Wednesday, October 31, 2018

SERIES 9/Chapter 1: WHAT FRESH HELL



It had been over a year now since Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne and her partner Jude Powell left Collinsport after her traumatizing ordeal with the bewitched body of Jason McGuire. Carolyn was eager  to be with her daughter Alexandra who was also living in her native London with her boyfriend Christopher, the pair had moved back from Collinsport themselves 5 years earlier after their own traumatizing events.

Carolyn and Jude's year abroad was filled with happiness and love; living in a beautiful townhosue in the Shepard's Bush neighborood. It was quiet and serene, surrounded by quant English gardens and old ladies who'd invite you for tea just to gossip and cackle over the latest neighborhood mishaps.

Through the spring and summer and now the fall, everything had felt so perfect. Everything in Carolyn's life felt so normal and happy. And real.

Carolyn and her daughter Alexandra had reconnected, they were as close as ever. Powell and Carolyn were in love and Christopher, Alexandra's boyfriend of 5 years, completed this small little packaged family so perfectly.


The news from home was also good. David and Siobhan had become married during Carolyn's time away and Siobhan was even pregnant with their first child together. Caleb, Kat and their nanny Sasha had taken their son Canan on an Asian adventure and were traveling the eastern parts of the globe, jet-setting across China, and Mongolia, Vietnam and Thailand all the while, Kat and Sasha still withholding the secret of Canan and Sasha’s true identities from Caleb, a pact they agreed to for the good of the family, leaving Curtis in Collinsport retaining his own identity as Victoria’s adopted son. 

The Collin's family business was booming; fishing fleet after fishing fleet brought a wealth of product back to the sleepy little Maine town of Collinsport and the whole of the eastern American seaboard like never before. Even Barnabas, who had lived an incredible life across generations seemed to finally begin to feel comfortable in his own skin. His daughter Siobhan, whom he and Julia Hoffman adopted during their marriage in the late 70s, was going to make him a grandfather again, a new generation to add to his life’s story.

The truly remarkable thing about the members of the Collins family, is that with all that they knew of their own sorted and macabre history they were, at their core, a people of optimism. They saw this lucky, happy patch of time as good fortune. They neglected to recall the fact that these feelings never last and the sun eventually goes down and the night comes, dark and treacherously, ready to unleash the things that go bump in it's shadows. 

There is a natural ebb and flow to life and in the passage of time. Good things happen, then bad things happen, even if you're a member of the Collins family. Lady luck had brought them such wealth, power and notoriety throughout the generations of family members but not without any pitfalls. Lady luck, was indeed two faced...and she was about to rear her devil's grin once more on the members of the Collins family.

The Curse had returned.


LONDON, ENGLAND PRESENT DAY

It was midnight. A room in a cozy townhouse billowed with fabrics of white and purple. It smelled of  lavender and felt fresh and cool with the autumn breeze that was filling the room like fluid pouring through the slightly open window. 

Asleep in the plush bed was Jude Powell. His breathing was the only noise. He was alone, but not for long. As the night progresses, his partner Carolyn Collins Stoddard-Thorne sat in a near by study reading as she did most nights due to her chronic insomnia.

As the ticking clock in the hall chimed away at the midnight hour, a shadowy substance began to filter through the screen of the bedroom window like water squeezing it's liquid form through a strainer, slowly and methodically clouding the air like a fog on a winter morning. 

The shadow surrounded Jude in his bed then descended on him like a blanket of dark mist covering and circling his entire body, entering his nostrils as he breathed it all in suddenly taking the breath out of his lungs. He lie there, pulse slowing, breathing stopped---motionless as the black mass from the window watched as the life drained from  his body one dying heartbeat at a time.

Jude was gone, his life snuffed out by a mysterious darkness that went as fast as it came through the window in London. 

As Carolyn sat in her small study, just steps away from the room where her partner had died, the page in the book she was reading suddenly, and without a single touch from her, turned as if a breeze had just passed. 

She felt a chill flow from her exposed toes and up through the bones in her legs and in her stomach and across her chest and into her brain. The chill was not a foreign sensation that she had never felt before, no, this was something Carolyn had felt all her life. It was an old friend, of sorts, a familiar breath of coldness reminding her of her place. It was the feeling of darkness and fear and a sign of something sinister. Death was near. 

She tossed the book to the floor as if it were on fire and dashed out of the study and down the hall to the room her daughter Alexandra and her boyfriend Christopher were sharing. She banged on the door, pleading for someone to answer. She felt the icy cold breath of death run through her body again, she knew it well and her first reaction was to protect her daughter from any doom. 

"What is it???" Alexandra said as she opened the door seeing the panic in her mother's face.

"Are you ok? Where's Christopher?!!!??!" Carolyn yelped bursting into the room to see if Chris was ok.

"Carolyn?" Chris said, sitting up groggy in bed with his eyes half open.

"Mother what's going on? What's happened?" Alexandra asked in a terrified voice as she walked over to put her arm around obviously disturbed mother.

But just as Alex's hand was to fall on her mother's shoulder, Carolyn darted back towards the bedroom door.

"Jude!" she said, rushing back down the townhouse hallway to her own bedroom.

Alex and Chris, both still drowsy and confused from sleep, followed suit. Carolyn flung open her bedroom door and in the cool fresh air of the open window she saw her partner's lifeless body in bed.

"Jude." She whispered.

"Mother." Alex said, starting to feel the same cold feeling of death in the air. It terrified her. "Mother wait" Alex added, the concern in her voice noticeable. 

"Something....something has happened to Jude." Carolyn said, her eyes welling up with tears.

Christopher pushed past both Carolyn and Alex at this point and walked up to the man in the bed. He looked closely and then pressed his middle finger and index finger on an exposed part of Jude's neck checking for a pulse. He turned back to the women, Alex now holding her mother's hand and shook his head.

"He's gone." Chris said in a soft sorrow filled voice.

Carolyn gasped and fell to her knees, Alex right along with her allowing her mother to sob in her arms. 

Another man in Carolyn's life gone. Another love taken from her before they could really experience true happiness together. 

In the small townhouse in London, the terrible curse of the Collins family had returned, and this was not the end. This was not some sort of sudden rush of bad luck that hit Jude Powell out of no where. This was the beginning of something much more horrible for Carolyn and her family, and Jude's life, the taking of it, was just one more piece of this complicated puzzle of destruction and misery that was the lives of every member of the Collins family.


****

"David." A soft voice said from across the room at the entrance to the drawing room from the foyer. It was Siobhan, holding a telephone in one hand and caressing her pregnant belly with the other.

David looked up from his evening news paper as a cracking autumn fire burned away warming the room. He looked at his watch and wondered who could be calling at such a late hour, then he noticed Siobhan's white face and empty expression.

"What is it?" He said jumping from his chair and dropping the paper to the ground. He grabbed the phone from her hand but the caller had already hung up. "Who called?"

"It was Chris in England." Siobhan said, her voice timid and sad.

"What did he say? Is everything alright?" David questioned, clearly noting something was not alright.

"It's Jude. He died tonight in his sleep." Siobhan said, her voice still soft and sad.

She began to cry, the emotions running through her body like a river through the mountains. David pulled her in close and the phone dropped to the floor. 

"Oh god, Carolyn." David said, thinking of how horrible his beloved cousin must be feeling. "We have to get her back here." David continued.

Through her sniffles and tears, Siobhan nodded her head in agreement and reached down for the phone that had fallen to the ground. "I'll call the pilot and have the private jet get ready to take off as soon as possible for London. I'm sure we can get something chartered before morning." Siobhan said.

"Why don't you go up and rest, I can have Curtis take care of all of this." David said mentioning Curtis Winters, the young man who  had come to Collinsport the year before to work for the Collins Fishing Fleet and had revealed himself being Victoria Winter's adopted son, but secretly being the true son of Caleb and Kat that had been kidnapped years before and raised by Victoria starting in the year 1920 when she time traveled there to keep Canan safe from the Collins curse.

Siobhan agreed to allowing Curtis to make the flight arrangements, David took the phone from her and went back into the drawing room and begin making his calls. Siobhan, 7 months pregnant with her belly dipping low and ready for birth, watched as her husband turned his back to the door and she slipped out in the night and quickly made her way to the Old  House, there was someone there she needed to inform.

****

The old house, the large home on the Collinwood estate that was the first home of the Collins family, was no longer the shell of itself that it had one been. The family over the course of the year had refurbished it's halls and parlors and bedrooms to it's former glory. Lavishing it with care so that it would fit the life of the person who'd be inhabiting it, for all eternity: Barnabas Collins.

He was home this night and most nights sipping Cherry by an open fire. He had been busy that entire evening and was now resting himself when the knock at the front door came. He stood up quickly and cautiously then looked at the grandfather clock's face. It was now 11pm in the evening.

He slowly walked over to the door and opened it, a gust of wind pushed past him and standing there was his adopted and beloved daughter Siobhan. Her hair in a tussle from the wind, her eyes full of tears.

"What is it? Come in, come in!" Barnabas said rushing his cold pregnant daughter closer to the fire.

"Christopher called from London. Something terrible has happened." She said, warning herself as the tears continued to fall.

"What's happened? Is it Carolyn?" Barnabas questioned.

"No, Jude. He's dead." Siobhan answered.

"I'm so sorry, I had no idea you were so close to him." Barnabas said, hugging his daughter.

"He was a very kind gentleman, but I'm more  upset for Carolyn. What will this do to her? I know what happened to her first husband and second husband, and Jude seemed like he would finally be the one to be there for her for the rest of her life and now...." Siobhan said before being interrupted.

"Now he's dead." Barnabas said with a raised eye brow. "My dear these things happened. Jude was not a young man." Barnabas noted.

"He wasn't ill that we know of, this is so sudden. This is going to destroy Carolyn." Siobhan added.

"Yes." Barnabas said with concern now. "Listen, you go back to Collinwood and rest. You shouldn't be out in this cold weather in your state. You have to stay healthy for this child." Barnabas continued.

"You'll take care of Carolyn when she comes home won't you? She seems to gravitate towards you more than anyone else in the family. Please say you'll be here for her." Siobhan requested.

Indeed, Barnabas was like a second father to Carolyn and he loved her like a daughter. They had their ups and downs and she had often had trust issues with him but there was no way around it, she did love Barnabas more than anyone in the family aside from her daughter Alexandra. The trust issues she carried along with Barnabas would ebb and flow just as the Collins family luck, in and out like the sea.

"I would do anything for anyone in this family, of course I will make sure Carolyn is taken care of. When does she return?" Barnabas questioned.

"David is having Curtis make the arrangements for her flight right now. She'll probably be home by tomorrow night." Siobhan explained through her tears.

"Very well then I will be there with the rest of you and make sure her home coming is a welcome one." Barnabas said and kissed his daughter on the forehead. "No, go on, get back home before David has a fit and knows you're all the way out here."

Siobhan nodded her head and quickly left the drawing room and the Old House and set back for the main Collinwood mansion in the breezy night.

Barnabas picked up his Cherry and took another sip. He took a deep breath and buttoned up his double-breasted suit jacket and made his way down the refurbished halls of The Old House gliding past paintings of old family members who's eyes seemed to lock on his every step just before he came to a dark red door at the end of a various first floor corridors.

He opened the door revealing a staircase to the basement that he was so familiar with. With the light of a small candle that he had brought with him from the drawing room he slowly made his way down the staircase that emptied into an equally dimly lit basement where a large coffin had been sitting.

The coffin was surrounded by at least 10 large, fully burning candelabras. The coffin, was not his. This was work...work that he had been doing for an entire year while the Old House was being refurbished. This was work in secret. No one knew of the existence of the new coffin or what Barnabas' plans for it were.  No one could ever know, not now, not any time soon, only when the time was right.

Barnabas lifted the lid of the coffin and smiled.

"It seems the time, has yet to come for you. I must take care of Carolyn first before all else, and when the time is right, you'll be ready for all. I promise you this, until then, good night." Barnabas said as he closed the lid of the coffin and made his way back up the dreary staircase up into the main portion of the Old House.

Just like the Lady luck, Barnabas Collins had two faces. He could be the kind father figure to a group of family members who have been struggling with the curses their forefather's had laid on them, but he too was a creature of those curses, in fact he was the most cursed of them all. But to live a life as he did, he could not always be as open and honest as the family wished him to be.

A man like Barnabas Collins was a well of secrets and deceit, and although times may have changed, it was easier for Barnabas to continue doing what he did best.

Keep secrets.