Series 13/Chapter 4: STRANGER THINGS

Evangeline & Justin meet

In a black void between two worlds; a place that acted like a veil that divided life from death, light from dark a woman created by supernatural love and passion stared down a man's who's energy force was the signal she had been sensing and searching for all her adult life. She had sensed his life force that had been masked by Noelle all these years and now,  Evangeline, stood face to face with a man that was like her father. A man of the shadows. A man of the darkness. 

She stared at the stranger, Justin Patterson, that she sucked into the void with her and circled him like a shark smelling blood in the sea. His power was evident in his eyes. His throbbing heart beat was what she was feeling deep in her own body. She believed it to be Barnabas sending a message to her---but she was wrong. Justin, this new vampire creature created in Evangeline a new found intrigue and suspicion. 

And a twinge of uncertainty. 

He, she knew, was a man that could withstand the power pull of the black void they were standing in. She knew this because he too was like her father. A man who was taken from the world of the living and into the world of the supernatural to live, lust, and love among the shadows that created him. 

Justin Patterson, a new vampire, was this man. And it was his heart that was like a fire burning within her and keeping her up at night all this time, not her father Barnabas'. 

Evangeline had been awaiting in the return for her father Barnabas. The monster she blamed for her all her life's hardships. As a little baby, he took her away from her mother Angelique and took her back in time to be raised in a convent---far away from the gaze of her wicked mother. It was Barnabas hope that this baby that Angelique named Evangeline and that the Nuns named Claudia would be safe from all the darkness she was born into.

But he failed. And now Evangeline was faced with a sort of usurper, a man who did not belong in her father's place. 

For his part, Justin stood there, his eyes fixated on the beautiful witch before him with his fangs ready to pierce her perfect skin. The blackness of the void flowed around him like a mist gracefully soothing his skin.

"Who are you?" He growled as the witch continued to circle him. "What do you want from me? How did I get here?" He continued to question.

"You stepped into my realm," Evangeline said referring to Collinwood, "I could smell you a mile away. Perhaps you'd be better off telling me who you are first." She added, slowly walking around him like a shark carefully biding its time before it attacked. 

"I think, madame, you'd be mistaken if you try me. I could kill you in a split second. I could snap your neck. Drain you of all your blood. You'd be back in hell faster than you could ever imagine." Justin hissed, not knowing who he was speaking with and the powers she possessed.

Evangeline giggled. "Is that so?" 

Justin opened his mouth showing his fangs. He stepped closer to her but Evangeline, magically two steps ahead of him, lifted her hand and an invisible force-field blasted Justin back to where he was first stand. The jolt of energy surprised him so much the hair on the back of his neck stood up.

"Witchcraft." he whispered .

"If you even think of touching me with those daggers you call fangs, you'd die before you had a chance to even taste my blood on your lips. You see, I'm poison to you. My blood would burn your insides like acid. I'd be able to see your guts go up in smoke. I might even enjoy watching it. But, I can tell you're not a stupid man. I can tell you have some sort of mind..." Evangeline said as she continued to circle Justin. "So tell me vampire, who are you? Who sent you to find me?" 

"Your paranoia is showing." Justin growled knowing full well he had no idea who she was. 

"I'm cautious." The witch Evangeline countered. "And if that means killing you where you stand because you won't answer, I won't hesitate. So tell me who you are!" She shouted.

Justin wouldn't budge. He was insistent on getting away from the sorceress and getting back to Collinwood so that he could find India. India was all he cared about. All he wanted was to kiss her again, to see her, to touch her. To love her. His passion for India was so strong that he was about to risk his own life to find her....but that would be futile. Evangeline had vanquished India back to her own timeline. 

Justin, his patience thinning, lunged at Evangeline, his mouth gaping open for a taste of the witch. She yelped as his body knocked her to the ground. She managed to pull her arm out from under his crushing body and placed her hands around his neck. She began to breath in deeply. Each in hale took air from Justin's lungs. It was like her power was a hurricane entering his body and taking every breath from him---he was suffocating. 

As Justin continued to try and bite Evangeline he began to grow weaker. He couldn't breath. His lungs seemed to stop pulling in precious oxygen because it was all going into the witch's lungs. 

"I........can't............b r e a t h...." Justin said, as his fangs began to retract. 

His lips were turning blue.

"TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!" 

Justin didn't have the words. He couldn't ---perhaps wouldn't--say his name. He was unsure of what this woman was or who she was or what she wanted from him all he wanted to do was kill her and get back to his mission to find India. He looked at her dead in the eye. She was beautiful. Angry but the anger showed on her perfect face like a sadness, a mask of sadness. He could see into her soul almost. They were both hurt. They were both in pain. They perhaps wanted the same thing. To find life again. Real life. In essence, they wanted to be loved and give love, but the shadows that brought them to this point were blocking them from it all. He could see this in her as clear as day, and Evangeline, slowly began to see it too as Justin's face and eyes began to return to their normal more human state. 

But Justin didn't trust her just yet, despite seeing that they were more alike than different. So he lied. 

"What is your name?" She said again, pushing down on his chest as his heart began to beat slower and slower.

Justin thought of the envelope he saw at The Old House that belonged to Noelle and mustered out a whiff of sound that said: "Leopold." 

Satisfied with the name and with the clearly lack of connection to Barnabas, Evangeline lifted her hands from the vampire's chest and stood over Justin as he coughed to catch his breath. She snarled and curled her lip looking down at the pathetic creature she could kill with the snap of her fingers. 

But there was no threat, Evangeline thought, he was pathetic. Handsome but pathetic. 

Evangeline closed her eyes and clapped Once.

The sound of her clap echoed in the black voice over and over again.

Then, Justin woke up on the floor of the Old House Drawing room. He was whole. Not dead. She had spared him his life. Using the name Leopold, a fake name, an alias perhaps did it for him. He sat up and grabbed at his chest, his vampire heart was still beating. Slowly. Coldly. He got up from the floor and went to the drawing room window and look out on to the dark night and saw in the distance the main mansion Collinwood in the silhouette of the night.

"Who the hell was that?" He whispered to himself unsure of what had just happened to him.

For her part, Evangeline was now standing in the foyer of the Main mansion as if nothing had happened. She fixed her golden brown curls that had been mussed in the quick altercation with Justin in in a large mirror that hung across from Barnabas' painting that was framed in leaves painted gold. In her reflection she looked at her father's painting. 

The clock struck late in the night. 

"I will wait you out Barnabas Collins." Evangeline said. "Whatever monster you send to take me back to hell, I will wait out as well. I have all the time in the world. And when you do finally show your face here again, you'll wish you never set eyes on me." Evangeline said.

She was in full revenge mode. Her heart was in it. Her body was in it. No one would stop her on this rampage. But as she turned away from the mirror to face the painting, eye to eye, she could only think of the man she had just met. 

Who was this Leopold and what did his presence mean for Evangeline's plan against her father's betrayal? 

****

Cameron & Lucas

As the sun began to rise over the horizon, it's light sparkled over the Atlantic sea creating specs of light that shined like diamonds floating on the blue waves. The air was thick with the perfume of the morning dew and filtered into a small open widow of a little one bedroom house in the center of Collinsport near Founder's Park.

Asleep in a chair, was Cameron Frame, Noelle's nephew and Carolyn's secret son. A Collins by birth.

He had stayed the night at his boyfriend's house after the argument with Noelle about the secrets that she had been hiding all his life: The man named Justin, details of who he was, where he came from and what, if anything, did the Collins family have to do with this biological father's disappearance.

The smell of fresh brewed coffee floated into Cameron's nostrils and perked him up in the chair he had been dozing off in after being unable to sleep all night.

Cameron opened his eyes. the blur of the morning fogged his vision but he could make out his boyfriend in front of him with a fresh mug of coffee.

"Thank you." Cameron smiled as the sleep wore off.

Cameron's eyes started to clear and finally his vision finally made clear the image of his handsome boyfriend with his piercing ice blue eyes, his pink lips and his premature white quaff of luxurious hair. 

"I let you sleep on the chair, last night you just knocked out I didn't want to wake you." The boyfriend said smirking as he curled up next to Cameron on the adjacent blue and white sofa. 

"Sorry---I shouldn't have come here like that last night. I probably freaked you out with all my ranting." Cameron replied to his boyfriend, a science major at the University of Augusta, a man named by the name of Lucas Granger.

"No! Not at all! Cam, listen, we haven't been together all that long but I'd like you to feel comfortable telling me anything you want. If you're upset and you need to talk, by al means, I'm here for you." Lucas said kindly.

"I know, I know, I guess I just feel a little embarrassed I mean ...it's sort of family drama." Cameron replied.

"What is it?"

"It's my aunt. She.....well, she told me some things about my birth parents. I guess she's known who my mother was this whole time. All my life! Can you believe that? She's known---" Cameron answered to a confused Lucas.

"Wait---I don't understand. You didn't know who she was?" Lucas asked.

"Well of course! But none of it was true." Cameron said as he sipped the sultry coffee in the red mug that smelled of cinnamon and cream. "When I was old enough to ask questions she told me that my mother died at my birth and that my father died shortly after.....but she said his death was a mystery to the family. That's only half true."

"Which part is the true half?" Lucas asked eager to hear the rest of the story.

"My father's death is a mystery. He died some how --we don't know---he just vanished. Gone. Noelle has this weird thing about the family she works for. She said they're involved that she's been trying to figure out just how they're involved but she hasn't gotten any headway. Then there's Justin...." Cameron explained.

"Wait --- wait....." Lucas said, interrupting the story and trying to catch up. "Noelle thinks the Collins family is involved with how your dad died? The Collins family?" Lucas added, as he knew Noelle worked for Elizabeth. How ever the idea that the most infamous family in town were somehow involved  in something nefarious, was not surprising. That felt normal for anyone who grew up in Collinsport. 

Cameron rolled his eyes. "I know. Its insane."

"And Justin? Who's that?" Lucas asked as he too sipped from the his own mug. 

Cameron wasn't sure how to explain who Justin was. It was too bizarre to say he was someone who had become some sort of freak of nature, a person frozen in youth by the bite of vampire. How could Cameron even begin to try and explain that to his boyfriend, a student of science, a person who understood facts and figures and had specific and calculated answer for everything. 

"He's....her friend. Someone who's going to help her investigate my father's death." Cameron said brushing way the vampire framing. 

"Well," Lucas said as he moved from the sofa to the arm of Cameron's chair. "Whatever you feel right now is valid, ok? It's hurtful to feel like your whole world is collapsing around you. I know that from my own experience. My parents weren't the best either, you know. I guess that's why I love you so much. You're just as messed up as I am!" Lucas said, his bright white grin sent butterflies through Cameron's whole body and they settled in his stomach fluttering and floating around giving him the feeling he was as light as air. 

Lucas leaned down and kissed Cameron's head. More butterflies.

"I'm going to take a quick shower, and then we can go head off to the diner and have a good breakfast, that ok?:" Lucas asked.

Cameron ginned from ear to ear---"I'd love it!" 

Lucas got up and rushed over to his bedroom leaving Cameron in the front room feeling safe and loved and truly understood. The drama with Noelle at home would be there when he got back--today he'd focus on Lucas. Only Lucas.

As Lucas entered his bedroom, he quietly closed his door and left it an inch open just to be sure. He waited at the door and listened and when he felt Cameron was still in his place in the front room Lucas quietly walked over to his closet. He pulled the white French door shutters of the closet open and pulled on the long ball-and-chain style light string. A single light bulb flickered on illuminating the tiny closet of clothes, shoes and various boxes.

Lucas lifted himself up on his tip-toes and removed a show box on the top shelf and took it to his bed. He opened it to reveal various papers and files...all marked COLLINS. 

Lucas, for years and years, had been fascinated  by the family on Window's Hill. The secrets. Their connection to the world of the unknown. The man, a member of the family that for years lived shrouded in a mysterious fog like the kind that lifted off the sea late at night: Barnabas.

It seemed like fate. It seemed like the universe was finally rewarding Lucas' hard work and studies of paranormal sciences. 

Lucas' connection to the family he was so obsessed with was sitting in his sitting room. The man he loved. In fact, he was even a member of the family. It was all too perfect. 

****

David, Victor & Kimberly 

Later that afternoon a cloudy sky covered most of French Bay that Collinsport and rocky shores and lush hills folded into. A brisk smell of salty sea air filled the lungs of David and Kimberly Collins who were walking hand-in-hand down one of the small cobblestone streets in town as they headed for a late afternoon drink at The Blue Whale tavern.

Kimberly adjusted her scarf and smiled as David opened the wooden door to the pub that had withered and warped with age and the constant beating of the sun. 

The handsome couple walked into the pub, two Collin Fishing fleet fisherman lifted their frothy mugs of beer in the air acknowledging their boss and his pregnant wife as they entered. Kimberly especially seemed happy despite her many secrets and lies that linked her back to Victor Reed, the father of the child she was carrying. 

"It's always so nice to see people from the fleet wave over at us, doesn't it? They're so grateful." Kimberly said as the two sat down at a booth and window seat in the corner. 

"That's Carlos Jimenez and John Ross....they've been with the company since I was a teenager. They're great guys. Hard workers." David said, showing off how good he was at his job.

Since David took over for the company after his Father Roger's death and since Carolyn had been in London. David was literally the only Collins family member who had anything to do with the family business that was still prosperous and still providing the whole family with millions of dollars a year in income. 

The Business and its clearly prosperous earnings was one of the major factors that made David so appealing as a mate the first time they'd med. The heir to a mass fortune. The giant house. The esteem around town. All of what came with being a Collins in Collinsport....the only problem was that Kimberly had a major fault of her own: a wondering eye, and her affair with Victor was hot, especially now that she was with with child, Victor's child, it was boiling over. 

"I think Elizabeth's birthday is going to be amazing. I have a caterer coming in from New York and they're going to make all her favorites. Even Mrs. Johnson is coming to visit her. It's going to be a wonderful surprise." Kimberly mentioned as she sipped from the fresh orange juice the bar-maid had brought over.

"About the birthday and surprises....last night I called Carolyn. I think she's going to come. She's finally going to come and be here to see her mom. After all this time, can you believe it?" Said David, the gleam in  his eye from the good job he had done convincing his cousin to return home. 

Kim was not so pleased.

"What do you mean? Carolyn? Well, when does she arrive? How long is she staying?" 

David wasn't sure why Kim was coming off so uncomfortable. "Why does it matter?" 

"Listen, David, you know she and I have never really gotten along I mean besides the fact that I hardly know her she's just going to come in and start up the way she does like the princess of the manor and I really ..." Kim said before being interrupted by David.

"Kim!" David exclaimed with a grin, tickled by the jealousy his wife had over Carolyn. "Carolyn is totally welcome to come home and see her own mother on her 80th birthday, my god! She's not moving back ok? So you can rest assured you're still the lady of the manor. Not Carolyn." David winked.

It was true, Kimberly and Carolyn had never truly seen eye to eye. They weren't close in any way but when David said he was going to marry Kim 6 years previous Carolyn wasn't happy about the choice. Carolyn could smell a gold digger a mile away. She was trained in it. Carolyn wasn't just a Collins, she was a Stoddard, and the Stoddards knew a gold digger when the saw one. 

That wasn't all. Kimberly knew that as soon as Victor caught wind of Carolyn being in town, he would want her dead as well. Victor's plot to destroy every last Collins family member would grow larger and larger and Kimberly, being completely in love with Victor and eager to start her life together and the child she was carrying would feel almost positively compelled to kill Carolyn for him too.

Plain and simple: Kimberly was in a cult. A cult born and raised from decades of Collinsport folklore and history. This cult wanted to ruin and destroy all of the evils in the world that they saw were brought on by the darkness of humanity. The evils and the monsters that arose from the crypts of hell, this cult named The Organization of the True Hearted, blamed and believed were all caused by the existence of one family: The Collins family. 

As David continued to attempt to get Kimberly to believe that Carolyn coming for Elizabeth's birthday was a good idea, Victor Reed walked into the bar. 

His eyes, emerald green and piercing, darted directly over to the husband and wife sitting at the booth.

He loved Kimberly, deep in his soul, but hated that she was involved with David. They met by chance at a small antique shop in downtown Collinsport just two years prior. And like moths to flames, they continues to run into each other over and over, as if by kismet. Soon they started seeing each other in planned secret visits when Kimberly would take her infant son Caleb for walks. 

On one of those walks, through Founder's Park, just below the giant copper statue of Issac Collins, David's ancestor that founded the town in the name of his family, is where Victor first began his brain washing of his new love. It was there and done, that Kimberly agreed to help the OTH end this family's reign of what they perceived as terror. 

 "Mr. and Mrs. Collins, hello!" Victor said as he stepped up to the pair's booth as Kim coughed in shock at seeing Victor's face right there in front of her husband. 

"Mr. Reed! Pleasure seeing you out. It's been a long time. How are you?" David innocently asked as he shook  his wife's lover. "You remember my wife Kimberly, don't you?"

He did. 

"Absolutely, Mrs. Collins, how are you?" Victor replied playing it off perfectly. 

"Fine thank you." She replied shyly.

"Oh! Would you like to join us? We were just discussing my aunt's birthday party over some juice and beer." David giggled. 

"That's right, Mrs. Collins is having another child. Such a blessing!" Victor answered. "But I really shouldn't bother you both. I just came in to see a friend."

"Thank you." Kim replied attempting to shoo him off. She was clearly nervous. 

"Is your friend here yet?" David wondered.

"Not that I can see, no." Victor replied.

"Then I insist, please have a seat!" David replied as Kimberly's eyes began to water. 

"David, really, I think Mr. Reed would really rather have a seat awaiting his friend than sit with the two of us talking about an old lady's birthday party, don't you think?" Kim said to David's shock.

"An old lady's birthday? Kimberly she's my aunt not just an old lady. I surely hope you don't speak like that around her when I'm not around or even worse, when Carolyn shows up." 

Carolyn's name sparked an instant grab of attention to Victor's ears. He quickly shot Kim a look. 

"You're right I'm sorry." Kim said embarrassed at first then she licked her lips and sipped another drink of orange juice. She knew the wheels in Victor's mind where turning, and more death was on it's way.

"Let me grab you a beer Victor"! David said, seemingly famished for male companionship. 

As soon as David was out of ear-shot, Victor leered over at the mother of his unborn child and grinned a wicked smile. A smile that would freeze any sprig day, a cold and evil smile that made him seem like he was a wolf sharpening his teeth. 

"This is news." Victor said quietly.

"Victor, now, listen to me, we don't have to do it all at once. Ok? I still have to figure out what to do about David, he's the biggest obstacle and I ... I just need time. Carolyn, well she can wait." Kimberly said as the baby in her whom jumped at the sound it's father's voice.

"That's not what we talked about. That's not what I want. That's not what The OTH wants either. They all have to go. Every last one of them. You took an oath, you promised and this is what we have to do to save humanity, Kimberly, this is what we have to do to save our lives." Victor replied continuing his cold words to Kim of death and murder.

"You're forgetting I have a son with David. We can't....god, we can't just do this and pretend Caleb isn't a Collins too. I can't kill my own son." Kimberly whispered showing signs of the brain washing starting to falter. 

Victor thought for a second. He looked at the woman he did love but knew that they had a job, one job and it was the most important one of all. But he wasn't a child murderer either. That is to say He wasn't, but the OTH had plenty of members that were. 

"Caleb is still young. The OTH is strong enough to absorb him in and teach him that his Collins blood line is evil and that it deserved to be extinguished from all time. It can be done. I'm sure." Victor said in an attempt to quell Kim's worries for her older son. 

"Are you saying Caleb is safe in all this?" She wondered as her eyes turned to watch David walk back from the bar with Victor's beer.

Victor grinned and answered "Of course." just as David arrived.

The truth was, Victor wasn't sure. The OTH wanted every last Collins dead....Victor may not kill the boy himself, and that was a promise he could keep, but as for the other in the cult, he could not control.

"Here you are!" David announced placing the beer on the hard oak table that had decades of scars from the scratches of cups and mugs from thousands of sailors that had passed through the pub. "What are we talking about, I can see you're both deep in conversation." He added

Victor and Kim both looked at each other. Her eyes were as big as a doe's unsure about how to answer her husband, but Victor, always the consummate actor filled in.

"Change. We're talking about change." 

David smiled. It could be anything. Change was a big topic, he had no idea Victor meant a change in David's own life.....and death.