"When you get called home by the likes of you Barnabas Collins, I guess it's sort of hard to resist the invitation." Victoria Winters said, her eyes a steely cool blue, her hair turned a light brown, but her face was the same beautiful face Barnabas was so obsessed with years ago.
He could see she was cold, her hands securely in place inside their leathery gloved home, warm and safe.
"Please come in." Barnabas said, stepping aside for Victoria to enter the old house.
As she stepped in, she could see that house was still the same, albeit slightly updated with more modern paint, carpeting and furnishing. Her eyes darted back an forth around this place, a place she knew so well, it was a house of shadows and horrors, some of her most darkest memories haunted every corner of this place yet she walked in and swallowed the fears rushing through her veins,
"How's Carolyn? Curtis called me the other day and said that Jude died. I hope she got my flowers." Victoria said of her half sister as she removed her leather gloves.
"She is managing to deal with her companion's death as best she can but it has hit her very hard. I assume you'll be going up to the main house to see your half sister?" Barnabas asked as he took Vicky's coat.
"I will. Later." Vicky said as she slowly made her way into the warm drawing room of the Old House. "Are we just going to make small talk or will you tell me what you've summoned me here from New York for?" She added, cutting right to the chase.
"Cherry?" Barnabas asked, sitting across from Vicky offering her a drink. She declined.
The fire was glowing and casting small dancing light across Vicky's beautiful face. Barnabas stared at her and marveled in his mind at just how beautiful she still was still, after all these years. Vicky could sense Barnabas was stalling for some reason, she was uncomfortable and wanted nothing to do with his day-dreams of decades ago, she wanted to know what he wanted and she wanted to know now.
"Barnabas?" Vicky said, her voice raised trying to snap Barnabas out what ever daydream he was having.
He took a breath and smirked.
"The last time you were here, we did not get on so well. You showed me a very different side of yourself, a side that no one in the family knew, or at least never cared to pay attention to, it was a cunning side, something darker behind a veneer of what we all thought was perfection." Barnabas said as the fire crackled beside him.
"I'm human Barnabas, we all have a side of ourselves that we hide, you of all people know that. No one is every who they really say they are. There is, of course, always some truth to what we present to the world, but at the end of the day that's all a mask, isnt it?" She replied.
"Indeed. That's actually why I've called you back, as I mentioned in my message to you I need someone to help me. There's only one person who can do what I need and that's you Ms. Winters, based on what you are capable of." Barnabas explained.
"What do you mean? What is it that I can do that you need? She asked.
"Your ability to travel the lengths of time, your ability to bend the ribbon that is time and space and lift yourself into that spectrum and move around as if it were walking into a different room of a house. You seem to walk through time and space like no one I have ever seen. That ability is a commodity that I am very interested in today." Barnabas explained further.
"That ability that I acquired no thanks to you and what you did to me over 50 years ago. But I don't do that anymore, 4 years ago when I traveled to 1920 with Canan to save him from the Collins curse, which I regret now, was the last time, I promised myself I would not do that ever again." Vicky explained.
"Pitty." Barnabas said with a raised eyebrow.
"Why? Why do you need to travel again? And why can't you do it yourself?" She wondered.
"My many incarnations and returns have left me with different amounts of abilities. This most recent time that I have come back, has left me without the abilities to move through time as I once had, its a side effect of curses and black magic that has sustained me over the years --alas it fades." Barnabas explained.
"That still doesn't explain what you need me for." She answered.
"You still have the ability." He said.
"I do, but what do you need me for, what is it you need to find in the past?" Vicky said, noting that she could only travel into the past not the future.
"Come with me." Barnabas said, as Vicky watched him stand up.
She hesitated. She wasn't sure she trusted Barnabas at all. She knew him too well to trust him, she knew that as kind and warm as he could see, he was still and forever the man who killed many, attempted to kill many others and was like a tiger lying in wait for his next victim. There was nothing Barnabas wouldn't do to satisfy his inhuman nature, no matter how hard he tries to suppress it. It was there, his animal lust for human blood, and she was well aware of it...so...should she take his hand anf follow?
She did, wearily, and perhaps stupidly, but she did.
They slowly made their way down the refurbished halls of the old house. She marveled at just how clean and new everything looked. Even the paintings of the family that hung on the walls of the old house seemed to glisten with new paint. At the end of the hall, there was the red door the led to the basement and just beside the door was a painting of Vicky's birth mother, Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. Vicky's eyes watered.
"Please, after you." Barnabas said, opening the red door to the basement.
Vicky hesitated.
"Here's the key, and I'll leave the door open." Barnabas said to make Vicky feel more comfortable.
She took the key to the red door and began her decent into the basement. It was dimly lit, cool and damp, but smelled like roses, but there were no roses to be found.
She slowly made her way into the bottom of the Old House, her crept down the stairs and saw the many lit candelabras that surrounded the coffin in the center of the room.
"Barnabas, what is this? Why have you brought me down here?" Vicky asked thinking the coffin was for Barnabas.
"I need you to take me back to 1970. There someone I need back into my life, the one person who understood me, the one person who I need to be with me in my whole life. And you'll do this tonight." Barnabas said, as he lifted the lid to the coffin in the center of the room revealing the mummified, decrepit corpse of Julia Hoffman.
Vicky screamed when she recognized the body that had decayed over the years, the glow of the candles burning in the basement cast gloomy shadows over the bones and ancient flesh of the body but it was clearly Julia Hoffman. She saw the crystal necklace Julia often used to hypnotize patients still around her neck. It was Julia, mummified and dead, gray skinned and cold, but was her.
"How could you? How could you keep her here like this?" Vicky said disgusted, horrified and covering her face with shock.
"She and I were married in 1972. I fell in love with her very soon after we left Collinsport and traveled over-seas. I need her now, I need her back in my life and you're going to help me get here back." Barnabas said.
"I will not." Vicky said continuing to cover her mouth and nose and staring and the dead woman in the coffin.
"You will... because if you don't ill be sure to tell the whole family what you did in 1920, I'll be sure to tell the son you've raised as your own in secret just how you came to be his mother. I'll tell everyone that the son you raised is actually Caleb and Kat's child that you secretly hid away back in time and that the child they are raising is in fact my own grandchild: that child my daughter Claudia conceived Christopher. How do you think the family that you've so easily reintegrated back into will feel when they find out you switched these children and have kept this secret from all of them all this time? You have lied to them all, you have deceived them and taken away children from their parents, and lied all this time, how do you think they will feel Victoria? How do you think Curtis will feel when he finds out what you've done to his life?" Barnabas threatened.
"Curtis knows he is from a different time, he knows that Kat and Caleb are his parents. " Vicky said attempting to explain herself.
"Ahhh.. perhaps, but does he know that he was kidnapped by you? Does he know that you did this without Kat and Caleb’s approval? What lie did you tell him to convince him all of his life that it was such a normal world you brought him into? Does he know that you've lied to him all his life about who he really is and where he really came from?" Barnabas questioned,.
It was true, 4 years ago when Vicky kidnapped baby Canan and took him to 1920, she switched him with Claudia's baby Leith. Claudia & Kat knew the truth, but Curtis had not known the full story of his upbringing. He did know Kat was his birth mother but did not know the malicious way Vicky had become the woman that would raise him. And the other members of the family knew nothing at all of curtis’ true identity and paternity.
Curtis has always seen his adtopter mother as an innocent party not the actual purportor of a kidnapping. The details that left Vicky in a rightful negative light, were kept from him all this time as he was raised back in time.
By the year 1957, things began to change. Curtis began to ask questions of who he was, and why she refused to allow him to visit New York City from their home in Lexington, Rhode Island. In that time period, Vicki told Curtis of her family, the Collins of Maine, she told him of her ability to time travel and that she kept him safe from their curse by raising him away from the family back in time and late proved it by bringing him to 2018 where he could meet his family in their truest form--all the while never revealing who his true parents were.
Claudia had confessed all this her father Barnabas a year ago just before she went off with Kat and Caleb on their trip around the world.
"How will the family take it knowing that you too have been keeping this secret?" Vicky said trying to turn the tables on Barnabas who did not flinch.
"They expect me to lie to them, my dear. They expect me to somehow always keep secrets. It wouldn't be anything new. You on the other hand have become one of them again, you have everything to lose. I do not. But... if you help me bring Julia back, your secret is safe forever. Your son, the one you've raised and loved as your own remains loyal and loving and nothing changes. You refuse to help me and I expose you....you'll lose everything and everyone....it's up to you." Barnabas answered.
Vicky stood in the basement and stared down at Julia's dead body. She promised herself that when she brought Curtis from the past into the future to meet her real life family, when she told him of her secret time traveling ability that that would be the last time she did it, she promised herself she would never do again. But she could not lose the son she loved and had raised on her own in secret back in time. She could not lose the only family she had ever known.
"Give me one day." Vicky answered.
"You have 12 hours. Come back here at midnight with your decision. No more than that." Barnabas said coldly and Vicky threw the basement key at Barnabas and ran out of the basement in a furious storm of angry, terror and panic.
What would she decide? Make a deal with the devil and bring Julia Hoffman back from the past or tell her son and her family that she had secretly kidnapped one of their own and hidden him away back in time. The truth was painful, but was that pain worth exposing?? Was she ready to risk it all to help Barnabas?
****
That evening Carolyn sat in the large screen room of Collinwood at the back of the house towards that faced the sea. It was a large half circle-shaped patio that had it's entire curved walls were made of screens to protect from the people inside from the elements.
Out there, Carolyn sat in a giant white patio chair with her feet up, in her hand a book, she wasn't reading it, she was just sitting there with the book closed and the book mark sticking out that she nervously flicked with the tips of her fingers.
She sat there listening to the ocean crash up against the wickedly sharp rocks below. She watched as the sea spray floated to the top of the cliff where Collinwood so regally sat perched above.
"Can I come in?" David said, smiling and slowly making his way into the screen room.
"Of course." Carolyn said, her eyes, a silvery blue, welcoming him in.
"I ran into Chris just a few minutes ago and he mentioned what happened earlier today." David said, his heart sinking to the bottom of his stomach with concern for his beloved older cousin, a woman he thought of more like a sister.
Carolyn rolled her eyes in annoyance.
They were indeed more like brother and sister rather than cousins. Carolyn's mother Elizabeth and David''s father Roger had raised them so close together, that they even treated them as siblings. Elizabeth adored and doted on David all his life all the way up until they day she died, and Carolyn loved him so much, but hated the fact he was always in her business--which hasn't changed much now that they're older.
"David, please, I don't want to get into any of that, I already know what you're going to tell me and I just don't want to hear any of it." Carolyn scolded.
"I wasn't going to scold you." David answered. "I just want to know why Jude's death has changed you so much? We're all worried about you Carolyn, we love you and we want to make sure that you're ok. There's nothing more painful than watching someone you love go through something so horrible and not be able to help. You remember how hard it was for your mother when your father died." David further explained.
"She thought she murdered him." Carolyn reminded David.
"That's not what I mean." David replied, his voice filled with a twinge of irritability. "Aunt Elizabeth shut herself off from the world when Uncle Paul died, she did it for almost 20 years. She trapped herself in her grief and never left this compound. She stayed here hurting, and sad, and depressed for most of my young life---and yours! You struggled so much to get her to..."
"That's enough David, I remember very well those years, I don't want to go through it all again. And besides, I'm not my mother. Jude and I ...things were different between us. I loved him more than I ever thought I would love anyone again after Jack's death. He was taken from me and for no reason. He wasn't ill, David. Something happened to him, something that I can't explain. And I want answers, so if Christopher told you I'm planning a seance to get those answers, he's right. I am."
"I can't let you do that Carolyn." David said softly as he got up from the deck chair next to her.
"I'm not asking your permission. I'm not asking anyone's permission." She shot back.
"Why!? Why!? Why do you think you'll get answers by reaching into the--who knows where-- to find out what happened to Jude? I'll tell you what happened, he died. He was in his 70s and he died, Carolyn. It happens. People die!" David said, his voice now raised.
"Well, I'm surprised." Carolyn said to a confused David. "You know just as well as I do what happens in our family and the cursed way we've always been, you should...."
"Stop. Just stop." David interjected. "We're not getting anywhere. You'll do what you want to do just as you always have just as you always will. All I ask is that you be careful and do whatever it is you're planning on doing with discretion for the rest of us. I don't want to see you hurt, Carolyn. None of us do. Just remember that we're your family and we're here right now. You don't have to chase ghosts to find someone that loves you. There are plenty of living breathing people just inside this house that love you right now."
David's words struck a cord with Carolyn as she watched him make his way back into the house from the screen room. She sat there, legs extended listening to the sea crash again and again then looked down at the book still in her lap. She pulled out the book mark from the warn yellow pages. It was the folded yellow paper with the instructions to the seance that she had hidden away.
She unfolded the paper and read them over to herself, then placed it back in the book and shook her head. David's words about her family loving her were true and powerful to hear but she had decided that there was no way she'd turn back. Tonight, when the clock struck midnight she would conjure up the spirit of Jude Powell, with or without her family's blessing.
****
At a small apartment on the north shore of Collinsport, in a small neighborhood of town that the locals call "the mists" because of how close it it is to the ocean and how often the air smells of the salt from the sea, and how much of that air swirls with the misty wetness of the ocean that feels so close one could touch it from their bedroom window.
Inside the apartment that was freshly painted and smelled of warmth and coziness, was Curtis Winters. Victoria's adopted son that she had raised in the 1920s and whom she brought back to 2018 just last year to know his real family--without his true knowledge. All he knew was that this family was that of his mother's who he knew as a time traveler, and he was in Collinsport to know them, to love them and to be in this time period.
Curtis was awaiting a visit from Vicky, who had called him on her way back from The Old House. He quickly rushed around the small flat cleaning up and moving things around to make sure everything looked perfect for Vicky's visit. And just as he moved picture frames from side to side for the 5th time, there was a knock at the door. Curtis rushed over and opened it.
"Mother! I'm so glad to see you!" Curtis said hugging Vicky as the door opened.
"Oh darling, it's so good to see you too. Can I come in?"
"Yeah! Of course! Come in, come in!" Curtis said ushering her into his little home.
"I love your apartment." Vicky said looking around.
"Thanks, its small but it does the job. David said he would help me find a larger place but I really don't need anything bigger than this. It's just me anyway." Curtis said.
"Honey, I want to talk to you about some things. Some very important things." Vicky said with a slight pause in between words.
"I don't really like this tone." Curtis said, noting his mother's apprehension in her sentences.
"Tell me, what has it been like living here in this time? Do you like being here? Working here? Being with my family in 2018?" Vicky asked.
"Well yes, there are so many more amazing things here than where we come from. I wish you had brought me here years ago, or at least I wish I were born in this time. Do you know that you can actually just pick up the telephone and call a number and food is delivered to you? It can be dinner or lunch or even grocery stores. They just bring it to you after you pay with a something called a credit card. David gave me one for my expenses!" Curtis adorably and innocently informed his mother who smiled.
"And have the Collins family treated you well?" She wondered.
"Of course. They've made me feel very welcome. At first they thought maybe I was here as some spy for you or something but they warmed up very quickly." Curtis said.
"And you've never told them about...." Vicky said, her words stopping before she could say what she wanted.
"That you brought from a different time period and that Kat is my real mom? No. They all think I was born in 1981. Kat, Claudia and I agreed it was better for everyone not to know." Curtis said, with a silly grin on his face. "I mean I really don't blame you for having me tell them all this....I can't imagine it's something they'd understand right away."
Vicky smiled and stood up then went over to a large open bay window that faced the crashing sea. She wrapped herself up in her own arms, a protection from the chilly wind from outside. Curtis noticed there was something bothering her. He and Vicky were very close. They were all each other had. Vicky's entire lie about his life was still intact and she was all her had, his fabled father had died in a war at the end of World War I...another lie of his life that Vicky used to explain their situation and cover up his kidnapping.
"What's the matter mother?" Curtis asked standing behind Vicky. "I can tell something is bothering you."
"There is something bothering me, honey, I just don't know how to tell you." Vicky said. "It has to do with why I came home to Collinsport from New York."
"I thought you came to see Aunt Carolyn. You said you wanted to come see her and show you respects on the passing of Jude." Curtis said confused.
"There's that but there's something else. I actually came back because an old friend needed me to do something for him, and I don't quite now if I should do it." Vicky said.
"What do they need you to do?"
Vicky paused and turned back to her son allowing the cold wind blow her over her light brown hair and into her face. She carefully pulled the hair away from her face, he could see her eyes welling up with pain and sadness and the job that Barnabas needed her---was forcing her to do: Bring back Julia Hoffman.
"Mother?" Curtis said, bring Vicky back from her quick trans.
That word "mother". How she longed for someone to call her that, how she longed for a child of her own and now she had one, she had one for all these years, raised him as her own in secret and adored him and now if she didn't do what Barnabas wanted it could all go away. Curtis would hate her forever knowing what she did, knowing that she took her from his real parents all because she wanted to protect him from the so-called Collins curse. Curse or not, she would lose Curtis forever if she didn't help Barnabas and her lies exposed.
"You know what, its very important to my friend to help him with this project so I think I'm going to do it." Vicky said.
"What is it that he needs you to do?" Curtis wondered.
"I'm going to have to go away for a while to help him, maybe a week or so but I'm going to come back and then I'll never have to worry ever again." Vicky said.
"Mother this is getting a bit strange, why won't you tell what your friend needs you to do?" Curtis said, his voice now forceful.
"Just know that I'm doing it so that I can come back to you...my son." Vicky said as she put her hand on Curtis' beautiful face. His eyes were like pools of the arctic sea. She looked into his eyes and she knew that her decision would be worth it, to protect her life as Curtis' mother meant she had to do things that perhaps went against the laws of nature, including working with Barnabas Collins to bring back Julia Hoffman from the past to the future.
****
The night wore on and the gloomy mist over Collinsport continued to pour over the town like smoke from a wildfire; Cold air that swirled in various directions and came down like an invisible ice storm that strangled the sea port village with clutches of an Autumn touch.
In the lobby of The Collinsport Inn, Serena sat nervously waiting for Dr. Shaw to come down from his 6th floor suite. Her the heel from her left foot hung across her right let impatiently tapped the corner of the hotel coffee table, tap tap tap tap tap. Her heart pounded in her chest. Her time was running short.
"Honey, are you ok?" A woman who was checking in asked as she noticed Serena's nervous body language.
"Huh? Oh! Yes, I'm fine. Thank you." Serena said as she turned to look out of the giant hotel windows as car headlights reflected over the shiny wet streets.
"Ms. Bellmore." A voice said from behind the sofa's where Serena was sitting.
She slowly turned, and standing there before her was Dr. Jeffrey Shaw. The mastermind behind a very peculiar plan that involved Serena retrieving Sebastian and his body for experiments that involved a strange person named patient X. Sebastian's body was of profound interest to Jefferey for his ability in the past to change into a werewolf.
"Where are with the the patient?" Jeffrey asked on Serena's progress with delivarying Sebastian as he sat down on the plus yellow hotel sofas across from her.
"It's still on going doctor. You know that I have to make sure that the trust never weans."
"I've given you three days, of which one has expired. You have two days. What is the problem?" Jeffrey asked forcibly.
"It's clearly not so cut and dry, I have to make sure he doesn't suspect anything, in fact I had to lie to him to come here and see you, I shouldn't even be here. This could ruin everything I've worked for all this time. You're constant push could really---"Serena began, her frustration starting to show.
"You should watch your tone Ms. Bellmore." Jeffrey interrupted. "You're in this situation not because of anything I did, not because I asked you, and not because it's your job, this in fact, is all because of your stupidity and mistake you made a very long time ago. Did you already forget what you did to my son?" He further explained.
"No." Serena replied quietly.
"My son is encased in a vat of formaldehyde awaiting Sebastian's organs to live again. If you don't supply me with what I want to bring my son back to life and better than before, I will have to make sure you pay the ultimate price. Your life is not as important to me than my son's, keep that in mind." Jeffrey said.
"I have apologized profusely for what I did to your son on many occasions and I promised that I would find a way to bring him back to you and that's what I am doing but I still need your patience." Serena said, her tone rapidly changing. "Rushing me will only cause more problems for all of us."
Jefferey looked at Serena with total disgust. He hated her. He hated what she did to his son 5 years ago, he hated that he needed her to help him bring his son back to the state of the living and not in the state that he was in now, in a deep coma sleeping inside of a liquid that kept his body from deteriorating awaiting the harvested and strong and superhuman organs of Sebastian Banning.
"You're a waste of a person and I cannot believe my son once loved you, and when he wakes up, trust and believe he will want nothing to do with you. This whole experiment, should it work, is for his family to have him back, not for you." Jeffrey stated.
"I know." Serena said sadly.
"Two days. That's it, or I take matters into my own hands--you don't want me to take matters into my own hands." Jeffrey said as he stood up and walked back over to the elevators to his 6th floor suite.
Serena sat still, frozen almost, on the sofa just staring at the beautiful orchid sitting in the center of the coffee table. Her mind was racing her eyes, welling up with tears, and just as she sat there, a beautiful young couple walked in to the lobby heading for the hotel restaurant for a very late dinner.
The couple looked familiar, but she had no idea where she had seen them before. She looked over the couple checking in with the restaurant hostess, and finally it dawned on her.
She quickly reached down and opened her bag with files that Jeffrey have given her as research for the project. She furiously flipped through the forms and found the face of the man she had just seen in the lobby of The Collinsport Inn.
It Christopher Reed.
Almost 10 months earlier, while doing her research on Sebastian and how he became the werewolf and lycan creature she was given photos and bio's in this paperwork about the man who actually turned Sebastian this way, Christopher, three years earlier. Christopher had attacked Sebastian three years ago on a moonlit night. His bite spread the diseases, the curse, the mysterious and cruel effect of werewolf lycanism into Sebastian's blood stream.
And suddenly, Serena saw a way out, and a way to save Sebastian. She needed to to get Christopher in place of Sebastian and give his body over to Dr. Shaw to replenish his dying son with the superhuman body parts of Christopher and thus, save Sebastian from certain death.
This was her way out. This was Sebastian's way of survival. All she had to do was get Christopher.
Serena collected her things and walked out of the hotel lobby and got into her car. Tonight, she would get Dr. Jeffrey Shaw what he needed, but it wouldn't be with Sebastian's body.
