B.C.
Rage grows inside the heart like a wild vine. It encircles the body and wraps every organ tightly until it cuts off the oxygen and kills every emotion. Every feeling. Every hope. Every dream.
Barnabas Collins has felt this rage. He's been in love and in hate with others, with himself, with his whole existence since the day the witch Angelique turned his life upside forever. Now, he has returned to the beginning of a journey he started 5 decades ago in hopes, this time, to save the generation of family members he saw as the catalist of so much turmoil for the future of the Collins family in the year 2019 and beyond. For Barnabas, his return to Collinsport in 1966 was about the fate of and the lives of his loved ones in the future: his adopted daughter Siobhan, his biological daughter Claudia and his grandchild John-Michael, but not it seemed one woman standing in his way.
*
At the Collinsport Inn bar the clock stuck a hefty midnight chime. Arabella boozily laughed and giggled with a group of people at a table who were in town for the night on their way to Canada to vacation. She was happy and telling stories of her life through drink after drink that this party of travelers happily paid for. To them, she was some sort of celebrity. Her life was fascinating and glamorous and like the life of a great movie star: Money, Loves, Loss, Pain, and Redemption.
The group continued to laugh and carry on in the bar as the clock continued to click away the minutes to half passed midnight, when the lobby clock chimed again hinting at the late hour to the guests.
"I really should get myself back up...up...to...uhhh.... my room. I've taken up a lot of your time. Please let me at least pay for my last drink." Arabella told the glowing group in a drunk voice.
"NO! Please it's been our pleasure! Please! Let us take care of this." A woman in the group said pulling the tab from Arabella's hands.
"It really has Ms. Stoddard, thank you for the wonderful conversation." A man said, the husband of the woman.
The third man, single, was smitten with the fire-haired Arabella. She was charming, witty and something about her spoke to him. His fellow travelers could tell too and decided to leave pay the tab together, giving Arabella and the man some alone time.
"Could I take you up to you room?" the third man asked, he was younger and much more handsome and very single.
Arabella's yes were glassy, she smirked and could tell exactly what this gorgeous man really wanted and it wasn't to escort her up to her comfy room and then just come back down to his boring brother and his wife.
"Well, that would be very kind." Arabella said as she took his hand and he helped her up from the table.
The two, beautiful strangers cuddled all the way up the stairs to the third floor then turned a corner where Arabella tripped on a rug and fell into the man's arms. They're eyes met. Arabella leaned back and the man placed a deep kiss on her lip as Arabella began to melt deeper into his body.
"Let's hurry." Arabella said.
The two giggled and quickly made it to the third floor elevator that would taken them to the 6th and top floor where Arabella's suite was.
As they arrived, Arabella opened the egg-shell painted room door and flipped on the lamps in the corner of her suite. She smiled and removed her coat and threw it on to the bed.
"I'm just going to freshen up, why don't you make us another drink." Arabella said as she slowly stepped into the adjoining bathroom.
Arabella looked at her face. It was a pure pink. She smiled and seemed very pleased with herself. She adjusted her eye makeup in the reflection of the mirror and pulled out a lip balm from a bag she had placed on the sink and refreshed her lipstick; a shiny sexy pink rose. She stood back and posed, again pleased with what she was looking at. She fluffed her thick red hair and quickly unbuttoned the top two buttons of her blouse and opened the bathroom door.
The entire room suite was pitch black.
Arabella was startled at first. When she had stepped into the bathroom she had left the man in the room with all the lights on, why did he turn them off?
"Hey. Hey!" Arabella said, trying to get the man's attention.
She slowly turned the corner to go back into the bedroom and saw the man was already laying on the bed. Arabella could make out his strong, big body in silhouette.
"Oh. Man of mystery." Arabella said to the man in the dark but he did not respond.
"Are you gonna just lay there or are you going to come over here and help me unbutton some more of these buttons?" She said teasing him, but the man again did not respond.
"Hello?! Hey! I'm standing right here." She said again to no response.
Arabella looked confused. She didn't understand why he wasn't moving over to her. She slowly walked over to the lamp and switched it on and when she turned back and saw the face of a dead man. Arabella gasped in shock. Her date was pale, his face was frozen in a terrible twisted gaze with eyes glazed over and blank lacking all signs of life. His neck was bleeding. There was blood coming out of two wounds and pooling on the bed-spread in dark crimson puddles.
"Oh my god! OH MY GOD!!" Arabella said slowly making her way to the dead body.
She could not understand what was happening. How was he dead? Like this! How did this? What did this!
As Arabella quickly turned back around to reach for the phone to call the front desk a large shadowy figure leaped out in front of her pulled her body around and put their hand around her mouth.
It was Barnabas Collins.
"You've made a very big mistake." He said coldly, the blood of Arabella's male visitor still fresh on his tongue.
Arabella's breathing began to slow. Her heart began to pump the blood faster and faster all through her body. She could feel the cold hands around her mouth like two strong pieces of ice clasping her lips shut.
"I'm going to release my hands from you and you will not be able to scream or speak. Do not worry---this will only be temporary." Barnabas said.
He released his hands and Arabella quickly turned around and saw him for the first time face to face.
She tried to scream but nothing came out of her mouth. She backed away but Barnabas moved forward. She grabbed a large lamp that was to her right on a dresser and through it at Barnabas who in turn lifted his hand and froze the lamp in mid-air. He then moved his arm down and the lamp slowly came back down to the dresser without a single shatter.
Arabella's eyes were like giant saucers. What was she seeing? How did he do that? Her heart was pounding in her eyes, her life was flashing before her eyes as she continued to walk backwards away from the approaching man she met hours earlier at Collinwood, the approaching man who needed another taste of blood.
"You are a sideshow and an interruption Ms. Stoddard. Someone who is stepping in my way and in the of the plans that I have been working on and through for a very long time. That is a very dangerous place to be. I fully understand that." Barnabas explained as Arabella's eyes began to shed tears that went down her face and destroyed the make she had just refreshed.
"What is about to you happen to you has happened to many before and I have never felt good about it. Never. Not once. It's just apart of a curse. Something that happened to me that has followed me over time and space and has effected my family for generations. Even your precious niece Carolyn. Ms. Stoddard---you're about to die, and in the worst way." Barnabas said.
Arabella screamed again---her voice mute by Barnabas powerful energy that blocked all sound to come from her. He was now just inches from Arabella who was cornered. She reached out her arms and braced herself against the green and white wallpaper of her hotel suite's walls.
She opened her mouth to scream again ---nothing. Her tears were now all over her face.
Barnabas' eyes turned black. He opened his mouth revealing the sharpest fangs and red bloody tongue, stained by blood from his first victim. He lunged at Arabella and pulled her body close and sunk his teeth deep into her soft flesh allowing her blood to flow freely into his mouth finally quenching the thirst after years trapped in the coffin.
And within moments. Arabella was dead.
****
The night of death and darkness, of confusion and confessions turned into a brilliant morning of sun and warmth of spring.
The day light shined down on Victoria Winter's face in a pattern that showed the source of the light came from a barred off window. India, still inside Vicky's body, opened her eyes and took a deep breath almost as if it was the first time she had every breathed a deep two-lunged breath.
She tried to get off the bed she was on, but her arms and legs were tired to the mettle rails that kept her safely in place while she slept, thanks to the sedative Julia had her orderlies inject into her veins along with Justin's.
India looked around. Even though she knew she was at Windcliff she had no idea for how long. Was it just hours? Was it days? Or worse---weeks. Her head was pounding, a side-effect of the deep sleep she had been in for the mysterious amount of time.
While looking around her Windcliff room, she saw a small machine connected to her fingers that recorded her heart rate. It beeped every three seconds and, unknowing to India, indicated when she was awake.
Then, her door opened.
"Don't worry. The foggy feeling you're sensing will ware off soon." Julia said as she sat down on a chair next to India in the bed.
"How long have I been here?" India asked.
"Just over night. I wouldn't keep you asleep for very long. We have much to discuss." Julia continued as she pulled out a pad and paper from a briefcase she had to her side. "Now, let's begin at exactly where you left off. You mentioned to me last night about how you don't feel like you're in the correct body."
India rolled her eyes. She was frustrated and angry. Nothing she had told Julia made her believe it, nothing she had to say was making it clear that there was a deep danger in Collinsport, a town just hours away that Julia needed to help stop. It was a devastating reality and India could not believe her predicament.
"No. That's not what I meant. Please. You have to let me out of here. You have to release me." India pressed.
"Now, I can't do that, can I? Vicky---or would you prefer I call you India?" Julia asked.
"My name is India do Arco and I do not belong here. You have to start to listen to me!" India said, her voice seeming to grow louder with anger.
"India, very well. Listen, I cannot let you out. You're clearly going through a very powerful psychotic break-down and I need to make sure you're taken care of. It's obvious to me that the things you're saying are very real to you. You really believe them. The sensations can often feel as if they are really happening all around you when in reality the psychosis is only making you believe this. Its a game that your brain is playing. I want to lead you out of that so that you can be who you really are." Julia said, tightly gripping another hidden syringe, just for safety.
"That's all I want, to be myself. But this isn't myself! This isn't my body! Please, Dr. Hoffman you have to find Barnabas Collins. He'll tell you I'm telling the truth. He'll tell you that everything I'm saying is true and that he can help me get back to my time and make it all normal. But you can help him, I know you can. I just need you to believe me." India explained.
"Barnabas Collins. You mentioned this name last night. You said that I was married to him, but I am no longer married. And my late husband was not this Mr. Collins. Who is he? Does he represent something to you?" Julia wondered.
"NO! JULIA! Please stop with the probing! This isn't some kind of psychotic break I'm having! I can prove to you Barnabas is a real person and that when you find him he will know you! Just let me up, please, I have to get back to my time. With your help and Barnabas' powers this can happen." India explained.
"Tell me more about this Barnabas." Julia asked.
As the frustrated India began to open her mouth to at least slightly explain about her situation and just how Julia and Barnabas were connected, she suddenly realized Justin was not in the room where her.
"Wait...where's Justin? Where's my friend?" India said, her head going back and forth over the layout of the room.
"Don't worry about Mr. Patterson. He's fine. He's going to be just fine." Julia continued. "Now, tell me about Barnabas."
"NO! NOT UNTIL YOU TELL ME WHAT YOU DID TO JUSTIN!!" India screamed.
"Ms. Winters," Julia said using Vicky's name "I did not want to do this. But you're leaving me no choice." Julia said showing India a syringe in her hand.
India began to panic and she tried to move her tied up body from Julia whitch was obviously no use. Julia was only inches from her arm and injected India with a new medication that would keep her in a conscious fog like state, so that Julia could more easily ask her penetrating questions of this bizarre story.
As the drug slowly seeped into Vicky's flesh and tissues, she could feel her self drift off into a waking sleep. It was as if she were floating in a room of white clouds, like she was lifted out of the bed into the sky and was weightless. The drug had left her mentally open to anything Julia needed to know.
"Victoria----forgive me, India---Who is Barnabas Collins?" Julia said to India who was staring straight up to the ceiling in her medically educed state. "Who....is .....Barnabas..........Collins?" Julia repeated slowly again.
"Barnabas. Collins." India said slowly
"Yes, tell me, tell me who he is?" Julia requested not knowing she too was now dragging herself into an uncharted world.
"A vampire from the 18th Century who is living at the Collinwood mansion in Collinsport. He brought me here from another time and he knows you. He was married. He knows you Julia Hoffman. He. knows you. He loved you." India said right before she passed out into a deep sleep.
Julia was confused, a bit frightened as well. She had no idea what India, as Vicky was talking about but it fascinated her. This woman laying in her hospital bed was telling a story that Julia could tell she really truly believed. Everything she was saying was alarming, and seemed so real to her, and could easily be some sort of strange dark fantasy of a very mentally ill woman. This case, should Julia solve it and heal her, could make Julia the most famous psychiatric care provider in the county, perhaps the world. To bring a woman back from a psychotic break so deep and strange would launch headlines in every medical journal on the planet, with Julia center stage.
It was inciting.
Julia knew however, that she had to check things out. She had to be sure this place called Collinsport wasn't all a figment of the young woman's ill mind.
Julia got up quickly from her chair allowing India to rest off the sedative she gave her and reached for a staff phone that was attached to the room's wall that would instantly connect anyone in the room to the front desk.
"Nurse Finkle, can you check on something for me? ....Check to see if you can find a place with the phone company called Collinsport. It's close by.......oh, you know it? You've heard of that town?....and do you know of something called Collinwood?.......you have heard of it too? ............HAUNTED? What do you mean??............blood.?....never-mind, never-mind, I don't think I need to hear anymore, thank you nurse." Julia said hanging up the phone shocked by the bizarre story the nurse had just told her of fables and tales of monsters and blood thirsty creatures that lurked around the ground of a Gothic mansion called Collinwood.
It seemed Julia had bitten more off than she could chew, or at least more that she had anticipated when she first met the young woman she saw in dire need of psychiatric help. India was telling the truth, at least one version of it. And now Julia felt the hairs on her neck stand up.
"Barnabas Collins........" she whispered to herself as she watched India sleep. "Maybe I need to take a little trip to Collinsport."
****
In a shimmering breakfast nook filled with sunlight and warmth from the day and just off to the side of the large kitchen, Elizabeth sipped on a piping hot coffee with a basket of assorted bagels in front of her as David sat quietly next to her and looked over his book on nautical navigation.
Roger and Carolyn then walked in giggling arm in arm as he greeted his sister and son respectively. Carolyn, giddy with anticipation from her conversation with her paternal aunt Arabella, grabbed a bagel and smeared cream-cheese over it and took a large bite.
"Anyone hear from Aunt Bella this morning?" Carolyn asked as she poured herself coffee.
Elizabeth lifted an eye brow and looked over her morning paper and responded with a hefty "No."
"Really? I was expecting her to be here this morning." Carolyn replied.
"This morning, why?" Elizabeth asked.
"Oh, don't you see Liz, your little girl has found a new role-model. She's fitting right in to Kitten's life styles of the Rich and ---infamous." Roger joked.
"Now, now, you're still my favorite uncle." Carolyn joked back.
"Carolyn I would prefer you not run around with you Aunt so much she's got a lot of, well baggage that I don't want you to become entangled with." Elizabeth replied as David looked on.
"Still, I was expecting her this morning. No call? Nothing?" Carolyn wondered.
"No." Elizabeth repeated.
Carolyn frowned. That didn't seem right. Arabella had all these plans to rid the house of Vicky, why would she be late to something so important.
Carolyn quickly drank her coffee and rushed out of the breakfast nook. She rushed out of the room and down a slightly curved hall way that had one wall made of glass that over looked a quiet courtyard that had a lush green garden. The hallway led Carolyn into the foyer where she grabbed a coat from the hanger and made her way over to The Collinsport Inn to meet with Arabella so that the plot to take down Vicky could get moving.
Then it dawned on her...why rush? The plan needed to be fool-proof and if Arabella didn't seem to be rushing, why would Carolyn? She decided to take her time before heading to the Hotel.
"She's not coming." David said, back in the breakfast room.
"Who's not coming?" Elizabeth asked. "Vicky? She hasn't gotten up yet." Elizabeth thought, not knowing Vicky wasn't even home.
"She's not coming back." David said again.
"David what are mumbling about?" Roger said frustrated with his son.
David didn't answer. He shyly turned his eyes back down to his nautical book.
****
In a small two bedroom home just off of main street in town, a young handsome man was awakened by several painless slaps to his face. It was Justin Patterson, home safe in his own bed. His father, George Patterson the town sheriff. sat on his bed awaiting the minute his son would open his eyes, and when he did open them, the shock of seeing his own bedroom surprised him.
"What happened?" Justin said in a tired voice.
"That's what I'd like to know. What were you doing up in Bangor at the hospital?" George questioned.
"Where's India?" Justin asked.
"India? Oh, that young woman you were with. Son her name is Victoria Winters. That's what the ID in her purse said and she's fine, I'm sure. What I'm more concerned about is you. What were you doing up there?" George questioned, his tone of voice seemingly angry.
"No, pop, you don't understand, I can't be here. I have to find India and help her. We don't have lots of time, I have to get to her and help her back to where she belongs.You don't understand!" Justin said, his voice ripping though his father's heart with painful urgency.
It was clear there was something wrong with Justin, at least in his father's eyes. But the truth was Justin, and India, was perfectly fine. They were living in a truth a truth that was so bizarre and unbelievable that to everyone around them it seemed that they were both going insane. And the Patterson family had lived and understood the terrifying truth of insanity before. It it home.
George got up from his son's bed, Justin quickly sat up and turned around looking for his shoes.
"I wish this hadn't happen to you son, I wish I could have made sure that you didn't get this way. I tried so hard to make sure you grew up as normal as possible but I guess a man has to allow his son to grow and be who he's going to be no matter how hard I push back on the inevitable." George said with his back turned to Justin and as he picked up a framed photo of a young Justin with his mother.
"What? What are you talking about?" Justin said, one foot in a shoe, the other still without it's sock.
"Son, Dr. Hoffman told me you went up there to Bangor with that Winter's girl and were talking none-sense about time travel or body snatching or something like that. She told me that you and this girl went there in the middle of the night and specifically for her and told her this wild story. Son, did you know it was coming? Did you feel it happening to you?" George asked his face swollen with tears.
"See it coming? Pop, what are talking about? Everything that India and said was true!"
"THAT'S ENOUGH! Stop calling her that! You hear me? STOP IT! Her name is not India, her name is Victoria Winters and she works for the Collins family. If they've done something to you, if you got involved with someone up there at that house and they did something to you to make you start acting this way, tell me! Son, we can make it right. I'll march my way up there right now and make sure those people fix this." George said.
George Patterson was very familiar with the Collins family. He was very familiar with their way of life and how they would bring people into their homes and the haunts of the past would slowly seep into the lives of the new people that worked in that house. Like a danger elixir that was slipped into a drink and slowly filtering their a person's veins, the Collins family was like a poison on anyone they came in contact with. George knew it. Justin knew it.
Because George's wife, and Justin's mother knew it too: Rebecca Patterson was once Elizabeth's personal secretary. The person who'd run all of Elizabeth's errands in town as Elizabeth for years has refused to leave the confines of the mansion in hopes Paul would return.
Many come and go from the house, and Rebecca did too...every day. That's how it all began. The beginning of Rebecca's mental break down. She'd come home after her time working at the estate and she'd hear sounds, see shadows, all in her own home. She began to feel the presence of someone or something following her everywhere she went. She began to lose herself in the strange darkness that floated around every member of the Collins family. It became her obsession, her passion, her one and only concern.
Justin was young, only 8 years old, when Rebecca's obsession with the world of dark and evil that Collins family was built on finally took its toll on her life and her mentality.
On a very cold and icy morning in January, George took Rebecca to Windcliff on the recommendation of a doctor in Collinsport.
Rebecca never returned and Justin never saw her again. And now, to George, it seemed like the same demons that took his wife were after his son.
"I really wish I could have protected you more." George said to his son, still only wearing only one shoe.
"Pop, I just need some time to get this all straightened out with India, I know you don't believe me but its all true. You'll see. Maybe you can help me!? Maybe you can come with me to Collinwood and meet Barnabas and he can tell you everything there is to know. But we have to go at night. He sleeps in the day." Justin said sounding even more crazy as more of the truth came out of his mouth.
Hearing the name Collinwood out of his own son's mouth stung like a slap to a very cold face. George, shedding small droplets of tears down his round manly face, walked backwards towards the door to Justin's room. He thought he was seeing the end of his son's life. He thought he was seeing the final years of a young man who was about to break through to the other side of insanity just like his mother did, but George would not let it happen.
As George made his way out of the room Justin slowly followed his father unsure of what was about to happen.
The bedroom door slammed shut and locked from the outside. George had set up a large beam across the door while Justin slept and locked all of the windows with powerful bolts all while Justin was under the drug Julia had given him.
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? LET ME OUT!!!" Justin screamed and pounded on his bedroom door.
George only cried in the dark hallway of his own home and stared at the door that Justin was pounding furiously on. He stood there, in the dim morning light, surrounded by photos of his late wife and son in happier days and cried. He would not let his son go mad. He would not let his son anywhere near anyone attached to the Collins family. Not now. Not ever. For the love of his wife whom he could not save. Justin could never leave his room again.
Over in the living room, George picked up the phone and dialed a number that was given to him on a scrap of paper.
"Yes, Dr. Hoffman? I wanted to thank you again for having your orderlies bring my son home. It means a lot to me given that you knew Rebecca and .....and how much she suffered." George said.
"Sheriff, it was my pleasure. I grew fond of Rebecca while she was here and seeing her son succumb to something similar broke my heart. Just be sure you give him the medication I have you just like I prescribed." Julia said tangling the phone cord around her red painted fingernails.
"I will." George answered.
"Oh, Sherrif..." Julia added. "Can you tell me how to get to Collinwood. I'd like to make sure the family knows about Victoria. She's taken a turn for the worse and I want to go in person to see her employers." Julia said lying about India's condition and only wanting true directions to the mansion.
George felt sick. He wanted no one to go to The Collins family's home, he would only go there when asked to on official duty, but gave Julia the directions anyway, against his better judgement.
"Good Luck." George said hanging up the phone.
Julia looked down on her paper where she wrote the directions to the mansion and smiled a very evil smile. She was about to embark on something that would change her life forever. She fantasied on what she would discover when she met this family and just how famous her career would become when all was said and done. But Julia truly had no idea what she was really in for.
****
Carolyn arrived later that evening to the Collinsport Inn still expecting to find her Aunt alive and well. Their plan to have Vicky killed ran on in Carolyn's brain, despite her second thoughts. Carolyn felt Arabella was right. Vicky had to be dealt with, but it was strange that Arabella hadn't shown up at Collinwood as Carolyn expected.
Carolyn, her coat now perfectly folded over her arm stood at Arabella's hotel room door and knocked.
No one came.
She knocked again.
Still nothing.
Carolyn reached for the door knob and turned it slightly testing it. It was unlocked. Carolyn lifted a brow and continued to turn the golden door knob fully around, opening the door and let herself into the large luxuriously furnished Hotel Suite that was in complete darkness despite the day time hour.
"Aunt Bella? It's Carolyn. Are you up?" Carolyn said from a small foyer who's walls blocked the view of the sleeping area.
Carolyn waited for an answer but there was silence. Dead silence.
The room felt stale and off. Carolyn sensed a strange energy in the part of the room where she stood that made the hairs on the back of her arms stand on end. It was an electric feeling, like the something was swirling in the room pushing past her like a jolt of invisible power but....yet...there was nothing. Just a vast shadowy hotel room with no noise.
Carolyn sighed and threw her coat of a plush white chez that her coat missed and fell to the floor revealing a small tag on the inside of the coat that Carolyn had never noticed before. It was an odd patch, pail pink with a scribe on it.
"What the devil?" She said, reaching down for her coat that had fallen.
As she pulled at the tag inside the coat, she saw that it had the initials V.W. sewn into it colored black felt pen.
They were Vicky's initials.
Carolyn rolled her eyes, she had taken Vicky's coat by mistake.
Annoyed that she was wearing her secret half sister's coat, she rolled her eyes and continued into the rest of the hotel suite that from a shadowy first look seemed deshevled, out of sorts, frankly a mess. It was odd....Arabella wasn't the type to live in a messy room. Then, suddenly Carolyn turned from the center of the suite's living room towards the two open french doors of the bedroom and saw what was making her feel on edge.
There, lying in a pool of her own blood was the dead body Carolyn's beloved, and scheming, Aunt Arabella.
Carolyn screamed and went over to her Aunt on the floor. The immense shock flowed over Carolyn like a water fall causing her to completely overlooking the large red blood stain the man’s body had left on the now empty bed. His body was gone. But Arabella’s remained.
The wounds on Arabella's neck were strange, two large gashes on the side of her neck. It was as if someone had used a tool of some sort to puncture those marks deep into the skin draining Arabella of her blood.
Carolyn's heart began to pound in her chest. How could this have happened, what had even happened? Who would have done this? Why? Why would anyone want her dead? Like this!
Carolyn quickly gathered herself up off the floor next to the dead body of her father's sister, still in shock, and rushed for the door. She grabbed Vicky's coat...then, suddenly, something came to her mind. In the middle of her pain and grief, a wicked idea broke through.
This would turn the tables again but still keep Arabella's plot alive. This new idea, this new twist to the story that Arabella had crafted to out Vicky as a possible rival was cold, and calculated even for Carolyn's taste, but could she really do it? Could this new twist really work in Carolyn's favor?
Carolyn grasped on to the coat marked V. W. with both hands.
Carolyn took the coat that belonged to her secret half-sister that her mother Elizabeth had lied about, and that Arabella had manipulated her into believing was going to usurp her place in the Collins family fortune, and dipped it in Arabella's blood. The white fabric soaked up the red liquid like a sponge. The stain at first was ruby red, then it darkened as it seeped into the coat's lining.
It was a horrible sight but Carolyn kept telling herself that Arabella would have wanted it this way. Arabella would have wanted Carolyn to take actions into her own hands just as she was now, and make sure Vicky was destroyed before things could get worse for Carolyn. The only problem was---all of that Carolyn believed about Vicky replacing her in Elizabeth's Will was a lie, something Arabella's sick jealous mind concocted in her own head that she would later use to double cross her niece and take Elizabeth's hush money payment and vanish.
Now, even though Arabella was dead, her lies were not. They had taken on a life of their own and infected Carolyn like a decease of the mind. Warping her sense of what was right and wrong all for the love and money of her own family. Carolyn's move here, in the bloody hotel room would change the coarse of events once again.
Carolyn threw the now bloody coat to the floor and rushed out of the room leaving it; planted as evidence as if Vicky was the last one to see Arabella alive. And then killed her.
Vicky's coat, a dead body, and a lie would began a terrible reality that no one would have every foreseen. A murder plot that took a different turn and would now implicate an innocent woman and once again put Barnabas' plans to turn his wrongs into right upside down without him even knowing.
With every step forward, Barnabas would see, a very steep step backwards into darkness.
These things he could not escape, no matter how hard he tried. And now, he had to clean it up again.
