Series 13/Chapter 2: SPEAKING IN RIDDLES

Evangeline Traps India in the mirror for safekeeping.

The ocean waves crashed up against large black rocks causing a booming sound that lifted from the ragged coastline and up the rigid cliff of Widow's Hill and flowed on to the land that made up the compound of Collinwood. It was a very familiar and constant racket. Everyone recognized the throbbing heart beat of the Atlantic in the form of crashing waves. 

It was by far, the most normal thing about Collinsport. The waves. The sea. The sound.

Everything else, however, lived in the world of the strange and the bizarre. Especially when it came to the family that lived on this land and gave the town it's name.

In her bedroom, Caleb Collins' governess Evangeline kept the secret of being the daughter of Angelique and Barnabas very well. No one would have ever guessed. But Elizabeth had a strange suspicion of the young woman from the day she set foot in the mansion. Due to her old age, David and his wife Kimberly often vetoed all her attempts to set control in the household. Elizabeth's assertiveness was a knee-jerk reflect. It was, after all, her house until the day she died. 

Unfortunately, the matriarch of the family was now relegated to live as a dowager empress passing the days in her room with only her caretaker Noelle Cielvert to keep her company and listen to Elizabeth's frosty complaints towards her nephew and his cunning wife.

To her part, Evangeline knew of Elizabeth's suspicions, and for fear of exposure she kept her distance. 

That afternoon, Evangeline walked over to her mirror and watched as her beautiful face of blush toned cheeks slowly morphed into that of India DoArco, the time traveler she trapped inside her own body to keep her away from the family and thus exposing any kind of truth to who and what she was.

 This was an act of self preservation that Evangeline thought was as last resort. But India, trapped in this nightmare once again, only wanted to be free and would do and say anything to gain that freedom. 

"Evangeline, please." The echoing voice of India in the mirror said, her eyes watering with tears. "You have to let me out, you can help me get home I promise that's all I want."

Evangeline shook her head. "That's impossible. Something has happened." She said in her whispery voice.

"What? Whats happened?"

Evangeline reached into her pocket and pulled out a golden necklace that she had been wearing when India first encountered her. She then pulled down her cream colored chiffon blouse, puffy at the sleeves, to show burn marks around her neck and chest where the necklace was.

"I don't understand." India said.

"This necklace was given to me by the woman who raised me. She was a Carmelite nun with powers that I can only describe as otherworldly. She said the day the undead came back to Collinwood I would know by this necklace. These burns tell me that today is that day." Evangeline explained. 

"Barnabas." India assumed. "But---don't you see? If Barnabas has returned, to this time, maybe that's why I'm here! Maybe he wants to help me get back to where I belong. That's why you have to let me out of this mirror. Please!" India pleaded as her hands pressed against the other side of the mirror. 

"I can't do that." Evangeline said with a cruel voice. 

"You can't?? Of course you can! You can't keep me here forever. You can't do this!" India said her hands now pushing up against the class so hard that on her side the glass cracked. 

"You don't understand, you still don't understand!" Evangeline said.

India only looked at the sorceress confused; her heart was pounding in her chest. All she wanted to do was wake up from the nightmare she was living and get back to where she was from 2019. All she could do was think of her uncle Gabriel, the man who risked his whole life to protect her and now, all she could do was hope and wish he could get her out of this. Somehow. Someway. 

"No, I don't understand!" India shouted slamming her hand against her side of the glass in frustration.

Evangeline lifted an eye brow at India's forcefulness.

"The last time I saw Barnabas he said he was leaving, for good. And he promised that he would send me back to my time. And now....I find myself here. So this must be his doing. He must have done this for a reason. I'm here for a reason." India explained.

"Barnabas didn't vanish India." Evangeline said shocking India.  "He came back. He came back to his place of rest at Eagle Hill and was released again. He reset the cycle of his life again. Barnabas Collins lived his life just as he had originally, nothing changed. Victoria arrived in 1966....Willie Found him in 1967...He and Julia went on their journey. It all happened as it was supposed to happen. Don't you see? He lied to you. He lied to you just like he lied to everyone his whole life." Evangeline explained.

"He....he went back into his coffin? After everything that happened to me?" India asked confused.

"Yes. He didn't do anything for you, can't you see? He abandoned you just as he abandoned me. And now he might be back, I can feel that energy, its awakened. I've been waiting for this...for centuries. And I can't let you interrupt that, India. I can't." Evangeline said. 

India was angry, she was furious. She didn't want to believe that Barnabas could have betrayed her this way but it must be true, it must have been all real. 1990 Seemed untouched by the past, and that could only mean that Barnabas did in fact return and was released by Willie Loomis in 1967 and allowed everything to happen just as it had originally. But it didn't matter, in India's eyes, despite his constant betrayals, the young time traveler knew Barnabas, and only Barnabas could send her back to the correct time.

"Evangeline, listen to me," India pleaded from the mirror, "I don't see how keeping me from Barnabas, who's come back to obviously finish what he started, and killing him will help you. He's still your father!!" India shouted attempting to buy her time and get to the man she believed could save her.

"Barnabas Collins was no father to me---he may have helped conceive me but he took me from my mother, he took me and left me to be raised as a child of no one. I've been waiting for him. I've been waiting to avenge my mother's life for a very long....long time." Evangeline explained.

"This is your chance to set things straight to set everything right." India said again, sill trying to buy time for herself by keeping Barnabas alive. "Killing Barnabas may only set things off into a different course of reality. Trust me, I know! He tried to fix things in 1966 and they did not go well. At every turn, he made things worse. At every attempt at faxing the past he made another error and things got worse. This must be his way of setting things back on the course, if you kill him, that could ruin things--even for you!" India explained.

But Evangeline was undeterred. She faced India dead in her eyes and smirked. "He's going to die. There's nothing you can do or say to stop me."

"You can't!" India screamed back, her voice shrill and filled with panic and anguish over the idea of being trapped there, behind the glass forever if Barnabas was killed. "you can't do that. He's my only hope at getting back to my time." India added.

Evangeline stepped closer to the glass of the mirror and tilted her head slightly as if she were looking at her own face and examining it's beauty. She could see India's emotions were real and that perhaps India wasn't sent there to destroy her but something or someone had come back and brought India with them, Evangeline didn't need anyone to tell her that, she could feel it in her body, in her blood, the aching in her bones told her that someone from the world of the undead was now back.

The burn marks on her neck were proof. 

"I don't think you'll like my answer India, I don't think you'll like it one bit. You see my whole mission in life has been this---to avenge what my father did to my mother. He killed her! He took me away from her and then killed her. Do you know what that has done to me? Do you know what it's like to learn from a nun of what your own father did to you and your mother? This is meant to be. This is what is supposed to happen...Barnabas is somewhere out there, I can feel his heartbeat...and now I have to make sure it all ends. All of it." She explained further. 

"Then I'll die here too." India said, her voice now echoing a deep sadness that perhaps all was lost for her. 

Evangeline, the daughter of Barnabas and Angelique slowly got close to the glass and breathed on it causing it to fog up in a large circle on India's face. Evangeline took her finger and drew a pentagram over her face then covered it with her hand. 

India began to feel strange. She began to feel her body twitching from the inside out, it was almost as if her insides were collapsing inward, into a hole, into a drain. She was being pulled out of the mirror and into a void of nothing, into a void of darkness where nothing was real and nothing was imagined. 

"You're not going to die India....you're not even alive yet." Evangeline said in a cold tone of voice that gave India's body shivers. 

Before India had a chance to reply her body began to evaporate into what seemed like a mist. She was becoming a fragmented piece of time that was now going back to where she came from....India was born in 1990....and because of the laws of duplicity in time she could not exist in two places at once. India was going back...back to where she game from.

To her mother Dominique's womb. To be born again, in her own legitimate time line. 

In a flash of light, the fogged up portion of the mirror with the drawn on pentagram went away. The mirror was now reflecting only Evangeline who smirked at her own beautiful face.

"See you soon." She said softly in the mirror. 

India doArco was gone back to her own place in time, to be born another day. 

****

At the old house the smell of burning wood from the fireplace in the drawing room filled the room that had been filled old and new furniture for the house's inhabitants: Noelle and her nephew Cameron. Noelle had decorated the home with the help of her employer, Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, whom she was caretaker of. Everything on its surface seemed quaint and lovely. Warm. Inviting. But on the inside, in truth, things were about to become much stranger. 

Secrets were about to be revealed, especially as Cameron met his aunt's house guest: Justin Patterson. Justin had been turned into a vampire in 1966 and found by Noelle in the Collins family crypt, hiding, hoping his love India would find him. He was a member of the world of the undead. 

His presence, his life-force was who Evangeline was feeling, not Barnabas'. 

Cameron sat down slowly onto the sofa that was a dark maroon color. His hands nervously went over the seams of the cushions over and over again as if he was feeling for something, searching for anything to take his mind of what his aunt needed to tell him. She was in a serious mood, and the man with her had an equally serious expression.

"What's going on? What do you have to tell me?" Cameron asked, still fiddling nervously with the sofa cushion.

Noelle sat down across from her nephew. "Cam, I have to talk to you about...." she paused and looked at Justin who was meandering towards the front window. "I have to talk to you about something that happened many years ago." She said.

"Ok." Cameron said looking over at Justin and unsure of what was to come.

"This is Justin Patterson. Justin is a ...." she paused unsure how to explain Justin, "a very old friend of mine who's just come back to town." She said. "But...there's more to it than that." 

"I think you should explain to him where I came from Noelle, and how he's connected." Justin said in a slow growl of a voice.

"Connected?" Cameron replied confused. 

Noelle wasn't sure where to start. It had been so many years since she followed Carolyn to Europe and adopted Cameron right out from under her nose. It was so many years ago that she found Justin and took him away from the crypt and kept him safe in her own own until the right moment. It had been years and years since her brother Beau's disappearance and so many years since she came into the Collins household to work for Liz. But Justin's awakening was the moment she had been waiting for. It was the message from the beyond to tell her that now everything would start to move forward and the truth of Beau's disappearance would finally come true and she could tell Cameron that he was in fact, a Collins too.

"It's about how you were born and how I became your guardian." Noelle began. 

"Tell him." Justin said still staring out of the window of the old house. "tell him now."  

Noelle took a deep breath and opened her mouth and began to tell the story. The story of Carolyn. Justin. Beau. The story of how she came to be where she was and what she needed to do to get to the truth.

 

***LONDON, ENGLAND 1966***

Carolyn Hands Noelle baby Cameron

A young blond woman screamed and writhed in pain on a hospital bed as a doctor and two nurses quickly rushed in. She was reaching for one of the nurses who grabbed her hand and squeezed. The nurse, looked down at the patient and smiled behind her medical mask and whispered "its going to be ok."

The blond woman, screamed and grabbed at her throbbing stomach and screamed again. She was having a child. A new baby was to be born in this hospital. 

"Please....there's so much pain." The woman said.

"Its ok Carolyn, this will help." The other nurse said as she filled a syringe and poked it into the vial the filled the IV into the woman's vein. 

The medicine soon swirled through Carolyn's blood stream and calmed her, the pain subsided and she lay back on the hospital bed sweating and aching but the sharp pains of her belly gone like the flickering off of a light switch.

The first nurse squeezed Carolyn's hand again as the doctor began to count backwards from 5..."On 1, you push, alright? Ready?" The doctor said crouching down ready for the baby to be born.

"Ok." Carolyn said, weak and sleepy from the medicine. 

"5, 4, 3, 2, ....1...Push Carolyn! Go on, push!" The doctor said.

Carolyn pushed as the first nurse squeezed her hand, the other nurse stood behind the doctor with a towel ready for the new baby. It felt like hours but it was only minutes and soon, a new baby was in the world. 

"Its a boy!" The doctor announced asking the first nurse who was holding Carolyn's hand to cut the cord. The first nurse, an American too, had tears in her eyes and cut the cord. 

"Emotional?" The second nurse said to the first as she cleaned off the baby.

"It's just so wonderful." The first nurse said.

Carolyn looked up noticing the American accident coming from the nurse who was holding her hand. It had been so long since she heard someone else talk like she did. 

"You're American?" Carolyn said, as the first nurse cleaned off the sweat from Carolyn's forehead. 

The nurse nodded yes. 

"Alright Miss America, can you take the baby off to Neonatal please?" the first nurse said handing the cream colored baby boy to the first nurse.

The first nurse, her eyes lit with glee, grabbed tightly to the new chid as Carolyn's sad eyes looked on. She had already signed the release papers for the baby to be adopted, but it hurt still. It ached. It was wrenching. But it had to be done.

The first nurse quickly walked the baby, swaddled in a white blanked with a blue trim into the Neonatal unit and removed her mask.  It was Noelle Cielvert, the biological aunt to the baby boy that she helped bring into the world, and in days she would adopt as her own. Her brother's baby boy would be raised in her own care. He would be protected. And loved. 

It had only taken a few months and legal paper work for Noelle to take full custody of the new baby. But it worked just as she had planned. She returned to Collinsport soon after with the baby. Her nephew, a boy she named Cameron and gave him the fake last name of Frame.

Now back in the seaside town in Maine, Noelle put the baby down in a new bassinet as he slept and walked down into the basement of her home. She had been gone for a few months while in England following Carolyn and had left something in the basement. 

Asleep.

She slowly walked down the dark steps and made it to the center of the basement where she pulled on a long string that turned on a single light-bulb illuminating a halo like spotlight around her. She stood in the center of the spotlight from the light-bulb and stared at a large trunk-shaped object directly in front of her shadowed and obscure.

Noelle slowly made her way out of the spotlight, step by step, slowly making her way towards the large trunk that as Noelle got closer to it, it could be revealed to be a large coffin that she had constructed. For her new friend. The man she found in the depths of the Collins family crypt. 

Justin Patterson. The vampire.

Noelle opened the coffin, the basement light cast Noelle's shadow over Justin's sleeping face

"I've come back as I promised Justin. It's all done. We can begin now. We can get our revenge now. I did it. I got the baby. We can start." She said in a whispery voice.  

***THE OLD HOUSE, 1990***

The "Old House" on Collinwood, 1990

"So....all this time, you lied to me? You told me my father and mother died and that's how you came to raise me. You....you've been lying to me all this time?" Cameron said shocked to hear the story of Carolyn being his mother.

"I had to. I couldn't tell you what really happened!" Noelle said.

"And who's this? Who is he? Why does he know more about my life than I did?" Cameron shouted as he stood up quickly from the sofa. 

"That's another part of the story. I came across Justin who ....well he also has dealings with the Collins family." Noelle said vaguely. 

"Like what?" Cameron asked to Noelle's blank expression.

"The Collins family helped make me who I am today...let's leave it at that." 

"What? What does that even mean?" Cameron replied frustrated.

"Cameron..."Noelle said before being interrupted by her nephew. 

"This is...Look, I don't know what to say!! You've been lying to me all these years! You said we were alone, that we didn't have anymore family and this whole time we've been living steps away from people who I'm related to! How could you?" Cameron shouted.

"Cameron you can't tell them that you know you're Carolyn's son. You can never ever tell them!" Noelle shouted back.

"Why? Why can't I?" Cameron asked.

"BECAUSE!" Noelle screamed back. 

"TELL ME WHY!" Cameron shouted back just as Justin took control of the conversation by dropping a bomb: 

"Because they killed your father!" Justin shouted over them all.

Shocked for different reasons, Noelle and Cameron both turned and looked at the vampire. 

Noelle signed in disappointment and closed her eyes as if to block out the truth and sat back down on the chair facing Cameron who was still standing.

He was frozen in place but managed to tilt his head back towards Justin who dropped the bomb about Cameron's father's murder.

"What? Is that that true?" Cameron asked. 

Noelle shook her head. She had never been sure if Beau's vanishing had anything to do with the Collins family but she had always had her suspicions, and in truth, couldn't figure out any other explanation. 

"I believe so...yes." Noelle replied softly. 

Cameron was furious. He was angry. He felt betrayed. He reached over and grabbed his coat and charged for the foyer of the Old House. He turned back and looked at the stoic and handsome Justin who had no emotion on his face whatsoever and his aunt Noelle who seemed crushed but at the same time relieved  that her secrets were out. Most of them anyway. 

Cameron shook his head in disgust and left. 

"That's not how I wanted to tell him about Beau, Justin. How could you be so cold?" Noelle said as the fireplace crackled and popped a glowing orange light on her finely aged face.

"You baby him. I needed the truth out so that we could get a move on with our plan. I've been waiting 25 years to reunite with India, you've been promising me ....with no result. Cameron had to know...it had to be said." Justin said as he sat down. "Now that the truth is out, we can begin our process. And we can  both get what we want." Justin added.

"India....this was all about India for you wasn't it?" Noelle asked.

"You'll get your revenge on the Collins family too...eventually, once any evidence is found....you can always just use those powers of yours." Justin replied reminding her of their pact and hinting at her own supernatural abilities.

Noelle narrowed her eyes. "You're selfish. I told you using my powers only brings in the darkness that created them. You pushed me. You kept pushing." Noelle said frustrated with what she had done.

"You move to slow. You told me two years ago, that in the year 1990, the stars would align in a figment in the sky and that would be your sign. Look at the calendar Noelle. The time is now. Those stars align this week." Justin replied proving he'd been waiting for the sign Noelle told him about.

Noelle hoped he wouldn't have been paying attention. She was having second thoughts and was hoping that she could take care of everything in a different way without the unpredictability and volatility of Justin Patterson. But it was too late. He had the taste of blood in his mouth and he wanted what he was promised,. 

"I don't know if its safe for India here anymore. I don't know if you're good for her anymore. You're different, don't you think she'll notice you're not the same man anymore?" Noelle asked, unsure of how Justin would react to her backtracking. 

"She loves me! And I love her. I would never hurt her! I wanted to brig her to this time so that we could be together.You told me I couldn't be with her until the moment was right....this is the moment. You agreed." Justin reminded Noelle.

"Maybe I'm having second thoughts." Noelle said turning away from Justin, embarrassed about her involvement in the scheme.

Justin fumed in frustration. He had waited years and years to be reunited wit India after Noelle discovered him in the Collins family mausoleum. He pressured over the years to help him, but she refused, she was constantly putting it off....she was waiting for the right moment.

They finally agreed that bringing India, the catalyst to all the horrors in 1966, would be the perfect timing to begin the exposure of the Collins family for what they were. 

But having Cameron as collateral damage didn't sit well with Noelle. 

Justin growled a monstrous moan at Noelle's attempt to back out of their plan. He reached for Noelle's arm and pulled her around to face him and look him in the eye. His eyes turning red like fire filled coals, his canine teeth lengthening and turning into two sharp dagger fangs, his breath hot and ready thirsty ready to attack.

"Justin! No! Stop this! Let go!" Noelle said trying to rip his hand from her arm.

"You promised me you would help me bring India here, you promised to help me if I helped you. Now its time to pay up....I will kill who you need for India in return. Just give me the name and I will slaughter them.....I--WANT--INDIA!" Justin shouted, his mouth full spitting with anger.

"I...I..." Noelle couldn't muster the words.

"If you back out now, I swear to god Noelle, I will kill Cameron right in front of you." He threatened. 

Noelle's face changed from fearful to serious. She had no reason to believe that Justin wouldn't kill anyone to get what he wanted. She saw just how cold he had turned and how he didn't care about who he hurt or who he destroyed in the process. Her nephew was now in danger and a target.

Noelle pulled her arm free and snarled at the vampire in front of her. 

"I hope you two are happy together." Noelle said, her words a veiled confirmation that she would help him get to India.  

She stormed out of the room leaving Justin to his own thoughts of love and the beautiful India who he had yet to discover was now gone for good thanks to Evangeline.

He would soon find out, and when he did, someone would pay with their lives.