Shadows On the Wall

Chapter 84: Gone

by Nicky


(Voiceover by Jonathan Frid): "In the aftermath of Victoria Winter's quest for
destruction and Angelique's subsequent reign of vengeance, the denizens of
Collinwood lick their wounds.  Summer is coming on, but there will be no peace
for anyone in the great house.  For though the ones left behind aren't aware of
it yet, a clinging vestige of that tainted darkness may still remain."

1

She found him staring out to sea, with his eyes dim and far away, and Julia
felt an all-too familiar pang scratch at her heart.  He's grieving, she
thought, and forced herself to simply watch him for a moment.  He was probably
aware of her presence - with his heightened vampire senses, how could he not
be?  - but she wanted to give him another moment or two of silence before she
officially announced her presence.

"Julia." His voice was just above a whisper, like paper, like dried leaves
rustled in trees nearly bare.  

"Barnabas," she said, and laid a hand on his shoulder.  He took it gratefully,
and she found that she could almost ignore the chill.  

"Has Quentin come back?"

Julia shook her head.  Barnabas sighed, and released her hand.  She allowed her
own to drop back to her side.  It was May, almost summer, but the evenings at
Collinwood were still fairly chilly.  She inserted both hands into the pockets
of her wool coat.  "He didn't leave a note, and he hasn't called," she said. 
"Eliot thinks he may have gone off to find Chris."

"Or to just be alone." Barnabas turned to face her; in the light of the waning
moon his face was sallow, gaunt; his eyes were hooded in their sockets, and she
caught only a flash, but it was red.  From weeping, she realized, not the
crimson tint of the vampire.  "I can understand that very well.  Oh yes."

"He'll come back," Julia said, but she wondered, as she had wondered since the
morning after Vicki's death, when they had discovered that Quentin's room had
been ransacked and that Quentin himself was long gone, if that were really
true.  "He needs time.  We all do."

"And what if he doesn't?  Come back?" 

Julia shrugged.  "We can find him eventually."

Barnabas nodded, then set off back towards Collinwood.  He hadn't wanted to
leave Elizabeth alone since that final night, nearly a week ago.  The matriarch
of Collinwood was a much stronger woman than anyone gave her credit, but to
lose her brother and her niece in the space of one evening had almost been too
much for her.  She had refused Julia's offer of sedatives until two nights
before, when the screams produced by a week's worth of nightmares had set the
entire house running.  Mrs.  Johnson had threatened to quit right then and
there, but Carolyn had persuaded the stubborn old housekeeper that the family
needed her now more than ever.

"I don't believe it," Barnabas said suddenly.

"Believe what?"

"Sometimes," he said.  "In the early morning, when I go back to the coffin, or
when I've come back to Collinwood after dusk.  That Vicki won't be there,
waiting, as she always has been.  That she isn't coming back.  That she's gone.
Just ...  gone." The word hung between them like vapor, like the breath that
Barnabas didn't need.

"She's at rest, Barnabas," Julia said, as gently as she could.

"What does that mean, do you suppose?  We know that the dead go on.  We've
heard them.  Talked to them.  Seen them, Julia.  How do we know that she's at
rest?  How do we know she has found peace, if there is such a thing?  How do we
know?"

"I suppose that we don't."

He raised an arch eyebrow, and said, in a tone discomfitingly similar to those
he had used when they had first begun their uneasy relationship, "Not exactly
words of comfort, Doctor."

She winced.  She hated when he called her that, and it had been so long. 
Still, she forged ahead.  "I don't know what else to say.  Vicki was my friend
too.  And I miss her.  Her death was horrible, but I do believe that, even
after everything that she did, she was still a good person, Barnabas.  A person
who loved, and was loved in return.  How can that be bad?  How can that be
wrong?  She made choices, and maybe they weren't the right choices, and she
hurt people, but she was still Vicki.  After everything, she was still the girl
we knew, and I believe - I truly believe - that she was sorry.  That she would
take it all back if she could.  Only -" And her voice choked a little.  "- only
we never can."

Barnabas sighed.  "No," he said.  "No, I suppose we can't."

Collinwood loomed over them.  One light burned, in the drawing room.  Carolyn
had seen that the windows were all replaced after Roger and Vicki and Amy's
funerals.  Bodiless funerals, of course.  Poor Elizabeth, Julia thought.  Poor
David.  Poor all of us.

They entered the great house on the hill, and the doors closed behind them,
silent, but heavy as the doors of a tomb nevertheless.

2

Barnabas left Julia with Elizabeth a half hour after their arrival; as it was,
he could barely contain his impatience, could barely manufacture an excuse to
leave them.  Julia had been following him, loyal as ever, but he cursed her
loyalty now.  He wanted only to be alone -

- but that wasn't exactly true, was it.

The door before him beckoned him.  He licked his dry lips, and reached for the
knob with one pale, icy hand.

Why did he hesitate?  He hadn't hesitated at all the previous five nights,
when, each time, he had snuck away to come back here, to the forgotten, lonely
halls of Collinwood's East Wing.  There, in one room, one very special room,
something magical waited.

"Damn it," he snarled, and threw open the doors.

The room was empty.  


He released his unnecessary breath in a rush of fetid air, and turned away. 
Bloody tears stung his eyes, and he snarled again, a growl of frustration, and
slammed his fist against the wall.  Plaster puffed out in a tiny cloud.

Where was it?  Where was that other world, what Eliot called "parallel time"? 
Why was he seeing what awaited him in every other room: a thick layer of dust,
the occasional discarded box, cobwebs and shadows, always, long and languid. 
Where was that magic?  Where were the orange drapes, the pale cream carpet, and
that portrait of Angelique that looked regally down from above?  

Where was Vicki?

He turned back to the room, and his eyes narrowed and became slits that began
to glow with a crimson light.  "Appear," he commanded, and his hands clenched
into fists.  "Appear ...  appear ...  appear!"

He waited.  

And waited.

"Appear!"

Nothing.

He bowed his head; his shoulders trembled.

"I'll be back," he said at last, his voice a whisper, a caress of steel in the
stillness and the quiet of that empty room.  "I'll be back for you, Victoria. 
I promise you that."

A moment later and the East Wing was deserted of life, human or ortherwise.

3

"No," David said.  "I haven't seen her.  I don't need to see her.  I know she's
here.  Watching me.  Waiting for me." He sat in a chair before the fireplace,
hands folded placidly in his lap.  He stared at Julia with huge moon-eyes above
shadowed, purple crescents of flesh.  Julia recognized the look.  She had seen
it for years, in the eyes of almost every patient to cross over the threshold
of Windcliff.  She wondered if the boy would ever recover from the events of
the past few months.

"He claims that his mother still comes to him," Carolyn said, and Julia had to
admit that she didn't look much better than the boy.  But at least the
treatments worked for her, Julia thought; the marks on her throat had vanished
entirely, and she seemed to have no memory that her cousin had used her for his
bloody nourishment.  "I've tried to tell him that that's impossible, but -"

David glowered at her.  "It's not impossible," he said, his voice childish and
dangerous at the same time.

And Julia, who tended to agree with David, could only say, "Perhaps we
shouldn't overlook the possibility, Carolyn.  According to all accounts, and
from what limited experience I have with the woman, I'd say she was quite an
extraordinary person."

"She's coming back," David said.  "There's nothing anyone can do to stop her."

"What does she want, David?" Julia asked him.  One hand she had placed on his
shoulder; the other dangled her oversized golden medallion before his eyes. 
She had hypnotized him a few minutes before, and he seemed perfectly
comfortable in that state.  Which, frankly, made her nervous.  As if the boy
was used to having his will subjugated.

"She wants me." Simple.  But chilling all the same.  "She wants to take me
away."

"She tried before, didn't she?" From what Barnabas had told her about his
experiences with Laura Collins in 1897, she was unstoppable, intent on her
goal, icy but a creature of fire nevertheless.  No one - no one except
Angelique, that is - had been able to end her reign of terror.

Julia couldn't think about Angelique now.

"Yes," David said.  "Cassandra tried to stop her.  She succeeded, but only for
a little while." Julia raised an eyebrow.  That was certainly new information;
Angelique had succeeded in destroying Laura twice?  

"Where has she been?  Where did she go after Cassandra ..." Julia licked her
lips.  "...  stopped her?"

"Naqada," David said without hesitation.  "Paradise.  Beyond the wall of flame.
In the land of the sun.  In the land of Ra, ruler of all life."

Carolyn's face paled.  "Julia, what is he talking about?" she hissed.

Julia waved her free hand to silence the other woman.  "Why is she still here?"
she asked, but she was afraid that she knew the answer.

David's gaze focused suddenly, and he cocked his head and smiled as he stared
directly at - directly into - Julia Hoffman.  "To settle," he said, and his
teeth were tiny white pearls.  "To collect me, and to settle her scores.  All
of them.  And this time no one can stop her." He looked away from her, and his
eyes closed, and after a moment Julia realized he was deeply asleep.

"Settle her scores?" Carolyn's voice, even in a whisper, was shrill; Julia's
head throbbed miserably.  "What does he mean, Julia?"

"I ...  don't know," Julia admitted.  "I suppose we can only watch.  And wait. 
And see."

And they both looked wordlessly at the angelic face of the sleeping boy.

4

Barnabas' head was bowed low as his icy fingers closed over the knob and turned
it before he admitted himself over the threshold of the only home he'd known in
three separate centuries.  The rage he felt at the non-appearance of the room -
the tantalizing possibility that somewhere at least Vicki lived on, and that he
might be able to see her again, for just a moment - felt dim and unimportant. 
He had discovered that, in the past, all his emotions were heightened by his
vampire sensibilities, but watching Vicki's horrific demise had dampened them
all forever.  I will never feel again, he thought dimly, not for another living
creature.  Feeling brings pain.  Too much ...  too much pain.

"Pain," a woman's voice, heavy and sibilant, spoke from the darkness, and
Barnabas froze.  "Yes, there is pain." The room was dark, but an eerie green
light began to play in the corner of the room, and a moment later Angelique
stepped into reality.  "Hello Barnabas," she said, and she sounded almost
pleasant.  She had changed her clothes since last he saw her; instead of the
ebony robe she had worn after she had transformed, she now wore a black sweater
and tight fitting matching leather pants; her hair was still coal black, and
her face remained that blanched, marble white.  The disturbing marks and sigils
of varying magical languages had faded away, and her eyes had returned to their
formal crystalline blue.  Her hands, white and delicate looking, were folded
together before her.

"Angelique," Barnabas said, and cursed the wariness he heard in his own voice. 
But if Angelique was offended by his carefulness, she gave no sign of it.  Her
face remained placid, unmoving, and hard as marble.  "You came back."

She laughed softly, and he was struck by how different her laughter sounded
now.  Not sharp, not grating, not the witch's cackle it had always been.  She
sounded understated now, he thought, almost like the delicate chiming of a
spoon struck gently against a crystal glass.  Like water running over rocks. 
"I never left," she said.

"It's been over a week." The awkwardness he felt would not allow him to say
anything else, and for several moments - perhaps only thirty seconds or so, but
he could feel it stretching out into eternity - neither of them said a word. 
They studied each other instead.

Then she walked toward him, and he could hear the sharp heels of her black
boots clicking against the wood of the floor.  He felt beads of ice break out
on his forehead, and that old familiar fear of her assailed him again.  After a
moment she stood directly in front of him, and looked up into his eyes.  She
reached for him with one pale hand, and he flinched away from her touch.  Her
hand froze, poised in mid-air two inches from his face, and then dropped back
to her side.  Her eyes never left his.  "You're afraid of me," she said.  She
didn't sound sad or angry, merely matter-of-fact.

"You have given me reason to be."

She laughed a little again, and turned away from him.  She walked over to the
fireplace, and he was unable to control his eyes from watching her backside,
clear and tantalizing beneath the thin layer of leather that clung lovingly to
each buttock.  She stopped at the fireplace, and tossed her fall of black hair,
and looked at him.  Her lips had curled into a smile.  "Perhaps I have, after
all," she said.  "It wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

"What do you want, Angelique?"

"To tell you goodbye." She held out her empty hands; there was a glitter, the
faint suggestion of a golden glow, and the Mask of Ba'al appeared.  "And to
collect this." It seemed harmless now; no longer did it glow with that eerie
eldrtich light.  It seemed merely to have become perhaps what it originally
was: a beautifully crafted mask of bejeweled gold, nothing more, nothing less.

"The source of your power?" He sneered before he could stop himself, and said,
"I knew you'd be back to collect it, somehow.  You always held a fascination
with power.  Over me.  Over others.  An addiction, I suppose you could say."

She shook her head sadly.  "Poor Barnabas," she said.  "You never understood
me.  I used to ask myself why I wasted my time on you.  Nicholas mocked me for
it, and it always grated on me.  I suppose maybe I'll never understand; you
have never known what I was thinking or feeling." She shrugged.  "It doesn't
matter now.  As it is, I did not come to collect the Mask of Ba'al." She drew
her hands away, but the Mask remained, held fast in the air, floating a little.
She passed her hands before it in a simple wave, and the Mask instantly began
to glow a hot, fiery red, and then a blazing white.  It twisted and twined in
the air, stretching, shrinking, pulled like taffy - and then it was simply
gone.  The air around it pulsed with that same glowing white energy, and then
dissipated.

Angelique looked up at him.  "I don't need it anymore," she said simply.  "No
one does.  It's useless now.  The power is inside of me."

"The power you used to destroy Victoria Winters." He was quaking now, and the
sudden blossom of rage inside him threatened to overcome him.  His hands were
fists he was powerless to unclench, and he knew that his mouth bristled with
fangs.  "You took her away from me.  From the world.  Forever." He took a
shambling half-step towards her, his eyes glowing red.

"Is it vengeance you want?" She asked this politely, her head cocked, her eyes
blue and full of honest curiosity.  He stopped in his tracks, and opened his
mouth.  He knew she could see his fangs, but she wasn't afraid of him.  She
honestly wanted to know.  "Because I understand vengeance.  I always have. 
Wielded it with a kind of expert efficiency.  Vengeance is a machine, Barnabas.
It will carry you along with it in, pulled behind it in its wake, awash in its
tide, and then when it's gone you're left all alone with the consequences of
what you did in its indescribably foul name.  Vengeance.  Like a machine,
Barnabas.  You want to kill me; I can see it in your eyes.  And why shouldn't
you?  Vicki was your love, and I took her away from you, as I have taken other
women you have loved in the past.  It only makes sense that you should want me
dead again.  You can't kill me, of course, no one can, but I do understand what
drives you.  Because I understand vengeance."

Tears spilled down his face, and he was powerless to stop them.  "I'm sorry
about Sky Rumson," he whispered.  "You warned me, didn't you.  A long time ago.
That if I interfered in your life, if I cost you your happiness, you would
never forgive me."

"True."

"So I suppose ...  I suppose we're -"

"Even?" Angelique threw her head back and laughed.  Barnabas winced.  Still
nothing like her previous laughter, this was much worse.  Leaden, heavy, dark,
antiphonal; it jangled in his head and seemed to darken the air around them. 
When she looked at him, Barnabas saw that her eyes were black, empty pools like
oil in the whiteness of her face.  "We are not even.  We will never be even.  I
begged you to kill me long ago, Barnabas Collins.  You may come to wish that
you had done so."

"Angelique," Barnabas said, his voice strangled, "what's happened to you?"

"I am what I have chosen to become," she said.  "What I was, and what I shall
always be.  The power is in me.  The power is me now.  No difference.  I am a
goddess."

"You are a thing."

"Perhaps.  A thing of darkness.  But alive.  So, so alive." She closed those
terrible black eyes, and smiled.  After a moment the smile faded.  "I have more
power than any being on this earth, mortal or otherwise."

"Then fix it!  Fix everything!  Bring back Sky, or go back in time and change
it, like Vicki did ...  change things, now that we know ...  change it so that
she never ..." His words died away.  Angelique was looking at him with
something blacker and more murderous that hate.

"Do you think I'm a fool?" Her voice was soft and hissing, belying the rage he
could feel in each syllable; outside, thunder growled menacingly over the sea. 
"Do you think it never occurred to me to try?" She paced away from him, and her
heels struck up black sparks against the floor.  "It is forbidden.  He cannot
return, not the way he was, and I ...  I am not allowed backwards.  Again." She
raised an eyebrow.  "None of us are.  The gates of time are barred to all of
us.  We are not allowed to meddle in the before."

"I don't understand.  If you're a ...  a goddess, then why can't you -"

She didn't move, didn't make a discernible motion or even a flick of an
eyebrow, but Barnabas felt hands burrow into his brain ...  and clench. Pain,
red and flaring, whole sheet, exploded in his head. He sank to the ground,
clutching his skull and roaring.

And just like that, the pain was gone. 

He opened his eyes, and blinked them blearily, and found he was looking into
her cold, dead face.  "Do you see?" she whispered, and he wondered at the pain
he heard, like twisted shards, embedded deep in her voice.  The grief beneath
the rage and the glacial coldness.  "I can hurt you with my thoughts.  These
powers - they are in me, they are me ...  but they are difficult to control. 
Near to impossible sometimes, it seems." Her voice was heavy, the sighing of
the wind now.  "I don't want to hurt you, Barnabas.  Not really.  I don't want
to hurt anyone anymore.  Sounds silly, doesn't it?  Me.  Not wanting to hurt
other people." Now her laughter sounded suspiciously like a sob.  "How things
change.  It seems I learned a lot about human beings that I had forgotten after
two hundred years.  In just six months.  So much I didn't remember.

"It's all gone now.  Forever, possibly."

His voice was choked, his words clods of mud in the cracked landscape of his
throat.  "Does it have to be that way?"

"I don't know," she said, and turned away from him.  He rose trembling to his
feet, and watched her warily as she crossed the room again.  When she turned
back, he saw that her eyes were blue again.  "Honestly, Barnabas, I don't know
what the future holds for me.  For you.  For any of us.  Darkness ...  pain ...
misery.  Those things always seem so certain, don't they?  Looming above us
all the time.  Ready to fall at any moment."

"Y-you ...  you sh-should use your p-powers for ...  f-for -"

"For good?  That would be nice.  But not very likely." Her eyes were black
again, sullen coals set far back in that chalky wasteland.  She regarded him
somberly in the darkness of the drawing room.  "I don't want to hurt people,
but I do.  Quite a dichotomy, eh?  The darkness and the not darkness.  The
black and the not black.  All that power - and the rage.  Powerful all by
itself, but this darkness inside me, crawling ...  just crawling ...  and
waiting.

"And there's no way to get rid of it, you see.  Look at me, Barnabas." She held
out her hands, and they sparked and crackled with writhing lines of black
energy that, after a moment, began to glow a steady silver.  

"What are you going to do now?" He looked at the magic that glowed before her;
all that power, he thought ...  all that power, and yet she can't ...  she
can't -

She dropped her hands, and the magic vanished.  "I don't know," she said.  Her
eyes were blue ...  and then black.  And then blue ...  and then black.  "I
just don't ...  know.  Leave, I suppose.  Leave this place, and go far away. 
Where there are no people, and I can be alone to think.  And to grieve, if that
is still possible."

The idea that had been rising in him like a terrible fish surfaced then, and he
was unable to stop himself from asking.  "Angelique ...  can you help me?"

She froze, and at that moment she was a statue, carved perfectly from marble. 
Those unsettling ebony eyes seemed to look through him and deep within him at
the same time.  For a long moment she said nothing, and then, quietly, just
above a whisper, "What do you want?"

"The curse," he said, and licked his lips.  "The Leviathans are gone, but their
curse remains.  You have the power to fix it.  You can help me by ending the
curse.  Make me human again, Angelique, I beg you."

She stared at him, and for just a moment he caught a twinkle, a flash of blue
within all that white.  Then the darkness came crashing down, filling her eyes
like ink, and her mouth yawned open, wider and wider, and a terrible birdlike
shriek came forth; she threw out her hands and he was struck by the blackness
that crackled between her fingers and in her eyes, struck and lifted and held
high, and he felt an eerie sense of deja vu; wider and wider stretched her
mouth, and the shriek had become a roar, and it filled the world, bestial,
lion-like, and every window in the Old House blew out, and coughed its glass
onto the lawn.  

"HOW DARE YOU," she roared, this white angel of destruction beneath him, black
and white and pure in her fury.  "HOW DARE YOU ASK ME SUCH A THING?"

"Angelique -" he whispered.

"I SHOULD END YOU RIGHT NOW.  YOUR MISERABLE EXISTENCE.  WOULD THAT CURE YOU,
BARNABAS?  WOULD THAT END THE CURSE, ONCE AND FOR ALL?"

"Please." The world was growing dim, and all he could see was her face.  Her
beautiful, terrible face.

"YOU NEVER CHANGE.  NEVER CHANGE.  SAME OLD SANCTIMONIOUS, HOLIER THAN THOU ...
AND YOU'RE TOO GOOD FOR ME THEN, AND I'M NOT RIGHT, NEVER RIGHT, AND THE MAGIC
IS BAD, YOU SAY, AND I'M BAD, BAD, BUT THEN YOU COME ...  COME CRAWLING ... 
AND ASKING ME NOW, AFTER ALL ...  BASTARD, YOU -"

Distant.  Growing dark.  Everything - everything dark -

- "bastard" -

Then the power was gone, and he dropped like a stone to the floor.  Angelique
turned away from him with a sob, and covered her face with her hands.

"Angelique?" He reached for her, and she jerked away.

"Don't touch me," she whispered.  "I don't even want you to look at me."

"Are you all right?"

Bitterly, jagged, "Do you really care?" And then, softly, "I'm sorry.  Really. 
Truly.  But I almost destroyed you just now.  It would've been easy ...  so
easy -"

He put a hand on her shoulder, and she didn't jerk away.  After a moment he
took it back.  "But you didn't," he said gently.

"No.  I didn't." She turned to look at him, and her eyes were blue and human. 
For the moment.  "But I would've.  And I nearly did.  I want you to remember
that, Barnabas, should we ever meet again after I leave this place.  I nearly
destroyed you this night." She moved away from him, and looked back over her
shoulder.  "I'm leaving now.  Tonight.  And maybe forever."

"And you -"

She smiled, and shook her head.  "No," she said.  "I won't.  I don't even know
if I can.  There are powers greater than mine in this universe, a force that
dictates the way things should be sometimes.  Maybe at some point I'll be that
powerful, but right now ...  no.  I don't think this is the time for you to be
human.  I'm not punishing you, Barnabas.  You will punish yourself more than I
ever could."

He smiled a little, and bowed his head.  "Perhaps the time for punishment has
ended."

She touched his cheek, and he looked up, startled.  Her face was grave.  "You
must watch.  Watch and listen.  Something is rising, or has risen, or has
always been here.  I don't know for sure.  But I can feel it.  Something dark. 
Something old.  And ...  and ferocious.  Something vengeful.  It hindered Vicki
tonight for reasons I can't see or understand, and she didn't either.  It has
appeared before, and it will show its face again.  If it has one.  Watch for
it, Barnabas." She took her hand away, and already it was wavy and indistinct. 
He blinked; she was fading away, and only her eyes remained clear.  Sad. 
Haunted.  Then she turned and began to walk away, across the room, and then she
was gone.

And he was alone.

He scrubbed away at his eyes before the tears could form, and stared with an
irritated scowl at the small stains of blood that smeared the back of his hand.
She is really truly gone, he thought, and the despair he felt was familiar. 
Almost comforting.

Gone.

What do I do now?

5

"You have to stay away from there, Barnabas.  It isn't safe.  You don't know
what will happen!" Julia's eyes, tiger's eyes, blazing at him, even as he
shoved her aside.  Didn't she see?  Didn't she understand?  He needed it;
craving wasn't even a word, it was need, hot and ferocious, because ..  why,
because it would solve all his problems.

He couldn't tell her.  There was no time.

Something was going to happen.  He could feel it.

And still, she followed.  She always followed.

"Eliot and I have been talking," she said, and her fingers clutched at the
lapels of his cape.  He brushed them aside without thinking.  "He's been doing
research on parallel worlds.  And Maggie ...  Maggie's using her powers to help
him.  To reach out, Barnabas, to see what else is out there.  What other
worlds, perhaps." Still pulling.  He could feel his fangs ache in his gums, ah
god, someone help, this torture can't go on forever -

Barnabas.

That whisper.  Her voice ...  the woman he loved, no, can't let her go, can't
ever, she isn't gone, she isn't, can't let her go one, can't let her be dead -

"But you have to listen to me, Barnabas.  Barnabas, we don't know, we don't
know anything for certain, don't you see?  What if you go into that room and it
takes you away with it?  How will you get back?"

He stopped at the landing, poised before the door that led to the East Wing,
and when he turned to look at her his eyes were flat and crimson.  The hair at
his temples was stained an abysmal gray.  "I'm not coming back," he said, and
when she reached for him he held up his palm, and she flew backwards and struck
the wall.  When she looked up, he had gone.

"Barnabas!" she cried, and clambered to her feet.  

6

By the time she reached the door to That Room - which was how Eliot had begun
to refer to it - she already knew that she was too late.

He had gone inside, and the door had slammed behind him, sending up a plume of
dust and ancient cobwebs.  She pounded it on, sobbing, calling his name, ready
to forgive him anything at this point, ready to forget, because she was such a
forgiving soul -

She froze for a second, and looked around.  The temperature in the hallway had
plummeted; she could see her breath hanging before her in a cloud.  "Who's
there?" she whispered; goosebumps marched up and down her arms.

Go, Julia, a voice clamored inside her, and she knew she should, but she just
...  couldn't ...  move.

"Who is it?" she screamed, and clawed at her cheeks, yanking at her hair.

The air shimmered before her, and Victoria Winters appeared, much as she had in
life.  Her hair was thick and luxurious brown, and her bare arms were crossed
over her breasts.  She was smirking, a look that that pre-Leviathan Vicki had
never adopted.  "You're too late, doctor dear," the apparition cooed, sick and
sweet and mocking.  "But then again, is that anything new?  You're always too
late.  Too late to save me.  Too late to save Chris Jennings.  Even Angelique,
and you hate her.  Or you used to."

Julia's eyes narrowed.  "Who are you?" she growled through clenched teeth.

Vicki placed a hand to her breast; her eyes widened, and her mouth gaped
comically.  "Me?  Li'l ol' me?  Why, I'm Victoria Winters.  Surely you
recognize me."

"You're not Vicki Winters.  You're not even a good copy."

"Someone else who isn't here anymore," the Vicki-thing said.  "Someone else
who's left you behind." Then its features ran like tallow and changed, and
Julia drew back with a gasp of horror.  Tom Jennings stood before her in the
cerements of the grave.  A shard of glass jutted from his chest cavity; his
shirt was stained black with blood.  "Julia," he moaned, and held out his
hands.  "Julia, why don't you help me?  It isn't too late, please ...  please,
Julia!  I ...  I need your help -"

"Stop it!" Julia screamed.  "Don't make me see him!  Don't!"

"It isn't too late," Tom said; his fangs gnashed and gleamed.  "Even now.  I
want to show you ...  just for a moment ...  show you what the future holds. 
See, Julia?  See?"

She sank to her knees, sobbing and shaking her head, peering at him through her
fingers and the veil of tears that nearly blinded her.  "This isn't fair," she
whimpered.  "Go away ...  go away -"

Roger Collins knelt beside her, ran a gentle hand through her hair.  Julia
cringed away from his touch; it was icy cold, and terribly, personally damp. 
Like freezing mist that reached beneath her clothes to fondle her most private,
secret parts.  "Is that so bad?  See?  All gone.  He's gone away." The thing's
voice became hard.  "But he could come back.  Do you want that, Julia?  Do
you?"

Julia looked up at her with wide, childlike eyes.  "What are you?" she
whispered.

Roger's lips - and his breath was charnel, the scent of tombs - brushed Julia's
earlobe.  "Get him back, Doctor," he said.  "Get him back, if you know what's
good for you.  Get him back."

Julia blinked.  She was alone.  All alone.  There was no one in the hallway but
her.

Get him back, Doctor.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, then stuttered to her feet.  She
looked around, whipping her head back and forth, but there was no one else in
the hallway with her.  Her face darkened.  I didn't imagine it, she thought. 
Something was here with me.  And it might've looked like Vicki, but it wasn't
her.  It wasn't her at all.

"Get him back," Julia whispered.  "What did it want?  What did it mean?" Then
she rushed to the door and turned knob, calling, "Barnabas!  Barnabas!"

And it turned.

The door swung open.

Julia found herself staring into a beautiful room awash with light and color. 
An enormous color portrait dominated the room, and she found herself held by
the malefic stare of the subject's icy eyes.  The eyes, and she supposed she
should've seen this coming, belonged to Angelique.  She wore a beautiful blue
dress, empire-waisted, and her otherwise bare arms were encased in matching
elbow-length gloves.  A tiny, secret smile dimpled her lips.  

Barnabas stood in the center of the room, his mouth agape.  He held out one
hand and brushed it against the portrait frame, as if he couldn't believe that
they were real, then drew back and stared at his fingertips wonderingly.

"Barnabas!" Julia cried, and stepped forward ...  and bounced back against the
barrier.  "NO!" she screamed, her voice shrill and feline with her frustration,
and pounded against the invisible wall with her fists.  "NO NO NO NO NO!" 

But it was impenetrable, as Stokes had said it might be.

So how did Barnabas cross it?

That was the question, wasn't it.  

"What am I going to do now?" he whispered, and Julia dropped her head, and
tried without much success to stifle the dry sobs that wracked her chest.  

He was gone.  Just ...  gone.

What am I going to do now?


To Be Continued . . .