Monday, October 12, 2020

Series 13/Chapter 9: SECRETS IN THE WALLS


Collinwood at night 


Every star seemed to be lit up in the sky above Collinwood the night Lucas was finally going to do what he had only dreamed of doing. He walked along side a slender concrete walkway lined with large triangle shaped topiaries bushes that stood like soldiers guarding the servants entrance door. 

Lucas had longed to be in the world of the supernatural. He had literal dreams of cascading through the halls of Collinwood attempting to contact the other side, attempting to find and feel and understand the world of the dead that the Collins family had been rumored to be connected with. All this life, folklore and rumor that surrounded this stoic family had been like a ghost itself that haunted Lucas' mind.

To put it plainly, he was student scientist with an obsession. But not his boyfriend's link to the family via his birth mother Carolyn Stoddard-Thorne was pay-dirt.

At the servants' entrance now, Lucas pulled out the key Noelle had given him. It was a long a golden key the felt light in his hand. He held it up to the moon light and it reflected a shine on a large letter C engraved on it.

He slid the key into the locked and slowly turned it opening the door without a single problem. It was, again, feeling too good to be true.

Lucas then followed Noelle's instructions and walked through the various corridors and halls that led to room after room used by the hundreds of servants in Collinwood's history. Eventually these rooms lead to a side door that opened into the foyer, just as Noelle described.

In almost complete darkness, Lucas slowly walked up the dimly lit staircase that lead him past a large stainless window of a large seascape. The different colored blue and white glass that made up the ocean sparkled in Lucas' equally blue eyes. He smiled at the beauty of the art then followed his own advice and continued on his way into the main hallway that gave access to to the rest of the mansion.

The mansion was finally quiet. Everyone was asleep. There was an odd feeling that came over Lucas with the sense that even though he could tell that there was no movement, he was still not alone. A chill crossed the back of his neck, he turned around to see what would have done that, and nothing was there. 

Just an empty hallway. Even the paintings on the walls seemed to look down on him like they were pitting him for what he was about to get himself into---now and for the rest of his life. 

Lucas kept hearing Noelle's instructions of how to get to Roger Collin's old study. That is where she believed he would find the most important information and possible the answers they were both looking for. Roger was the bookkeeper of the house. Everything he had ever written down for the Cannery, for the lawyers, for the accountants that looked over his books, for Elizabeth, all of that was documented and saved in hundreds of books and binders kept on bookshelves in his old Study. The study that David taken possession of when his father died 10 years earlier.

Noelle's directions in the labyrinth of Collinwood were spot on. He found the darkened study and turned the knob. He entered and flashed his flashlight over to the desk and began his search. 

He went through drawers in the desk and in a large apothecary table that sat near the two huge windows that let in the gloomy blue moon light from outside. He then shifted his attention to the bookcase with all of Roger Collins' work from over the years. It seemed like a never ending task. There was so much to look through. So much paperwork. So many records.

As Lucas went though the books, a few papers that he had left on the desk suddenly lifted and fell to the ground. He looked over at the vacant spot on the desk where the papers were and furrowed his brow. Lucas flashed his flash light around the room. Just just an old study. He got up from the desk and went over to retrieve the papers from the floor and as he reached down the papers moved forward. 

Lucas reached for them again.

Again the two sheets of paper moved, all on their own, a bit forward. 
It was as if a strange and mysterious breeze was pulling the papers along. Lucas looked up and flashed his light over at the windows. They were closed. No breeze was pushing these papers across the floor.

Lucas reached down to pick them up again, and once again the papers fluttered across the floor in the opposite direction from which they came. 

Suddenly, they began to flutter even further, faster and all alone without Lucas reaching for then. The shuttered like leaves blowing in the wind and Lucas, nervously, followed. He ran up to them and slammed his foot on them so that they could no longer move. He picked them up and read what they were.

Just two old tax forms from 1967. 

But then, Lucas realized he was standing in front of a large painting of Roger Collins sitting in a chair with a glass of painted sherry gazing down in his typical Collins snobbish and New England sneer. The papers had fluttered all on their own pointing the way for Lucas to follow and find himself directly under the image of Roger, and Roger's painting was hung above a small table with a large potted plant and one little drawer with a four-leafed clover handle. 

Lucas looked at the drawer. Then up at the painting. Then back at the drawer.

"Well...that was subtle old man. Do you want me to open it?" Lucas asked Roger's painting believe that Roger somehow moved the papers.

Lucas, a believer in the supernatural and the world of the undead reached for the drawer to pull it open when suddenly it opened all by itself. 

Lucas's gasped and stood back. He couldn't believe what he had just seen. The papers were one thing but the whole drawer opening before his eyes seemed overtly haunted. He looked up at Roger and Roger's face had changed. He was now not just staring out in to the room he was looking down in the painting. Down at the open drawer. 

Lucas flashed his light into the drawer and there was a black leather bound book inside. He picked up the book and unwrapped the leather strap that kept it closed. He began to flip through the pagers and saw that it was Roger's private journal. 

Years and years of his most intimate thoughts and dreams. His most private expressions about his family, his life and everything in between. 

Lucas skipped over years and years of Roger's own words to find the dated entry around the time Beau disappeared. 

And there it was, almost too easy to be true, but it was. 



Roger's confession:

 "....the boy...theres something wrong with him. Sometimes I think it has something to do with his mother and how she left us. Laura wasn't a good mother. Laura...Laura had something wrong with her too. I love David but at the same time I feel like I hate him but I don't know if I hate him because of his mother's influence and sickness or because I just don't know how to love him the right way. It reminders me of how my father treated me and god---how I loathed him for it. Maybe David feels the same way about me. Last night my worst nightmare happened. I found David just standing in my study with Liz's gun over a dead man. A DEAD MAN. Its the most extreme and strange of all my horrific thoughts on what David could be capable of. But he's my son. And I couldn't let anything happen to him. 

I hid the body. These walls hold a lot of secrets. So they'll hold just one more. David is my son, like it or not. I won't allow him to be taken from me for killing that Ceilvert man. I won't."



At first Lucas wasn't sure what to make of the journal entry. It was sad. It was unfortunate. But was it true? Could it have been some sort of exaggeration....but it wasn't. It was all written in black and white in Roger's own handwriting. 

Then Lucas read the line "These walls hold a lot of secrets. So they'll hold just one more" once more and realized it could mean something quite literal about the mansion, specifically the study. Secrets in the walls.

Lucas placed the book down on the sofa in the center of the room and began searching for false walls in the room. His bare hands searched and searched every inch of all four walls of the study and just as the clock struck 3 in the morning he found it. A false wall the slid open as if it was doing it on it's own. Lucas stared at the opening, the blackness inside the wall seemed gaping and never ending. His stomach turned and he was unsure what to do ....he wanted to look in but it felt almost as if he were going to look into someone's grave.

Lucas took a deep breath then stepped into the opening of the false wall. 

He slowly made his way through the walk space between the two walls. It was perfectly formed for a man of his size, or Roger's, to slink through with their body turned to the side with just enough room to breath. Lucas kept his right arm stretched out with the flashlight brightly pointing in the direction he was going. 

His stomach was doing flips in his body. His face was covered in sweat. His mind was racing and the heat inside the walls was beginning to choke him. Was this just a wild goose chase? What was he really going to find. 

As he continued on his way, about 25 feet from the entrance the false Wall suddenly slammed shut. 
Lucas gasped and turned the light back towards where he came.

"NO! NO!!!" he yelled.

He then began to walk back, side-stepping in a quick pace trying to get back to the exit. 

He suddenly started to feel as if the walls were getting tighter around his body. His breathing was now labored. He felt hotter and stickier and he couldn't find his way back in the pitch black with in the walls.

Then suddenly his light flashed in the the glow of the flashlight the green and and white transparent body of Roger Collins' ghost stood before Lucas. 

Lucas' eyed were as large as two giant eggs. His screamed at the stoic and emotionless face of Roger who only pointed back in the opposite direction.  "Go back." The ghost of Roger said in a monotone voice.

Lucas was shaking. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. He was frozen in place. 

"GO BACK!" Roger said, forcing Lucas to continue back down the thin walkway in the hidden passage. 

Lucas nervous again turned back. He was shaking. The light in his hand was unsteady and flashing up and down and forward, in all directions. He could feel the sweat drip down his back like tears coming from a pair of terrified eyes. 

Then, in almost perfect timing he felt a crunch under his shoe. 

He paused. He was scared to look. He was scared to even think of what could have made that sound. 

He slowly turned his flashlight downward and there, still dressed in the clothes he was in when he came to Collinwood the night David shot him were the bones of Beau Cielvert. Noelle's brother. Cameron's father. Dead of a gunshot wound in 1966. 

Lucas screamed and the skeleton suddenly lifted up on its legs. The mouth was slightly opened. Lucas didn't know what to do he wanted to go back down the path again, back towards the exit but the skeleton only stared at him, and ripped a necklace off of its bony neck and extended its bony arm and passed it to Lucas. 

Lucas grabbed the necklace, and the bones fell to the ground in a jumbled heap.

Then the door at the far end of the passed between the walls opened and Lucas quickly made his way out of the secret passaged, out of the study and quietly out of the mansion.

Beau's skeleton in the walls of the mansion
Roger and Beau had worked together to finally reveal the truth. Beau could finally Rest In Peace. 




****

Elizabeth's Will 



The next morning, as Lucas slept in a deep sleep after his night of secret searching within the walls of Collinwood, the family members met with Webber Garner, Elizabeth's family lawyer. Web's family had been managing the Collins family's legal issues for decades his father Frank and Grandfather Richard before him had always been at Elizabeth and Roger's beck and call. 

Web was no different. He was trust worthy. Loyal. A friend and he was in town to ready Elizabeth's Will.

In the drawing room, Kimberly sipped on a piping hot cup of tea as Noelle entered with Carolyn. The two old friends were rather uncomfortable with each other after their long history of friendship and secrets. Noelle knew of Carolyn's relationship with her brother Beau and of course their mutual connection by blood: Cameron. 

As Noelle and Kimberly made small talk and Carolyn looked through old forms and her mother's photos, Webber entered with instructions from one of the housekeepers on where to go.

"WEB!! Oh it's so good to see you!" Carolyn said, leaping from her seat after seeing a friendly face. 

"Carolyn, it's been so long. I'm very, deeply, sorry to hear about your mother. My father sends his regards as well." Webber said of his elderly father Frank.

"How is Frank doing?" Kim said from the sofa.

Webber and Carolyn looked over to her, Webber knew Carolyn's distaste for her cousin-in-law from various bits of notes she'd send from London making sure Kimberly stayed out of the family business and that David retained much of the control while she lived abroad. 

"He is well, thank you Mrs. Collins." Web replied.

"Tea?" Noelle asked him as she poured herself a cup. 

"No thank you. I'd like to get Mrs. Stoddard's Will read as soon as possible so that you all can mourn her in peace. Its never a good feeling being the lawyer in the room after the Will is read, believe me." Webber answered.

"Have you already looked it over?" Carolyn asked.

"I have. I needed to make sure everything in it is legal above board before I read it out loud. She had it updated about a year ago. It was actually notarized by my father then too, so I know that it's all set to a legal standard that even I couldn't poke hole in." Web said, referring to his well rounded knowledge of estate law. 

"That's good to hear." Noelle said, thinking that perhaps after being Elizabeth's caretake for the last 20 years she'd perhaps get a big chunk of the woman's money.

Web looked around the room and noticed someone was missing. "Where's David?" 

"He's unwell. He's been very sick for the last week or so. He's asleep upstairs." Kim answered as little Caleb rushed in from the foyer and into his mother's arms.

"Well I'd prefer to read this in front of him too. Is he too ill to come down even for a short time?" Webber asked not knowing the rumor in the house was that David pushed Liz and that it wasn't an accident. 

"I think it's better that we let him rest." Carolyn interjected knowing her word would be the end of the conversation. 

"Very well." Web said as he reached into his briefcase and pulled out the file with Liz's Will. "Are we ready?" He asked as the women looked at each other and nodded that they were. 

Web flipped through the papers and took a deep breath. He knew that most of the information in Elizabeth's Will would be common knowledge and obvious but after he looked into the legality of it all he knew there were a couple of surprises that would take the room by surprise.

"I, Elizabeth Alexandra Collins Stoddard, being of sound mind and body on this day, the eleventh of January 1989, in the presence of estate and personal attorney, Frank Garner, here by bequeath the following as my final Will and Testament: To my daughter Carolyn and/or her descendants, I leave all of my shares and responsibilities of The Collins Fishing Co which she/they will divide amongst their cousin David Collins and/or his descendants. Carolyn and/or her descendants will also inherit half of the the Collinwood estate which includes the main inhabited mansion and the old house, and the rose Cottage. Carolyn and/or her descendants will also inherit all of my liquid and assents including bank accounts, jewelry, clothes and furniture purchased in my name and passed down to me. A list of the following jewelry and items herein will be passed to Carolyn and/or her descendants. To David and/or his descendants I leave the sum of $150,000 a month for the next full year after my death. To my caretaker Noelle Cielvert, thank you for all the kindness, sharing, brilliance and work. I leave you $300,000. This amount will be divided to her and/or her descendants in payments made in over the next 12 months. To Kimberly Grayson-Collins, I leave a diamond brooch given to me by grandmother. This brooch shall not be sold, and if sold I have given Garner & Garner full rights to sue for the sum of money that was sold by. I am entrusting Kimberly to keep this piece in honor of our family and for her children with David."

Kimberly smiled. She she was now in-line to receive $1.8 million over the next year now that her plan with Victor and The OTH to make David insane. Things seemed to be coming up rosy and perfect.

"Very straight forward." Noelle said thinking about her inheritance too.

"But thats not all." Web said pulling out a second envelope. 

"What's that?" Carolyn asked. 

"This is where things get interesting and unfortunately I had to look into this before I could repeat it here. Its about Seaview House." Web said handing Carolyn the envelope. 

Carolyn looked down and saw that the envelope was marked V.W. 

"What about Seaview house?" Kim asked. 

"Mrs. Stoddard left it to Victoria Winters." Web said.

Kim's face froze almost as if she didn't know which expression to show. Was she shocked? Or terrified. It was like someone had splashed cold water over her whole body. No one in the room knew how to react. 

"I don't understand. No one has seen or heard from Vicky in ....I don't know. Decades. How can she have legally inherited Seaview?" Carolyn asked.

"Well, that's what I had to find out. It just so happens that Vicky's social security number is still active meaning she hasn't been declared dead or missing in any state. So someone is receiving her benefits. Someone, Vicky herself or not, is initialed to what your mother left her. That envelope is for her...or whom ever is receiving her social security." 

Carolyn moved to open the envelope and Web reached over and grabbed her.

"I can't let you do that." Web said as he took back the envelope. "This can only be opened by Victoria or..." he paused "her descendants." 

"Web no one knows where she is. I mean if my mother left our old Governess part of our estate I think we should be told where she is so that she can either claim it or sign it back over to us." Carolyn said forcefully. 

Webber smiled, he always knew Carolyn was a firecracker. She never took any guff from anyone and this whole business with the mysterious surrounding about Vicky and Elizabeth rubbed her the wrong way and he could see it all over her face. But the truth was, he was bound by law to only allow the family to know what part of the estate was now in someone's else hands but not read things that were directed for only that person's eyes.

"I completely understand that this is frustrating and that the feeling of not knowing what to do with this info is weird. A lot of things are weird." he smirked to Carolyn's stone face. "I can only tell you that I'm going to do my best in finding where she is or who's the person she left her own money to. And as soon as I do, I'll be sure to get them to sign over Seaview to you." Web said.

That, for now, satisfied Carolyn who gave Web a hug. He said goodbye to the women and patted Caleb on the head. Caleb, now an heir to his father's millions from grandpa Roger and great-aunt Elizabeth, played with this stuffed bear on the old rug just below his mother's feet.

Kimberly rubbed her pregnant tummy and excused herself to the other room. She picked up the phone, and as per usual, dialed Victor Reed, the man she was having an affair with and who had been brain-washing her to destroy the Collins family from the inside out. 

"Its me." She said as Victor skimmed a book written by Chancellor Devlin and distributed within The OTH. "Liz's will was just read. I'm Rich!" She gleamed. 

"Good, now maybe we can finish the job." He said as he flipped through the pages of the book describing how to kill a vampire and how to conjure a ghost and then vanquish it to hell.

Kim paused before answering. "David is almost gone, ok, I just need more time with Carolyn." 

"And the kid?" Victor asked of Caleb.

"Vic, I... he's just a boy. My boy." She answered. 

"David's boy too. I told you, we told you, this was going to happen. Chancellor Devlin warned you in your  sessions with The OTH that this would come eventually. You were fine with it. You'll have a new child soon and this child will be born the proper way with all the teaching of the OTH. Trust me. This is the way it should be." Victor said, coldly and cruelly. 

Kim didn't answer him. She could feel that her inner hatred of herself bubbling up and when that happened she did stupid things and angered Victor and the OTH. "I have to go." She said quickly before her mind went to that place where she'd have to get reevaluated by the OTH. 

Victor could feel her tension. But it was all apart of the job. He hung up the phone and dialed the Chancellor to give an update on the situation in Collinsport.

"It's Reed." He said as the Chancellor answered with many questions.  "I understand Chancellor Devlin, she's doing everything she can at the pace that she can do it without being detected. If we killed them all at once we'd have a mass murder on our hands that would certainly arouse suspicion. I'm trying to push her to quicken her pace but I can't too much...you know how skittish she gets when things become more and more real." Victor explained. 

Victor listened to the Chancellor's instructions. To save the world of the evil this family brought every last one of them had to be killed. Time was of the essence. Time was ticking. Time, the Chancellor said, was running out for all of them. 

"I agree. And I understand. I'll keep on it." Victor said as he hung up the phone.


The Chancellor got up from their desk and walked over to a window over looking New York City. The streets were covered in strangers passing each other. Just people walking around going places. Strangers passing. Strangers not knowing who the others were. But they were all there. One blank face after another. 

The Chancellor's office was covered in pictures of their past. Pictures of Maine. And New York City. 

One small photo of Burke Devlin sat on a corner side table next to a name plate on the desk that read

CHANCELLOR V.W.   DEVLIN


The Chancellor turned and the reflection in the window facing New York City was one of a woman haunted by every ghost and monster Collinsport had to offer. A woman who disappeared, vanished without a trace and renamed herself. Remade herself. Regained herself as VW Devlin. Soon, her Organization of the True Hearted would rid the world of the family that caused her so much pain and suffering.

Soon. And forever. 


****

Later that afternoon and the ships in the French Bay that surrounded Collinsport began to fill the harbors and marinas to bring in their morning catch, Noelle paced back and fourth in the living room of the old house. She Stared up at the painting of Barnabas Collins. He looked down at her with eyes that seemed to be almost resentful of her living in his home, the home he had loved more than anything he had ever loved before. 

It was his place. It was the place he had given up so much to come back to so man y times over the generations that he had lived. She snickered at his painting. She had hated it all the time she had lived there. The resentment was mutual.

"I need you to leave soon. I need you to leave and never come back." Justin said from the dark and shadowy hallway just outside the basement.

Noelle turned and snarled at him. She hated him too. Everything he had done and how he had been behaving lately didn't even matter. She felt a freedom now that Cameron would receive some hind of inheritance now that Elizabeth was dead. The money that Carolyn would receive would now trickle down to Cameron. Noelle had finally figured out how stick it to the family she still believed killed her brother.

Justin--and all his strengths and powers--was now obsolete. 

"Why? So you can take over this house with that....that...woman you have hidden down there? Not on your life." Noelle said with a wicked tone.

"You're very brave with that tongue Noelle. Something must have happened. Something in your favor" Justin noted. "But I know something you may not.... India is never coming back. Your promise to me to work together so that India and I could be together and so that I could help with the subject of Beau is now null-in-void. We're free of each other." He added.

"You never sent her back did you. You never sent that woman down there back. The nanny." Noelle devised. 

"Her name is Evangeline and we're in love. We're going to be together." Justin said of his new found passion with Evangeline. 

"Oh my god! YOU'RE DELUSIONAL! What do you think is going to happen? That the two of you are just going to ride off into the sunset and be together Justin? It's never going to happen. Neither of you will ever find happiness because you're build of hate and evil and darkness. That's it. You'll never ever find any kind of happiness! Mark my words." Noelle exclaimed.

Justin stepped one step closer out of the hallway shadows but the sunlight from the drawing room scared him off and he stepped back. He stared at the now brave woman in front of him who's world so suddenly and at the same time shockingly changed. Justin wasn't needed. 

As Justin began his reply, Cameron and Lucas burst through the font door. Noelle turned back to see that in that split second entrance Justin had vanished angrily down back in to the basement to be with Evangeline.

"What the hell Noelle!!!!" Cameron screamed.

Noelle was shocked at his voice and tone. "Cam?!" 

"What did you have Lucas do last night? Huh? Tell me?" Cameron asked angrily even though he already knew the answer. 

"I had to tell him." Lucas said.

"Honey I can explain everything...." Noelle replied as they all went into the Drawing room.

"No, I don't want to hear any of this. We were supposed to do this together I said I would help you figure out what happened to may dad but I wanted to do it the right way. Not like this. Not in secret. How could you do this? How could you go behind my back and ....and..... I mean for God's sake the Collins family have treated you with such kindness over the years and you have some break into their home and snoop? What have we become?" Cameron asked knowing that the truth he was so afraid to hear was coming. He didnt want to believe any of it but it was coming. 

"I know it seems off but you've haven't been yourself since you found out that Carolyn is your mother and that I raised you here..." Noelle paused still stinging at the sound of her original sin. "....what happened to your father might be too much for you to handle." She finished. 

"I think that Noelle too had a reason to worry, Cam. I'm sorry. I really am. But I'm glad it was me that found these things and not you." Lucas said handing over Roger's journal and the necklace that was found in the walls of Collinwood.

Noelle gasped at the site of the necklace she hadn't seen since 1966.

"It's his." Noelle said in a hushed voice.

"You can't be serious. This can't be real." Cameron said reading the passage of the journal that mentions Beau's murder.

"It is. I'm sorry honey." Lucas said grabbing at his boyfriend's hand. 

Cameron pulled away. 

Noelle, who had pulled the journal from Cameron's hands had been reading the passage. Her eyes narrowed when she discovered from the entry that 10 year old David shot and killed Beau and that Roger hid the body in the walls. She began to tear up. The horror. The monstrous horror. 

"I knew it. I knew they were hiding this all these years. I knew it!!" Noelle said. 

"Really? What are you going to do? March in there and tell Carolyn that you've been raising her bastard son next door to her now dead mother for 25 years and that you just decided to have his boyfriend break in and start going through their things?" Cameron shot back ripping the necklace from Noelle's hands.

"You don't understand how hard it was for me to do this for you all these years. To Protect you To keep you safe. I'm going over there. Im going to tell David I know what he did. I know that he's responsible for all the pain and suffering of our family." Noelle said her face awash in tears.

"He’s not the only one! They will arrest you!! Don't you understand? You can't solve a broken law by breaking the law! That's not how these things work. This isn't your ordinary family and now you've made things one hundred times worse." Cameron shouted. 

"Cameron, it's time you take your place in that family. It's time, because Elizabeth's inheritance said so. I heard it with my own ears. David will go to jail and you can make up for his absence in the company and live off of what Elizabeth's trust fund that you're now entitled to." Noelle said in a calculated way.

Cameron stared at her with eyes that could burn holes in the sun. He couldn't believe what she was saying and how she was speaking. It was like Noelle had turned another face. She wasn't the same. She had been blinded by so much anger and pain and suffering and lies and betrayal that now she could only see revenge as the last option and nothing in her mind could change that. Not even the pain she was now causing in Cameron's own life. 

"Cam say something. We have to know how you feel." Lucas said as Cameron pulled away from his hands.

"Blood money. It's all blood money and that's all its ever been about. No. I don't want anything to do with it and if you even try to bring me in to it I swear I will leave town and never come back." Cameron threatened. 

“This is your right!” Noelle replied her true colors of greed showing. 

“STOP!” Cameron screeched, heated and disgusted with his aunt.

"Cameron, come on!" Lucas said reaching for his boyfriend again.

"Leave me alone!" Cameron replied as he stormed out of the Old House with his father's necklace in his pocket. 

Lucas and Noelle were left in ashes of Cameron's fury. Lucas wanted to know more about the Collins family and even though the man he loved was right now curing his name he felt that it was for now, the best decision he could have made. 

"Now what?" Lucas asked Noelle.

Noelle grabbed her coat and Roger's secret diary and looked at Lucas as she walked through the door. 

"Im going to make David pay." She said with a sizzle in her voice as she made her way over to the main mansion. 



****

A fall from the balcony 


At the house David would be waiting. But he wouldn't be alone. As he lay on his bed with his eyes open, his mind felt like jelly. Kim stood over him and shook her head. She could see that he was no longer the David he had been just a week ago. The serum was working. He was truly going mad. 

"I wish you had been down stairs today to hear all the nice things Elizabeth's Will had to say. She really did love you, you know." Kimberly said as she flicked the syringe in her slim, perfect fingers. 

David turned his head slowly to his treacherous wife and saw her pushing the syringe's plunger to test the medicine she was about to inject into him.

David mumbled as Kimberly made a pouty face to David teasing him.

"Don't be such a baby. It won't hurt a bit."

As the needle went into David's arm, he could feel the medicine go through his veins like lava. There was a heat that went up his arm and into his brain and he started to see sparks. It was as if all the lamps in the room were flickering on and off.... on and off....on and off....on and off.

Suddenly, Noelle burst thorough the door. 

"YOU BASTARD!" She screamed as she through Roger's journal on to the bed.

"Jesus! Noelle! What are you doing?!" Kim said hiding the needle in her handbag. 

"He killed my brother. He killed beau!!!" She shouted.

"What? What are you talking about?" Kim asked.

"Noelle? Kim? What's going on?" Carolyn asked as she walked in from the hallway after hearing the scream from Noelle's entrance.

"Its right there. Its all right there from his father's own hand. Read it. Here, Carolyn, read it yourself. David Killed my brother Beau!" Noelle repeated as she handed Carolyn the book open to the page explaining Beau's murder.

"Beau...killed Beau?" Carolyn asked confused as she skimmed the journal.

"In cold blood. With a gun. Shot him. Dead." Noelle replied through a gritted jaw.

"I....I don't understand. None of this is making sense. My head is spinning." Carolyn replied her mind in total disarray. 

"Just read it Carolyn! Just read it, its right there!"

"Alright I need everyone to leave this room. Right away. David is not feeling well and..." Kim began as she looked over to see that David was now standing over his bead staring at Noelle. "David, honey? Are you ok?"

He stared at her. His eyes locked on her. There was a vacant and cold look on his face like something in side him was missing and that he had nothing left to give. His skin was pale. His lips chapped and cracked. A single thing line of drool fell from his mouth in a long 6 Inch strand that finally released itself from his lip and fell to puddle on his bare foot.

He was growling. His heart was pumping. He was sweating profusely and he was staring at Noelle.

"What is he doing? What's wrong with him?" Noelle asked.

"Noelle... I think you should leave." Carolyn said slowly seeing that David had his sites on her for some reason.

Noelle reached for her coat that she had taken off down stairs and walked upstairs with it in her hand and when she entered the room and thrown it on a side chair.

As she did, David yelled a bloodcurdling sound so loud that it cracked the glass in the mirror that hung on his bedroom wall. Carolyn screamed at his monstrous state of mind and fell back into the hallway and Kim, protecting her pregnant belly fell back on to the bed as David lunged for Noelle's body.

She screamed as their two bodies collided in a thunderous pounding sound. He was attacking her. The Drugs Kim had been injecting him rendered him animalistic. Almost like a wolf. He was tearing at Noelle's clothes. She kept blocking his hands as she backed up towards an open balcony. The fear in her eyes almost seemed to light the room up, it was so pronounced. 

Carolyn was frozen in fear. She had never seen David like this before.

"David...DAVID!" Kim screamed, unsure of what would happen next as she watched the man she was injecting with the drugs Victor gave her go at Noelle like a wild dog hungry for blood. 

He kept at her and lunged one more time. This time he fell to the floor but not before pushing Noelle off the balcony.

Her scream echoed over the orange grass Collinwood land. 

Kim, too shocked to scream got up from the bed and Carolyn rushed back into the room. The two women looked over the balcony and saw Noelle at the bottom. Dead. Her body contorted in painful shapes. 

David, exhausted and hurting fell to the floor in a giant heap of muscles and brawn and passed out, his veins still throbbing with the hallucinogens Kim had been injecting into him. 

Kim and Carolyn looked at each other and slowly began to settle with the fact David had lost his mind.

To Carolyn, David's sudden and quick onset into a deep psychosis was a horrible mystery. Perhaps a mental break from the decades attached to a home and a family littered with the corpses of old secrets and lies. Perhaps David had reached a breaking point. Perhaps he had just had too much.

But Kim knew better. He wasn't naturally losing his mind. He wasn't randomly killing people because of this decay of consciousness. Kim knew she was the one pushing him to this madness. She was the one with a powerful drug that she injected into him every chance she got hoping he would kill his family one by one. In way way, it was working....and to Kim hers was a job well done. 







Monday, October 5, 2020

Series 13/Chapter 8: AMOUNTING DEVASTATION




Carolyn mourning the loss of Elizabeth  


An early afternoon wind blew through the French door windows of the drawing room lifting the sheer white organza curtains up into the air like white ghosts looming over the furniture. So strong was the current of air that blew in from the courtyard and in through the floating curtains that the fireplace blew our in a puff of sparks leaving only fuming embers and coals.

The fire going out was cruel reminder that only 5 days before the legendary Matriarch of the Collins family, Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard’s own fire, that which burned inside of her had gone too. 

This icon of Collinwood had died in a tragic fall down the main staircase of the mansion under strange and suspicious circumstances involving the sudden madness of her nephew David Collins.


The foyer had been filled with flowers of condolences from shocked town’s people. Elizabeth was a sort of cult-icon of sorts, a town celebrity. A living legend who had lived a life of privilege and glamour, but mostly she had lived a life shrouded in secrets, curses and terror. 

Now her life would only exist in the local folklore of the fishermen whom she employed and in the campfire stories of children who’s parent own childhood’s were haunted by the shadows of Collinwood. For all time.

Whispers in town were already flouting conspiracies of her tragic death: was she really the victim of a freak accident in her own home? In her birthday? Everyone in town knew that with the Collins family, nothing was ever as it seemed.



David and Kimberly's five year old son Caleb danced around the freezing Drawing room jumping at the floating curtains' trying to grab them down as if it were some kind of game someone was playing with him.

From the corner of the little boy's eye he saw a figure standing in the bright light of the day. It was a woman with dark hair and and deep dark eyes and pale skin who blew kisses at him. With each blow of a kiss a wild gust of wind would flow into the Drawing room like a river of cold air lifting the sheer curtains again for Caleb to jump at.

It was Josette DuPres. The patron saint of the Children of Collins family. She was always around watching over the little ones in ghostly apparitions that only they could understand. That only they could see. She protected them. She loved them.

He laughed at Josette’s silly air kisses and spun around in constant twirls; playing and laughing trying to grab at the floating curtains. His giggle echoed in the room. His eyes were bright and joyful even though the day was sad and mournful.

Five days earlier, his father went insane and supposedly pushed Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard down the stairs killing her. And today was her funeral. 

Caleb, dressed in all black was the first one of the family ready for her the sad ceremony. Alone in the cold drawing room dancing along to Josette little game.

"Caleb, that's enough!" Kimberly said pulling down the curtains and closing the French doors to the wind just as Josette's ghost quickly evaporated into the light. "That's inappropriate." The pregnant woman said rubbing her belly.

"Why?" Caleb asked.

"Because today is sad day. Today Aunt Lizzy goes to heaven." Kimberly replied trying to explain a funeral to a child in a cute and easy way.

"Because you pushed her." Caleb said.

Kimberly gasped in the reveal that he did see her. He did see what she did to Elizabeth.

"Now, honey, that's not true. Ok? Daddy did it. Remember? I told you that daddy pushed aunt Lizzy. You have to be sure that when you talk about Aunt Lizzy's accident you remember that Daddy pushed her, not mommy ok? Can you do that?" Kim asked, attempting to turn the truth upside down in her own son's mind.

"But daddy was not there. You pushed Aunt Lizzy mama." Caleb said in pouting, knowing he wasn’t crazy for saying what he saw.

"Caleb..." Kimberly began to speak as she knelt down close to him so that they were now face to face, eye to eye. "Listen to mama: If anyone asks you what happened, or if you saw something the night Aunt Lizzy died, you have to tell them what Mama is telling you, ok? Daddy is sick and he pushed Aunt Lizzy. That's what happened." Kim said forcing her lie on the boy who saw nothing of the sort the night Liz died.

"I ...I....don't know mama.” Caleb said confused at his mother's request.
"Honey, mama is trying to explain to you what to do when someone asks you what you know ok? So listen, if someone does ask you tell them Daddy pushed her. Do you understand? It was Daddy not mama who pushed Aunt Lizzy. Ok? Will you do that for mama?" She asked, still forcing the boy to cover for her.

He reluctantly agreed.


Carolyn & Kimberly in mourners
black in the drawing room 


"Is everything ok?" Carolyn asked entering the room, also dressed in mourner's black from head to toe with delicate Black veil barley covering her face, yet her steely blue eyes still piercing through.

"No, no, nothing. We were just chatting about today." Kim said squeezing Caleb's hand.

"I'm miss Aunt Lizzy." Caleb said in a little voice, shying away and hiding his face in his mother's legs. "Oh honey, I know. I know. I'm going to miss her too. But she's always going to be with us. She's always going to be in our hearts." Carolyn said kissing his little face. "Is David ready?" She added.

"Ready?" Kim questioned.

"For my mother’s funeral?" Carolyn asked irritated.

“Absolutely not!” Kim shot back.

Carolyn turned her head slightly to the side to Kim’s outburst. “And why not? We’re family Kimberly.”

"Carolyn, my god! I mean... he pushed your mother. He...killed her.” Kim said in a soft voice as Caleb looked down at his shoes knowing It was a lie.

Carolyn lifted a brow beneath her veil. “It was an accident. We all know it was an accident and any insulation otherwise is asinine. Especially coming from his wife!” Carolyn retorted.

“I’m also a doctor. And I don't think he should go. He's been in and out of consciousness for the last 4 or 5 days. Besides, I don’t want you to have to sit around all those whispering mourners Knowing Liz’s killer is at her funeral ." Kim replied again pushing the narrative that David lost his mind and pushed Liz.

“Kimberly! David is not a killer! What happened... whatever it was must of been an accident and once he gets better he will tell us that.” Carolyn replied Protecting her cousin.

Caleb looked away. He knew the truth. He knew it was a lie. He, in his own childlike way, couldn't deal with what was coming out of his mother's mouth. It was confusing. And he felt betrayed by his own mother and his own eyes. He knew what he saw. He knew it with all his little heart.

And Carolyn could tell.

"You told me how David snapped that night and how he's never been the same since. You keep telling me how he all of a sudden just went berserk and my mother some how got in the middle of it, but for the life of me I just don't see it. Nothing makes sense. Usually I'm pretty good at connecting the dots, but this whole thing doesn't add up." Carolyn said, as she adjusted the a black hat in her hands with a black veil.

"Denial is a symptom of the mourning process. It's very natural that it would be difficult for you to come to terms with your cousin pushing your mother down the stairs and killing her. In fact, if you believed it right off, then I would have been worried for you too." Kim said coldly, continuing to hide the fact she had been drugging David for days and days to keep him medically disoriented to push the story of his sudden mental break.

Carolyn lifted her veil, her eyes became fixed on Kim's lying face. She couldn't believe how cold Kim was sounding about her own husband, about the father of her child.

"David was like a son to my mother. I mean she raised him. She did everything for him. She spoiled him rotten as a child. She protected him. Adored him and the feeling was mutual. He wouldn't do this." Carolyn replied as she stood up from the sofa to face Kim.

"Carolyn—you’ve been gone a long time...so I should remind you,” Kim said with a snarky tone about Carolyn’s many years absence from Collinwood “your mother didn't fall on her own. She knew very well that we didn't want her walking around the house without Noelle being here. On Noelle's days off at night, your mother knew to call one of us. She must of called David and David was going through a psychotic break. He’s been under so much stress being the only family member here working at the cannery and all.” 

Carolyn rolled her eyes at the obvious insinuations.

“We could have the police come and investigate but I thought you wanted to be sure they thought it was an accident. I know how much your family appreciates their privacy in family matters such as this." Kim continued making sure she kept David out of the Police's cross-hairs.

Carolyn knew it too. Collinwood and the Collins family had too many secrets and too many skeletons in the closet for anyone to come poking around. Sometimes quite literally. In fact they had never even reported Evangeline's disappearance either.

It was too risky. It was too dangerous. Carolyn agreed to all of this, but she hated it.

"I think what needs to happen..." Kim said adding the second part of her plan with Victor and The OTH, "is that we should make sure that David is taken care of and taken care of in the correct and appropriate matter."

"Oh? What is the appropriate matter is that?" Carolyn asked, crossing her arms in defiance.

"Windcliff. I think we should have him admitted." Kim said just as a sudden hush came over the room.

"Absolutely not!!" Carolyn shouted breaking the silence. "Carolyn be reasonable, he has to be taken are medically. I'm a doctor. I know these things." Kim said.

"You're not a doctor yet." Carolyn reminded Kim that she actually hadn’t gotten her medical license.

As Kim began to sizzle with frustration little Caleb gasped out loud.

"Daddy!!" Caleb said, as a sweaty and disheveled David walked into the drawing room.

His eyes were sunken. His skin pale and his hair a mess. He was drugged, sick and seeing things all over the place. Monsters. His demons. His past. Everything bubbling up in a horror show just for him in his mind. The serum Kim had been administering had caused him to lose every once of sanity and at this point, he was a shell of the man Carolyn knew. He was gone.

"David, David you shouldn't be down here." Kim said trying to keep David out of Carolyn's way for fear of the truth coming out.

"No, wait. He's been so sick that I haven't been able to see him. David, honey, are you ok?" Carolyn said rushing over to him and getting in between the married couple.

"I............." David said, his mouth dry and lips chapped.

"You should be in bed." Kim ordered.

"Stop it Kim! Stop, let him speak! David.....talk to me. I need you to tell me what happened with my mother. Please tell me you didn't push her." Carolyn began.

"Carolyn!" Kim shouted.

"Kimberly, stop interrupting me. You may be studying to be a doctor but you're not one yet and until you get him checked out by someone I won't have you dictating what happens in this house, do you understand me???" Carolyn screamed, asserting herself as the new matriarch of the family.

"Aunt....Liz......where is she?" David mustered to say in a breathy and exhausted voice. 

"You don't remember?" Carolyn asked.

"Of course he doesn't. He killed her." Kim said in a cold way. 

David began to shake and sweat. He began to hallucinate and see Elizabeth in the corner of the room. Then he'd turn and she was in the window. Then he'd look away and she was standing next to the fire place. Then next to Carolyn. Then next to Kim. Then she became Carolyn and them became Kim. There were now three and four Elizabeth's in the room. 

"I CAN'T TAKE IT!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT!!!" David screamed as he fell to his knees and his mind, filled and poisoned by the drugs in his blood Kim was giving him. He was consumed by a manic and insane confusion. 

"I'll take him upstairs and to bed." Kim said taking back control. 

"I think....." Carolyn began to say but paused as David got up "It's better that you both stay home and don't come to the funeral. Caleb too. I'd rather be alone." she added, her heart breaking for David who was clearly out of his mind. 

Kimberly lifted an eye brow as David clung to her arms in a slump, in pain, terrorized by the drugs his wife injected into his body in secret. "If that's what you wish." Kim replied actually annoyed by Carolyn's superiority. "Come on David, let's get you to bed."


Carolyn was now alone with Caleb who was suddenly very quiet. He had seen so much in the last month. His nanny vanishing in a black blob created by Justin. His mother pushing his great-aunt down the stairs and his father losing his mind. It was all too much for the little boy to verbalize. 

Carolyn sat him down on the dark green family sofa and he snuggled up under her black organza covered arms that felt soft to his face.

"It's going to be ok, love. We're going to be ok." She said holding him tightly. 


Upstairs, David was now asleep. The sedative rushing through his body like a Formula 1 race car. Kim walked to his bedroom door and listened. No one was coming. She quickly rushed over to the phone in David's room and dialed Victor, her co-conspirator in the elimination of the Collins family. 


"How are things?" Victor said as he answered the phone.

"How did you know it was me." She asked.

"I just know." Victor said, carving a hole in a the photographed eye of David Collins that was on his kitchen table.

"Things are good. David is almost out of the way. I'm just having trouble with Carolyn." Kim reported.

"And the boy?" Victor asked.

Kim didn't want to tell him he was fighting his memory. She knew that if Victor knew the truth that he would kill the boy himself. Her own flesh and blood. She was having second thoughts about killing him and wanted to be sure that she could take care of that herself when the time came---if the time came.

"He's fine. He is holding to the story." She said giving a half truth.

"Good. Good. Let Carolyn have her funeral today. And as soon as it's over...." Victor said, pausing for Kim to soak in his next order "murder her."

Kim hung up the phone. She took a deep breath and looked over at her handsome husband as he slept in induced state. She walked over to him and caressed his bare chest. His breathing was good. He was sleeping, in a deep deep sleep.

"I'm sorry. But for the sake of this world, for the souls of so many lives who deserve to be safe from all of the evils your family has birthed, you can't go on. David, tomorrow, Ill have you taken away. Forever." Kim whispered in David's ear as she kissed him for the last time on his lips.



****

Carolyn at the COLLINS mausoleum 

Behind the glazed windshield of a sedan Noelle and Cameron watched as a local priest, undertaker and Carolyn lowered Elizabeth's casket into the lush green covered ground of Eagle Hill cemetery next to her father, mother and brother. The family plot was directly across from the old mausoleum that housed the remains of other Collins family members; it also included the secret passage and hideaway crypt where Barnabas Collins once laid.

After the altercation with Kimberly Carolyn called around and asked that all other mourners, old friends and acquaintances in town, not to come to the cemetery. She wanted to be alone. Just her and her mother and a priest.

Carolyn allowed the priest to bless the hallowed ground where Elizabeth would lay for eternity. The priest, an old man around the age of Elizabeth  herself, handed the black veiled Carolyn a silver try with a mound of soil in it. With a gloved hand, Carolyn tearfully reached for a hand full and sprinkled it over the open grave.

“She was a wonderful woman. I knew her well. Did you know she used to come around my perish as I was just taking my vows? We became very close at one time.” The Priest said.

“I don’t remember.” Carolyn said through sniffles. 

“Oh it was much before you were born my child. She was a good good woman. I did care for her very much. She and I became close in those days... many years ago of course. She would come by and visit and we.... well we were close. Elizabeth Collins, as I knew her, was kind spirit and I know she is now in the light with the lord.” The priest added.

Carolyn began to cry “thank you Father Helsing. Thank you.” 

“If you need Anything, please feel free to give me a call. My door is always open. Especially for anyone as close to Elizabeth as you.” Father Helsing replied. 

He then smiled and patted Carolyn on the shoulder then extended his condolences once more to her and her family....where ever they were. Carolyn politely thanked him and stood there alone, as the undertaker continued to fill in Elizabeth's grace. 

When Carolyn turned to reach for a bundle of red roses, a gust of cool sea wind blew over a Eagle Hill cemetery rustling the beaches in the bare autumn trees causing a xylophone sound effect to ripple through the air. 

 Father Helsing Crossed himself and looked back at the grave... he then blew a kiss to Elizabeth’s grave, his very special friend. 

As Father Helsing walked off down the yellowed grass, Carolyn took out her handkerchief, dabbed her eyes and slowly began to rip away the petals on several blood red roses onto the dirt. One rose for each of Liz’s beloved family members. 

She looked over towards the mausoleum that had been allowed to become swallowed up but lush over grown brush. The stone COLLINS name still stood at the top above the iron gate, only the letter 'O' was obstructed from view by a rogue vine of ivy. 

In a black car parked under a large shady willow tree hidden from Carolyn’s view, Cameron, his boyfriend Lucas and his aunt Noelle watched from a far. Cameron's emotions were bubbling up in his stomach. He felt horrible that he couldn't go to his mother Carolyn. All these years, all his life he was living next door, at the Old House with Noelle, to his family and he didn't know it. He had met Elizabeth every now and then because of Noelle's position as her caretaker, but he never had a chance to get to really know her as a grandmother. 

And now she was gone. 

"I just want to go over there and be there for her. I just want to hug had and tell her how sorry I am and that I wish I could have been there all these years." Cameron said with a slow tear crawling down his caramel colored face.

"When I called Collinwood, Kimberly said that David wasn't feeling well and that Carolyn decided that she wanted to be alone. We can't just barge up to her." Noelle said reluctantly. 

"Just another way for you to avoid everything right?" Cameron said, his voice showing resentment and angry towards Noelle and all her secret keeping.

"Cam, please...let's not do this right now." Noelle said as she too wiped away a tear from her eye for Elizabeth. "I took care of Liz for years and years. I was as close to her as anyone else. This hurts me just as much as it hurts you." 

"Really? At leas you had the chance to know her. At least you had the chance to be in her life more than just in passing. Because of you I didn't have anything to do with her other than seeing every now and then in the gardens. But that always seems to go right over your heard. You always seem to forget that all your actions have a direct link to me, and how you never told me the truth. Until it was too late." Cameron said again, unaffected by Noelle's tears.

"I deserve that. I deserve all of that. But right now I just want to remember Elizabeth as she was. I don't want to fight. I can't fight. Not right now." Noelle said, her hurt showing in real palpable pain. 

The sat in the car for what seemed like hours but it was only minutes. They watched Carolyn stand in the fogged out cemetery as the wind blew around her. Alone. Cold. Devastated. It was too much for Cameron to bare. 

"I'm going out there---I'm going to tell her everything." Cameron said reaching for the car door. 

"STOP!" Lucas' voice said from the back seat pulling Cameron back. "You can't do this. You can't tell her who you are. It'll ruin everything!" Lucas shouted figuring that if Carolyn knew who he really was and that Noelle had lied about who he was all these years that she wouldn't let them anywhere near Collinwood, and if they were going to find the truth about Beau's death and everything else about the skeletons in every Collins closet the secret needed to be kept. 

Cameron grabbed Lucas' hand and removed it from his shoulder. "Watch me." Cameron said as he opened the door and headed for Elizabeth's grave. 

As Cameron slowly went up the hill to find his mother and grandmother, Noelle began to panic. She didnt know what to do next. Lucas jumped into the front seat. 

"He's not going to do it. He won't tell her right now. Not here." Lucas said in a low voice.

"How do you know? He's so angry with me. He'll do anything to hurt me back for all the years of lies." Noelle replied.

"No. He's not like that. He knows Carolyn is broken up right now about her mother's death. He wont add to her pain. But that just goes to show that maybe we should rethink his role in searching the mansion." Lucas said.

Noelle turned her head from watching Cameron and removed her dark sun glasses to reveal her tear stained face and swollen eyes.

"Why are you so invested in this? Why are you so invested in going into that house and looking around? This was about my brother's death and some how I feel like you're ready to take up the reigns and make this all about you. What's in for you Lucas?" Noelle asked, seeing the writing on the wall. 

Lucas wasn't sure how to answer. He couldn't all of a sudden tell his boyfriend's aunt how much he had been working on the strange cases and mysteries that surrounded the family and how the coincidence of Cameron being a Collins himself by blood seemed meant to be. Noelle's suspicions needed to be quelled. 

"You need help. Cameron is a lose wire right now. I can help you. No strings attached." Lucas said. 

 Noelle thought for a second and looked back up the hill just as Cameron approached Carolyn. She took a deep breath and answered. 

"Tonight. I'll give you the key to the side servants door that I use on occasion. The main part of the mansion is a good distance away no one will  hear you enter there. There'll be a hall directly leading you into the kitchen. From there, you'll have access to the rest of the mansion and the family's living areas. You'll follow that area into the drawing room and the main staircase." Noelle explained.

Lucas smiled evilly and looked back up towards Cameron just as Noelle reached into her purse and pulled put the key the Collins family entrusted in her care. The key to the servant's entrance to the mansion where all the secrets would be revealed. 



"I'm sorry to bother you." Cameron said in a soft voice as he finally reached the summit of the small cemetery hill in the shadow of large oak tree's and the mausoleum with the stone name of COLLINS.  

Carolyn turned and looked her son in the face for the first time in almost 25 years. She lifted the black  veil from her face to get a better look at him. The young man who had eyes so deep and so brown and so kind warmed her heart with just one look. Instantly she felt like she knew him. Instantly she felt like that face was someone else's from decades ago. 

"I uh..." Carolyn began before being interrupted. 

"You probably don't remember me. We haven't really met ever. I'm..." He paused "Cameron Frame. Noelle Cielvert's nephew.." He explained. 

"Oh! Of course. Of course. Mother's care taker." Carolyn said reaching for his hand to shake. 

"I don't want to interrupt you or take up your time. I know how hard this must be for you. We were told that you wanted to be alone...but....we just had to come pay our respects." Cameron explained.

"We?" Carolyn asked, noticing Cameron was alone. 

"Oh...Noelle and my partner are in the car just over there. We, uhh...felt maybe it was better if just one of us came up here to see you." Cameron said covering up his story.

Carolyn looked down the hill passed Cameron and noticed the car sitting there with the figures inside.

"I see." She said. 

"Mrs. Thorne, your mother Mrs. Stoddard gave us so much. Noelle worked with her for so long...she helped me get into college. She gave us a place to stay. She was very kind to us. I don't think I will ever be able to repay her" Cameron stated.

"Cameron she wouldn't expect you to. My mother gave because she was kind and loving. I'm sure she was very proud of who you became. From what I'm told, Noelle had been her caretaker for a very long time. You must have been a small boy when you moved to the Old house." Carolyn noted.

"Yes. I was 4." Cameron said.

"I'm sorry I've never been down to see you. Since  I moved to London in 72, I just never really turned back." Carolyn lamented.

"That's ok." Cameron replied. "I hope that you know that Mrs Stoddard was well taken care of." He added.

"Yes, in her letters to me and my daughter she often said here caretaker was very kind, although she never mentioned Noelle by name." Carolyn added.

"Daughter." Cameron said softly realizing he had a little sister.

"Yes, Alexandra." His estranged mother replied.

"That's a beautiful name. Well, again. I just wanted to be sure that you knew who I was, and that you knew how much I appreciated your mother's help all my life." Cameron said, his stomach in a nervous knot. 

"Yes. Thank you for that." Carolyn replied. 

Cameron felt crazy. He was staring his mother in the face. After so many years. All he wanted was to scream out that they were related. That she was his mother. That she had been tricked all the years. And that Elizabeth too had been tricked. And that all this time he had been right there. Right next door. Right under their noses. That he didn't feel any ill will towards Carolyn for placing him up for adoption. But none of that came out. None of the truth came from his lips. The cool air swirled around and the seagulls screeched a painful wild song above the cemetery and all Cameron could muster was the typical condolences one says to another at a funeral.

Carolyn smiled politely. He handed her a bouquet of flowers and smiled again and rushed back to the car where Noelle and Lucas were waiting. A gush of painful and broken tears fell from his eyes. 

He was dying inside with pain. 

He got in the car and slammed the door.

"Are you ok honey?" Noelle asked after a split second of silence.

"Just take me home." He replied. 


Carolyn watched as Noelle's car drove off. She watched go down the small cemetery road and towards the font gates and watched it vanish into the gray horizon. She felt a strange bit of nostalgia as she remembered Cameron's face. His kind and warm eyes. His chestnut skin. 

It was all so very familiar. 

She then turned to her own awaiting car and signaled to the driver that she was ready to go back to Collinwood. 

She pulled out a single white rose from the bouquet Cameron handed her and laid the rest on her mother's grave then kissed her hand and placed the kiss on the dirt. 

She made her way slowly over to her car where her driver opened the back door for her.

"Ma'am, are you ok?" The driver asked as Carolyn smelled the white rose. 

Carolyn didn't know what to say. The truth was, she didn't know. She felt numb. She felt cold. She felt dead.

"Ask me tomorrow Albert.” She said using the driver’s name. “Ask me tomorrow."


****

Lucas with Noelle's key to Collinwood


That night. In the pitch black darkness with only the gauzy moonlit sky to guide him, Lucas made good on his promise to Noelle behind Cameron's back of going into Collinwood and attempting to find the truth of what happened to Beau Cielvert all those years ago.

Lucas was armed with they key that the Collins family had entrusted to Elizabeth's care taker Noelle that she had given him in secret just two nights before. This key was the literal opening a door to a world that Lucas had longed to be privy to for all his adult life: Noelle's key to the servant's entrance to Collinwood.

He slipped the golden toned skeleton key into the servant's entrance door of Collinwood where no one would see him. He pulled the door closed behind him and realized he was now in the throws of his own biggest dream ever. He imagined what he would find, secrets, mysteries, all kinds of hidden treasures that the family had buried away forever so that no one would ever find. Lucas, would be the one who discovered these items, he would be the one to solve crimes and mysteries with ease because of these discoveries. And with his findings, Fame. Fortune. Notoriety. It was his destiny. It was his calling. 

As he stood in the doorway of the servant's entrance a glow of white light appeared behind him. It was a woman, in a white gown with large dark eyes. She seemed to be weeping but no sound was coming from her. It was Josette DuPres.

Her hair, dark and flowing was flowing in a non-existent breeze that also filled the bottom of her gown lifting slightly to show that she was floating above the floor. 

Lucas felt this cold, icy feeling on the back of his neck and turned around quickly only to see the door he had just come in from. 

Josette was now on the opposite side of him, glowing like a firefly and still weeping silently. 

Lucas turned around again and she was gone, flashing back again to where she was when he first came in. He could feel her presence but she would not allow him to see her. He could feel her dark eyes staring straight through him but he could not pin her down and look her in the face.

"Who's there?" he whispered hoping that someone would reply. 

She did not.

"I ask you to show yourself to me, I can feel you, I can tell you are here. Please show me your face." The butting paranormal investigator begged. But the ghost of Josette did not comply.

She only stared at him from her ghostly perch above the floor floating in white light and in a cool breeze made from her spiritual apparition. 

"Please tell me who you are." Lucas asked again of the shy Josette as he turned again to find her. "Maybe I can help you." He added. 

Josette did not want him to see her. She knew what he was she knew what would eventually happen to him in the future and she knew that time was ticking on everything and anything regarding Lucas Grainger. 

She slowly dimmed the light her body was exuding and the wind around her subsided. She began to float behind him, close now so close he could feel her right behind him but her powerful spiritual force froze him in his place. 

"I can help you." he whispered as his eyes widened with wondering of the force holding him in place.

Josette, her body now gray and flesh like and not at all transparent as it was before stroked his hair. She could feel every stand of the beautiful premature white heard of hair he had. 

She came centimeters from his ear and whispered back "it is you who may need help, it is you who will need all the help he can find." 

And when she was done speaking to him in a whispery ghostly voice she released Lucas from his frozen like state. He gasped in a deep loud breath of air and turned around to see he was alone in the servant's entrance room. 

Josette had gone. 

Now alone and inside Collinwood, Lucas knew his thoughts of the mysterious family were correct. There was something here at this mansion. Something powerful and super nature. As frightened as he was with Josette's strength, he knew he would still do everything he could before the sun came up to find any evidence he could for Noelle, and most of all...evidence of the existence of the super nature all for himself.