DS X Files

by Thor2000

In a sequel to Smart Shadows, Fox Mulder decides to check out Maxwell Smart’s claim of a vampire in Collinsport. In the meantime, Carolyn Stoddard finds the spellbook of Angelique Miranda DuVal and realizes that she and Barnabas’s wife are one and the sam

Sara Collins(Sara Michelle Gellar) voice-over: "Another day rises over Collinwood with even more growing hope as even more traces of the dark and sinister past vanish under the light of day. It has been over twenty years since the forces of darkness and tragedy have reared their faces here, but the past, as we are about to learn, cannot be forgotten or even remains buried. As we are about to learn, memories of darkness will always manage to return for whoever delves into the truth…"

Barnabas Collins sat reading the Collinsport Courier as he sipped his afternoon coffee. He scratched the silver goatee that now adorned his aging face as he read the tales that occurred around this mediocre New England town and feigned interest in the news of other people in town he did not know. Instead, he gasped with concern while people out near Parker Field had reported a burglary at their small cottage and raised an eyebrow on the claims of items that divers found buried in the sea off the cliffs. His attention was then diverted as he peered over the top of his paper to firstborn child. Twenty-seven years old, William Benjamin Collins sat at the lunch table and crumbled crackers upon more crackers into his chili. Instead of raising a spoon, his eccentric son took another cracker and used it to spoon some of the chili out and up to his mouth. Barnabas observed this behavior for a few seconds as the young man read the local comics from a Bangor newspaper.

"If you don't have enough crackers, there's another box in the pantry." He mused with a line off the top of his mind.

"Why do you say that?" William possessed a hearty appetite and still remained somewhat brawny and less than hefty. Barnabas saw little of himself in the boy, but he still shined more than ever at being a father. He had an all-consuming interest in the young man's future and even a hope to see him happily married.

"So what will you be doing this weekend?" Barnabas asked.

"I was going to go see Ally in Boston again." William sipped his tea. "I was thinking of taking her to Nantucket to meet the Hackett Brothers."

"You're starting to see this young lady a lot." Barnabas closed and neatly folded his paper.

"I'm crazy about her." William confessed as he hesitated from his meal. "I think she legitimately likes me. I haven't even told her about how much money I have, and… she's just so… wonderful. I'd marry her now if I had the chance."

William's mother grunted from the back steps as if she'd been offended. Carrying a plastic laundry basket with bed sheets in it, there was a worried thought between father and son that she was wrought with house work, but then that could not be the case what with the servants at the main house on the estate always offering to relieve of the brunt of the household duties. Ranting under her breath, she paced a bit on the mud porch to the washer and dryer and then turned with a mystery pack of magazines under her arm.

"Barnabas," She spoke her husband's name with frustrated annoyance. "I turn over one mattress upstairs and look at what I find!!!" She spilled the stack of magazines. Barely clad ladies decadently posed under titles of Hustler, Penthouse and Stud looked up as Barnabas froze at the sight of them. He looked at the son he was once so proud of a second ago.

"William!!"

"They're not mine!!!" William screamed in shock.

"You know how your mother and I feel as to this effrontery in this house!!!"

"They're not mine!!!"

"Barnabas…" Angelique tried to gently intercede.

"As a Collins, you expected to live a certain amount of decorum!!!" Barnabas scowled displeased. "I loathe this sort of lewd and inappropriate distraction. I will not have it in this house!!! I forbid you…"

"But…" The son feared his father as he saw a frightening side of him he wished to forget.

"Barnabas!!!" Angelique matched her husband's temper. "I did not find them under William's mattress; they were under Sara's mattress!"

"Sara?" Barnabas was taken aback.

"Whoa!!" William suddenly saw his sister in a new light. He now pictured her in a plaid shirt with rolled up sleeves and blue jeans with sinewy arms and a tattoo with short blonde hair under a hard hat.

"Sara?" Barnabas recalled her as the epitome of every beautiful young girl he had seen since his little sister had died. He then recalled his son by his side and looked up to him with embarrassed tact. "William, I… apologize. I should have know you would never… Sara?" He looked back to his wife.

"There has to be a logical explanation." Angelique spoke with reason. "She's a beautiful, bright young girl…"

"…Who likes looking at ugly naked prostitutes without clothing or morals." William added derisively as his parents looked at him. Neither of them was a bit amused as they tried to find a way to handle it.

"Don't you have a trip to Boston…?" His mother reminded him.

PART TWO

Several hundred miles to the south in Washington DC, FBI Agent Fox Mulder strolled into the basement that served as the printing offices for an obscure newspaper known as The Lone Gunman. The three guys that called this place home were also a part of the overall atmosphere of the place as he bumped their door open. Darkness and vague shapes filled the rooms ahead of him as he treaded lightly but cockily. As he moved forward, the disembodied face of the one called Melvin Frohike looked at him.

"You guys need some light." He told him.

"We're working on it." A few distant bulbs few and far apart lit up. A distant computer screen flickered to life and cast an eerie blue gaze on the scant surroundings as Mulder looked round.

"Fuse?" Mulder asked.

"Bill." Frohike informed the government agent. "As in, forgot-to-pay-the. It's sort of hard to print a paper on the sole power of an old civil defense generator."

"Yeah," Mulder looked around half-amused. "Look, Byers was supposed to leave me behind a…"

"Oh yeah," The computer screen illuminated off Frohike's glasses as he tapped a few buttons to reboot his computers. Still hoping their power problems were going to get better, he wandered around a shelf to a desk piled with paper and assorted debris and started poking through the stacks of articles and old copies. "Now, where did I put that?" He looked around the vague shadows and then turned toward another desk against the wall before turning to Mulder again.

"Why don't I print you a new one?"

"Sounds fine." Mulder answered.

"So," Frohike returned to the computer and pulled up some electronic files on it. One was called Mulder's favors as he clicked that, logged up the most recent article and then started printing it on the printer. He crossed his fingers the generator stayed on.

"So," He stood up straight. "What's this one about?" He asked out loud. "Extraterrestrial contact or biological unknown?"

"Vampire."

"Serious?"

"Serious." Mulder listened to the humming of the printer. "The Bureau is starting to share old case files from Control and they had a brief mention of a series of vampire-like attacks from April 18 to May 20, 1967 from Collinsport, Maine that were never followed up on. I've always had an eye on this case wondering how it ended, but I never had an inkling on where to start the investigation until last fall when a private detective named Sabrina Duncan researched the history of a man named Quentin Collins whose history supposedly went back to 1870 when he was born."

"That's a long time." Frohike raised his eyebrows intrigued. "And what's this that I'm printing up? A list of vampire attacks from the area?"

"That and a few other things." Mulder pulled off the first page. "Including a list of all the people recorded as also having residence as 1300 Collins Road with Mr. Quentin Collins, my suspect." The computer continued printing as Mulder perused the sheet.

Angelique Bouchard-Collins

Amanda Jennifer Collins – Born December 1, 1975

Barnabas Collins

Carolyn Nora Collins – Born February 17, 1983

David Andrew Collins – Born October 12, 1957

Jamison Samuel Collins – Born April 22, 1972

Quentin Collins

Roger Collins I – Born September 14, 1925

Roger Elliott Collins II – Born May 7, 1991

Sarah Victoria Collins – Born October 18, 1975

William Benjamin Collins – Born September 9, 1971

Margaret Allison Evans-Collins – January 16, 1943

Christopher Thomas Loomis – Born August 29, 1991

Elizabeth Victoria Loomis – Born October 3, 1980

Jason Roger Loomis – Born June 3, 1973

William Hollingshead Loomis – Born May 28, 1943

Carolyn Collins Stoddard Loomis - Born July 16, 1946

"What's the significance of 1300 Collins Road?" Frohike asked. Mulder didn't respond as the Frohike already took it upon himself to look over his shoulder. "See something already?"

"Three people don't have birth dates here." Mulder replied.

"Well," Frohike replied. "That's odd, they all have to have records of their births. He cross-referenced that list with census and state and county tax records… unless of course they were born before 1890."

"How far before 1890?" Mulder looked at him.

PART THREE

Angelique Collins tried to remain busy by dusting the parlor of the Old House. She still wanted to talk to her daughter about the magazines she had turned up in the girl's room and as she paced around nervously, she tried to rehearse what she was going to say. Her daughter was just so bright and attractive and it was just so hard for her to accept. At least she was going to have a very private talk with her. Barnabas was taking a long walk around the estate enjoying the sun. It was a daily ritual that he had been appreciating ever since the end of that nasty business so long ago. Her son, William, was off to Boston for a visit with that short lady lawyer he was in love with. Angelique just checked the time of the Queen Anne Clock in the room as her senses alerted her to the traffic on the front porch. She turned eagerly to get these suspicions out of her head, hastened for the door and pulled it open while Carolyn was just about to talk. Accompanying the lovely family matriarch was her daughter Lizzie. Both the proud mother and the effervescent twenty-year old girl were in nearly matching overcoats.

"Hi Angelique," Carolyn greeted her with a kiss hello. "I hope we didn't come at a bad time?"

"Bad time?"

"The old dresses?" Carolyn reminded her. "For Lizzie's high school play?"

"Oh, yes," Angelique recomposed herself. "Of course, they're up in the attic. I forgot all about them."

"Is there something wrong?" Carolyn pulled off her overcoat to her red sweater and white denim jeans. Lizzie was looking around the house silently for anyone else as she stayed in her mother's shadow out of habit.

"It's nothing really." Angelique claimed then turned to her niece. "Honey, the trunks are all in the first room of the attic and the two armoires. You can borrow any of the period costumes wrapped in plastic."

"Thanks, Aunt An…" Lizzie turned for the stairs as she placed her hand on the railing leading up stairs. "Mom?"

"Be there in a second, honey…" Carolyn noticed how distracted Angelique seemed to be. Her dusting motions were a bit indirect as she turned and dusted things already immaculate. The wife of Barnabas Collins was usually so alert and in command of everything at all times. To see her misdirected was unusual.

"Angelique," She turned her head up a bit. "You want to talk about it?"

"No, well…" Angelique realized she needed modern day advice. She and Barnabas had done well to raise their children with the traditional Old World morals and social expectations of their lifetimes despite the influence of the Twentieth Century, but when the present lurked into her home, or in this case barged in, she was unsure how to handle it.

"I found a…" She looked to see if Lizzie was gone. She lowered her voice. "A stack of dirty magazines under Sara's mattress."

"You mean porn?"

"Porn?"

"Pornographic." Carolyn was already having a hard time believing it. "Naked men and…." Carolyn made a face and gestured halfhearted.

"No, more like…" Angelique felt this talk was so tasteless. "Naked ladies…"

"Naked ladies?" Carolyn was taken aback. She pulled her short blonde hair back a bit and stepped back as she tried to think. She turned away as she tried to think why a level-head girl like Sara would want to look at that sort of stuff and then pushed that preposterous idea out of her head. Sara was completely heterosexual, maybe just as much driven by it as her own daughter.

"Carolyn," Angelique paced around a bit. "I have always honored my daughter's privacy and I'd still love her if, as William put it, she wanted to live a guy's life, whatever that means, but…"

"Honey," Carolyn turned her head back up. "If you just give her a chance to explain, I'm sure you will find it easier to handle." Her head turned to the sound of the back door to the kitchen mud porch. Sara always returned that route from visiting Joe Haskell Jr. at his uncle's farm. The glass door popped back as an unknown presence raided the refrigerator for sustenance.

"Mom, I'm home!" Sara's voice rang out.

"Angelique." Carolyn gave out her support. "Trust her." She turned on her heel to see how her daughter was doing with the clothes of yesteryear up in the attic. Becoming the trusting mother once more, Angelique took a deep breath for confidence and then moved forward with a touch of faith. Sara was munching on a carrot and making a salad on the cutting board by the sink as she strolled up to her and motioned to the breakfast table.

"Honey," She gestured with a toss of her head as Sara popped a small tomato in her mouth and turned to her mother. As her mother pulled out a chair and sat, so did she. Her mind wondered if this was the talk about how she was getting to be a woman and how her body was changing. Her eyes nervously turned up as she leaned forward and pressed her fingers together.

"Baby," Angelique beamed at her beautiful daughter. "Is there something you want to tell me?"

"About what?"

"About…" The former sorceress tried to continue as her faith wavered a bit. "Sara, I was flipping over your mattress this morning and I found some… magazines."

"Magazines?" Sara looked confused a second as a light lit up in her head. "Oh! Those magazines! I forgot they were there."

"Are they yours?"

"Heck, no!!!" Sara cringed as her lip pulled back in disgust. "They're Jamison's and J.R's. Amanda was hiding them from them and they trashed her room trying to get them back so I took them for her. You didn't think they were mine, did you?"

"I just knew there had to be a logical explanation!" Angelique sat relieved.

"Oooo, I like this one!" Lizzie pulled a long red dress from an armoire in the attic as her mother sat on the floor bent over into a trunk. She looked up as her daughter found a fondness for the old Collins wardrobe. Holding the dress against herself, her daughter turned to the imperfect reflection of herself in an old mirror covered in dust. Even in the partial light from the garret window, Lizzie had enough illumination to strut her stuff.

"That?" Carolyn stood up. "Oh yes, that belonged to Millicent Collins. I've worn it three times myself. It ought to just fit you." She poked through the other old clothes in the same armoire. "How many more of your cheerleader friends need dresses for this play?"

"Tricia, Buffy, Libby and Hillary."

"Okay…" Carolyn wondered unconsciously how Angelique was doing with her own daughter downstairs. She considered herself lucky to have a fair relationship with her own daughter. Lizzie was sometimes uncontrollable and temperamental, but it was times like this that she really loved being a mother.

"Look what I found…" Lizzie dragged out a book from another open trunk on the floor. It felt as if it and its pages were coming apart as she turned it toward the scant amount of light. She could just barely read the faded print on the cover.

"A college? No, a collect…" She tried reading the cover. "Collection of…" Her mother walked over and took the book.

"A Collection of Spells and Hexes by Miranda Angelique DuVal." Carolyn read it for her. "I've seen this before. It belonged to your Aunt An's ancestor. I wonder why she keeps it in such an undignified place. You ancestor Isaac's possessions are all in the county museum."

"Isn't she the one she said was accused of being a witch?" Lizzie's face lit up and her eyes became excited. "Open it up. Maybe there's a spell to get Russell Coleman to fall deeply in love with me!"

"I don't think so…" Carolyn had always had a desire to see this piece of history closer ever since she had last seen it. She treated it with a careful and light touch as she opened it up. The binding creaked with age and a few weak and brittle pages nearly floated away as she sat under the window with it. One page had lifted into the air slightly like some flower petal caught in a breeze as she caught it and started to put it back. In bold red letters near the top, she caught the words, "Eternal Youth." She now felt a bit like her daughter and a bit curious to try it out. She recalled how she used to look and the heads she used to turn and then of the toll the years of being a parent had taken on her. A longing chance to be young again was oft on her mind while she wanted to try the spell, just for a laugh, to see if it worked. If it did, great, if it didn't, at least she could have a laugh on herself.

"How you doing up there?" Angelique's voice came up the stairs as Carolyn remised on being a fifty-something mother of three. She was a bit put off that Angelique was eternally beautiful and then wondered if she practiced the arts of her ancestors. It would explain so much to her. She placed the book between dresses pulled out for Lizzie to use as Angelique looked toward them.

"Did you find anything interesting?" She asked.

"I think we did." Carolyn looked like a proverbial cat that had swallowed a canary.

PART FOUR

Maggie Evans-Collins relaxed in her home going over and covering the books and bills of her fitness center. The business had sort of started as a lark with Carolyn as they tried out aerobics to regain their figures after their pregnancies, but the idea of sharing the concept with the general public of Collinsport had allowed it to take off. Based in the building that was once Phillip and Megan Todd's antique store, the business had actually become a gathering center for the young adults in town. It had taken the burden off the diner and the Blue Whale from becoming teenage hangouts. Covering the books of the business, Maggie centered her attention on the bills of running the business and started considering asking the advice of Carolyn on how to handle the taxes. If Carolyn could juggle Collinwood, maybe she could check her own math. The snap of someone biting into an apple got Maggie's attention as she looked up.

"Amanda, honey," She looked up into the flawless face of her redheaded daughter. "I'm trying to get some work done here."

"I'm sorry…" The girl stepped back a bit pale from looking over her mother's shoulder. A bit withdrawn and embarrassed, she retreated quietly and started to step back.

"No, no, honey…" Maggie turned and looked up to her big blue eyes. "Don't be like that. I love having you around, but I'm just a bit occupied right now."

"Okay," The girl turned with her apple from the parlor into the front foyer of the house. She stepped a few paces up the stairway to the second floor and then heard all of Rose Cottage echo from the sound of the front doors. Her mother grumbled from the desk in the parlor as the younger girl hastened backward for the tall front doors. As Maggie stood watching in the entrance of the parlor, her daughter opened the doors to Angelique standing outside on the veranda and looking ever more radiant that ever in her mink-collared jacket. The breeze whirling past the house stirring up leaves made her appear practically regal as she stepped inside the old mansion.

"Amanda, sweetheart." Angelique kissed Quentin and Maggie's beautiful red-haired daughter. "Could I speak to you and your mother?" She hung her coat over the coat rack by the door.

"Hi, Angelique." Maggie stood elegantly in her brown sweater and black Capri pants. Pushing her sleeves up, she tugged a bit at her hair and gestured to a chair as Angelique sat on the sofa. The beautiful blonde mother also motioned for Amanda to sit by her as they grouped for a discussion.

"Amanda, darling,'" Angelique started. "I want to discuss something with you I think your mother should know about, but I was straightening Sara's room and I found some… inappropriate material in her bed that she said she was helping you hide from Jamison and J.R. Is this true?"

"You mean the dirty magazines?" Amanda replied before biting into her apple.

"Jamison…" Maggie rolled her eyes knowingly as she realized her son becoming a man did not stop the problems she had with him.

"Then its true?" Angelique looked to her.

"They trashed my room last week." Amanda revealed. "They didn't find them so I told them I burned them up, but I really gave them to Sara to hide because I knew William didn't go for that stuff. He seems to be the only decent guy around here."

"They trashed your room?" Maggie looked her daughter over as the girl looked back at her. "Honey, your room is such a mess, how can you tell?"

"I can tell." Amanda bit into her apple again.

"You can go." Angelique sighed a bit and leaned forward as her head fell into her hands. Emotionally drawn over these events, she lightly lifted her head as Maggie gave her a bit of emotional support.

"Angelique," The auburn-haired former governess turned to her. "You can't stop boys from looking at that stuff. They have to learn on their own that women are not sexual objects. When I was still governess to David, I wanted to teach sex education to David, but Elizabeth kept telling me to put it off until he was older. Now look at him. He's been married three times and has two children by two different girls. It's just these days and times and it's not getting better. It's everywhere."

"Maggie," Angelique rose as she tried to deal with it. "I grew up in a different time and a different place." She was speaking literally even if it came off as figuratively to Maggie. "Sex and nudity was not something that was discussed. It was…"

"You sound as if you grew up in the Seventeenth Century." Maggie answered jovially not realizing just how accurate she really was.

"I hate this stuff." Angelique confessed. "And you should hate it too. If it were in my power, I'd wipe it off the planet."

"Angelique, I hate it too." Maggie admitted. "But what can we do? Almost all the kids are of age that they can legally purchase it. Sex is used to sell everything from cars to junk food."

"I'm not talking just about sex." Angelique spoke up. "I'm talking about smut and porn. I may not be able to destroy it, but with Carolyn and a lot of other mothers, we can get the stores to stop selling it."

"And that will make the kids drive to Rockport to get it." Maggie answered as she heard the back door open and close to the kitchen. If it had been her son, she might have called him in to talk to him, but it was just her husband. Feeling old and tired, Quentin halfway wished he had never had the enchantments on his portrait removed. He thought he would like old age, but now he was feeling all of his one hundred and twenty years. Just following his son around knocked him out and made him want to take a nap. He stared a second at the bedraggled image of himself in the silver surface of the icebox as he pulled out a bottled water and pulled out a chair to sit as he heard his breath and then the conversation of his wife and Angelique. He raised an interested eyebrow on their conversation to clean up the town and then recalled on his old carefree years as a wandering bachelor and all he'd seen over the years. He still had his old Playboys from the Fifties and Sixties in the trunk he had brought from his old home in Vermont. Shuddering to think how much trouble he'd be in if Maggie saw them, he slowly realized it was time to cash in those mint issues as he reached for the phone.

In the main house, Willie Loomis sat stretched on the sofa reading the Collinsport Courier. It didn't have the world news the Bangor papers had, but it did have his favorite cartoons. Grinning at Snoopy and then to Calvin and his stuffed tiger, Beetle Bailey made him laugh while he lowered the paper as he reached to the new cordless phone in front of him.

"Collinwood."

"Willie," Quentin in hushed tones. "Can you talk?"

"Yeah," The hair on the back of Willie's neck went up whenever someone spoke to him in secret. It usually meant he be returning to the cemetery or hiding things from Carolyn.

"The women are in a frazzle over some suggestive magazines the boys had." Quentin looked to the parlor from the kitchen. "You know that trunk I'm storing in the west wing?"

"I know the one." Willie knew it. He still returned to check out a few of the issues when Carolyn wasn't in the mood.

"If Carolyn's not around…" Quentin started.

"She's out shopping for some special project."

"Good," Quentin continued. "I'm going to check the yellow pages for the closest collectibles place and then I'll be over to pick them up to cash them in."

"What are you going to do with your million dollars?"

"Plan that trip to the Bahamas Maggie's been wanting."

"I'll be waiting for you." Willie was folding up the newspaper as he clicked off the phone. Rising with a groan from the sofa, he looked to one of the servants dusting the drawing room and wondered what she had heard. Turning out of the room for the foyer, he barely made the staircase before the whole estate resonated from the pounding of the main entrance. He turned toward it and opened the left side door.

"Hi," The young man looked at him. "I'm Fox Mulder, FBI…" He flashed his badge. "Could I speak to either Quentin Collins or Barnabas Collins?"

PART FIVE

The answers came elaborately and logically as Mulder looked to the sunlight streaming through the side of the drawing room windows. Barnabas Collins with his cane hanging off the side of his chair was reclined and relaxed and Quentin was pouring himself more brandy. If he knew vampires, at least one of them should have been collapsing into a pile of ashes and blacked bones. Inscribing his observations in his legal pad, he also jotted down observations he noticed as both men remained polite. Willie Loomis haunted the foyer outside the room as he peeked in on them. He wandered up to Quentin at the liquor cabinet nervously on how to act with the FBI man in the house.

"Quentin," He looked at him. "Is it serious?"

"I don't know." Quentin sipped his drink. "He hasn't told us yet."

"Now, Mr. Collins…." Mulder shifted his legs as he folded them in the other direction. "Your family records. You said they were destroyed when?"

"World War Two." Barnabas stuck to the same old story he'd told and passed off confidently for the last twenty years. "You see, I was born in…"

"1934," Mulder looked up grinning. "Yes, I got that. And you arrived here in the United States in…"

"No, Mr. Mulder," Barnabas rubbed his silver goatee to alleviate an itch. "I arrived in Canada in 1967 and came from there to Collinsport. I've lived here ever since."

"Right," Mulder wrote down VISA with a question mark by it. "And you never bothered to update a new VISA? It would make you an illegal immigrant. "

"Well," Barnabas reacted confident and calmly. "I just never worried about it."

"Mr. Collins," Mulder looked over his shoulder to Quentin and Willie mumbling under breath. "How about yours?"

"Well," Quentin sounded back with his usual dry wit. "If Barnabas wasn't worried…"

"Quentin's an American citizen." Willie spoke up nervously. "So is Barnabas's wife, Angelique. That makes him a U.S. Citizen, correct?"

"Yes it does," Mulder began as the front foyer reverberated from the front of the mansion. Willie turned to see Carolyn entering with a bag of items from the store. "But it does not make him a full citizen in the eyes of the United States Government. There is an oath he must take." Mulder continued.

"What's going on?" Carolyn supported her bag as she nudged her husband.

"Barnabas is being investigated because he never became a full U.S. Citizen before marrying Angelique." Willie took the bag of groceries for her as he pulled himself from the drawing room to escort his wife to the kitchen. They moved nearly perfect side by side as they motioned through the dining room and then through the kitchen doors. It was usually the most populated room in the entire estate, but now it was empty. "I'm not sure but I think Quentin's being investigated as well." Willie continued.

"That doesn't make sense." Carolyn pulled out a bottle of cod liver oil from the bag as Willie cringed from the sight of it. He pulled out a bottle of thin brown liquid without a label and then another bottle of vinegar as he poked further into more exotic and unidentified objects.

"You're not making soup again, are you?" He gazed up at her.

"No," Carolyn glanced up at him. "I found a new beauty regime I want to try out." She confessed.

"I wish you'd be careful with that stuff." Willie looked at her with the love he had for her. "That stuff that was supposed to tighten your skin and erase your wrinkles gave you green skin for nearly a month."

"I think I applied that too thick." Carolyn looked across the counter at him. "This stuff is really supposed to be magical."

"You don't have to do this." Willie tried to convince her. "You're already a lot more beautiful than anyone else our age."

"More beautiful than Angelique?" Carolyn asked as Willie tried to think of an answer that he could give. Quentin slipped into the kitchen with them at that moment as if he was looking for something. His eyes rounded a bit as he tugged Willie away and lowered his voice.

"I think this Mulder guy is a bit more serious than I thought." He whispered. "He just brought up what Barnabas knew about the vampire attacks in 1967 and in 1970." Willie made a face he had not made in over ten years. He marched out of the kitchen like a man on a mission and cut through the back hall into the drawing room. Quentin followed on his heels as the memories of the past and the events connected to them returned like a bad dream they could not forget. Mulder just repeated back the story as he had been told.

"This Nicholas Blair…" Mulder continued. "How well did you know him?"

"Not very well…" Barnabas looked up as Willie and Barnabas tried to be nonchalant. "He was my Cousin Roger's brother-in-law. He might be able to tell you more, but he's going through physical therapy in Bangor over a recent cancer treatment."

Mulder looked up to Quentin and Willie as he reacted partially non-committal. His investigation seemed too cut and dry. In the almost twenty years since the alleged vampire attacks, the actual leads and events had been erased and the cover stories had been memorized perfectly. The police still believed that Nicholas Blair, a brother-in-law to Roger Collins, had committed the vampire attacks as a part for his known satanic rituals. It was a public record that the man was obsessed with Maggie Evans back then had he had been implicated in her three month disappearance after the coffin was found in his house. In the back of Fox Mulder's mind, the trails from Nicholas lead back to the Collins family, but which one? Quentin? Barnabas? Barnabas wife?

"Mr. Collins," Mulder looked up with a wry grin to Quentin. "Did you know Mr. Blair?"

"Briefly," Quentin again resorted to the working version of events the state patrol had come up with while Barnabas was missing in parallel time. "His cult was trying to marry into the family through Carolyn…"

"My wife." Willie broke in a comment.

"Her first husband was a member of Blair's cult along with some antique owners and half a dozen others…" Quentin continued. "But the young man broke off contact with them and took his life to save her. I was working with Barnabas to try and keep them out of the family at the time and was nearly buried alive for the attempt."

"This story has more confusing twists and turns than a daytime soap opera." Mulder was jotting more details and notes as far as he could. His cell phone buzzed as he re-wrote a few words and it buzzed again as he picked it up.

"Mulder, here."

"Mulder," Dana Scully stood by a pay phone in the Boston train station. A few guys walking past her made thirty-degree turns to admire her figure in the green pants suit she was wearing. "Are you still updating those murder cases from Collinsport?"

"Yeah," Mulder glanced up suspiciously as he acknowledged secretive looks from the quite human and very live Barnabas and Quentin Collins. "I've got one other person to interview and a few more leads to follow and then…"

"Skinner wants me to back you up." Dana Scully rolled her eyes to the train schedule a second. "He doesn't want you making this another chupacabra out of this."

"I can honestly say this is not another one of those." Mulder thought Barnabas Collins definitely looked the vampire type with his silver goatee and somber features. Wondering what he looked like in a coffin, he figured Quentin was maybe once his protector, but then Willie Loomis was more that type. Loomis was jailed in connection to the abduction of Maggie Evans, but then again, it all happened twenty years ago. Was there any trace of the true story that had occurred here?

"Fine," Scully replied on the Boston pay phone. "I'm on my way." She hung up the receiver as she checked the time on her watch to the local time. The train ride from Boston to Collinsport was supposed to be three hours not counting the stops in between. She picked up her case as a crowd of people flowed from the terminal. Dodging businessmen and travelers and tourists, she swerved one after another as she suddenly came face to face with someone she actually knew.

"Dana," William Collins beamed his big goofy smile as he hoisted his knapsack on his shoulder. He gave her a peck on the cheek as he usually did as he looked round. "How you doing?"

"Fine." She lightly nodded her head. "Heading to another haunted house?"

"Nope," William beamed proudly still a bit infatuated with her. "I finally got a girlfriend. Her name's Ally and she's the cutest lady lawyer here in Boston. I really think you'd like her. Is Mulder with you?"

"Mulder's following a case in your home town." Dana shined a bit before the young writer. "I can't believe you didn't see him."

"I must have just missed him." William realized and thought it over as he thought back. "It's hard to believe he's following something in Collinsport. I mean, Dana, it's the most boring town on the planet."

PART SIX

Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis felt a bit as if she was doing something wrong. Consciously, she felt she was just covertly indulging in a science experiment to test the merit of a so-called witchcraft spell created by Angelique's ancestor from Martinique in the Seventeenth Century. Maybe it was just all some holdover from the years her mother caught her in here doing the curious things for which a teenager would get in trouble. All she had was a big fire going in the fireplace of her bedroom. None of the ingredients she had mixed was even the remotest bit dangerous or questionable even though she had to go to five stores and a flower nursery for all of it. If she followed this reputed mystical procedure right, she could appear at dinner looking twenty again. She might even settle for thirty. From the safe length of a long fire poker, she heated the vial of liquid and herbal roots in a glass test tube and anointed them in the flames before her. Sitting on the floor, she halfway expected the glass tube to shatter from the heat, but it didn't. The liquid in the vial maybe bubbled a bit as she checked the incantation she had copied from the book.

She memorized it like a script and then crumpled it up and tossed it into the flames. The book said they were supposed to be anointing the vial, but all they really seemed to do was heat it to a boil.

"I call upon the gods of heaven and earth and of time and eternity…"

"Mrs. Collins," Fox Mulder sat in the Old House parlor as he interviewed Angelique. She was a beautiful and dedicated homemaker as she politely and spiritedly grinned to his interrogation of events from her past. He looked up to her as she waited on his next question. "Was there anything during the time of the attacks in 1970 that…" He paused as his lovely hostess suddenly clutched at her heart. To Angelique, it felt as if someone had jabbed a spear through her chest.

"Angelique…" Barnabas rushed to her.

"Mrs. Collins, are you all right?" Mulder wondered what was happening.

"Mr. Mulder," Angelique acted frightfully afraid as Carolyn's voice whispered words into her ear as if she was in the room. She felt the heat from the flames and the vanity of the heiress as she stood. "Could we perhaps continue this later? I must run to Collinwood for a minute."

"I'm afraid that is not exactly procedure." Mulder watched as Barnabas and Angelique held each other. They looked at each other with concern.

"Carolyn is attempting a spell from my book." She whispered with terrified apprehension. Barnabas recoiled as he looked back at her and then to Mulder watching their spectacle.

"What?" Barnabas looked back and forth as he recalled on his wife's past medical emergencies and had an idea. "Your heart medicine? Where did you leave it?"

"At Collinwood!" Angelique screamed as she still heard Carolyn's voice in her head. "I must stop… get it now."

"If this is a matter of medicine, can't your husband run up and get it?" Fox Mulder asked a bit confused as well as intrigued.

"He would never find it!" Angelique dashed for the door, ran outside and down the front veranda. Barnabas nearly joined after her, but then he paused as he recalled the FBI agent in the parlor. He turned trying not to look guilty as the agent jotted something.

"She runs quickly for someone with heart problems." Mulder noticed.

"Mr. Mulder," Barnabas tried to compose himself in the face of pending disaster. He sat down across from him. "I take it you are not a married man. Once you are, you will find that wives are often illogical and unpredictable."

Angelique knew the thirty-minute walk to the main house would take too long. She slid into her car and fumbled with the seat belt as she drove over the grass in the clearing in front and then sped up the cobblestone driveway leading up and behind the property. In her mind, Carolyn's voice was reciting words she had written almost more than three hundred years ago as a student to Hester Bouchard, a witch from Fifteenth Century France. It was a faulty spell and an incomplete one with side effects she had never discovered for herself. She had no idea what the now current matriarch of Collinwood would unleash of she completed it.

"Demeter and Isis and Circe, hear my call." Carolyn called out as she felt herself slipping into a trance. "Youth and beauty become one. Reverse the ages and all I shun. Make me young again…" She poured drops of the vial to her fingers and dabbed her face and neck. The scent of the concoction began inducing mental images of someone else's life on her. She felt as if she was a child in the far past and a young girl trapped in the witch trials. People in costumes she had never worn danced in her dreams and then the heat of flames beckoning to her. The chants and choruses of many echoed in her mind as she forced her eyes to open. The flames of the fireplace had turned bright blue and were now reaching out to her as she recoiled from their deadly embrace. Her spine pressed to her bed, she dropped the vial of oil on the stone portion of the fireplace as the science test tube around it shattered. The vial immediately turned to smoke that Carolyn could smell as it entered her lungs. She was scared. Too scared to go further, she wanted no more part of this foolishness she was trying. Vague memories of bad horror movies seen with former boyfriends danced through her mind as she tried to keep from thinking of the repercussions those fictional youths endured. She gathered the oils and liquid ingredients between the spaces of her fingers and lifted them up to her bureau to return to the kitchen. She pulled her long blonde hair to one side as her hand reached to open the vent further in the fireplace. Turning it a bit further, she then paused as her hair fell back into her face. Brushing it back, she realized that was not supposed to be. She had not had long hair since her daughter was born and it had not been back since then. Her hair was just as long as it once was as she turned to the mirror for confirmation.

She gasped at the sight of herself. Her face was filling out on her under her long blonde locks. Wrinkles around her blue eyes were tightening up and small blemishes on her neck were fading. She was getting young again. The crazy book and its spells were real! From inside her mind, she still felt the role of a woman pushing fifty her mind, but her face and complexion and hair was returning to what she was as a giggling high school teenager. A mixture of over-eager delight possessed her as well as a bit of nervous tension as she wondered if anyone would recognize her. She was becoming young enough to join her daughter in school! Her face was fuller and unmarked by the ravages of time and age. Her hair cascaded down her back longer than it had ever been and as her eyes fell lower she noticed her bosom perhaps a bit fuller than before. Maybe she wasn't just getting younger; she was becoming someone entirely new! Her hand glided over the front of her blouse reacting to the slow physical changes under it as the suddenly youthful visage in the mirror turned and observed the seat of her pants. Her bottom had perked up to something she wanted to be proud of.

"I'm becoming a girl again!" She proclaimed a bit giddy to her reflection as the front of her blouse strained just a bit from new curves forcing their way out. "And that's not bad either!" She could feel the light numbing of parts of her body continuing to change on her, but with them was another slight sensation she did not welcome. It was a heavy sensation in the center of her stomach that was standing up into her lungs. She hadn't drunk anything. What was that about? She massaged her now flat abdomen and regretted not having any bicarbonate to treat it as it suddenly grew worse and wreaked through her body like someone wanting out of her. For just a moment, her body felt stretched ever which way at once and she dropped to the floor in pain.

"What was that?" Her palm stretched to her closet mirror as she feared the pain wreaking her body building back up. "Oh god, what have I done?" She crawled to the spell book looking for anything about side effects as the pain possessed her again. It felt as if she was exploding in side. There was something in her trying to get out and it was searching her body for a way out. Her breath racing and her lungs coughing for air, she brushed and fussed with the long blonde hair on her head getting into her face. It fell down her back and tangled around her like a blanket unweaving on top of her as she felt her small body exploding once more with more pain than she had ever experienced before. It felt as if the pangs of giving birth had returned with a vengeance to wreak from her body. She could just drop to the floor and pray to stay conscious.

"Oh god, oh god…." She fretted in a painful panic. "What did I do?! What did I do?!!" The sensation of a million volts of electricity charged her body again and seared her mind that she couldn't think. Her mind became as heavy as a lead weight as she tried to help herself up. There had to be someone that could help her, but who would know who she even was?

"Mom!" Her daughter's voice called through the hall.

"Lizzie?" Carolyn reared up in a panic and realized what was happening. She had now only changed in appearance but in size! Her blouse now fitted her as if it belonged on her daughter and her figure belonged on someone posing on the cover of a car. Her hair belonged on a giant cat hunting prey on the African savannah. Her hand reached to the doorframe as she pulled the door open to the hall and peaked out first. There was no one in sight as she dashed for the door to the west wing. She pulled it open fast and quickly before her and dashed through it like a mad scientist turning into an evil counterpart. Maybe an evil counterpart that looked like Raquel Welch as a blonde. Slamming the door hard. She reached to lock it from the inside.

"Mom?" Lizzie Loomis heard the thunderous slam of the door. Clenching ten dollars from her little brother's room and another seven from her older brother's room, she hastened to her parent's bedroom to get the money for the boots she wanted in town. She skipped lightly with her blonde locks bobbing on her shoulders and peeked in first to the room. Her eyes panned from the burning fire in the fireplace to the askew bed covers under the book from the Old House. She glanced uninterestedly toward it as her eyes fell on her mother's purse in the chair by the door. Lizzie checked the hall once and reached for the purse.

"Mom, can I have a hundred dollars?" Her voice asked the air as if it was a line. "Oh yes, dear, take what you need." She mimicked her mother as she rifled the purse, opened the wallet in it and took a hundred dollar bill and the fifty-dollar bill next to it. Dumping the wallet and purse back in place without any pangs from her conscience, she smirked a little bit at her success. Instead, she feared the wrath of god as she heard hurried running from the door to the foyer at the end of the stairs rushing toward her.

"Lizzie!" Angelique gasped out of breath from the run from her car. "Where's your mother?!"

"I haven't seen her!" Lizzie shrieked guiltily and hastily departed. Angelique knew the girl was up to something, but her concern was more to even more dire means. In the oversexed teenager's absence, Angelique's eyes froze on her spell book open on the bed.

"No, no, no, no, no…." She grabbed it up and clutched it to her heart. "What is with these people they think that anyone can cast a spell!" Her hands gripped it tightly as she recalled her daughter accidentally sending Willie and Julia back through time. Before that, J.R. had held a séance that nearly had everyone in Eagle Hill Cemetery retuning from the grave and before that Roger wanted a spell to cure his cancer. She wanted to destroy the book, but she also knew she couldn't. It wasn't just a matter of nostalgia, it was a matter of keeping a foothold in the real world to every spell she had created and even in those she had suppressed. She was sure her husband did not want to return to the coffin or even Quentin to fearing the full moon.

Her mind turned to the fear of what Carolyn had unleashed. Reacting with instinct, Angelique stepped back into the hall backwards until she faced the door to the West Wing. Gripping her book even tighter to her chest as a shield, her hand unconsciously reached and turned the doorknob. Twisting it once or twice proved it to be locked, but then the lock clicked on its own. Angelique watched as the door swung open for her. Collinwood itself was trying to tell her what was happening. It was groaning inaudibly to her psychic senses and even pining in fear to her as if it stood threatened. The former sorceress stepped forth into the dark corridor behind the door. Dark shadows caressed over her from abandoned corners and lofty archways lead to the hallway beyond. This part of the house had been restored just for Quentin and Maggie when they had married, but now it was digressing back to the most haunted mouth of the mansion. Angelique forced herself further as the ghosts of Collinwood stood hidden around her and watched her press on.

Angelique paused and looked down to a stray shoe on the floor. Not thinking of it, she pressed on as she found its mate. The simple short heel pump was the sort that Carolyn wore around the house. Wondering why they were deserted so soon in this part of the house, she looked onward and discovered another lost article of clothing. She had seen this blue sweater on Carolyn several times she had purchased it, but now it was ripped and torn along every seam and every button on it had been ripped off. Feeling true fear for the first time in her life, Angelique gasped quickly as she hastened under the last arch into the West Wing and passed a chair in the middle of the room turned over and then a heavy table strewn empty of its coverings. A few feet behind it, Angelique's heart pounded as she noticed the Capri pants lying in its unstitched sections midway down to the boarded up Parallel Time Room. There was not much places to go from here. Angelique turned to open one bedroom then heard a hissing sound from down the hall. In all her years of dealing with ghosts and spirits, she had never been afraid as she was now. The sliding doors of the upstairs study were partially ajar in the dark end of the hall outside the boarded up Parallel Time Room. The light falling through the doors shined on something in the floor. Angelique picked up the light remains of a distorted bra with one hand as she held on to her book. Her ears detected another hissing gasp from the study as she tried to force herself to look. Dropping the tattered undergarment, her free hand fearfully pushed open the door as she marched in fearlessly.

"Carolyn?" Her head trembled at the shock of what she was seeing. Beyond a mane of hair twelve feet long, the once most petite denizen of Collinwood sat curled up on the floor of the room trying to press herself out of sight. Twelve feet high sitting on the floor, her fifteen-foot long legs were bent up away from Angelique against the wall. In all, she had to be thirty feet tall as she sat curled up against the wall from the windows. Tear strewn eyes turned to look down at Angelique beneath her as Carolyn turned away embarrassed once more.

PART SEVEN

"Easy Carolyn, I have you." Angelique guided the lost heiress back to her room once more. Once more petite and every much her age once more, she walked with the demeanor of a child. A heavy curtain draped under her arms and twice around her body, it trailed behind her for three feet on the floor. Her mind was in deep shock; she barely knew where she was. Something remained trapped at the front of her mind as she was forced to sit and stare at her image in the closet mirror again. Middle-aged once more and cursed with all that went with it, she realized her lofty hair once more bobbed over her shoulders just a bit longer than before, but no where as long as it had been for the last ten minutes. Angelique gazed upon her lost image and wondered how she was going to explain this. How could she explain it with a FBI Agent on the estate asking questions??!

"Carolyn, can you hear me?" She gazed deep into her tear filled eyes. There was nothing in the eyes of the matriarch of Collinwood. Carolyn just sat on the bed before her unable to say anything. Her mind and personality was trapped and hidden somewhere in that pretty blonde head unable to accept the reality of what had just happened. Angelique gasped defeatedly and overwrought as she realized her only option. She closed Carolyn's door and locked it. As she turned back, she pulled the simple wood chair from the wall and sat before Carolyn face to face. She held her head lightly in her hands as she peered deeply into her eyes.

"Carolyn, I'm looking for you." The former witch's psychic senses reached out telepathically into the mind of her husband's relative. Vague images of brain impulses flowed around her vision with the multitude of millions of memories overlapping and replaying. Angelique experienced the sensations of old memories and old remembrances as she imagined Carolyn as a young girl. A young girl trapped and scared hiding in a closet. She felt the intangible touch of the closet barred with fear and shock and other emotions connected to the humiliation of her body betraying her. She pressed against it fearful of breaking through it. Carolyn was buried so deep behind what had happened she wasn't at all certain she could break her shock.

"Carolyn," Angelique spoke as she lightly felt through the layers tossed up over the buried mind of the heiress. "It was a dream. It didn't really happen. You dreamed the whole thing. It didn't happen…" She saw in her mind's eye the mental layers of Carolyn's body poking up and fading underneath.

"It was a dream!" Angelique screamed at her to return. "You stole the book, but you never did the spell! You dreamed you did and it turned to a nightmare! It never happened!!!"

Angelique's mind reached into her even further as Carolyn's fear kept pulling her away. Her strength of mind was pulling her out, but the fear was pulling her away from Angelique reaching out to her. Twisted around the fear were vanity and pride, but Carolyn's strength and security was trying to pull her out. Angelique was trying to show her the way out, but the spell Carolyn had tried had done so much more mentally than physically.

"Carolyn," Angelique reached out as she pictured Carolyn reaching to her. "It was just a dream!!!" She grabbed her hand and held on as everything flashed quickly. The psychic link snapped as Angelique listened to Carolyn gasping and trembling.

"Carolyn…"

"Oh god…oh god…" Carolyn finally spoke. "I can't…. I can't…. It seemed so real!"

"Dreams usually are." Angelique composed herself and stood up. She opened up Carolyn's closet for clothes to give her as Carolyn continued regathering her bearings. She noticed the oils and potion ingredients on her bureau and the fire dying down in her fireplace. Feeling the heavy curtain around her, she looked up as Angelique laid out a sweater and skirt by her. If it was a dream, why was she naked and wrapped in a curtain?

"It wasn't a dream."

"Of course, it was…"

"No," Carolyn started realizing the truth as she actually recalled Angelique restoring her to normal with mere words and a gesture. A flash of light later, she was suddenly in her room. "It really…." She looked at Angelique. "You really are a witch?"

Angelique froze as she looked for Carolyn's undergarments.

"All these years…" Carolyn stood shaking her head in disbelief. "Maggie and I killing ourselves with exercise just to look half as good as you and you've had an unfair advantage!"

"Carolyn," Angelique responded carefully as her worse fear came true. "It's not like…"

"All these years you've spoken of this…. Proud Wiccan heritage because of this ancestor from Martinique and you've actually been a witch yourself?!" Carolyn shook her head trying to refuse the concept.

"Carolyn," Angelique was both shocked and afraid. "I can honestly tell you that I have not practiced any of the spells in that book. The majority of them are incomplete and faulty. Some of them don't even lack binding enchantments…"

"But why do you know that?" Carolyn reacted unable to believe what she was hearing. "Angelique, just how old are you? How old are you really?!"

"I…" Angelique didn't want to answer that. "I… I can honestly confess I'm just a bit older than Barnabas."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this!!" Carolyn shrieked.

"Carolyn," Angelique pulled her back to look at her. "If anyone has a right to be angry, it's I. You took that book out of the Old House to dabble in a spell you had no business trying!"

"And you got involved to cover up your secret!!" The blonde heiress hissed back. "Just how many more secrets are you hiding from me… from everyone!"

"Carolyn, look deep within my eyes," Angelique started tapping into Carolyn's mind once more. "If I had anything to hide, I could have destroyed you, but I didn't. I am not an evil person. I have only used my skills and powers to get what was by rights mine. I have never taken anything that didn't belong to me. I have spent a lifetime to learn from my mistakes and to finally get where I am now and I am not going to give it up! You will once again forget all that has happened in the last few hour and sleep. You will sleep Carolyn Stoddard and when you awake you will recall nothing!!"

Carolyn felt as if she was drifting off to sleep. Her head trembled a bit and her eyelids felt heavy as her small body lightly swooned. Unable to look away, she felt she wanted to sleep.

"Go to sleep, Carolyn." Angelique's voice insisted. "I want you to go to sleep."

Carolyn started to reach for her bed as she exhaled deeply. Gradually turning to lay down, her eyes turned to the reflection of the dying fire in her vanity as she was stirred from the trance. It was a shock to her system as she snapped out of the suggestion and stood up straight.

"You're trying to hypnotize me!!!" She screamed. "Get away from me!" She pulled Angelique around her scared to death of what was happening. Pushing the blonde sorceress out into the hall, she slammed the door shut hard and locked it against the witch in her family. Realizing what was happening, Angelique turned round and began pounding at the door.

"Carolyn!!!" She pounded and rattled the doorknob. "Please! For the love of God, I apologize!!! Please talk to me!!! Carolyn, please talk to me!!!!" Her shrieks and cries echoed up the hall as J.R. Loomis looked out of his room from listening to tapes to the noise. His younger brother, Christopher left his computer to watch his Aunt An pound at his mother's door. Crying and pounding through her pleas, Angelique noticed the kids looking at her and brushed the tears from her eyes. Realizing that even witches had hearts that could be broken, she turned and rushed down the hall for the foyer.

PART EIGHT

Gasping a bit and adjusting his belt from dinner, Willie Loomis turned down the back hall from the dining room and entered the drawing room. Passing by the piano, he noticed the television left on and abandoned by his kids and flipped it off. Picking the newspaper up off the sofa, he sat to read the articles he had skipped from this morning then heard the doors in the front room open and close. Looking up, Barnabas Collins stormed the room waving his cane and with his cloak flapping in his breeze.

"Barnabas," Willie looked up. "Something up with that FBI Agent?"

"Never mind him," Barnabas was a man on a mission. "Where's Carolyn?"

"Locked up in the bedroom." Willie leaned forward concerned. " She even had her dinner up there. She's not talking to anyone."

"Well, she's going to talk to me." The former vampire heard the door at the top of the foyer. Turning on his heel, he briskly strolled forth as Willie joined him. At the top of the balcony, Carolyn came down strongly and determinedly silent in a black sweater and white Capri pants. Upon seeing Barnabas, she stopped on the top step and looked at him.

"Carolyn," Barnabas glared at her. "Angelique came down from up here over an hour ago crying her eyes out and telling me that you two had some sort of fight. Now, I wish to hear your version of this fight."

"Barnabas, butt out." Carolyn snapped to him under her breath as she proceeded to the dining room. "This is between I and your wife."

"And anything that involves my wife involves me." Barnabas stopped her before his old portrait. "I want to know what you told her."

"Barnabas," Carolyn narrowed and rolled her eyes at him. "Just how well do you know your wife? Just how well do you know her?"

"About as well as I know anyone if not more," Barnabas glanced briefly to Willie before answering. "As I've told you before, we met and married when we were quite young and separated after but just a few months. We were estranged for several years before I came to Collinwood, but since then we have forgiven each other in order to renew our vows and once more live again as husband and wife."

"And her being a witch doesn't bother you?" Carolyn asked frankly as Willie watched out of curiosity. The question got a reaction from Barnabas as he turned with the demeanor of a man with a history he wanted to forget.

"I admit…" He started. "That that was a big part of our estrangement. I didn't want to accept it, but then, you must understand Angelique as I know her…." He turned back to Carolyn. "For her entire life, she has only wanted a place to belong. She never knew her father, her mother died when she was quite young and she has had to live on her own for her entire life on the whims of others. All she has ever wanted is a place to belong. The only thing she has wanted more than anything else is the right to be Mrs. Barnabas Collins."

"Barnabas…" Carolyn couldn't or didn't want to accept that praise for his wife. She turned for the drawing room and moved to pour herself some sherry as her mother once did. "I can see why you love her, but… The thing that bothers me so much is how strongly she holds on to this secret past."

"But she hasn't." Willie responded with a tender voice to her. "Carolyn, after that ordeal we all went through during Barnabas and Angelique's wedding, she told you she was a witch and even helped to save your life."

"She continued Julia's injections to keep me alive and to keep me from becoming a vampire." Carolyn sipped her sherry to moisten her voice. "That is not very witchlike. Besides, Willie, I didn't exactly take her seriously. I thought she was kidding on the references of this ancestor she was named after!"

"Carolyn," Barnabas noticed his portrait from the drawing room and turned back. "Angelique has cared for you and everyone else in the family since she has been a part of it. Now, if the roles were reversed and Angelique discovered that you were a piano virtuoso, a culinary maestro or even… an expert and practitioner in sorcery, would she have a right to hold it against you?"

"That's not fair."

"Is it?" Barnabas answered back and turned from the room. Believing he had made this point, he opened the front doors to the main house and strode out with a brisk pace. Behind him, Carolyn gasped under her breath and rolled her eyes as she looked to her husband and then around the room.

PART NINE

Dana Scully drove and turned her rental car off Main Street and on to Collins Road as a short cliff on her right side blocked the sun from shining on the car. Above her, the tombstones of Eagle Hill Cemetery glanced mutedly upon her as her partner Fox Mulder glanced once more upon the rolling landscape of cottages and farmlands in this small town. He glanced from kids on bicycles and people sitting on Norman Rockwell perfect porches and then turned back to the perfect Hollywood looks of his redheaded partner.

"So," Dana spoke with a professional verb to her voice. "Did you tell them they you were friends with William?"

"I didn't think it was relevant." Mulder claimed. "Besides, I wanted to keep it on a professional basis. I will tell you this. I'm starting to realize why William refers to his family as the Addams Family. They are just a little bit spooky."

Scully glanced at Mulder as she turned off Collins road and on to the estate. Just inside the gates, a nearly obscured road turned off for the Old House, but Dana continued past tall oaks five feet apart lining the length of the driveway. Despite speckles of randomly growing trees, the bottom part of the estate was perfectly landscaped, but once the road turned through the continuing driveway, the gravel road rushed through a slight forest and wooded grounds festooned with weeds. A forgotten barn hid deep in the woods off their right side as up on the hill Collinwood rested on the hill obscured by trees by their left. On the other side of the woods, their car entered more meticulously mowed grounds. Continuing in a circle around the hill, the road began on an incline cut out of the hill and supported by a stone and brick rampart. The tips of cedars and elm trees peeked to their right as their car neared the stately mansion growing up before them. To the left, the cobblestone road continued to the garage, but Dana stayed right and pulled up closer to the main house itself. Parked off to the side of the road, a concrete stairway made of rock and brick ascended to the front veranda in front of the main house. Placing the rental car in park, Scully undid her seat belt and extended one shapely long leg out of the car as she reared herself up. Mulder tugged at his tie as he looked at her across the top of the car and then joined her in a brief jaunt up to the towering mansion that was Collinwood. The sky was blue and interspersed with clouds of white as a cool breeze blew in from the sea off the coast. Mulder mused a bit on the favorable weather and how even in the bright sunlight Collinwood reacted to his senses as a big gloomy three story haunted house. Dana entered the exterior vestibule and rapped at the front entrance. As Mulder stood by her looking out at the sunlight, he heard someone inside the foreboding edifice unlock and pull at the door. In the crack of the door, Amanda Collins looked out solemnly.

"Hello," Scully flashed her identification. "I'm Federal Agent Dana Scully. This is my partner, Fox Mulder." Mulder showed his identification. "We'd like to speak to Carolyn Stoddard Loomis."

"She's not in any trouble, is she?" Amanda insecurely pulled her flaxen red hair back over her ear to meet Dana. She met so few other redheads in her life.

"No," Mulder replied. "This is just a routine questioning."

"Please, come in," Amanda opened the door wide to the high ceiling of the foyer. The mahogany staircase reached up to a balcony under a plate glass window. Across from the agents, the drawing room was sheltered with wood paneling holding the portraits of ancestors. The long hall to the left was lined with tables, lamps, bureaus and chairs outside other doors and archways beyond the solitary grandfather clock in the foyer. A servant twenty feet down dusted the rafters to keep the estate to the high expectations of cleanliness and decorum.

"You can wait in here." Amanda motioned to the drawing room. "My Aunt Carrie is in her room. I'll go get her."

"Thank you." Dana turned to look the room over. There was more wood paneling in here. A fireplace sat in the back right corner under a portrait and to the left of a cabinet under a model of an old sailing ship. Behind her, a sculpture rested on a bureau on one side of the double doors across from the window seat framed by curtains. To the left of the door was a liquor cabinet. The furniture was simple. A conversation set of a sofa, chairs and table rested before the fireplace while on left side of the room beyond a small desk was an old fashioned TV set in a wood frame and accompanying set of sofa and chairs. In the back left corner beyond the piano, a back hall extended to the dining room and back entryway to the garden area behind the house.

"So this is where William lives…" Dana poked her vision into the detail on the fireplace.

"Actually," Mulder tinkled at the ivories on the piano. "He and his parents live in the ancestral home on the estate called The Old House." He moved to the window seat and opened up the windowpanes. "You can just barely see it from here." Dana stood by him and noticed the partially obscured roof and cupola about a thirty minute walk away from the main house.

"Here's another thing," Mulder stepped away and stood in the double doors. "That's his ancestor, Barnabas Collins in the portrait." Scully joined him in the walk back out to the foyer. "He lived back in the Eighteenth Century. Since then, there's been at least three other Barnabas Collinses. One in 1840, one in 1897 and then William's father. There's also been a vampire attack at the same time of each man's life with the most recent in 1972 coinciding with the opening of the Collinsport Historic Center."

"According to the police file, the so-called vampire was an imposter named William Collins in order to get close to the family." Dana recalled reading the file. "It was believed, however unproven, he was working with a Satanist named Nicholas Blair in trying to extort money out of the family. Blair was also connected to the family through his sister who was briefly married to Roger Collins. Blair was also accused of abducting Maggie Evans in 1968, but he vanished before he could be questioned. Before vanishing, Blair killed the William Collins imposter with a silver letter opener through the heart. The imposter was believed responsible for the 1968 killings."

"Where was this William Collins buried?" Mulder asked.

"The police don't have those records." Dana revealed. "Possibly he was dumped in an unmarked grave."

"There's something else connected to this case." Mulder turned back to the drawing room. "Last year, a private investigator named Sabrina Duncan tracing the death records of a Quentin Collins from 1897 traced him to the present Quentin Collins. The paper trail suggested that both men were one and the same. Now, my theory is that the 1795 Barnabas was the first vampire and later infected the 1895 Quentin Collins. The 1895 Quentin carried it to the 1968 imposter who ingratiated himself into the family. I could prove it if I could located the remains of the imposter."

"Mulder," Scully stopped his tangent before it began. "We are not hunting vampires. We're investigating two sets of unsolved murders. Now, vampirism is based on a disease called porphyria and certain family names do get passed down between descendants. I'd say the police have it right that Nicholas Blair used his sister and then this Collins imposter as help in first abducting Evans and later trying to extort money." She looked up as Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis gracefully descended the stairs in a green and white dress. Amanda hung on her for a while, paused a second and then trailed off for the kitchen.

"I'm Carolyn Loomis," She presented herself with a quiet regal bearing. "How can I help you?"

"Mrs. Loomis," Mulder spoke first. "What do you know about vampires?" Scully dropped her jaw a bit annoyed and rolled her eyes to him.

"Excuse me?" Carolyn was taken aback. "What is this about?"

"Technically, the bureau doesn't believe in vampirism, " Dana Scully tried to save face in this obvious embarrassment. "But we do have to keep abreast of potential cases of potential violence or disease and outbreaks."

"I see." Carolyn lightly guided them into the drawing room. Sitting demurely in the sofa, Scully sat across from her as Mulder sauntered near the fireplace. The blonde mistress of Collinwood glanced at him nervously as Scully pulled a leather bound folder out of her pocketbook to write notes.

"Actually," Dana began as she sent a look to Mulder. "What we're investigating are the vampire-like attacks from 1968 and 1972. The bureau prefers some collaborating evidence to back up the files compiled by the local police. Now, you were the first one attacked in 1972."

"That's right," Carolyn pulled her hair back as she thought back to those nights of revelations. "That was the same week my Cousin Barnabas, Dr. Hoffman and Professor Stokes returned from a trip abroad." Carolyn was careful to omit details about parallel timelines. "My mother had returned to the estate to get my Uncle Roger's speech and she returned with them to the opening. During the opening, I became restless and slipped out to my mother's car and then… I was attacked."

"Did you see your attacker?" Mulder asked. Carolyn silently pulled her hair back nervously. She wasn't sure if she had seen him or not, but she did realize who it had been later. She had promised Angelique and Barnabas not to disclose the full identity of the repentant vampire to anyone beyond the family.

"I don't know." She replied again. "I probably did, but you have to understand. I was out of it for almost the full time."

"You were attacked by a man claiming to be William Collins, a relative of your Cousin Barnabas from England." Dana realized there was a certain illogical thread in the story Carolyn was revealing. "He stayed here at Collinwood…"

"No," Carolyn replied. "He stayed as a guest of Barnabas at the Old House."

"But you did meet him?" Mulder asked.

"Yes," Carolyn once again replied honestly. "But it wasn't till after the fact I was told he was supposed to be the person who had attacked me."

Scully looked up to Mulder.

"Where was he buried after his murder?" Mulder asked.

"Why?"

"We can't answer that."

"Why not?"

"Because it might influence how you answer us." Mulder answered back.

"If you want to know where he was buried," Carolyn slightly leaned forward. "You'll have to ask my Cousin Barnabas. Both he and Angelique cared much for William and never believed that he was really an impostor."

"We don't need to know where he was buried." Dana stared at Mulder to get him to back off the vampire line of questioning. "Moving on, how well did you know Nicholas Blair, your uncle's brother-in-law?"

Mulder exasperatingly turned to look out the window and noticed Amanda in the back hall from the dining room. She grinned a little bit to him as if she harbored a little crush on him then nibbled at the watercress sandwich she was taking up the back stairs.

"Hi," He advanced on her hoping she wouldn't be on such guard. "So… what's it like living in the most haunted house in Maine?"

"Where'd you get that idea?" Amanda responded softly.

"Your cousin William's website." Mulder grinned. Amanda's face both lit up and blushed as she grinned. "So, have you seen many ghosts?"

"No…" Amanda leaned into the banister as Mulder stood in view of the dining room on the doorframe to the back garden. "Well, maybe…" Amanda changed her answer. "I was walking up the back of the house and I saw a huge face in the window of the upstairs library. It kind of looked like my Aunt Carrie."

"Your Aunt Carrie?"

"Aunt Carolyn." Amanda nibbled her sandwich again. "I've called her Aunt Carrie since I was little."

"Oh…" Mulder continued to charm her. "I guess this face kind of scared you."

"No." Amanda shined a bit. "It was only for a second. I just barely noticed it and when I looked at it, it was gone." Mulder lightly lifted his head as he had a sight of something out the corner of his eyes. From the hallway at the other end of the dining room, he noticed Quentin Collins and Willie Loomis struggling with a long crate from one of the rooms. It looked like a long crate, but it had the length of a casket and was carried by ropes thread through holes in its sides.

"Excuse me," Mulder departed the back hall and briskly jaunted through the drawing room behind Scully for a better look from the foyer. Standing before the portrait of Barnabas Collins, he had the best vantage spot. The two of them were reacting very secretive and very hastily to take their coffin-like secret out the side of the house. His imagination realized the only thing that could be in it as he turned back for his partner.

"Scully, I found my proof." He told her.

"You found your what?" Dana looked up confused as Carolyn reacted a bit shocked. Before her, the two agents seemed to suddenly bolt up together. Dana Scully grabbed her folder and hastened to catch up with her partner. Mulder had rushed out the doors, jumped down the three feet off the front portico and stood watching as a white and blue Dodge pick-up seemed to casually leave the estate and gradually pick up speed down the hill. Hurrying for his rental car, he slipped into the driver's seat and started the motor as his partner still struggled to get slip in by him.

"Mulder, what are you doing?" She pulled the door shut by her over a spray of rocks from the driveway.

"I just saw Mr. Collins and Mr. Loomis covertly secret a coffin out of the house." His foot pressed the gas pedal as the pick-up ahead of them hastened for the exit of the estate. The driveway wound down the front of the estate where it turned into a gravel road surrounded by trees. The family cemetery on the grounds whipped past as Mulder approached and passed the pick up just a hundred yards for Collins Road off the estate. Quentin looked worried as the two agents blocked them with their car. Willie hit the brakes as Dana Scully stood before them holding her pistol on their car.

"I didn't know the FBI gave speeding tickets." Quentin remarked as Mulder approached them.

"No," Mulder lead Scully to investigate their package. "But moving evidence in a case is a Federal misdemeanor." He watched as Dana stepped up into the back of the pick up with her gun drawn and opened the coffin-like crate. She looked at the contents, gasped disgustedly and rolled her eyes embarrassingly.

"Mulder, come look at your evidence." He replied as Quentin and Willie slipped out of the cab of the idling pick up. His foot on the back bumper, Mulder lifted himself up and looked upon a coffin-like crate filled with faded Playboy magazines from the 1950s and 1960s. Dana gasped trying to live down the porn bust that had nothing to do with their case.

"This isn't even a coffin!" She screamed as she reholstered her gun. "It says Braithwaite Jewelers on the side! It's for shipping things!" Mulder gasped as Quentin and Willie looked at him.

"I didn't know selling back issues of Playboy was a Federal offense." Willie leaned into the side of the truck.

PART TEN

Barnabas sat reading by the mantle of the fireplace in the parlor. Angelique walked in dusting the room off quietly and distractingly as if her mind was not on her regular cleaning. Her mind was still on whatever fight she had been through with Carolyn. Lifting the knick-knacks along the mantel to wipe the dust from under them, she swatted the Queen Anne clock with her rag as rapping noises echoed from the foyer. Barnabas looked up to her over the rapping's and she stared back upon him. A silent message traveled between them as Barnabas placed his mark in his book and rose up from his chair to the foyer. The rapping happened again as he straightened his house jacket and pulled open the door. Standing outside on the veranda, Carolyn in her dark blue dress looked up to Barnabas.

"Carolyn, what a pleasant surprise." He voiced his interest in her arrival. "Please, enter freely and of your own will."

"Barnabas," Carolyn's eyes turned to him as she strolled forward into the foyer. "I wish to talk privately with your wife."

"Please do," Barnabas turned on his heel as Angelique pretended to be distracted by a watermark on the desk. Picking up his book, Barnabas glided up behind her and stood in back of his wife. Angelique just looked up to the mirror on the wall above the desk and his reflection beyond her reflection.

"Angelique, talk to her." Her husband told her. Stepping out of the mirror, he motioned to the back of the house and left her alone. The former sorceress rubbed to remove the watermark in the desk as Carolyn's reflection appeared in the mirror.

"Angelique," The blonde matriarch began. "I just want to say… my attack on you was…" She stared at the rug on the floor. "Probably based on ignorance. I was scared and… confused." She wandered dramatically like an actress looking for lines to say before finding herself before the bookcase.

"I've never met a witch before and after reading about real Wiccans on the Internet about black witches and white witches and I realized just what it was all really about." Carolyn continued. "I've never considered myself bigoted against anyone for being anything, black, Jewish, Asian, anything and I'm not going to start now. You are what you are and I am what I am."

Angelique didn't answer. She continued rubbing the same spot on the desk.

"Angelique," Carolyn continued. "You're possibly one of the best friends I have. I've never been close to Maggie. I've always held it against her for taking Joe Haskell from me. You saved me from a spell created by your ancestor and I didn't even say thank you. You have always been truthful to me, right?"

"I have secrets, Carolyn." Angelique replied solemnly. "I have a past I am not proud of. I do not want to be reminded of it."

"And you have a right to keep it personal." Carolyn turned back toward her. "I've done things I'm not proud of too, but witchcraft, Angelique? It just hit me from out of nowhere. How can I handle something like that?"

"The same way you've been handling it." Angelique turned round to her. "By forgetting it happened!"

"It's so hard." Carolyn lowered and lightly shook her petite head. "But, if I can live in the House of Usher, I can handle having a best friend who's psychic." She heard Angelique chortle a bit.

"As well as a bit psychokinetic…" The beautiful blonde sorceress confessed as they lightly hugged each other. A sisterly bond strengthened between them in that second as a teardrop glided down Angelique's face. Carolyn sniffled a bit.

"I don't think you should tell the kids, but Maggie and Quentin, I think they should know." Carolyn replied as they buried the hatchet.

"Actually," Angelique began. "Quentin has always known himself; you know he's always been a step behind William in liking ghost stories, but Maggie, I'd like to reveal it to her a bit at a time."

A few miles away, Dana Scully wondered where her partner was. The old Collinsport murder cases were obviously wrapped up and there were more than enough facts to add and close the Bureau's files. Fox Mulder meanwhile felt he was just a step from the truth. Standing on the platform of the Collinsport train station under the orange sky of dusk, he felt he was in the Transylvania of the United States. He rolled his eyes disillusioned as businessmen returned from jobs outside the small town and a few others departed the town to go elsewhere. Within the small human jungle, Mulder recognized a face he knew from a would-be ghost hunter who called Collinsport home.

"Hey, Mulder," William Benjamin Collins dropped the duffel bag he used to travel with. "Leaving so soon?"

"Well," Mulder looked up to the Collins heir. "I kind of embarrassed myself royally in a case here and Skinner decided to close the case on the few facts I was able to get. How about you? Scully said you're dating a lady lawyer in Boston?"

"Yeah," William beamed. "What about your case? Can you talk about it?"

"The bureau was just doing a follow up on the vampire slayings from 1972." Mulder postured a bit as the train conductor called time on his train for Boston. "I was pretty sure I could get a new line on the Collins imposter that was around back then, but…"

"My namesake, William Benjamin Collins." William replied. "I know who you're talking of. I visit his grave every so often."

"Wait a second," Mulder did a double take. "You know where he's buried?"

Five minutes later, Dana Scully was on the way to Boston by herself and William Collins and Fox Mulder were driving up the hill into Eagle Hill Cemetery to the Collins Family Mausoleum. The dark blue night sky was quickly descending as William parked his black 1987 Pontiac trans-am and emerged from it among the lonely forgotten tombstones standing in the lights of the city from below. William emerged first as Mulder came up behind him traipsing between tombstones and grave markers toward the Collins mausoleum on top. The iron gate on the tomb creaked forlornly on its weathered hinges. The sounds of it echoed through the outer chamber as William lead the way through with the beam of a flashlight to show him where he was.

"See that opening," The Collins heir pointed it to the opening in back. "My dad said that was a secret chamber built to hold weapons during the Revolutionary War, but it had never been used. When Uncle William died, dad had it opened for him to rest here with our ancestors."

"There's a lot of honor in your father." Mulder peered to the left and saw the marker on the wall. The stone seal read in carved letters, "William Benjamin Collins 1955 – 1972." He felt as if he was on the verge of a great discovery if his assumption was true. If he was right, there should be a staked vampire inside that coffin.

"You got any tools in your car?" He stood staring defiantly at the nameplate.

"No, not really." William stared at the marker with a bit of distant recourse to the man buried in the wall. For most of his life, he had believed he was named after his uncle Willie Loomis and a long lost manservant named Ben Stokes. However, in recent years, the idea was he that he had been named after this relative. Maybe the earlier story had been based on this one, but deep in his mind he realized that there was never supposed to be any questioning on where his parents came from or anything about their past.

"What do you need?" William asked Fox.

"A hammer, a chisel…" Mulder leaned forward and checked for cracks in the mausoleum. "It's going to take the two of us to get his casket out."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa…" William threw his hands up. "I didn't bring you here to defile a grave, I thought you wanted…"

"I'm not going to defile it." Mulder looked to William with guileless intrigue. "I just want to examine the body for characteristics of vampirism."

"No." William turned and shook his head a bit trying to believe what he was hearing. "Mulder, this is my family you're talking about!"

"You're supposed to be a ghost-hunter. I thought you had an interest in this stuff." Mulder gazed imposingly at William.

"I'm a ghost-hunter, not a vampire-killer and that man in there is a member of my family." William pointed at it.

"If you're related…" Mulder mumbled running his hand frustratingly over his head.

"Mulder!" The Collins heir saw his old friend in a new light. "You are talking about defiling a grave! I thought you were into UFOs and extra-terrestrials, not zombies and the living dead!"

"I'm interested in the truth." Mulder stared William down. "I have an obligation to my job to prove vampires exist and are not just some sort of campfire tale. You go around trying to prove ghosts exist. What's so wrong with me trying to prove everything else does as well?"

"You have to find your proof elsewhere, because if you break into that tomb," William issued an ultimatum. "I will go straight to Skinner." Mulder squinted his eyes a bit and rubbed his hands together as the mausoleum grew inexplicably colder.

"I can't believe you would ruin nearly ten years of friendship over a dead man walled up in a mausoleum." He looked up to William.

"Mulder," William grew disturbingly solemn as the light around them dwindled to darkness. William's flashlight shone solely on the face of his best friend. They were now just basically just shadows with human features standing in the dark devoid of the light vanishing from outside the door. "I had heard nothing but good things about him growing up. Why are you trying to ruin that?"

"How good is the clam chowder in this town?" Fox Mulder turned out thorough the opening. "The next train won't be here till morning and your going to have to put me up for the night." Crossing between the outside caskets and out the gate, he ambled as best as he could down the hill to where William's trans-am was still parked. Moving round it, he pulled open the door and looked over the top as the Collins heir slowly caught up to him. William stood staring distantly at him over the top of the car.

"I promise on your father's good name to never break into that tomb." He told William. "I mean, if there's one vampire in this world, there has to be another."

"Forget the clam chowder." William pulled open his car door and unceremoniously tossed the flashlight to the back seat as he slid behind the wheel. "I'm wanting some lobster and my Uncle David's restraunt has the best in town." He started to reach for his keys then noticed them still in the ignition. A quarter turn and his engine started. A flick of the headlights showed him the way through the cemetery to the road. Two friends would be sharing experiences a few minutes later. In their absence, a neglected mausoleum gate left open would close by itself.

END