling and pushing each other. Marie Clotilde's arm became free and she reached back and landed a large slap to Judith's face, the shock of the blow shaking Judith out of her decent into madness. Judith grabbed Marie Clotilde's cheek, her eyes wide like saucers then the madness grabbed returned and Judith began screaming in her rival's face.
They continued to struggle in the living room, their large dresses dragging and pulling on the floor. Judith's bustle knocking over knickknacks and books..
"Please stop this!!" Marie Clotilde screamed as she broke free from Judith's grasp.
"Please stop this!!" Marie Clotilde screamed as she broke free from Judith's grasp.
Judith's face changed, her heart blackened and she lunged for Marie Clotilde one last time, the two women fell to the floor knocking over another table with lit candles. The candles quickly lighting the a near by table cloth on fire. Judith jumped up to her feet from the ground. She stomped on the bottom seam of her dress to put out two attaching flames.
She looked down and Marie Clotilde had been knocked unconscious in the fall.
The fire gained mass quickly and was already crawling up the wall and creating a canape of flames on the ceiling. Judith had to get out before she too was swallowed up by the fire.
She quickly made her way around in the burning living room but then remembered the door that Marie Cotilde was looking at while they spoke, surly whatever was in that room was stolen goods from Collinwood.
Without thinking twice, Judith pushed open the door of that room and found not items taken from her or given to her by Gregory, but a small baby boy crying in a crib.
The boy, who's eyes were clearly his father's blue sparkled like two tiny lakes was Gregory's son with Marie Clotilde. Judith realized this child was her husband's, a child no one knew of, a child kept secret. This was the gift Marie Clotilde talked about that no one else had been able to give her.
Judith snarled and began to close the door on the boy as the smoke began to fill the room. Her mind told her to leave him, leave him to burn like his adulteress mother. But then she realized, her was just as innocent in the events of their affair was she was. The boy did not wish to be born from this illicit romance, the boy did not wish to have been the son of that monstrous man Gregory Trask. Judith rushed over and picked up the baby and went back into the living room that was now engulfed in flames.
Marie Clotilde's body now a mound of fire just across the room.
Judith hid the baby's face from the fire and dashed out of the burning house. Her horse was wild with fear as the fire burned in it's sight. She wrapped the baby up in a make shift bundle from the blanked under the horses saddle and wrapped it around her body. Then she jumped on the horse and looked back at the fire she started. The house was crumbling, the fire had eaten the house and now just the skeleton frame remained.
Judith called to the horse and pulled it's reigns up tight around it's mouth, a signal to quickly dash out of the way of the burning house. The horse lifted his front legs up, neighed a neigh that echoed through the woods around the area and they rode off into the darkness.
****
The spirit of Marie Clotilde, now in death and only shaped by mist, wept for her child, wept for her life, wept for the things taken from her.
Judith and the baby rode through the darkened Collinsport woods until they came about a large rushing stream that's banks snaked into the blackened distance in the shape of an S where she carefully jumped off her horse. Tears were streaming down her face the child cooed and reached up for her, his little hand trembled in the chilly air.
She was desperate. What would she do with the baby she saved? The desperation turned to frantic panic, once she was discovered with the baby that belonged to the woman she had just burned alive it would be curtains for her. Judith took a deep breath and pulled the shall off of her shoulders and wrapped the child and the other blanket in it tightly and then twisted the slack around her fist.
The water from the stream swished over the black rocks quickly rushing the dark liquid past the panicked woman on it's banks. Judith lifted the bundled baby over the forceful river and turned her head away, she could not bare to see the child fall out of her shall and into the ice cold river. She would drop this child into the river and let him wash away into an abyss never to be seen again.
Judith closed her eyes and she turned her face away from the sin she was about to commit; even in her anger and vengeful state she could not bare to see a baby fall into the water from loosely twisted shall. As the child dangled there moving back and forth like a pendulum, Judith open her eyes, and in the distance behind her, another small cottage with it's lights on. Judith had never seen this home before, in fact she had no idea anyone else lived so far into the woods.
She pulled the baby back close to her body and away from the river's edge. She quickly wrapped the shall and walked across the grassy paths that lead to this small house, her horse following slowly behind.
As she approached the house, she could see inside, a small family sat at a table. A mother. A father. A sister. Judith, carried the child carefully over to the front door. She set him down, he was now sleeping peacefully cuddled in her shall and blanket. As she walked slowly from the tiny porch leaving the baby on the door step she picked up a large rock from the ground then jumped back on her horse. As the horse quickly turned toward it's retreat back to Collinwood, Judith pulled her arm back and through the large rock up against the wall near the child.
The loud noise shook the little house and startled the family inside.
.
The loud noise shook the little house and startled the family inside.
.
"What was that?" The little girl inside said as her parents quickly stood up at the table.
"It came from the front porch." The mother replied to the fast moving father.
The father grabbed a fireplace poker and looked back into the small dining room where his wife was now standing holding her curious daughter back in protection mode.
He put out his hand in a silent gesture as if to say "stay where you are."
The woods were a dark and mysterious place, and this family, known as the Baptistes had come this far north from heavily crayfished banks of the Mississippi in search of a better life. Their daughter, the first born out of slavery, had never known a different home.
The father, a strong prideful man name Jean, crept through their tiny living room, never keeping his eye off his wife Antoinette and 10 year old daughter Pauline. He slowly turned the door knob to the front door, and quickly pulled it open, fire poker in hand.
Nothing there but the fog.
He stepped out side onto the porch, to his left the large rock that had battered the side of the house, to his right, a small baby wrapped in a silky, black and embroidered shall.
"Nette! Come here!" He said loudly as he picked up the baby in shock.
"Que es-que c'est?" She asked in her creole French.
"A child." Jean answered in confusion.
Antoinette grabbed the child and saw his warm golden brown skin and pink lips. He smiled up at her as if he had not just lost his birth mother only moments ago in a deadly fire set by a mad woman.
"It's a baby boy!" Jean said with a sparkle in his eye.
"The good lord has brought us a son." Antoinette answered as she looked around in disbelief.
Antoinette grabbed the child and saw his warm golden brown skin and pink lips. He smiled up at her as if he had not just lost his birth mother only moments ago in a deadly fire set by a mad woman.
"It's a baby boy!" Jean said with a sparkle in his eye.
"The good lord has brought us a son." Antoinette answered as she looked around in disbelief.
The fog in the forest that surrounded their home soon thickened. The cold air swirled around their small little cottage like storm clouds, and from out of those clouds stepped the spirit of the child's birth mother, freshly burned to death only 5 miles from this family's home.
The spirit of Marie Clotilde, now in death and only shaped by mist, wept for her child, wept for her life, wept for the things taken from her.
The Baptiste family cuddled the new baby and took him inside leaving the spirit of Marie Clotilde to wallow in the shadows. She lifted her hands and covered her eyes, the smokey clouds covered her and she disappeared to the same night, in the same spot, in the same forest 120 years ago.
****
EZRABETTE BAPTISTE'S COTTAGE
COLLINSPORT, MAINE
-2017-
COLLINSPORT, MAINE
-2017-
Collinsport's resident psychic medium and voodoo enthusiast Ezrabette Baptiste slept peacefully in her room on a balmy summer night. Her windows were open allowing a fresh sea breeze to seep in through the screens and saturate Ezrabette's pillows and sheets with soft coolness that relaxed her whole body. The moon was full and bright.
With this breeze and plume of fog that followed, curling and turning like a sea snake slashing through the underwater sand pulling and churning it's way through the tiny wire grates of Ezrabette's window screen. The fog mystic and centuries old, floated not only up from the ocean's currents bur from another time, it carried the spirit of a woman long forgotten, long dead, and long left behind in the ashes of another cottage not far from where Ezrabette lived herself, on this very night 120 years ago.
This was the spirit of Marie Clotilde, the murdered mistress of Judith Collins' philandering husband Gregory Trask. The woman who's baby was taken from her and left on a stranger's doorstep by her own murderess just as she breathed in the flames that would carry her into the other dimension. She had finally risen from the ashes in spirit form to reclaim what was hers taken from her. The moon and stars had aligned in the exact way 120 years ago releasing her soul to reach out to the living, and Ezrabette's gift of connecting to those behind the veil of the dead was a perfect way for Marie Clotilde to do so.
It took Marie Clotilde's spirit 120 years to finally reach Ezrabette, and as she was the destined choice of the living to retrieve this message from beyond.
The plumes of mist clumped together and began to form the shape of a woman. The shape molded and twisted and turned until all the elements of a person stood out, gray and white shapes of clouds and fog. Then the spirit began to break free from it's foggy hold and in a translucent state stood on it's own. There she was: Marie Clotilde starring down at the sleeping Ezrabette.
The cold and icy touch of the dead started to creep over Ezrabette's exposed skin as she slept. She turned over in her sleep to pull the blankets back over her but Marie Clotilde lifted her transparent hand and the blankets flew off Ezrabette's body. The pulling sensation from the covers startled her awake. Ezrabette jolted up, her breath visible in the ice cold room.
"There's a presence here." She said to her self, puffs of white breath coming from her mouth. "What do you want!" She questioned, at first not seeing Marie Clotilde's ghostly figure.
"There's a presence here." She said to her self, puffs of white breath coming from her mouth. "What do you want!" She questioned, at first not seeing Marie Clotilde's ghostly figure.
Then from the corner of the room a grey being pushed forward showing itself. The spirit, the cold angry soul of Marie Clotilde.
Ezrabette gasped in shock. In front of her was an ash like creation of a person staring down at her with eyes made of white and black. Marie Clotilde smiled a wicked smile and bowed her head.
"There's not rest for the weary, my sweet great-Granddaughter, waken. There is much I need from you." Marie Clotilde said in a voice that echoed through Ezrabette's chest like the blast of a cannon ball leaving the mystical woman stunned and terrified of what was in front of her.
Ezrabette was frozen in fear. Her eyes locked on the creature made of ash and fog. Her mind unable to break the gaze from the dead woman looking back at her from beyond the grave.
Marie Clotilde's murder by a member of the Collins family was a story that would soon shake loose the dead leaves of this family tree; secrets that would unravel before a family that perhaps was unprepared for yet another storm, a storm that would most certainly wake the dead.
