Series 6/Chapter 10: BOUND IN FLAMES

The swirling plumes of chimney smokey danced in the sky above Collinsport creating a ceiling of grey floating clouds that covered the entire town. Sitting atop Widow's Hill, long and far back across the icy crust of the lawn, was the mansion known as Collinwood. Inside, deep in the belly of the main house, one woman was about to face her greatest fear: finally ridding herself of a spirit that in life caused her to do unspeakable things to her family members and in death wanted her to continue the pain.

Kimberly carefully lit candles around her laboratory patiently awaiting her sister Joanna's spirit that had been haunting and torturing her for months. Joanna's greed had consumed her in life and was spilling over from beyond the grave.

Joanna's forceful and cruel nature towards Kimberly had always been evident when they were girls growing up in Boston. Joanna, the elder of three siblings, was always the ring leader when rounding up her siblings Kim and their brother, as minions in whatever trouble she liked to create.

As they grew, their brother moved on, far away from the family, leaving only Kimberly to take the brunt of Joanna's cruelty and demanding nature. It was Joanna who first encountered Victoria Winters and learned about "The Organization". It was Joanna who convinced Kimberly to infiltrate the Collins family, marry David, have him committed so that DNA tests could be done on him.

It was Joanna who introduced her to Victor Reed, encouraging the affair, and proposed the further DNA transfer into Kim's young child Christopher.

All her life Kimberly had been a pawn in Joanna's evil ideas. All her life Kimberly had been just a puppet in the name of all that was terrible.

But no more. Kim wanted redeem herself in the eyes of her two sons, and Joanna would no longer hold power over her.

As the last candle was lit in Kim's lab, she could feel the icy air swirl in from the bowels of the dark depths. Kim kept her back turned as the coldness extinguished all the candles she had just lit in anticipation for Joanna, all except the one Kim held in her hand. She turned around slowly, her breath visible in clear white puffs of mist escaping her mouth.

Standing behind her, the spirit she had been waiting for in all its twisted and evil glory. Joanna.

"I was hoping you'd come to me today." Kimberly said covering the flame of her last lit candle with one hand.

"I expect a progress report. What's the status on the tests on David. Is he ready? There's a full moon in four days, we don't have much time to spare." Joanna instructed.

"We have to talk about all of that. We have to discuss the process..." Kimberly said as the nerves began to take over and Joanna interrupted.

"There's nothing to discuss Kimberly!" The spirit waled. "I've given you a job and you need to do it, that's it. Nothing more, nothing less. This is your task. How else should I put it?" She continued.

"No." Kimberly simply said in a whisper.

"What did you say?" Questioned Joanna as she floated over, cold and grey.

"I said no. I won't do you. I've decided not to. I've already given the serum to Caleb who's put it in a drink his father was drinking and it's over. David will no longer turn into the wolf you want him to. David will no longer be used as some kind of weapon for your gain....more importantly, I will no longer be used." Kim answered.

"You're weak! You always have been. Everything you've touched, Kimberly, has been worthless because you're worthless. You don't deserve to walk the earth alive!" Joanna said angrily.

"I have to honor my children and fix the things that I have done or we'll never see the end of this. We can't go on doing the same things and hope for a different outcome, Joanna you are the past and I will extinguish it if its the last thing I do." Kimberly stated.

"YOU'RE WEAK!" Joanna screamed.

"It's over." Kim said in a hushed voice.

The anger in Joanna's dead eyes filled the room with a warm glow. Inside of her she could feel the fury of all that was dark bubble up. Her icy visage turned as hot as the sun...she came up to Kimberly and grabbed her by the shoulders and let out a blood curdling scream, so loud, so strong that it broke the glass in the cabinet door panels behind Kim.

Kim turned and stepped back, the scream filled the room with an angry heat that could only be described as the fires of hell swirling about engulfing everything it touched.

Kimberly grabbed a new candle that was not lit and stood up in the face of the heat that was blowing from the mouth of her dead sister, the sister that plotted so many evil things for her own monetary gain.

With her arms extended, cupping the candle in both hands Kimberly closed her eyes and began to speak: "Joanna Greyson....I bring you here to forever lock you within the confines of the after life, where you shall never ever again be released. Follow this path Joanna, follow it into the light or into the darkness but never ever return. Joanna Greyson...you are free!"

With those words, Kimberly released herself from the locks and chains Joanna had placed on their two souls. With those words Kimberly not only freed herself from Joanna's spirit but she also freed Joanna from the realm of the in between.

Suddenly the candle in Kimberly's hands lit on its own and all of the hateful heat and fire that Joanna's scream had been spewing in the room began to be consumed into the lit candled like a vacuum absorbing everything made of cruelness and pain taking Joanna along with it.

When Kimberly opened her eyes the room was back to normal. All the candles she had lit before Joanna arrived were lit again, the candle in her hand extinguished.

Kim looked around the lab....it was quiet serene even. It was over. She had kept her promise to Chris and Caleb and ended the terrorizing that Joanna had created.

She was free now. They all were.

****

In the drawing room, Carolyn poured Maggie and David  frothy glasses of hot milk and coffee. They cozied up to a roaring fire warming the entire room as the first frosty snow fell on the ground outside. The white powder began to cover the tips of the grey frozen grass like the decorating of a cake with powdered sugar.

"I never thought I'd be back here again. I never thought I'd feel so...so free. I'm happy I came with you and David. I'm happy I was able to help you. Things are so different now, aren't they Carolyn?" Maggie said with  a smile as she sipped her coffee.

Carolyn smiled and took a sip of her own drink. "Different?" She asked.

"Yes, different from all those years ago. We're safer now." Maggie responded.

"Perhaps. I guess we'll have to see. There's still so much going on, especially with Kat and Caleb's baby still missing and Barnabas still in search of him. I can't imagine how Kat has been handling everything." Carolyn explained as David and Maggie equally became slightly uncomfortable.

"Barnabas. What do you mean? I thought...? Carolyn I thought he was gone. I thought that's why you brought me here. This place isn't safe is Barnabas is still around." Maggie said sternly.

"Its ok Maggie, Barnabas isn't here. He's gone in search of Kat's child, we're not sure when --or if--he'll return." David said remembering he burned the letter sent from Barnabas in 1920 that was left in a book in the library.

"But it's a possibility. This won't do. I can't ...we can't...allow him to return, Carolyn you have to make sure it wont happen. Barnabas' presence will only bring more pain. More sorrow. More death!" Maggie explained.

"Maggie, he knows his place with us. He knows that everything he does or thinks or feels is being watched. I can't say I trust him but I can't say I don't either. He's still family and he's done some good things for us. You don't have anything to worry about." Carolyn explained as Maggie jumped from her seat and went over to the frozen over window looking out.

"I should go back to Windcliff. I feel safer there. I feel safer having him think I'm dead, or lost, or just gone." Maggie said.

"Vickie and Barnabas will come back, and when they do, they'll have Caleb's baby. That's the most important part of this. He doesn't want to hurt anyone more." Carolyn said.

"Vickie? Winters? I don't understand I thought she died years ago!" Maggie explained in shock.

"It's a long story, but she, like you, faked her death to keep herself safe." David answered.

"And now she's with Barnabas? Did he take her?" Maggie said worried.

"No, like David said sweetheart, it's a very long story. They're both looking for Caleb and Kat's baby. That's all I really can tell you." Carolyn answered.

A short hush of silence fell over the room as Maggie's mind started to process what she had gotten herself into coming back to Collinwood. A home filled with a family that she cared for but who's curse had destroyed so many aspects of her past. The trauma of her past would constantly bubble up throughout her life, and only at Windcliff did she feel like she had a handle of it all, that was until she found David there. Then everything started again, almost as if it had never ended.

"He'll return. I know he will. He always does. No matter what, Barnabas always rises. You both know this to be true. Why do you protect him?" Maggie asked in a frank tone of voice.

Carolyn and David looked at each other not knowing how to answer.

"There's no way Barnabas can return. I'm sure of it. He's traveled again to a different time. But this time, I'm sure there is no way he can come back. Maggie, you don't have to worry about anything." David stated.

"What? How do you know this? What have you heard?" Carolyn asked confused about David's out of no where statement.

"Because, I know. I was in the library and a book fell from a shelf. I reached down to pick it up and when I grabbed it, it opened to the center, inside was a letter from Barnabas. He's in Collinsport, 1920." David explained.

"David! You've know this whole time where he was and you never told anyone? Have you even told Caleb? How you could keep that information a secret from us? Where's the letter, I want to read it." Carolyn scolded.

"I burned it." David said quickly.

Carolyn scoffed in shock, the anger about David hiding information was infuriating. They were all working together to make sure the baby returned safely but by David keeping Barnabas' out-reach a secret could be detrimental for their return.

"Why would you do that? What if he sends us a message with instructions on getting the baby back? David, this is your grandchild! Any message from Barnabas or Vickie for that matter, needs to be taken seriously." Carolyn explained.

"You said there's no way he can return, how can you be so sure?" Maggie interjected.

"He's in 1920...Collinwood in those days was headed by Jamison Collins, my grandfather. Every one knows about Jamison's history." David said cryptically.

"I don't." Maggie answered.

"David..." Carolyn said pausing before she realized where David was going with his strategy.

"Our grandfather, Maggie, went mad. They said he would have visions and psychotic episodes. Aunt Elizabeth had always told us stories of how much grandmother Catherine would later suffer with how insane he would go with all the things he could sense and see. Once Jamison realizes what Barnabas is, there is no way in  hell he'll be able to escape. Barnabas will die in 1920...and maybe...maybe that's for the best." David said coldly.

Carolyn's eyes began to water. She knew that David had issues with Barnabas' return when she told him a few months back after her airplane accident, but she had no idea he would risk the safe return of his own kidnapped grandson to make sure Barnabas never saw the year 2016 again.

It was a betrayal and Carolyn felt it deep in her bones.

****
COLLINWOOD, 1920
****

The chill of December crawled through the vents and beneath the doors of the drafty 1920's house of Collinwood. Three women plotted to get to the site of the future cottage Sea View where Kat, still inside Catherine's body, would begin the process of transferring them back to the year 2016 using the powerful pull from the present that Ezrabette had given  her. But Jamison Collins' mind was cracking. The things he knew and the things he saw deep in the valleys of his mind were disturbing him beyond all understanding.

Jamison quietly walked into the cold study on the west side of the house. The room was dim with the exception of a small break of light streaming from behind the drapes that hung on the great windows that guided Jamison to a large chest up against the wall in the center of the room.

Jamison went straight for the center drawer of that chest, he opened it and pushed around a few of the objects that were inside. He knew what he was looking for, it did't take long for him to find it. He pushed over a few more objects when he found it: the shiny black pine box with the ruby encrusted crucifix in the center that held a pistol and 5 silver bullets. Jamison opened the box and looked at the carvings and the silver bullets. He carefully pulled out each of the bullets from their velvety bed and plugged them into the pistol.

Once the gun was loaded he slowly walked out of the study and into the hallway that lead to the first floor foyer. Jamison slowly walked up the red carpeted stairs, quiet and confident with the gun in his hand. Step by step, closer and closer to the nursery where Claudia, Vickie and Kat, who was possessing Catherine's body, were talking of the plan to escape. He slowly pushed open the slightly ajar door and pointed the gun at them.

"There's no place for any of you here." Jamison said in a cold voice.

"Jamison! What are you doing?" Kat said in Catherine's voice.

"Shut up demon! I know what you are. Shut up!" Jamison screamed as  he pointed the gun at his wife Catherine's body knowing full well the body was her's but the mind was Kat's from 2016.

"Mr. Collins what are you doing?" Vickie said with her hands up in front of her acting as a buffer from the pointed gun.

"I heard what you three witches were planning. I heard what you wanted to do, and I know what you've done to my wife's body. You've taken her hostage, and I have no doubt that monster Barnabas is behind all of this. I heard everything this devil inside my wife said." Jamison said with tears in his eyes.

"We can explain everything, and we can fix it all if you just give us some time to do so, sir. " Claudia said trying to buy some time.

"I knew from the moment you came here that something wasn't right. I knew from the moment the devil Barnabas walked into this house he would only bring death and sorry. I saw it all, and now my mother-in-law is dead and buried in some grave in the woods. Well, it stops here...move...go, all of you." Jamison motioned for the women to go in front of him as the gun was still pointed at them.

"But the children?" Claudia said noting the two babies, Elizabeth and Canan would be alone.

"I'll come back from my child, the boy can rot." He answered cruelly. "Now move!" He yelled again.

The three women walked slowly and silently out of the nursery. Only the sound of their rustling lace and rayon dresses scratching as they walked down the main staircase with their hands in the air.

"Keep going and turn left at the staircase and walk through the door at the end of the hall." Jamison ordered.

Claudia took a deep breath, she knew where that door led.

They followed his instructions and continued through the door that lead down a winding stone staircase all the way to the bottom levels of Collinwood. It was cold and damp, rats scattered on the floorboards below as Jamison turned on the one single light bulb from the top of the staircase.

"Jamison what are going to do?"  Kat asked holding herself close to keep warm.

"Ask me another question devil, and I'll kill that baby boy of yours." He answered with a chilling voice.

"Please don't hurt him, please. I'll do anything to keep him safe. Do what you want to me, but leave the boy, please." Kat pleaded inside Catherine's voice.

"Whatever you are, spirit, witch, you're in my wife's body, I can't hurt her. But your boy...he's the spawn of something evil. Whatever you are,  now shut up and get down there." Jaimson ordered as Kat followed the other two women, Vickie and Claudia, down the stone staircase.

As the three women huddled together at the bottom of the staircase, Jamison followed in and pointed the gun towards the back of the room that was dark. they walked forward and as they got closer to the back they saw what looked like a built in cage with what looked like hundreds of loose bricks settled all around the opening of the cell.

"Get in." Jamison motioned to the three women with his pistol.

The three women obliged and Jamison closed and locked the three women inside.

"Did you build this?" Claudia asked.

"A long time ago I dreamed that I would need some kind of cell in this house. There are too many people who wish our family ill and want to hurt us. Had someone come here to hurt us and I overpowered them I needed a place to put them....town is too far away and the authorities would probably appreciate that I had a place to confine assailants.

"You made your own jail cell?" Vickie asked in bewilderment.

"It's obviously come in handy." Jamison said with a snicker. "Now....eventually that monster will come looking for you. And when he does, I'll be ready for him with this." Jamison said talking about the pistol.

"Jamison you don't understand, we want to leave you here in peace with your wife and daughter. We want you to be like you were without us here. But we can't do that if you trap us here." Victoria explained.

"None of you are leaving here. None of you, you can believe that. I'll figure out a way to get my wife's mind back but, as far as you two...you're not leaving this cell alive. And when Barnabas comes for you I have a silver bullet in this gun with  his name on it. The demon will perish and save the Collins family from years of darkness and evil." Jamison said with a cold look in his eyes.

He turned around and slowly made his way back up the staircase closed and locked the door behind him leaving Claudia, Victoria and Kat locked inside the secret cell underneath Collinwood.

"Now what?" Claudia asked.

"Now.....we plan to die." Vickie said cryptically.

****

In 1920 the old Collinwood mansion stood in disrepair next to the gorgeous new house where the family lived. It had been left dilapidated and ignored since the late 1850s, but Barnabas found a dark place to rest until night fell. Jamison could feel him. Jamison could sense him. It was a gnawing feeling in his stomach. It was a ripping sension in his mind that Barnabas lay in sleep inside the darkest corners of the old house during in the dark just wait for the right moment to awaken and make  his move.

Jamison could no wait for Barnabas to waken, he needed to find him first.

Jamison trenched through the fresh December snow in the short walk from the new house to the old house. His shoes seeping with ice cold melted froth. His impatience made him determined to kill Barnabas before he could strike. He was going to place one of those silver bullets square in the head of who he thought was a demon sent from the depths of hell to destroy his family.

Jamison entered the old  house through the broken front door that had been resting on a single hinge. He slowly made his way through the foyer and looked into what used to be the main drawing room. The painting of Josette hung over the hearth covered in dust and webs stared down at Jamison with eyes of anger and resentment.

With his gun pointed and ready to strike at any moment Jamison checked every single room he could think of to find the sleeping Barnabas. Finally he made his way to the back of the house where there was door that lead to a dark basement. There is where he would find the one he wanted dead, he could feel Barnabas getting closer and closer as he went closer and closer to the door.

Jamison slowly descended the staircase and walked slowly into the basement that was lit by thousands of candles. In the center of the room an old broken, damaged coffin Barnabas must have found in an old grave-site. It sat in the the center of the room with old paintings, old furniture, old crates of family knickknacks.

"You will haunt this family no more, Barnabas Collins. I will free us from your evil and from your curse once and for all." Jamison said as she slowly opened the coffin revealing the sleeping Barnabas.

Jamison pointed the gun at Barnabas' head ready to shoot him with a single silver bullet ending the curse of the Collins family forever.

Series 6/Chapter 9: TRUTH IN THE MIRROR

**COLLINWOOD 1920**

The morning frost crowned the trees and gray grass across the wet and marshy front lawn of the great house of Collinwood. Inside two women shared one body one from this time, and one from the future, her purpose to find her kidnapped child and bring him back to 2016.

Claudia carefully walked up the main staircase with a tray of small dishes that had little breakfast treats for the two babies in the house: Catherine and Jamison's infant daughter Elizabeth, and Kat and Caleb's son from the future, Canan. In her ankle length brown skirt and striped cotton button-up shirt, Claudia made her way up to the nursery to start the day.

Claudia carefully turned the corner at the top of the stairs and quietly made her way down the hallway to the shared nurseries of Elizabeth and Canan. She turned around and pushed the slightly opened door wider with her backside. Claudia turned around, and there was Kat, in Catherine's body holding Canan.

"Mrs. Collins? Good morning, What are you doing in here?" Claudia asked as she put down the small breakfast tray not realized the body possession. 

"I needed to see him. He's so beautiful." Kat said, in Catherine's voice and tears in her eyes.

"Here let me take him for you." Claudia said as she reached for the baby.

"NO! Stay back!!" Kat yelled to Claudia's surprise. "I'm sorry, I just heard him crying and I came in to help."  Kat followed up trying to continue not to blow her cover or act suspicious.

Catherine's demeanor had obviously changed, and Claudia being the conniver and body invader she was, once possessing Alexandra's body in 2016, could tell something was a miss

"Good morning." Vickie said as she too entered the room.

"You." Kat growled in Catherine's voice towards Vickie, the woman who kidnapped her child to 1920.

"Good morning." Vickie said again, this time in a more confused tone to Catherine.

"Good mornign mother." Claudia responded to Vickie who was still under the guise as Claudia's wayward widowed mother. "Mrs. Collins has kindly taken Canan up, he was crying and she heard him. Wasn't that nice of her mother?" Claudia continued in a strange manner as if to warn her that something odd was going on.

"Oh! How very nice, yes, thank you Mrs Coll--" Vickie began before being interrupted by Kat.

"Alright, enough!" Kat said putting baby Canan down in the crib in a fed up tone. "We don't have to play these games anymore. I know who you are. I know you're not mother and daughter and I know this child doesn't belong here. Where's Barnabas?" Kat said in Catherine's voice to the shocked pair.

"What are you talking about?" Claudia hissed as she walked closer to Catherine.

Catherine pushed Claudia aside and walked over to a large white vanity mirror in the nursery and stood in front of it, to the surprise and shock of Claudia and Vickie, the angry, seething reflection looking back was Canan's real mother, Kat Banning of 2016.

"Kat! How ...how can you be here?" Gasped Vickie with  her hand over her mouth.

"It doesn't matter now, all that matters is that we get my child home, just like Barnabas said he would, now where is he?" Kat asked through the reflection.

Vickie took a deep breath. She knew she couldn't hold in what she and  Barnabas did the night before. Someone had to know, and if she was turning a new leaf, Vickie new she could no longer be the barer of Barnabas' secrets.

Vickie began to tell Claudia and Kat that the night before Barnabas had killed Jacqueleen and that she had helped him bury her body in the woods. Now they had to cover it up and tell Jamison that Barnabas and Jacqueleen had eloped together so that no one would go looking for Jacqueleen. It was a plan that Barnabas came up with, a plan that no one knew would hold water especially if people started to snoop around--mainly Jamison who seemed a bit off his rocker.

Kat wasn't having any of it. She was fed up with the way Barnabas and now Vickie were handling the situation. Everone in 2016 had been waiting and now that she was in 1920 with them all, Kat felt their priorities were mixed up. Little did she know it was a lot harder to get back to the future as it looked.

"We have to get my child to the site of Sea View Cottage where this all started, and we have to do it as soon as possible. I won't be in Catherine's body for long." Kat said as she walked over in Catherine's body back to the crib where her son lay.

"What do we do about Barnabas? Do we bring him along?" Vickie asked as she picked up a crying Elizabeth.

"What do you mean 'we'? I don't think I want to see your face in Collinwood every again Victoria, as far as I'm concerned, you can stay here and live out the rest of your life. You kidnapped my child and took brought him into danger....What you've done is ..." Kat scolded before Vickie interrupted.

"Kat, listen to me! I'm sorry for everything I've done, if I could take it back I would. I realize now what a horrible thing it was and how much of what I was doing was based on a lie. I should never have hurt you and Caleb this way. I'll do whatever I can to get Canan back to 2016, and to his family. I was wrong." Vickie confused.

Kat took a breath, her detective instict to tell a lie from the truth kicked in. She could sense Vickie was telling her the truth. Whatever had transpired in 1920 over the past few weeks had cleared Vickie's head and she now saw the truth of her actions. And to Kat, that had to be worth something.

"So? What about Barnabas?" Claudia asked.

"If Barnabas can somehow escape what he's done to Jacqueleen unscathed he'll certainly have to figure it out himself, I won't beg him to come along, that's for sure. At this point his sins are his to bare and the three of us need to figure out a way out of this ourselves. Murder was never a part of the deal. I just want my son back." Kat said.


As the three women talked in the nursery Jamison stood in the hallway listening to the entire thing. His eyes watered. His mind raced. He knew, his premonitions were true, and Barnabas and the rest of these women had to die for what they'd done.

****

COLLINWOOD, PRESENT TIME
****

Kimberly sat calmly in the study while a roaring fire lit the room just before the afternoon sun broke through an overcast sky. She flicked through pages of a novel of a far off land where nothing ever ended badly. It was her only escape from what was happening in her real life: Her dead sister haunting her and constantly forcing her to do unspeakable medical experiments on a David Collins, the man she once loved, without his knowledge. The constant betrayal was eating at Kim alive.

David's DNA had been altered and mixed with that of a liken, or werewolf, just like Christopher's had yet David's experiments had not been as successful. He had never once turned into the wolf that Joanna and Kim plotted to use against the Collins family to kill them. It was a plan Kim and Joanna had planned behind  "The Organization's" back when they worked for Vickie in the great take-down of the Collins family. The take down that never materialized. 

Vickie's motive was revenge on the family that she felt had abandoned her, Joanna and Kim wanted Collins money and Collins power. 

Throughout both Chris' and David's trials of DNA tampering, only Chris' had been successful, but Joanna was just as determined in death as she was alive and Kim's guilt over Joanna's murder by the hands of Barnabas was what drove her to oblige the evil spirit. 

As she read quietly Christopher and Caleb came into the room, armed with the files on David that Chris found in the lab ready to expose their mother for what she was doing, and hope that she would stop whatever treatments on David and end the insanity forever, both men believing the secret DNA tests were the culprit for David's angry outbursts and terrible behavior. 

Caleb walked in ahead of Christopher and slapped the files Chris found on the coffee table in front of Kimberly. 

"Missing anything?" Caleb said smugly as Kim calmly lifted her eyes from her book to the coffee table.

"I can't say I haven't been expecting this." Kim signed in reply pulling out Chris' lighter that she found on the floor of her office. "When you're sneaking into someone's office it's probably best not to leave any evidence behind that you were there." 

"You're upset that someone went behind your back to find out the truth? It doesn't feel very good, does it? After everything we've all been through, mother, how could you do this to dad? All along you've been the one behind it all haven't you? You're the reason he was taken to Windcliff, and for what? These treatments? Why? Why did you do this?" Caleb demanded to know.

"You have to understand where I'm coming from, both of you do. There's something....someone who won't let me stop. It's Joanna." Kim answered putting down her book and grabbing the files.

"Joanna? What are you talking about? She's dead." Caleb responded.

"That's who I saw in your office last night, wasn't it? That's who grabbed my lighter. Is Joanna still here...is she still ...around?" Christopher said now stepping into the conversation.

"She's been controlling me all my life and now even though she's gone she feels more powerful than ever. It's almost like I can't say no to her." Kim explained.

"You have to. You cannot allow her to control you anymore, for the sake of our family you have to understand and stop all of this. I need you right now mother, I need you be there for me more than ever. My child is missing, Kat has been depressed and she didn't even stay at home last night. I need my mom to be there for me and not out trying to sabotage what normal relationship we have. Can you do that?" Caleb asked as Chris sat down next their mother and put his hand on her shoulder.

"There has to be a way that you can fix this mom! You don't have to be a slave to Joanna any longer. She's gone....let her go." Chris said sympathetically.

"If Dad doesnt start coming back to normal, I feel he can jeopardize the baby's return. He's already said to me that he thinks it's better Barnabas doesn't come back --which means my baby wont come back. It's so unlike him! I need him back to normal! I need you back to normal! I need my family!" Caleb said with tears in his eyes begging for his mother, the doctor, the scientist, to understand.

"It's now or never." Chris added.

Kim took a breath and looked at  both her sons. She remembered how hard it was leaving Caleb when he was a young boy and the guild she never let go of, she remembered being manipulated by Vickie, Joanna and Chris' father Victor Reed under the organization to do terrible things to the Collins family including having David kidnapped and imprisoned at  Windcliff 20 years ago and how she agreed to change Chris' DNA. The guilt, the pain, it all had to end.

A tear feel from her eye and rolled down her cheek staining the page of the book she was reading. Her boys still loved her no matter the terrible things she had done to them and David.

"I'll give your father the serum to dissolve the liken DNA inside of him to end it. I will.... It's the same serum that we gave Chris that ended his transformations too. I'll do it!" Kim promised as Chris scooped her up and hugged her tightly.

Caleb smiled and felt a confidence inside himself, something her not felt in over 20 years. Kim had been an absentee mom to him the divorced from David and disappeared to work in other territories for the Organization, his trust towards her had always been shaky, unit this very moment.

****

The wall of a quiet parlor inside the great mansion slid open revealing a secret passage into the house from the outside. A cool breeze filled the room and from that secret passage within the walls stood the sorcerer Nicholas Blair. His obsession with finding his mother and taking Alexandra back to the underworld just as his father Nicholas Sr. tried with Maggie Evans had reached a fever pitch. Nicholas was on a mission and finding Maggie and Alexandra was the main objective.

Nicholas slid the secret door in the wall behind him and walked through the quiet parlor that lead into a darkened office room with big leather chairs and books adorning the walls and a dark pine desk at the end of the room in front of an over sized window that looked out on to the side pasture near the house.

"Looking for something?" A voice said from the chair that behind the desk that was facing the window.

Nicholas turned, startled that someone was in the room with him, and looked at the chair that slowly turned around to face him revealing Maggie Evans sitting proudly, like a queen staring directly at the son she never knew had been created using her body. She had returned at the request of Carolyn and David to end Nicholas' plot to finish the evil work his father once started years ago.

Nicholas's eyes zeroed in on Maggie, he had an almost euphoric feeling rush over his body at the site of her. It was as if part of his plan had just fallen into his lap, like a gift from the devil himself. He was now face to face with the mother he always knew he had.

Maggie had been taken by David and Carolyn from the safety of Windcliff Sanitarium the night before. She knew her old friends needed her now more than ever and if anyone was going to stop whatever Nicholas was plotting for Alexandra, it was going to be Maggie. She stood up from the chair, stoic and regal and walked over to her bastard son with an icy look on her face. She was not going to allow anyone else to take whatever years she had left from her. Even if they were blood related.

The terrorizing of Maggie Evans was going to end-- today!

"You shouldn't be here. You should have never come here. Whatever you've planned, whatever you want to do....don't. Just stop and go on with your own life whatever that may be, but the people here at Collinwood want nothing to do with you. Go." Maggie stated sternly.

"I have a mission, something that has been engraved in me until I reached this age. You don't know how long I've been searching for you and for someone like Alexandra to fulfill that mission. The two of you are the key to a salvation that will bring a new world order...you can be like a queen, father made you his queen. Don't you remember?" Nicholas asked as he stepped closer to his mother Maggie.

"Your father Nicholas Sr, only wanted to control people and their lives for his own pleasure. There was nothing good in that...only for himself. Don't make that same mistake. You're half human Nicky. You can rise above all of that if you just give it up. I can help you do that if you want." Maggie said stepping back away from Nicholas and offering an olive branch.

"Why would I want to that? Father has promised me everything if I brought you back to him and a bride back for myself. It's perfect." Nicholas answered.

"No, Nicky, it's not. Your soul was stolen from my body, that is not perfect. Your life-force was taken from me and given to someone else to birth and raise in an evil, dark, twisted way to believe the that forces of evil are more important than those of love and good. Had I raised you myself, as my son, I would have shown you that though there is darkness all around us, the forces of good always prevail. This is what you should know. This is what you should feel inside you." Maggie explained thoughtfully.

"You aren't swayed by what father can offer you?" Nicholas asked with an eyebrow raised. "You aren't at all curious at all of the things you can  have if you just come with me back to him? You and Alexandra can have anything you want, just give yourselves to me and father and you'll see." He added.

"Nicky...that is not the way of the world. You must go. You must never come back here." Maggie said.

Nicholas' eyes felt a twinge of sorrow, his birth mother was in a way dismissing him, pushing him away and something in him started to break.

"That will be impossible." He said in a darker and angry tone of voice. "I cannot go back to father without you and without a bride for myself. You know what lay ahead for me if I do so and do not comply with father. There's no question, mother, you must come with me." Nicholas said as he reached for Maggie's arm and grabbed it.

Nicholas grabbed her arm forcefully and began to pull at her, she screamed and Nicholas became more forceful and pulled her in close and turned her around then covered her mouth.

"Maggie Evans you will come with me!" He said with a dark look in his eyes.

Just as Nicholas began to drag her to the secret passage a light started to filter out of Maggie, a light that scattered all round her body like in small electrical pulses that began to twist and turn around her arms and legs, neck and face and as they got brighter and brighter they became hotter and hotter scolding Nicholas's skin burning his hands so much that he released Maggie from his clutches, only to see that Maggie was slowly turning into Alexandra  who was used her power of shape-shifting. She had turned herself into Maggie.

"Trickery!" Nickolas said as Alex stood in front of him catching her breath.

Nicholas lunged at the terrified Alex but she quickly moved out of the way, and Nicholas fell to the floor empty handed.

"STAY AWAY FROM HER!" A voice said from an adjoining door just off the side.

Nicholas and Alex turned their heads and standing there walking into the room was the real Maggie Evans, with Carolyn and David behind her.

Carolyn rushed over and pulled Alex away from Nicholas as David pulled a gun up from his side and pointed it at Nicholas.

"What is this? Mother....sweet kind Maggie Evans has a bit of mischief inside of her. You know that all I want is for us to be a family. You and father, me and Alex. That's all this is." Nicholas loosely explained.

"Everything you heard that came from Alex's mouth was my actual voice Nicholas. Everything that was said is the truth. You cannot stay here and believe you will survive. This place, this time, is not yours. You are not of this earth." Maggie continued to explain. "I BANISH YOU BACK!" Maggie screamed as she lifted her arm towards Nicholas and closed her eyes.

"You can't do that!" Nicholas said just before the house began to shake.

Nicholas' dark veneer began to crack, the powers of darkness began to lose their grip over his presence. The room began to shake, the wind began to spill in from the outside in causing Alex, David, and Carolyn to fall to the floor and cover themselves from all the flying objects in the room. As the wind of evil became more and more intense it began to rip at Maggie's clothes and blow her hair back as if she were standing in a powerful hurricane. She knew this was her time to make sure the grip the devil had over Nicholas and her was once and for all removed.

"This is your chance, Nicky, this is where you get to release yourself from everything that has you chained in evil and find your own way, no one, not even your father has that much control over you. Renounce him!" Maggie screamed over the blowing of the evil winds.

Nicholas closed his eyes, his mind became clouded with demons and darkness flooding his brain like they were raised from the depths of hell to come back for him because of his failure to take Maggie and Alex back with him. Nicholas fell screaming to the ground covering his eyes. The horrors of the visions of evil were coming for him like hungry wolves for their prey, and Nicholas screamed trying everything in his power to not be taken in by the demons set to retrieve him.

"Fight back Nicky, you're half human. You can have a life too, a real one with love and laughter. You have to rid yourself of the spell the devil has placed upon you. You can do this!!" Maggie screamed over the wild wind.

Nicholas screamed louder and louder, a pain that was ripping as his mind and body and when he could not scream any more a loud burst of energy exploded from his chest blowing Maggie to the ground and causing the wind to suddenly stop.

Maggie, David, Alex and Carolyn were knocked out leaving them on the floor of the study covered in the room's debris. As they came to Nicholas was gone.

"What happened?" Carolyn asked as she helped her daughter Alexandra up from the floor.

"Is he gone?" David asked still pointing the gun around.

"He's gone." Maggie said solemnly.

"Maggie, are you ok?" Carolyn asked noticing her friend seemed sad and suddenly withdrawn.

"He's gone." Maggie said softly. "I can't help but feel like something in me too was taken." Maggie answered, a single tear falling from her warm eyes.

"What you did has saved us all Maggie. It was courageous and strong.  What you did was something 50 years in the making. You've taken your power back. You have no need to hide anymore." David said as he hugged his friend.

Maggie smiled a half smile and hugged David back. Carolyn reached over and hugged Alexandra too. For now, the house was quiet. The world seemed half adjusted, but the world never stands still for a second and what was coming would test them all one more time.

Series 6/Chapter 8: SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

The night became later and later. And as the stars hung in the cloudy East coast sky, like tiny specks of sea glass twinkling in the distant blackness of space, a pair of cousins made their way to Windcliff Sanitarium to help find an old friend who's world was about to change forever. 

David and Carolyn arrived at Windcliff Sanitarium in the middle of the night hoping to capitalize on the lack of staffing in the late hour so that they could maneuver through the halls and hopefully locate Maggie Evans who had been hiding at the hospital for over 30 years under the name Rose Glassburg. Rose Glassburg was a patient who died at Windcliff in 1998, the same year Maggie switched medical bracelets with her to conceal her identity after Rose died.

For Maggie, Windcliff was a sanctuary away from the evils of Collinsport and a safe haven from the one she feared most: Barnabas Collins. Barnabas had take so much of her life in the past. What Maggie didn't know was that another monster from her past had done something to her years ago as well; something she thought was all just a terrible dream...a nightmare. 

Maggie became the mother to Nicholas Blair's child through a twisted devilish spell he placed on her during their Black Mass wedding. He took hostage the sanctity and innocence of her womb  and mixed in his evil DNA. The child, born via a surrogate mother, was Nicholas Blair JR, who had come back to Collinsport to find   his own bride and his biological mother Maggie and to finish off the Collins family, just as his father attempted 50 years ago.

Maggie was the key to Nicholas' undoing, she was the only person who could save Alexandra from pure calamity if Nicholas got his hands on her, the same way his father did to Maggie so many years ago. This was something Carolyn was losing sleep over. 

Carolyn and David needed to find Maggie and needed to warn her. It was the best way to make sure Nicholas didn't get a hold of his mother and begin what was sure to be a disastrous set of events.

"Are you going to be ok?" Carolyn asked as she and David got out of the car, she bundled up in an elegant flannel cape, David in a thick jacket and scarf.

"It's weird to be back here, but if Maggie is still here we have to make sure she's safe. She helped me escape this place....I owe her." David said putting his arm around his beloved cousin Carolyn as they made their way up to entrance. 

"You don't have to go in. I can do this on my own, David. If you're not up to it..." Carolyn responded with concern before David interrupted.

"I'm fine. I can do this." David snapped.

The two walked up to the door and looked inside, no one was around. The hall was empty and there were no nurses around. David looked over at Carolyn and nodded at her to signal that he was about to open the door, Carolyn took a deep breath and prepared herself. Windcliff was not a place she held in high regard. Many of her family members had suffered metal breaks and had come to Windcliff to recover.

David pulled the door opened and the whiff and stench of unwashed sheets and soiled bodies hit David and Carolyn like a ton of bricks. The walls were still their yellow dingy color, the floors still stained with years of gunk from shoes of a thousand visitors. The florescent lights flickered on and off and on and off creating a flashing effect that tormented their eyes as they slowly and quietly made their way down the main hallway towards the empty reception desk.

"This way." David whispered as he grabbed Carolyn by the arm and took her down an adjacent hallway to continue to search for Maggie.

"Do you remember which room was hers?" Carolyn asked looked around her surroundings with and a buzzing sound interrupting her sentence from the lights above.

"This way." David whispered back. 

The continued down the new hall that was just as dingy and vial as the last. David kept hold of Carolyn the whole time knowing exactly where he first saw Maggie when they were both trapped there together. David's mind switched back and forth to memories of his time here. The sound of the lights flickering, the smells the taunting voices from the patients in their cells and Joanna's voice echoing in his mind during their many sessions of manipulative hypnosis to turn him against his own family.

"They've wanted you dead. They've wanted you gone. You're the one that should lead this family and yet you're here....they did this to you...." Echoed Joanna's voice in David's mind.

He shook his head and felt dizzy, small beads of sweat began to appear on his forehead.

"David...Daivd! Are you ok?" Carolyn asked squeezing his hand and forcing him to stop walking once she noticed.

"I said I'm fine. Come on, we have to find her before it's too late."

As the two continued to make their way down the hall, David still shook out all the haunting memories that continued to haunt him, making him feel uneasy, hot and dizzy.

"You don't look well, sweetie, we should go and come back in the day time." Carolyn said looking at David suffering.

"I'm fine...I'm..."

Just as David was finishing his sentence, he heard someone coming from the other end of the L shaped hallway. David and Carolyn stopped dead in their tracks, trapped and unable to open any of the doors around them. They stood in the center of the hall and prepared to be caught by an orderly or worse yet the attending physician  of the night.

"Shit..." David whispered.

And as the person came around the corner from the hall David felt a relief. It was the bald patient with the piercing blue eyes that had helped him and Maggie escape the hospital. She was still there.

"...hello.....do you remember me?" David whispered to the woman in her hospital gown.

The woman looked at David and gave him a crooked smile exposing her rotted teeth then walked over to him and put her hands over his face.

"You do." David confirmed for her. "We're looking for my friend. Do you remember her too?" He continued to question.

The woman removed her hands from David's face and stepped back and looked at Carolyn with disdain. She walked over to Carolyn and grabbed her hair and placed it closed to her face and began to smell  it.

"This is my cousin, we're both looking for our friend. Please, can you help us find her before someone comes." David said, as Carolyn stood frozen with fear.

The patient circled Carolyn some more poking and prodding, pulling and tugging.

"Miss, please he...help us." Carolyn said her body stiffening as the patient continued to look her over. "I don't know if she understand David." Carolyn said.

"No, she does, she's just fascinated by you. Miss, please we don't have much time and this is an emergency. Do you know what that means? Emergency? We have to find--" David said before the patient put her crooked and thin index finger over her lips, dirt and gunk were caked under her finger nail.

"Shhh." The patient said as she pointed the way around the bend in the hallway.

Carolyn finally took a breath and grabbed on to David's arm harder. She wasn't sure where the bald blue eyed' patient was going to take them but David seemed confident that where ever it was it would lead to Maggie.

They finally came to a well-lit part of the hallway where a door was open. The open door lead into a cell that belonged to the bald blue eyed patient who didn't speak. She stood in her own doorway then pointed to the cell across from hers.

"Friend." The patient muttered.

"Friend. Is my friend in here?" David asked.

The patient nodded nervously.

"Maggie.....Maggie, it's me. It's Carolyn, darling. Are you in there?" Carolyn asked as she rushed to the door. "Oh darling please open the door if you can. I hope you're there. We have to get you out of here." She continued.

"Friend. Friend. Friend." The bald patient said over and over.

"Maggie....can you hear us? Are you awake? Open the door." Carolyn asked again.

"Hear us!" The patient said again still standing nervously in her cell's doorway.

"Carolyn? Carolyn Stoddard?" A faint voice from the other side of the door said.

"Maggie!!! Maggie! You're there! You're alive!" Carolyn yelped, as David shushed her.

Maggie opened the dinner tray slot built into the door, David and Carolyn crouched down and looked in, and looking back at them from the other side of the door, where the soft green eyes of Maggie Evans. Alive and well.

"Maggie why are you locked in here? Why aren't you in one of the other rooms?" David questioned remembering that Maggie used to be able to walk freely around the hospital like most non-dangerous patients.

"When I came back after being with you David, they locked me in here for helping you escape. I haven't  been out since." Maggie said putting her hand outside the slot and touched his scarf.

"Oh god." David lamented. "You've been trapped in here all this time!"

"Honey, we have to get you out of here and to a safe place. Something terrible has happened and you're not safe here anymore." Carolyn said.

"This is the only place I am safe, this is the only place I've ever been safe. I can't leave." Maggie said straightforwardly.

"You don't understand Maggie, this is quite serious. We have some news for you, that you may not understand at first, but we believe it to be true. It's about Nicholas Blair. Years ago he did something to you...and......well Maggie..." David said stammering.

"You think I don't know? I know. I know everything that's ever happened to me. I've always felt there was a part of me taken away without my consent by that monster. So its come true, the nightmares I've had for years have finally come back for me." Maggie answered.

"He's searching for you. We're not sure how long we can keep him from here. We don't know what he's capable of either." David answered.

"We have to take you. You can hid at Collinwood." Carolyn said.

"Over my dead body. I will never go back to that place." Maggie hissed.

"Darling....I promise you from the bottom of my heart, we need to take you there and we can protect you. It's your only hope. Now, how do we get you out?" Carolyn asked.

As David and Carolyn stood in front of Maggie's cell a thin little arm poked through from between them. It was the bald patient's arm, in her skinny bony hand a set of keys.

David looked down at the hand and grabbed the keys and stood up from his crouched position looking into Maggie's cell.

"Are these the..?" David said grabbing the keys from her hand.

"Friend." The bald female patient said with a smile.

"Thank you." Carolyn whispered to her.

David quickly shoved the key through the lock and turned it easily opening the heavy door.

"Maggie.....please. Please come with us. We don't have much time. We think your son, Nicholas, wants to take Alexandra just like Nicholas Sr. took you." David confirmed.

"Alex is my daughter." Carolyn explained.

Maggie took a deep breath and turned around to face her old friends. She took a gulp of air and reached over to her small side table and grabbed a rosary from the top and squeezed it in her hand so hard it left the impression of the small crucifix in her skin.

"I don't want that. I need to end this too. All of it." Maggie said looking down at her hand with the rosary squeezed inside. "Alright. I'll go back with you. I'll help protect Alexandra from the Blairs." Maggie agreed.

David and Carolyn grabbed Maggie and quickly made their way through the winding halls hoping no one saw them. The bald patient walked back into the middle of the hall, her hand in her mouth, her teeth biting the tips of her nails.

She waved goodbye and whispered. "Friend." one last time.

****

In the woods just outside of Collinsport, the spell Ezrabette had placed over Kat was spinning around and around in a whirl of cold air that started to create icicles and frost across the ceiling.

Loomis looked on in terror as his friend and partner Detective Kat Banning began to shift from this, the present time, to the year 1920 in attempt to reach her son Canan that had been taken there by Victoria Winters in a cruel kidnapping. 

"Follow the lights of your ancestors child, follow them down the rabbit hole of time and space and find the mother. Find her and fill her with your light and soul. Bring your baby back to the land where this all begin, the land where Sea View Cottage will be built and the portal will open again...that is when you can come back home." Ezrabette instructed while holding Kat's hands and the spell began to take shape.

Kat fell back, her eyes turned white and the trans took over her whole body.

Loomis removed Kat's hands from Ezrabette's and picked her stiff body up and moved it over to a soft sofa and laid her down.

"Will she be ok?" Loomis asked concerned.

"She has no choice." Ezarabette cryptically responded. "This is what she wanted."

*** COLLINWOOD 1920***

In the dark of the night, the Collinwood mansion held a sense of anxiety and fear within its walls. The night fog surrounded the house so much that it looked as if a mote of low clouds enclosed the property like an isolated island. 

Jamison sat in a chair, stone silent and still contemplating the visions he was having. He was terrified of what they might mean for his family. He had a small child to think about and was worried that curse his family had upon it had finally reached him and his own.

Sleep began to creep into his body and Jamison started to close his eyes. The warmth of the fire roaring in the fire place in the drawing room began to warm all around him.

As soon as his eyes shut and sleep took over a white flash blared in Jamison's mind and the visions began again.

This time in dream form.

Jamison awoke in his dream standing on a cloudy moody night on the lands of Collinwood. He could smell the sea as if it were just under his nose. He could feel the freezing ocean air brush up on his rosy cheeks like the icy breath of the unknown. Just off into the distance in the forest that stood before him Jaimson could see to figures quickly darting into the woods.

He followed.

As he got closer and closer it made out the figures and saw what they were doing. They were digging.

"Who's there?" Jamison yelled towards the sound of digging as he began to make his way into the misty woods. "I ask you again, who goes there?!"

As Jamison's patent leather shoes carefully made its way through the wet soggy ground and through the brush the digging got louder and louder, dirt falling to the ground in large fluffy clumps. He continued to hear it non stop even after he asked the person digging to name themselves. Unsuccessfully.

Jamison continued to come closer and closer in his foggy dream and finally came across a clearing within the forest and saw a man in all black digging.

"You there! What are you doing? Who are you?" Jamison asked of the man in black.

The man, who's back was turned to Jamison, stopped digging and lifted his head and slowly turned in the direction of Jamison's voice. The night, fog and darkness within the trees obscured the face of the man blocking his identity from Jamison's view.

"I'll ask you one more time, who are you? This is my land and you..." Jamison began as the man in black turned completely around, shovel in hand and lunged at Jamison. Jamison screamed and turned quickly blocking his face and falling to the ground cowering in fear as the man in black suddenly burst into what seemed like hundreds of bats that sprayed across the tops of the tress of the forest.

Jamison's breathing swallowed and he opened his eyes. He was still in his dream. Once he got up from the ground he went forward to where the man in black was. There were leaves stuck to his clothes, dirt marked his face and over his lips where he fell. He was terrified and cursed the minute he fell asleep. As he stepped forwards, there, in front of him was an open grave bare and gaping, its edges covered in the autumn leaves that had fallen from above.

Jamison hesitated but knew he had to look inside. Something deep inside him told him to look into the grave.

"What is it." He whispered to himself.

He slowly peered his head over, a chilly breeze blew away the fog above the mouth of the grave and inside was the body of Jaqueleen Walsh. Cold and dead, her skin a pale translucent grey, her mouth slightly open with a small beetle crawling out.

Jamison screamed a loud and blood boiling scream that immediately woke him from his sleep in the drawling room inside Collinwood.

He took a few breaths and grabbed the half empty cup filled with brandy then got up from the chair and looked up at the portrait of Barnabas Collins that hung in the foyer.

"He is this darkness. I have to stop him." Jamison said.

Jamison quickly grabbed a letter opener from the top of a cherry wood writing desk that sat at the end of the drawing room table and dashed up the stairs to find Barnabas Collins ...and kill him.

Jamison went down the hall he opened every guest room door as he past. The rooms were all empty but that did not detour him. He continued to search for Barnabas. All he wanted to do was end the curse that he knew Barnabas was the key to. As he opened the doors to the darkened rooms, he saw from the corner of his eye a bright light beam come from the end of the long hallway. The light came in a quick flash from under a door, hid bedroom door.

"Catherine." Jamison said as he noticed it came from where his wife was in there sleeping.

Jamison abandoned the search for Barnabas and quickly dashed down the hall to the bedroom he shared with his wife and pushed the door open to investigate the bright flash of light he saw.

Catherine was standing at her window in her nightgown staring out on to the sea.

"Darling, are you ok? I saw something ...some kind of a light. What was it?" Jamison asked walking over to his wife the letter opener still in his hand, sharp and ready to cut Barnabas' throat.

"What? Oh...yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine, I just couldn't sleep." Catherine said as she pulled a silky robe from her chair to cover herself.

"What was that light?" He questioned.

"There was no light." She answered.

Jamison looked at her, he wasn't sure she was telling the truth but wasn't sure he even really saw a light in the first place. His mind after all, was scattered and stressed.

"Are you sure you're ok? I have a bad feeling about tonight. I know you think I'm too superstitious but, honey I feel like something is about to happen. Something wicked." Jamison said as he put his hands on her shoulders.

"Yes! I'm fine. Like I said just couldn't get to sleep. But I'm fine. You should try to get some sleep too, the rest will help wit the stress." Catherine said in a frustrated voice.

"You're right." Jamison answered.

"What are you doing with that letter opener? " Catherine asked noticing the refection of the candle light in the knife.

"Nothing, nothing. I just thought I heard something downstairs before I came in here. Something strange, I guess it goes with my paranoia." Jamison laughed. " I'll leave you to sleep now. I'll be back up in a little bit, just going to check up on Elizabeth. I'll be right back." Jamison said fibbing.

Once Jamison closed the door to his room, Catherine took a deep breath and sat back on her bed. She felt relieved he was gone. She felt the anxiety slowly dissolve out of her body but knew it would return, because deep inside of her she was no longer Catherine Collins.

Ezrabette's spell had worked.

Catherine walked over to a mirror and looked in. The reflection looking back at her was Kat Banning from 2016.

****

In the dark of the night Barnabas and Vickie made their way through the forest just outside of Collinwood, Vickie led them into the forest with a lantern and a shovel and Barnabas carried the body of Jacqueleen Walsh.

The made their way slowly and cautiously through the night until the made it to an opening in the forest. A small area that was mostly grass and leaves. 

"Here. We'll do it here." Barnabas said.

Vickie put down the lantern on a log and Barnabas put down Jacqueleen's body and grabbed the shovel from Vickie's hands.

He began to dig slowly and meticulously into the cold hard earth creating a small grave for his victim.

"Why did you have to do this? Why did you have to take her life?" Vickie said tears in her eyes and shivering in the cold.

"Victoria, you of all people know that this is the last thing I want to do. But I had no choice. There is a nature inside of me that comes like the night; dark and cold and I cannot control it. Jacqueleen was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Think of her as a martyr. Because  he life was taken, other's will be spared." Barnabas explained.

"It's sick. You're sick." Vickie said in a hushed tone.

"I wouldn't expect you to think anything else of me. You're mortal. You understand the world through the eyes of someone who has never seen the other side ...the side behind the veil." Barnabas said.

"But haven't I? You took me there more times than I care to remember Barnabas. You took me behind the veil and I almost died as a result. For almost 50 years I did everything in my power to stop those like you only to realize that it was all a lie. And now, because of my failure Jacqueleen is dead." Vickie said in tears.

"Victoria that's enough. We can't go through this argument again. We have to figure out what we are going to tell the family once they realize Jacqueleen is gone." Barnabas said grabbing hold of Vickie's shoulders to bring her back to the case at hand.

"Hide. You have to hide. In the basement, in the old house where ever but you cannot come back to the main house at Collinwood. I'll say that you and Jacqueleen ran off together to New York, you've both fallen in love and that I caught you two together." Vickie answered.

"Do you think they'll believe it?" Barnabas questioned.

"They'll have to. They'll be no other evidence to prove otherwise. Now.....put her in the grave and.....lets go. I have to hide her things once I get back" Vickie said as her words became difficult to leave her mouth.

"Love....the most dangerous emotion in all humanity. Men have gone to war for love, lost their lives for love and all I can seem to do is cause the opposite. The ones I love die and I remain. A stone relic of what I was, poisoned and cursed to be on this earth, in one for or another forced to watch how love will forever allude me." Barnabas said, his breath coming from his mouth like a tiny clouds of icy cold air. 

Vickie wrapped her arms around herself shielding herself from the bitter Collinwood autumn air. She walked up to Barnabas and looked him in the eye. She could see there was still a small put of humanity in him even if she wanted to believe it was all fake, a sort of act that he would put on just to confuse those of the living world. 

"I want to believe you. I really do, Barnabas, but there's always a way out of this place. And you know how to make sure you'd stop the suffering and break the curse. But you know deep inside, you cannot. Your grasp on this place is stronger than any love the world as ever seen." Vickie responded.

Barnabas lifted an eye brown, astonished at Vickie's candor. 

Barnabas turned slowly and carefully put Jacqueleen in the grave he had just dug. As she lay there silently in death, dirt from Barnabas' shovel began to fall on top of her white flowing gown that was delicately beaded with pearls across the shoulders and down the back. 

Once Jacqueleen had been covered completely Vickie and Barnabas grabbed the shovel and lantern and made their way back to Collinwood where Barnabas would hide in the dilapidated old house of 1920 and Vickie would go into Jacqueleen's room and hide some of her clothes creating the lie that she had run off with Barnabas, like to fools in love. 

Down in a cold dark grave, the dirt clung to Jacqueleen's white dress wet and heavy. Her body lay with its arms across her chest.

And suddenly like the flick of a wrist, Jacqueleen's eyes opened.

Series 6/Chapter 7: ONCE BITTEN

The moon hung high in the brisk autumn sky above Collinsport. A soft wind blew through the skeleton trees devoid of all their summer leaves. A small blue car turned slowly on a rural road, careful of every winding curve that lead it to Ezrabette's small house hidden in the finger-like shadows of the trees.

It was Kat heading for her midnight rendezvous with the voodoo mystic, but she wasn't alone.

As Kat popped out of her car onto the frost bitten grass drive way at Ezrabette's home, headlights of another car suddenly blared blinding Kat as she turned to look and see who was there. She shaded her eyes and stared in the direction of the headlights as the silhouette of a tall person came closer and closer. Kat slowly backed away unsure of who might be there watching her and as she continued to squint in the person's direction the person stood in front of the lights blocking the brightness.

It was Kat's detective partner Loomis McGovern.


"Loo! Jesus, you scared me half to death, what are you doing here?" Kat said shoving Loomis in the chest.

"I should ask you the same thing. It's probably safe to say you'd agree that it's strange for a woman to be in the middle of no where in the middle of the night alone." Loomis answered.

"I can take care of myself, I don't need you watching over me like this." Kat said, the chilly air freezing her breath into a white steam as it exited her mouth.

"Does Caleb know you're out here? Does he know what you're doing?" Loomis questioned.

"No, and I don't have to tell him everything I do. Besides I don't know he would understand." She answered.

"Understand what?" Loomis questioned.

"Loo...get back in your car and go home, ok?" Kat answered with a brush off.

"You broke your promise to me." Loomis said. "You said you'd come to me as soon as you had more answers about where your baby went, and I have a feeling you already have an idea and have decided not to tell me. Our deal was that you'd let me know as soon as you knew Kat, what the hell is going on!! What are you doing here?" Loomis exclaimed.

"Listen I know what I told you but I have nothing to report back I can't..." Kat began before being interrupted.

"I don't believe you, and I'm your partner. You've put me in a really bad spot here with the prescient. How can we have this partnership if I can't trust you?" Loomis asked angrily. "I followed you here earlier too. Who lives here? Do they know where your kid is?" He continued his questioning.

Kat was furious that Loomis had followed her. She turned around in frustration and anger and looked off to Ezrabette's house only wanting to run off into the house to leave Loomis there in the cold. She knew the clock was ticking and that they only had a few more minutes before midnight. The window of time was closing.

"Loomis! Just shut up!! If you want to know what's going on come inside with me. I don't have much time to explain anything but once we're inside you'll understand." Kat said grabbing Loomis by the hand and dragging him off to the front porch.

As the two detectives walked up to the door, it was already open, but the screen door was closed and Kat and Loomis could see inside the house. It was dark and only lit by candles all over the front room floor. It was like the inside of a great cathedral lit from top to bottom by candle light.

Sitting in the back of the front room at a table drenched in lace was the Voodoo mystic Kat's mother trusted most: Her best friend Ezrabette Baptiste.

"Come in child." Ezrabette said from the dimmed room.

"What the hell?" Loomis whispered as he and Kat walked inside the house filled with candles.

"You've brought a friend. He does  not believe ma cher...this could be problematic." Ezrabette stated.

"You came to some...some...witch doctor? Kat, really??" Loomis said.

"Witch doctor? Child, your mouth talks loud but your heart speaks volumes, I aint no witch doctor. But you know that deep inside. You've seen this before too, haven't you mon petite." Ezrabette said through the muffle of her black veil.

"Ezrabette has promised me that she could get me to my child, and I believe her. The problem is now, you have to believe her. If you don't this wont work. The energy in the room must be of the realm of belief." Kat explained.

"Time is clicking away and we haven't much more, sit down. We must begin." Ezrabette said.

"What is she going to do?" Loomis said faintly confused by the woman in front of him.

Ezrabette had covered her hair with a lace veil of black to match her black dress. She was completely covered in black from the tips of her fingers to the bottoms of her shoes, like a widow at her husband's funeral.

"We're going to find my child. Ezrabette is a medium, not a witch doctor, and she is going to channel all of her energy so that we can find him." Kat explained as she sat down at the table.

"You're kidding?" Loomis said in doubt.

"Loomis shut the hell up and don't say another word. This is all I have at this point and if you ruin this for me..." Kat said leaving her sentence unfinished  as she was afraid of where her anger would take her.

"As the lights of the candles begin to melt the wax, so goes time and space; slow and steady away from the hot flame of life that burns. Kathryn...give me your hands." Ezrabette began, Kat complied. "Winds of time, light of life complete the story of this woman's strife. A child's will has been usurped, where has he been taken? Where has he gone?" Ezrabette continued.

A flow of air swirled through the room chilling every inch of anyone's exposed skin. Loomis looked around, his eyes wide as saucers watching each flicker of candle light. He then looked over at Ezrabette and began to see the lace veil blow in the breeze. The breeze began to intensify and the veil over Ezrabette lifted revealing her eyes as white as snow without irises.

"My god!!" Loomis screamed.

Kat kept her eyes closed and held on to Ezrabette's hands as the breeze inside the room turned in a wind. It blew and flowed over their bodies like a tiny tornado flushing the cold air around and around extinguishing the candles all over the room and as Loomis looked over at Kat she opened her eyes. Loomis jumped back at the sight of Kat, she was under a trance, her eyes had turned to completely white just like Ezrabette's. Kat had gone into a time warp. Her body was in 2016, but her mind and soul had flown out and gone in search of her baby in 1920.

****

As Kat and Loomis met with Ezrabette in the thick fog in the forests outside town, Christopher was quietly making his way back into Collinwood after staying out much of the evening. He knew that as the night progressed he would soon be able to sneak into Kimberly's files and make good on his promise to his half brother Caleb in retrieving what they needed to find out what was really bothering David.

The clock struck 1am, and the bell of the great grandfather clock sang through The Blue room just outside the main drawing room. Christopher walked slowly down the hallway towards Kim's lab and was careful to make the least amount of noise possible, hopefully keeping quiet enough so no one would know what he was up to.

He continued on his way past several other rooms in the great house. The electric candelabras were shining an orange light dimly throughout the hallway illuminating a shadowy glow on the faces of the portraits that hung on the wall. Christopher looked at each face as he passed the portraits, his eyes keeping focus on each of the painting's eyes...he swallowed a small gulp, a nervous tickle at the back of his throat.

It didn't take long, but he finally arrived at Kim's office. He took another gulp of air and swallowed hoping that no one was inside the office. As he turned the knob he slowly pushed the door open. Inside only darkness.

Christopher was aware of the history of the office. It had once belonged to Dr. Julia Hoffman who was also granted the small adjoining laboratory. Dr. Hoffman had practiced many experiments and tests when she worked on several of the families members in the past there, the walls were billowing with history, but Chris had a task, and standing around in the dark thinking of what had happened in the room would not get him anywhere. He reached into his pocked and pulled out a lighter that flickered a golden light once lit. With his own light source now, Chris pored over each of the corners of the room searching for something--anything--that might hold the secrets to why David's behavior had been so erratic and alien to Caleb. What had happened to David in his past at Windcliff Sanitarium under the care of Kim's evil sister Dr. Joanna Grayson that changed him so much?

 As all those thoughts filled Chris' head he looked over and there, in a small darkened corner was a green filing cabinet that he knew had to have the answers to those questions. Chris quickly made his way to the cabinet and opened the top drawer. He looked through the files and saw names he did not recognize. He continued to flip through the pages of notes and documents and finally came across the patient's surnames that ended with the letter C.

There it was: COLLINS, DAVID.

Chris thought for a second. Should he read through the file first before taking it to Caleb? Was it ironic that he was stealing a private medical document but was still thinking of having discretion enough to not read it himself?

Chris pulled the file from the cabinet and tossed it on top of Kim's desk over the dark green blotter. He flipped it open and came close to the white pages with his lighter. He looked over it but didn't really understand much of what was written. But as he continued to read through the pages he saw something shocking. The forms he was reading looked very similar to the forms he and Alex found on himself. Forms that told the story of DNA tests, and experiments with serums to alter that DNA. Then the words LIKEN and LIKEN DNA. It was all the same.

"Jesus." Chris quietly said to himself when he realized that the same tests that were performed on him as a baby were also performed on David.

"He's a werewolf too." Chris said again to himself as the papers continued to tell the story.

Chris grabbed the ends of the file and flipped it closed and grabbed it and headed out towards the open door to the hallway. In his haste rushing towards the door, his shoe snagged on Kimberly's throw carpet and tossed Chris to the floor causing him to drop his lighter and leaving him in complete darkness.

As he lay on the ground on his stomach, he blindly searched for the illusive lighter by patting his hands on the floor. He patted and patter but never found it. Then suddenly just above his head he heard a flicker then a small spark of light.

He looked up and saw nothing.

Chris then again patted the ground on while laying on his stomach struggling to find the lighter to brighten the completely dark room.

And again...the flicker and a spark just above his head. Chris looked up and there was nothing, but he recognized the sound he was hearing it was the sound of his lighter flickering and lightening but quickly going out.

Chris waited again and continued to look for the lighter and as he patted his hand over the carpet again in search of the lighter he hit what he knew was the top of someone's shoe. He looked up and the flicker again came but this time his lighter stayed lit and was in the hands of Joanna Grayson's ghost.

Joanna's face was illuminated with the light of Chris' lighter, he face was gaunt and grey her hair was disheveled, her eyes had dark circles underneath, and they twitched with anger.

"GET OUUUUUT!" Joanna screamed in a horrible murderous scream.

Christopher bounced up from the ground and looked at Joanna again, he was frozen in fear. Joanna screamed at him again.

"GET OUUUUT!"

Christopher reached down on the floor and found the file and grabbed hold, his mind was racing, his heart was pounding. He reached for the door knob and opened the door then looked back to see the ghost.

She was gone. As soon as the light from the hall way made its way into Kim's office, Joanna disappeared.

Chris shook his head and quickly closed the door behind him never looking back, he rushed down the hall and took the file to his room to await Caleb so that they could go over what he found.

Moments later Kimberly came out of her adjoining Lab where she was conducting very late secret tests on samples of David's DNA, she opened the door to her office and turned on the lamps on either side of her desk. The light from the lamps hit the mettle of Chris lighter on the floor in the middle of the room sparkling in Kim's eye.

She walked over and picked up the lighter. As she looked it over she noticed the inscribed initials on the metal cover. C.R.... Christopher Reed.

Kim instantly knew the truth was about to come out. And when it did, she could lose the two things she loved most in the world. Her two sons. 

****

COLLINWOOD, 1920

As the night progressed in the present, so it did in the past. Barnabas had made his way to a private room over the east wing where he knew there were secret passages in the walls that would allow him to sneak way before the sun rise, in the meantime he removed his dinner jacket and white bow tie and laid them out on the ruffled bed in front of him. He loosened the cuff-links and walked over to the window that looked over the great courtyard that lead to his beloved old house.

"That old thing is an eye sore isn't it?" A sultry voice said from behind Barnabas.

Barnabas turned and standing in his doorway was Jacqueleen in a long dress with her hair still slicked back in finger-waves, pearls dripping from her ears and a cigarette dangling from a long stick at the end of her mouth. 

"I find the house quiet beautiful actually. I thought you and the other ladies had retired for the night. What can I do for you Mrs. Walsh?" Barnabas quickly answered noticing Jacqueleen had dressed again for the evening.

"I just feel the night is so young, don't you? I couldn't possible go to bed now. Lets say you and I drive off somewhere Barnabas, just the two of us and have a night of it? What do you think?" Jacqueleen said puffing from her cigarette and removing her long opera gloves and tossing them over her shoulder.

"I'm afraid I have business to attend to tomorrow morning. I wouldn't be able to do anything of that, perhaps another time." Barnabas said as Jacqueleen walked into the room and got closer to Barnabas.

Jacqueleen scrunched her nose in disappointment. She tip-toed over to a the bed and sat on the edge dangling her legs over the back. 

"You don't seem the type that would pass over a good time, now, why don't you want to spend some time with me?" Jacqueleen said again in a sultry tone.

"I can see where this is going, Mrs. Walsh and..." Barnabas began.

"Please, call me Jacqueleen." She replied.

"Jacqueleen....that is such a beautiful name. First names will put us on a more informal level." Barnabas said as Jacqueleen got up from the bed and walked over to Barnabas and met him in the center of the room.

"That sound good to me." She replied with a twinkle in her eye.

"I don't know how my cousin Jamison would feel about ...us....becoming more informal. I don't plan on staying in town long and I would hate to ruin my welcome." Barnabas answered.

"Oh, come on! He doesn't even have to know. It's been such a long time since I've had such a handsome man around me, you see, and now that Catherine is so busy with her baby....well, I'm bored." Jacqueleen said with a grin.

"You wouldn't like me in the morning." Barnabas joked.

"Let me be the judge of that." Jacqueleen said as she leaned in to kiss Barnabas. 

Jacqueleen hoped that her seductive flirting would lead to something more with Barnabas, now that she was broke and a widow. Barnabas was the first handsome man with a bank account that she had come across in Collinsport and he may be the last, all she had to do was reel him in, just like she did all the other's she loved and married, but what she didn't know was that Barnabas came with a hefty amount of his own baggage. 

As they touched lips, Jacqueleen stroked the side of Barnabas's face with one hand the slowly slid it up so that her fingers began to make their way into his thick black hair. 

Barnabas had not been kissed like this in what felt like a century. Her lips her soft and plump, her skin was white like milk. Her neck....her neck was a perfect pale and just below the surface of that white skin was the pulsating heat of what Barnabas really desired. The crimson life force that drove his passions.

As Jacqueleen continued to knit her fingers through his hair Barnabas began to kiss her neck. Jacqueleen sighed with delight dropping her hand from his hair, the other hand with the long stick and the now extinguished cigarette fell to the floor. Jacqueleen's eyes began to water, a passion she had not felt in years.

But Barnabas could not control himself any longer. His eyes began to change. and his mind began to go blank. He pulled down on the neckline of her dress to expose more of her neck, she squealed with excitment not knowing what would come next. As his eyes turned to blackness, his fags peirced through. 

Barnabas opened his mouth and planted his sharp teeth deep into the white flesh of Jaqueleen's neck.

At first she froze and then as the blood began to seep from her neck and it started to become clear that the pinching at her neck was no longer the passionate feeling she expected she began to push him away. But it was too late, Barnabas, tried to control himself, but the urges were stronger than he had ever remembered. 

Jacqueleen started to struggle but Barnabas was too strong, she pushed and pushed but he held on, the blood was pouring into him like a river. She stared to feel faint and her eyes started to close. Jacqueleen tried to stay awake in Barnabas' arm and she had no idea just how far this would turn. As they struggled, he turned her slightly towards a mirror, and there she was in the reflection, alone without Barnabas; two holes in her neck pouring blood over her white dress.

The site of it terrified her. She closed her eyes and screamed but Barnabas covered her mouth and continued to drink the life force out of her until she fainted, and once she fainted he continued to drink until all the life in her was gone.

Barnabas put his hand on her heart and it was not beating. His tuxedo shirt was stained with blood, his mouth was covered too by the red liquid. He was almost in shock. Jacqueleen's body fell limp in his arms and he grabbed her and pulled her up. 

Without a second thought, he picked her up, with his foot he opened the door to his room that had been slightly left ajar and dashed down the hall as quietly as he could until he came to Victoria's room.

Vickie had been fast asleep, Barnabas pushed the door open ripping through her door startling Vickie so much she fell out of her own bed to the floor.

Barnabas said no words but looked at Vickie who slowly got up from the floor in sheer terror. 

What was she looking at? What had he he done? Thousands of questions filled her head.

"Help me, Victoria....help me." Barnabas simply said as Vickie looked on at Jacqueleen's lifeless bloody body in Barnabas arms.