Series 13/Chapter 5: OCTOGENARIAN

Carolyn looking at her mother's portrait 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"As I'll ever be." 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you happy to see me mother?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who is Noelle?" Carolyn demanded to know.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carolyn Arrives at Collinwood

****

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin made it so.

Evangeline tried to scream but her voice was silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"A person?" Liz asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evangeline is absorbed into Justin's dark mist

****

Elizabeth Turns 80

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not to Kim's amusement. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mother.....don’t.” Carolyn warned.

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

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

Barnabas.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"She's not gone." Carolyn insisted. 

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

"Caleb!" Kim shouted. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Series 13/Chapter 4: STRANGER THINGS

Evangeline & Justin meet

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

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

And a twinge of uncertainty. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evangeline giggled. "Is that so?" 

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

"Witchcraft." he whispered .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His lips were turning blue.

"TELL ME WHO YOU ARE!" 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Evangeline closed her eyes and clapped Once.

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

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

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

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

The clock struck late in the night. 

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

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

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

****

Cameron & Lucas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

****

David, Victor & Kimberly 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kim was not so pleased.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He did. 

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

"Fine thank you." She replied shyly.

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

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

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

"Is your friend here yet?" David wondered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This is news." Victor said quietly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Change. We're talking about change." 

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

Series 13/Chapter 3: DAGGERS TO THE HEART

Kimberly and Elizabeth

What we have seen and what we have overcome in our pasts linger in our minds for years and years. Our history is what makes us, the obstacles we have personally overcome also become part of our DNA and create us just as the color of our eyes and the color of our hair. 

These trials and tribulations also act as a protection force against allowing the same evils and horror to happen over and over again, but none of this matters if we do not acknowledge our pasts and pay heed to the red flags that fly in our faces. 

Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, now approaching her 80's was such a person. She saw it all. She saw the darkness and the shadows from every angle of her life. She recognized when things seemed to be ...off. And she, even in her old age, saw something "off" with the new governess for David's 5 year old son Caleb: Evangeline. 

In a small play room who's walls were built in a half circle and made up of 9 foot tall windows that allowed in the glowing gloom of the late afternoon light, Evangeline played on the floor with the child Caleb. They built small block castles and ran around the room, he as a dragon she as a damsel in distress and when then dragon got angry enough, he'd knock down the block castle and the damsel, Evangeline, would pretend to pass out on the floor in fear bringing Caleb to fits of little boy laughter at her silly feigned fear. 

On the wall of this play room, several large paintings of former Collins family members stared down at the scene of the dragon and the damsel. One such parting was of Naomi Collins, the original mistress of Collinwood. The portrait was a close up of the woman sitting in a white gown with large white rose corsage attached to her dress near the center of the painting. He hair was a dark brown in delicate curls painted with ease, every brush stroke evident and perfect. Her face soft and round, a calm smile peeking in the corners of her pink lips. 

But there were strange things about her eyes. Her eyes seemed alive. Her eyes seemed to look down with real movement. They'd follow Evangeline as she'd get up from the floor after her pretend fainting. Naomi's eyes would follow little Caleb as he climbed on the furniture and changed from dragon to knight and continue his mock pillaging of medieval village ad Evangeline changed from damsel to royal queen.

Namoi's eyes looked real. They looked real because they were real.

On the other side of the painting, behind a small passage way secret to those in the play room, stood the old Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard watching her great-nephew Caleb like a mother hawk protecting her chick from the stranger Evangeline. Elizabeth did not trust the woman. She did not like the woman. And she saw her as some sort of usurper for her own favorite Governess, and daughter Victoria. 

It was true, that in fact, Elizabeth resented Evangeline in many ways and saw her as some sort of creature that had come from god knows where ready to eat little Caleb alive. Liz had seen it all before. And she would rather die protecting Caleb than allow whom ever this woman was take over her family. 

As Elizabeth stared through the paintings eyes she watched and watched until she felt safe enough to leave the secret wall passage and go back into her own room that was just adjoining, then came the moment. Kimberly, Caleb's mother and David's wife entered calling for the little boy to run off and have his dinner.

"I'll take it from here honey, thank you." the 7 month pregnant Kimberly said to the governess releasing her from duty. 

"Yes ma'am. Caleb, wash up for dinner and I'll see you for story time." Evangeline told the boy with a wink. 

Kimberly smiled and looked up at Naomi's painting and noticed the eyes switch from gray to nothing to then painted Green. Someone was watching. Seeing the paintings eyes switch like this shocked her at first but then realized who it was. Elizabeth. 

Kimberly rolled her eyes and grabbed the little boy's hand and marched herself into the other room that shared the wall with the painting where she found Elizabeth casually sitting on an over-stuffed sofa reading a book. She was dressed for dinner. A lacy and silk black gown dripping in pearls and diamonds. Ever the grand-dame of Collinwood.

"Elizabeth, really!?" Kimberly shouted as she shooed little Caleb off to the dinner table down stairs. 

"Pardon?" the old matriarch replied, playing dumb.

"Spying on us? Is that really where this has come to?" Kim scoffed.

"I don't have the foggiest idea of what you're talking about Kimberly." Elizabeth answered with a snobbish lift of her nose. 

"We've talked about this before. I know you have some sort of weird on going vendettas about our governess but she is who we chose, I don't see why we would have had to go through you to choose her. Caleb is our son, not yours." Kimberly reflected.

"But this is my house." Elizabeth reminded. "You had no right bringing in a person I did not know into my house. This house, these walls, everything in it, is mine. Not yours." She continued. 

"You forget, David is a Collins too. He's lived here all his life. You can't just pretend he has no claim to anything here and has no right to do what is best for his child while he lives here. Caleb is Roger's grandson and I think that you holding this over Evangeline is wrong. She's a good girl, she's doing great with the boy." Kimberly said trying to soften the blow that Liz was no longer truly the ruler of the manor. 

Elizabeth took the book from her lap and carefully placed it next to her on the sofa and grabbed hold of her cane in her left hand and the sofa's arm with her right and slowly lifted her tired 80 year old body up so that she as now standing face to face with Kimberly. 

Liz had always been a tiny framed woman, but now at her age she seemed even smaller. Her tiny little body swollen by this dark gown and all her chunky jewels made her even smaller to the human eye, but her attitude, her voice still carried the size of a 6 foot tall woman. She made two small little scoots closer to Kim and gazed up at Kim's beautiful face. Liz's gray eyes squinted at her nephew's pregnant wife showing off a bit of her Collins family scorn. 

"I'm not dead yet. And I know what I heard. I know Evangeline is some sort of seer. I heard what she said to the boy and I don't trust it and I dont like it not one bit. I've seen that kind of behavior before and I can tell you right now it'll only bring in the darkness. I've had enough of that." Liz explained.

"What are you talking about? A seer?" Kim wondered with a sort of snarky grin showing she didn't believe Liz at all.

"She said they were playing a game with some sort of imaginary woman. There's no such thing. Caleb was seeing someone. A real woman. Maybe real or was once real. I know it. I know it in my body. I feel it." Liz said, reminding Kim of Evangeline's fake explanation for Caleb seeing India the day she arrived.

"Oh god, seriously Elizabeth this is just insanity, you're old, you're losing your mind! I can tell..." Kim began before Elizabeth yelled back at her and David, passing in the hall on his way to dinner overheard and entered.

"Whats this? Whats going on?" he said stepping into the room, a full 35 year old handsome man with a perfect face and eyes deep and brown stunning Elizabeth. 

He stunned her every time he walked into a room. His handsome features were to Elizabeth the crown jewel of the family. She adored him. Felt safe around him and knew She could trust him. Liz took a deep breath and waddled over to him. 

"Your wife questions my integrity." Liz said point blank, embellishing the argument. 

"Oh! That is not what is happening here, David. Liz just..." Kim began before Liz interrupted. 

"We are not friends Kimberly, you may call me Mrs. Stoddard, I've told you that several times." She shot back.

"I...." Kim said before the shock of Liz's rudeness felt like a slap to her face.

"Aunt Elizabeth what's the matter now?" David said playacting to Liz's clear attempt at gaining his attention first.

"I don't know really. She came in here blasting me about my feelings about Evangeline again. You know I only want what's best for Caleb and I think that it would have been nice if I have been asked about bringing in someone in the house with my input." Liz explained and she settle both her hands on top of her cane like a knot of flesh and bones. 

"Is that it then? You wanted to be involved in the decision of Caleb's nanny?" David wondered.

"She was spying on them David." Kimberly replied to Liz turning to her with her mouth agape. 

"THAT'S ABSURD!" Liz shouted.

"I saw you! I saw the eyes of the painting change in the play room. She was watching from behind Naomi's painting. How can we keep good employees like Evangeline if we're just constantly watching then like that, from behind walls and painting and potted plants." Kim fired back. 

"This is absolutely ridiculous, how could I even do that? You're saying I would just go into the wall's crawl space and stand there for who knows how long? With my bad hips and cane? Yes Kim, darling, that makes perfect sense. I'm going down stairs for dinner. We're already late." Elizabeth said, in essence shutting down the conversation before she was further exposed.

"She was." Kim said again now that she and David were alone.

David only shook his head at his pregnant wife. "I wish you'd just go easy on her. She's gone through so much. She doesn't mean any harm." David said protecting his Aunt.

"David, are you kidding me right now? You constantly come to her defense. I am your wife. I am the one you should back when it comes to who we hire for OUR child, not that old battle ax!" Kim said with gritted teeth.

"Kim!" 

"Whatever...just ....look, you do what you want to do and pretend that she's not going senile all you want but I think you should call Carolyn up in England and tell her to come get her mother. She needs to get more involved." Kim demanded.

"I'm not kicking out my aunt and sending her on some flight to England just because she's a bit grumpy. Let's just go down stairs and have a nice dinner and let it be that. Can you do that?" David asked.

Kim was furious. This was not the first time Elizabeth had come for the person Kim had hired to watch her some. Evangeline was not the first governess, but Kim was tired of being on the outs when it came to Elizabeth. In fact, Kim was tired of all the Collins family all together. She had been for a very long time. Her marriage had been on ice for over a year and she and David had been as romantic with each other as two dead corpses in a frosty day. 

There was a lack of love coming from her. He couldn't see it yet, but it was growing inside of her every single day. The resentment.  The lack of any kind of enthusiasm for growing their relationship into a new sector even though she was pregnant. 

That was because Kim had met someone else.

Kim had met another man over a year ago. A man who had revolutionized her mind and her affections. He had observed her and told her of the true tales of the Collins family. He was a Collinsport son, born and raised. His name was Victor Reed, a great nephew of a man named Matthew Morgan.

Victor knew everything about the Collins family and how they terrorized and tormented his great-uncle Matthew many years ago who happened to be a loyalist to Elizabeth Collins. Victor blamed the Collins family for the deterioration and later death of Matthew and when Victor met Kimberly he knew this was his way to finally rid the world of the family that destroyed his own. 

Especially because of the training he had acquired. Special training. Trained to kill---a specific killer.

David went down to dinner and Kimberly lagged behind saying she had to wash up quickly before she went down. But she lied. 

She scurried into a side study and closed the door behind her. She waited to hear no sounds coming from the stairs adjacent to the study and quickly made her way to a fancy oak desk with several family photos. 

This was Roger's former study. Photos of David as a boy, Roger on the boats, Liz and Carolyn and a very large black and white photo of Roger's second wife, the deceased Cassandra Collins. 

Kim grabbed the phone desperate to hear a friendly voice before she had to go back down into the lion's den of Collins family members. 

"Hi....it's me." She said in a soft sexy voice as she twirled her golden hair around her finger.  "I don't know how much more I can take here. I really can't. I just want it all to end and to move on. If I get into one more stupid fight with that old bat Liz, I don't know what I'll do. When can we go away?" She added.

On the other line, the diabolical Victor Reed. The seeds of hate and disgust for the family he had been planting in her mind for over a year while they had an affair were finally growing fruit. Kim was now turning on her in-laws. She was ready.

"Are you sure you want to take this to the next level? I told you it will be very, very important and once we begin you can't stop the process. It's either in or out. Black and white." Victor said as he sat in a black chair surrounded in white cigarette smoke billowing from his mouth.

"Yes. I've been thinking long and hard about it, and I think I'm ready to go on with this. We'll be happier together, and...." She paused listening to herself realizing what she was doing, she was really deciding to leave her husband and allow the new man in her life to do whatever he wanted and take out the family...all of them. 

"and what?" Victor said, his blues eyes pricing the smoke around his chiseled and rugged face. 

"And I agree with you and the talk we had a few weeks back. I think I'm ready to take the next step." Kim said, her voice sounding shaky but affirming.

"Come over." Victor said, his eyes lighting up with Kim's words.

"After dinner." Kim said with a wide smile as she hung up the phone and caressed her pregnant t belly, the baby turning wildly in her womb, the baby being Victor's and not David's. 

Victor hung up his end and walked over to a desk and opened the drawer pulling out a black wooden box with a heart carved into the lid and a dagger going through the heart. He lifted the lid revealing many wooden crosses, three sharp wooden stakes and a pistol with silver bullets.

Victor, was a vampire hunter. And his eyes were fixed on the Collins family, ready to kill them all. 

****

Noelle and Justin at the Old House

At the old house the tension was rising like the cold icy sea below Widow's Hill. Noelle's suspicions of the involvement of her brother's death decades ago were boiling over now that she her nephew's relation to the Collins family had been revealed. He was still gone from the old house, still out in the village hurting from the lengthy lies he had been told all his life about who he was. 

And Noelle was no safer than she was when the secret was still hidden.

Justin Patterson, a vampire that had been living with Noelle in secret and who was ready to take on any challenge she set forth for him in exchange for her help in reuniting with the love of his life India do Arco was growing frustrated with the slow motion of the plan.

He would kill and destroy anyone Noelle wanted, as long as India was the prize at the end. India, for her part, had been in a time-traveling ping-pong match for almost a year. First she lived for months in 1966, and now she was in 1990---or so it seemed. Evangeline's discovery of India and later vanquishing her to where she would be born again in her correct time-line was still a unknown to both Noelle and Justin who was growing impatient.

Noelle was sorting through main and gathering items to take with her to the main house on the Collinwood estate where she would begin a night-shift work as care-taker to the soon-to-be 80 year old Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. In the bag she placed the regular things she always needed: A change of clothes, medicines Elizabeth needed, books and magazines, and for Noelle's eyes only---her book of spells and a crystal container of salt. For protection.

"So you're off then?" Justin said from behind, his body obscured by the shadowy hallway.

Noelle turned and looked towards where she heard the voice and calmly nodded her head.

"Take me with you. Please." Justin said through the silhouette of the dark hallway he stood in. " India has to be there by now. Your spell to bring her to us has had to have worked. " He added.

"Look, I just have to be sure everything is on the right track before I start bringing you around. You have to understand that." Noelle said as she tolled some worthless mail back on to the desk. 

 Justin entered into the light of the room and looked down at the desk as she spoke noticing a letter from a Leopold Danvers, a nobody trying to get elected to some office up in Augusta. 

"You promised me if I helped you, I'd get India. I'm ready to help you and you said your spell brought her back. No where IS SHE?" Justin said again formally reminding the reluctant Noelle of her magical musings. 

"Justin I told you..." Noelle began before he interrupted.

"And I told you! This was our deal. You brought India to me with one of your spells and I would  kill whomever you thought was responsible for your brother Beau's death. I'll do it! I promised! Noelle, I can feel India, I can feel that she's here. Please...take me to the big house. She has to be there." Justin said.

"It's much more complicated than that, I still don't know who killed Beau. And ...and....I don't know if its even safe for you to be at the main house with me. How would I even explain who you were? People remember you Justin. Everyone thinks you went missing in 1966 and died. No one knows what really happened." Noelle explained.

"No, you promised me! You promised me India!" Justin said like a child told he couldn't go out to play.

"Justin stop..." Noelle began.

"NO! You listen to me, I told you, if you don't start to help complete this pact we've bound ourselves in I can't be held responsible for what happens to Cameron." Justin said with a cruel smirk.

"You've already exposed him to everything. I don't know how much more you can hurt him." Noelle replied attempting to throw Justin off Cameron's scent. 

Justin stepped closer to Noelle, so close she could feel the breath from his nose like a mad bull huffing and puffing into  her personal space. She stepped back and bumped into a large desk knocking things down in the process.

"I've lived years here with you in secret. I've run around this land after rabbits and raccoons and birds drinking their blood for years so that no one was unsafe. So that no one died and so that no one would look and worry that there was another Barnabas Collins lurking around. That was me protecting you, that was my part of the promise. Yours was to bring me India and then I would complete the promise by killing the one you believed killed Beau-----you're beginning to have seconds thoughts, Noelle, I can smell it on you. The doubt. The fear. It reeks. I won't warn you again of what I can do, of what I will do...and my target is on Cameron. Do you understand what I am saying Noelle? It's time ....no more waiting. Take me to India, take me to the main house and let's finish this. Once and for all." 

Noelle took a breath. Her heart was racing. It was true that she had promised Justin India in return for his assistance in destroying the Collins family member responsible for her beloved brother's death but she was no closer in discovering who that was than she had been in 1966. And what was worse was that she was now a trusted member of the household. She even cared for Elizabeth, literally and emotionally. They had become close.

Noelle's second thoughts were putting her in danger. And Justin was not forgiving their pact. Noelle was trapped in her own web.

"Fine. You're giving me no choice." Noelle said as she turned slowly to grab the bag she was filling. As she did, she saw a letter opening on the desk. It's silver and gold hand sparkled in the dim light of the room. Noelle, with the reflexes of a cat, grabbed the sharp letter opening and lunged at Justin who just as quickly grabbed her forearm. 

The letter opener was inches from Justin's chest. They struggled. They fell to the floor. Justin and Noelle, rolled around, the letter opener, headed for Justin's chest like a dagger to the heart. Justin's eyes turned red and his fangs came out. He hissed in anger and with what could only be described as super human strength picked Noelle up and tossed her to the ground. 

The letter opener flew from her hand and landed across the room.

"That was a mistake." Justin said as she slowly walked towards his cohort with his fangs out and mouth dry and begging for a taste of blood, Noelle's blood. 

"No, no ....Justin please. I'm sorry. You're right. You're right." Noelle said slowly scooting herself backwards and finding herself backed up against the room's wall.

Justin, his eyes still red like fire, squatted down and leaned in close. Noelle turned her head, closed her eyes as if she were awaiting the prick of a doctor's needle. Justin smelled around the exposed part of her neck, a large vein popping up from underneath her soft caramel colored skin. He could almost smell the blood, he could feel it rushing around in her body like a busy freeway of cars rushing, rushing, rushing --faster and faster as her heart-rate went up.

"Take me to Collinwood." Justin said softly as he got up from his crouched position allowing Noelle to live another day.

Noelle, opened her eyes and turned back towards the vampire her whole life was now entangled with. She shook her head in agreement and went over to her bag. She grabbed her coat and paused looking back at the fuming Justin who watched her every move like a half awaiting the perfect time to claw at his prey. She slowly turned and began her slow walk to the main house as Justin followed her.  

The two walked through the darkening woods that stood between the mansion of Collinwood where she'd begin her late night shift as Elizabeth's caretaker and the old house where Elizabeth was allowing Noelle and her nephew to live. The wind was cold and stinging on their skin. Noelle clutched tightly to her bag and Justin walked behind her slowly watching her step by step. 

Their skin, chilled to the touch as the mist from the sea lifted over the cliff side and became absorbed by their thirsty pours. Noelle was nervous. She had often thought about this moment, when her plan would begin to take shape to use Justin to get back at the family that took her brother and abandoned her nephew but it was still a scary moment. Revenge and cruelty and murder---were not in her wheel-house. 

As the two slowly made their way closer and closer to the main mansion, Evangeline was setting Caleb in for the night. His room was warm and sweet. Decorated in a nautical theme with model ships of the 18th century from all over the world. One in particular was a direct replica of the ship that brought the first Collins family members to the French Bay where Collinsport was founded. 

Evangeline, who's life was curated in a storm of lies and pain over her past, still felt a twinge of love for the young Caleb. He was an innocent of the family. He was a child. She too understood what it was like to live in a world where, as the child of two supernatural beings, things never made sense. Everything in life always seemed to be shrouded in mystery never clear and never cut and dry. 

Caleb's own life was similar. His parents were constantly at odds. He too lived in a storm. Evangeline could relate. 

As she finished reading the boy his favorite story and his eyes began to dip into a sweet unbothered sleep, she felt a beating in her chest. 

It was like a second heart. It was like drum beating in time with her own pulse. To her, the sign was clear, the message was coming to her. Something---or someone--was coming into her territory just like India had. Something of the supernatural. Something from the world where only the shadows ruled.

Evangeline, stood over Caleb and passed her hand over his face. Small tiny lights sprinkled from her hand falling to his face. He smiled and turned over in his bed. She was safe to traverse the house and search for what this beating sounds was. Caleb would not wake up during the night. 

David runs into Noelle 

Downstairs, Noelle let herself into the mansion with the key the family provided for her. She looked around and the foyer was dark, lit only by a side lamp on cherry wood table under the leering painting of Jeremiah Collins. She hung her coat up in on the coat-hanger and watched Justin stand in the doorway. His eyes reflected both a chilling coldness and the eager hopes that inside that mansion he'd fine the woman he'd been waiting for for so many years. India do Arco. 

But he would not find her. Noelle's spell worked, but Evangeline reverted India back awaiting to be born again to her mother. 

"I have to get to work and check on Mrs. Stoddard." Noelle said as Justin slowly made his way into the foyer under the dim light.

"What do I do? How do I find her?" Justin asked unsure of his own next steps.

Evangeline followed the beating in her chest, down the hall from Caleb's room and through a small corridor that lead to the landing of the main staircase beneath a large 17th century stain-glass window. 

Noelle turned to Justin as she begin her assent up the stairs, she wasn't sure how to answer. She wasn't sure of anything. Justin's attack on her had turned her off to him. She wanted to use him, use his power, and his strength but now she regretted not killing him when she discovered him in 1966. 

"Do whatever you want, Justin, whatever you want." Noelle said as she began to go up the stairs to Elizabeth's room.

Evangeline quickly vanished. Noelle walked towards her and stopped inches from where the invisible Evangeline was standing and felt a cold breeze tickle the exposed skin on her neck. A shiver ran up her spin. She could sense Evangeline's power. But shrugged it off. 

As Noelle passed into the hallway, she turned a corner that led into a private entrance to an atrium like room that was lit with various large antique lamps. A door to the bedroom on the other side of the wall began to slowly open. David Collins stepped out and was met with Noelle to his surprise.

"What are you doing here?" David said, his voice seemingly nervous at the site of his Aunt's caretaker. 

"I'm back, I start my shifts at night." Noelle said, she had always felt a strange energy from Roger Collins now adult son. 

"Oh. Right. Right. Uhh...aunt Liz is asleep already. But you can go in." David said, the guilt of what he secretly did to her brother Beau in 1966 and what his father helped cover up always at at his conscious when he looked at Noelle. She could feel it too. This energy from David, his guilty vibe, is what fed her suspicions on the Collins family most of all. 

"Thanks." Noelle replied as she watched David head back down from Elizabeth's private quarters. 

 Evangeline re-appeared on the landing above the foyer and watched as Justin looked around the foyer. He looked at the painting of Jeremiah. Then he turned and saw the one painting that stood out among all the other's: Barnabas Collins

And just as quick as he could think, Evangeline appeared in front of out him out of thin air and grabbed. Justin jumped back, his teeth extended and his eyes turned red. Evangeline gritted her teeth and clapped her hands. The sound echoed in Justin's ears like a ship's fog-horn in deep and blinding fog... then, suddenly in a split second flash of light the two creatures of the night were out of the foyer and in a blank space, a void, a place that was no place. Where they could be alone. Where they could be safe and uninterrupted. Where Evangeline could determine just who this mysterious man was that had caused the pounding drum like beat in her chest. 

"Who are you?" The cautious and suspicious witch said, awaiting the answer she had been expecting--something relating to her bastardized father Barnabas. 

Justin growled, he didn't know who this woman was, but being that his identity had to be kept secret because of his vampirism, he thought of the name on the envelope in Noelle's mail and hissed out an alias to the witch to protect his secret:

"Leopold." 

***

It was now hitting a very late hours in the mansion. The house creaked and moaned the normal sounds of an old house settling in for the night. A light breeze filled a large bedroom with two large French doors opened to it's terrace allowing in the breeze and lifting the sheer curtains up to float up like ghosts. 

The comfortable cool room was Elizabeth's. She lay in her large fluffy bed comfortably asleep resting her ancient bones. Each breath took in the fresh sea air as her care-taker enter the room to check on her. 

Noelle had years of preparation for this moment. She studied nursing and at-home-care to be able to infiltrate the family house when Elizabeth got older. It was a gamble. Noelle had no idea that Elizabeth would be alive when she finished her studies and she had no idea she would even be hired when she did, but it paid off in spades. 

Over the several years she had been at Collinwood she had garnered most of their trust. She had been given permission to live at the Old House with her nephew so she could be close to her patient and in doing so entered the main mansion freely. 

And on many nights as Elizabeth slept, Noelle searched the mansion for any sign or confession or clue to her brother Beau's disappearance. She knew, as his sister that this family was directly responsible for his vanishing. Was he dead? Did they kill him? Did his secretly relationship with heiress Carolyn and her pregnancy become common knowledge and Beau became a victim of someone's rage? 

Noelle had yet to discover the answers after all this time. But In her experience all that happens in the dark comes to light and hopefully Justin being on her side would help---but he was a live-wire, she could never predict how his behavior. 

As Elizabeth slept, Noelle prepared her clothes for the next day. She clawed through the hundreds of garments in her walk in closet. Even in her old age, she still liked to dress for the day. All in black. Pearls. Diamonds brooches. Rings. Ever the lady of the manor. 

Noelle placed the next's day's dress and shoes over a chair with the picked out jewelry in a box just next to the chair so that Elizabeth would find them in the morning. Sometimes she'd veto Noelle's choices in ensemble but it wasn't often. 

Then, Noelle quietly let herself out and walked back into the glowing atrium and down the hall that was illuminating her path out. As she continued down the red carpeted hallway, Noelle saw a light coming from the crack left open of the study that once belonged to Roger Collins. She paused and listened as a voice could be heard talking, but it seemed talking to themselves.

Noelle slowly, and stealthily, walked towards the study and put her ear to the door hiding herself from the light and listened.

It was David Collins fresh from their awkward moment at Elizabeth's door.  He was on the phone. 

"I know, I know. You've told me that many times before." He said to the other person on the phone.

Noelle looked at her watch, it was well past midnight now, who could be talking to, she wondered?

"But I think you should come now, especially since its going to be her birthday soon." David said to the other person on the line. "Well you can bring the baby!" He added.

On the other line was a Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne, freshly woken up in London where it was 8am. She had not been back to Collinsport since 1986 when she left after Maggie Evans' death at Windcliff Sanitarium. The horrors of Collinsport had taken her to London and she had never returned, and now that she was a mother herself to a baby girl of only 6 months, she held her self back the black shores of Maine.

"David, I love mother, I miss her so much but I just don't know if I can do it. Alex is so young and I don't want to travel with her." Carolyn said as she looked over at the sweet baby girl playing in her bassinet. 

"Carolyn...she really misses you. We all do. It's her 80th birthday for god's sake." David reminded her. 

"David...I..." Carolyn began but she paused to reflect on just exactly what he wanted her to do. To come home, to be there, in the place where so much horror had happened in her life, in all their lives. Could she really stay away? Could she really resist the temptation to visit her own mother again despite her fear and revolution of the place and town that made her who she was?

"What is it?" David said waiting for his cousin to finish her thought.

"I can't." Carolyn said. "I really have to go ok....I love you David." Carolyn said as David took a deep sign and answered her back. "I love you too.

As the hung up Carolyn turned around and looked at a large photograph her mother and herself taken when she was younger. She began to cry and felt homesick, even if it was THAT home. She loved her family but feared even the slightest involvement with them would trigger something horrible, would bring in the darkness again and the secrets...the ghosts. 

Carolyn in her London home

She thought of the darkest secret in the family's relatively full chest of secret. Barnabas. No one had seen him in decades. He vanished in 1972 with Julia Hoffman and Willie Loomis to parts unknown. He disappeared after Roger's death. After Roger's wife Cassandra's death, in a shroud of mystery and speculation. Barnabas was gone. But not forgotten. He Haunted Carolyn. He was the boogyman that never left her side. Not in the day light and not in the darkness. He was always there. His face. His fangs. His thirty grin.

"Are you ok?" Carolyn's English husband and as he entered the room with their morning tea.

"Oh thank you darling," Carolyn said taking the mug. "It was David. He's very instant of me going back to Maine to see my mother for her birthday." 

"Do you want to go? You haven't seen her in a very long time and I know she'd love to see you see you again. And maybe meet the baby?" Jack Thorne replied.

"You're not serious." Carolyn shot back.

"Well of course I am, love, this is your family. Like it or not. They miss you. Alexandra does deserve to know them. Regardless of ...you know." Jack said, hinting that he knew of the skeletons in the Collins family closet. 

"I wouldn't step foot in Maine with Alexandra. Not ever. I mean the very idea makes my blood boil, Jack, you know the danger in that. You know I could never put our baby...I mean Jesus!!!" Carolyn said, her voice now brimming on the hysterical.

"Calm down, calm down. Ok. Ok." Jack said reaching for his wife and holding her close to his body. He could feel her shaking. He could feel her body revolting at any idea or mention of Collinwood. It was a trigger. It was a dagger to her body, her heart, her mind. 

"Listen, shhhh......you're ok. You're safe here. Alex is safe here, love, you don't have to be this way....its ok." Jack said, calming his beautiful wife.

Carolyn lifted her face that was buried in her husband's chest and look up at him. His handsome chiseled chin resting on her head. Her eyes filled with tears clouded the blue pools of eyes and she smiled at him. Her protector. Her loving husband. 

"I know what you're thinking." She said wiping her face. 

"You don't." He joked and sipped his coffee over by the baby. 

"You think I'm insane and I'm being ridiculous. I can see it in your eyes."

"Carolyn, I don't think that. After everything you've told me about your life and your passed I don't think that. I believe everything you told me I believe everything thats happened to you but you can't keep running. You can't keep away from the things that scare you the most, darling. You have to face them at some point. And ...what better way to face up to your fears than doing it on your terms." Jack said as he played with his baby girl in his arms.

Carolyn took his words to heart. He was right. She knew he was right. Her mother's birthday was just in a week or so. She had time to digest it. The right thing, the good things to do was go. Go back to Collinwood. 

She slowly walked over to the telephone and picked it up and placed it to hear ear listening to the dial tone drone on and one until she began to key in the phone number to David's study. 

She took a deep breath and waited for David to answer. 

"Hello?" David said, confused by the late night call.

"Honey, its Carolyn." She said softly. 

Noelle was still listening by the light of the cracked open study.

"Hey! Carolyn What is it? Are you ok?" David asked noticing Carolyn's voice showed how she had been crying.

Noelle's ears perked up at the name. The name of her nephew's mother. The woman who had given birth, secretly to the boy she raised. 

"I'm coming back. I'll be there. For mother's birthday." She said in a hopeful voice.

"OH!!! That's GREAT!! We'll keep it a surprise. We won't tell Aunt Elizabeth and she'll be so happy you're back, Carolyn she's going to be so happy." David said.

Noelle's eyes widened. Carolyn was coming home. Another layer of danger of exposure had just been placed on her plan to find out what happened to her brother. Carolyn returning could potentially spell disaster in her plot, as she would not leave her mother alone for a second....and Carolyn had no idea her Ex-Lover's sister had been living as Elizabeth's caretaker. 

More secrets. More betrayals. More Lies. 

The fog rolled in over the land around Collinwood. And the wind howled deep baritone breaths through the trees. Wolves were circling and baying at the moon.

No one would be safe from the truth. No one. 

Carolyn in gloomy London