A moment of eerie silence is only made more so by the sounds of terror and screams just before it. Such are the events the basement of the Old House; a house cloaked in mysteries and darkness that only could have only been brought on by one man: Barnabas Collins.
Victoria's time-travel to 1971 Singapore to retrieve Julia Hoffman for Barnabas had worked, and Julia's corpse Barnabas held in a coffin had miraculously come back to life, in flesh and bone as if nothing had ever happened. The timelines had crossed, and Julia was not a ghost, not a figment of anyone's imagination, she was real, alive, and standing before them just as she did so many years ago.
As Barnabas and David stared at Julia with various amounts of emotions swirling through their minds, Victoria, the only person who could have done this for Barnabas slowly made her exit from the basement without anyone noticing and back up stairs to the main part of the Old House. While the others were distracted by Julia's return, she was going to gather her belongings and make her escape.
Siobhan started to get back up with David's help after she fainted. Her mother's face was so much like she had remembered yet so different. It was a shock to her whole system. Siobhan took deep breaths and cleaned the tears from her face.
"Siobhan, honey, are you ok? Siobhna?" David said to his wife as she started to ease the fog of shock from her system.
She felt the back of her head. She looked up at her handsome husband David and put her hand on his scruffy face and smiled. She motioned that she was fine, as he helped her back up.
"What the hell have you done?" David said, as he held on to a shaky legged Siobhan and turned to Barnabas.
Barnabas only snarled at David who had almost ruined the whole project.
"How can this be? How can you be here in front of me like you are. It is you isn't it?" Siobhan asked of her mother.
Julia said nothing, her mind still a blur from her awakening.
"Julia, Julia are you ok?" David asked, his arm stretched out for Siobhan to hold as she was still feeling light headed.
"Julia has had a long travel, we shouldn't bog her down with questions. Would you like to go up to the drawing room?" Barnabas asked his back-from-the-dead wife.
"I...." Julia began and she looked around the basement room with it's concrete and brick walls, its low domed ceilings and its bevy of well lit candelabras. "I don't know anything. I feel very confused. Am I Julia?" She answered.
"She.... doesn't remember." Barnabas said slowly, his own shock evident in his words. "She doesn't remember!" He said again, this time angrily as he looked around the room for Victoria to explain how this could happen.
"Yes, you're my mother Julia Hoffman-Collins, this is your husband, and this is my husband. I'm Siobhan, this is David and Barnabas. Mother, you've ...." Sionban didn't know how to explain what had happened to a woman who had come back from the dead, not only back from the dead and from the past. She looked up at David for answers, his face was blank.
"It doesn't matter now." David said. "Why don't we just take you up to the drawing room where we can all clam down." David continued, his feverish anger towards Barnabas slowly subsiding as to not frighten the already unsteady Julia and Siobhan.
The foursome made their way into the drawing room where a fire was already lit and hot. They sat Julia down in the closest chair nearest the fire and she smiled calmly, yet obviously still nervous and confused at the three strangers staring back at her.
"I'm sorry, I can tell that I should remember something; you all are looking at me as if I should. There's obviously something that I am missing. I wish I could explain myself, but I ....I just can't. There's nothing that I can say. I feel so blank." Julia explained as Barnabas handed her tea.
"It will come back to you, all of it. Our time together in Singapore, your life here in Collinsport. It'll all come back." Barnabas said with a Cheshire cat grin.
"Collinsport, is that where we are?" Julia asked.
"Yes, this is where you lived before you and father left for Singapore. That's where the two of you adopted me. My parents were your friends, a couple of Americans who lived in Singapore too and they died in an accident. You took me in." Siobhan explained.
"Oh." Julia said with a smile and sipped her tea.
"Siobhan why don't we leave Julia to rest, I'm sure she is feeling a little tired." David interjected.
"No! I want to be here with her, this is my mother. I thought I'd never see her again. She left so abruptly when I was so young, I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye." Siobhan answered.
David looked over at Barnabas who excused himself while Siobhan and Julia talked alone. They're bonding was instant, even if Julia couldn't remember her, she could still feel the motherly instinct inside of her grow.
"Where are you going?" David said, quickly grabbing Barnabas' arm.
"I advise you to remove your hand from me young David, there's nothing more you can do. What's done is done. I need to speak with Victoria." He said staring at David's hand around his well suited arm.
"I swear to god, Barnabas, if you do anything more that will hurt Siobhan I don't know what I'll do but you won't like any of the thoughts running through my mind right now. How could you do this to her? How could you ---how? How could you do this?" David said in a whisper, his distrust and irate anger towards Barnabas at a full boil.
"Cousin David, when you're in a position like mine you do everything you can to survive and you surround yourself with those who have that same interest. Julia was one of those people. Without her, I would have perished decades ago. I would have never found my way home and we would never have found little Siobhan and you would have never married her. I need Julia...nothing in this world will ever stop me from getting what I need to survive." Barnabas explained.
"You're a selfish monster!" David said angry enough for Barnabas to see, but still in a whisper as to not disturb Siobhan and Julia's talk.
Barnabas, thrust his arm out of David's grasp and slowly made his way up the staircase into the main portion of the Old House. And as he turned the corner at the top of the staircase into the hallway he and Victoria collided.
"Ahhhhh now now now ...where are you off to Ms. Winters!?!" Barnabas said, pulling Victoria's body back into the dark second floor hallway where no one could see them.
"You have what you want, now leave me alone!" Vicky said.
Barnabas turned Vicky around and pinned her up against the wall, his large hand quickly locked around her throat, her suitcase fell to the floor spilling its contents all over the dark hallway.
"Did you think you'd get away so easily? What did you do to Julia? Why doesn't she remember?" Barnabas demanded to know.
"I don't know what you're talking about, I did nothing to her!" Vicky said through a slightly chocked out voice.
"You're LYING!" Barnabas growled. "You're lying to me Victoria, and you know I don't like when people lie to me. Whatever you did to you her must undo. She must be the Julia I knew!" Barnabas hissed.
Vicky's fury was starting to boil just as David's did on the first floor. She was tired of his demands and blackmails. She had provided him with what he wanted and she was done being part of whatever Barnabas had planned for Julia's return. She sunk her finger nails into Barnabas' hand that was around her neck and peeled away his claws then pushed him off her so that they were now standing face to face in the hallway, with only the light beaming up from the foyer and the staircase below.
"You got what you wanted, you have Julia sitting in your house right now as we speak. That's what you asked for." Vicky said, her breathing labored from the quick scuffle removing Barnabas hand.
"Her memory loss was not part of the deal. She was to be returned to me the way she once was, not this...this...empty person with no history. Get Julia back. The Complete Julia!" Barnabas demanded.
"That's it Barnabas. You don't get second chances. Not this time. You've gone around living this existence getting what you wanted because people feared you, because people didn't know what you were capable of and they just sat there and took it. I've decided that I'm no longer going to fear you. I brought you back what you wanted so that maybe you could find your own form of peace....but that's all you get from me. Nothing more." Vicky said as she picked up her things that fell in from her suitcase. "Deal with it."
Vicky stared deep into Barnabas' eyes and fearlessly continued on her way out of the Old House past Siobhan and David and Julia. Her part of the deal was done and her fear and control that Barnabas so cunningly held over her had vanished. She felt free. She felt like nothing could hold her back any longer, but she knew she still had to see her son Curtis.
Curtis needed to be protected, Vicky's fears were that Barnabas' raging anger would slowly turn into a revenge plot where Curtis would be victim number one bad the secret that she actually kidnapped him would destroy their closeness.
As for Julia she calmly sat and listened to Siobhan go on and on gleefully recounting their lives and filling in Julia on all that had happened over the years. Sioban's eyes were sparkling like two ravishing blue diamonds and the thought of how lucky she was that her mother was miraculously back in her life just as she was going to have a baby. It was all so perfect.
"Siobhan." Barnabas said as he walked back into the room.
David stood up and placed himself between his wife and her father.
"David." Siobhan nagged pulling David back down to the sofa.
"Do you remember receiving the paper work on a new patient to take on?" Barnabas asked.
"Yes." Siobhan answered confused as to how Barnabas knew, David looked over confused, he was not aware his wife was taking on a new client at Windcliff.
"Well, I sent you those papers. Your mother, is your new patient." Barnabas revealed. "I had suspected Julia may need help putting her life together now that she would be in the present, it would, of course be so much more different the other times she time traveled years ago. She would have a grown daughter and a grandchild on the way, needless to say I did not expect her to not remember anything...all the more important you help her."
"ABSOLUTELY NOT!" David said, standing up again to Barnabas. "I will not have my pregnant wife get dragged into any of your god forsaken plans. NO!"
"David!"Siobhan said, looking over at her mother then back at Barnabas. "Even though this was an underhanded thing you've done, and even though I should have know that you could be capable of something like I can't help but thank you for bringing her back to us." She then grabbed David's hand. "She's the only mother I really have ever know. If I can help her...I have to."
Julia sat silently in the chair looking up and her family, what they didn't notice was that she too had a little smirk in the corner of her mouth. Time travel may have changed Julia's surroundings, but it didn't change one very important thing --- her cunning disposition. Julia was lying. She had never lost a single ounce of her memory.
Julia had every intention of using the freedom of self-imposed amnesia to maneuver around the dangers of being back in Collinwood, things were about to get very interesting.
As the gloomy winter fog rolled in from the raging Atlantic sea, creeping into the sea-side town of Collinsport like pea soup Maggie and Sebastian sat together at the Evans family cottage wondering where Serena had been all this time. She had borrowed Sebastian's car to kidnap Chris but said she was running errands. That had been hours ago, and she hadn't returned anyone's phone calls. It was strange behavior, and Sebastian and Maggie were starting to become worried.
"I'm sure it's nothing. I'm sure she just got lost. She's never been to Collinsport. The streets all look the same maybe she just got turned around." Sebastian said nervously tapping his fingers on his knee.
"Uh..." Maggie said as with a wince "hon, I don't know how to say this without hurting your feelings."
"What?" Sebastian asked.
"Collinsport isn't really a big town, sweetheart, she wouldn't get lost. And besides, we've called her almost all night. I'm not saying you shouldn't be worried, because, I am too, but maybe instead of just waiting around we should call the police." His mother advised.
Sebastian took a deep breath. It was one of those moments when a person is faced with the feeling that they never want to feel. The moment when the truth is more terrifying than your worst nightmare---the truth is real---nightmares are often imagined.
"I just feel like..." As Sebastian spoke, car lights hit the window from the outside. "Oh thank god, it's her." He said noticing his own car pulling up.
Serena quickly made her way into the Evans cottage to the awaiting Evans family. Maggie sat back on the living room chair, her worry slowly churning in her stomach to suspicion, and Sebastian only displayed pure relief that she was ok.
"Where have you been!?" Sebastian asked as Serena walked in to the awaiting arms of Sebastian.
"I'm so so sorry. I know I should have called back. I had to leave town and take care of somethings and I literally just got back now." Serena said, lying.
"You left town?" Maggie said from her comfy chair.
"Yes, work had an emergency and I drove back to Boston." Serena said, again lying.
"WOW! That's almost a 7 hour round trip, you must be exhausted. My mom made dinner, it's still warm." Sebastian said with a happy grin.
Serena smiled and went into the kitchen with him as he helped her make a plate. He was totally in love, the signs of deception clearly passing him like like blaring red road alarms, his happiness was blocking all logic from entering his mind and allowing Serena to clearly fabricate what had happened. Maggie, on the other hand, had been lied before. She had lived with a cruel husband and she knew when she was being played a fool. She was not falling for any of it.
"What time did you get into Boston?" Maggie asked setting up her trap as she too stepping to the small kitchenette where dinner was prepared hours ago
"Oh, umm... I don't now, I guess I didn't pay attention to the clock." Serena said.
"Well you left here early in the day, and its about a 3 and half hour drive." Maggie said, offering Serena help with the math.
"I don't know." Serena said, turning coldly towards Maggie as she realized Maggie wasn't falling for it.
"And what time did you leave?" Maggie continued.
"Mom?" Sebastian shot back, seeing straight through Maggie's inquisition.
"What is this?" Serena asked point blank. "I told you I had to do something for work Ms. Evans that's where I was, I don't understand why you'd need a time line."
Maggie only glared at Serena hoping something else would come out of her mouth that she could use to counter but Serena was just as smart and stayed quiet, only starting back at Maggie both waiting for the next woman's move.
"I just think that perhaps there something you're not telling us. You haven't really explained the situation in any sort of way, Serena. We've been waiting around all day to hear back from you. We were worried." Maggie scolded.
Serena started to feel the tables turn. Had she taken advantage too long of Sebastian's kind side? Had she neglected to notice that Maggie would put negative thoughts in his mind about her while she was away? It was obvious that she had over estimated Maggie's welcoming side, and now she had to backtrack or risk exposure.
"You're right, you're both right. I should have called but the truth is I just wanted to make sure I took care of what I had to take care of for work and not interrupt your reunion. I know that the two of you really needed to be together again. It had been so long." Serena said, trying to ease out of the confrontation.
"Oh Serena....please!" Maggie began not believing one word of it.
"Alright! Alright!" Sebastian interjected. "It's been a long night, I think we're all just really tired, why don't we all head off to bed and let it go for now." Sebastian said attempting to calm the sea.
Maggie smiled coyly and walked over to her son that she loved so much and kissed him on the cheek. She turned back and looked at Serena who's green eyes hadn't left Maggie the whole time.
"Good night." Maggie said frigidly as she walked away back into her room.
"You ok?" Sebastian asked Serena as Maggie disappeared in to the bedrooms.
"She hates me." Serena said dryly.
"Noooo she doesn't, she's just very protective. You have no idea what she's been through in her life. My mother has a tendancy to over think thinks and sometimes, she goes a little dark." Sebastian explained without going into detail of Maggie's traumatizing past.
"Do you believe me?" Serena asked, hoping she had at least thwarted off Sebastian's suspicions.
"I Love you, and that's all I need you to know." He said sweetly.
"I love you too." She responded, it was the first thing she had said that was truth all night.
Look, I'm going to go off to bed, you get yourself more comfortable and everything will be fine in the morning, ok?" Sebastian said to a pouting Serena. "OK?" Sebastian asked again kissing her on her neck.
"Fine!!" Serena said, giggling at his short beard tickling her cheek.
Sebastian too left for the bed room and as Serena cleaned up her plate in the kitchen, from inside her bag, her phone rang. Serena knew only one person would have been calling her so late. One person and one person only. Dr. Jeffery Shaw.
She dashed over to her cell phone and pulled it out of her purse. She clicked it on and waited to see if anyone had heard it go off....just silence.
"What?" She said in a whisper seeing Shaw's name on the call log.
"I'm sending you a location of a warehouse I rented before I got here to make the transfer of DNA into my son's body. They've delivered him early, I need you here to help me." Shaw said.
"No, absolutely not. My part of the bargain was to bring you the DNA you needed to get Andrew back to normal and I've done that, so no, I will not help anymore." Serena said, mentioning Shaw's son by name.
"Are you...you're pushing me to the edge Miss Bellmoore! You haven't finished with me yet, not by a long shot. Until Andrew opens his eyes and speaks his first words since he's been in this coma you still owe, me do you hear what I'm saying? If Chris' DNA doesn't work, you still OWE me."
Shaw was right. Serena had promised all of this to him years ago when the accident happened, the accident she was responsible for. But she had no idea how long and how much this promise of hers would take from her life, and now she was seeing what she thought would be the end of his power over her, much like that of Barnabas and Victoria, but unlike Victoria, Serena was still a slave Shaw's will.
She took a deep breath and bit her lip, making sure she doesn't say anything to anger him any further.
"Hurry up, text me the address. I'll be there tonight." Serena said as she hung up the phone.
She quickly grabbed a pen and paper from her purse and wrote Sebastian a note.
"Bash---work called again, I'm sorry. I'll back before breakfast,
I promise. I'll make it up to you.
Love Serena."
Serena grabbed Sebastian's keys, dropped the note on Maggie's coffee table and left the cottage.
Just as she did, Maggie came out of the hallway, she had heard every single word. Maggie walked over to her own purse and car keys and grabbed her coat to follow and just as she did, Sebastian grabbed his mother's arm and pulled her back.
"I'm going too." He said.
Sebastian's love for Serena was strong, but the suspicion that subsided just moments before had returned, like a wave crashing on a beach pulling grains of sand away like the reveal of the truth, it was now obvious Serena was hiding something.
Across town from the Evan's family cottage in "the Mists" neighborhood of Collinsport, Curtis Winters was settling in for the night after a long day of work at the office buildings of the Collins Fishing Co. He went around the living room turning off the lights and drawing the sheer lavender curtains that hung so freshly in his french door windows.
He picked up a news paper form the kitchen table and started on his way his bedroom when there was a knock at his front door. He looked at his watch and wondered who in the world could be coming over so late at night.
He walked over to the door slowly, butterflies fluttering in his stomach, he looked through the peep hole and bounced backwards, quickly unlocking the front door once he recognized his mother Victoria on the other side.
"Mom, what are you doing here so late? Is everything alright.?" Curtis asked as the door swung open and the ice cold winter Collinsport air filtered in.
"I'm so sorry to come by so late, hon, I couldn't wait to talk to you in the morning. We have to leave town right away. Right away!" Vicky said in a panic.
"What? What are you talking about? Why? Whats the matter?" Curtis said placing his hands on his mother's shoulders trying to calm her.
"I don't know how to tell you this but ...." She paused.
"But what!?" Curtis insisted.
"Curtis, I have to tell you something and when I tell you there is a good chance you'll never want to have anything to do with me again." Vicky responded.
"Mom you're scaring me. What's going on?" Curtis questioned.
Vicky's big blue eyes began to well up. She had so much pent up emotions about what she had done for Barnabas all so that the secret of her betrayal would remain buried like a long lost Collins family member. In fact thats exactly what Curtis was, a long lost Collins family member.
Vicky wiped her eyes and walked over to the sofa that was laying in a deep cloud of darkness until Curtis turned on a side-table lamp. The room lit up in an orange glow shining on family photos of Curtis and Vicky on the table and shots of Collinsport Curtis had taken himself, he was an avid photographer on his spare time.
"Sit down." Vicky said patting the other side of the sofa, Curtis complied.
"What's that matter?" He asked.
"A long time ago, I came to Collinsport and I lived at Collinwood. I was a governess for a the family...I practically raised David for a good amount of years. His father ...well let's just say Roger had a lot of his own demons to deal with and David was a hand full. The family always thought I came to town on a whim, some kind of lucky break answering an ad to come and be the governess to this wealthy family. The truth is, I had was working for an organization that knew the of the Collins family's dark side. I had belonged to this organization and willingly came here to get information on them. Over the years I saw things that no one should ever see, I did things that no one should ever do and when I left just after 4 years I vowed that when I returned I would make sure the family that was so dangerous, so horrible and so filled with secrets would never hurt any innocent soul again. I vowed that....I wanted to keep that vow." Vicky explained to a transfixed Curtis.
"Go on..." he replied sensing there was more to the story.
"Well I did come back, about 4 years ago. I came back and Caleb Collins, David's son, had had a baby boy." Vicky said, all information Curtis knew for the most part. "When I found out, I just knew, I knew that couldn't live in this world knowing that this baby, this innocent baby would grow up in this house of horrors under the eyes of ...of a killer, no matter how much of their own blood ran through my veins." She said.
"Your own blood?" Curtis questioned in shock.
"Yes, my mother Elizabeth. I never told you this...but as you can tell now, it wasn’t exactly openly known that I was part of the family. Elizabeth was in love with a man before she married Carolyn's father and to avoid scandal I was put up for adoption. But that's not all, honey, when I came back to Collinsport 4 years ago I did something that in a way I now regret." Vicky said.
"What?" Curtis asked waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"To protect this little baby, Caleb's baby, a boy he and his wife Kat named Canan, I took him. In the middle of the night; out of his little bed, out into the cold and I took him far far away. To save him from a life of only God knows what." Vicky confessed.
Curtis could see where the story was going, he knew he was that baby, but the way he ended up Vicky’s son was a secret. The actual kidnapping was kept a secret all this time.
In truth, he has always known bits and pieces of his mother's past but now that she was finally coming clean with her back story he was beginning to see where is own origin story would eventually change.
"You kidnapped me. You always made it seem that I grew up with you because Kat needed your help to raise me because of some sort of darkness here... that she ASKED you to raise me. But you took me and switched me! It was all a lie. All of it." Curtis said softly.
Vicky began to cry and nodded 'yes'.
"I can’t believe I was so naive." He said
"You took me from my family? You took me and you....you raised me all those years and you never told me until ....until about 2 years ago. And even then it was only a half truth. You brought me here and had me pretended I didn't know things about the Collins family you...you lied to me! YOU LIED TO ME!" Curtis yelled.
"You don't understand Curtis!" Vicky said
"How could you lie to me??? You made me think you did all of this honorably. Like ... like it was for the best for Kat and Caleb...no wonder Kat refuses to tell Caleb about me it would hurt too much, the truth. All of that was a lie!" Curtis yelled back.
"I've raised you, I've loved you. You don't know what you have been saved from Barnabas, honey I don't know what your life would have been like if you had been raised around the evils that surround Collinsport and this family. Darling, I needed to keep you safe. Barnabas...I don't know what he would have done." Vicky explained.
"Why? What do you think he would have done?" Curtis questioned.
"Horrible things. Evil things. Things that should not be spoken out loud. His thirst for creating chaos and horror all around him absorbs even the most innocent of people, and a child like you, well, that is the most innocent." Vicky said.
"You're terrified of him. You really are." Curtis began to see.
Vicky turned and walked over to the window that was slightly open. The sea breeze slowly flowed through raising a sheer blue curtain up like a ghost flowing in mid air. The light of the village below glistened like tiny orange starts and reflected into the sea just off shore as a lighthouse flashed it's beacon in Vicky's eyes, round and round the light would flash.
"He's a monster." she said.
"What did he do to you? Did he hurt you?" Curtis questioned.
"A lot of people. Many. Over and over again year after year decade after decade. If I had left you here....Curtis there's more." Vicky said as she turned back to Curtis. "Barnabas threatened to tell you the truth about who you were and that I had taken you. He said that if I didn't do what he wanted he would tell you. I was sacred. I needed to tell you in my own way. But.....I did what he wanted anyway." &"What did you do?" Curtis said worried of her answer.
"I broke my promise to you and I went back in time and I brought some back with me for him. His wife. I had to. I had to get him away from me and finally allow myself to be free of his control. This was the last of it, honey. I'm free of him!" Vicky said.
"That is until he finds something else he can hold over you! Or someone else! What can we do? What can we do to stop him from hurting anyone else! I mean my god, Siobhan has a child on the way!"
"Shhh...." Vicky said, hushing her son who was now raising his voice in the middle of the night., "There's nothing we can do now, but what I want us to do in the morning, is leave Collinsport----forever." Vicky said.
Curtis stood in the center of the room while Vicky kissed his cheek and excused herself to Curtis' guest room. He paced around and around his small living room as the same ocean breeze oozed through the window and caressed his exposed arms. He turned to look out of the window and saw the same lighthouse down in the harbor flash in his ice blues eyes.
He would leave Collinsport with Vicky just as she wanted, but not after he and Barnabas met man to man. Tomorrow, he would confront the man that made his mother Victoria's life a living hell for over decades.
