PART ONE
She was the only one in the entire Collins Family Tree with fiery red hair. If you asked anyone in town to point you to the local redhead, all hands would point to Collinwood. Amanda Collins was only otherwise known as the little sister of Collinsport High School's star quarterback Jamison Collins. After leaving her cousin Sara at the Old House, she was left to walk the
lonely tree covered walk to Rose Cottage, her restored home on the estate. Always walking with her books up in front of her like a shield, she silently slipped in barely noticed without a noise.
"Darling," Maggie Evans-Collins looked up surprised from the books of her aerobics center. "I didn't hear you come in."
"I'm sorry." The girl looked up with her father's big blue eyes.
"Did you meet a nice boy today?" Maggie made another attempt to crack her daughter's shell. Following her teenage daughter up the twisting staircase of the foyer, she tried even harder to be her little girl's best friend by following her into the girl's messy, clothing strewn room.
"No." The girl silently put her books down, sat down on her canopy bed and pulled her boots off.
"Sweetheart," Maggie sat by her. "There must be a boy you like." She saw a faint glimmer to her girl's eyes. "I knew it! What's his name?"
"He's no one." Amanda insecurely twisted one of her curly red locks around her finger.
"Well, invite him to the house. Does he like you?" Maggie smiled. "I'd love to meet him."
"I can't."
"Why not?" Maggie pressed a bit more. She heard the timer on the oven go off downstairs and thought of the pork chops roasting in there for her family. "Back in a minute, princess."
Amanda sighed loud enough as she pulled off her sweater and pulled on a loose t-shirt. She glanced at herself in the mirror a minute, turned sideways and wondered why all the guys went crazy for her cousins, Sara and Lizzie. Sara was beautiful and outspoken and Lizzie was often over-sexed and surrounded by boys. Maybe it was their blonde hair? Maybe it was because Lizzie had big boobs and Sara was popular. Maybe guys didn't like girls with red hair.
Hearing voices outside of the house, she turned, hid behind the curtain to stare down the cobblestone path and watched as her brother Jamison and William came down the path. The two of them were horsing around and imitating wrestler's movements. Not that William was as sports obsessed as Jamison, but they both had been friends since childhood and even had a band that rehearsed in the basement and anywhere else they were allowed. She gazed upon William even closer as he grinned, laughed and looked up to her window.
"If only you weren't my cousin..." Amanda whispered to herself as they came through the front of the house and headed straight back to the kitchen. It had only been ten years since Rose Cottage had been restored for Quentin and Maggie to move in and raise a family, but both the boys together had the power to level it!
"Chicken!!" Jamison opened the fridge as both he and William grabbed sodas and gobbled down anything small enough to be swallowed. Maggie watched them as she lowered the heat on the oven. Watching them made her feel like an anthropologist studying human behavior.
"You know," She replied. "That chicken might be better if you heated it in the microwave."
"Microwave?" Jamison made a stupid face.
"Fire." William told him in a guttural apelike voice. "Fire good." They shoved the bowl in to the microwave and regressed back into apes. Grumbling, hooting and acting as their primeval ancestors, they bowed and worshipped the microwave as Amanda sneaked down the back steps. She giggled at their humor as Jamison's mother stood in disbelief at their teenage antics.
"William," Maggie spoke as she tossed a salad for tonight's dinner. "Are you in Jamison's band for the talent show tonight?"
"No," The Barnabas and Angelique's son spoke in his normal voice. "I'm doing something else with Amanda."
"That's sweet." Maggie looked up. "I was hoping she'd have a part in something." The microwave went off as Jamison reached for the bowl. Burning himself, he chattered and shrieked like a monkey for a moment as he and William grabbed their food and went up the back steps acting as cavemen. Amanda tried to conceal her laughter.
"Cavemen gatherer good." Jamison turned and looked at his sister. "Stupid little sister bad." He dampened her good spirit and made her feel like a child living with the wrong family.
PART TWO
Many of the Collinses had heard for years of the elaborate talent shows that the teens at the Collinsport High School turned out. Finally having their own children in it was a perfect chance to see all this talent as well as to see what their own kids could do. The building was only five years old. It had been built at the end of Old Mill Road North of town near the remains of the old mill. The emblem of the Collinsport High School Cougar was everywhere. Carolyn recalled her youth in the original building on the other side of town. The old high school was now an elementary school and the old elementary school was ready for the wrecking ball. The whole family from Collinwood lined up in the same roll as Willie pulled out a small camcorder.
"I'm not blocking your view, am I, Angelique?" Willie looked to her as Quentin pulled out his camcorder on the other side of Maggie and Barnabas.
"No, Willie," She leaned into him silently as the auditorium packed with sitting and standing parents. "But I do know a small spell that will render that inoperable beyond repair." She beamed harmlessly as her daughter took the stage.
"Hi, everyone." Sara Collins mastered eloquence as an emcee for the Honor Society. Angelique beamed at her daughter from the audience as her little girl bewitched the crowd in her own way. The crowd packed auditorium applauded for her. "As you know, the proceeds from the talent show tonight will be going to building us a new updated gymnasium. We have a lot of talented students backstage and proud parents here so lets go on with the acts."
The first act up was her best friend Tricia singing one of the popular songs of the time followed by a heavy metal group comprising the rejects of the senior class. Her brother William next pulled off a fair imitation of Elvis as his cousin Amanda did her best Ann Margaret strutting and dancing to his presence. The ravishing redhead strutted and danced around him with a bit of attitude. Angelique beamed even more to see her baby boy becoming more than she expected. She and Barnabas forgot the past between them as their children embraced the culture of today.
"Angelique," Maggie leaned over. "I think you've got a lady killer in the family." She then looked up with an interested look at her daughter's attraction for her cousin seemed to become too realistic and too discomforting to her. She turned to Quentin as their son Jamison and a few the football players came next and became too heavy metal for everyone.
"And I thought Jamison was loud enough playing in the basement." Quentin watched his son pound away at a $1200 electric guitar. Even with his ears ringing, he clapped the hardest as Sara came out once more and announced the votes from the student council for the acts so far. Another singer and a magic act with magic store props; Willie and Carolyn now had a chance to beam as their oldest boy came out after another singer.
"Hello there, ladies and gentleman," J.R's comedy was obviously an acquired taste. "Welcome to Collinsport High School, I hope you don't mind the guard dogs, searchlights and cavity searches." He got a few laughs as his monologue was about to get him yanked off by Principal Karlen.
"Not that this place used to be a prison but my locker still has Jack the Ripper's lunch in it!" He twirled the microphone with a laugh. "I tell you I've been in detention so many times they're about to rename it solitary confinement." He mused. "And my principal, I know he used to be a warden because he still gives us lock-down!"
"Okay, Loomis." Principal Karlen was standing in the wings as his face turned redder than a lobster. Willie was laughing louder than anyone else as Carolyn shot him a look. She had heard all these jokes before, but it was their daughter she wanted to see more than anyone else. A few more singers and a female comedian for a change, it was finally Willie and Carolyn's last chance to beam as their middle child Lizzie was one of the last acts.
"Barnabas, she's wearing my wedding dress!" Angelique shrieked as Lizzie appeared on stage before a microphone ans straddled it before her as if it were a lover.
"I made it through the wilderness..." the thirteen-year-old girl copied her idol with a slow seductive voice.
"Are you sure she's only 13?" Quentin turned to Willie.
"Somehow I made it through..."
"Willie," Carolyn turned to her husband as she shrank in embarrassment in her seat. "This time she's gone too far!!!!!" Willie was, however, becoming distracted by the things being yelled to the stage by teenage boys sitting around him. He turned his head like a lighthouse out of control as all the comments.
"What a body!"
"She's in my gym class!"
"I want her!!!"
"Boys," Willie leaned forward toward them. "That's my little girl up there, and if you say guys another thing, your parents will never see or hear from you again! You understand me."
"She is so grounded!!!" Carolyn shrank deeper into her seat as Angelique and Maggie watched in dumb-founded surprise into her seat. Barnabas and Quentin exchanged glances as they realized that the young girl seducing the room was from among the children of Collinwood!
"Like A Virgin ............." Lizzie purred as she draped her aunt's bridal veil from over her blue eyes. Gyrating her hips got a big response from the teens in the room and a few single fathers.
PART THREE
Lizzie was screaming as Carolyn picked apart her daughter's life. Willie and J.R. shared a gaze between them that could only be shared by father and son. It was going to be another night. Carolyn and Lizzie had had these fights before concerning her freedom and expressing of her sexuality. It almost always ended with Carolyn being reminded she was not that different in school, but the difference was that it was now Carolyn being embarrassed.
"I have never been so embarrassed in all my life." Carolyn held her head as if she had a headache. "My daughter putting on a live sex show!"
"Did you hear what some of those guys were yelling?" J.R. remarked leaning into the drawing room doors His parents looked at him frustrated not wanting to deal with his comments.
"You are not helping." Willie looked to him. "Go to bed." J.R. glanced briefly at his father and started up the foyer steps but then stopped and hesitated on the balcony to eavesdrop as his little sister got yelled at in the drawing room.
"All I did was sing a song!!" Lizzie screamed louder than her mother.
"You didn't have to sing it like that?!!" Carolyn poured herself some sherry. "You also didn't have to take your Aunt Angelique's bridal dress. You do know it was handed down from Naomi Collins!"
"She said I could wear it!!"
"When you got married!!!" Carolyn narrowed her eyes in disgust. "Not to throw yourself at a bunch of boys!!!" Lizzie squealed in disgust and stamped her foot. Her father had dropped to the sofa and rubbed his forehead. Years before, he had learned to let Carolyn do the screaming.
"Daddy?!" His daughter turned to him.
"Don't look at me." he rolled his eyes to her. "I'm on your mother's side on this." They looked up to the figure striding in from the back hall. Slowly and hesitantly trying to stay out of the family strife, Mrs. Johnson wandered into the drawing room trying to be a neutral party. Clad in her robe and with her hands around her cup of hot chocolate, she stood as a mute by-stander to the family squabble.
"Mrs. Loomis," She looked up wearily. "I just wanted to tell you that Christopher went to bed at eight on the dot without a fuss and that everything is locked up."
"Thank you, Mrs. Johnson." Carolyn calmed as she lowered her voice. "But you needn't bother. You're retired now."
"Me? Retired?" The former housekeeper scoffed. "Not when I have to keep on the toes of your new house staff." She almost turned. "By the way, how was the talent show?"
"The school raised over $38,000." Willie reported from the sofa in front of the oft-used television on the far wall while Lizzie brooded next to him. "And Barnabas and Angelique's son, William, won second prize."
"I don't know what I did that was so wrong." Lizzie mumbled under her breath. "Mrs. Johnson said you were a hell-raiser in your day."
"Oh-no," The elderly housekeeper turned back the way she came. "Keep me out of this."
"Well," Carolyn sipped the sherry she had poured for herself and grinned to her problem child. "My life has nothing to do with this. " She stared into Lizzie's blue eyes as the girl tried to break her will. "Go to bed. I'm sick of talking about this."
"Fine...." The thirteen-year-old girl bounded up in disgust and tramped out of the room mumbling under her breath. "I hate this house so much... when I hit eighteen, I am so gone..." She met J.R. at the top of the stairs.
"Did they see your report card yet?" Her brother asked her.
"No," Lizzie ignored him as best she could. "And they never will...." The curly-haired blonde wild child wandered off to her room.
PART FOUR
Amanda's walk home was slightly more spirited than it was in a long time. Silently humming the song that she and her cousin had done in the talent show the night before, she strided calmly across the front veranda of Rose Cottage, pushed the door open and dropped her school books in a chair as she went to the kitchen in back.
"Hi mom," She looked up as she pulled down a banana from above the refrigerator and took a bottled water from the fridge. Maggie glanced up from the books of the aerobics center she shared ownership with Carolyn and stood up as she went after her.
"Amanda, honey," She spoke. "We need to talk."
"About what?" The girl looked back trustingly as her mother directed her to a dining room chair. Sitting across from her, Maggie held her daughter's hands.
"Amanda," She started. "There's something I've got to know. Remember I asked you yesterday if there was a boy you liked."
"Yes..." Amanda reacted nervously.
"It's not your cousin William, is it?" Maggie watched the girl's reaction as the fifteen year old silently gasped. She almost answered then embarrassingly drew silent. Hoping she was wrong, she suddenly began imaging all sorts of illicit and covert activities. Amanda turned in disgraced silence and wandered out the kitchen to the living room parlor.
"Oh my god!!" Maggie's voice grew in pitch and followed her. "What have you two been doing??!!!"
"Mom, it's nothing!!" Amanda panicked as her unopened bottle of water rolled out of her hand and hit the floor.
"What has he done to you?!" Maggie stood holding her head and grabbed the phone. "I've got to tell Angelique!!!"
"No, no, mom...." Amanda shook her head at her mom hysterically and grabbed the phone from her. "Please don't! You can't tell anyone!!!"
"And give me one good reason why I can't!!"
"He doesn't know!!" Amanda admitted the truth. "He doesn't know..." She retreated back into her shell in embarrassment. Dropping to the sofa, she curled up into humiliated disgrace.
"What?" Maggie put the phone down as she forced her daughter to sit by her again. "He's your cousin! What's got into you, honey?" Her voice was calmer now as she adjusted her daughter's hair. "You're a sweet, beautiful, smart girl."
"No, I'm not." Amanda looked away as she forced herself to talk. "Smart, maybe; but I'm not beautiful."
"But you are."
"Mom, look at me." The girl looked back at her mother. "I've got all this stupid red hair and no figure. All the boys treat me like garbage, especially Jamison. William is the only one who has ever been nice to me."
"That's because he cares about you." Maggie revealed. "He's the oldest among all of you and he looks out for all of you, but honey, he doesn't love you the way you think he does. As far as what you look like, you could wear a little make-up and I can get you new clothes. As far as your brother, let your father and I handle him." Maggie paused as she looked deep into her daughter's eyes and remembered a pig-tailed little girl who often romped in the sand under the cliffs. "Don't let anyone tell you that you're not pretty. You look just like your father." She pulled her close to her heart and hugged her tightly. Amanda was weeping insecurely just a bit as she heard voices and footsteps on the back mud porch. Two figures crashed through without mercy.
"You need to throw the football harder." Quentin was badly out of breath as he dropped in a kitchen chair and stared out to his wife and daughter. "I'm getting old..." He longed for the days he was enchanted by a Tate painting.
"Yeah," Jamison was sweaty, dirty and grinning as he pulled another bottled water from the fridge. "What are you? 80 or something?" An annoyed smirk and dark secret in his mind, Quentin seemed to be harboring a secret as he took the boy's water, opened it and took the first swallow.
"You'd never believe me if I told you." Quentin looked upon his tall and muscular son and started to miss his own youth. Jamison grabbed a Pepsi instead to replace his water and started for the front stairs up to his room. From the foyer, he noticed his mother and sister in the middle of a moment watching him.
"What is this?" The eighteen year old wondered. "A female thing?"
PART FIVE
Angelique's little clone walked the long path from Collins Road toward the Old House alone. In her youth, she had once recalled all sorts of memories of being her ancestor's little sister in 1795, but now as an adult she remembered none of it. Maybe she was the reincarnation of the little sister of the first Barnabas Collins, her father's ancestor, but it mattered little now. The ghost of Sara Collins had stopped haunting the estate at the time she was born and if she was once the former girl's ghost, it might go to explain just how vivacious she was today. Blonde, beautiful and brainy, she was often referred to as the princess of Collinwood as all the boys in her high school competed for just glimpse of her long golden locks or a view of her blue azure eyes. Maybe she loved life so much because she wanted to forget her old existence. Surrounded by boys and peer pressure, she realized what she really preferred was the calm, quiet serene of paradise from when she walked alone through the woods.
She heard screaming behind her as she looked behind her. One large figure in a hockey mask carrying a rusty machete charged for her and another figure in an inside-out Halloween mask and fedora clicked his glove with four long blades. They rushed to attack her as Sara stood her ground, glared disgustedly and rolled her eyes. She threw her books at the clawed monster and flipped the psycho hockey player just when they came in fighting range.
"I think you broke my nose!!"
"I think you broke my nail!!" Sarah recognized the voices as her brother pulled off the hockey mask and his best friend and crony, Russell Coleman, removed his glove. It had taken him three months to create the hinges and back piece of the glove in shop class and he was very protective of it. It was supposed to be just like the one in the movie documenting the crimes of serial killer Freddie Kruger. Wearing the hockey mask, her brother was supposed to be Jason Voorhees, another forgotten serial killer from Connecticut.
"Would you stop this crap?" Sarah glared at William. "You've been trying to scare me since we were kids! This is not a movie; this is real life! Besides, I kick your ass every time."
"This is how I show I love you." Her big brother beamed his big, stupid smile as his buddy inspected his glove. Dark-haired with two eyes of solid black, Coleman reportedly had Indian blood in him, or so he claimed. Everyone knew he was a notorious liar. His grandparents had opened Coleman's, the large discount merchandise store in town back in the 1950s and his father worked at the Collins Cannery. A bit heavy set, he was responsible for much of William's fascination in horror movies.
"Perfect." He replied inspecting his glove. "Lizzie's getting off cheerleader practice in a while. I'm going to meet her!" He took back the machete and hockey mask, tilted his fedora to Sarah and then raced back down the wooded path. A hearty slap of friendship to William's shoulder, the two of them briefly parted and headed for their respective homes.
"I don't see why you hang out with him." Sara recollected her books as William took them and carried them for her.
"I don't see why you date Junior Haskell." William walked his sister along the path for the Old House. "You know his father used to date not just Aunt Maggie but Aunt Carolyn too."
"His name is Joe," Sarah replied as the back of the Old House came into view. "And I know that. But did you know his mom was once set to marry Uncle Willie??"
"I heard that." William stomped up the backyard and on to the back mud porch announcing his presence by testing the wood with his weight. "I wonder if there's any other stories in the family we don't know about." They entered the back kitchen together as Sarah took her books and headed up the back stairs to her room. A creature of habit, William opened the refrigerator to stack one his usual triple-decker sandwiches. They only required three types of lunchmeat, a dash of mayonnaise, onions, olives, pickles, peppers, tomatoes and a disapproving look from his mother.
"Darling," Angelique stood in the arch to the dining room and looked to her son. "Could you come in here?"
"I guess," William left the bread and sandwich-makings out as his mother led him into room. The pictures of Joshua and Naomi Collins stared down from the front wall of the house. His Aunt Maggie was sitting at the table under their portraits stirring a dash of cream into her tea. An inexplicable fear came to the young man wondering if he was in trouble. His mother pulled a chair out for him and gestured him to sit. He wondered how much trouble he was in this time.
"Honey," Angelique spoke sitting next to him. "We seem to have a problem."
"If it's about the bottle of tequila in my room, Russell left it." He unwittingly incriminated himself.
"No," Maggie started as Angelique smirked in amusement. "William, are you and Amanda doing anything you shouldn't be?"
"You mean like smoking?"
"No, honey," Angelique became very maternal as she took her boy's hands and leaned into his eyes. "Are you two...intimate?"
"She's my cousin!!!" William blurted out shocked and a bit disgusted.
"William," Maggie exasperatingly pulled her hair back. "She's in love with you."
"Why would she do a dumb thing like that?!" The nineteen year old asked. "If anyone could be in love with me, why couldn't it be Tricia, Cathy or..."
"William," Maggie became frustrated. "Jamison is a very lousy brother to her and has been terrorizing her for a long time. Not only that, but everyone in school teases her because of her red hair. When someone like you comes around and is nice her, she is going to make an emotional connection."
"Sweetheart," Angelique continued next. "I am so proud that you stand up for her, but you need to delicately set her straight and maybe find someone else to whom she can channel her feelings. It took me years of undirected emotion to get your father to notice me, and I can sympathize with Amanda's pain. She needs to be loved."
"You want me to fix her up with Russell?"
"Oh god, not Coleman!!" Maggie fretted and rounded her eyes in shock with the idea of Russell Coleman as a potential suitor for her daughter.
"Not quite," Angelique smiled as her son made an effort. "But it's a step in the right direction. Now, one other thing."
"What?"
"That bottle of tequila in your room." Angelique raised a parental eyebrow.
PART SIX
Elizabeth Victoria Loomis was never one to admit that being grounded was to stop her. Having Russell drop her off at the bottom of the hill, she lurked across the estate moving like a cat burglar back to the bed sheet rope left dangling out of her window. Of course, she hadn't thought this quite out thoroughly. Running across the estate in the moonlight left her out of breath to climb the fifteen feet up to her bedroom window. A gasp for air, she tugged the line, her foot to the bottom window sill, pulled up to the ledge, foot to the top of the window ledge, dangled a bit and grunted and heaved herself along the edge to her window left ajar. Wondering how many times her mother did this when it was still her room, she grinned to herself for being so clever and put her foot through to the floor. Her mother needn't know she was ever out after curfew.
"Lizzie!!!"
The thirteen year old girl spun awkwardly on her ankle while her mother flicked on the light. Lizzie's blue eyes widened in shock as her lucky steak came crashing down to earth in a ball of glory. She forgot to lock her bedroom door!!
"I have tried to be lenient in this…" Carolyn cocked her head as her now short blonde hair swayed. "But now you've left me no choice, I'm sending you to boarding school."
"Mom!!" Lizzie freaked as she saw her life destroyed. "Please, not that!! I won't do it again! I promise!! Please, give me another chance!!!"
"This was your last chance!" Carolyn scowled as her voice began adamant. "I am not putting up with a sex-crazed daughter who runs around loose and embarrasses me in public...." She noticed in the mirror her son standing in the hall laughing hysterically as his sister was being punished.
"J.R., go to bed!!!" Carolyn screamed as his reflection vanished from the mirror.
"And how is this so different from when you were my age!!!" Lizzie screamed with attitude.
"This is not about me!!" Carolyn shook her finger as her temper flared from her daughter running around in a bustier, leather jacket and hip-hugging jeans. Heavy make-up partially obscured her daughter's face. Pictures of similarly attired Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Paula Abdul posters all over the room along with all the current Eighties icons revealed Lizzie's facets of world. "I never gave my mother the amount of grief you're giving me. It ends now! Now, wash the crap off your face and get to bed! We'll be talking more in the morning!!"
"But, mom!!!"
Carolyn slammed the door of the room that used to be hers. She gasped secretly after letting her rage possess her and listened through the door as her daughter jumped on the bed and cried her heart out. The mother in Carolyn wanted to go back and apologize, but the guardian in her thought she wasn't strict enough. A brief second to listen to the girl, she wandered back to her mother's old room and her husband waiting for her.
"So you did it...." Willie mumbled half-asleep as his wife slipped out of her robe and returned to their marital bed. Pulling the blankets aside, Carolyn slid back next to him.
"She gave me no choice." Carolyn flicked on the light and pulled the brochure out for Eastland Academy from her nightstand. Willie grunted from the light and rolled over as Carolyn scanned the colored paper in her hands. Nestled in the rolling wooded hills near Peekskill, New York, the girl's school sounded perfect for Lizzie. Even the head master, David Parker, agreed with her when they talked that Lizzie needed structure and discipline, but then the mother in Carolyn did really not want her daughter that far away from her. She started realizing what it must have been like for her mother when her Uncle roger wanted to send her cousin David away to military school.
"Willie," She looked toward his hairy back poking out over his shirt. "Am I doing the right thing?"
"I thought we both thought so." He mumbled. "I wonder if they'll take J.R.!"
PART SEVEN
With long blonde hair and big blue eyes, Sarah Collins was obviously one of the more attractive girls at Collinsport High School as her roguish looking boyfriend kissed her deeply at her parents door. She looked into the steely blue eyes of Joe Haskell Jr. and nearly swooned in his presence every time. The high school's best football player next to Jamison Collins himself, Joe's eyes bounced from her chest to her regal blue azure eyes as he pushed her to the front door of the Old House and kissed her until he had almost surrendered his soul to him. As a child, Haskell thought Sara's mother was one of the prettiest ladies in his life, and now that he was grown up with her daughter, he was glad to see that Sara resembled her.
"You better go." she gasped. "My dad doesn't like you."
"I know." he forced one more kiss. "What does he have against me?"
"Don't worry about it." She kissed him again. "Thanks for the dance."
Sara grinned as she quietly pushed through the door and started to make her way to her room at the top of the stairs. Formerly Josette's room, the Eighteenth Century portrait of Collinsport's most famous ghost still hung in the room and watched the changing times as girls were allowed to be just as aggressive as men. The third step creaked under her foot as the lights went on.
"Sarah Collins, do you know what time it is?" her parents sat in chairs in the parlor. Sarah looked to her watch. It read 1:36. At least four and a half hours past curfew! She shook her wrist with the watch as if she was trying to get it to work.
"Last time I buy a watch from J.R.!" she smiled innocently. "Night!"
"Do you know how worried we were?" Angelique looked to her daughter. She was the exact image of herself at fifteen. Sarah, however, looked to her father for solace, but his brow was becoming even more displeased. Daughter and father always had a special relationship in this family, as did Angelique for her son. Barnabas had always tried to be the sort of father his father had been and more; he and Angelique had tried to raise their children with the old-fashioned ideas of their long ago generations, but it now seemed that things had changed so much in over two hundred years. Both of them had seen and heard at times the bouts that Carolyn and Quentin had with their kids, and both Barnabas and Angelique hoped their very Old World experiences was best to raising children and young adults, but finally they had to admit the truth. There was no way to keep the Twentieth Century from influencing their progeny.
"Daddy, I'm a good girl I swear!" Sarah rushed to him. "All we did was kiss at Parker's Field; I'm not pregnant or anything! Please don't kill me!"
"Sara," Barnabas looked to Angelique. Somehow she knew he was going to cave in. "I'd never kill you; I love you very much, but this time the grounding sticks."
Sara looked to her mom to see if she could influence her, but she had that parental look too. She instead defeatedly headed up to her room. Around the corner overlooked her brother's room as William peeked out half asleep to the disturbance and locked eyes on his sister. She glossed over his appearance and quietly watched him step back into his room and close the door to do a disgusting little victory dance in his room.
"I am the good one, I am the good one..." He cavorted and celebrated the qualms of sibling rivalry as he heard his door being
opened. Sarah poked her head in through the opening.
"At least, I'm dating." She grinned evilly as she became the spitting image of their mother! Looking back at her, William cringed inside and hated being reminded he still had not had a single girlfriend.
"That hurt…" He told her.
PART EIGHT
The yelling and screaming in the morning was almost as bad as it was the night before. Lizzie sat and scrunched up her face. Sometimes, it seemed as if her parents were taking away the last of her freedoms and liberties. Worst yet, J.R. stood and grinned at her teenage persecution as for once he was not being punished. Once let loose, Lizzie sprang up the stairs trying not to cry and headed for the last person in the house that seemed to love her. While her grandmother had died in 1990, she still had her retired granduncle.
"Uncle Roger?" Lizzie peeked in his room.
"Princess," Roger sat reading in the sunshine of his window. The elderly man beamed as his sister's granddaughter and namesake hugged and kissed him. She and David's daughter, Carrie, seemed to be the only young ones who visited as he enjoyed retirement and became glad to see Collinwood filled with children that were not his own. He had had one son with Laura and that was going to be it. After Cassandra and his current wife, Rachel, he was not interested in raising any more children.
"You've got to help me, Uncle Roger." Lizzie kissed his baldhead and squeezed him carefully in her arms. "Mom wants to get rid of me."
"Oh, she's not going to do it." Roger had heard the screaming through the floor. "She never sent J.R. to military school, did she? She's just trying to scare you. Trust me, I know. I almost sent your Uncle David away a few times."
"I think she means it this time." Lizzie looked up with her two big blue eyes. "I messed up big."
"Remember when your brother, Jamison and William knocked over the tombstones at Eagle Hill and tried to break into the tomb." Roger's mind remained sharp. "That was worse, and they're still here."
"Well," Lizzie sighed. "Maybe if J.R. just went away I could be better. He just makes everything worse."
Roger chuckled at her daring proposal and hugged her as best as he could. The notorious brother, however, had fled the house as far as Rose Cottage looking for his cousin William. Named for J.R's father, the often-distant son of Barnabas and Angelique once in a while took off to Bangor without a word looking for girls or just departed Collinwood investigating haunted houses like the Gracie Mansion in Louisiana with Roger's son, David. Some day, J.R. was going to go with them.
"Hi, Aunt Maggie," the Collins family comic invaded the house. He glanced over the parlor. "Is William or Jamison here?"
"They're in the basement practicing their instruments." Maggie answered as Amanda slipped down stairs with her red hair flying behind her as if it were the tail of a comic. J.R. looked at her, grimaced his weird little grin and leaned against the banister.
"I heard you wanted two-headed babies." He told her.
"Up yours!!" She screamed at him.
"Redneck romance!!"
"J.R.!!!" Maggie screamed over the quarreling cousins. "If you are looking for your cousins, they are downstairs!!!"
The two of them spitefully locked eyes as if they were brother and sister. He was two years older than her and two inches taller, but she still looked like she could kick his butt in a fight. He had seen her fight with Lizzie and Sara over clothes and was sometimes even impressed that she could fight dirty. Grinning over another unspoken taunt, the would-be felon opened the door under the spiral staircase and headed the curling staircase down the steps into the basement.
"Don't worry about him, honey." Maggie kissed her daughter.
"One of these days," Amanda narrowed her eyes and clenched her fist. Out of all her cousins, William might have been her favorite, but J.R. was her least favorite. He constantly had a snide comment about her red hair or her fondness for solitude. "Pow! Right in the jaw!!"
PART NINE
There was a rumor in Collinsport that the reason the teenagers at Collinwood were given access to musical instruments was to keep them distracted from a life of juvenile delinquency. Indeed, early police reports from the late Seventies to early Eighties were sprinkled with tales of false reports of the walking dead and even the random cemetery vandalism. In those sojourn days, the vampire tales from the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries were updated to the more modern reports of the terror of the Collins kids. Homes bordering the Collins estate no longer had to listen to wailing widows or the calling of dogs. Those noises had been replaced by the tumultuous noise of other annoying repercussions.
"Just take those old records off the shelf!!!!!" William screamed with a guitar as J.R. pounded on the drums and Jamison accompanied him on bass as the electricity poured into their five-foot tall amplifiers. Russell Coleman hammered on electric guitar and Matt Burton, another local miscreant, worked a keyboard he had programmed himself. "Give me some of that old time rock and roll!!!!!!!"
It suddenly dawned on Maggie why no one the estate had seen any of the celebrated ghosts or apparitions of Collinwood since the kids all became teenagers. She felt the floor vibrating from the music pumped up and saw portraits of family from recent and long ago dancing on their nails. The boys were trying to break the sound barrier. The portrait of Maggie's father and mother crashed to the floor as their grandson tried to become the next Elvis Presley.
For a second, it became quiet.
"I still don't think we're loud enough." Jamison's voice sounded from the stairs to the basement.
"No!!!!" Quentin came charging down the steps as he glanced over the faces of his son and the next generation of the estate. A bit alarmed, he shuddered to think they would be around to take care of him when he really grew old. "Boys, a hundred white flags just went up for each tombstone in Eagle Hill begging for you to stop." He pulled out his wallet. "Take a hundred, go to the Blue Whale and pick up girls. Please, while the ringing in my ears subsides."
"Sure, Uncle Quentin," William chuckled as he pulled the strap of his guitar over his head. The undeclared leader of the group, he realized they had nowhere else to practice after being chased out of the last of the basements on the property with electricity. Matt hit a key that played a funeral dirge as Quentin pounded his left ear trying to lose the ringing still plaguing him.
"Well," Jamison put his guitar in its case. "That was fun while it lasted. Let's see if the cheerleaders are practicing."
"I don't wanna." J.R. was still lightly drumming a beat. "Coleman's sister said she'd beat the crap out of me for putting itching powder in her gym shorts."
"Speaking of flakey females," Jamison turned to William. "Did you hear that Amanda has a thing for you?"
"Whoa, really?" Russell looked up.
"I heard," William didn't know what to do with the unwanted attention while he was already pursuing two other girls. "Aunt Maggie is blaming you for driving her crazy."
"She blames me for everything!" Jamison started to lead the way back upstairs to the kitchen.
"You know," Matt looked back at William bringing up the rear. "I always thought Amanda was hot. You think she'd date me?"
"Ask her." William followed his buddies and lifelong comrades up the stairs and into the kitchen as they attacked the refrigerator and began emptying it. From their vantage point in the main hallway, Quentin and Maggie were analyzing the damage to the Evans family picture and turned to watch the five still-growing boys making sandwiches, drinking sodas and opening bags of crackers and chips. Even Burton made himself to home by munching on olives and celery sticks.
"I thought I sent you boys to the Blue Whale." Quentin wondered out loud.
"But we need a snack for along the way." Jamison admitted. Leading the way, the other guys trailed behind him for Jamison's white BMW parked behind the mansion. Realizing there was a bit less food in the house, Quentin turned to Maggie for answers.
"A snack on the way to eat…" She giggled a bit. "Quentin, weren't you ever a teenager??"
PART TEN
Carolyn crossed the drawing room of Collinwood as she came down stairs in a good spirits. She and Lizzie had visited Eastland and heard a story about four girls who had smashed up the school van and was working off the repairs in the school kitchen. Hearing about other parents' problem children, Carolyn realized that Lizzie suddenly sounded like a prim and proper Catholic schoolgirl. Wondering if she was being repaid for the grief she must have put her own mother through, she grinned secretly to herself and crossed the foyer considering discussing and maybe redefining the rules of curfew with her daughter. Maybe they could be changed to reflect how much she had grown. The girl deserved that much. The doors sounded off as if they knew Carolyn was there. She turned on her heel to answer it.
"Sheriff Taylor?" She recognized the man who had replaced Patterson. "Oh no! Not J.R. again!!"
"Not this time." The fairly amused lawman quietly guided Lizzie through the door. The diminutive wild-haired blonde thirteen year old was barefoot and clad only in a police blanket. Carolyn reverted once more to the strict parent she hated being so much. She apologized to Sheriff Taylor and became embarrassed momentarily to stop her daughter from wandering off.
"What happened?"
"I caught her, Sara and a few of their friends streaking across your property." The father in Don Taylor smirked out of amusement at the spectacle. "I just dropped off Sara and I'm letting the other girls' parents know."
"Thank you very much." Carolyn excused herself as the local lawman departed. "I have never been so embarrassed!" The mother in her came out as she began reconsidering Eastland. "What you doing running around like that?!!!"
"I'm not!" the girl insisted. "The girls and I got hot outside so we went to the creek to go skinny dipping alone, I swear! But someone stole our clothes!!!!!"
"I don't believe that for a minute." Carolyn narrowed her eyes and folded her arms. "Who would want to steal your clothes?!!!"
J.R. wandered in as nonchalantly as possible from the direction of the dining room with a huge plastic sack bobbing over his shoulder. Whistling as non-conspicuously as possible, the frequent peeping tom smiled to his mother and younger sister.
"Mom," He kissed her. "Lady Godiva..." He reacted with a smirk to his sister with a dirty look and raced up the stairs to the balcony and second floor. Lizzie screeched at the top of her lungs and chased hostilely after him while their mother just gasped and prayed for strength.
"Maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem." She mumbled to herself.
END
ADDITIONAL CAST:
William Collins – David Sutcliffe
Sara Collins - Sara Michelle Gellar
Jamison Collins - David Arquette
Amanda Collins - Kate Winslet
J.R. Loomis – David Schimmer
Lizzie Loomis – Geri Betzler
Joe Haskell Jr. – Freddie Prinze Jr.
Russell Coleman – Lochlyn Munro
Matt Burton – Jason Bateman