Shadows On The Wall Chapter 33: Lord of Ghosts by Kelthammer PART ONE: LORD OF GHOSTS by Kelthammer Voiceover: (Nancy Barrett) "Sunlight devours the hiding shadows of Collinwood, creating a sense of peace and calm. Only a few who live in the darkness know how fragile that peace is. Soon a man who lives in the shadows of moonlight will be revealed to those brave enough to be curious, and a woman will return from more than death; she will return from oblivion." Call it a habit, but Julia had forgotten how to sleep under the light of the full moon. How many times had a tightly compressed, worried Tom Jennings called her up asking advice about his little sister? Well, those were the rare nights when Julia was able to get a nap in; the full moon meant extra activity at Wyndcliffe. Lunacy. Mania. Two words for insanity that meant "moonstruck" or "Moonmad." Dreamers were full of "moonbeams" and "moonshine"--and the effects of local alcohol were the reason why it was given that name. What was the moon good for, if not for defining reality by her absence? Thoughts like these floated through her mind as she went through the motions of breakfast and then on to the blessed relief of the upstairs library, alone. The Collinses were like buzzing insects around her. Inconsequencial to her heavy thoughts. Twice at the table, she had thought how irritating humans could be when they were wrapped in false security. Was Vicki learning to ride on Quentin's bike THAT fascinating? Roger had glanced over the sugar bowl then, and the haunting in his eyes told her that his experience with Dracula's Daughter still remained. She felt badly for him, but was stretched tightly. She wondered if she could bear one more demand upon her resources. Roger had already been here; she recognized his large leather portfolio, a dark and sober blue with the state Pinecone stamped hard into the corner. He used it for all his state-business mishmash, and it was in the long overstuffed sofa overlooking the thick glass windows facing the forest between Collinwood and the Old House. She carefully picked it up, intending to move it aside to the little taboret, when a smaller book revealed itself underneath, like a helgamite under a creek-rock. She put the ledger in its place and picked up the smaller, brown book with the same intention and of course, a waterfall of photos tumbled out of the pages. Julia muttered softly under her breath and began picking up the personal effects of a family that was not hers. Sober and tight-collared artefacts watched her tend to them with silvery tintype eyes. Newspaper so old and orange she was afraid to touch them at all crackled like brittle linen. Oval and framed portraits. She picked up entire decades in a single handful and put them back in the book with as much care as she could and not spend all day doing so. (No wonder they fell out!) She was starting to get annoyed. (LOOK at all these! There must be hundreds, crammed into an album no bigger than--) Vicki was staring back at her. Julia quite forgot what she was doing. The little photograph rested on gleaming floorboards, its image before a wall-calendar that said 193- before the dark spill of hair blocked out the last number...clothed in a blue suit that was so sober and utilitarian that if even Julia had worn it, she would have been accused of being facetiousness with her efficiency. (That's Vicki.) Julia knew her mind was being very stupid right now, but... But that was VICKI. Vicki was staring back at her. "I touch her. Is she real? Can I address her?" Julia whispered the words from Euripides' play ALCESTIS. Her one bright spot of Greek Lessons in school. Heracles battling Death Himself to bring the man's dead wife back to him. "But how ever did you bring her back from dark to light?" "By battling with the Lord of Ghosts..." The woman was eerily ghostlike...it struck Julia how odd it was to hold the image of anyone one never personally met, and assume it as proof that this person actually existed. She was a little thinner than Vicki, but SO MUCH like her... Except for the eyes. They were dark hollows, the eyes gleamed like firefly points inside soft gray shadow inside the skull. (Not long to live...) Julia thought. There was no allopathic reason for her to know this: even the most staid and rigid of physicians admitted to following instincts, and she had seen that look before, in people who would soon be buried. She turned the photo over. "Your silly friend, Elsie." Was written in sepia. Squid wasn't the most permanent of pigments; it was growing faint even though it was away from the sun's light. (Elsie?) A little shaky, she finished returning the photographs to the book, but kept the last one. As the door opened, she acted on instinct; the photograph slipped out of sight. "Julia?" Barnabas smiled faintly as she recognized him and slowly relaxed. "How are you doing?" As he watched, she relived most of her morning and dismissed it all with a shrug. "Fairly well." Her return smile was slow in coming; something was bothering her. "Yourself?" He strode to the window without replying at first, taking in the breathtaking view of the silver birches in the ripe morning sun. "I was thinking of the other night." He said at last. "Julia, I wonder if Quentin knows more about this than we do." "Quentin?" Julia repeated. Now that she knew it was Barnabas...she was pulling the photograph back out again and staring at it. "I have nothing definite...only a feeling. But he..." Barnabas looked for words, but there were none for him. "This does not feel right." He finished, deeply unsatisfied by this. Julia was thinking carefully. "Quentin is very reticent when he has to be." She told him. "He doesn't seem like it, I know, but he's not as open as he likes people to think. And if he's quiet, its usually to protect somebody or something." She tapped the stiff paper of the photo against her knee and then held it up. Barnabas took it slowly, his expression of puzzlement changing to something akin to alarm. "That is the woman we saw at Widow's Hill!" "I wondered. Well. Be careful who you show that to." She warned him to another blank expression. "Barnabas, people seem quite determined to ignore the possibility of a missing Collins around here." Barnabas sank into the couch heavily. "Where did you find this?" "In Roger's private stack of photos. I daresay he didn't expect me to poke around in them." She briefly outlined her spill. "I've been in what was supposed to be *all* the family albums." She sighed and stood, beginning to pace for the nervous release. "Barnabas, when I first started working on the Family History, I noticed rather quickly that large portions of information are missing. I accepted the story that some records and photographs were lost. Now I'm not so ready to do that." "193..." Barnabas worked at the date just as Julia had. "Old enough to be Vicki's mother." He barely whispered. "Yes. Quite. I thought that too. But we need a little more proof than this before we go to Vicki. You know Miss Winters--she'll fly to Liz with the photo for confirmation and she'll hit the usual Collins Brick Wall." Barnabas winced at Julia's scathing tone, but had to admit she was right. "If there's one bit of evidence on Elsie's existence, then there's another somewhere." He was confident of that. Julia forced herself to stop pacing, and leaned against the bookshelves, arms folded. "How can we find anything else?" She frowned heavily. "As small as this town is, it would have been a simple matter for Liz or Roger or whoever to saunter into the County Courthouse and rip up what they need." Barnabas' eyes lit up. "The Family Bible. They wouldn't dare touch that. They could only hide the evidence of a birth!" "How in the world could you do that?" Julia was skeptical. "Calligraphy!" Fired by his convictions, Barnabas stuffed the photograph into his breast pocket and began searching. "Help me find it." Julia complied, but slowly. "Barnabas, what makes you think that they would still be recording births in the Family Bible?" "Of course they would, Julia." Barnabas tossed over his shoulder as he began pulling monstrous tooled leather books off the shelf. The pages were thinner than rice paper, the print miniscule. "Why wouldn't they?" "But...People usually don't DO that anymore." She protested. Forget the fact that she was non-Christian by culture. "These are Collinses. They would stick to tradition." And with that utter faith, Barnabas yanked another tome out without regard to the overweight of the pages against a frail spine and batted the hardboard lid open. "Jamison Collins was Liz and Roger's father, correct?" Spartan and ugly handwriting looked back at him. He shuddered and found another Bible to look through. "What does Jamison have to do with it?" Julia was still lost. "He was a Victorian child. They were taught fine penmanship, or I've missed the point of your enforced history lessons." Not to mention, he felt that period was the last holdout of elegance in the world. Three more books met his disapproval--and none of them Bibles. He stuffed them back and settled upon the largest example of all--COLLINS FAMILY was written in the flyleaf. Julia watched his face fall from triumph and peered over his shoulder. There were three pages of family birth and death, but Roger and Elizabeth were very conspicuously the only names. He exhaled in a sigh. "Perhaps I was being foolish." "No..." Julia's hushed voice alerted him. She was staring at the sepia with an intent gaze he knew well. "Barnabas, you may have something." He looked. "I see nothing." "Look at the *writing.* She stabbed at the paper with her fingers. "They're exactly the same. There are years between Roger and Liz' birth. But the ink is ths same shade, the shapes of the letters identical. There should be some difference between the two." "But this is the Family Bible." Barnabas persisted. "Barnabas, *look* at all these Bibles. This isn't the day when there was only one book per family. People are given Bibles right and left as soon as they enter church." At least, that was her experience with growing up around Catholics, and from what she knew, about 4 out of 10 Collinses knew their way around a rosary. "Let's look for Jamison's personal Bible." Both of them worked quickly, aware that the odds against their being interrupted were high. Barnabas was the victor in the search. It was a smallish brown thing, a schoolboy's study and buried deeply under a stack of yellow newspapers. JAMISON looked back upon him, floral and delicate. "Here we are..." Again, the Family Tree looked back at them. Julia's eyebrows crimped to see a flowing and graceful design at the bottom of the page after Roger's birth-date. "There." Barnabas was rich with satisfaction. "I told you!" "I...can't see a thing." Julia protested. Scenes from JOHNNY TREMAINE came back to her: disowned members buried under loops and scrollwork so ornately it took a practiced eye to see. Julia could read Pennsylvania Fraktur at a glance: this organic style was beyond her. "I can see it." Barnabas said confidently. His large fingertip traced up and down over something buried on the other side of the scrollwork. It was as bewildering as trying to see a house through a briar maze. She had to take his word that something was there at all. "L...O...U...I...S...E!" "Louise?" Julia repeated as Barnabas' face fell. Just as quickly, she stiffened. "Who is "this?" He exclaimed. "Barnabas, it's Louise--I mean, it's the woman in the photograph!" "The woman says her name is Elsie!" Barnabas mangled his sentence comprehension on that one, but it was understandable. "No, look!" Julia was grinning now, a bright sunbeam. "The initials! Louise Collins...L.C..." "El-See!" Barnabas stared at the krypta. "'your silly friend...a pun upon her initials!" "Louise Collins." Julia whispered. "Yes." Barnabas whispered back. "Now...should we tell Vicki?" Quentin heard hushed voices from the library and was going to automatically sail on through, but "Should we tell Vicki?" riveted his feet to the carpet. His heart thumped once, strongly, and he stifled it into a semblance of calm. Tightening his self control he twisted in his place and pushed open the library door. Barnabas and Julia looked up with twin faces of alarm, then grudgingly relaxed. Julia was more happy to see him than Barnabas was; the older man was clearly unsure of what he should be thinking about him. Well, let him. Quentin wasn't exactly HAPPY that he had been forced to remember a horrific past. He preferred to live in an utter state of zen-here-and-now, and that was effectively blown to hell now. "Hi there." He smiled his most innocent. "What's up?" *** Church bells. When you stood in the tower room on a clear day, the village chapel's summons rang throughout the air. Carolyn leaned her elbows on the open windowsill, sniffing the odor of pines and seawater. When the wind changed it would begin its familiar reek of fishy death. Pettibones were one of the founding families. It amused her to no end that tradition was being upheld--a toll for every year of her life. No doubt the Missus would have been dreadfully embarassed that the entire community knew her true years. Gong. She smiled, enjoying the sober knell of bronze and iron. It went down, then up, then down. "Oranges and Lemons, say the bells at St. Clemet's..." Gong. "You owe me five farthings, say the bells at St. Martins..." She pushed away from the sill and continued on with her journey, music rining from the bells, inside and outside her mind. "When will you pay me, ask the bells of Old Bailey?" Dust floated with the draft across dim shadow and corpse-white cobwebs, briefly illuminated in the glare of white northern sunlight, then gone. Dry floorboards, time-worn until even the deep-worked oils had fled their luster, creaked under her feet. "When I grow rich, say the bells as Shoreditch..." Dreamlike, the wraithlike figure of the tiny blonde woman slipped her pale way through tired hallways. HE was there, of course. Where anything languished, forgotten and unmourned, HE languished too. Biding his time like the rat that scurried, the spider that hurried, the candlewax that wound a winding-sheet around its slender column. And with HIM lurked the power that she craved. "And when will that be?" She sang, too faintly to be heard, unless you were the dead. "Ask the bells at Stepney?" A sad gust blew across her feet as she pressed against the door. A groan of too-dry timber and browned brass hinges and she was inside. A feral smile, frozen like a Hallowe'en pumpkin, smashed itself over her face and she couldn't shut the door after her fast enough. Hide herself. A good secret. Never let anyone see her. The glee made her giggle and she heard his stirring in the back of her mind, tickling the soft skin under her chin. Her secret. Her secret room. All hers, all hers. "...I'm sure I don't know," said the Great Bell at Bow..." Portraits. Battered photographs much younger than the antique frames that held them, standing at attention upon the cobwebbed walls. Images captured with delicate patience and trapped under the frames like insects in a killing-jar. Roger Collins. Elizabeth Stoddard. Quentin Collins. David Collins. Carolyn Stoddard. The newcomer's photo had been taken unawares. Barnabas had his back mostly to the camera, his head beginning to turn in growing awareness of her eyes. She enjoyed that one; it made her think of the victims she had killed just as dawning horror fell upon them. Barnabas Collins. Whisper of promise, a thrill of blood, the need to kill and bathe in the red...oh, HE waited, HE waited with her, and such delicious suspense it was, until the day when she could smash all the portraits, bathe each image in its owner's red... "Here is a candle, to light your way to bed," Carolyn's whisper reached fever-pitch with the foxfire gleam in her eyes. "Here is an axe to chop off your head! Last, last, last, last, LAST MAN DEAD!" (This,) Quentin thought, (is moving too fast.) He didn't know if he should feel jealous or not. He and Barnabas had both been trying very hard to help Vicki find the answers to her past--only they were rivals in their helpfulness. And now, thanks to a gross carelessness on the part of Roger Collins, Julia Hoffman had stumbled upon the largest clue to Vicki's history. Quentin tried not to think of this coup as Barnabas'. Those two were quite the team. Julia was looking as uneasy as he'd ever seen her. Quentin wasn't certain why. She traced a lilne of bubbles in an antique glass vase with her fingernail and barely contributed to the conversation. Several times, Barnabas' speech had stalled, aware of her silence before plugging on. "You seem worried about telling Vicki about any of this." He remembered the overheard conversation that had first garnered his attention. Julia looked up for the first time. "I can't say I've known Vicki for long, but I do believe she is predictable. Wouldn't you think it would be like her to go to Liz or Roger with this proof and innocently demand answers?" Quentin winced to his very bones. Oh, yes, he could VERY MUCH see that. Vicki's wide, guiless eyes turned upward: "Please, Mrs. Stoddard, I just want to know, I don't care about any skeletons in the closet..." Oh, yes. She might have grown up in less-than-perfect surroundings, but she somehow beliieved that the light of Truth would bear out in all troubles. Quentin's thoughts must have shown on his face, for the other two were nodding. "Liz and Roger have denied having a sister for this long." Barnabas picked up the thread. "It would be more conducive, I believe, if this search for Vicki's family continued to be quiet and unobtrusive." "If that's possible." Julia protested. "Carolyn was pestering Roger and Eliot nearly to death over the family album. What if she's on to something too?" "If she is it's just because she is Vicki's friend, do you not think?" Barnabas wondered. "Possible." Julia admitted. "But she's not being 'quiet and unobtrusive'." Quentin cleared his throat. "OK, I have to pick Vicki up in town today at noon. What if I dropped her a few hints and clues, and let her find, say, this photograph far away from the House?" They didn't think much of that idea, but better ones weren't jumping up to bite their noses. "She's tenacious." Julia was staring at the vase again. "She's polite and well-mannered, gracious and gentle, but she has GOT to be one of the most stubborn human beings on this planet." Rueful and grudging admiration colored her voice for the young woman. "She won't be easily satisfied with just a clue. She'll track it down like a bloodhound." "I just don't know what to do!" Quentin exhaled. "I don't want her to be ignorant...but if what we're looking at is true, Vicki could be RELATED TO US!" He shook his head. "And if Roger and Liz persist in being shutmouth about this..." He stoppped himself, clicking his teeth together. "Look, there are three places where one NEVER picks up a date: At funerals, stock markets, and family reunions. What if she's blood-kin? How could she not be if this is her mother we're looking at?" He felt more than uneasy at this thought anyway: Jamison was his nephew, and if Louise was one of Jamison's children...He shivered all over. For Barnabas, the family line was much more dilute, but he too was worried about that. For him, the family tree branched with Daniel, his uncle's son. Joshua had adopted Daniel as his own, which made the boy Barnabas remember, to be his adopted BROTHER. Julia could have told him there was little chance of inbreeding backlash, but she thought nothing of either of these points. She was considering that Vicki might LIKE to live a simple life, but chaos swarmed fore and aft about her, like the sharp coastal currents that churned froth against the unmoving granite boulders. Both Barnabas and Quentin had been fairly obvious in their interest with Vicki. Yet Liz and Roger hadn't said anything. Without that name in the Bible, that would suggest that Vicki's resemblance to Louise Collins was a fluke. But now it was looking like the siblings were choosing to wait until the very last minute to tell the prospective beau that he was barking up the wrong (family) tree. Quentin fidgeted, looking very unhappy indeed. "Damn. I have to go now to pick her up..." He stared at his watch accusingly. "For now, I don't think I'll say anything. But she needs to be brought into this slowly." "I agree." Barnabas' feelings of Quentin as a trespasser was taken over by his worry. Vicki had not dealt well with seeing Louise's spirit over Widow's Hill. What if a new shock sent her to emotional breakdown? Julia sighed, much like Quentin. "I have to go to Rose Cottage and see to Chris." She sounded anything but thrilled. "Let us know how it goes when you come back, Quentin?" "Of course." Barnabas looked uncertain for a moment. He thought of Vicki when he looked at Quentin, and when he looked at Julia he remembered the too-recent collection of hells she had been through. "I'll walk with you, Julia." Julia didn't dare show her relief. *** Man and woman slowly crunched through the dry forest floor. Behind them the distant rumble of a sportscar told them Quentin was rocketing towards town with his usual reverence for safety. "He acts as if he's immortal." Barnabas growled, knowing that it made him sound old and cantankerous. Julia made a sound of agreement. "You're very quiet." He said softly. Julia wished he wasn't such an understanding friend right now. She hated to do anything that made her think of Tom. Her face remained a still, unreadable pool. Barnabas studied her from the sides of his gaze as they walked. He wondered about the link that stood between Julia and Chris' brother. Tom Jennings had seen...felt something inside that too-calm face and and been unable to exist without it. She was a remarkable woman. And no more remarkable as on the times when her face lit up in a smile, crooking that grin in warm humor. That was sorely missing from her life now. He hadn't seen such warmth in her since... Not since Tom had taken advantage of her, and Cassandra had been very quick to keep that going. Would she recover from this? He hoped so. It was all too easy to destroy all the good feelings inside a human heart. Odd how their stations were reversed. She had been the one to be human for him when he had forgotten how. "Julia," He murmured, and finally stopped. She stopped too, quickly. Her dread at going to Rose Cottage was almost successfully masked. "Why do you have to go see Chris?" He asked softly. The wind tugged at her hair, blowing fine strands against a high cheekbone. She pushed them away with her gloved hand. Never once did her large, dark eyes leave his. "I need to talk to him about Amy." She stated. And that was what it was. A statement. Her very directness was shielding her feelings from coming out. "She was my patient, and he's wanting to suspend her treatment. I'm worried about that." "You're quite close to her, aren't you?" He divined. She looked away. "As close as she lets other people get to her." Her voice was strained. "Is that all you're thinking of?" He probed. Would she admit to him that she saw Tom when she saw Chris, and her body would remain locked tight as an iron bar? "No..." Julia gulped hard. "I thought of something about Vicki...I was afraid to talk about with Quentin." Barnabas leaned on his cane, dark brows knitting together worridly. "What is it?" "Barnabas...what if we're wrong about Liz and Roger's reasons for keeping quiet about Louise?" She barely whispered it, but he could hear it as loudly as a shout. "What if they're trying to protect her? Or...protecting their children?" Barnabas opened his mouth to speak, but Julia's gaze, going past him, froze, and she gasped in shock... Roger Collins had no memory in his mind to tell him of what had happened since he stumbled home, Carolyn's knife-wound in his side. He had been looking for Julia, he reasoned. A doctor. Obviously that would have been the logical thing to do. But had he even found her? If he concentrated, he THOUGHT he could recall tiny fragments of breakfast with the family, and she had been present. Or was it breakfast? Was it lunch and the sun just abnormally bright for that time of day? The more he struggled to think, the less he knew. Carolyn was insane? If so she was contaigous! He was hardly in his right mind! Roger rested his forehead against the chilly windowglass of his room and stared without seeing the spread of lawn below. Absurdly, a memory came to him with sharp and sweet vitality. A memory he hadn't even been looking for: Springtime and the lawns were low and green. White clover was starting its soft cotton-boll blooms. And Louise was laughing, swinging her Easter Basket around her small fingers. Looking for eggs and flowers at the same time. It didn't matter, it was all a grand game to her. Father had said she would outgrow it, but she was eight years old by now and he had made certain his other children were staid old adults by six. Liz had thrived under his discipline; Roger had coped by bottling himself in. He was now starting to explore the possibilities of the liquor cabinet. As long as Father thought it was Mother's nipping, and Mother thought it was Father's nipping, he would be safe. "Look at this!" Louise ignored the wind blowing over her thin white dress and stuffed a handful of green under her brother's nose. Roger smelled a Peppermint Patty in the fumes. "This is mint!" She told him, expecting him to be just as astonished as she was. "Yes, it is." He chuckled dryly. She stared. "You're not surprised!" Roger found a leaf that had escaped mangling, and chewed on it. The stems were dark brown--chocolate brown--but otherwise looked like ordinary dark peppermint. "Our grandfather Edward planted it all over the lawns when he took over Collinwood." Louise thought about that. Disappointed that she had not stumbled upon a terrific mystery, she was satisfied to have found a story instead. "Why did he plant MINT? It grows everywhere?" "Rich people used to grow mint, and other plants that smelled sweet in their lawns. That way they could smell the perfume when the servants cut the grass. He planted lemon mint, lime mint, horsemint, spearmint, lemon balm...and I don't know what-all." Louise jumped upon this subject the way he had known she would. "Let's look for them!" Roger resisted the grip on his sleeve. "Most of them are probably swallowed up by the grass, Elsie." "Come on! We found one! There's got to me more!" "WE?" Roger repeated, but Lousie was already yanking him along the sward, a powerful little tug manipulating a stubborn freighter. "We." Roger repeated to himself, his breath smoking his reflection away. A memory he hadn't wanted, and certainly hadn't needed. Elsie had grown up, taken over by the identity of Louise-the-adult, and had remained Elsie only to Roger. And then Louise had been taken over by HIM. Roger pushed away from the window, sick and bitter. Morrison was right, he thought. Hatred IS a very understated emotion. It never died out on its own, but simply crawled off in a dark corner. Not to expire like a rat should, but to lick its wounds, rest and recover, and when you were least prepared for it, the hatred would jump out and take you over again. He swallowed hard and gritted his teeth. Too late he knew the only way he could remain sane was to sacrifice his memory. The strength that had made him survive Cassandra was protesting this new assault but a cool clinical voice inside his brain was advising against heroics just now. (Too tired.) He faced this knowledge in disgust. (Too tired to fight) When he resisted violently, the crawling, nattering voices would return. When he blanked out, they were gone. He didn't want to hear the voices; they demanded that HE be free and Roger wasn't about to DO that. If Cassandra was a horror, she was merely a pathetically small aspect of it compared to the real thing! (Rest.) That cool, objective voice was insisting. It was his own voice--the one he usually managed to drink into inaudibility. If he blanked out, though, wouldn't he be just turning himself into a marionette for the voices? (No, they need you to move on your own will.) If they had wanted Roger to just be a poppet, they would have used him this morning when he was walking around in his little gray cloud of stupor. So they needed conscious human aid. And in order to do that, they would have to break his will down to nothing. Roger had no desire to be on another leash. ******************************************************* "...One day my daddy stumbled in All pale and weak... Said the woman down the block Just gave birth to a geek! Sell it to the circus, Mom said, what the heck! Nope, says dad, this one's a pencil neck! And if there's anything lower than a sideshow freak, Its a grit-eating, scum-sucking, pencil-neck geek!" Chris nearly killed himself running to snap off the radio. Ok, maybe he was overly sensitive but--god damnit, he didn't feel like hearing any songs about freaks of nature. Joe Haskell's smirk nearly drove Chris insane but he pushed it away--it was just an image in his eyelids. Haskell had left after Chris had panicked over David's discovery. Chris hadn't thought it at all funny, and Joe had been quick to get bored with his "stupid histrionics." "What are you afraid of, Chrissy-sissy?" Joe had grinned. Chris had not been called that since grade school, by bigger kids wanting to prod him into a fight so they could kick the shit out of him. But Chris still had to fight to keep from lunging at Joe's throat at that underhanded, smarmy attack. (Shut up, just shut up) he told his head. His hands had slowed, now they were working faster--pulling clothes off the closet rack, folding them over one arm and then putting them in his trunk. That was all. He had to leave. Things were that simple. (Can't stick around, God, Amy's got enough scandal hanging over her head. Her last brother would--) WHAM the door rattled on its hinges and Chris yelped, nearly dropping his spare shoes. "Chris?" Barnabas' deep voice, worried for him. FRANTIC, actually. "Chris are you in there?" Chris coughed to clear his throat. "J-Just a minute!" Barnabas--and Julia--nearly tumbled into the living room, both looking pale and a little sick. As one, they locked white-eyed gazes on him, and he stepped back a bit. "Uh..." He began. "Chris," Julia cleared her throat. She and Barnabas looked at each other, as if the sight of him being alive and well wasn't in their planning book. "Chris, are you feeling all right?" "Uhm, well..." He doubted that question covered affairs of the heart. "Yeah. I mean, nothing unusual's going on." Barnabas slowly relaxed. "We..." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a white cloth. "Forgive me, Chris, but...we found this in the woods and we thought it might be yours." Chris felt his heart slam inside his ribs at the sight of his skull ring, glaring back at him. Then he frowned. "That's not my ring." He held up his hand, showing them it was bare. "I just lost my ring, and that looks exactly like it, but look at the size." He proved it by picking up the object in question and slipped it on his finger. Or tried to. The ring was grotesquely large and slipped right off again. It was at least two sizes too big. Even Chris' thumb was too narrow to fit. (Please, God,) Chris only prayed to a Higher Power when he was up against a wall and cornered like a rat in a trap. (Make them believe this.) Julia's face grew pink. She managed a weak laugh as Barnabas began to melt with relief. "Chris, we're sorry. We...we jumped to conclusions. There was a trail in the woods and we thought--" Barnabas smoothly cut her off. "We thought this was yours. I am sorry. Do you know who this might belong to?" Chris made a show of thinking, and shook his head. "It's pretty popular among bikers. I picked it up on a road trip. I lost it last night, and I've been looking for it." He sighed. (I gotta stop buying cheap jewelry.) This wasn't the first time his Change had done something like this. The last time, it was a watch and it had been made far too well. The band had taken its time about breaking when his bones swelled, and the result had been painful to say the least. In another minute, the silence would get very uncomfortable. But Chris didn't feel like driving any more guests out today. When word got out about him and Joe, he'd be leaving anyway. Might as well be pleasant. "Well I'm glad you came by anyway! Come on in and have a real visit. I'm making up some coffee." Coffee. What would Americans do without it. With unanimous agreement, his guests began taking off their coats. Barnabas glanced down at his hands surrepitously. "Would you mind if I used your lavatory?" Chris nodded at the tiny hallway. "Down there." He wondered at the sharp look Julia suddenly threw at her companion. "I'm going to pull out the milk. Have a seat." "Did you wash your hand??" Julia's frantic whisper was not meant for human ears at this range. But Chris heard it just fine over the heavy glug of milk pouring out of the heavy jug. "I wiped as much blood as I could onto the cloth." Barnabas whispered back. Chris felt his knees turn to jelly but long habit kept him going. "It's probably all the dog's blood anyway." Julia was weary, defeated. "I suppose Collinsport can stop worrying about that stray-and-hostile mastiff." "I know what we saw, but still." Barnabas gnashed his teeth. Chris could hear that too. "It was ripped apart for all its power! I doubt if it took more than five seconds to kill it!" (Dogs and wolves don't get along.) Chris thought. He clinked silverware loudly together, and just as noisily rummaged around for tray-trimmings. "What about that hair?" "I'm not trained in that kind of analysis." "Do we need that? You know what we saw." "Yes, I know. But...humor me in my thinking." Barnabas sighed. Clunk-wham, Chris set large mugs down on his tray between wedges of food. The abruptly canceled lunch between himself and Joe wasn't a total loss after all. "Julia, you stay here with Chris; as soon as its polite I'm going back for another look." "What do you think you'll find?" "The light will be far better." With that mysterious comment, Barnabas fell quiet. Chris hefted the tray and opened the kitchen door. "I was gonna have lunch with Joe but he canceled." Chris told them with an utterly straight face. "So you might as well enjoy." "Nothing wrong I hope." Julia said smoothly. She was perfectly comfortable with taking a sandwich off the tray. After a moment, Barnabas did the same. "No...we were trying to...catch up on history." Chris ducked his head down as he poured coffee, certain his cheeks would burst into flame. ******************************************************* Nicholas Blair saw Quentin before Quentin saw him, and smoothly slipped into the flower shop as if it had been his idea all along. Collins, of course, was too busy racing to his own agenda to look to the left of right of him; such an attitude would not guarantee his getting killed, but it practically promised an ugly traffic incident if he didn't think to glance at the crosswalk more often. "What do you have in yellow?" He smiled to the nameless lady behind the counter. She had roses. Nicholas had always preferred that color for the pale suits he enjoyed. He wound up getting enough for the lush green clay bowl in his living room. The woman was of the working class, and she flinched ever so slightly at the tally. No doubt she thought the price was quite high. He made a point of paying for it with a careless manner. (People are so tiresome,) He thought it a little sadly. (All wrapped up in their tiny worlds, thinking money will solve all their problems. Life was so much easier when the emphasis was away from material value.) No doubt his enemies would be shocked to know of his ruminations. But Nicholas was immune to the pleasures of the material For Its Own Sake. While he enjoyed expensive clothes, it was because hand-tailored suits fit him better. His books were expensive but they were the ones he needed for his studies. He ate at the finest resturants, for that was where the finest food was. What point, he wondered, was there in skimping? If you were going to DO something, do it to the best of your abilities and stop whimpering about the future. People who complained about their lot in life should be executed. Cleanly and quietly with as little fuss as possible. That was one thing he enjoyed about Maggie. She hadn't been happy about her lot in life, but had she complained? Certainly not. She had GOALS in mind--goals to better herself, to attain the level she aspired to. If it took years, so be it--she also had patience. Nicholas was purposefully giving her unlimited access to his bottomless bankbook in order to jade her on money. While she had suspicions that cash couldn't buy happiness, she still needed to see that for herself. Everyone did. And it wouldn't take long before her dissatisfaction sent her searching for more...meaningful things. It was human nature to never be completely satisfied; his success as a predator depended on it. The warlock grinned over the soft flowers as he walked to his car. ******************************************************* Julia was feeling rather tired and she decided to move in for the kill. Barnabas had barely shut the door after him when she made up her mind. She smiled as Chris returned to his seat and then spoke. "We saw David running from here a few minutes ago." Chris blanched white as a sheet, confirming one suspicion and dismissing another. "Well." Chris cleared his throat. She could see his hands trembling. "He's...a little upset. I'm...leaving, you see." "Oh? So soon?" She said evenly. "Yeah. Well. It can't be helped." Hmph. "What about Amy?" "Oh, she's staying here." Chris realized too late he had said far too much--not just with his words but his body language, tone and eyes had probably just mailed his sister's physician a raft of bad information. "I thought about what you said about her needing a stable life." Pause. "And you were right. She's better off at Collinwood." Those last five words were not uttered every day. As far as Julia knew, no one had EVER discussed that possibility. She sighed and set her coffeemug down, leaning back into a couch that was far too comfortable. "Chris, may I put my cards out on your table?" Chris swallowed. "Sure." It came out as a croak. "David didn't say anything overt, but he was obviously shocked and distressed. No doubt when Barnabas finishes his work he'll seek him out for a little talk. You mentioned Joe had been by, and those his clothes you're wearing. Last but not least, my brother killed himself because he couldn't live with the public censure. Most of that censure was in his mind, but I wasn't able to convince him of that. I'm not about to let you go off on a self-imposed exile in the desert wearing a hairshirt you volunteered to wear for yourself." Her eyes snapped like orange sparks off charcoal. "And if I seem angry at you, I'm sorry, but when Tom said you lived apart from your family in the woods because of 'personal problems' I thought it was something SERIOUS." Chris slowly remembered to breathe again. But it took a while. "Uh." He said. Intelligently. "Normally I'm not this blunt with people." She assured him. "But its my own personal experience coloring my feelings." Chris was still processing. "You...don't...care?" "Were you listening to me?" Chris backed up his mental tape and replayed. "Your brother...killed himself?" Remorse soaked in. "I'm sorry." She shrugged helplessly. "So was I. And I still am. I wasn't even a medical student when it happened, but I can't stop thinking of him as a patient I failed to help." Her mouth crooked on one side. "I don't want you to leave. It would be the worst thing for Amy." Chris looked down. "You...you haven't really talked like this to me before. I mean, in this way. You've been...well, doctor...you've been avoiding me." She grimaced. "And that's my own problem. It has nothing to do with you." "It has to do with Tom, doesn't it?" Chris' voice was hollow and empty as an old nutshell. "I won't ask. It's nobody's business. But I'm kinda...used to people reacting to me one way because of how they dealt with my brother." He struggled to swallow. "I mean, I loved the guy but he was...he..." He tried hard to laugh but it came out as a frightening sound. Tom and Joe...Joe wanting Chris to be Tom... And then he was sitting there, with Julia wrapping her arms around him like a friend would, his shoulders hitching like a body under an electric current, trying to remember how to dredge up feelings he had buried in order to save his sanity, only in the process, he had forgotten how to cry. TO BE CONTINUED BY LUCIAPHIL ...