Nancy Barrett voice-over: "Collinwood in main time. The great estate has been peaceful for almost ten years. The lives of the Collins family has had changes by three marriages. The wailing of the widows has been replaced by the screaming of children who terrorize the family estate like the waves that pound its shores. Angelique Bouchard, now Angelique Collins, has been tempered by the events of the past and is no longer the opportunist she once was. But now she wonders just how far away the old Angelique may be as events tempt her to become the person she no longer is..."
"I want a cookie!" The tiny moppet that was Sara Collins looked up at her mother as her little blue eyes glazed with anger. Her blonde pigtails bobbed just a little bit and her little fists clenched as Angelique stood her ground and checked tonight's roast chicken.
"And I said," Angelique added. "That it's too close to dinner time." Sara took a deep breath and filled her six-year-old lungs with as much air as she could get. Her mother's incessant pampering had turned her child into a brat who tried to control the house, but Angelique was very calm. She knew little witches had no power over big witches.
"Angelique, where did you hide my..." Barnabus emerged into the Old House kitchen from the dining room. He tightened his smoking jacket as he looked to his adorable daughter's face turning blue and then to his wife leisurely tossing the salad for dinner with a smile.
"Is there..." He looked around. "A story here?"
"Your daughter's blackmailing me." Angelique answered.
"Oh," Barnabas was still looking for the Hemingway novel he had started, but his daughter was his first love after his wife. "She's my daughter now..." He crossed before Angelique cooking on the oven in the island of the kitchen and lifted up his tiny blonde clone of his wife. Tiny Sara gasped before her father.
"Tell mommy to give me a cookie." She asked. Barnabus turned his head to Angelique and sometimes still feared her a little bit. He had confessed his love for her in 1841 and he still meant it, but every once in a while, he wondered just how much the old Angelique still lurked behind those big blue azure eyes of hers.
"Sweetheart," The scion of Collinwood started with a father's love and respect. "Wouldn't you wait a bit longer and eat chicken and stuffed peppers?"
"Peppers," Sara was even adorable as she scowled. "Yuck!"
There was a knock at the door as Angelique placed aside her salad tongs. She checked her chicken again as she stepped around her husband with their daughter.
"That'll be Willie and Carolyn," She removed her apron as she checked her reflection in the mirror outside the kitchen. "I invited them and the kids down for dinner." She heard Barnabus trying to talk reason to their daughter, but it was a fruitless task. The girl wanted that cookie before her older brother got it. Angelique opened the left inside door and looked down at the tiny cherubic face looking at her. It was Russell Coleman, one her son's best friends.
"Good evening there, Mrs. Collins." His dark brown eyes lit up with unbridled childhood mischief. "My, you are sure looking lovely today. Can William come out and play?"
"No," Angelique told the pint-sized con artist. "He hasn't had his dinner yet."
"Well, neither have I!" Russell looked up at her as William had heard his voice from upstairs. He came running halfway down the foyer stairs, saw his buddy and partner in crime and grinned with a smile that made Angelique shudder.
"Hey, Rusty!" William cheered. "Come on up and see my trains!"
"All right!" The two nine-year olds joined forces as Angelique lightly dropped her jaw in shock.
"One more for dinner..." She rolled her eyes and unconsciously made up curses that turned boys back into frogs and snails and puppy dog tails.
PART 2
The best thing about the Collinwood Estate was its acres and acres of rolling hills, woods, old structures and weaving paths and forgotten carriage trails that seemed to go on forever. A little creek started from some where up near Crabapple Cove eight miles north and weaved its way down through the property to where it emptied into the sea down from Widow's Cove and near the boundary of the Haskell Farm. The boys of the Collins family ran wild over the land with their friends every chance they could get. It was still light out as the parents sat down after dinner to relax and breath a few moments of peace as the children attacked the grounds as if they were the same British Soldiers that once tried to take the land in 1775. Nine-year-old William Collins, the son of Barnabus and Angelique Collins was a direct ancestor of Captain Joshua Collins from the Fifth Infantry under Colonel "Screaming Jack" Marshak. Although he was never told just how truly close he was related to Joshua, William was obviously very proud to be a Collins and it was a trait he shared with the rest of his family. His buddies, Russell Coleman, Nick Schafer and Matthew Oh, had a bit to be proud of as well. Russell's Native American ancestors reputedly shared guns against the British as William's British ancestors came over. Nick's father worked at the bank both legitimately and honestly while his mother was the only policewoman in Collinsport. From the only Korean family in town, Matthew's ancestors were probably responsible for inventing the gunpowder used on both sides of that war. The three boys screamed, looked for trees to climb and through rocks as Jamison Collins, the son of Quentin and Maggie Collins came to join them, but he was not alone. Behind him, Willie and Carolyn Loomis's oldest boy, J.R. Loomis came running too.
"Come on, guys," He could almost run as fast as they could trying to lose him. "Come on guys..."
"J.R." Jamison looked back. "You know, I think I hear your mommy calling you." It was a lie to ditch the seven year old so he wouldn't ruin or be able to tattle on their fun.
"No, she ain't..." J.R. scoffed as Jamison rolled his eyes. Older than him, but younger than William, Jamison looked at William aggravatedly looking back at him. He often did the same thing to ditch him, but it never worked.
"What you guys doing?" J.R. asked.
"Hitting bottles off the wood fence..." William answered as Russell took one of the rocks they had collected from the creek and hurled it. Another bottle was knocked over as William made a face and chose another rock. J.R. hung off the fence as if he was in a Norman Rockwell painting as Matthew waited his turn. William threw his rock, missed his target and heard glass shattering.
"That's funny..." Russell looked out amongst the trees and bushes. "Usually it has to hit something to make that sound."
"I think it went over there." Matthew pointed to a huge wad of dried out and scattered branches as they converged on the whole pile. Jamison had taken a closer look as William looked around. J.R. rushed to join them as Russell became excited.
"It's a car..." He began pulling off the thick pile of branches and leaves on top of it in an attempt to hide it. It was a large sedan and William's rock had shattered the driver's window. Parked off the old carriage path, all four of its wheels had gone flat from dry rot and the weather had scorched and dried the now rusted shell. Jamison pulled open the door and found boxes of someone's possessions in the back seat he began pulling out.
"I bet there's a body in the trunk!"
"I bet you it's been here a million years!"
"Hey," William found a wallet on the dashboard as they crawled over and through the deserted automobile. "Money! It's mine!"
"I saw it first!" Russell screamed as he dumped a box of clothes.
"Will," J.R. had picked up one of the cards William threw away. "What's this say?"
"Matthew Morgan..." The only boy present who could read better than the others, William read the driver's license card and scowled a bit. "I bet this stuff and the car is his."
"I want it." Matthew Oh wanted anything with his name on it. "I wonder if this is like my mommy's credit cards."
"When I get big," Jamison watched as J.R. climbed on top. "I'm driving this sucker out of here." He pounded the dead horn and made driving noises as he screamed at imaginary pedestrians through the dirty windshield.
From a few feet away, a tall stranger looked over the boys screaming and swarming over the car like dogs on a three-legged cat. He grinned, chuckled and continued coming up the path from the main road as they calmed and watched him. He was big and tall and very built. His hair was long and his eyes a peaceful shade of blue. The feet in his huge boots crushed the twigs and dry leaves he stepped on as he came closer. The boys thought they were trouble as they froze and watched him come closer. He looked like a giant to them in his khaki pants and white shirt.
"Looks like you boys found a car?" He said.
"It isn't yours, is it, mister?" William swallowed his heart.
"No..." The huge figure of a man grinned as the boys cheered and attacked it once more. They began clearing it out for more treasure and opening the back doors as the adult watching them stepped back and grinned.
"Could any of you boys tell me if Barnabas Collins still lives in the Old House over there?" The man asked out loud.
"Sure..." Jamison stopped his imaginary race. "That's William's daddy!"
"You're Barnabus's son!" The stranger was taken aback.
"That's right..." William emptied another box and took what he thought was treasure. "He's my daddy. Do you know him?"
"I guess so," The figure introduced himself. "I'm sort of your Uncle Adam..."
PART 3
Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis sipped her brandy in the parlor of the Old House as she and her husband Willie engaged in friendly talk with Barnabus and Angelique. Their respective daughters, Lizzie and Sara were upstairs taking their naps with their cousin Amanda as they had a final moments peace to think like adults and not like the selfish children they were raising.
"Angelique," Carolyn smiled. "Dinner was wonderful. Your mother must have showed you how to cook."
"My mother showed me nothing." The blonde enchantress sipped her sherry as their husbands listened. "I grew up mixing... other sorts of things..." She responded with a gleam that Barnabus lightly chuckled at. "I have collected recipes I've received from people going way back." She continued.
"Shame Quentin and Maggie couldn't have joined us." Willie was starting the tendency to put on weight since he was no longer working hard as the estate caretaker.
"I asked," Angelique continued. "But they were taking a private dinner out at Maison Francois in Bangor without the kids."
"And we had plenty of them here." Barnabus reflected on the chaos of events with all the six current Collins children minus David's daughter, Carrie. He had always said he loved the children, but he loved his peace and quiet even more.
"Thank goodness for peace and quiet." Willie sat back in his chair as the front door opened and slammed shut. The four adults shared looks amongst themselves as young William's voice cried out from the shoulders of a giant.
"Hi mommy!" He looked as if he were being dragged away as everyone stopped and stared in disbelief. They had not seen the man with William in years...
"Adam!" Barnabas stared in disbelief. Carolyn was the only one present who didn't know that he was the creation of Dr. Eric Lang trying to prove that the Frankenstein novel could have been based on a real account. He was still a huge figure of a man, but his patchwork scars were gone and he looked like an older man with silver temples and the long black hair of a modern man. Carolyn was never let in on the actual morbid and grisly truth, but like her mother currently in the hospital, she had assumed Adam was Barnabus' nephew who had left forgotten for several years, and it seemed so likely back then. When Adam first came to Collinwood, he did wander the grounds and town as some mute scarred giant who had been kept prisoner in a hospital somewhere without human knowledge.
"Hello, Barnabas," Adam grinned as he tried to wake his memories of his time here. He still loved Carolyn a bit, as he did then, but he also remembered some not so wonderful memories too.
"William, darling," Angelique shooed off her son. "Go play."
"I want to stay."
"William, listen to your mother." Barnabus watched his boy leave as he wished him not to hear the truth. Carolyn had hugged and kissed Adam as he towered above them all.
"Adam," She looked up at him. "It's been so long. How have you been doing? Last I heard, Professor Stokes had sent you to school somewhere on the West Coast."
"Yes, he did," Adam sat down near her as Willie stood. "I was in a hospital too getting taken care of for a while, but we lost touch. After he died, I wanted to come back, but I was being kept so busy. I'm working as a Research Consultant for a big company called the Phoenix Foundation in their offices in Hawaii. I've even been married now to a beautiful woman who reminds me of Eve."
"Well, " Barnabas found memories he wasn't proud of returning. "It seems as if you have everything you've ever wanted."
"Yes," Adam answered. "I can't believe you're married to Angelique, Barnabus. I never would have thought after all we went through."
"Forgiveness, Adam," Angelique answered. "And a lot of mortal compassion..."
"Does your wife know your past?" Willie asked out loud.
"Well," Adam looked to Carolyn and wondered if she knew the truth despite all the hypnotism and mesmerism going on back then amongst the secrets and manipulation. "She knows I had a..." He smirked and sneaked in a cough. "Weird childhood. I was raised by doctors helping me for a long time and that I have only one... true relative." He looked at Barnabas.
"And I vow to live up to every and any promise you need." The former vampire was full of heartfelt emotion. He had once worried that the Leviathans had killed Adam after they had made him a vampire once more, but again, those were details he had would soon prefer to forget.
"Adam," Carolyn looked at him as she remembered he loved her so much back then. "You know, Willie and I are married now, but if you need anything, please don't hesitate to ask."
Adam looked at Willie and recalled things when they might have just soon killed each other. If Lang was Adam's Dr. Frankenstein, then Willie was certainly the sadistic assistant and Barnabus the, however reluctant, Dracula looking for a cure to a curse. The movies he watched weren't as weird as the real life they had all endured.
"I don't need anything." Adam grinned. "I'm happy, I'm content. I just... wanted to see you all again."
PART 4
It was getting dark and cold as two boys crawled up the cliffs up the shore from the Collinwood Estate and found themselves in a neighborhood adjacent to the property. All the trees looked the same as Russell Coleman feared more his mother than his father and his best friend William Collins predicted his mother being so worried about him. It was almost as if she should have gotten used to him coming home after dark. They just continued walking as they looked up at the windows staring back at them from Seaview, one of the five haunted sites known to rest in Collinsport along with Collinwood, The Old House and Widow's Hill. The fifth was the old Blair House where some insisted the ghost of a warlock met his end some years before.
"I bet you there's a ghost in there." Russell stopped in front of the house and looked back at the windows. Empty rooms stared back from behind them all as garrets and parapets lined the house like broken lines stopping and continuing. The front veranda looked like a huge mouth standing open to gobble up little boys and the weed covered front yard looked as if hid a goblin or two. Old dried vines twisted over the whole end of the house like dead snakes consuming the house and gradually working their way over it. The whole house had an alarming menacing dull gray coat to it as if it were cursed from time itself.
"Why would a ghost live there?" William answered. "If I was a ghost, I'd want to live in the toy section at the store."
"You can't control where you go, stupid." Russell sneered a bit as he controlled their friendship. "You gotta go where they send you."
"Who's that?"
"Uhhhhhhhhhh," Russell got caught with logic. "The head ghost, I don't know." He saw a loose piece of the sidewalk to the house, picked it up and threw it. His weapon just sort of landed, skittered across the mansard roof and landed in a gutter.
"I knew you couldn't make it."
"I can make it better than you can." Russell took two more rocks and handed him one. William watched as Russell threw a bit sharper and harder this time and shattered one of the second floor windows. The glass in the upstairs pane just sort of vanished on impact from the glass as the crash sounded and ended.
"I can do better..." William squinted his eyes, stepped forward and threw his rock even harder. His aim kept shooting up as it met impact with a garret window. Something also gave way as the big pane of glass as well as the two smaller ones in the same window all went together.
"All right! Top that!" William turned round as he saw Russell missing. In his place were an adult and an angry one at that with folded arms. His uniform was tan with brown pants, but the shield on his chest was obvious. He scowled with a bit of disappointment as he unfolded his arms and gestured for William to come closer.
"Aren't you one of those Collins boys?"
"Yes sir." William answered half-heartedly against his will.
"How many times do I have to run you boys in?"
"I don't know…" William answered logically. "How high can you count?"
PART 5
It was morning once more and Angelique turned from her family duties while Barnabas emerged from the kitchen stairs in his smoking jacket ready to lounge around the house. She beamed a little bit as he brushed past her to pour some coffee into a cup and then turned to sit at the table. He took a piece of toast and buttered it from the butter tray on the table and nibbled at it as he picked up the newspaper and scanned the first page.
"Barnabas," She turned as she placed a plate of scrambled eggs and ham before him. "What happened to you last night? I thought you enjoyed seeing Adam again."
"I do," Barnabas sipped his coffee as an irritated father. "That phone call I took was from Sheriff Taylor at the police station in town. I didn't want to alarm you or our guests, but it seems as if our son has turned from throwing rocks off Widow's Hill and toward glass windows of people's houses."
"Oh no..." Angelique felt her heart break a little. "How could he? It's that Coleman boy. He's making our son do all sorts of things he never did before." She pulled out the chair by her husband and sat down beside him.
"No," Barnabas disagreed. "William is smart. He doesn't have to do what his friends tell him." He paused and swallowed some of his breakfast.
"Fortunately, the house he broke the windows is Seaview and is one of the Collins properties. Taylor said we can do anything we wanted with him since the house belongs to Liz."
"And what did you do?"
"I did the same thing my father did when I was my son's age and broke the windows at the Old McGruder House." Barnabas looked into his wife's big blue eyes as the light bounced into them. "I confined him into the estate until Liz can punish him."
"I didn't know Liz was around back then..." Angelique mused on the circumstances.
On the other side of the estate on the narrow weaving path toward the Old McGruder House, now restored into Rose Cottage, Willie Loomis and Quentin Collins took the directions described by their progeny. They ducked and walked around bigger trees and over hanging limbs as they reached the old fence and then stopped and looked down into the old wagon trail at the car their boys found. Willie had barely been back here in his old duties of the estate, but as he looked at the old abandoned sedan, his eyes panned over the debris and abuse the boys had done to it.
"They sure cleaned it out, didn't they?" Quentin remarked as he saw strewn clothes, ripped up boxes and assorted possessions laying in the incline near the car. The car itself was wide open and its trunk sitting open just as the boys had left it.
"Yep," Willie looked at the footprints up and over the windshield. "They did everything but strip it for parts."
"Here's something..." Quentin paused as he saw important papers torn from the glove box. It was the registration papers to the car. "Who's Matthew Morgan?"
"Well, that answers some questions..." Willie sat in the driver's seat and checked the ignition. "He was Liz's manservant before I came to Collinwood. From what I understand, he was quite fond of Liz and would do anything to protect her. He got into a peck of trouble after he killed old William Malloy for some business or another. I guess he hid his car here back when he was hiding from the police. I can't believe it's been sitting here all this time."
"What..." Quentin popped the hood of the car. "Happened to him?"
"He had a heart attack at the Old House."
"Barnabas?"
"Oh, no, no..." Willie reared the hood up as they stared at the rusted mess that was once an engine. Tall weeds had grown up through the bottom of the car and through the engine block. "This was months to a year before I released Barnabas. We're going to have to get a wrecker to drag this out of here." He and Quentin stared at the engine a bit. Willie knew enough to keep all of the Collins cars running, but he was no expert in restoring old abandoned cars.
"Where'd Adam come from?" Quentin stood up straight. "You know as well as I do that Barnabas has no real living relatives."
"That's a bit uglier to explain." Willie checked the car fluid levels as he continued the small talk. "He and Julia met this doctor named Eric Lang who was convinced that a Dr. Frankenstein really existed. He created a corpse from the body parts of dead people and then somehow linked Barnabus's life to it to bring it to life. Somehow, the creation's existence cured Barnabas's..."
"Blood condition." Quentin added as he looked up from under the shadow of the car hood. "And Adam worked for him."
"No," Willie checked the battery for a spark, but it was dead. "He was the monster." Quentin gave him a very solemn stare.
"That's funny," He replied in a monotone level. "He didn't look like he had a flat head."
"Stokes helped Adam a lot." Willie sighed and realized Morgan's old car was ready for the junkyard. "Cleaned him of his scars and sent him to school. Barnabus was going to pass off Adam as his nephew, anyway, so..."
"He became the nephew." Quentin mused as Willie slammed the hood shut.
"Basically."
"Do you ever get the idea that our lives are some horrible TV writer's dream?" Quentin remarked with a wry grin.
PART 6
The weekly Collins Family dinner was a traditional event that was impossible to avoid because it was when the whole family sat together at Collinwood to discuss and keep informed of the week's events and occurrences. Liz had started it again after Willie and Carolyn had started dating, but right now, she was at Windcliff for a medical check up and Willie and Carolyn were married. Carolyn took her mother's chair at the head of the table and Willie took Roger's at the other end. Roger's business trips out of town were his only time to take the chair, and in some way, sitting at the heads of the table, Carolyn and Willie showed who really ran Collinwood now.
"Adam," Carolyn elegantly turned her head. "I'm so glad you could return home. You remember Maggie, this is her husband, my cousin, Quentin."
"Of course," Adam looked at the smattering of children between adults. "I'm sorry to hear about your father. He was a good man."
"I know." Maggie sat next to her five year old daughter, Amanda. "I almost forgot you had known him."
"Adam," Barnabas pushed in Angelique's chair at the table. "I thought your wife would be joining us."
"She's busy in New York." Adam looked at Barnabus's son a minute. Young William was obviously developing a sort of hero-worship over the huge man before him. "She promised to be up here tonight. I think you'll like her. Like I said, she reminds me a lot of Eve."
"Eve?" Quentin reached for the bowl of eggplant before he lost a chance to get some. "Was that your first wife?"
"Hardly..." Adam barely retorted.
"She was..." Angelique ate like a bird between cutting food for her daughter and trying to get her son to eat his vegetables. She tried to put the lost events in a better scenario for the mixed witnesses to the past. "A first love... She didn't care for him very much."
"She was in love with Victoria's fiancé." Willie added as he gestured his fork with roast on it. "Jeff… Peter someone."
"Victoria Winters." Quentin spoke up from spooning his peas. "David's old governess." He broke a little grin. "I knew if I listened long enough I'd recognize a name. And quite a young beauty if I remember the descriptions right."
"Yes," Maggie looked at her husband.
"Maggie," Carolyn was helping to cut her own daughter's food. "Did David have a bigger infatuation on you, or on Vicki?"
"Vicki, I suppose." Maggie beamed as she practically remembered David more interested in humping her leg than his arithmetic. "He talked about her a lot more after she left."
"Where's David now?" Adam recognized the name and scanned the table.
"College." Carolyn answered. "He's studying psychology and physics to become a parapsychologist. He never did get ghosts off the brain."
"Speaking of ghosts of the past," Angelique looked up from her plate. "Willie, what are you and Quentin going to do with Morgan's old car still on the property?"
"We're going to have to get it towed off." Willie shoveled his food faster than he put weight on. "It's too dangerous to let the kids play on it."
"But daddy..." J.R. suddenly looked up.
"Please leave it..." William stuck up for it.
"No, no..." Willie resisted their pleas. "It's going to be gone."
"Well," Dr. Julia Hoffman strolled into the long dining room and glanced briefly over the munchkins dotted around the parents. Her hair was long and straight again and her face was showing scant signs of the cancer she once had. "It seems I've found the heart of Collinwood..." Her eyes looked up straight to Adam. The face was recognizable as he beamed to her.
"Adam?"
"It's him alright, Julia." Carolyn's voice melodically sounded as she rose and stood up. "Please, take my seat and catch up with him. Where's mother?"
"What?" Julia was obviously put off by the memories returning. "Oh, uh, she's in the drawing room."
"Thank you." Carolyn glided out of the dining room and down to the foyer. She paused before the drawing room and looked in as her mother sat in peace. The mother she loved very much was getting old and it scared her everyday to think she might be losing her.
"Mother?" Carolyn's voice attracted Liz's attention. Liz looked up with her royal blue eyes and beamed. She hugged and received her daughter closely as they sat next to each other.
"What did the specialist at Windcliff say?" Carolyn asked.
"Well, honey," Liz poured some tea from the pot still in front of her. "He couldn't find anything wrong, but he still prescribed me medicine to help me. I'm just getting old."
"You're not old, mother." Carolyn insisted. "Why you're only..."
"I don't need to know how old I am." Liz sipped the tea. "I also don't need to be reminded how much time I've got left. I've had a very good life and I'm happy. I've met my grandchildren, I know both you and David are going to be alright and I'm ready to move on."
"Please don't talk like that." Carolyn lightly shook her head as she responded. "Please come to dinner. The servants made a roast and..."
"Julia and I ate at a place on the road." Liz sipped her tea again. "And please don't worry about me. I'm going to be all right." She stared into her beautiful daughter's face. "Now, has anything happened while I was gone?"
"Well," The lovely petite blonde acted as if she had to think for a minute. "Barnabus's nephew, Adam, has returned."
"Adam?" Liz remembered that name. Before Stokes passed away, he had commented to her a few times as how the once bestial nephew was becoming civilized. "How is he?"
"You'll barely recognize him." Carolyn glowed with love for her mother. "Oh, and Barnabas and Angelique's son was picked up by the police."
"Curfew?"
"Vandalism of Collins property." Carolyn added.
PART 7
The old records room downstairs from the dining room had been cleaned out a few months before. The outdated files were in the upstairs library now awaiting to be updated and the room itself had been painted and cleaned and fixed up for the children to watch TV and make as much noises as they wished as the parents had their moments of peace upstairs. Maggie watched the boys playing with a racecar set as the girls handled dolls from a big box of accessories. Maggie sometimes wished she could return to being a child. It seemed her children and their cousins had much more interesting things to play with than she was a child. Outside playgrounds had become much more elaborate and the Barbies were so much more accessorized than she remembered.
"How are things, Maggie?" Angelique glided down the stairs and poked her head in the door.
"Barbie has a date with Ken." The governess grinned as she sat between her daughter and Sara. "Don't you wish we had Barbies like this when we were little."
"I never even had Barbies growing up." Angelique admitted frankly as her son William burned off his energy from dinner. He laughed and then screamed as his tiny matchbox car flew off the electronic track.
"Sweetheart," The former witch bent down to him. "Your Aunt Liz wants to see you."
"Now?" The boy's big brown eyes looked to his mother.
"Now." Angelique took his hand and led him out as J.R. Loomis rushed to take his place. The young man looked at his mother and wondered how much trouble he was in as they passed the hall next to the study and emerged into the hall outside the dining room. The men were talking with Adam about all things adult as Mrs. Johnson lead the two new servants into the care and guidance of household matters. Barnabas just happened to look up as Angelique and his son passed out of his view past the grandfather clock in the foyer. He excused himself from his dignified discussion about current events and hastened his step to the double doors of the drawing room. Carolyn was there to part the doors as William entered alone. Angelique turned to him.
"Barnabas," Her eyes were wrought with concern. "I hope she goes easy on him."
"I've never known Liz to be anything, but fair and understanding." Barnabas replied.
"That's not the mother I had." Carolyn claimed as she remembered her childhood.
William Benjamin Collins stood with his back to the doors as he looked to Mrs. Stoddard. She resembled none of the rosy-cheeked doting grandmother figure that baked him cookies or read him stories to go to sleep by. She looked back at him from the sofa with her dour blue eyes peering back at him like just another parent. There was no expression to her face as she gazed upon him as if she were about to start screaming any minute.
"Come over here and sit down." She replied.
William swallowed his fear and made tiny steps over to the closest chair. He motioned over to it with lackluster emotions as the seat came up to about his waist.
"Not there," Liz watched him. "Over here next to me."
The boy sighed nervously as he turned around and tried not to look at her. Her gazed down to the rug and passed between her and the coffee table as he stepped past her legs and paused next to her. He turned around to hop up on the sofa a small foot away from her. As she helped him up, she pulled him closer. He looked up with fear as she sipped her tea from expensive bone china.
"I hear you like throwing rocks." Liz asked him.
"I guess..."
"You guess?" Liz had never raised a boy. The worse she ever dealt with Carolyn was perhaps when she started dating and staying out all night.
"Well, I hear you like throwing rocks off Widow's Hill and into the water on the shore and at birds and squirrels in the trees." She seemed to pause with effect. "You're a deadly little shot, aren't you?"
"I don't know." William answered not knowing what to say.
"You don't know!" Her voice rose just a bit. "Well, let me tell you something, young man. You do not throw rocks at people's houses! I don't care how spooky it looks or how deserted it appears, it belongs to someone somewhere."
William's little eyes quivered and feared the worse.
"To tell the truth," Liz reached to the table and picked up a very old leather bound book thick with photos and memorabilia as she searched for the right picture. "Seaview scared me quite a bit growing up. Being alone at the end of that driveway apart from the other houses on the street does that. I used to think there were ghosts all over the property just waiting to yank little kids off the street. I tried to stay away from it, but my mother liked to walk up there as she waited for the house to be released from Caleb's will. Do you know the story?"
William shook his head as Liz stopped turning pages to a forgotten member of the Collins family. She stopped before a gnarled old figure in a wheelchair that looked like his face was trapped in an angry expression. It was a picture of a very aged Gabriel Collins.
"Gabriel Collins lost his legs in a fall from a balcony off the west wing," Liz started. "But even before that he pretended he couldn't walk because his brother Quentin knocked him from the lofts of the old barn. That's the first Quentin, not your Uncle Quentin's grandfather." She showed another tintype of another older figure with a big grin standing on Broadway in New York. He sort of resembled Uncle Quentin anyway.
"Before the accident," Liz continued. "Gabriel had three sons that he had sent off to military school. I don't think he liked being a father. They were Geoffrey, my great grandfather, Charles and Caleb." The three photos were of men in Union Soldier uniforms. Looking very much like Barnabus, Geoffrey was especially decorated while Charles resembled Quentin again. Caleb resembled his father as a younger man.
"Caleb did not like his father at all." Liz continued. "I think having a crippled father embarrassed him. Caleb wanted to leave Collinwood so he designed and had Seaview built while he was away in school. His fiancée, Fiona McAdams, oversaw the building in his absence."
"She's very pretty." William saw Caleb in a picture with a stunning brunette in a long gown. He was in his uniform again and she looked like a Southern belle.
"She sort of resembles David's first governess," Liz digressed a second and recalled Victoria Winters before continuing. "When Caleb returned home, he was carrying a wagon full of Confederate debris looted from during the war. It upset a lot of people in town and Gabriel used it as an excuse to disown his son. Son and father feuded until one of them died as Gabriel prevented Caleb from being a successful contractor. Charles had been killed in the war and Geoffrey was left to inherit Collinwood, but Caleb wanted Seaview. Fiona and him never married and Caleb finally disowned the family out of revenge by having his lawyers keep Seaview out of the family's hands for over a hundred years." Liz looked at William.
"They say to this day," Liz turned to William hoping to scare him. "That if you're really quiet, you can hear Caleb hammering at the house's foundation, trying to bring it down. Some say they've seen Fiona's spirit drifting from room to room in a long white dress waiting for Caleb to marry her."
William felt a shiver up his little back.
"Fortunately," Liz continued. "Caleb's firm went out of business in 1940 and his will was taken over by our family retainers who felt a need to honor it. Some legal mumbo-jumbo…" Liz rolled her eyes pretending to understand it. "Anyhow, the will was contracted only till 1976 and I'm going to need someone to take care of the place when I'm gone. I need a young man... Who will take care of it and want to raise a family in it... and not throw rocks at it."
"Me?" William was waiting for the shoe to drop.
"Well," Liz pulled William closer. "Your parents will hold it for you till you're eighteen, but if it's yours, maybe you won't vandalize it, and keep your friends from doing so too."
"Wow!" William looked at the picture the house looked like in 1880. It was orderly and neat and prim. The black and white picture showed straight hedges, a long front porch with steps down to a little lane and gray flowers on a clear yard surrounded by trees.
"Are you going to treat it right from now on?" Liz grinned a bit.
"Yeah!" William answered excitedly. What boy his own age had his own house!
"Give me some sugar." Liz asked while the boy kissed her cheek, scampered over her lap and rushed over to open the doors to the foyer. Angelique whirled around as Barnabas sat up from near his ancestor's portrait.
"Mommy, I got a house!"
"A house?" Angelique held him and looked up to Liz.
"A house?" William's cousin, Jamison, was standing down from the foyer in the hall outside the arches of the dining room. "For throwing rocks? What do I have to do to get a car!"
PART 8
The three Collins boys sat on the fence in the middle of the woods on the Collins property watching as Quentin and Willie guided the wrecker from Forbes Garage in town back over the over-grown wagon trails to where Matthew Morgan had left his car so long ago. It must have been easier bringing it in back then when the old paths were wider and not pressed together by trees growing outward. Willie had to take down part of the fence and then saw down one of the old oaks on the property for the wrecker to get through. Even then, Collinwood was not easily giving up its secrets. Morgan's car had to be lurched and rocked and literally pushed to get it dragged up the hill to the regular dirt roads on the property and when it did move, it dragged and pulled away the vines, weeds and plants growing up through it. In the end, there was a patch of bare ground and dead grass as animals living under the car this many years scattered away for new homes.
"Awww, dad," Jamison looked up. "Can't you please leave the car?"
"It's too dangerous." Quentin gasped and sipped his Pepsi as the sun heated him to a fine toasted red. He gestured to Nathan driving the wrecker as Willie caught his breathe in the shade close to the boys.
"You boys have a quarter of a million dollars invested in toys scattered from here to the Old House and back plus a playground at the park and a pool house to swim in on the estate." Willie picked up the last of the trash littered by the boys from the car. "You don't need an abandoned old car to climb on."
"But... daddy..." J.R. whined a bit as William rushed ahead to join his Uncle Quentin. Quentin looked down and reveled in the fact that he was the favorite uncle of Barnabus's son, but it only seemed to be when Adam wasn't around. Adam may have been taller, and bigger, and had been around the world... but then, if he was a boy again, he might be his favorite uncle too.
"Is it gone?" Angelique stood at the edge of the outside veranda outside Collinwood as the boys came up the hill with Willie and Quentin. In the distance, the wrecker was vanishing in the distance with the dragging and shaking car once owned by Matthew Morgan. Jamison could see it from over the tips of the trees as he lamented what might have been.
"It's a memory." Willie walked past her as Barnabus stepped out from the double doors of the main house. He lightly and fastidiously dusted some lint off his expensive jacket and looked down on his son.
"Can I go see my house yet?" William looked up at his father. Barnabas grinned at the son who would succeed him and then glanced at Angelique and Quentin sitting at the edge of the veranda with his son.
"Don't you want to see your Uncle Adam first?" Angelique spoke what Barnabas was thinking. "He's bringing his wife to meet the family."
"Well, how long is that going to take?" The son of the former witch had obviously found something else to hold his interest.
"He got a house?" J.R. asked.
"Yeah," Jamison sat on the other side of his father as they stared across the property and down the hill to the tree line. "For throwing rocks!"
"How come I got a spanking when I did it?" J.R. asked.
"Life's unfair." Quentin told the would-be con. "Get used to it." He lifted up his soda to sip from it again as they saw a taxi coming up the hill. It vanished behind the trees at the bottom and reappeared on the rampart next to the estate that ascended the hill. It was coming quite close to the main house as its brakes squealed and came to a stop. Adam stepped out from the passenger side after paying the driver as a beautiful redheaded woman emerged from the other side. Barnabus and Angelique were both taken aback at her likeness. She did resemble Eve a bit, but she was much more beautiful.
"Uncle Adam!" The boys launched themselves at him as he ruffled their hair. The cab pulled away his wife joined him nervously by his side.
"Barnabas, Angelique..." Adam pulled the redheaded beauty tighter. "This is Ginger, my wife."
"Mr. Collins..." She touched his hand with her perfect white alabaster hand.
"Quite an honor..." Barnabus beamed as even she enchanted him, but then memories of the power of Angelique's jealousy and his years as a contented husband pulled him back. Quentin was another matter as years and memories of being happily single returned to him like a forgotten personality.
"Hello..." He turned his charm up a notch. "I've seen you before. 'Hula Girl and the Full Back?' You're Ginger Grant, the actress?"
"Oh my gosh," Adam's wife blushed a bit. It had been years since anyone recalled her career as an actress. "Yes, that was me. I'm doing exercise videos now."
"You will have to tell me about that island you were on." Quentin beamed as Adam looked at him and reminded him that he could still hurt him with one look. Angelique shared a secret grin with Barnabus while the boys didn't understand the attention.
"How did you and Adam meet?" Angelique gently came between Quentin and Ginger.
"I've always been attracted to men with brains." The two ladies walked ahead as the men became boys. "There was this professor, but he was more interested in his experiments..."
END