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| Vicky and India in Vicky's room |
The sun had set. The moon slowly rose above the sky half covered in darkness. It hung above Collinsport like an orange slice, dripping in stars and low clouds. In her bedroom on the third floor of the Collins estate known as Collinwood, India lay on her bed with her eyes closed---eyes that belonged to Victoria Winters, the governess who a few months before had come to town to follow her fate into a world of dark shadows.
The melding of these two women was a source of hope for Barnabas Collins; a hope that India's purity to the cursed family would bring a light that it had never seen and with that light a saving grace. He had hoped that by using Vicky, who Barnabas too saw as innocent to the Collins curse, and India together he would right the many wrongs he had caused all those years ago.
He ultimately failed. And now he had disappeared into the night as promised, but not before separating the two women who's lives he had so brought together forever.
India, in Vicky's body, waited for the moment she was free from her bodily prison and she could see her own face in the mirror again. She kept her eyes closed while she lay on the bed clutching Barnabas' ring in her hand that still hung around her neck.
Waiting for the power to finally release itself and turn her world back to normal.
As the clock struck 11 India finally began to feel what she had been waiting for.
The energy from Barnabas' Onyx ring began to heat in her hand. It began to feel like she was holding a hot cinder from a fire, burning her skin and leaving a mark in the palm of her hand in the shape of a perfect circle.
She quickly got up from the bed, and held the necklace out in front of her and watched as the ring dangled from the silver necklace. A powerful light of energy burst in from outside; a moon beam, electrified everything around Vicky's body and slowly but surely the separation began.
The two women, locked together in one body, began to feel the pull of gravity from the moon that reflected into the Vicky's bedroom. It was as if one woman was a sandy beach and the other was the waves pulling and tugging at the sand, pealing away each layer to reveal fresh new ground.
One woman the sea, the other the sand so close to the touch but so different in texture and in spirit.
India finally began to feel breath in her own lungs, she could feel air around her, it was such a remarkable feeling to feel her own skin again, to touch her own hair again, to see out of her own eyes.
As her body was supernaturally lifted out of Victoria's she began she was slightly elevated off the ground and within seconds, her feet, her real feet finally touched the carpet. She was free. She was herself. And she was India, only India.
Vicky remained standing for only a few seconds but the power drained her and she fainted to the floor. India quickly went to her aid, unsure of how she would explain who she was and how she got there and what had happened in all the time she was there.
"Vicky? Vicky are you ok? Vicky?" India said, hunched over the governess' body.
Vicky slowly came to.
"I don't feel well." She said softly.
"You'll be alright, take deep breaths Vicky. Take slow and deep breaths." India instructed as Vicky complied.
"He did it. He did it." Vicky said in a whisper.
"What do you mean?" India began saying in a confused tone as she helped Vicky up.
"Barnabas, he promised he'd separate us, and he did." Vicky said.
"You....know what happened? You know who Barnabas is?!" India asked, cradling Vicky's head in her lap surprised by Vicky's awareness of who Barnabas was and what had transpired all these weeks.
"The whole time we were merged as one I could feel and see and taste and hear everything. My consciousness never went dark. I just could not speak, I could not control my movements or what was happening. I know everything India. Everything." Vicky said, as she wobbled over to the bed. Her mind racing with emotions of what had happened to her in the few weeks that she had arrived in town.
"Oh Vicky. I wish I could take it all back I wish I could just make it better so that you didn't know any of that happened. It's so much to take in. Are you going to be Ok?" India asked kneeling down next to Vicky's bedside and squeezing her hand.
"It almost feels like a dream. Like it wasn't supposed to happen this way, but it did. You know the day I arrived here a man on the train warned me ---he said I would regret it and that I should just get back on the train and go back to New York. A woman in a cafe ....she too seemed to warn me." Vicky remembered.
All India could do was listen. She could tell Vicky was broken up about her whole life being altered in the few weeks that India was inside of her, and the realization of what Barnabas was, and what he could do was overwhelming; India didn't have to be inside Vicky's body to feel that coming from her.
"Oh Vicky, I'm so sorry. I wish this hadn't happened, I know that you have had so much to deal with and honestly there's so much more to happen in the future. I wish I could fix it for you. Barnabas tried, he really did try and fix things. But ...it looks like his plan just made things worse." India broke down.
Vicky looked into India's eyes and although she was unsure of what awaited her in Collinsport, she would not leave. She would not let go of the fate that brought her here and would stay, despite the bizarre and terrible things that awaited her in the future. Deep inside, Vicky knew she was as strong as steel.
"I don't know what's going to happen but....I'm ready for it." Vicky said.
"Will you tell the family? I'm afraid they won't understand." India replied.
"I don't know. I don't really know what to think right now other than I'm just happy to be me again. You must be too. It's been an ordeal for you living in ...my body, hasn't it?" Vicky wondered.
"You shouldn't worry about me, lay back and rest a little. I'll be ok, hopefully I'll be back in my world at any moment. I hope." India said and then she went over to the desk and pulled out a paper she had written in Barnabas' name.
"What's this?" Vicky said taking the paper.
"It's a cover for Barnabas. He's decided, rightfully so, leave Collinsport for good. I don't know where he went and I don't expect him to return but I think this will cover for his absence. The family, especially Elizabeth will wonder." India explained.
"What does it say?" Vicky asked.
"He thanks the family for their hospitality, but he's decided to go to Singapore on business and may not return. That's really it. I didn't go into detail. I think Barnabas would have wanted it that way." India explained.
"It all feels like a dream, doesn't it? I feels like someway, some how all of this was a dream. Like I should close my eyes and fall asleep and when I wake up none of it really happened." Vicky said, still unable to wrap her head around everything she experienced from a sort of unconscious state while India world over her body.
"Tell me about it!" India said. "Oh my god! Look!" She added, noticing Barnabas' ring was now gone from around Vicky's neck.
"Where do you think it went?" Vicky wondered as she lifted her hand to the space around her neck.
"It must be back with it's owner. Barnabas." India said as she turned to the window and looked out into the darkness wondering where Barnabas was.
"And Justin?" Vicky said from the bed. "Is he coming to say goodbye to you?"
India's eyes watered as she continued to look out into the dark night. She only said goodbye to him in Vicky's body, and now, he was no where to be found.
"I don't know." India said in a whisper with one small tear rolling down her cheek.
****
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| Justin Patterson, the Vampire |
A man struggled to get his body down a winding staircase the bottom of the old Collins family crypt in Eagle Hill Cemetery. This was the only place he felt safe. This was the only place he felt he could be now that.....now that he was left for dead....left for the ashes. He was bleeding from his neck, his shirt was covered in the red liquid that gave his whole body life. It was Justin, alive, barley, and a victim of a vampire who ripped through his neck for a taste of blood. His blood.
Justin stumbled along all around the crypt. He had seen what happened to Julia after Barnabas at bitten her, but this was different. This bite drew blood into the mouth of the person that bit him, leaving him for dead but not knowing that in reality---his life was now immortal he was now ---forever prisoner to time and life and reality had blurred into nothing. He was locked in his body and youth without the fear of real death.
It was the vampire curse.
Justin again allowed his memories flow with what Barnabas had said to India when hit bit Julia's neck: "I only pierced her skin, I did not taste her blood or drink from her wounds."
But Justin knew his was different. His blood was taken, and tasted and his wounds were drank from. He could already feel the slow change in his body, the cold touch of his own hand. He could already feel the internal fear of the sun that would soon coat the outside world that he could not be apart of ever again.
He sat in the corner of the darkened Collins crypt and cried. He was alone, terrified of what he would become and when his first thirst for blood would feel like and how he would go about quenching that thirst. He did not want to be a murderer, he did not want to be the menacing monster that hunted down citizens of Collinsport all because he needed to get his fix of the nectar of hemoglobin. It had to stop.
Then it began. The freezing of his veins. The closing down of his body as he knew it. He has changing. The texture of his skin, hardening like cold marble, his heart beating slowly, slowly, slowly.
He cried. He mourned the person he was never going to be again. He mourned the thought of his father never knowing what really happened to him. He mourned the idea that, somehow, some way, he could never tell India what happened to him and he could never see her again. He could never love her. Not like real people love. Not real love. For the person that bit him, that took his blood into their vampire toothed mouth forever took all that away from him. His future was now going to be a dark shadowy sleep.
Then, like the beam of moon light that separated India and Victoria, Justin had an idea. He would save himself and those around him forever. He would lock himself away in the Barnabas' coffin and forever free the people of his beloved town of his danger. The murders would stop with his.
Justin quickly rushed up the crypt's staircase that curled towards the mausoleum where Naomi, Joshua and Sarah Collins rested and barricaded the door, making it impossible for anyone to enter.
Justin looked around the dark room where Barnabas was trapped in, and now where he would be trapped in--willingly, and took his last breath of fresh air. This had to be done. But it was difficult for him. The life of solitude would be too much, it would drive him inside...perhaps there was another way.
He looked at the wooden coffin and though that he could easily destroy it and use it's pieces to make a sharp stake and impale himself in the heart ending his suffering before it became worse. He could choose a heavy wooden scrap and whittled it into the sharp tool: flat on the sides, but sharp as a knife on the end.
Justin pushed over the coffin and saw that the wooden stand already had sharp edges attached to it. He broke off a leg of the coffin's stand and in one corner sanded the sides down by rubbing it over the cement floor that with the amount of friction acted as sand paper. This created a point, shape enough to puncture flesh.
He thought for a second....took a deep breath into his newly vampire lungs and plunged the stake-fashioned-table-leg into his chest, only his hands, slippery with sweat, slid down the smooth leg and caused no damage. The only pain was the small little splinters that enter his skin from the rubbing of the wood.
As his splinted filled hands bled down his harms, he licked his own cool ice like blood. The taste was electric. It was like he had his first taste of water after a long journey through the Egyptian desert. The blood gave him energy, even if it was his own. His taste-buds danced in his mouth quivering for more. A sign his vampire curse was strong. Powerful. Determined.
He couldn't do it. He couldn't stay this way.
Justin then saw Barnabas' empty coffin that he had kicked over off the table. It called to him. It called his name in a whisper like wind filling his ears and entering his brain. He had to remain there. Forever. It was his only real chance.
Justin crawled into the coffin that smelled of lilac and roses. He lay back and stared at the ceiling of the secret crypt below the Collins mausoleum from the coffin and took a deep long breath. He would sleep now, forever, letting time pass around him and never being a killer to the people of the town he loved. He, too, would never see India again and that, in the end, would be the true curse.
Justin pulled the lid over Barnabas' coffin and it sealed shut. And suddenly the broken chains magically lifted on their own and wrapped around the coffin locking him in.
****
Someone was breaking into the mansion.
"Jesus Christ, David." Roger said as the 10 year old dropped the gun to the floor in the pooling blood. "What have you done!?"
Asleep in her bed, Beau's sister Noelle sat up gasping for air and sweating, her body unable to relax. She felt it...something ripping away from her. Inside she knew and the tears started to fall uncontrollably.
Beau was dead.
In her grief, her sadness. She wondered around Collinsport looking for her brother whom she could no longer sense. His life force had always been like a second beating heart within her chest.
And as the night wore on and Noelle meandered around town like a lost puppy she found her self at the gate of Eagle Hill Cemetery. She could hear something in the distance, like a clock ticking away in the dark and billowing fog. It was a thumping. A deep rumbling in the shadows.
A heartbeat.
Noelle, thinking of her missing brother, thinking that perhaps her sense that he was no longer among the living followed the sound deeper and deeper into the cemetery. It was as if she was a submarine following the sound of a honing-device that lead her to the Collins family mausoleum.
She didn't think twice, in her mind Beau was in there, the heartbeat sound was that of her brothers. It had to be his, there was no other explanation.
Noelle unlatched the already unlocked mausoleum gate and entered. she followed inside and saw the lion with the ring in it's mouth. She didn't even have to think about it, she pulled on the ring and entered into the secret chamber that was at the end of a long and winding staircase.
At the bottom of the stares, inside the secret chamber she saw a coffin chained up forever.
Noelle closed her eyes and lifted her hands in the air, a mystical wind blew in like a powerful hurricane wiping the chains away from the dark black box that she believed may be her brother trapped.
Had someone done this to Beau? Had he been led to this secret chamber by a member of the family for some god awful cruel punishment for what he had known or discovered? Had this been the reason she woke up in the middle of this night believing her brother was dead?
As the coffin was freed from its chains Noelle rushed to release her brother but upon opening it saw the cold body of the new vampire Justin Patterson.
At the Collins estate, a small window slid open in a servant's quarters in an empty part of the house. The window, made of blue and green stained glass tilted upward and a leg slowly made it's way in searching for a surface to land on. When it found a empty desk just under the high window, the other leg slowly followed, then the whole body.
Someone was breaking into the mansion.
The mysterious person dressed in all black slowly crept in through a vacant servant's quarters and discreetly made their way through the dark halls of Collinwood under the lavish pieces of art and vases and urns that adorned every corner.
The person in all black was searching for answers to where Arabella really was. The person, was Beau Cielvert, the detective that worked with Arabella and who discovered Elizabeth's connection to Vicky. He was unsatisfied with Carolyn's letter explaining her departure from Collinsport, and felt it was bizarre that she'd go after Arabella.
Beau was sure something had happened to Arabella and now feared the same thing was happening to Carolyn. The excuse that Arabella had somehow killed a gentleman caller then left Collinsport for Europe was a lie and that she did nothing of the sort. And Carolyn's corroboration felt forced, and now she too was breaking off their relationship and going off to parts unknown.
None of it made sense to his detective sensibilities and he was livid and the silence from the Collins family.
Beau was sure something had happened to Arabella and now feared the same thing was happening to Carolyn. The excuse that Arabella had somehow killed a gentleman caller then left Collinsport for Europe was a lie and that she did nothing of the sort. And Carolyn's corroboration felt forced, and now she too was breaking off their relationship and going off to parts unknown.
None of it made sense to his detective sensibilities and he was livid and the silence from the Collins family.
Beau didn't buy the lie Elizabeth told him and he would stop at nothing to make sure he discovered where Arabella went and who's blood was really in the hotel room. Little did he know, his own girlfriend Carolyn was involved and hiding much more than he knew about her vanishing Aunt Bella.
As Beau flicked on his flash light and searched through drawers and chests in a dark office for some kind of evidence of Arabella's disappearance connecting someone at Collinwood, he suddenly felt like he wasn't alone.
Beau looked up from his search but saw no one. He turned and flashed his flashlight to his left and his right. Again, no one was there.
He closed a drawer and began to slowly move through the pitch black room over to the door when suddenly he heard the small drawer at the desk slide open, the person behind the desk pulled out Elizabeth's hidden gun and caulked it.
The clicking sound of the gun was very familiar to Beau....he slowly turned to the desk where the sound came from and shined his light. The person stood in the the light coming from Beau's flashlight and shot twice hitting Beau twice in the chest.
Beau fell to the floor and began to cough up blood. He tried to crawl out of the pitch black room but the person came up behind him and stepped on his back pushing him down on to the ground. The person who shot Beau wasn't as strong, even in Beau's injured state, and Beau continued to draw out a long red stain on the office floor.
Suddenly the heavy office door flung open and Roger flicked on the lights to see Beau's body slumped down on the floor in a pool of his own blood and his own son David standing over the body with the gun in his hand.
"Jesus Christ, David." Roger said as the 10 year old dropped the gun to the floor in the pooling blood. "What have you done!?"
Asleep in her bed, Beau's sister Noelle sat up gasping for air and sweating, her body unable to relax. She felt it...something ripping away from her. Inside she knew and the tears started to fall uncontrollably.
Beau was dead.
In her grief, her sadness. She wondered around Collinsport looking for her brother whom she could no longer sense. His life force had always been like a second beating heart within her chest.
And as the night wore on and Noelle meandered around town like a lost puppy she found her self at the gate of Eagle Hill Cemetery. She could hear something in the distance, like a clock ticking away in the dark and billowing fog. It was a thumping. A deep rumbling in the shadows.
A heartbeat.
Noelle, thinking of her missing brother, thinking that perhaps her sense that he was no longer among the living followed the sound deeper and deeper into the cemetery. It was as if she was a submarine following the sound of a honing-device that lead her to the Collins family mausoleum.
She didn't think twice, in her mind Beau was in there, the heartbeat sound was that of her brothers. It had to be his, there was no other explanation.
Noelle unlatched the already unlocked mausoleum gate and entered. she followed inside and saw the lion with the ring in it's mouth. She didn't even have to think about it, she pulled on the ring and entered into the secret chamber that was at the end of a long and winding staircase.
At the bottom of the stares, inside the secret chamber she saw a coffin chained up forever.
Noelle closed her eyes and lifted her hands in the air, a mystical wind blew in like a powerful hurricane wiping the chains away from the dark black box that she believed may be her brother trapped.
Had someone done this to Beau? Had he been led to this secret chamber by a member of the family for some god awful cruel punishment for what he had known or discovered? Had this been the reason she woke up in the middle of this night believing her brother was dead?
As the coffin was freed from its chains Noelle rushed to release her brother but upon opening it saw the cold body of the new vampire Justin Patterson.
Noelle gasped in shock.
A new secret was revealed. And now, Noelle was certain. Beau was dead and Justin would be her key to the getting the answers to what the Collins family was truly hiding.
A new secret was revealed. And now, Noelle was certain. Beau was dead and Justin would be her key to the getting the answers to what the Collins family was truly hiding.
****
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| Barnabas Collins says goodbye |
The moon reflected on the ocean like a pearl sparkling through the waves. It was a dark night, and the sea wind began to pick up and blow through the village of Collinsport like a wild current pushing through the sea.
On the deck of a large black and white ocean liner called La Divina, Barnabas stood with his cane, and his replaced Onyx ring watching as the village he had known over so many different time periods, decades and centuries, past, future and in between, began to get smaller and smaller in the distance.
This ship was taking him away from Collinsport and Maine and America. This ship was freeing him and his family members of the torment he had caused them over the decades. With his attempt to right the wrongs he caused so many decades ago now a failure, it was clear to Barnabas that he had to leave once and for all.
La Divina, was headed for Singapore. The place he originally had chosen to live after he was cured in 1971 with Julia Hoffman and Willie Loomis. Now that Julia and Willie were never going to cross his path the way they had originally, he would have to brave the wild open future of forever, all alone.
Or was he?
As Barnabas, closed his eyes and allowed the ocean's salty wind to blow on his face, a final goodbye from the wild American coast line he had known all his life in various incarnations, he turned and began to walk down the dark deck of the ocean liner towards his stateroom where he would sleep through the day and only come out at night.
He drank enough blood to sustain his urges until Singapore. He had taken care of that before he left. As he continued to walk he saw a woman in a heavy black cloak sitting on a deck chair, a puff of smoke came from her like a chimney. Her thick cloak obscured her face from Barnabas' view.
He slowly walked up to her and wondered if he should say hello, but decided against it as a large puff of cigarette smoke spewed from the hooded head in the cloak.
It was too risky. He turned back around and began to go back to his room when suddenly she spoke.
"Fancy meeting you here, I'd thought I'd see you at the bottom of a grave. But I was wrong." The cloaked woman's voice said as the smoke from her lungs surrounded her like the Collinsport fog.
Barnabas recognized the voice, but refused to believe who it was. It couldn't be. How? How could it be? He furrowed his brow, grabbed a hold of handle of his wolf's head cane tightly and rushed over to the deck chair and confronted the voice he recognized.
It was confirmed, the voice he heard was belonged to who he suspected.
The diabolical Arabella Stoddard, alive!
She was the hand that came from the ground. She was the monster the attacked Justin earlier in the night, turning him into one of them, and now, she was a member of the club Barnabas hated so much.
The un-dead. The immortal. The bloodthirsty. Creatures of the night.
"My god, what are you doing here?" Barnabas growled.
"You don't think I'd just let you off so easy do you? No, not at all Barnabas Collins. You killed me Barnabas Collins...This is what you made me, this is what you have done to a woman, an innocent woman." Arabella teased.
"Innocent? You were never innocent." Barnabas shot back.
"Well, I can't argue with that. That whole Victoria thing really blew up in my face, didn't it?" Arabella giggled. "At any rate, I've been watching you since I so wonderfully emerged from my dirt filled grave my own niece so shallowly dug. Really, Barnabas, sending Carolyn to bury me was really a foolish thing, the moment a girl like her gets dirt under finger nails is the moment they abandon gardening forever. I didn't last a chance in that shallow little hole of a grave." Arabella jokingly added.
"What do you want?" Barnabas asked, lifting his eye brow.
"Want? I want a lot of things. I want a life. I want a world I can see day and night, I want a man who I can trust and live with and be apart of together but ...surprise...you took that from me, and from what I can tell, you've taken that from many other's too. But you see, the difference is, you haven't paid for that. You have never, not once, paid for what you've done to those other people." Arabella said.
"Haven't I? You don't know what I've paid for. You don't know what I've suffered because of what I am and what I have had to let go of for centuries. You don't know me Arabella." Barnabas growled again.
"Oh Barnabas, you would be very surprised of what I know and what I've seen. In my opinion, you haven't paid nearly enough for what you have done. Life is a circle, it goes around and around and it never ends. No, not for beings like us." Arabella said as she stood up from her deck chair and puffed again from her cigarette and she allowed the hook of her cloak to slip from her perfectly white face.
There was something about Arabella the Barnabas noticed was different. Her face. It was her face but...something told Barnabas that this un-dead version of her was not exactly who he killed at the Inn. There was a spark in her eye, a gleam of something more sinister and as she slowly walked up to him she whispered in a voice that was not Arabella's: "you owe me."
Barnabas took a step back...the voice....the eerily familiar voice...."Owe you?" Barnabas asked. "Owe you what?"
"A life! Even if its in the shadows. Even if its in the dark. Even if its only when the moon lights the sky and the stars are out. Even if its under the gaze of suspicious villagers and town's people and in the middle of whispers and secrets. You owe me eternity. And that's why, I'm here. You and I will travel the world together. As man----and wife." Arabella announced said in her twisted voice that Barnabas could tell was not hers.
Barnabas's eyes saw red. The face of the red-headed woman began to glow, a magic power was flowing now through the woman's body within the cloak. It was a glowing fog that surrounded her and slowly it began to shape-shift into a different face. The woman everyone was calling Arabella Stoddard, the woman who attempted to kill Vicky and take Elizabeth's money and was now shape-shifting in front of Barnabas’ very own eyes on the deck of the ship La Divina into that of Angelique Bouchard.
The witch obsessed with the vampire. The witch who started it all centuries ago.
"NO!!! NO! NO!!! It can't be. You ....you can't be Angelique!" Barnabas screeched as the beautiful blonde stared back at him with her true face and moon-shaped eyes.
"You can't be that surprised my love. I once told you I would never leave you. And I haven't. I'm here. I've taken back our lives so that we'd be together. Even though you did everything you could to take it all away. You should be happy. You should be thrilled that we're finally together." The witch Angelique said as her body slowly shifter back into the face of Arabella.
"Have you been Arabella this whole time? Have you been posing as her??" Barnabas wondered.
"No, silly. I've learned my lesson posing as others before, it never really works out. When Arabella died, her body was the perfect conduit for me to return; so that we could be together. All this fixing and changing of time has allowed me to come back once more using Arabella's body as a host. As you can see I can only show you my real self for a short time, but Arabella’s face isn’t such a bad mask to hide behind, don’t you think?” Angelique said now in Arabella’s voice and admiring herself in the reflection of a ship’s window.
“Why... why are you here?!?! Why do you haunt me so?” Barnabas begged, his voice breaking finally releasing the pain and suffering he has been holding in for so long.
He was trapped on a ship with a woman who he hated more than the taste of blood. Angelique had hijacked Barnabas' retreat from Collinsport and his hope to atone for his mistakes now seemed as distant as the store. His attempts involving India had failed miserably, and his punishment now to be settled together with Angelique on their way to Singapore.
Barnabas felt defeated. He felt the horrible weight of his mistakes on his heart and on his mind like a giant anvil tied to his back and sinking him into a deep black sea of misery, and it felt as if Angelique was standing holding the rope.
"What about Curtis in 2019. You did all you could to finally find love with him. You did all you could Angelique! Even turning yourself mortal in that time.” Barnabas said.
They were together again, somewhere in time.
There were so many holes in her story, so many unanswered questions. Then there were the wounds on her neck. Justin told her it was an animal attack just outside the old house. But it was clearly not. She could see with her own eyes, the scars that were marked on her neck were to perfect circles, no reasonable explanation would wash away the doubt in Julia's mind of what happened to her. Her mind seemed to go in circles, she knew they were lying to her, she knew there was much, much more to the story; something strange had happened to her. Something very strange.
As she got up from her desk, Julia went over to a mirror that was hanging on a dark green painted wall. Before she stepped into frame to see her own reflection she paused and took a deep breath. She thought about the scar on her neck. She thought about the strange feelings she was having, she thought about the most foolish explanation she could think of that could make that mark ---a vampire bite.
If she saw her reflection than, she was fine, if she didn't then, by some sort of frightening reality, she was bitten by a vampire and now she herself was one.
Relieved, Julia turned back to her desk and opened a drawer and pulled out the file she was keeping on more recent patient and pealed off the sticker that read WINTERS, VICTORIA and replaced it with the handwritten name DOE, JANE. This case would remain in her volts. Unmarked. Unnamed. Unsolved.
Julia then sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette. The smoke filled the space around her perfectly heart-shaped face highlighted by streaks of sunlight coming through the shutters of her office window.
She chuckled to herself as the cigarette burned in her mouth about the silliness of vampires and bite marks and mirror reflections.
Julia took a deep breath inhaling the thin plumes of cigarette smoke and then she sat back in her red leather chair as the cigarette burned at the end of her fingers like a tiny chimney spewing gray some all around her. She giggled again...the silliness of vampires and bite marks and mirror reflections.
But something deep inside of her told her this wasn't the end, and she knew in her heart-of-hearts that this wasn't the last time she would hear from the citizens of Collinsport, Maine.
As the night progressed Vicky and India continued to talk about everything that had happened over the course of the last few months. The stress. The troubling things about Arabella's supposed disappearance and Julia locking her away with Justin at Windcliff for what could have been a disastrous amount of time.
The two women looked at each other one more time and hugged. A single tear feel from Vicky's eye and rolled down her cheek. They had been together, joined in a way that no one in the world could ever imagine, it was as if Vicky was letting half of herself go.
"This is it!" Vicky said.
"This is it." India confirmed.
"What's the first thing you're going to do when you get back to your own time?" Vicky wondered.
"Shower!" India giggled.
"Well, I don't know what you'll find when you get there, India, but I hope my future self remembers you. I hope what you did here made a difference in everyone's life and I hope....I hope we can be friends. Convincing Barnabas to leave Collinsport may have just saved all of their lives, one way or another." Vicky said.
"Or it could have had disastrous effects and there may not be a family to go back to." India noted.
"Don't think that way. It'll all work out. I have faith in that." Vicky replied as she pulled India close for one last hug.
That was the thing about Vicky. She had faith. She had promise that however dreadful the world seemed at the moment, Vicky's faith that things would change for the better always got her through the darkest parts of her history. She was never certain of it, how could she be? She was only a 24 year old orphan with the world in front of her, but her faith was strong. Her faith in love, in humanity, in fairness and in truth.
This faith, got Vicky through her troubles and she knew that however tied they were, it would also get India through hers.
Vicky held on tight to India's hand, squeezed it and told her she'd always remember her no matter what happened. They were now a part of each other. Vicky then excused herself from the room and allowed India to now concentrate and returning home. She had to wait for the feeling. It had to come. Barnabas had separated the two women and it had to come. She had to be sent back.
He promised.
When the time came, Vicky rushed down the stairs with the letter India wrote supposedly from Barnabas in her pocked. She quickly made her way around the corner of the banister and bashed her body into Roger 's who was rushing out of breath in the same direction. The velocity of their two bodies colliding together knocked Vicky to the floor, she hit her head on a the edge of a potted plant.
"Oh GOD! Vicky! VICKY!!" Roger said angrily as he was already in over his head with the situation with Beau and David in another room.
Vicky only moaned with a large bump former on her forehead.
"What the devil were you doing? Why are you running down here this way??" He asked as he helped her up.
But Vicky didn't know why. She wasn't even sure what had happened 5 minutes ago, or 10 minutes ago.
"I don't know." She said. "I can't remember." She added.
Vicky's mind was fragile. It had been locked away in another woman's control for over two months. Every ounce of energy had to be used to contain and retain everything that had happened to her while India was inside of her. The jolt, the blunt force in her fall had cleared her whole mind of all the events that had happened of the last few months. She was whoozy and confused. Roger wasn't having any of it.
He helped her off the floor and saw David cowering in the hallway shadows still in shock over what he had done to Beau and what he saw his father do to the body.
"David, help Miss Winters to your room and lay her down. Let her rest. I don't have time for all this nonsense. Roger said rudely, concealing the fact he had just hidden a dead body in the walls and secret passages of the mansion. Concealing the secret of Beau's death forever.
"but...." David said meekly.
"DO IT NOW!" Roger yelled frustrated by his sons actions.
As David helped the newly refreshed Vicky to his room to lay down, Roger went down into the main chamber of the house where a guest was waiting, it wasn't the man named Jason McGuire as Roger was expecting that night. It was another man....Burke Devlin in the drawing room with Elizabeth who seemed out-of-sorts and uncomfortable with Burke's presence.
Roger's face dropped. Another enemy.
"God damn it." Roger whispered to himself. "What fresh hell is this?" he added.
"I'm back Roge. Aren't you going to welcome me? It's been 10 years, welcoming me back to town is the least you could do." Burke said with a grin.
Back upstairs David and Vicky were in his room. Her head was throbbing.
"Thank you David. I can't believe how foolish I was." She said resting her eyes.
David sat in a chair across from her and from inside her coat pocket a small little letter peeked out.
Carefuly and quietly while Vicky rested David took the letter and opened it. Read it. Then rolled it up in like a tube and hid it inside of a large wooden model ship sitting on his dresser.
Upstairs in Vicky's room, India lay down on Vicky's bed and closed her eyes. Within seconds, she began to feel a deep pulling in the center of her body, it was as if she were being pulled through the bed, but it was really her body being yanked back through time. She could feel the stretching of all that was holding her together go through what felt like a wringer and it yanks and pulled and tugged and stretched until she felt nothing at all.
There was a blackness for a few seconds.
Quiet. No noise, no movement. Just a black silence that was haunting. India could not speak.
She could not understand what had happened to her. Had she died?
Did she not make it back to 2019?
Suddenly there was light. She opened her eyes to reveal a brilliant bright morning but she was still inside of Vicky's bedroom at Collinwood, but the room was different. The room had changed. The furniture was newer, the walls were wallpapered differently. The carpeting had changed from a shag-yellow to plush white. Even the items inside of it were not hers. Or were they? Her mind could not comprehend where she was or what had happened to her. She jumped off of the bed she was still laying on and rushed around the room searching for any sign of what year it was.
Then she saw a television set in the corner and instantly she could tell this was not a TV from the 1960s....nor a TV from 2019.
India stood in the center of the room...her eyes fixated on the TV, her heart was pounding and she slowly walked over to it, seeing her refecltion in the black screen.
She knelt down and took a gulp of air and turned the television on:
".......in this news this morning, President George Bush today welcome the first female Surgeon General of the United States to the white house for a breakfast meeting that was met with a surprise applause from the media. We'll have more on that story later on in the evening here on WCLP News."
As the morning news anchor's voice trailed off the screen flashed the date and time....
India covered her mouth as she screamed into her own hand as she folded over and planted her face into the soft white new carpeting in Vicky's room at Collinwood. Then, in a manic upheaval of disbelief and denial she jumped up from the floor and wiped her wet tears from her eyes. She was now angry. Angry at Barnabas for betraying her, for leading her to believe he'd send her home to her time as soon as he separated her from Victoria's body. But he lied.
In a rage now, she lunged at the sheer white curtains that drew in the gauze of the bright Collinsport sun and pulled them back. Deep down she was hoping it was all a joke and that behind glass would be Collinsport in the year 2020... but again, to her horror, from Vicky's window, she could see the reality of the small fishing village she had known in 1966 had grown to a mid-sized town in 1990.
She was truly still 30 years in the past.
What had Barnabas done? Why had he held her back, this time in 1990? How could she be in 1990 and not be in someone's body as Barnabas explained needed to be done to preserve the time line as he did with Victoria?
India began to panic at the idea of still being so far from her time. She didn't know what to do. She fell down again to plush carpeted floor and sobbed, hoping that when she'd open her eyes it would be all a dream.
But it wasn't.
As her sobs got louder and louder someone opened Vicky's bedroom door.
"NANNY! NANNY!!!" a little boy with bright blond hair screamed. "Come quick!!!"
India panicked, got up and went over to the child that she did not recognize. She started to shush him. But it was too late.
"What is it Caleb?" The nanny said.
India looked down in shock at the little boy identified as 6 year Caleb Collins, India's half brother.
The nanny gasped at the site of the strange woman with a tear-stained face that Caleb had found in Vicky's old bedroom. The nanny shooed the little boy back into his nursery and closed Vicky's door behind her. India was petrified. She didn't know what to say, but the had plenty to say.
Then to India's horror the nanny's eyes turned fire red, her beautiful curly auburn hair began to sway like there was wind in the room, her body floated up off the ground and she lunged at India's neck, her hands reached around India's throat and she tightened attempting to cut off India's air.
In a deep and dark menacing voice, the transformed nanny growled an evil set of words that felt like daggers into India's body.
"Who .....sent .....you?"
But India could not answer, her air supply was cut off. India's eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted there in the demon woman posing as Caleb's nanny's hands.
Outside in the hall, Caleb was speaking with his mother Kimberly. Kimberly was attempting to figure out what the boy was talking about. She couldn't heads or tails of his story of a strange woman in the Nanny's room. As Kimberly looked up, she saw her Nanny coming from the room, calm and collected as if nothing had happened.
"Oh, Mrs. Collins, you're home early." The nanny said pretending everything was fine.
"Yes, umm....Caleb was saying something about a woman in your room?" A very pregnant Kimberly said in a confused tone.
"Woman? Oh!! No, no it was just a little game we were playing. Nothing really." The nanny said.
Kimberly smiled and seemed satisfied with the answer. She picked up Caleb and kissed him on the forehead.
"Of course Evangeline, this boy's imagination seems to be growing faster than he is." The mother said.
Evangeline, the nanny, smiled and waited for mother and son to leave the hallway. She then turned and looked at the closed door of her bedroom where India was still out cold on the floor. India had indeed come into the future from 1966, but not far enough. Not into the world that she was supposed to. For some reason, her travel through time was not over yet, and in 1990 she would encounter the key to the life-force of the man that brought her here.
The woman known as Evangeline, Caleb's nanny had a secret of her own that she was hiding. A secret that she had been hiding for a very long, long time. The secret ran in her blood. It was in her D.N.A. She had been waiting, waiting for what seemed like a lifetime to finally be at peace with a certain someone in her family tree that she believed ruined her life. There was more behind her vicious blood red eyes than anyone in Collinwood actually knew.
Evangeline, or Claudia as she was known in the orphanage she was raised in, had come in search of truth and seek revenge...and in doing so she found a family. A family that, in time, would reveal more to her about herself than she could had ever imagined. India was now too intertwined in a story that would unravel so many questions and thrust a new generation into the shadows.
This was the beginning of the end.
Angelique felt bad, she could see the man she loved and the man she cursed was truly breaking down. She took a breath and touched his chest with her hand, a sign to comfort him. Calm him.
“ I came back for you. And now we can be together Barnabas, our destiny is intertwined, you know this. We can’t escape it. Nothing in any universe will ever part us." The witch explained.
He was trapped on a ship with a woman who he hated more than the taste of blood. Angelique had hijacked Barnabas' retreat from Collinsport and his hope to atone for his mistakes now seemed as distant as the store. His attempts involving India had failed miserably, and his punishment now to be settled together with Angelique on their way to Singapore.
Barnabas felt defeated. He felt the horrible weight of his mistakes on his heart and on his mind like a giant anvil tied to his back and sinking him into a deep black sea of misery, and it felt as if Angelique was standing holding the rope.
"What about Curtis in 2019. You did all you could to finally find love with him. You did all you could Angelique! Even turning yourself mortal in that time.” Barnabas said.
Angelique smiled. “You know as well as I do that there was no way I, Angelique Bouchard, could ever stay mortal. I tried with Roger. I tried with Sky. I tried again with Curtis. I think three is enough don’t you. It’s not meant to be. You and I, however, are tied, fused forever. THAT is to be. Curtis’ life will be figured out without me once his time comes again.” She explained.
“Then? What now Angelique? What do you want from me?" Barnabas asked his merciless ex, as the ship began to hoist anchor and embark on it's journey.
Angelique looked down at Barnabas's Onyx ring. She reached down and felt the smooth surface and the cold black stone that sat crowned in the center. The lighthouse in the distance flashed it's sporadic light across her face illuminating her green eyes. She smirked and slowly pulled on the ring sliding it down Barnabas' finger until it popped off and fell into her cold hand.
Barnabas lifted an eye brow and watched as the witch placed the ring on her thumb adjusting it so it perfectly gazed up at her eyes. The lighthouse again flashed across her face.
"It's time you and I set this voyage back on course to the way it was in the beginning." the witch said.
"You don't mean..." Barnabas began before being interrupted.
"It's the only way Barnabas. The way it was. The way it has to be. Everything must be set right by allowing it to occur again ....now and forever. I know what you did to India. I know how you brought her from another time. Do it again. Do it with me.:" She ordered. "You owe me." She mentioned again as Barnabas showed he reluctance to the idea.
"I don't know if I have it in me to do this all over again." He answered.
"You don't have a choice." she said with serious tone in her voice.
The vampire looked back at Collinsport from the deck of the La Divina as the town got smaller and smaller in the distance. He could see the mansion, Collinwood, high up on Widow's Hill with the window's lit with glowing orange light.
Barnabas turned back and grabbed the ring off of Angelique's thumb and replaced it on his hand. The light house on the docks of Collinsport flashed across their faces again, this time so bright it felt as if their eyes were burning by the light. Angelique covered her face as the white light enveloped her and swallowed the two supernatural being into it absorbing their bodies and taking them to places known and yet unknown.
The ship's fog horn screamed through the misty night, heading full force to Singapore. The moon reflected on the slick surface of the sea as the white ship cut through the waves faster and faster in pace to it's final destination. With two less passengers.
Angelique looked down at Barnabas's Onyx ring. She reached down and felt the smooth surface and the cold black stone that sat crowned in the center. The lighthouse in the distance flashed it's sporadic light across her face illuminating her green eyes. She smirked and slowly pulled on the ring sliding it down Barnabas' finger until it popped off and fell into her cold hand.
Barnabas lifted an eye brow and watched as the witch placed the ring on her thumb adjusting it so it perfectly gazed up at her eyes. The lighthouse again flashed across her face.
"It's time you and I set this voyage back on course to the way it was in the beginning." the witch said.
"You don't mean..." Barnabas began before being interrupted.
"It's the only way Barnabas. The way it was. The way it has to be. Everything must be set right by allowing it to occur again ....now and forever. I know what you did to India. I know how you brought her from another time. Do it again. Do it with me.:" She ordered. "You owe me." She mentioned again as Barnabas showed he reluctance to the idea.
"I don't know if I have it in me to do this all over again." He answered.
"You don't have a choice." she said with serious tone in her voice.
The vampire looked back at Collinsport from the deck of the La Divina as the town got smaller and smaller in the distance. He could see the mansion, Collinwood, high up on Widow's Hill with the window's lit with glowing orange light.
Barnabas turned back and grabbed the ring off of Angelique's thumb and replaced it on his hand. The light house on the docks of Collinsport flashed across their faces again, this time so bright it felt as if their eyes were burning by the light. Angelique covered her face as the white light enveloped her and swallowed the two supernatural being into it absorbing their bodies and taking them to places known and yet unknown.
The ship's fog horn screamed through the misty night, heading full force to Singapore. The moon reflected on the slick surface of the sea as the white ship cut through the waves faster and faster in pace to it's final destination. With two less passengers.
Barnabas and Angelique and vanished into the light of the lighthouse to parts unknown but leaving the Angelique's cloak on the deck of the ship crumpled up in a ball.
They were together again, somewhere in time.
 |
| Barnabas on the deck of the ship with the woman in the cloak |
****
At Windcliff, Julia Hoffman sat in her office writing out her final report on a patient. She sat back in her chair and looked down at the folder in front of her. The patient had gotten better after many of her hypnosis treatments and she wondered had she tried harder with Victoria, would she have gotten better too. Julia still had a loss of memory from two nights ago when she woke up in a bed at the Old House on the Collins' family land.
It was all so fuzzy. She couldn't understand it. George Patterson had wondered what had happened to her too, he was the one that left her there at the Old House but she couldn't fill him in, not with the lack of memory and gaps of details that seemed to empty from her mind like a sand water through a strain.
Earlier that night George had even called to check to see if Julia had seen Justin who hadn't come home. Julia, of course, told the truth: She hadn't seen him since he helped her get home from The Old house.
There were so many holes in her story, so many unanswered questions. Then there were the wounds on her neck. Justin told her it was an animal attack just outside the old house. But it was clearly not. She could see with her own eyes, the scars that were marked on her neck were to perfect circles, no reasonable explanation would wash away the doubt in Julia's mind of what happened to her. Her mind seemed to go in circles, she knew they were lying to her, she knew there was much, much more to the story; something strange had happened to her. Something very strange.
As she got up from her desk, Julia went over to a mirror that was hanging on a dark green painted wall. Before she stepped into frame to see her own reflection she paused and took a deep breath. She thought about the scar on her neck. She thought about the strange feelings she was having, she thought about the most foolish explanation she could think of that could make that mark ---a vampire bite.
"No." She whispered to herself with a smile, thinking it was just stupid.
It was too far-fetched. Why would anyone...human or not...do this to another human. Vampires didn't exist, she thought, she was a scientist, a medical and psychiatric professional, a leader in her field of work. There was no way she could ever even entertain the notion of vampires.
Or could she?
Julia couldn't get the feeling she had out of her mind as she stood there just inches away from the mirror in her office. Something was telling her she was on the right track that she wasn't foolish, that she wasn't stupid for thinking her scars, her neck wounds were really what she thought they were. But the mirror on her office wall would finish it off, it would tell her the truth.
If she saw her reflection than, she was fine, if she didn't then, by some sort of frightening reality, she was bitten by a vampire and now she herself was one.
Julia took one step, then another and placed herself directly in front of the mirror.......
There was her face.
Relieved, Julia turned back to her desk and opened a drawer and pulled out the file she was keeping on more recent patient and pealed off the sticker that read WINTERS, VICTORIA and replaced it with the handwritten name DOE, JANE. This case would remain in her volts. Unmarked. Unnamed. Unsolved.
Julia then sat back in her chair and lit a cigarette. The smoke filled the space around her perfectly heart-shaped face highlighted by streaks of sunlight coming through the shutters of her office window.
She chuckled to herself as the cigarette burned in her mouth about the silliness of vampires and bite marks and mirror reflections.
Julia took a deep breath inhaling the thin plumes of cigarette smoke and then she sat back in her red leather chair as the cigarette burned at the end of her fingers like a tiny chimney spewing gray some all around her. She giggled again...the silliness of vampires and bite marks and mirror reflections.
But something deep inside of her told her this wasn't the end, and she knew in her heart-of-hearts that this wasn't the last time she would hear from the citizens of Collinsport, Maine.
****
As the night progressed Vicky and India continued to talk about everything that had happened over the course of the last few months. The stress. The troubling things about Arabella's supposed disappearance and Julia locking her away with Justin at Windcliff for what could have been a disastrous amount of time.
The two women looked at each other one more time and hugged. A single tear feel from Vicky's eye and rolled down her cheek. They had been together, joined in a way that no one in the world could ever imagine, it was as if Vicky was letting half of herself go.
"This is it!" Vicky said.
"This is it." India confirmed.
"What's the first thing you're going to do when you get back to your own time?" Vicky wondered.
"Shower!" India giggled.
"Well, I don't know what you'll find when you get there, India, but I hope my future self remembers you. I hope what you did here made a difference in everyone's life and I hope....I hope we can be friends. Convincing Barnabas to leave Collinsport may have just saved all of their lives, one way or another." Vicky said.
"Or it could have had disastrous effects and there may not be a family to go back to." India noted.
"Don't think that way. It'll all work out. I have faith in that." Vicky replied as she pulled India close for one last hug.
That was the thing about Vicky. She had faith. She had promise that however dreadful the world seemed at the moment, Vicky's faith that things would change for the better always got her through the darkest parts of her history. She was never certain of it, how could she be? She was only a 24 year old orphan with the world in front of her, but her faith was strong. Her faith in love, in humanity, in fairness and in truth.
This faith, got Vicky through her troubles and she knew that however tied they were, it would also get India through hers.
Vicky held on tight to India's hand, squeezed it and told her she'd always remember her no matter what happened. They were now a part of each other. Vicky then excused herself from the room and allowed India to now concentrate and returning home. She had to wait for the feeling. It had to come. Barnabas had separated the two women and it had to come. She had to be sent back.
He promised.
When the time came, Vicky rushed down the stairs with the letter India wrote supposedly from Barnabas in her pocked. She quickly made her way around the corner of the banister and bashed her body into Roger 's who was rushing out of breath in the same direction. The velocity of their two bodies colliding together knocked Vicky to the floor, she hit her head on a the edge of a potted plant.
"Oh GOD! Vicky! VICKY!!" Roger said angrily as he was already in over his head with the situation with Beau and David in another room.
Vicky only moaned with a large bump former on her forehead.
"What the devil were you doing? Why are you running down here this way??" He asked as he helped her up.
But Vicky didn't know why. She wasn't even sure what had happened 5 minutes ago, or 10 minutes ago.
"I don't know." She said. "I can't remember." She added.
Vicky's mind was fragile. It had been locked away in another woman's control for over two months. Every ounce of energy had to be used to contain and retain everything that had happened to her while India was inside of her. The jolt, the blunt force in her fall had cleared her whole mind of all the events that had happened of the last few months. She was whoozy and confused. Roger wasn't having any of it.
He helped her off the floor and saw David cowering in the hallway shadows still in shock over what he had done to Beau and what he saw his father do to the body.
"David, help Miss Winters to your room and lay her down. Let her rest. I don't have time for all this nonsense. Roger said rudely, concealing the fact he had just hidden a dead body in the walls and secret passages of the mansion. Concealing the secret of Beau's death forever.
"but...." David said meekly.
"DO IT NOW!" Roger yelled frustrated by his sons actions.
As David helped the newly refreshed Vicky to his room to lay down, Roger went down into the main chamber of the house where a guest was waiting, it wasn't the man named Jason McGuire as Roger was expecting that night. It was another man....Burke Devlin in the drawing room with Elizabeth who seemed out-of-sorts and uncomfortable with Burke's presence.
Roger's face dropped. Another enemy.
"God damn it." Roger whispered to himself. "What fresh hell is this?" he added.
"Well hello Roge." Burke said with a confident and somewhat arrogant tone.
"Devlin, what the devil are you doing here? Liz, what's going on?" Roger said, his voice stammering with the shock of his former enemy standing in his face.
"I...I just....he...." Liz said, unsure of what to do and sensing the two men's negative energy.
"I...I just....he...." Liz said, unsure of what to do and sensing the two men's negative energy.
"I'm back Roge. Aren't you going to welcome me? It's been 10 years, welcoming me back to town is the least you could do." Burke said with a grin.
Roger never thought he'd see this man again, and with Burke's return a whole new set of disasters were on the horizon. Roger could feel doom near, a dark and calamitous doom.
Back upstairs David and Vicky were in his room. Her head was throbbing.
"Thank you David. I can't believe how foolish I was." She said resting her eyes.
David sat in a chair across from her and from inside her coat pocket a small little letter peeked out.
Carefuly and quietly while Vicky rested David took the letter and opened it. Read it. Then rolled it up in like a tube and hid it inside of a large wooden model ship sitting on his dresser.
Upstairs in Vicky's room, India lay down on Vicky's bed and closed her eyes. Within seconds, she began to feel a deep pulling in the center of her body, it was as if she were being pulled through the bed, but it was really her body being yanked back through time. She could feel the stretching of all that was holding her together go through what felt like a wringer and it yanks and pulled and tugged and stretched until she felt nothing at all.
There was a blackness for a few seconds.
Quiet. No noise, no movement. Just a black silence that was haunting. India could not speak.
She could not understand what had happened to her. Had she died?
Did she not make it back to 2019?
Suddenly there was light. She opened her eyes to reveal a brilliant bright morning but she was still inside of Vicky's bedroom at Collinwood, but the room was different. The room had changed. The furniture was newer, the walls were wallpapered differently. The carpeting had changed from a shag-yellow to plush white. Even the items inside of it were not hers. Or were they? Her mind could not comprehend where she was or what had happened to her. She jumped off of the bed she was still laying on and rushed around the room searching for any sign of what year it was.
Then she saw a television set in the corner and instantly she could tell this was not a TV from the 1960s....nor a TV from 2019.
India stood in the center of the room...her eyes fixated on the TV, her heart was pounding and she slowly walked over to it, seeing her refecltion in the black screen.
She knelt down and took a gulp of air and turned the television on:
".......in this news this morning, President George Bush today welcome the first female Surgeon General of the United States to the white house for a breakfast meeting that was met with a surprise applause from the media. We'll have more on that story later on in the evening here on WCLP News."
As the morning news anchor's voice trailed off the screen flashed the date and time....
FEBRUARY 25th, 1990
India covered her mouth as she screamed into her own hand as she folded over and planted her face into the soft white new carpeting in Vicky's room at Collinwood. Then, in a manic upheaval of disbelief and denial she jumped up from the floor and wiped her wet tears from her eyes. She was now angry. Angry at Barnabas for betraying her, for leading her to believe he'd send her home to her time as soon as he separated her from Victoria's body. But he lied.
In a rage now, she lunged at the sheer white curtains that drew in the gauze of the bright Collinsport sun and pulled them back. Deep down she was hoping it was all a joke and that behind glass would be Collinsport in the year 2020... but again, to her horror, from Vicky's window, she could see the reality of the small fishing village she had known in 1966 had grown to a mid-sized town in 1990.
She was truly still 30 years in the past.
What had Barnabas done? Why had he held her back, this time in 1990? How could she be in 1990 and not be in someone's body as Barnabas explained needed to be done to preserve the time line as he did with Victoria?
India began to panic at the idea of still being so far from her time. She didn't know what to do. She fell down again to plush carpeted floor and sobbed, hoping that when she'd open her eyes it would be all a dream.
But it wasn't.
As her sobs got louder and louder someone opened Vicky's bedroom door.
"NANNY! NANNY!!!" a little boy with bright blond hair screamed. "Come quick!!!"
India panicked, got up and went over to the child that she did not recognize. She started to shush him. But it was too late.
"What is it Caleb?" The nanny said.
India looked down in shock at the little boy identified as 6 year Caleb Collins, India's half brother.
The nanny gasped at the site of the strange woman with a tear-stained face that Caleb had found in Vicky's old bedroom. The nanny shooed the little boy back into his nursery and closed Vicky's door behind her. India was petrified. She didn't know what to say, but the had plenty to say.
Then to India's horror the nanny's eyes turned fire red, her beautiful curly auburn hair began to sway like there was wind in the room, her body floated up off the ground and she lunged at India's neck, her hands reached around India's throat and she tightened attempting to cut off India's air.
In a deep and dark menacing voice, the transformed nanny growled an evil set of words that felt like daggers into India's body.
"Who .....sent .....you?"
But India could not answer, her air supply was cut off. India's eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted there in the demon woman posing as Caleb's nanny's hands.
Outside in the hall, Caleb was speaking with his mother Kimberly. Kimberly was attempting to figure out what the boy was talking about. She couldn't heads or tails of his story of a strange woman in the Nanny's room. As Kimberly looked up, she saw her Nanny coming from the room, calm and collected as if nothing had happened.
"Oh, Mrs. Collins, you're home early." The nanny said pretending everything was fine.
"Yes, umm....Caleb was saying something about a woman in your room?" A very pregnant Kimberly said in a confused tone.
"Woman? Oh!! No, no it was just a little game we were playing. Nothing really." The nanny said.
Kimberly smiled and seemed satisfied with the answer. She picked up Caleb and kissed him on the forehead.
"Of course Evangeline, this boy's imagination seems to be growing faster than he is." The mother said.
Evangeline, the nanny, smiled and waited for mother and son to leave the hallway. She then turned and looked at the closed door of her bedroom where India was still out cold on the floor. India had indeed come into the future from 1966, but not far enough. Not into the world that she was supposed to. For some reason, her travel through time was not over yet, and in 1990 she would encounter the key to the life-force of the man that brought her here.
The woman known as Evangeline, Caleb's nanny had a secret of her own that she was hiding. A secret that she had been hiding for a very long, long time. The secret ran in her blood. It was in her D.N.A. She had been waiting, waiting for what seemed like a lifetime to finally be at peace with a certain someone in her family tree that she believed ruined her life. There was more behind her vicious blood red eyes than anyone in Collinwood actually knew.
Evangeline, or Claudia as she was known in the orphanage she was raised in, had come in search of truth and seek revenge...and in doing so she found a family. A family that, in time, would reveal more to her about herself than she could had ever imagined. India was now too intertwined in a story that would unravel so many questions and thrust a new generation into the shadows.
This was the beginning of the end.
 |
| The Mysterious nanny in 1990, Evangeline |
