Her name was Victoria Winters. Raised in a foundling home for her entire life, she dreamed of a chance to discover who she truly was and to meet whatever brothers and sisters she might actually have. It wasnt that different a dream than anyone else had the foundling home had and she did like her time there getting to be a big sister or a mother to the others who lived there. It wasnt the same as knowing the truth, but it was what she had. In 1980, though, a week after her thirty-fifth birthday, she received a message from a woman named Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard. The woman claimed to be her mother by means of weaving a story about wanting to keep her and being unable to do so because she had been betrothed to marry someone else. There was no mention of her fathers identity in the letter and that question was at the top of her lips as Victoria packed up her belongings and traveled to the far off corner of the world known as Collinsport, Maine.
What Vicki found was much different. She met a sister named Carolyn Stoddard and was told that their mother had passed away some years before and that the letter had been sent sealed by the family lawyers. Carolyn lived alone in the immense family home as the last known member of a once large and wealthy family. That much was the truth, but Vicki suspected so much more was hidden in the dark shadows of the huge gothic edifice of the home on the estate. Carolyn seemed to eschew sunlight and was mostly seen at night. As Vicki began recalling everything she could remember from vampire movies, a few things also tried to dissuade her beliefs. Carolyn did have a reflection in the dining room mirror and she did not have an aversion to the symbol of the cross. Either the vampire lore was incorrect, or her Gothic-minded sister was something else entirely. Whatever the answer was, she was certain she could find it in the closed off section of the house. It was the only place in the whole house she had not been in and she had an unavoidable prerogative that the secret being kept from her was in there. During another of her sisters conspicuous absences, she forced her way into the closed off part of the house as an inexplicable wave of apprehension and dread came over her. Fighting the illogical panic attack she was feeling, she tried to rationalize the fear overwhelming her by reminding her that this was her family home. She had a perfect right to see any part of it. She left the door behind ajar and passed through two arches supporting a short hall. The ceiling rose high aloft her head into the rafters of the house with a midway balcony above her to the attic rooms. Her feet carried her forward through an arch into a long corridor lined with doors. All her memories of reading Nancy Drew novels were returning her as she stopped quietly and looked around the empty corridor. The area was dark and meticulous as some museum after hours. The air even smelled sweet like cinnamon or some other rich spice. Between bedroom doors were paintings above ornate cabinets. She glanced nervously at the first painting of a beautiful blonde and regal grand dame. The nameplate read "Angelique Bouchard-Collins" and her rich azure eyes seemed to be following her. Vicki turned to a chair nearby. In the seat, a book had been left upside down as if someone had just left it. Covered in a plain black cover, its inner title page read "The Iliad."
Out the corner of her eye, Vicki thought she saw a glimpse of someone hurrying to get out of her way. She turned back to Angeliques portrait and forced herself to look closer to the visage of the beautiful woman upon it. It was still watching her as she felt a shudder down her spine. A faint noise of weeping was guiding Vicki as she entered a bedroom with a door left ajar. She had the feeling someone was crying and advanced on a chair before a fire in a burning fireplace. Someone sat obscured in the chair before her. Wanting to see the person in it, Vicki forced herself forward and tried to say something just before the visage of Liz Stoddard turned from it and finally stood up to her.
"Why'd you do it, Carolyn?" She asked distraughtly. "Why did you do it?
"Do what?" Vicki asked. "What'd she do?
"Carolyn," Liz's spirit seemed to reliving the last seconds of her life. "Why would you kill your mother?
Vicki gasped and turned around as hands grabbed her and spun her around. Roger Collins entered the bedroom from somewhere behind her and gripped her tightly as he too became trapped in time.
"I treated you like a daughter." He said to her. "How could you do what you did?
"I'm not Carolyn!" Vicki forced her arms loose and turned as Barnabas Collins stood blocking the doorway while leaning on his cane.
"Carolyn," He looked distraughtly to her. "I'm so sorry. I never meant what happened to occur."
"What happened?" Vicki implored confused and alarmed to the shades starting to surround her. She stepped back into the chair itself, landed within it and tipped backward with her back to the floor looking up to the ghosts. Flipped over completely, Vicki held her head as David Collins stood looking at her.
"I didn't mean to see! I didn't mean to see!" He started screaming as Vicki looked back. Roger and Liz were reaching down to her as Barnabas watched. Vicki suddenly saw other faces of people emerging out of the air she didn't recognize. A handsome figure with sideburns covered in dust, a beautiful blonde woman with white skin morosely watching, a forlorn little girl watching from another chair, a sinister reverend with tortured eyes, another man in period clothes frowning a look of sheer hatred and a brunette ingnue hiding in a corner behind the others. Several of them advanced on her as they reached down to her. Vicki backed to the wall and shrieked as she recoiled from their undead touches. She froze where she was and counted to ten under her breath before slowly opening her eyes. They were all gone. She wasnt sure if they had been real or if she had imagined them. Looking around once more, she realized the room was just as she had found it. The once beautiful room was now ruined and deserted. Portraits were faded and furniture was covered in dust as debris and disassembled furniture lined walls. Her eyes gasped as she noticed out in the corridor the portrait of Angelique was the only one not quite so ruined by neglect. It seemed much more vibrant than everything else left abandoned and neglected in this wing of the mansion. Vickis voice gasped trying to forget the spectral images that had frightened her. She braced herself to stand up off the floor for a second and paused still partially on her hands and feet. Starting to rise, she noticed the feet of someone standing before her. She looked up and up as Carolyn towered over her on the floor like a miniature giantess. She had the same despondent look she had as when Vicki had first arrived in Collinwood.
"You know, don't you?"
"You killed them." Vicki slowly stood on her feet and she realized part of her demented sisters secret. "You killed them all!
"Vicki," Carolyn advanced on Vicki shaking her head as her perfect hair lightly swayed elegantly on her shoulders. "You don't know what you're talking about. Let's go downstairs and talk about it."
"No!" Vicki backed from her. "I don't know what you are, but you're not human!
"Vicki, you're talking crazy." Speaking slowly and assuredly with a demented grin, Carolyn followed her down the hall. "Take my hand and we'll talk about it."
"Don't touch me!" Vicki shifted Angelique's portrait when her back hit the wall. "You're a monster! You're not real!
"Vicki, you're losing it." Carolyn didn't look away from Vicki as she instinctively straightened Angelique's picture with one gesture. Her eyes were methodical and cold as if it was just something she had to do. "Just touch me and I can make you feel all better."
"No!" Vicki backed away further as she bumped into some doors. "You want to kill me, just as she you did them!" Her eyes looked into the second floor library as she started screaming. There were bodies everywhere sitting at tables with books or standing before shelves. Each one was dried and desiccated without anything remotely human left behind to them to suggest they were once alive. Skeletons with hair stared back at her with empty eye sockets and hideous grins permanently etched on their frozen decayed faces. Posed and displayed in deteriorating clothes, they sat in chairs with books in their hands or stood balanced against shelves as if they had just been caught reading. There had to be over a dozen of them. The whole room looked to be some sort of shrine dedicated to the dead. Her voice filled the room with the shocking piercing strain of a woman losing her mind!
"Vicki," Carolyn spoke. "Stop screaming. This is our family and friends." She turned to a body wearing a decaying dress. "Mother, this is Vicki. I told you about her." She paused. "Mother says you're more beautiful than she thought."
Vicki froze in terror against a shelf as she watched Carolyn moving through the room talking to the corpses. Her hands pulled to her face, her eyes rounded in shock behind her fingers, Vicki squeezed in the wall behind her by a cabinet of books in shock as her demented half-sister paused by one of the nearly mummified corpses and even kissed it.
"Joe, we need to find a date for Vicki." Carolyn turned toward two skeletons literally propping each other up. "Tom or Chris? I don't think they're her type, but I can ask." She looked back into the alcove. "Mother, tell Jason he is too old. She then turned her head to the remains of a young man playing checkers with the emaciated rotting remains of another young man. Vicki, I think this young man has a crush on you. No, not David, the one I caught in the tower last week."
"You're mad." Vicki forced out. "You're not normal!" She started to run out past Carolyn, but the demented blonde stopped her quickly with an eager grimace and closed the doors. She took the key from the double doors, locked them with a sadistically eager grimace and then grinned almost demonically back to Vicki as her blonde hair fell gracefully off her shoulder.
"Mad?" Carolyn dropped the key down the top of her black sweater. "Well, we all go a little mad sometimes. Let me help you feel better!" She lunged forward as Vicki shrieked, grabbed a book and threw it at Carolyn. The blonde psycho ducked too fast to be merely human. She had protected her solitude too religiously to give it up like this. Disgusted as she was by the corpses around her, Vicki started darting past the remains of her dead family and hurried around the table between her and Carolyn. With the mere piece of furniture between her and Vicki, Carolyn reached forward and shoved the heavy oak table with minimal effort and moved it with a crash into the wall. Vickis eyes widened at the remarkable feat of strength as she whirled around to keep her eyes on her. Could anything stop her? Was there anything that could? As she spun around to keep her eyes on her, Vicki felt her weight sliding under her and reached to stop her fall. Stumbling over bones in a chair, she crashed to the floor atop a tangle of broken bones and dried cadaverous human remains trapped in a tangle of clothing as Carolyn dived over the table blocking her from her sister. Vicki barely had a chance to leap to her feet as her younger half-sisters hands grabbed her leg. In seconds, Vicki felt an immediate burning sensation from her as she felt herself getting older and her body drying from the inside out. She could barely scream for help now. All she could do was lift her head and open her mouth in a silent scream as she tried to hold her last breath. It felt as if she was drowning in the open room as her jaw dropped and her lungs expanded trying to get as much air as they could. Her very soul felt it was almost entering Carolyn as her demented half-sister tilted her head back in and gasped at the sensation of her sisters life force filling her every being. Maybe this would be the one to do it. Maybe finally she could end this curse on her. Vicki briefly felt she was inside her demented sister watching her do this to herself. In her mind's eye, she had a brief vision of herself in her own hands. She practically felt one with Carolyn for a brief second and then the sensation of vanishing deep into her with what felt like almost a hundred other previous victims. She felt the glee of triumph; the ecstasy of sheer power and even the evil taste of contented euphoria for a second more herself slipping away from her sisters powerful consciousness. Carolyns laughing voice came from her throat and started to lightly grin in demented pleasure as Vickis eyes slowly glanced up at the wolf's head cane in her hand vanishing from her sight. She had landed on top of it from of the bony cadaver she had shattered underneath her. Whatever was happening wasnt complete. With every last fiber of might left in her, her fingers weakly gripped it as she reared back hard. Hitting Carolyn as firmly as she could with it, the burning stopped, but she felt like an old woman as her demonic sibling gasped full of strength and vitality. The blonde psycho grinned ear-to-ear rising up from the floor as Vicki hobbled on her burning leg and swung the old cane to warn her again from touching her.
"Why did you do that, Vicki?" Carolyn grinned devilishly once more. "I could make you so beautiful. All I need is your soul - your life force - you won't miss it. Do you hear them complaining?
"I..." Vicki backed away wearily swinging the cane. "Don't know... What you are, but..." She felt as if she was having a heart attack as she backed against the window. "You're not getting... My life."
"Vicki," Carolyn reached for her face. "You tasted it for a brief second. Wasnt it wonderful? Wasnt the sensation more than you could want? The sheer wonderful taste of complete immortality. You'll be so much more happier a part of me."
"No!" Vicki thought she had a glimpse of another person in the room. Her head spun toward to face them as she realized the ugly truth. It was her reflection in a mirror and just how old she had now become. Her once fresh baby doll face and looks had aged almost fifty years. Her bright blue eyes had lost her sparkle and long creases crisscrossed her face. As she slowly slipped into shock, she saw Carolyn behind her in the mirror starting to grab her.
"No!" Vicki turned to strike once more for one last time as her sister caught the cane and lurched it from her like a parent snatching a toy from a child. Carolyn took a mere second to snap it in half and throw it behind her. That weapon gone, her hands reached to Vickis face and whatever was left of her life force. Vicki stepped back to try and flee and hit the wall as her sister pushed her to the floor. It was a movement she could not survive. She felt herself lurched from her body once more and then once again falling into a slow deep dark pit of non-existence. Carolyn heard one last gasp from her sister as Victoria stopped fighting. Lifting the two of them up together, she carefully laid Vicki to sit in a chair across from the remains of their mother. Resting her sisters body to rest upright in the chair, she shifted her weight and stood up straight. Her hair felt longer, her body a bit lighter and the last ounces of euphoria tingling through her small frame as she gasped. Her hands fell flat to her chest as she tried to contain her breath and then glided slowly around her bosom and down her hips as she caught her breath. She backed to the door a moment more and looked at the new body in her shrine. Leaning against the locked entryway, she took a moment to assimilate the new memories amalgamating into her brain while her hands started searching her person for the key.
"There, Vicki," She felt the key caught in her bra as she pushed it to the top of her sweater. "Was that so bad?" She paused a second listening to a non-existent voice from her sister's corpse talking to her in her mind.
"Apology accepted. Now, you enjoy your long talk with our mother as I rest. I need to head to the train depot tonight to find some company." She pulled the key from her collar as she released herself from the locked room. As she departed, a tear rolled down the face of the woman formerly known as Victoria Winters.
