Series 13/Chapter 7: BLOOD AND MADNESS

Camron finds Lucas' file

The Autumn sun burned slowing in a sky filled with circling seagulls searching for a place to rest their wayward bodies from a wind swept flight down into the Village. It was a cold late afternoon and Collinsport was still chocked by the morning fog that remained like a white gauzy sweater keeping the warmth in and the cool sea air out. 

Over in Lucas Grainger's small apartment across town, Cameron flipped through the pages of a book that could not hold his interest. It had been two days since he agreed to help his aunt search Collinwood for any sort of evidence on his father's supposed murder. The truth was, Cameron wasn't really sure what to believe. His aunt had lied to him all his life about his birth parents and now to have to come to terms with such a fantastic story about Carolyn Stoddard being his mother and that his father Beau was some how killed or disappeared by that family---his family---it was all too much.

As Cameron impatiently awaited Lucas' return with take out from the diner at the hotel, Cameron went into the bedroom to replace the book on the small book shelf in the corner. He knelt down and slid the book back into it's and as he stood up, he looked at himself in the mirror just above the bookshelf and noticed in the reflect an odd envelope peeking out from underneath a stack of sweaters in the closet just behind him.

Cameron's brow furrowed. It was an odd place to keep a manila envelope. It was an odd place to keep any kind of paperwork. Cameron walked over and carefully pulled on the visible corner of the envelope and pulled it out.

He held it in his hand and flipped it over. The seal, with its golden wing clasp fixed perfectly in it's place seemed too easy to just lift and open. 

He didn't want to do it. But Lucas' strange instant behavior the other day at The Old House: pushing the topic of helping Noelle with the matter about Beau. Cameron found it odd to that Lucas was so keen on helping his aunt rather than siding with him in such a quick and unquestionable manner. 

Everything to Cameron now seemed suspect and suspicious. He was cautious. Careful. All the lies had made his unsure of who to trust, even Lucas. And now, this envelope was practically begging to be opened. Why was it hidden in a stack of sweaters in the closet? Was he meant to find it? 

He decided that there was no point in wondering and lifted to two little golden tabs and pulled them through the envelope's seal and poured it's contents out on the bed. 

Papers. Lots and lots of papers.

Cameron sifted through them. Names. Lots and lots of names. Some he recognized and some he didn't.

CAROLYN COLLINS STODDARD (daughter of Elizabeth; Married name THORNE)

DAVID COLLINS (son of Roger) 

CATHERINE COLLINS (mother of Elizabeth and Roger) 

JAMISON COLLINS (father of Elizabeth and Roger) ....

ELIZABETH....

PAUL ....

ARABELLA.......

Names names and more names. It was a family tree. But one name, one scratched out then written over and scratched out again was at the bottom of the forms. The link over the name was a different color than the name was written in. A name that Cameron had never heard before...

BARNABAS COLLINS (Dead?) 

Cameron suddenly felt sick. Why did Lucas have all these papers? How long had Lucas been hiding this? Why was he hiding this interest in the family? It was so strange. It was disturbing. Another person in his life keeping secrets. As Cameron began to replace the papers a sinking feeling of regret and worry in the pit of his stomach. There was obviously more to Lucas, the man he had been in love with for shorty over a year than he realized. 

Then, another sinking feeling ---the sound of the front door opening.

"Hey Cam!? They didn't have the meatloaf today at the diner so I got us this lasagna that the waitress said is amazing. That ok?" Lucas shouted unsure of where in the apartment Cameron was. "Cam? Hey Cam?" He added.

Cameron took a deep breath and walked back into the living room from the bedroom...with the envelope in his hand.

"Hey Kiddo! You hungry? I got...." Lucas said before he noticed the envelope and stopped suddenly telling.

Cameron tossed the envelope on the kitchen counter.

"Look, I can explain." Lucas said. 

"I don't want to hear more lies. Lucas. Just please. No more lies. No more lies." Cameron said.

"I won't lie. I promised." Lucas said putting down the lasagna he was cutting up in servings. 

"Why? Why do you have all of this information on this family? ...My family? Are you and Noelle working together? HAVE YOU been working with her all this time?" Cameron asked. 

"No. No. Look...I...Ok, I don't know where to start." Lucas said as he came closer to Cameron who backed up.

"The beginning. That's usually the best place to start when you have a lot of explaining to do." Cameron snapped back. 

"Cameron I think that what I have to say might just be a bit strange to hear and I don't want to freak you out, I don't want to scare you off and finding out the other day that you and Noelle were somehow connected to this family was a total fluke. I never ever even had a inkling that you were related them. Not in anyway." Lucas began.

"Is that why you jumped on Noelle's bandwagon on searching that giant house on anything regarding my dad? What is it about them that you're so curious about? What is it about them that you want to know so much?" 

"I..." Lucas began to speak before he realized I lie was about to come out of his mouth and he paused, he didn't want to lie. He didn't want more to pile on poor Cameron. "Yes. That's why. It was a perfect storm that I would be in love with you and somehow you're related to this family that I've been studying for so many years." 

"Studying? Why are you studying then?" Cameron asked.

Lucas had the answer to this too. The Collins family, the most famous family in town and in Maine had a long woven history deep into the fabric of old Maine folklore. Was it true about all the ghosts? Was it true about the supernatural creatures and sorceresses that lived among those walls in the dark mansion on Widow's Hill? It sounded crazy to anyone who even bothered to look into those stories. But to Lucas, deep in his chest in his heart and his body it was all real and it was the driving force and passion to what he had been working and studing on for so many years of his adult life. 

The world of the supernatural. The world of the shadows. It is what he had always wanted to feel and see with his own senses. And now, with Cameron's connection, it was at his own door step and in his bed. Lucas knew that all of it was true and he was closer than ever before; Noelle and Cameron were the keys to unlocking the secrets of this family and Lucas needed them. 

"The Collins history. They are incredibly influential and powerful in this region and Ive been studying that. All this time. And now, I'm close. I'm so close to actually meeting one of them." Lucas said.

A lie. He couldn't bring himself to tell Camron the full truth of his investigations of the supernatural and how the Collins were connected to it. 

Cameron sighed. He turned away from the man he was in love with all this time and suddenly was seeing someone different someone he didn't recognize. The Autumn sun that was sinking in the horizon was now was shining in Cameron's deep eyes that reflected a sadness Lucas had never seen before. 

Lucas, for his part, didn't want to hurt him and never ever intended to hurt him. But it had already been done.

"Are you ok? I don't know what else to say. I should have told you and I know that it's going to be weird now that I have told you about this and that they're you're family. I know that it must be weird Cam, knowing that I know more about your family history than you do. But.... I promise I had never even thought about your connection to them before Noelle told us. I swear." Lucas said---this time the truth.

Cameron realized that there was going to be a lot more hurtles to jump through in the future because he promised his aunt Noelle one week of investigations at Collinwood over Beau's disappearance. He promised and he intended to keep his promise because in his heart of hearts Cameron believed he'd find nothing---nothing but dust and old paintings and spider webs and old furniture in the mansion on Widow's Hill....not answers to his father's death.

Cameron turned back around to Lucas.

"I'm fine. I'm fine." Cameron said, expressing own half truth. "I guess this has all been a lot for me to take in. Noelle hasn't ben truthful with me --ever--and I just really need you to be honest with me. Always. Lucas, I love you too, and...having your total honesty is something that is more important than ever." Cameron said, his hands resting around Lucas' perfect face.

"Of course. That's what I want too. That's all Ive ever wanted." Lucas said, again, another half truth. Lucas did love Cameron. He adored him in fact. But the desire and the pull of what secrets and mysteries he could uncover on Widow's Hill were now driving Lucas' passions.

Cameron's big brown eyes looked deep into Lucas's. He felt at least for now, he could let Lucas slide. There was a certain kindness and beauty to Lucas that would always melt Cameron's core and get Lucas off the hook. 

"Let's just take a breath and enjoy dinner and it's going to be fine." Cameron said feeling overwhelmed and tired about talking about so much. 

"You sure?" Lucas said,  his ice blue eyes showing a deep concern for Cameron. Deep and legitimate concern. 

"YES! Now...let's eat...I'm starving." Cameron said tossing the envelope from the kitchen counter to a side table away from sight and plastering on a plastic smile to save face.

Cameron would for now allow it all to happen. It had to happen. Everything had to happen the way it was flowing so that he could finally tell Noelle she was crazy and obsessive and never going to find blame on the Collins family about Beau because to Cameron there was no one to blame. Cameron thought it was all in her head and once he and Lucas got into the mansion and found nothing and more nothing, he would finally show them both they were wrong.

But secrets never live on a single thread alone. They are often times tangled up together like a giant ball of old Christmas lights that have been left in a bin for years and years only to be discovered and discarded to the side because of how complicated the unraveling process would be.

That is what Cameron was walking into. A long tangled web of Christmas lights, and untangled them at Collinwood would prove much more terrifying than he would could ever imagine. 

****

Kimberly stalks David in the Study

That evening as the last of the seagulls circled the sky crying out in mournful screeching to the anchored ships in the French Bay that gave Collinsport it's salty air, the mood at Collinwood was no different. 

Tonight Kimberly would begin the process of removing every last Collins family member from the face of the earth. 

But she was nervous. After all this was her family now too. 

Kimberly's brainwashing by Victor and The OTH came at a time when she and David were having trouble in their marriage 4 years prior. It wasn't something out of the ordinary. Marriages often times suffer bumps in the road. But Victor and Chancellor Devlin of The OTH saw an opening, a fisher in this relationship that they would and could take advantage of.

Four years ago, Victor set his sights on Kimberly and sinked his claws into her. He began a long processes of brainwashing and torment that eventually set her against her husband's cursed family. She also became pregnant by Victor, and the baby she was currently carrying was going to be an essential part of project Futura,....the process of the removal of the Collins family named by the OTH. 

But on this night, David was first on the list. 

David was sitting in a second floor study reading through more Cannery paper-work that he would bring over to his Aunt Elizabeth in the morning for her to look over and sign. This was now part of his daily and nightly routine. Paperwork. Cannery work. Work. Work. Work. David was the main go-to-person of the company. Nothing got done without David knowing, however Elizabeth, was still a major factor and symbol for the Cannery, even in her old age. Everything had to be signed off by her no matter what--even if David was in total control. 

He flipped through the papers. Checked off areas for Liz to sign and initial just as a secret door behind a tapestry in the wall of the study slid open. There, 8 and a half months pregnant, was Kimberly Collins. Her face shadowed by the doorway and her hand gripping the syringe filled with the hallucinogen serum Victor had given her the night before. 

The hallucinogen would flow into David's veins and speed thorough his body like a racehorse. It would cause him to feel a lack of control, his mind would feel like it was racing and drive him into fits of insanity. It was designed to take grip of a person's most horrifying fears and illuminate them to the most extreme. 

It was a powerful drug. Something that would slowly make David die inside. 

This was trial one, Kim would have to inject him two more times for the full effect. 

She slowly slinked out of the hidden doorway and walked slowly in from the side of the study where he could not see her. She thought about all of their good times and their mutual son Caleb. How could she explain this to him? How could she explain to her little boy that his father was going insane and eventually, if Victor's serum worked, David would die and Kim would then have to explain to the boy his death.

The power of The OTH was stronger than her instincts. She had now reached the point of no return and David's life was minutes away from being changed forever and ever. 

As he sat at the desk heavily into the paperwork in front of him, Kimberly raised her arm high from behind and dropped it down onto David's back injected the serum into his body.

David yelped a sound she had never heard before as he jolted out of the desk chair trying with both hands to reach for whatever was plunged into his back causing the sudden pain.

As he turned around, panicking and screeching in his pain he saw his wife standing there, her face pale and blank, emotionless. She had the syringe in her hand.

"What are you doing?" David said he began to slur his words. 

"I'm sorry but this was going to happen no matter what." Kim said as she slowly watched her husband go into a strange hazy state.

As the medicine starting to surge through David's body he began to see the walls move. He began to see the light from the lamps leap from under the lampshades and dance in front of him like fireflies dancing in the night sky. The wallpaper in the study was various majestic scenes of men on horseback riding through grassy meadows---all of those scenes began to come to life in David's mind. The room began to spin. He started to feel like everything was spinning without stopping. 

"Help me." He said, as he fell to the floor in manic frenzy shaking and shivering on the floor.

Kim and David were not alone. Someone was to come to the Study for those papers. Someone was supposed to meet David at just the moment Kim decided to start the process of killing every family member. 

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?" Elizabeth shouted from hallway and the open study's doorway.

"Elizabeth." Kim said in a soft voice after realizing she was caught with the syringe in her hand. The family matriarch had arrived for her nightly meeting with David to go over the papers she was to sign. 

Liz, as fast as her 80 year old body could take her, began to rush down the hall to find her daughter Carolyn. She passed a table with a large potted fern planted deep inside a copper urn and accidentally tripped on the table's leg tossing the urn and fern to the gourd along with Liz's body just a few feet from the staircase. Elizabeth shuffled up, her body tired and old but strong enough to get up.

"Care-oh..." Liz said in a tired and weak voice trying to call for her daughter. 

Two hands grabbed her by the shoulders and lifted her up. Liz felt safe now that someone was there to help her but as she turned to look who her hero was she only saw Kimberly's face looking back her with a cold, dark stare. 

"No!" Liz said as she and Kim began to struggle and scratch at each other.

"Liz please, you don't understand." Kimberly said in a quiet voice attempting to warm over the older woman.

"You killed him, you killed him!" Liz hissed as they got closer and closer, pushing each other and pulling at each other at the mouth of the staircase on the second floor mezzanine. 

"Please! Please! Listen to me!" Kim begged as they both continued to inch closer to the first step. 

But Elizabeth wanted nothing to do with David's treacherous wife. Kim reached for Liz's arm but Elizabeth slapped it away with her left hand and with her right hand swung back and slapped Kim across the face with a raging and stinging blow. 

Kim, her mind spinning with anger, almost as wildly as David's was, in reflex mode, turned around and slapped Elizabeth back so hard that Liz lost her balance, screamed and fell down the flight of stairs falling all the way down to the foyer's hard stone floor cracking her head on the ground in the processes.

Kim gasped at what she had done. She stared down at Elizabeth's body in total shock. She didn't know what to do but then heard a large bang in the study and rushed back to check on David. 

As she went running into the hallway she passed her little son Caleb who witnessed it all. He too was frozen in fear as he watched his own mother and great-aunt fighting, then Elizabeth's fall. 

In the study David was pulling down books from the shelf. Throwing furniture all over the place. He was seeing things attack him, like birds and bats and evil creatures all coming at him in his mind attacking and pulling at him. His mind was in outer space. He was foaming at the mouth. His breathing was rapid and his fists were clenched. 

"DAVID!" Kim said now standing back in the door way.

He turned to her, his body drenched in sweat, his shirt ripped open exposing his hairy chest and his muscles bulging out of his sleeves. He was becoming something else. Something wild. Something mad and monstrous. 

"DAVID! STOP!" Kim said, as Carolyn came rushing down the hall passing Caleb on the way.

"What's happened?" Carolyn shouted as Caleb hid between Carolyn's arms as he looked at his father go mad in the study.

"Carolyn he's gone crazy, he pushed your mother down the stairs!" Kim said lying.

"WHAT!?!? MOTHER!!!" Carolyn screamed flew back down the hallway with Caleb attached at her hand. 

As Carolyn got to the top of the staircase she saw her mother's 80 year old body laying at the bottom of the staircase, one foot on the last step and her head bleeding a river of blood that created a square shape as it seeped into the grout in-between the slabs of stone that made top the floor of the foyer. 

Elizabeth at the bottom of the stairs 

In the study, Caleb's breathing was out of control. His heart rate was racing.

He was snarling. Growling.

Kim panicked. She didnt know what he would do next. 

And then....he fell to the floor. Fainted. His eyes were closed and his body began to relax.

The medicine had worked and tomorrow she would inject him again. A trial of three injections had to be processed for it all to work like Victor had planned.

"MOTHER! MOTHER WAKE UP! MOTHER CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Carolyn screamed as she touched her mother's soft face. 

Liz, face to one side, looked to be asleep. She was peaceful but at the same time there was something so horrifying in her body shape that Carolyn screamed again looking at her. 

Carolyn quickly got up from the floor, her mother's blood now all over her nightgown and Dailed for an ambulance. 

"HURRY! PLEASE! PLEASE HURRY!" She shouted over the phone. 

"Are they coming?" Kim said finally coming down to Carolyn's side.

"What happened Kim? Why did David do this?" Carolyn asked, her nostrils filled with snot and tears as her mother lay in a bloody puddle.

"I don't know, I don't know. He just snapped. He's gone mad Carolyn. He's insane." Kim said lying.

"First Evangeline's vanishes and now this. You see!? THIS is why I never wanted to come back here. This house of horrors is evil; nothing good ever happens here. Nothing good ever ever EVER happens here/." Carolyn screamed at Kim.

"I don't know what happened. I don't." Kim replied, continuing her lie. 

"None of this makes any sense! Why would he just snap and act like this pushing my mother. What happened? What do you know?" Carolyn shouted, she was sure Kim knew more than she was saying.

"Mommy. Mommy had it." Caleb said from the top of the stairs.

"What?" Carolyn asked.

"Caleb go to your room!!" Kim screamed. 

"What is he talking about? What did you have?" Carolyn asked trying to make sense of the boy's comments.

As Kim tried to convince Carolyn that she had no idea what the little boy was talking about Carolyn knelt back down next to Elizabeth who's breathing was show slowing.

"Mother, please, please stay with me. The ambulance is coming. Please stay with me. Mother. Mother!" Carolyn said. 

"Mommy had a thing. Mommy had it." Caleb said again trying to explain what he saw his mother do.

"CALEB!! What did I say??? GO BACK TO your room NOW!" Kim screamed terrified of what her son had seen and would say.

Carolyn only looked up at Kim from the ground with a withering stare. 

As the flashing police lights and ambulance lights finally began to break through the front windows of the mansion, Carolyn reached down to touch Elizabeth's wrist to feel her pulse. 

It was too late. 

Carolyn screamed a scream so profound and so animalistic that it shook the stone walls of Collinwood. The picture frames seem to all tilt to one side with the vibrations of the mournful sound that matched the screeching of the seagulls that circled the night sky above Widow's Hill.

Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard was dead. 

****

Evangeline and the man who calls himself LEOPOLD

Chaos has a way of filling the air around Collinwood and keep it in an insular form so that where ever it spills remains there. In that spot. As the Mansion was over-flowing with in the middle of the night with Elizabeth's fall and David's drugging, the Old House was serine. Quiet.

Almost peaceful.

Noelle was asleep in her room. She was burgeoning on losing her own mind with all the stress surrounding her, so much so that she took a sleeping pill to fall asleep. She tossed and turned and rolled around in bed but never opened her eyes and remained asleep.

Watching over her was Bathlem, the witch queen who raised Claudia Bouchard, the woman calling herself by her birth name Evangeline. The woman Justin kidnapped and was holding hostage in the basement of the old house, under Noelle's nose.

Noelle had called for Justin to return her to the main mansion but something about her was pulling him closer and closer into her orbit. This connection, this carnal love that was blooming inside of him was something Bathlem was going to protect. 

Noelle didn't need a sleeping aide....Bathlem had raised her hand above the sleeping woman and pushed her deep into a dream state. She would not wake up at all. Nothing would wake her, not a toss in the bed, not the waves crashing against the rocks below the mansion on the cliff--not even the sirens of the ambulance waling down the way at the main mansion. 

Bathlem needed to be sure that Claudia--Evangeline had her time with this man, Justin. He would be key to her survival. 

Down in the basement Evangeline looked around. She imagined her father Barnabas all those years ago laying there in that same place. She imagined him pacing back and forth unsure of what his next move would be. How he would continue to keep his darkest deepest secret from the outside world.

The glow of the candle-light from the ancient candelabras put the entire room stained the stone walls in a fire like tangerine glow. Evangeline walked towards the bed where she had been laying her hand slowly feeling the rocky cracks in the wall all the way back to the bed.

"If these walls could talk, huh?" Justin said, returning into the main room of the basement from adjoining lair that had been turned into a storage room for him filled with pints of blood to keep him alive over the years, thanks to Noelle's work.

Evangeline turned to him and smirked. 

"I don't know what you think you're doing but ....this wont last." She said softly. 

He walked up close to her, her eyes sparkled like two hazel marbles, flowing with fire and light.

"You don't feel it? You don't that between us? Whatever it is? I can feel something in both of us. Its like when I touch you when I look at you I feel a wild ocean crashing into me. I thought I'd only feel that with India but.....I feel it with you too." Justin said.

"Leopold," Evangeline began using the fake name Justin had given her. "you don't understand. I've had a mission all my life and I can't separate myself from it. I have to go back and get this done. I'm waiting for  him." Evangeline said.

"Him?" Justin asked. "A lover? I was waiting for someone too. India. I was waiting for her to come back and she never did. Maybe who you're waiting for isnt coming back either and that's why we were meant to meet. Don't you see that?" 

"No, no...it's noting like that. I've been waiting for my father all these years. He's the only one I want to see again. He's ...." She paused. "He owes me a lifetime. And a lifetime is all he has left---and I want it." Evangeline said referring to Barnabas' eternal life.

"You want to kill him? You want to kill your father?" Justin asked. 

Evangeline did want to kill Barnabas, where ever he was. At least that's what she thought she wanted. Her hurt overshadowed her cruelty and all she really wanted to do was to see him again somehow some way. After all he was her daughter and since he killed and vanquished her mother Angelique decades ago she was all he had too in the world.

Evangeline sighed. She turned to Justin and saw his big blue eyes. She knew too that something was happening between them too. Something from the spiritual side. Something that burrowed deep into her heart like she had never felt before. His touch, she knew, was fire on her skin. And she wanted it. And he wanted it.

"Since the second I saw you all I can do is think of you. I hear your voice even when you're not speaking. Its been a sudden surge of energy these last few weeks and all I can do, all I can see, all I can feel is you. You. You." Justin said.

"Leopold....I don't know. I feel it too. I do. And I can't explain it either. But, us together? It could be like oil and water." She said unsure of what in the world was happening in her mind and heart. The feeling of love and being loved had been gone for so long that this wild passion inside of her was like a perfume that would not come off the skin. It stuck to her. 

"I never thought I'd know this again." Justin said, again using his fake name. She could not know just yet his real identity. It was too risky. It was too dangerous. Justin Patterson should have been old and gray by 1990 after he vanished in 1966 and even if Evangeline was a supernatural creature of the night like----the risk was still dangerous. 

"India." Evangeline said to Justin's sad nod. "She's gone back to where to her beginning. Her life will begin again in a new form. She'll be born by her mother and her father, the same way, but...in time, things for India will surpass what happened to her before. I've made sure of that. It was the right thing to do after what my father did to her." 

Justin squinted at Evangeline. All this information coming from her shocked him. 

"How do you know this? Did you have something to do with her never showing up here in this time? You...it was you who sent her away?" He said, angry at himself for blaming Noelle for India never showing up as promised. 

Evangeline looked deep into Justin's eyes. From her gaze he knew the truth. He felt his heart shrivel a little. It was like someone had come in with a sledgehammer and plowed him in the stomach. The woman he was falling in love so suddenly was directly responsible for his first love's vanishing. 

Betrayed already. And it had only just begun. 

The anger deep inside were starting to boil in his body. He started to breath heavy. He started to get angry. Lies. Lies and more Lies. Maybe Evangeline wasnt supposed to be the one for him. Maybe she was there to destroy him and make him kill more. Maybe she was a test of his passion, she ruined his plans to be with India forever. This knew woman. She was no savior to his love, was a thief and a Jezebel! 

He raged. He screamed. All this time it was Evangeline who had taken away India. It was Never NOELLE! He picked up the bed and threw it up against the wall. He knocked over candles and screamed again into the stone walls of the basement of the Old House.

Evangeline kept her cool. She knew what she had done was the right thing for her and even more it was the right thing for India.

Justin, his dagger teeth now exposed lunged at Evangeline, he felt her now an enemy but then she lept in the air. The break and force of gravity extinguished the last of the candles in the room leaving them in patch black darkness.

Evangeline began to glow, a bright white light that blinded Justin.

He fell to the floor covering his eyes. Evangeline knew it was all too good to be true. No vampire could ever purely love a witch. There would always be secrets. There would always be betrayals and lies. In fact the two didn't even know each other's real names. 

The powerful witch Evangeline, Claudia Bouchard as she was named by the nuns that raised her, lifted her hand up and was about to destroy her captor when suddenly Bathlem appeared in the center of the room and blocked her coven daughter in her tracks.

"ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!" Bathlem screamed, her voice echoing like banshee in the sky.

"He must be destroyed Mother Batlem. He must be destroyed." Evangeline said. 

"Foolish child! You have allowed your past to constantly block you from the truths of what you really are. And now you go as far as taking the life of this mongrel vampire ... for what? For who? Listen to Mother and listen to me well, child, he may be the key to a future. Kill him and all will be lost for you. A thousand curses will fall upon you. When a vampire kills a witch he too dies burning fiery death, but when a witch kills a vampire her coven abandons her and her life is cursed for ever." Bathlem warned. 

Evangeline listend to the woman she admired and loved. She lowered her arm and Bathelm, still dressed in her nun's habit clap her hand loudly. The clap echoed again in the chamber below the old house and all the candles became flaming flickers again

Justin started to wake from a confused state and in her head she heard Bathelm's voice. 

"Never speak India's name again----love him. Love him to the end of time. Our coven's future needs you to."

"What.....what happened?" Justin said standing up. The powerful Bathlem erasing his memory just seconds before. 

Evangeline looked around the room. It was still tussled and torn  up from Justin's outburst.  She waved her hands and all the turned over tables and bed jumped back into their places and she helped him  up.

"Don't worry about it." She said softly. 

As he stood up he had no memory of what Evangeline had said of sending India away. They were face to face now. And the fire in both of their hearts burned bright again. There would be secrets. There would be lies. There would be imperfections. But this love, this true bright beautiful and uncomfortable love between a witch and a vampire needed to endure. It needed to happen. 

They kissed. 

"I need to go back tomorrow to the mansion. To Collinwood." She said to him after their lips parted and letting him know that her place was at the side of Caleb Collins.  

"Tomorrow." He whispered. 

He laid her down on the bed. She smirked as they were face to face. Eye to eye. They kissed again. Deeper and more passionate. And as the candles flickered off one by one, they removed each other's clothes and felt their naked bodies suddenly becoming like one. Skin to Skin. 

They made love that night. Passionate first love. 

Series 13/Chapter 6: A TALE OF FIRE & PASSION

Noelle finds Evangeline with Justin in the Basement 

The night of Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard's birthday was not over. A mix of wild wind and concern still filled the air around the compound of Collinwood. The main mansion had fallen silent for now, but the ruffle of chaos still filled the halls of The Old House where Noelle had just burst through the door in search of the vampire Justin Patterson whom she suspected of having been responsible for the disappearance of Evangeline, Caleb Collins' governess.

As the door of Barnabas' beloved home swung open Noelle could see a dim light coming from underneath a door at the end of a dark back hallway just beyond the freshly painted foyer. This door led down to the basement of the Old House where Justin lived.

"What have you done?" Noelle whispered to herself as she flung her coat around the staircase banister. 

She quickly made her way though the hall and carefully turned the door knob that lead to stone stairwell into the basement where she would slowly make her way down. Her nerves were on edge. What would she find when she finally entered the bowls of the Old House? What would Justin, his dark spirit fully on display be doing to this innocent governess.

Innocent to Noelle, who had no idea Evangeline was herself a powerful witch in disguise. 

As Noelle carefully made her way into the basement she could smell the aroma of rosewater and candle wax. She could feel the warmth of the room that was usually damp and cold and had so much history of darkness but in this instant felt comforting and welcoming. 

At the bottom of the stone stairwell she could see into the whole room. There, laying on a beautiful bed was Evangeline, completely unconscious and Justin was far in the corner hidden by shadows from the archway of the entrance. 

"What have you done?" Noelle asked as she cautiously entered the main room. 

She did not look at Justin only in the direction of the beautiful sleeping woman. 

"I sense her. I sense her whole soul. She's....she reminds me of India." Justin said from his shadowy corner.

"What are you talking about? This isn't India! This is Caleb Collins' governess Justin! What have you done to her?" Noelle asked now facing him.

"You won't understand even if I explained it you. She and I met, she and I have a connection and I can't figure out what it is. But I want to. I think I want to know her more." Justin replied.

Noelle stepped closer to Evangeline who's body was still. Motionless. She could tell that the woman was not dead. Her face and skin still had color of a living person and her breath raised her chest slowly ...but there was breath; proof of life. 

"Are you going to kill her?" Noelle asked in a slow and cautious tone.

"I wouldn't do that. Not to her. Not to someone who has India's energy." Justin said suddenly. 

"India’s energy??? What are you talking about? Listen to yourself Justin! You have to gain control of yourself. You’ve become obsessed!" Noelle replied. 

"Had you kept your word I would have been done with you by now... you’re a disgrace to your coven." Justin snarled. "Nevertheless I can feel India’s life force Noelle. She must have somehow connected with India when she arrived here. This woman .... She's like me. She's ..." He paused.

"Justin stop it. STOP IT! She is not like you. She is nothing like you. She's just a nanny. Do you know what you've done? Caleb saw you or...or ...or he thinks he did. He saw what happened to Evangeline and now the family is suspicious. You have to get this woman back to the house unharmed. We have to do this now." Noelle exclaimed.

From the shadowy corner Justin was sitting in, Noelle couldn't see his reaction to her demands. She could feel him staring however, a deep cold stare that felt like she was standing in the middle of a glacier. 

He stood up and made his way out of the dark corner or the basement and into the light of the room. His eyes glistened as if he had been crying. Noelle looked over at him and could feel that something in him was sad but the sadness was masked by a deep rage that he felt towards her. For she was the woman who promised him India --- and she failed. She woke him from his grave in 1966 when he was hiding in Barnabas' coffin and promised him India. 

She never delivered. A betrayal. 

"You would deny my happiness again? She isn't just a nanny. This woman is a sorceress. She showed me herself. She showed me that side of her and I could feel energy within her heart that tells me she had contact with India. And now...you're trying again to take that away from me." Justin said as she stood closer to Noelle that she felt comfortable with. "'Just take her back', you say, 'she's not what you think', you keep telling me. This is just another one of your tricks to get what you want out of me without delivering what I need to stay alive. Well I'm not doing it this time Noelle, I believe this woman and I are destined to be together. I'm beginning to see that perhaps she was the one that I was meant to be with." 

Noelle began to fear Justin was losing his mind. Perhaps all the years locked away in secret since she found him were getting to him. Perhaps all these  years feeding him the idea that she would use the weakening magical powers that she too held inside to bring him India were now starting to catch up to her and all of this madness and fear were climbing to a new height of his brain and destroying any kind of reality she could muster for him. 

Perhaps the world she built for him in hopes of using his strength and eternal life when the time was right to get back at the Collins family for their involvement in her brothers mysterious death was now falling apart. And now, Evangeline was a new victim in this web of treachery. 

"Justin listen to me...ok, just listen: we have an opportunity right now to set things right. I am very close to finally getting to the truth of what happen to Beau. I've been waiting for years to start this and now, now the time is right. I have to do this the right way. The safest way. Nothing can come between the truth and myself. I'm doing this for Cameron. I'm doing this so that I can finally have peace and....so that Beau can have peace. But this..." Noelle said pointing to the sleeping Evangeline "this could destroy everything. All my work. All the time that I have been working in that house for that family. Do you understand?" 

Justin thought for a second and realized that now he was in a way the one in control. He could finally see that everything Noelle was plotting was contingent on what he could do for her and that was a powerful spot to be in. If he wasn't in on what she was going to do, then, perhaps she could not do it. It was now time for Noelle to bring in some of her promises and stop using him. 

"I don't trust you anymore Noelle. You promised me too much and have brought me nothing. But I’m not an unreasonable man.  I'll give you two days to come up with a new idea that will be advantageous for the both of us. For you, you'll get to the truth of how and who killed your brother. And for me, I get the person I've been waiting for for so many years. India.....or Evangeline." Justin said posing the new proposition.

Noelle didn't know what to say. She only could hope that he would return Evangeline unharmed. She took a second looked at the sleeping witch and turned back to Justin. 

"Fine....in two days I'll come up with something that will serve us both and in the end you'll get what you want and I will too but this girl must be unharmed. " 

Justin smiled and looked down at Evangeline. He knew that now India was gone, he knew now that there would be no way of bringing her back. 

 

 Evangeline was now the focus of his affections. And She was lovely. She was beautiful and he knew in his body and soul that she was like him. Different. Special. Supernatural. 

"Take her back." Noelle said again in a quiet tone.

But just as she spoke, she heard the footsteps on the ceiling coming from upstairs. Someone was home.

Startled, Noelle put her finger up to her lips to hush Justin and rushed up the stone steps and back into the main chamber of the Old House where she found her nephew Cameron Frame and his boyfriend Lucas Grainger hanging their coats up in the side closet near the front door.

Cameron had left two days before after a contentious argument with his aunt Noelle about all the things she was keeping from him. His return home was a surprise. 

"Honey! It's so good to see you. I've been worried about you." Noelle said walking up to her nephew hoping he'd accept her with open arms. "Lucas, its good to see you." she added after receiving a cold reception from Cameron.

"You too, Noelle." Lucas replied.

"I just came home to pick up a few things. I'm going to be staying with Lucas for awhile." Cameron replied.

"Can we talk? Please." Noelle said softly hoping for a chance at redemption for all her secret keeping.

"Talk. Whatever you have to say you can say it in front of Lucas. He knows everything." Cameron said bluntly surprising Noelle. 

"It's ok I can go into another room if you need me to." Lucas said, hoping for some time alone to snoop around the old house.

"No, if she has something to say she can say it. What is it?" Cameron said, his hurt burning in his words.

"Cam, I wish you'd allow me to at least explain things further to you. I wish you'd allow me to show you why I did what I did and why I kept everything from you for so long. There was a reason, there's always been a reason and I can't tell you how sorry I am for it all. I really am. But my whole motive was to finally get to the point where I could finally figure out what happen to your dad. The truth." Noelle explained taking advantage of the opportunity.

"You should have been honest with me years ago. Years ago! I could have helped you figure out the truth and now we're in this mess because I don't know what to believe or what to trust. You've always been my only family Aunt Noelle, you've been the person I looked to the most; the person who I could trust the most and now...." Cameron began before being interrupted 

"And now?" 

"And now I don't know. I want to trust you. I want to believe you. But how can I?" He answered.

"Can I say something?" Lucas added. Noelle and Cameron both looked at him giving him the green light to speak. "Maybe now is the best time to align as one to fianlly get to the bottom of everything. You’re both stronger together than apart and now that the truth is fianlly out in the open you can join and finally, once and for all, put this horrible side of your family’s history go rest . I think that starting fresh with the truth was the best thing that could have happened." 

Cameron was confused. He knew that Lucas was on his side but at the same time he didn't feel like Noelle deserved to be left off the hook so quickly. 

"I think that would be great too." Noelle said. 

"Well of Course you do. That would be just so easy for you to take things and make them all good again when we both know that you literally had me live next door to my maternal family all this time ...you kept me secret from them. Don’t they deserve to know me? Half of who I am is in that other house over there and all my life I didn't even know. It’s selfish. It’s...beyond selfish actually. I mean my god, my grandmother is YOUR boss!!" Cameron pointed out. 

Noelle took his berating like a woman at a firing squad she knew she deserved it but she also knew her motives for keeping the secrets to his maternal connection to the Collins family were warranted.

"So what does that mean kid?" Lucas asked Cameron. "Does that mean you just want to throw in the towel with the woman who raised you because she felt  the woman who gave you up didn't deserve to know you yet?" 

Again, Cameron wasn't sure why his boyfriend was taking Noelle side so quickly. It was a strange reaction. A reaction he didn't expect. And in reality a bit off putting. But Lucas had his own ulterior  motives for trying to get Cameron and Noelle back in line---if they were close again, that would mean Lucas could get closer to the real Collins family, and hopefully begin whatever paranormal investigations he had always wanted to. He was only steps away from the mansion. Noelle and Cameron reconciling was the key to his scientific glory. 

"What would it take for you to understand my side of it?" Noelle wondered. 

"I don't know. I guess proof. Some kind of proof that the Collins family are as dangerous as you keep trying to convince me. So aperently dangerous that you kept me s secret." Cameron said with a sarcastic tone. 

"Yes! Proof, I want that too. And I think I can do that for you with your help. See, all these years that I've been working with Mrs Stoddard I've tried to find that proof and show it to you so that when I finally did tell you who your mother was you would understand why I kept the secret. Because I truly believe they had something to do with your dad's death in 1966. But I never had enough time while I was working to do the right kind of searching in the house but....but now you do know and maybe you can help me. Maybe you can do the searching while I tend to Mrs. Stoddard." Noelle said to Lucas' happy grin. 

Lucas felt like he was getting closer to his prey. He could feel it. 

Noelle grabbed her nephew's hand "Honey, I did this all wrong. I should have been honest with you from the start but I can't change that now. I want to, but I can't. But I hope we can move forward now together as a team and get to the bottom of everything. Now that you know  I feel like we can do this. We can finally find the truth of how the Collins family killed Beau and hid it from all of us. As a team." 

"A team of three." Lucas interjected. 

Cameron felt like he was being gained up on. Noelle only wanted to find the truth to everything that revolved around Beau's death and Lucas wanted something too. Cameron could tell there was something he wanted but was unsure of what exactly.  It was odd seeing his boyfriend being so upfront and on his aunt's side. 

Lucas could taste Collinwood. He saw the mansion on his way up to the Old House and it was like a dream. All his studies. All his investigations and readings on the family history and he was literally one door step away. Cameron only had to agree to finally be  involved and help Noelle. 

"A team of three." Noelle repeated in a cautious whisper.

Cameron wasn't sure what to do. Did he really want to do this? Was this really the way he wanted to get to know his mother's family, by infiltrating their home and pretending to being Noelle's nephew and NOT Carolyn's son? It was just lie upon lie upon lie and now he was on the verge of agreeing to help in the scam. 

At what cost? 

The truth? The truth that his mother Carolyn’s family was somehow directly responsible for his father's death...that this strange and long winded excuse  of Noelle’s was real and not some bizarre and random conspiracy theory of a woman he loved slowly going mad?  

Was Cameron willing to find that out and not only have the reality that his mother's family killed his father in cold blood?

"Well?" Lucas said nudging his boyfriend Cameron into a decision.

"Fine. Fine! I'll help. But I'm only giving it one week and if we don't find anything that's it. Its over. And you'll have to quit." Cameron demanded.

"Quit?" Noelle asked.

"Quit. Yes. You'll resign as Mrs Stoddard's caretaker and we'll leave this place forever. That's my part of the bargain. No more lying to anyone." 

Noelle thought about it for a second but she knew that now that she had more help, she would definitely find the truth and  when she did the Collins family would be held accountable for all their sins, all of that would come to pass before she'd ever be forced to resign.

"Deal." Noelle said with a gleam in her eye while still holding Cameron's hands. She pulled him close and hugged him tight. Her love. The boy she raised. The boy she adored. They were finally going to solve the mystery of Beau's death together like they should have always done. As a family.

And Lucas, hungry for fame and fortune by discovering that the dead were among us; that the vail between the world of the living and those that had gone before us was a reality and that the Collins family were some how conduits to it all would finally get what he wanted all along: Riches. Fame. Notoriety. 

Lucas would use his boyfriend's connection to the Collins family for his own greedy advantage.

As Lucas and Cameron went upstairs to gather some of his things, Noelle took a second to think about her new alliance now that she was left to alone. It was her best bet to finally, once and for all, getting the truth she had been waiting to discover all these years about Beau's demise. To her, Justin's decaying mental state and his kidnapping of Evangeline was now a liability. 

Her promise to him was empty. Fake. He had to be destroyed before it was too late. 

****

David & Carolyn in the drawing room 

As the fog rolled over the land that comprised the cliff-side of Widow’s Hill, Carolyn walked into the drawing room where David was going over Cannery paperwork. She looked at him and grinned. She was proud of him. He was last of their direct family that worked at the family business. The burden of the entire Collins enterprise was on his shoulders as she lived in London. She could sense his deep obligation to the job. She also felt guilty for leaving him all these years. 

David never complained. 

"You know, your father would be very proud of you." Carolyn said.

David looked up at his older cousin and grinned. 

"Would he? I tend to think he’d just go off on tangents and tell me how much more I could do, you know? How much more I should do. Nothing was ever good enough." David said. 

"David he loved you." Carolyn replied. 

David took a deep breath and stacked the papers on the desk and placed them inside a file. He smiled and turned to his cousin who he felt was avoiding the subject of Evangeline. 

"Go, on …you can tell me. I know you want to." David said.

"What do you mean? Tell you what?" Carolyn wondered.

"Deep inside you want to say 'I told you so'. You knew coming back here something crazy would happen. So...go on. Don't be shy." David joked

"Listen, I can feel a certain way about being here. That's true, but....I think Evangeline leaving is not connected to anything ...well..." She paused, "anything like before. At least that's what I'm going to believe. I don't want to entertain any other idea." Carolyn said, her mind shifting between her impulse of fight or flight. The fear engrained her in deep dark paranoia was many times exhausting. 

But there was also her uneasy feeling about David's wife Kimberly and her skittish nature. Especially the cryptic nature of the phone call she overheard the night of the birthday party. 

"I can tell you’re uncomfortable, so go in lay it on me. We’re going to find her. Ok? We are." David pressed..

"Oh god, FINE!" Carolyn relented. "I am worried and I don’t want to know what any of this could mean. I mean, the girl probably had had enough of everything in this drafty house and abandoned her job. She not  the first governess to do it." Carolyn said.

"Vicky was the first." David said in a low voice remembering his own governess' trials and tribulations at Collinwood. 

Carolyn scoffed. 

"And my mother.... she’s been going on and on about ...HIM." Carolyn mentioned. "Do you think? You don’t think..."

"I don’t even want to fathom that. Barnabas ..." David began before Carolyn interrupted.

"I don’t want to hear his name. Don’t say his name!" 

"Carolyn listen to me. Evangeline is going to be found, she’s going to be fine and everything will get back to normal. Everything has been normal here-- whatever normal is. Aunt Elizabeth has a way of retreating to what she feels is the old ways. I promise. We’re safe." David said confidently. So confident even he believed it.

"She does go on and on about the old days in her letters." Carolyn digressed.

"See." David said with a smile.

Carolyn smiled back and took a deep breath. She patted David on the shoulder and teased him about his penmanship on the paperwork. 

The two were falling back into old routines of friendly and silly teasing. So much so they didn’t even notice the eyes in a large painting above them, a painting of Joshua Collins, were real. 

As the two cousins talked the eyes shifted back to their painted versions. Just behind Joshua’s cold pale painted face with its removable eyes stood Elizabeth. 

Her face stone cold. They didn’t believe her. While she secretly spied on her favorite nephew and daughter she could tell that they didn’t believe her when she told them something wicked was afoot and that that was the reason for Evangeline’s suddenly and ghostly vanishing. 

Little did Elizabeth know, Justin was the true culprit. 

Elizabeth adjusted the black shawl around her shoulders that perfectly framed her porcelain face adorned with pearl droplet earrings on her ears and lifted a brow in disgust.

She’d show them. She’d show them she wasn’t crazy. 

****

Bathlem at the Old House

Back in the depths of the Old House, Evangeline was left powerless by the strength of the Justin's hold over her. He knew this was the only way he could control her and see deep into her soul. This is how he could feel the subtle link that lay within Evangeline's body to India's life-force left behind when India was inside Evangeline before the witch sent her back to her own time line. It was a like a plume of smoke floating about a chimney so potent of life he could smell it.

It was an alluring feeling, an alluring pull. He was attracted and Evangeline was burning into his soul. She was now all he could think about and all that he wanted in the entire world. 

Justin sat back in the corner of the basement of the Old House. His heart was pounding with the voice of Noelle telling him to return Evangeline, unharmed, to the Mansion on Widow's Hill. 

But He couldn't. Not yet. 

As Evangeline lay there, her mind was in another place. Locked away in a dream like state. Trapped like a bear in a trap, unyielding and filled with powers that were not working. 

She could hear what was happening around her. But she could not speak. She could sense what was going on and how locked in place she was--it was as if she were in a vegetative coma like state. Frozen. Her powers paralyzed by Justin's overwhelming strength over her. 

In the fog of the of her subconscious Evangeline was not alone. There, standing in the world of her mind was Bathlem, the powerful witch and mentor of her past from decades ago who posed as Mother Superior Magdalena Patrice. The woman who raised Evangeline as the orphan Claudia, the woman who also knew Angelique Bouchard centiries ago on the island of Martinique. 

"This is not how I raised you Evangeline Claudia." Bathlem's voice rang out. "This, weak despicable woman lying here worthless....this is not you. This is not the daughter of Angelique I raised." 

"Mother Bathlem?" Evangeline asked, searching the darkness for the face to the voice in the misty void in her mind. 

And suddenly, out of a mist like cloud the mystical nun appeared.  

"This is not how you were taught. Fight for yourself and for your legacy. The coven holds you on high and wishes to grant you all the powers of the universe to free yourself of this binding. But if you do not fight we cannot grant you such powers. Its incumbent on you my child. Prove yourself to your coven...prove it to yourself." 

"What do I do? His control is so strong over me!" Evangeline answered.

"It is only strong because you are allowing it to be. Nothing is more powerful than the strength we have bestowed on you, the powers of all your ancestors and of your mother flow through your Veins Evangeline Claudia. Open your eyes. Open them and see your future in front of you and take hold of it by the throat ..... now!" Bathem commanded.

Bathlem was in her own way a power immortal witch queen who lived her lived hidden away in the same convent in Bangor. She had never died. She lived. Lived to keep this child, this golden-daughter of the coven safe and powerful. 

To Bathlem, Evangeline was the future of all witches, yet still a novice in her eyes.

Evangeline, was unsure of what to do. She couldn't understand what she needed to do to thwart Justin's hold over her. She attempted to open her eyes but she couldn't. She couldn't move. Not even a finger. Not even a toe. 

How could she wake? How could she break this binding control this vampire had over her. This vampire who called himself Leopold. He stared at her. Obsessed. Infatuated. In love. 

"I....I can't. I can't do it. He's too strong." Evangeline said again in her mind to Bathlem. 

Suddenly, like a storm raging over mountains and sea, like a volcano irrupting in a wave of fire and smoke Bathlem screamed. Her rage echoed a roar inside of Evangeline's ears that actually shook the stone walls of the basement. 

"I COMMAND YOU TO WAKE!!!! WAKE!!!" Bathlem screamed. 

Justin, locked in a gaze at the sleeping witch felt the electricity in his body and the power suddenly fill his blood too.

And as the witch Bathlem's voice continued echoed in her mind, Evangeline gasped for breath in the bowls of the Old House like drowned person coming  back to life. She opened her eyes, breathing hard, her chest lifting up and down with every drink of air and then....she came face to face with the man holding her captive. 

Justin stood up and quickly took his place in front of Evangeline who was also already on her feet. He smirked at her. He could feel her strength. It was alluring to him. 

Her eyes were seething with anger. She was fuming. All she wanted to do was kill this man in front of her for what he had done, taking her from Caleb, locking her mind and trapping her in the Old House where no one would find her. As she lifted her hands, ready to snap the vampire into the dustpan with all the others that she had to kill over the years to keep her survival but she noticed that something was stopping her. It was as if a wall was in front of her and she could not see through it. 

It was something she had never felt. She could not bring herself to destroy him as she knew she could, with just a flick of her wrist, she could kill him. But....something was holding her back. 

Something that linked them. Something connected them and brought them together.
It was something in their blood. Something in their hearts. 

She couldn't do it. She couldn't kill him. 

In a breathy voice she asked: "What do you want from me?" 

"I.... I don't know. I am drawn to you. From the moment we met I felt that you were like me. You and I are of the same cloth. Of the same .....everything." Justin said as he stepped closer and closer. "Can't you see it?" He added reaching for her. 

"DON'T YOU DARE come any closer." Evangeline said, her voice screeching him to a halt.

"I don't want to hurt you. I don't. I just...I need to understand what I am and something tells me you can help me. I've been waiting to find someone for so long that understands what I am. And...I can feel that you're it. Tell me, am I wrong?" Justin asked, his heart beating so hard he could hear it in his ears.

This was love that came to him, that transferred from India to Evangeline. It was otherworldly. He could not understand it and could not make sense of it. And in a way this is what made him give Evangeline a fake name, the name of Leopold. Although he could tell he was falling for her and that she could be what he was looking for to save him from himself, he still lived in fear. 

She would only know him by this name. Until he could feel safe. Until he knew she would not kill him. He still needed to keep his real self hidden. Justin Patterson should have been an old man in 1990, and he was young and handsome frozen in his 1966 face. His truth was always a world of lies, even to a woman he had so suddenly fallen in love with.

Their destinies were interlinked and this was a truth neither of them could deny. 

In reality only Evangeline could understand this and there was no point to hide who he was. There was no point to pretend and live through a veil of mis-truths and lies. But it was almost like he had no choice. 

He walked up to her, the same witch that almost killed him, the same witch he kidnapped and trapped. She, in turn, stared him deep in the eyes. She was unafraid. She was unflinching. He walked over to her and saw her aura that was glowing like a raging fire. 

They were connected. Neither of them could or would deny this.

He stood in front of her. A man to a woman.

A vampire to a witch. 

Their pulses racing.

The blood overflowing with this mysterious and raging hate and passion and love and lust. Like a volcano spewing lava from the depths of the core of the earth, hot magma pouring over onto them both.

He reached over, pulled her close and kissed her on the lips. It was like an explosion so fierce neither of them knew what was happening. 

It happened so fast. Their connection. Their immense powerful meant to be connection.

The she slapped him across the face. He turned back to her and she reached for him and kissed him again.

More magma. More fire. More passion. 

Fire from a witch and vampire. None of it supernatural. All of it natural and carnal. 

****

Kimberly secretly meets with Victor on the foggy docs 

Late that night. Kimberly snuck out of the mansion and drove down to the docks. The fog covered every inch of her. She could feel the mist all over her skin. Wet and sticky. 

She caressed the stomach, full and round with the baby inside and waited as the car coming down in the distance finally made it to the docks to meet her.

It was the baby's father: Victor Reed.

He got out of this car but left the headlights on glowing over the sea below the wooden dock. The water reflected back up at them like flashes of lights from a light house or glass.

Victor smiled at  her and kissed on the lips. He could taste the salty moist air from the sea on them. She smirked and kissed him again.

"Chancellor Devlin is happy you're finally on board with the plan." Victor said as the water splashed wildly up against the docks. 

"I promised that I would complete the task and ....and Im going to do this. For our child. For the future." Kimberly said as the lighthouse from the harbor swung it's glass shine across her beautiful blue eyes.

"And have you decided on the fate of your first son?" Victor asked, his cold question searing Kimberly's heart. 

She wasn't sure how to answer. The Chancellor of The Organization of the True Hearted wanted every last Collins dead---this meant Caleb, Kimberly's son with David too. She didn't want to kill the boy. The other family members, would be easy, but the boy, her own flesh and blood she wasn't sure. She didn't know what to do. How could she kill her own?

But the brain-washing was more powerful that her own mind. Kimberly took a deep breath of sea air and nodded her head in agreement. 

"Very good. Very good." Victor coldly said as he kissed the mother of his unborn child. 

He then reached down and pulled up a briefcase from the ground and placed it on the hood of his car. He snapped the locks opened to reveal 6 vials of serum encased in foam. He then reached for Kimberly's hand and pulled her close.

"These are for you. Devlin sent these to me to use on David, Carolyn, Caleb and Elizabeth. And if any other Collins shows their vial, monstrous, devil faces at the grounds of that mansion you are to inject them with this serum as well. This will be their undoing. Do you understand the job?" Victor asked.

Kimberly, who was studying for her own medical license, knew her way around a syringe. 

"I understand." Kimberly said as she grabbed the briefcase, closed it and kissed Victor one last time.

She knew her job. She was ready to complete it. 

No Collins was safe.  

Series 13/Chapter 5: OCTOGENARIAN

Carolyn looking at her mother's portrait 

On a cool autumn late afternoon the wind off the Atlantic sea filled the trees that surrounded the great house on Widow's Hill. The first floor windows were all a glow with subtle burning yellow lights as a black sedan with blacked out windows slowly made it's way up the pebbled drive way that ended in a half circle around a bubbling fountain outside the mansion's front door.

A chauffeur dressed in all black jumped out of the front seat and rushed to the car's rear door removed his cap just before opened it. A dainty and perfect leg slowly swung out as the anchor for the tiny body of Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne fresh from the Bangor Airport off her flight from her home in London.

She was alone, her husband Jack remained at home with their 9 month old daughter Alexandra.

Carolyn sighed as she looked up at the mansion's turret that reflected in her blacked sunglasses. The tower was the center piece of the mansion, the welcoming crown jewel that sat just over the front entrance. Carolyn  removed her dark sun glasses and revealed her ice blue eyes that filled with emotion over her return. She was home. Against all her better judgement she was home. 

But today was her mother Elizabeth's 80th birthday. She had to be here.

As the chauffeur grabbed hold of Carolyn's luggage she  quickly ushered him into the house, which she still had a key to. This was her home after all, a place where she lived most of her life. A place that help not only a family history but a legacy of secrets, terrors and horrors that filled her mind just as she pushed the door open and walked over the threshold and into the foyer with its familiar stonework walls, centuries old tapestries and iconic ebony statues with their freshly dusted marble stands.

It smelled the same. She hadn't been in the mansion in years. Since the 1980s. Since her marriage. Since the birth of her daughter, her second child. It was the smell of her family. Of coffee, and roses, and soot from the giant fireplace in the drawing room.

Carolyn, her bags now tucked away in a corner near the staircase, stood in the drawing room staring up at the painting of her mother that had been placed there by David just to please Carolyn. It was gorgeous. It was a painted Elizabeth in her prime. 

"It's not a Sam Evans." Carolyn joked to herself remembering Collinsport's most famous local artist. 

"But it'll do, won't it?" David said doorway of the drawing room.

"David!!!" Carolyn said, her face lighting up at the sight of her grown up cousin, now a handsome strong man.

They hugged, a hug so tight that she could feel his heartbeat. She missed him. A lot.

"So tell me, how are things? Is mother ready for her party?" Carolyn asked as the much taller David released her from his grasp. 

"Well, you know how Aunt Elizabeth is, really, she's not too keen on celebrating anything but I've made sure she understands just how important her 80th birthday is. Most of our family didn't get to see this age. That's a big deal!" David explained.

"Most of our family....huh....most of our family reached 80 and beyond. And Beyond. And Beyond. And Beyond!" Carolyn joked referring to ever lasting life of some of their family members. 

"We don't need to mention that when we go up there to see your mom in her bedroom. Or at the party. Especially around Mrs. Johnson. You know how she gets.” David warred to Carolyn's bad-girl smirk.

“Oh!!! Mrs. Johnson??“ Carolyn said in hearty laugh. “She’s coming?” She asked  genuinely happy to hear the name of the family’s long time and retired housekeeper.

“She is. Kim had a chauffeur pick her up at the train-station. So.... Ready to go up & see your mom?" Asked David, reaching for her hand to take her up to see Elizabeth.

"As I'll ever be." 

The two cousins who had been through a world of nightmares throughout their lives walked hand in hand through the foyer. Carolyn looked to her right and saw that Barnabas' painting was still placed in the corner by the front door. She took a gulp of air and looked away, as if it pained her to even give it a long glance. David walked her up the stairs and through the long hall. At first Carolyn paused and tried to pull him in a different direction, down another hall way that led to where she remembered Elizabeth's room was.

"No she's over here now." David corrected her.

Carolyn was surprised. Elizabeth's current bed room was down a private hallway that lead to an atrium, a private sitting room that opened up into a large room that in Carolyn's time used to be the home's chapel. 

Just before they entered the chapel, or Elizabeth's room, Carolyn whispered "You put her in the chapel?"

David whispered back an explanation:  "She insisted on the change of rooms years ago. She likes it better in here. We don't use it as a chapel anymore. She said she felt safer in here." 

As David opened the door to Elizabeth's room, Carolyn peeked in from around his broad shoulders. The room was dimly lit, almost purely by candles. It still had many of the Gothic style religious paintings that adorned the walls. It had been designed as a family Chapel centuries ago, a place for the family to go to to find solace, prayer and meditation. Throughout the chaos of their lives, however, it was seldom used with the exception for many visits by Abigail Collins in the 1800s.

As they walked in, Elizabeth was sitting up in bed reading a book. Her eyes slowly turned upwards and saw her beautiful daughter standing before her. The family matriarch slowly turned her head and squinted her eyes as if she did not believe what she was seeing. The child she loved more than anything in the world, a child that was now grown and beautiful and a mother (again) herself had returned to see her.

"What is this?" Elizabeth said softly as she dropped the book down on her lap.

"You're still in bed? Now that's not the mother I knew!" Carolyn said with a sweet grin as she walked over and gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. "How are you mother?"

"What is this?" Elizabeth asked again. Staring deep into Carolyn's eyes.

"Its....a surprise Aunt Elizabeth. Carolyn's come home. She's here to celebrate your birthday with us." David explained.

"...surprise...Carolyn? Carolyn!! OH CAROLYN!" Elizabeth's mind quickly caught up to who was in front of her and reach out and held on to her daughter tightly as if she didn't want to let her go. Like a child who's was presented with their favorite toy. She wanted to never part from Carolyn again. The warmth in her heart spread to all over her body. This was a surprise indeed.

"Are you happy to see me mother?"

"Yes, I am darling so happy. Oh, I've been waiting for you to come home for so long. I have so much to tell you, so much to explain to you, and so much I need for you to hear. Oh Carolyn....I'm so happy to see your face again." Elizabeth said with tears in her eyes.

"Well we'll have plenty of time to catch up." Carolyn replied

"No, I have to tell you something right now. It's as if you knew exactly when to come and see me. See?" Elizabeth said as she reopened the book that she had in her lap.

It wasn't just any book. It was a journal. A journal Elizabeth had been keeping for years. She was carefully reading it over as David and Carolyn entered to see her. 

"I've been writing these. They're my dreams. I've been chronicling my dreams Carolyn, and I need you to read them. Something...something is happening. Look, they're all connected. I've written these out and the scenes in my dreams seem to be coming true....look....read them Carolyn, read them!" Elizabeth said to Carolyn's disappointment. 

"Mother, now, I didn't come home so that you could start with all this again. You know how it bothers me so. It's your birthday, can't we go down into the screen room and enjoy some tea and just have a lovely evening?" Carolyn said, already dreading what nightmares were written in that book.

"Aunt Liz, you never mentioned any dreams you were having." David said.

"I have them here. In this book. Carolyn please read it. You must protect us. I feel ....I feel that icy cold feeling, you know what I mean. Don't you? You remember that feeling. You used to feel it too. You did. You would always tell me it was like the sea, the ice cold breath of the sea. Well, I feel it now. And I've written about it in these pages. Death. It's death Carolyn!" Elizabeth said holding on to Carolyn's hand tightly. 

Carolyn was getting upset. She didn't want to come home and see her mother in this state. A state of fright, terrorized by her own mind and dreams that she could not control. This was exactly the type of situation Carolyn wanted to avoid and was safe from when she was in London. The family curse of madness and darkness. It was clearly still alive and well within the walls of Collinwood. 

Carolyn, sitting on Elizabeth's bed took the book and looked over at David as if to show him she needed help. 

"Alright, Aunt Liz, we'll read over the book and see what we can do about it ok? I'll call in Noelle so that she can get you ready for your evening walk before your birthday dinner." David said.

"Yes. Noelle. Yes. Ok. But please read it." Liz said in a voice that seemed to be fading.

Carolyn and David walked over together to the bedroom door. She grabbed his arm and pulled him around so that they were facing each other.

"Who is Noelle?" Carolyn demanded to know.

"Noelle...." David repeated in a tone of voice sounding like he couldn’t believe she didn’t remember. He then saw Carolyn's eyes filling with panic over the name that meant much more to her than she was leading on. "You remember her don't you? She's Beau's sister." 

Carolyn of course remembered Noelle, and especially Beau. Noelle and Carolyn went to school together. In 1966, Carolyn dated Beau and even became pregnant with his son, which she gave up for adoption in Europe, the same child that Noelle secretly adopted and raised, the same child who lived and grew up at the Old house for years.

"Why did you hire her? Why wasn't I told about that?" Carolyn said angrily.

David didn't know what to tell her. The truth of why he decided to hire Noelle when she came in for an interview years ago for the Caretaker job was not going to come out of his lips.

On the day, in 1985 Noelle came in to interview for the job, she introduced herself, she even mentioned that she and her brother, whom she stated had gone missing years before, were friends with Carolyn. David knew who Beau was. He remembered Beau. He remembered that Beau, investigating the disappearance of Arabella Stoddard in 1966 snuck into the mansion late one night and David, then 10, found him. Shot him. Killed Him. Beau was dead. David knew it. Noelle suspected it.

David's private guilt for murdering Noelle's brother in cold blood when he was just 10 and his father Roger hiding the body somewhere, within the catacombs of Collinwood, ate at him over his lifetime and hiring Noelle seemed like the only way he could make up for it. At least, secretly.

"I just....she needed work. She's very good with your mother. I promise you if I thought anything bad would happen in Noelle's care I wouldn't ever have hired her." David assured.

"You're lying." His cousin muttered. "I can tell when you're lying. I can always tell. What happened? Why is she here?"

David was clearly hiding something. Carolyn felt it in her bones. He began to sweat and squirm in front of her as if the heat of 10,000 suns were baking his skin.

"I....I just...." he began before Noelle walked into the atrium that attached to Elizabeth's bedroom.

The three suddenly all met eyes. Uncomfortable silence followed, but Carolyn was quick to quell the cold feelings.

"Noelle! Honey, it's so good to see you again. David was just explaining to me how wonderful you have been to my mother over the years. How can I ever thank you?" Carolyn said awkwardly.

Noelle smirked, the woman that gave up her nephew at birth was home. She could see Cameron's eyes in his mother's. There was a strange resemblance that she stupidly had not expected. But there it was. Her beloved nephew's eyes looking out from his birth mother's face.

"Welcome home Carolyn." Noelle said coldly. "Im going to get Mrs. Stoddard ready for our walk, is that ok?"

"Of course. Of course." David said allowing Noelle to enter the bedroom.

As the door closed, Carolyn was clearly frustrated with the choices David had made while she was away from Collinsport, but now it was out of her hands. She pulled the book from David's hand, the journal of Elizabeth's dreams. She huffed in annoyance with her cousin whom she could tell was hiding something and rolled her eyes at him. She opened the black leather bound book of dreams and skimmed through the pages. One page, dated the night before struck out to Carolyn. Over and over, in repetitive writing, in the same style of writing, line after line after line for two whole pages read:

DEAD VIC. DEAD VIC. DEAD VIC. DEAD VIC.

Carolyn paused. It was strange. She turned it around and show David.

"VIC?" David read. "Vicky?" He added in a hushed and worried voice.

Carolyn took one more look at the open book. She then quickly shut the it and turned towards the dim lamp sitting in the corner of the atrium. The orange light reflected on her aged and yet perfect face like the light of the setting sun just outside the walls of the great mansion.

This is what she was afraid of. This is what she was worried about when returning home after 15 years away.

"God." Carolyn replied. "What are we in for now?"

Carolyn Arrives at Collinwood

****

The orange light from the sun filtered through a shell of purple clouds above the village came down on the land of Collinwood. Evangeline, the witch and daughter of the legendary Barnabas and Angelique and who had been posing as a Governess to David Collins' 5 year old son Caleb,. and Caleb himself were returning to the mansion from a small walk together through the large ivy hedge garden on the grounds of Collinwood.

The wind was picking up now and as the cold of the autumn breeze kissed and caressed their skin a secret set of eyes lurked in the shadows of the trees just beyond the garden and away from Evangeline's view.

Evangeline, The governess, who was given the name Claudia by nuns Barnabas left her with and raised her back in time, knelt down to adjust a scarf around the little boy's neck that had slipped and unraveled while on their walk.

As she did so, she could feel cold eyes. Deep dark cold eyes. She knew she was being watched. She stood up and looked towards the shadowy forest in the distance. She could feel the eyes staring at her now, it gaze was growing more and more intense. And as a wild animal in the woods howled a bloodcurdling moan she grasped on to Caleb's hand and tightened her grip. The wind picked up and flicked her beautiful golden brown curls, and as she turned to face the wind she saw in the distance The Old House.

The Old House. The symbol of her father. The father she wanted revenge over. The father, Barnabas, who took her from her birth in 1971 and traveled back in time and abandoned her in an orphanage with nuns.

Was it him? Was it his eyes she could feel staring at her from the beyond? Was it his deathly cold gaze finally returning home to reunite with the daughter he abandoned and who's mother he killed after so many years a battling her?

"Can we go home now? I'm cold." Little Caleb said, pulling on her tail of his governess' coat.

"Of course." Evangeline said suddenly snapping out of her own dazed moment from the cold wind and the sense of the eyes.

But they were not yet alone. The pair of cold eyes in the shadows had not left them and were still staring, and suddenly the shadow connected to the eyes leaped out from it's encasement withing the shade of the trees around them and grabbed hold of Evangeline.

It was like the every shadow around them came alive and sprouted arms and a head and had two eyes. It was the power of the vampire. It was the power of Justin Patterson. He knew he could not attack his new enemy the witch Evangeline with his own body, he had to send out his own soul, his darkened shadow and attack her, take her and bring her to his layer in the old house.

Justin's black hearted-shadow separated Evangeline's hand from Caleb's and surrounded her whole body to the point where she felt like she was now inside of a black space, but a black space that was transparent and that she could see out of but not escape. She put her hands up against the black mist like walls that were dragging her away and pounded on it as if she were breaking down a door, but the mist was impenetrable.

Justin made it so.

Evangeline tried to scream but her voice was silence.

As she was taken away, she could see little Caleb standing alone in the middle of the yard. His eyes were like giant white saucers staring out in shock of what had happened to his nanny in front of his very own eyes. And as the wind continued to blow and pull at Caleb's scarf again the blob of shadows that Justin sent to get Evangeline dragged her away into the woods that surrounded the old house.

Caleb stood there. Alone. In the cold. Unsure of what to do next.

Evangeline and Caleb were not the only two out to absorb the fresh sea air before night fall. Noelle and Elizabeth too had been walking the land around the main mansion. 

As Mistress and caretaker made their final lap around a long cement side walk that went the circumference of Collinwood and dipped into an ever-green ivy hedges where they'd meaner among the large limestone statues of various Greek and Roman goddess.

As Noelle slowly chugged along Elizabeth like a tug boat in the bay pulling away a large freight ship, arm-in-arm, the little boy stood dead center of the garden where is governess had left him.

Liz, dressed in a long black dress with long sleeves that went down to the back of her and and looped around her middle finger with a find satin ribbon, blinked hard trying to make sense of what it was she was seeing in front of her. 

"A boy." Liz said softly to her caretaker Noelle who looked up from her mistress who was pointing out into the oncoming fog. 

Noelle tilted her head confused. "Is...it Caleb? CALEB!" She shouted.

The little boy, who had his back turned to the women, quickly turned at hearing his name and b-lined towards his great-aunt Elizabeth; his scarf blew in the wind and then untangled from around his neck and fell to the moist lawn below his feet.

"What are you doing out here alone? It's getting dark." Noelle scolded. "Where's Vangie?" She added using Calbe's nick name of "Vangie' for Evangeline, his missing governess.

"Vangie went with them. She's gone." The shaking boy said.

Elizabeth removed the long, over-sized, black shall that was wrapped around her neck and shoulders and placed it maternally around the little boy's body to warm him then ran her perfectly aged hands up and down his little arms.

"Who did she go with?" Elizabeth asked, as she looked deep into Caleb's eyes, her voice soft and worried. 

Caleb, a boy of 5 couldn't articulate what had seen. All he knew was that he saw eyes. Blackness. And something come from the shadows from the direction of the Old House and take Evangeline. 

"It was coming and it got her and she tried to come back to me but it took her. Aunt Liz, it just took her away and I was scared and just could not move. It took her away. I stayed...to wait for her." the little boy said, his eyes filling with tears.

"A person?" Liz asked.

"A person." The boy said. "I think. I think a person. Yes!" 

"What did the person look like?" Noelle asked. "Which way did they go?" 

Caleb's body stiffened. His facial expression turned cold, as cold as the wind blowing through their hair and the shall and the black skirt of Elizabeth's dress. He slowly made an about-face and lifted his finger in the direction the black mass of shadows that engulfed Evangeline and pointed.

"There." he replied simply with his finger stretched out to the Old House.

Noelle and Elizabeth followed his finger with their eyes and both had a visceral reaction to what they saw. The grand, glaring imagine of the top of the Old House's colonnade peering over the tops of the trees in the distance beyond the hedge garden. 

To Elizabeth, that house, the discrption of shadows and darkness only meant one person. To her the matriach of the family it meant Barnabas. It would always mean Barnabas. It would forever mean Barnabas. She covered her mouth and gasped and thought of all the people that man took, and killed. For good or for bad. For his future and for theirs. It was a scar. A deep wound on her heart and soul. 

"Could it be? Could it be?" She said under her breath as the last kiss of sunlight twinkled in the giant canary diamond ring around her finger. 

But Noelle knew better. She knew that there was something lurking at the old house, something just as dangerous and hungry as Barnabas Collins once was; Elizabeth's fears were not misjudging the situation, just misplaced on who she should really fear. Not the man form  her past...but a man that was in her present and living with her own caretaker.

"Mrs. Stoddard, do you think you can make it inside with Caleb on your own so that I check and see what's out there?" Noelle asked knowing she could handle Justin in whatever form she found him in.

"Absolutely not! You can't go out there on your own, I forbid it! It's too dangerous Noelle." Liz replied, pulling Caleb into her body, holding him tightly for warmth.

"I'll be alright. I promise." Noelle replied handing Liz her cane. "Now please go back inside I'll take care of it. I'll take care of everything." 

Elizabeth looked at her caretaker sideways. It was an odd way of saying things but she pulled on Caleb's hand and began the short walk back into the mansion.

And as the two fell into the thick fog and vanished, Noelle turned to the old house....

"What in hell have you done now Justin.' She said to herself.  "What in hell have done?"

Evangeline is absorbed into Justin's dark mist

****

Elizabeth Turns 80

As the evening progressed an army of caterers and florists filled the mansion's dining room setting up for Elizabeth's birthday party. There were 3 giant golden candelabras in the center of the long table that extended almost from wall to wall filtering a glowing light that reflected off of the golden wall paper of the dining room. Each china plate a family heirloom that had been passed down from generation to generation and would one day be Carolyn's, who was sitting next to the head of the table where her mother would soon be seated.

Kimberly entered the room in a beautiful golden dress with a large white flower at her shoulder arm-in-arm with a special guest. The guests, a small framed woman with white hair and wrinkly skin that she wore with a badge of honor, smiled an engrossing grin that lit up the dining room just as bright as the candelabras. 

"MRS. JOHNSON!!!" Carolyn yelped as she quickly rushed over to the mansions former house keeper.

"Oh my! What a welcome! What a welcome." Mrs. Johnson replied.

"You look sensational!' David said as he too entered the room.

"Still full of tall tales, eh David? Somethings never change.” The old maid winked.  “What is all that?" Mrs. Johnson asked looking over at the table full of food.

"Oh we had it catered. Is there something else you might like?" Kimberly asked.

"I came all the way from Boston, I could eat a horse! Whatever it is, it's better than what I had on that train." Mrs. Johnson said as she swished over to the table to take her seat. 

As Carolyn, David and Kimberly were making small talk with Mrs. Johnson Elizabeth entered with Caleb from their separate but equally strange walks out doors.

"HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" The guest and younger Collins family members exclaimed as Elizabeth and the boy walked in.

Elizabeth, her face concerned about what Caleb had said to her and Noelle outside only gave a slight smile and pointed in the direction of Caleb's seat next to his father. The boy obediently follows her instructions and quickly sat next to David.  

"Uhh...Where's Noelle?" David asked.

"She had to rush off to the old house." Elizabeth replied with a lifted brow.

"And Evangeline?" Kim asked as she helped little Caleb into his booster seat so that his bright little face could see over the large table at the rest of his family.

"Ghosts took her." Caleb said as he reached for a dinner roll.

"Ghosts? What is he talking about?" Carolyn asked.

"Ghosts took her." Caleb repeated. "Took her away."

"Ha!!! You see? Some things never change!" Mrs. Johnson giggled as she nibbled on a corner of bread.

"OH! Mrs. Johnson!!” Elizabeth shouted suddenly noticing her old housekeeper. “My goodness, it's been so long! You came! You actually came. You said you'd never come to Collinsport again after Roger died." Liz said as she turned and noticed a guest she hadn't seen in decades. "You're right, some things never change." Liz added.

"But they should! Roger's death was the last Collins funeral I wanted to see! You all make make a note to that!" Mrs. Johnson said as David looked down at his plate thinking of his late father's death.

"We all miss Uncle Roger." Carolyn said of her Uncle who died in 1988 of a heart attack in his sleep. She then looked over at David and grabbed his hand and squeezed. They were cousins, but at the same time in their older age had become best friends. 

Not to Kim's amusement. 

"I came all the way here from Boston and realized Collinsport hasn't seen the sun in months. Look around, the clouds have covered this place like a blanket in the winter time. It's no wonder ghosts took this new governess. That's what happens here. Governesses just ....seem to vanish." Mrs Johnson said as she raised her wine glass.

"The ghost ate her. Ate her up!" Caleb replied. 

"Mother what is Caleb talking about?" Carolyn asked again.

Elizabeth wasn't sure how to answer. The little boy had mentioned to her the whole way back into the house from outside about the dark blob, the ghostly spirit that came and took Evangeline right in front of his little eyes. The dark spririt that Justin sent. Justin, the vampire secretly living at the Old House that Noelle had been hiding since 1966.

"I don't quite know what happened, but she's gone. She's vanished into thin air. I knew this would happen. I dream these things. I've been dreaming these things for years and years." Liz said as the ghostly candle light reflected in her 80 year old eyes. “I think.... I think he’s returned.” She added. 

Two caterers off to the side looked at each other confused. Worried even. They were locals. They knew the stories. They could only imagine who the HE was.

“Mother.....don’t.” Carolyn warned.

“You can feel him too can’t you Carolyn... you can feel it just like I can. It’s in your blood. It’s how we have always been. When he returns we feel it like the birds feel the winter coming and migrate on. Except...” Elizabeth said just before she paused to stare into the light of a flickering candle.

The light danced in Elizabeth’s grey eyes like two little suns as she thought about the HE in her mind. The HE that brought her so much terror in her dreams for years and years.

Barnabas.

“You’re the only one who left like those birds, Carolyn. Left us all behind.” Elizabeth finished.

“Mother,” Carolyn began trying to get back on track about the missing nanny. “Where did you last see Evangeline?”

“The ghosts took her!!!!” Caleb shouted again. Elizabeth looked over at him and smirked as if to say listen to the boy.

"This is ridiculous!” Kimberly suddenly broken in. “There are no ghosts!!!” 

“Ha!” Mrs. Johnson blurted out as they all looked over at her.

David shook his head and slammed down his glass making a loud bang in the loud oak wood. 

“Enough!” He shouted. “How could Evangeline just up and leave like this without us knowing or her even telling us that she wanted to go. This makes no sense." David said in a dissenting tone. "I mean he's 5 years old what does he know of ghosts?"

"It only took you 5 more years to recognize what you had always seen all your life, David. Perhaps your boy is quicker." Elizabeth shot back reminiscing on David's own childhood experience with the ghosts of Collinwood.

"Aunt Liz!" David said, outside showing shock at her wicked sense of humor but inside actually loving every minute of it.

"I don't want to hear any more of this." Carolyn insisted. Her fury over ghost talk showing all over her face as the soup was being served. "Evangeline maybe decided to take a nap, maybe she's upstairs and no one went to check on her." She added.

"She was outside with Caleb on a walk." Kim added to the conversation. Her heart beating a mile a minute.

"She's not gone." Carolyn insisted. 

"She went away. She went away." Caleb insisted finally getting a hold of the dinner roll and breaking it in half to dunk into the soup. 

"Caleb!" Kim shouted. 

"Let him speak. He's speaking the truth. Noelle and I saw him, alone, in the hedge garden. Evangeline wouldn't have left him alone that way if she wasn't taken." Liz said, sipping her own glob of soup and winking at the boy.

"Then we should call the police. If she's really been taken right off the grounds of our house then we have to call the police." David insisted, unsure why everyone was seeming to be so calm.

"Police have never been able to find anyone who has ever gone missing off the grounds of Collinwood David. You know that better than anyone else here. She's gone. Something took her. Caleb saw. Whatever Caleb saw won't be found by the police." Elizabeth added.

"Alright I don’t want to hear anymore. There is an obvious explanation about why Evangeline is gone and I don't want to hear anymore about this ghost talk. You all probably scared her off. I mean ghosts and....whatever else. This house isn't exactly a place that breeds bright and cheery and with you lot always talking about god knows what I'm sure she had just had enough." Carolyn replied silencing the entire table. 

No one knew what to do. They all knew the truth, the Liz perhaps was correct. They had all seen it before. The vanishings. The disappearances. The quick comings and goings. Sometimes they'd come back. Sometimes they wouldn't but one things was sure, the Collinsport Police could never solve these things. Even though they tried. 

The next course in the birthday dinner was now being served in an awkward silence. Carolyn could tell there was a bit of strain. 

"She's going to come back....." Carolyn suddenly said as everyone looked up from their plates. "If she wants to get paid."

Later that night, after one of the most bizarre dinner's the family has ever experienced, Mrs. Johnson had been taken back home to her sister’s home in Boston by one of the Chauffeurs. She had been offered a room in the mansion for the night, but true to form, she was happy to deny the room. She'd rather drive 3 hours south home, than stay one more night in that house. 

For her part, Carolyn sat in her old bedroom stating at herself in the mirror as she brushed her hair. She thought about what Caleb had said. She brushed her hair. And thought about what her mother had said. Could it be him.... could the monster, the deep dark secret boogeyman of her family really have returned and taken the new governess? 

She stared into the mirror and at her own reflection. Her gaze was tight. Her eyes fixated on her own face. 

Suddenly the mirror cracked and knocked Carolyn out of her trans as tears of terror fell from eyes. She knew her mother was right, there was something afoot. There was a power, an energy---it was there. It was alive, it was awake.

But Barnabas it was not. The family just didn't know it yet. 

Kimberly crept out of Caleb's bedroom after putting him to sleep with no sign of Evangeline. She peeked back into his room and watched the little spinning nightlight lantern shooting a nautical scene on the walls of the boy's room of ships and sea creatures. 

He was fast asleep. It was very typical of a Collins child. He had witnessed a terrible event just hours before but somehow, he felt fine enough to knock out and sleep without any fear. The natural ability of any Collins family member to be able to lock away their fears of things things that went bump-in the night and carry on with their lives was almost like a fragment of DNA that was passed down from generation to generation.

Kimberly, however, did not have this trait. She was scared out of her mind.

David's cheating wife quickly left her son's doorway and rushed down the hall and passed the governess' quarters where Evangeline had been sleeping. It was empty as she passed and turned the corner of the hallway and flew down the main stairwell and scurried over to the phone that was in the foyer on a large cherry-wood table. 

She looked around. The proverbial coast was clear....there was no one in the drawing room, no one in the adjoining study. She quickly picked up the phone and dialed her lover Victor's house. 

"What is it?" Victor said as he quickly answered his phone after just one ring.

"The governess is missing." Kimberly said in a hushed voice. "She's just gone. No one knows where she went. All of her things are still here Victor. She just...vanished! Caleb was out with her and he says ghosts took her. GHOSTS!"

Victor had been waiting for this. He knew at some point something strange would happen that would bring him into the fold and start the process he had been urging Kim to help him with. To Victor, Evangeline was just another victim of this evil family's connection with the darkness of the other side. It was the soul purpose of the OTH.

"So what does this tell you? Huh? I told you. It's time to start this. The Chancellor of our

Organization has had words with me about how we are late to the game and we need to start this process Kimberly. With Carolyn now there, we need to take them out. All of them. Do you hear me? We have to take them out." Victor said.

"But what do I do?" Kim said, her brainwashing securely in place.

"Kill them. Start it. Kill them all. I'll help. I'll help you with all of this. Evangeline's life is gone, I know it. They're responsible. Who else would have summoned things from the depths of hell to take her? WHO?" Victor said continuing his cold brainwashing of the woman who was pregnant with his child.

"Ok...Ok....I'll ....do it. I'll do it with your help." Kimberly said as Victor smiled an evil grin on the other side of the line.

"Good girl. We'll start tomorrow once I tell Chancellor Devlin."

Kimberly did not reply. She hung up the phone and looked around again. No one was in the foyer with her. Just the dark corners of the room and the sleepy eyes of the paintings on the wall.

In the shadows on the landing just above the staircase was Carolyn, freshly startled from her shattered mirror. Unlike little Caleb, Carolyn Couldn’t sleep. And as she stood in a wide-awake silence above the staircase listening to Kim's conversation she learned enough to realize her cousin David’s wife was not exactly who she pretended to be.