 |
| Angelique in the bathroom mirror controlling Alexandra |
Night fall. It's one of the more peaceful times around the small fishing village. It's when people began to take stock of their day. What transpired, their achievements, where they fell short and how they'd get up the next day and start over. It's the time of the day when people re-connected with their loved ones, on the couch watching their favorite shows, at the dinner table over their favorite meal, or as in this case, in bed with their favorite lover.
In a small neighborhood on the west-side of Collinsport that the locals calls "THE MISTS" because of it's close proximity to the sea, Curtis and Cassandra lie in bed, glowing in love. Their skin glistening with sweat after a passionate and frenzied love making as was customary.
Curtis, was smiling. He had not felt this much in love in a very long time, and Cassandra was smiling too. For all her years in her real body and name, Angelique, no one had ever made her feel like Curtis did. As her true self Angelique was often the person giving chase to love and doing all she could to make the man she wanted love her back, and in this case, although Curtis was under a love spell, he did reciprocate in ways she did not anticipate. He would look for her and kiss her first, and make love to her like she was really the woman of his dreams.
Perhaps he was. Perhaps she never needed to put him under a spell. Perhaps it was all really something of a mistake and Curtis would love her no matter what, and with her true self, her true name.
These types of second thoughts often popped up into Angelique's mind while she was Cassandra. She had to constantly throw them out with the bathwater because she knew her true identity would destroy any real chance at love with Curtis, her history and name were just too tainted for true lasting love.
Curtis reached over and kissed Cassie on the lips as she snuggled in his grey sheets. She smiled and watched him replace his pants and open the bedroom window to let in the fresh sea air. He watched as the light of the moon reflected a dance on the sea, it was so close he felt like he could touch it. His mind began to drift with the floating purple clouds in the dark sky.
"Sometimes I wonder how things would be different if I had never come to Collinsport." He said as has hugged his bare chest with this thick arms warming his cooling skin.
"Why?" Cassie asked, unsure of where his thoughts were coming from.
"I look around and sometimes think about how maybe my mother would have been healthier and happier had we never come back at all. You see her every day, how do you think she feels being cooped up in that hospital all day?" His clear thoughts on Vicky's well-being signaled guilt, a conscious thought Cassie had been fearing would arrive as her spell over him began to fade.
Cassie sat up in bed and covered herself with the gray bed sheets, her hair still tousled from the passionate night.
"Curtis, she seems fine. She needs to be there so that she can, hopefully, one day come back much healthier. We talked about this. Don't you remember" Cassie replied, attempting to steer Curtis back into the way of keeping Vicky trapped.
"I know. I just..... I feel bad. And I miss her." Curtis said of his mother.
"Well you know you can come see her anytime you want." Cassie answered still in the bed.
"That's another thing. The family has been really pushing me to allow them to come see her. You and Doctor Wolf have told me that it probably wouldn't be such a good idea for her to see people from her past because it might trigger more of her nightmares and traumas, but is that really still the case? I mean, couldn't we at least let Carolyn come by? They're sisters!" Curtis said bouncing back from the window to the bed and covering himself with his sheets.
"I...uh..." Cassie stuttered, unsure of how to answer.
"It's just one person." Curtis added.
"Let me talk to Dr. Wolf and we'll see, how's that?' Cassandra said to Curtis great big grin, knowing full well she was Dr. Wolf.
Curtis reached up and grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed her again passionately. She could feel her blood boil with passion, his touch made her feel weak, made her feel wild, made her feel like she would do anything for him. In fact she would.
She would do anything for him...to keep him. To hold him close to her and no one else. No one could have him, no other woman. Not even his mother. She refused to allow anyone to get close to him but the spell she had placed on the man she loved, to keep him, to lock him in her clutches was becoming faint. She could tell, her grasp over his whole world could be slipping away and with Alexandra in total control over the bulk of Angelique's powers, there was nothing she could do about it.
His open thoughts about possibly allowing Carolyn to visit Vicky, was the very opposite of what her spell had entailed at its conception. Her spell, was for him to love her as Cassie, her disguise, and to want for no one to see Vicky. No one. Vicky believed them all dead, and if that part of the secret were discovered by anyone in the family, Vicky would tell them all that Cassie was really Angelique, which would would mean the end for her---forever.
The plan had to remain intact. Her powers needed to be restored to do this.
Cassandra got up from the bed and Curtis watched as she slinked over to the bathroom in just the gray sheet. He giggle at her pretend awkwardness. She closed the bathroom door behind her and stared at herself in the mirror. Her skin began to fall off, pealing like a fresh orange down. He hair began to suddenly fall out and grown back blond, she was shape-shifting back into Angelique.
Her reflection now back to normal Angelique could feel her powers growing weaker by the day. Alexandra had absorbed too much of her life-force during their battle. Angelique was losing grip on Curtis' mind and it was becoming more and more difficult to keep the shape of Cassie for long periods of time.
The only solution was Alexandra's death, thus returning the absorbed powers back to it's source: Angelique.
Angelique turned off the bathroom lights and allowed herself to stand naked in the bathroom with only the small nightlight glowing in the corner illuminating her in a blue/green glow. She turned on the water faucet and placed her wrists under the ice cold running water. She closed her eyes and began to chant in her mind:
"WATER. WATER. THE FORCE OF LIFE. JUMP INTO IT; AWAY WITH STRIFE.
WATER. WATER. THE FORCE OF LIFE. JUMP INTO IT; AWAY WITH STRIFE.
WATER. WATER. THE FORCE OF LIFE. JUMP INTO IT; AWAY WITH STRIFE."
Angelique's last bit of energy for the night began to make it's way through town. It burrowed though the trees and over the hill and through the little village and up into Collinwood and inside the house and made it's way directly to it's target: Alexandra's mind.
Alex, who was resting on the sofa in the drawing room opened her eyes and began to hear the echos of Angelique's wicked voice singing her chant of the water.
Over and over and over again. She felt light as air. She felt her heart pounding in the chest. Alex got up from the sofa and opened the French windows and stepped out into the wet grass of the grounds of the mansion and began to make her way over to Widow's Hill following the sounds of the water....the crashing waves off of the giant cliff side that had taken so many lives over the decades.
"FOLLOW THE WATER. FOLLOW IT NOW. TAKE WHAT'S YOURS AND DROWN IT OUT." Angelique's voice continued to say in Alex's mind.
Alexandra continued to walk, her face now glazed over in a trans as Angelique instructed her to make her way to the very edge of Widow's Hill. The wind was now blowing furiously into Alex's hair, so powerful was the wind that she would often lose her footing and have to hold on a broken off dead tree right at the edge. Alex had been here before. She had felt the cold touch of the wind on her face at the cliff's edge, years ago under a different spell. But this one was stronger, different, more sinister. Alex could feel the strength of this spell, stronger than the first from all those years ago.
Angelique, still in Curtis' bathroom with the water running over her wrists, opened her eyes to reveal a red glow, she was now in complete control of Alex's mind and body.
With a wicked, evil and deep voice Angelique said one word: JUMP.
Alex, her eyes now glowing like Angelique's, red like two burning coals, lifted one foot above the edge of the cliff but kept her had on the dead tree, its bark crackled and snapped with the pressure of Alex's tug.
"Hey! Cassie! You ok?" Curtis' voice said knocking Angelique's concentration.
Alex, her eyes still red, still linked to Angelique, also heard the voice in her own head. She snapped out of the trans and saw that she was on the very edge of the cliff. She watched as earth from the weakening ledge began to crumble under her feet and down 300 feet into the ocean and sharp rocks below.
Alexandra screamed but the scream came out of Angelique's mouth in Curtis' bathroom as the two women were powerfully connected.
"CASSIE!??!! What's the matter? Open the door?" Curtis said from the other side of the bathroom door in his apartment.
Angelique quickly removed her wrists from the water and unlatched herself from Alex's mind then shape-shifted back into Cassandra.
Now back as Cassie, she flipped on the bathroom lights and opened the door to a panic stricken Curtis.
"Jesus! What happened?" He said grabbing a hold of her naked body.
"Oh! I'm sorry! I'm sorry. I saw spider." Cassie said snuggling in her lover's arms.
Curtis hugged her back and shook his head.
"Oh god!" He said, laughing at her silliness.
But Angelique, the woman behind Cassie's eyes was furious. Her plan failed---again.
Alex screamed again. She pulled herself back on to the ledge, this time, both feet on the ground. She quickly backed away from the ledge, falling to the ground and dragging herself, in utter terror further away from the edge of Widow's Hill.
She sat there, in the mud, out of breath and in total fear. She could feel the rush of energy in her body. She could feel that someone, or something else, had taken over her.
"Alex? ALEX!" Andrew's voice said from behind as he lifted Alex from the dirt. "What are you doing here? What happened?" He asked hugging her and keeping her warm.
"She's back. I can know it now, I can feel it now... Angelique....is back." Alex said softy in Andrew's ear.
Andrew pulled away, his eyes like saucers and in disbelief. But what Alex was feeling was true and real, and could only have been the work of the witch Angelique Bouchard.
"I won't let her hurt you, or anyone. I promise you, Angelique will not get anywhere near us." He promised as the waves crashed on the rocks.
"How can you say that? She's already tried to kill me and I haven't even seen her. She's can control my mind somehow." Alex pointed out.
"You've absorbed so much of her, isn't there anything you can do to track her down?" Andrew wondered.
Alex knew the answer to that was unlikely. She had indeed absorbed all or most of Angelique's powers but the witch still knew how to manipulate her way into Alex's mind, and Alex still needed to reign in her strength to then use it against it's former host. The powers she possessed were too strong for her to use without restraint.
"I have to be careful with what I have now...if I'm not who knows what can happen? I may not only destroy Angelique, where ever she is, I may destroy us all." Alex warned.
"Then we'll find her. We'll find here where ever she is and ....." Andrew replied coldly pausing unsure of what to say next.
Alex put her fingers up to his lips pausing him. She knew his heart was in the right place, but finding the witch would be the bigger challenge, Alex knew that Angelique could be hiding in plain sight without anyone even knowing it. Like a tiger in the grass.
****
 |
| Quinn confronting David and Carolyn at COLLINS FISHING CO. |
The following morning Carolyn and David walked into The Cannery office building in downtown Collinsport. Carolyn hadn't been to work in decades and even though she was on the board of trustees and received regular reports on the cannery's business, she wanted a more hands on approach, to David's annoyance.
Carolyn was like his big sister, a woman who had always been there when he needed someone to lean on but at the end of the day, big sisters were often micro-managers who only wanted what they wanted, and Carolyn was the queen of micro-managing, and much like her mother Elizabeth before her to her own brother Roger, Carolyn could often be a thorn in David's side.
As the two Collins family members walked into the office, the office workers were all whispers seeing Carolyn for the first time in ages. She was dressed in a black pencil skirt, a soft chiffon blouse with a large pussy-cat-bow tied around her neck, in perfect office diva form; Coco Chanel reincarnated. She removed her dark sun glasses revealing her steel blue eyes and and turned back around to the office workers revealing a glittering white tooth grin that made everyone in the office feel like a mega star had just walked in.
David closed his office door behind him and plopped what looked like 4 pounds of paper work on his desk.
"You been dying to do that, haven't you?" He joked.
"It does feel good sometimes." Carolyn giggled.
"They think you're a movie star." David joked again.
"Who?" Carolyn questioned, to David rolling his eyes.
"Are you sure you really want to go through all this today? Andrew told me about what happened last night with Alex, you could be home with her, making sure she's ok. He told me he thinks it was Angelique." David said attempting to sway Carolyn from getting involved in the business.
"I know." Carolyn said, her voice turning serious again with the mention of the witch who tried to kill them all just 7 months before. "I tried to reason with her but, much like her grandmother, Alex is stubborn. She refused to even talk about what happened. I am pretty worried about her. First she got sick at the dinner party and then that strange episode on her balcony and now she sleep-walked to that ghastly hill...I swear David, we should just fence off the grounds and make sure no one ever gets to that cliff again. At any rate, as much as I am needed at home I really want to get my hands back in the business." Carolyn said sitting down across from David at his desk.
"It can be boring." David said flicking open some of the new files that came over from the company's lawyers and accountants.
"Boring? A Collins doesn't know the meaning of the word." Carolyn joked as David picked up some of his mail left on his desk.
He opened an envelope and read from the letter, his face lit up.
"What’s that?" Carolyn asked.
"It’s from Kat and Caleb. They’re having a wonderful time in Indonesia. Little Canan is loving it.
They’re just having the best time; the nanny though... Sasha was it? I guess she’s left them." David explained from the letter.
"Oh? Is Sasha coming home? To Collinsport?"
David searched the letter. "They don’t say, just that they’re loving Indonesia 'even though Sasha has left us.’" David said reading from the letter.
As the two then went over business paper work over coffee and talked about the various shipping fleets and the problem with the over-fishing in areas around Canadian waters, David's intercom rang. He looked at the clock and wondered why his secretary was so ahead of a meeting that was scheduled two hours from then.
David went over and connected to the call.
"What is it Kyle?" David asked his Secretary.
"Mr. Collins, a Ms. Quinn Devereaux is here to see you." Kyle replied over the speaker.
David looked at Carolyn who shrugged, unsure of why Quinn was at the office.
"Uhhh, ok send her in." David said.
David cleaned up his desk and Carolyn folded the paperwork back into their files and Quinn was let into the office suite that over-looked the Collinsport harbor filled with tiny boats and a shining ocean that color of dark green and turquoise.
"Quinn! Come in, come in!" David said ushering in Quinn.
"Is this a business or pleasure meeting?" Carolyn asked.
"Personal." Quinn said sternly, Carolyn lifted an eye brow.
"What is it?" David asked as he too seemed off-put by Quinn's surprise arrival.
"I don't want to beat around the bush and I don't want to be lied to anymore. There's something that I need to know and I need to hear it from you because I know you have the answers." Quinn said, her voice sounding overwhelmed and frustrated.
"What is it?" David asked.
"I know that you had Loomis McGovern look into my history which is how Julia discovered she was my grandmother. From what I can tell, she and my grandfather separated and my father was sent to live with my grandfather's family members. Julia didn't raise him at all, I know that from stories my father told me. What I don't know is why....why my grandparents split. Normally, it wouldn't matter but the other day I overheard Julia furiously talking to Loomis about it. She wants me not to know the truth." Quinn replied, laying down the law like a good lawyer should speak. "Which, as you can imagine, I don't accept that."
Carolyn felt the tension in the room spike, she knew David had a hand in discovering the connection between Julia and Quinn but had no idea to what extent her went to discover the information.
"David?" Carolyn said, she herself on the edge of her seat to know what was really going on.
David stammered.
"Quinn, don't you think this is something you and Julia should talk about together? I don't want to pry." David answered.
"Pry? I think you've already done that. Besides, Julia hasn't been honest with me up until this point why would she tell me the truth now? I just need to hear it from you. You got us here, you tell ,e. What is Julia hiding David?" Quinn said.
"Listen, what happened to Julia back then, with her first marriage to you grandfather was not at all what I expected to find when I had Loomis look into your background. My intention was to try to find out how you got Jeffery off the hook for Christopher's death and as they say, when you go looking for trouble you find it. I swear, Quinn, I had no idea I would discover you and Julia were related, and much less did I know I would find out about her first marriage....and especially how it ended." David explained.
"So you know how their marriage ended but you're not going to tell me?" Quinn asked.
"No. Julia should." David said standing up from his desk to look Quinn in the eye.
"She wont! What am I supposed to do? Pay Loomis to tell me like you did? Julia's already scared him off he wont be telling her secret any time soon, and now that I work for the D.A. I can't exactly go snooping around without good reason either. David, please....just tell me." Quinn begged.
"Quinn, these are matters of public record, you can do whatever you want." David said.
Quinn scoffed at David's reluctance to answer her questions and his evasion of her push for answers.
"Honey, you should talk to Julia. I think that she's really trying her best to reconnect with you and her daughter Siobhan and at this stage she's going to do what she can to be honest. It's in her best interest." Carolyn interjected.
"Julia? Honest? She hasn't been yet. She's been acting like it's normal that she and I are related but the holes in her history are gaping. I need to know, its my history too." Quinn replied.
David felt guilty. He knew that he was directly responsible for the mess between Quinn and Julia and he also knew that Quinn had a right to know and a right to be angry. But he was done meddling. The truth of Julia murdering her own husband in a drunken accident would not come out of his mouth. Not ever.
"Carolyn is right. Julia is trying to turn another page. She's trying to make things better. Ask her...she'll be open about it." David said.
"Fine." Quinn replied in a ruthlessly dissatisfied way.
Her heart was starting to break. She knew whatever David knew was so damning in Julia's mind that she threatened Loomis and made David too scared even to speak. Quinn grabbed her things and stormed out of David's office.
David watched through his glass office doors as Quinn entered the elevator to make her way out of the building. As soon as she was out of site he grabbed his phone.
"I don't know, maybe you should have told her." Carolyn said as David dialed.
"And have Julia Hoffman on my back? She's my mother-in-law, that's the last thing I want is to be on my mother-in-law's bad side." David added, still standing and dialing on his office phone.
"Who are you calling?" His cousin Carolyn asked.
David didn't answer her. He only picked up the phone and sat back down at his desk.
"Julia, Hi it's David.....listen, I think it's time.....time for you and Quinn to have that talk.' David said to Julia on the other line.
On the other side of the phone call, Julia's heart dropped, she was standing in the living room of the Rose Cottage with her arms firmly gripping her body as David spoke over the phone.
"What happened?" Julia said her voice coming through David's receiver cold and acute.
"She was just here, at the Cannery office, and ...well, it seems she knows you've been keeping something from her. I didn't tell her what it was because, well I think it should come from you." David said knowing that Julia should be the one to tell her granddaughter of the family secret.
"Thank you for calling David." Julia said. Her eyes glazing over in a cold calculating manner as she stared out from the white chiffon drapes in the living room of the Rose Cottage.
Julia could not relive this again. It was too much for her. It was bad enough that David and Siobhan knew that she had killed her husband in a fit of rage and abandoned Quinn's father when he was little but she couldn't tell Quinn. She couldn't bring herself to go into that dark part of her life again. Her secret was too viscous for her to rehash. Julia couldn't do it. She had to make sure Quinn never knew, not now, not ever.
Julia's thoughts began to float into all kinds of different variables about she could continue to keep the secret as if her relationship with her long lost granddaughter depended on it, because after all, she felt it did. She could lie to Quinn, but she knew Quinn would press on for the truth. She could lie to her and make everyone else around her continue the lie, but Julia knew full well a buried secret would always surface if there were too many involved. Then It came to Julia, the idea. the one trick she had up her sleeve that would guarantee her way out of Quinn's digging.
Julia walked over to her old medical bag and removed a syringe. She then took it into a room that she had set up as an office inside the small Rose Cottage on the Collinwood grounds and opened up a large empty armoire that was to House various small bottles of medicines that Julia planned on using when she began her practice again. There was one small box with six bottles of medical sedatives that Julia had secretly removed from Siobhan’s medical bag at Andrew’s dinner party.
Julia looked at the vials of sedatives and took a deep breath. She signed a deep disappointment breath with herself but grabbed the syringe in her hand anyway and stuck the needle inside the bottle and pulled the plunger back filling the syringe up to the top with the sedative.
She chose a mild medicine, one that would put whomever she was going to place under not to sleep but in a dazed state, enough so that Julia would still be able to speak and converse with the person thus being able to contour and curate the persons thoughts and control their mind's way of processing information by way of hypnosis. Julia's specialty.
Julia had to take matters into her own hands now that Quinn was digging too deep and getting too close. She craved a clean slate. She wanted a fresh start and with Quinn now poking around in a past Julia wished to forget Julia’s wish for a new beginning with her daughter Siobhan and granddaughter Quinn seemed close to vanishing.
The secret of Julia killing her first husband in a terrible drunken mistake was too hurtful for Julia to relive yet again. She would do anything to make sure it finally died and stayed dead, even manipulating and erasing Quinn's desire of knowing the truth. Julia had to take that out of Quinn's mind once and for good by wiping it clean of anything relating to Julia's past.
 |
| Julia with the syringe meant for Quinn |
****
In the evening, the waves of the ocean that crashed up against the harsh rocks of the Maine coastline looked like black water, like tar thrusting and pounding in furious succession; blasting a thunderous sound into the air and across Widow's Hill into the open windows of Collinwood where Sebastian and Serena were sitting in a smaller sitting room in the west wing of the house that had access to a exterior courtyard. She sat in the room in a nervous state having a night cap after Serena's long day as John-Michael's nanny.
They sat there making small talk waiting for someone.
"What time did Siobhan come home?" Sebastian asked as he sipped his brandy, reflection of the many men who had walked these halls and drank the same.
"Around 8." Serena replied looking nervously towards the French doors that led to the outer courtyard.
"David and Carolyn?" He asked.
"Not home. They're still at the office. Carolyn had a lot to go over now that she wanted to have a little more input on the Cannery's business." Serena added.
"Alex and Andrew?"
"Asleep. I think."
"Good." Sebastian answered.
They needed the coast to be clear. They needed time for themselves because of what they were about to do that no one in the family could know about. No one could walk in, no one could hear, no one could break it up. As the two sat nervously awaiting their guest, it finally happened, the tap at the French door window's that they had been waiting for.
Serena jumped from her seat and rushed over. She grabbed the two lion-faced door knobs on the French doors and took a deep breath. She hesitated unsure of if she was doing the right thing, but in her heart she knew whatever happened next was what needed to happen. She pulled the doors open and standing there was Maggie Evans and her friend Dr. Lucas Granger, the paranormal scientist that had come to Collinwood to finally rid the house of Barnabas' spirit once and for all.
"Thank you for coming." Serena said as Maggie quickly entered with her friend.
"I can already feel the many, many energies this houses possesses. Maggie, you didn't tell me of the intensity I would feel." Lucas said in his British accent.
"I wanted you to feel what I feel every time I walk into this house and what I've felt for close to 60 years. It's something I've lived with for so long, that I don't even know I could explain it myself." Maggie answered.
"Are there any family members home?" Lucas wondered.
"There are. Not many, just a few." Serena answered.
"Good, their energy will be used as a conduit, light a lightening rod that will break open the world of the dead." Lucas explained.
"Doctor, maybe you can explain to us what is about to happen before you begin. How did you even know about this family? My mother says you're very versed in Collinsport history. Especially this family." Sebastian wondered.
"I've been a student of the paranormal for decades. It's always been my keen understanding that the world of the dead isn't in some other place beyond ours, but rather within ours. It's here among us in the places where we are, where we sit, eat, sleep, dream. It's not a fantastical place that exists only in scripture and in the further corners of space. It's here." Lucas said looking around the room with eyes of wonder and hunger.
"And this family? How did you hear about them?" Sebastian pushed.
Maggie snickered at her son, his questions seemed a bit pushy and skeptical.
"It's ok. Questions are good." Lucas told Maggie. "A friend of mine who died many years ago had diaries, journals about one member. You see, I was student and when he died, many of his writings and journals were destroyed. But some....some were hidden, secretly where no one but his family knew. They kept them safe and one day were kind enough to let me see them, and one day when his wife died, I inherited them. Dr. David Woodard and his journals made my passion for the paranormal possible and real. His notes on Barnabas Collins in particular, were extensive." Lucas explained.
Maggie cringed. She could feel the goosebumps rise up on her skin remembering her time with Dr. Woodard and Julia......and Barnabas. She could see the flashes of the room Barnabas held her in, she could see the flashes of Julia's light in her eyes when she was at Windcliff, safe from Barnabas' evil hands, she could ear a song ringing in her ear over and over again.
"Are you ok?" Sebastian asked grabbing his mother's hand.
"I just want to get this over with." Maggie said, her body and mind filled to the brim with dark shadows, and ready to finally be rid of the darkness.
"Then I think we should begin." Lucas said.
Serena and Maggie quickly rushed over to the windows and pulled the large shades closed.
Sebastian went over to the sitting room door and locked it.
Lucas lit a flame from his hand lighter and lit several candles and then turned off the lights. The flickering flames bounced light on the walls like the orange glow of a deep sunset. Their shadows danced across the painted faces of portraits of Annabella and Isaac Collins staring down in regal distaste for what was about to happen.
Lucas set up three cameras in three corners in the room marking a perimeter for the entrance and hopefully banishment of any spirit in the house, but mainly Barnabas Collins. Sebastian helped set up recording devices that would hopefully record and prove the existence of the spirits in the house, that of Barnabas or anyone else.
"Alright, Please, sit." Lucas said, as he and the other's sat around the round table in the center filled with candles brightly shining white light on to their nervous faces.
"Are we sure we want to do this?" Serena asked. "I just ... I feel like we're betraying the family. We're doing this without any of them knowing without any of their knowledge. It just feels...." Serene continued before being interrupted.
"Its now or never Ms. Bellmoore. Either we vanquish these dark forces from this house and this town forever or they remain here as a constant remind of the evil that lurks within us all. The Collins family have done nothing to heal the wounds of their past and have allowed these trespassers to live long after their physical bodies have turned to dust in their graves....it's time we take matters up in our own hands. It's up to you." Lucas said in a stern and cold voice.
Serena looked around. Sebastian was staring at her waiting for her to decide. Maggie too looked at Serena with a fierce stare, showing that there was no other way to save them all, once and for all, of the horrors that were constantly plaguing everyone that touched the halls of Collinwood.
Serena reluctantly replied "Ok." backing down.
"Very well." Lucas said simmering in his win then motioning to Sebastian to turn on the recorders.
As the recording machines began their shuffling of white noise to capture the sounds of anyone on the other side, Lucas took a deep breath and cracked his neck releasing any tension within his body.
"To those who roam this place, to those who feel they are trapped and cannot find their way out, I say to you make yourself known now, make yourself know to us here in this room and in this place. I ask that Barnabas Collins speak, show himself and prove to me his was once of body and motion in this time."
Only white noise from the recorders replied.
"Barnabas Collins. Are you there?"
White noise.
"Barnabas." Lucas continued.
White noise.
"Is anyone in this place? I ask ..."
Suddenly a camera in the corner of the room flashed, capturing something.
Serena gasped.
"Who's there. Speak." Lucas asked again.
White noise.
"I ask you to make yourself known to us again, please tell us who you are." Lucas ordered.
Then two flashes from two different cameras.
Then another flash. Then another. Then another. Then two more cameras flashed. Then all three flashing in cadence with each other. Over and over the flashes went wild. Flicking and snapping photos and flashes and more flashes until the entire room was filled with the sound of clicking cameras and the bright flashes of cameras flickering all over the room like the red carpet of a Hollywood event.
The flashes were so constant and were coming so quickly that they were now beginning to blind Serena, Sebastian Lucas and Maggie.
"WHO'S THERE! WHO IS THERE!?" Lucas yelled.
A candle fell over in the midst of the flashing frenzy. The wax began to flow and spill in it's molten state all over the ancient hardwood floor, and as it cooled and hardened something, from another world and another place began to carve the letters B and C into the waxy surface.
"Jesus!" Sebastian gasped.
"I knew it, I knew he wasn't dead. I knew he wasn't gone! GET OUT OF HERE! GO AWAY! GO! GET OUT!!" Maggie screamed in a fiery rage. Decades of anger pushed out through the deepest parts of her voice.
The noise began to fill the halls of Collinwood, so much so that the small seance that was meant to be kept secret could no longer hold it's stealth nature.
Siobhan, who had just walked in from work early heard Maggie's scream to Barnabas and rushed over from the sitting room in the west-wing. She burst open the doors and was immediately bombarded by the flashing cameras all around the room.
She tuned her eyes from the flashes, blinded by their snapping lights.
"What is going on in here?" She yelled at the group.
As soon as her voice hit air the flashing stopped. Everything stopped. It was as if the air had been removed from the room and everyone turned to look at Siobhan who was in utter shock at what she was seeing.
"Serena? Maggie? What is happening?" Siobhan asked angrily.
The group didn't know what to say. They didn't know how to explain their actions to Siobhan who had already come to terms with the fact that her father Barnabas had died after Angelique's stone curse broke his body into thousands of little stone pieces. But the truth had to be told, and Siobhan had to know her adopted father Barnabas was attempting to come back via the innocence of her baby John-Michael.
"Serena?" Siobhan asked again.
"Honey, I think you need to sit down." Maggie said as Siobhan came into the room.
The candles still flickered their yellow glow, and Siobhan's green eyes looked perfectly serene in their light, but soon and as Maggie explained the situation and who Lucas was and what they were trying to do. Those green eyes would fill with tears, tears of joy and tears of terror, Siobhan was a mix-bag of emotions.
"I don't believe you." Siobhan said, lying.
"Look." Serena said pointing to the wax on the floor marked B. C.
"That appeared as we were trying to conjure your father." Lucas explained.
"I still don't understand. You're trying to bring him back?" Siobhan wondered.
"If we make contact with him, we can point him in the direction he and any other spirit trapped here need to go to find their peace. He cannot be sent to a peaceful place if he cannot find it. I am here to show him that place." Lucas explained.
"You can give him peace?" Siobhan asked.
"I can give you all peace." Lucas replied. "But Barnabas comes first, if he does not find his freedom from the realm he is trapped in, no one in this family will ever find their own peace."
"Honey, we need to keep this between us. No one in the family can know. I don't think Carolyn or David would agree that we do this, after all the terrible things that have happened after other seances, I just think they'd be a negative energy and right now we need possibility to get these lost souls to the right place." Maggie added.
Siobhan got up from the light colored sofa in the middle of the room and walked over the wax with her father's initials. She looked up at the paintings of Annabelle and Isaac and wondered what she should do. Should she agree and allow this to go on under everyone's noses? Should she even be apart of it? Should she refuse and tell them all to leave? She was trapped between a rock and hard place. But her decisions seemed to be the final and definitive answer for them all.
Then she thought about David and how contentious his feelings still were for Barnabas. No matter what good her father had done David constantly and unabashedly only saw the dark side. This conjuring, Siobhan thought, could be a way for her father to show his true side and leave this world peacefully, allowing the family to finally move on in grace. It would show Barnabas really did love them all, that his heart was as tender as theirs and that he was willing to finally let it all go, if she could convince him...she had to convince him.
"Siobhan?" Sebastian asked, waiting for her to reply while Siobhan's face glazed over in thought.
"Fine. You can continue to try and ....do whatever it is you need to do. I'll do my best to keep it from the rest of the family but I have one condition." Siobhan said.
"Go on?" Lucas wondered.
"That I be apart of it. I want to be here when you contact my father again and I want to be here when you finally close to the door to the other side forever, it will be his last gift, giving us this peace. Giving us this final relief from every dark secret he has brought upon this family and this home He can prove it to us, that he loves us by doing that." Siobhan explained.
The other's looked at each other.
"Oh, honey, are you sure? Are you sure you want to be here for that? It's very final. It's very much an end to something that for you might be---" Maggie began before Siobhan interrupted.
"Those are my conditions Maggie. Either I'm in, or no one is."
"This could be a very good thing. Having Siobhan here will up the ante for Barnabas. I say we let her in." Lucas added, he of course wanting with all his might to reach Barnabas no matter what.
The others looked around again and made their own decision: Siobhan was in.
"Fine, but we can't do it here again. It's too risky, anyone can just walk in and we can't have anyone else disrupt what we're trying to do here." Maggie said.
"The Old House." Siobhan responded to Lucas' utter delight. "That's where my father loved to be. It's his pride and joy. It's where his life force truly is."
"The Old House. Barnabas' house." Lucas said, his mouth almost salivating with the thought of seeing the place Barnabas lived for so long, a place he had only read about in notes and journals from Woodard.
Maggie nodded and motioned for the group to gather the equipment and head over to the one place Barnabas has always found as is refuge, the Old House.
"Very well, lets continue there..." Lucas added to the group as they began their trek out of the French doors and off to the old house.
They arrived after a short walk across the wooded grounds of Collinwood in the dark, in the fog of Maine. The wind blew through their bodies like an ice cold kiss of death. It was a harsh autumn night and the season began to chill the New England coast line to the bone. Serena shivered in her tracks to the Old House, gripping on to Sebastian's hand for security. He looked over at her wind-blown face as she cringed in the cold and winked at her.
"It's going to be ok." He mouthed.
As they arrived at the Old House, it was as dank and gaunt as Maggie had remembered it being the first time she had seen it over 50 years go. She had seen it since then, over the years, many, many times, but on this night it felt like it was the first night. A howling sound of wind rushed through the portico and blew Maggie's silk scarf off of her neck. She grasped at the naked skin of her neck and watched the scarf blow off into the foggy distance.
Sebastian forced open the front door. The house had all been rearranged by David and Carolyn. Mostly empty rooms now with whatever remaining furniture covered by white sheets. The furniture themselves sitting like old ghosts staring blankly into the night.
They looked at each other one last time once the room was set up for their next attempt to contact the other side and release the trapped spirits from their unending suffering in the gray area between two worlds.
Would the haunted spirits of the damned finally be able to find their peace in the other world?
Only the night would know for sure but there was a thin line between peace and disaster when it came with opening the channel to the world of the dead.
