"The Future That Never Was"

Part Two

Joe Haskell's slippers crossed over from a solid floor to the crunchy loam of a forest. Darkness swept over him suddenly like entering a movie theater in the afternoon. Here, it was early morning and not yet bright. In the distance, a rooster crowed cock-a-doodle-doo. Clouds turned the sunrise into a watercolor smear of scarlet and rouge. Red sky at morning, sailor take warning. Joe inhaled deeply of the mixed scent of birch, pine, and ash trees. The air smelled cleaner than anything he had ever known.

Nathan was nowhere around.

Joe was alone.

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dim of the forest shade, he managed to look around and get his bearings. Through the trees, he could see the majestic white columns and Grecian temple roof of the old house at Collinwood. He knew the place well. Who in the area didn't?

Luck had deposited him at the rear of the house. To the left, horse stables and an L-shaped barn were hulking shapes of eerie silence. To the right, a cluster of cottages like a miniature colonial village had to be the servants' quarters. No signs of life showed anywhere. The house and its outbuildings were utterly deserted.

Farther away, through the trees, Joe saw the blink of a lantern. Someone approached from the forest path that led up to the main house on the hill. Enough candlelight shined on the man's chest and face, that even in the gloom of the forest, Joe could recognize him. Barnabas Collins, coming home after a long night out.

Joe burst into a sprinting jog. Avoiding the man, he circled around the house in the opposite direction from where Barnabas approached.

They both arrived at the front of the house at roughly the same time. Joe ducked back and crouched in the hedges to watch. Good, he hasn't seen me.

Barnabas carried a flat wooden box under his arm. He wore a full length black cape. If it weren't for the glass lantern he carried, he would be nearly invisible.

As Barnabas approached the front door, his pace lagged. Wherever he had just been, and whatever he had been doing in the night, it weighed his shoulders down into a slump. Joe looked at him curiously. All he carried was a wooden case a little larger than a cigar box; nothing could be inside that was too heavy. The lantern's wire handle squeaked. He loudly huffed to blow out the candle.

Angelique's voice greeted him at the front door. Joe felt a chill at her melodic sweetness. Of all the memories he carried—the scent of her skin, the sharpness of her fangs, the color of her eyes—he had forgotten the sound of her voice. To hear it again was like playing an old scratched-up forty-five. Once more, he recalled her spectral summons echoing in his mind. Come to me, Joe. Come to me.

He slipped a hand into the pocket of his robe. The packet of cardboard matches felt real and solid. His breathing came in rapid pants. Vapors swirled in front of his face. No choice, he told himself. He had come too far to back out now. Nathan was counting on him.

Joe crept up the red-brick stairs. Cold wind stirred crackling dry leaves on the patio. The window glowed a soft amber, and he felt himself attracted to it. Not the same windows that he knew in the 20th century, these panes of glass were hand poured. Murky, rippled, like being underwater and looking up at people outside the swimming pool.

Angelique was a smear of vivid turquoise and corn-blonde hair. Barnabas was a blurry shape of brown and ivory. They were arguing with each other. Their voices overlapping vibrated in the glass.

Joe went to the front door. Unlocked, he easily pushed it open. He entered unseen.

Unlike the house he knew, almost two hundred years in the future, this house was still in prime condition. The wallpaper was fresh; the mirrors were polished; the Persian rugs were not faded; the brass candelabras gleamed like solid gold. The wooden banister shined from having recently been polished with lemon oil.

From behind, he saw the flowing pleats of Angelique's turquoise negligee. She stood with her back to him, unaware of his presence, at the rose quartz columns separating the foyer and the parlor. Joe could not see into the parlor from this angle, but from the position of his voice he could imagine Barnabas standing near the fireplace.

Barnabas said, "What are you doing with Sarah's doll?"

Angelique answered, "Do you remember when Sarah was very ill? She had a terrible pain here in her shoulder."

"Stop it Angelique!"

"And another one... here in her chest."

"Give me that doll!" Barnabas shouted.

"Stay away from me," she shrieked. "This pin is aimed at her heart if you come any closer."

"Please, Angelique." He softened his shout to a gentle lover's tone. "I'll do anything you want me to do, but please, remove those pins!"

"No, I don't believe you anymore!"

Joe looked to the standing coat rack. Barnabas's walking cane hung there on a hook—the same die-cast wolf's head on an ebony shaft that Joe had seen Barnabas Collins carry in the future. A family heirloom, he had explained, like the signet ring he wore. What a lying son of a bitch. And we believed him, because the truth is so ridiculous.

Barnabas said, "I promise you, I will not leave Collinwood."

"Oh, you would leave immediately if you had no reason to stay here. And I am making certain that you have that reason!"

"I'm telling you," Barnabas said, rapidly losing the tenderness. "If you do anything to harm Sarah, I'll..."

"You'll do nothing," Angelique said. "As long as she is on the brink of death."

"Brink of death?" he cried.

Joe carefully, quietly lifted the walking cane off the coat rack. He still wore his hospital slippers. He sneaked closer and closer to where she stood at the dividing archway that opened into the parlor.

"She will not die unless you deceive me again." Angelique's tone was firmly in command like a queen pronouncing judgment. "But she will come close. Very close!"

Joe held very still, waiting to see what he expected to happen next just as Nathan had explained it. The flintlock pistol did not have bullets; it held a round lead ball. The pistol's barrel was a smooth flute, not rifled. When it fired its projectile, the miniature cannon ball could spin off in any direction. Barnabas could not guarantee hitting her heart, even though he aimed from eight feet away. The pistol was loaded with a single shot. One shot, and he would need to reload with sprinkling in loose gunpowder, packing it down, and dropping in another musket ball. There would not be time to lock and load. Angelique would survive the shot. Wounded but alive, she would curse him into being a vampire at any moment, now.

Joe saw a fiery flash beyond Angelique's shoulder. Poof—a sound like a small roman candle going off. Smoke plumes rose to the crystal chandelier. A strong stench of burning chalk wafted in the room.

Angelique took the hit from the pistol. She was thrown back against the wall. Arms limp, her whole body like a rag doll, she slid down to a strangely graceful pose sitting on the floor.

Barnabas rushed to her side but not to offer aid to the wounded witch. Instead, he worked at plucking hat pins out of what looked like a voodoo doll.

Angelique was huffing in effort to speak. "You didn't do the job well enough, Barnabas. I'm not dead yet. While I can still breathe, I will have my revenge."

Barnabas stood up and seemed helpless, almost spell bound in his attentiveness to waiting for her next words.

Joe gripped the cane's shaft like a baseball bat. He stepped forward and started swinging. Smack, he clonked the metallic wolf's head into her temple. It connected like a home run. Again and again, he whacked her skull. Droplets of blood squirted on the wall.

"Nathan!" Barnabas cried out. "What are you doing?"

She fell over sprawled on her back. Joe dropped to straddle over her waist. He used the shaft of the cane to press down on her throat. He kept pushing, leaning his whole weight into the floor, and did not let up. Die, witch, die!

Barnabas gripped him at the shoulder, seizing a handful of his terrycloth robe. "That's enough. Stop it, Nathan. Stop it."

Arms trembling, he stared down at her dull unfocused eyes. Her lips faded to gray. Her cheeks sprouted purplish spiderweb veins. He spared one hand to grope her chest. Through the blood-soaked silk negligee he searched for a heartbeat.

Barnabas dropped to his knees beside her shoulder. Incredibly, he stroked her blonde curls away from her bloody forehead. "Nathan, what have you done?" His voice choked up; he sounded ready to cry.

"I killed her, like you were trying to do." Joe at last released his grip on the cane. He settled his weight on his hips, sitting full onto her flat belly.

"Why, why Nathan, why? How could you be so brutal?"

"Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you!"

Barnabas blinked as if Joe had slapped his face. "What?"

"Didn't you hear what she was saying? Angelique was about to put a curse on you, Barnabas. I just saved your ass."

"But—"

"No 'buts'. She was a witch, right?"

"Yes." Barnabas with trembling fingers pressed her eyelids closed.

"Okay, then. We've got work to do. Pick up that side. I'll get her feet."

"Why?"

Joe said, "We're going to bury her outside and clean up this mess."

Barnabas slipped his hands under her armpits. Joe scooted back so he could grab her legs. One-two, they hoisted her body off the floor. Barnabas swayed in place, and his pale face turned a shade whiter. He looked ready to throw up.

"Hey!" Joe barked to get his attention. "Don't look at her. Keep your eyes on me. It's gonna be okay."

Barnabas wobbled on his feet. He made eye contact with Joe for the first time. It was the same face Joe knew in the future—the same lean features and aquiline nose, but with an expression of vulnerability that he could only describe as human. What fools we were, not to know the difference between a living man and an undead one.

"It's going to be okay," Joe repeated.

"What does that mean, oh-kay?"

"Do as I say, and you won't have to be afraid anymore."

Joe had to walk backwards carrying her legs. He guided Barnabas along the hallway under the staircase, to the rear of the house. They passed through the kitchen with a big brick fireplace and copper kettles.

They lugged her down the back steps outside. On the sandy path, they had space to walk sideways. They carried her slung in between like a loaded fishing net. The middle of her sagged low to the ground. Her gauzy negligee dragged in the weeds.

They did not need to go far to reach the shadowy hulks of empty stables and the L-shaped barn.

"Put her down," Joe said, dropping her legs carelessly like a load of firewood.

Barnabas kneeled with her and gently arranged her limbs in the dew-moistened grass. He folded her arms across her belly. Once more, he made sure her eyelids were closed. He tugged the drape of her negligee to modestly cover her legs.

Joe hopped a few quick steps to the nearest horse stall. He grabbed a shovel and hurried to return.

Barnabas was still kneeling over her, the tails of his Paul Revere coat spread out behind him like a duck's wings. "All the terrible things she did, it was because she loved me. Perhaps if I had been more gentle in the way I rejected her."

"Forget about it." Joe grabbed him by the elbow and hoisted him to his feet. "Go in the house. Get a sack of salt and a bottle of liquor—sherry, rum, port, whatever you've got handy."

"Why?"

Joe pushed him. "Just do it!"

Confused, but too dazed to object, Barnabas staggered off to the house.

Joe raised the shovel. He stepped on the spade and pushed it, hard, into the soft earth. From time to time, he glanced sideways at the bloodied body of the blonde in the turquoise negligee. He kept digging and hoped she would stay dead long enough for him to finish her grave.

##

Barnabas returned with a burlap sack in one hand and a crystal decanter in the other. He stopped near her feet, reluctant to come any closer. His expression contorted with a mixture of grief, fascination and revulsion—the way people watched scenes of war on the evening news.

"Nathan, I still don't understand why you're here or why you did this."

The ditch was deep enough. Joe jammed the shovel upright into the soft earth. "She would've cursed you to be a vampire."

"What... what is a vampire?" Barnabas asked.

Joe glanced aside to him, for a moment, and reminded himself that he was almost two hundred years in the past. Before the first Dracula book. Before the movies. Perhaps somewhere in the world, the peasants telling ghost stories by campfire knew of all kinds of monsters. But here in a small backwoods town in Maine, in 1795, the word vampire had never been spoken.

"It means you'd be dead but you wouldn't stay dead. Every night, you would arise out of your coffin and feel an insatiable craving to drink human blood."

"That is utterly absurd," Barnabas said. "I don't believe it."

Joe returned his attention to the work at hand. On his knees, he pushed at the corpse. Angelique's body rolled over into the shallow grave.

"It's true."

"Why are you saying these things? How did you come to this knowledge?"

Joe straightened upright. He smeared his soiled and bloody hands on the terrycloth robe. Even so, without soap and water, his palms did not get clean.

"Because I'm not Nathan Forbes. I'm a time-traveler from the future."

"That's even more absurd," Barnabas said.

Joe first reached for the burlap sack and Barnabas surrendered his hold on it. A couple of quick tugs loosened the drawstring. He turned the sack upside-down and poured a good five pounds of gravelly rock salt onto her body.

"Okay, you believed she was a witch, didn't you?"

"Too late, I came to that understanding." Barnabas lowered his head in a moment of silence.

"No, it's not too late. Believe me, man, whatever damage she's done up to now, it coulda been a hell of a lot worse."

He tossed the empty burlap sack to the side, then reached for the crystal decanter. Barnabas handed it over. Joe plucked out the glass cork. One-handed, he tipped the twinkling bottle and poured out the whole thing. The perfume of sweet sherry wafted in the air.

"If I didn't come back and stop Angelique's curse," Joe continued. "You would be turning into a vampire right now. You'd be like a rabid animal prowling by night. Your list of victims is longer than a school's roster. You'll murder strangers and drain their blood. You'll even kill your friends like Nathan Forbes."

"I can't believe it. Why would I murder Nathan?"

"Because that's what vampires do. They kill."

Joe got the book of cardboard matches out of his pocket. He peeled off one and folded the matchbook cover backwards. He pinched the tip of the match against the coarse strip and yanked it. The match tip flared.

Barnabas drew in a sharp breath. "Are you a warlock?"

"Hell no. I told you, I'm from the future. This isn't magic. It's chemistry."

Joe lit the whole matchbook on fire. It blazed off the edge of his fingertips. Then he tossed it into the shallow grave. It ignited the sherry. Fire greedily tore into her filmy negligee and quickly spread. Soon the whole pit filled with a swirling mass of white and yellow flame.

Joe Haskell and Barnabas Collins stood at the edge of the shallow grave to watch Angelique's corpse burning. Morning shined above, but not as brightly as the orange light glowing to the underside of their faces.

"She's destroyed," Joe said. "Really and truly destroyed. You never heard the word vampire before now, and so help me, you will never hear it again. You can marry Josette as you were meant to do. Have a ton of children. Live a happy, boring life. Grow old and die in your own good time. Stay dead and rest in peace."

The fire started to die down. Smoke billowed out of the layer of ashes.

"I don't even know your name, sir." Barnabas turned away and took hold of the shovel's handle.

"My name is Joe Haskell."

"Joe... You mean, Joseph?"

"That's right." He stood back and watched Barnabas start the work of shoveling dirt into the pit. Scoop by scoop, the gentleman covered the grisly evidence of what had occurred.

I did it, Nate, he thought, with a twinge of sadness that his friend—who was still alive—would never know. You've got your second chance. I hope you use it wisely, as you said you would. Turn over a new leaf. Be kind to that Collins girl and her little brother.

Joe heard a rustling stir in the bushes. As Barnabas continued to shovel dirt, he looked aside.

In the trees was the face of a teenaged boy. He had sandy blond hair and the family resemblance of the Collins family. It had to be the little brother of Nathan's fiancee.

The boy's expression was blank, eyes big with the horror of what he witnessed. He had seen it all.

"Oh crap," Joe muttered. "You poor kid."

Dawn's light poured a rosy veil over Joe's eyes. Colors darkened to gray. A chilling breeze stirred all around where he stood, or perhaps he was falling from a great height—it felt the same either way.

##

Joe Haskell awakens in his own apartment. Maggie is in the kitchenette making coffee. His thoughts are sluggish which he blames on having one too many beers at the Blue Whale last night. He feels contented at the same time he is uneasy, waking up from a bad dream that he can't remember. He smells fire and almost panics. Then he realizes it's just Maggie frying some bacon on the stove. A tickle of worry nags the back of his mind. There is something important that he's supposed to be doing but can't recall what it could be. If it's really important, it'll come back to me.

Maggie calls out, "Hey, lazy bones, get up or you'll be late for the office!"

"Okay." He sits up in bed. For a second, he thinks of the number eight.

THE END