Chapter 6 : Silent Scream
Something was eating at Barnabas Collins, and that made Willie Loomis very, very nervous. Whenever something bothered Barnabas, that usually meant trouble - for someone else.
No, it meant something worse than trouble.
It meant death.
Willie shifted anxiously on his feet and glanced at Barnabas out of the corner of his eye. He was standing by the large window in the drawing room, switching his gaze back and forth from outside of the Old House to Barnabas, who was sitting silently in his wing chair. Barnabas's face was expressionless, devoid of any emotion.
That was a look that Willie decided he liked even less than the one of quiet fury that Willie normally saw in its place.
I got a bad feelin'. A terrible feelin'. Somethin's gonna happen. I know it.
Willie tried to shrug off the feeling, or at least ignore it. It was familiar to him by now. He'd had that feeling so many times since he'd "met" Barnabas that he guessed that he ought to be plenty used to it, but it still managed to catch him off guard and upset him.
Barnabas hadn't said anything to make him suspect that something awful was being planned, but then, Willie didn't need Barnabas to actually say it. He could see it in his eyes - those cold, calculating eyes.
No Barnabas hadn't said a word about a plan. In fact, Barnabas hadn't said much at all for the past few nights.
His silence just added to Willie's rapidly growing anxiety and unrelenting fear.
Knowing what had happened to Barnabas on Eagle Hill sure didn't do much to alleviate his frayed nerves.
Willie hadn't asked Barnabas what happened when he'd returned from his walk in the cemetery with such a haunted, grief-stricken appearance that Willie's jaw would have fallen open if he hadn't had the good sense to keep it shut. He could just imagine how Barnabas would have reacted if he'd seen Willie standing there in the foyer gaping at him like a fish.
Willie shuddered and tossed the image from his mind, then vowed not to imagine what Barnabas would do to him if he wasn't careful.
That ain't helpin' my nerves.
He just happened to be passing by the closed door of Josette's room when he heard Barnabas speaking in a low, strangely hoarse voice to the portrait.
Willie didn't understand why Barnabas would talk to the portrait of Josette at first. It wasn't like he was actually talking to her. Then Willie remembered the times he talked to the memory of Maggie after she died, the pretty image he held of her inside of his mind. He figured he understood it better after that.
It was the only way Barnabas could communicate with her because she was dead. Just like Maggie was dead. The image, the memory of Maggie was all Willie had left. And all Barnabas had was the portrait.
Those incredibly rare moments when he understood even the smallest thing about Barnabas horrified him in some ways more than anything else ever could.
It was easier to separate Barnabas from normal human beings. Barnabas wasn't normal. He wasn't human. Humans didn't do the things that he did, or live in the horrible way that he had to.
Barnabas's words to the portrait confused him, made him curious despite the common sense that repeated the tired old phrase "curiosity killed the cat". When the following morning came and Barnabas returned to his coffin for the day, Willie set out for Eagle Hill cemetery. Once he was there, he found that what Barnabas had said was true.
Josette duPres's grave was gone.
How does somethin' like a grave just disappear? It's crazy, it don't make no sense. Nothin' makes sense anymore, though, does it, Willie? Your life's all screwed up, and you ain't got no one to blame but yourself!
Willie left the cemetery with a heavy feeling of dread that weighed down on him with each step he took back to the Old House. By the time he got inside, he'd felt ready to fall, to collapse. Give up. The life that he was forced to lead was crushing him underneath its weight.
Sometimes, when he was alone with just his thoughts, he wished someone would find out the truth about Barnabas, even if it meant he would be caught too. Then he wouldn't have to read articles in the paper about girls being attacked and he would be free.
Yeah, sure. Your mind would be free, Willie Loomis, but ya'd end up in jail. That ain't exactly freedom, now is it?
Still, he sometimes thought it would better, being in jail.
But then he always felt so guilty after thinking such things. He felt like he was betraying Barnabas. Barnabas was all he had now. Barnabas needed him. No matter how much he disgusted Barnabas, Barnabas relied on him. No one had ever relied on him before, not even Jason. He kind of liked that feeling, no matter how screwed up it was.
Willie told himself that it was just the control that Barnabas had over him. The power. That was why he couldn't get farther than the train station when he tried to run away, and why he felt so guilty when he wished Barnabas would be found out.
It wasn't like he cared, 'cause he didn't. How could he?
Barnabas was dead.
A cold, dead thing that he'd turned loose when he tried to get rich.
It's like that's my punishment or somethin', for every bad thing I've ever done in my life. I know the list's long, but why me? There's gotta be worse guys out there than me! Like Jason. He was just as bad as me, tryin' to blackmail Elizabeth Stoddard!
But Jason McGuire had already paid for his ways - with his life.
Willie could still remember Barnabas's hand reaching out from the coffin and clutching Jason's throat. The terror in Jason's eyes. It was all too familiar to him.
I told him, didn't I? I tried to warn him. But he didn't wanna listen to Willie Loomis. No one ever does…
Even though Jason hadn't always treat him right, he hadn't wanted to bury him. The man had been his friend, maybe not a good one, but the only one he'd ever had. He had spent a lot of time at Jason's side. In the moment that Jason's body hit the basement floor with a sickening thud, Willie had wished that Barnabas had just done the same to him that night in the mausoleum. He wished that he'd been killed like Jason.
Death was the only way he would ever be free.
But death was too good for Willie Loomis. He could serve the dead, but he couldn't die himself. And truth be told, he didn't really want to die. Death terrified him as much as Barnabas. He would forever associate death with being locked in a coffin, unable to move, tormented. It was Barnabas's fault.
He hated Barnabas. He did.
Willie angrily wiped at his eyes, told himself it was just the wind that drove the water into them. He told himself a lot of things these days. He had no one else to talk to, other than the times he'd talked to Maggie in his mind, so he figured he might as well talk to himself.
Once, there were other voices in his head, but he didn't talk to them. They never really talked to him. They just haunted him, wouldn't leave him alone. Maggie was crying to him, Jason was laughing at him and Barnabas was threatening him.
He had taken sleeping pills then, so he could shut them out. He'd ended up sleeping for most of the day and well into the night. Barnabas had been pissed when he found out and he did more than threaten.
Willie wouldn't even take aspirin anymore.
He sighed to himself and worriedly looked outside. The storm had finally let up. He was about to turn around and say something to Barnabas, anything to break the awful silence in the room, when he glimpsed a small flash of white amongst the overgrown bushes and trees.
The flash of a white dress.
The white dress of the odd little girl he'd seen playing in the woods over a week ago!
That little girl can't be playin' out there, not after that bad storm. I gotta be seein' things! But if I ain't, if she's really outside….Shouldn't I go out there and make sure she ain't hangin' around?
I have to, if I don't want Barnabas to see her…and I sure don't want that. That would be bad.
Really bad.
Willie glanced over his shoulder at Barnabas, relieved to see that Barnabas wasn't paying the least bit attention to him. He was still sitting in his chair, staring vacantly at the flames that flickered in the fireplace.
Willie opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. He figured he'd better not say anything and just take advantage of Barnabas's distraction to check for the girl. It was possible he hadn't really seen her, so it wasn't worth mentioning to Barnabas.
Barnabas would just get angry with him. And if he could avoid Barnabas getting angry with him, then Willie was all for it.
He crept as quietly as he could out of the drawing room and slipped out the front doors. It was cold due to the storm, but he didn't want to go back in to get his jacket and risk Barnabas noticing him wandering around. Barnabas would want to know what he was up to and then he'd have to tell him about seeing the girl. Barnabas wouldn't like knowing that the kid was still playing in the woods nearby.
There was somethin' about his reaction when I told him about her the last time…somethin' weird. There was somethin' in his expression. It was almost like me talkin' about the little girl upset him. But it ain't like that doesn't make sense. I mean, if she's spendin' too much time around the Old House then she could see somethin' she shouldn't. He doesn't want that. He's afraid of that.
That's probably all there is to it.
He walked nervously into the woods in the direction that he had seen the girl flee in, but he couldn't make out anything in the darkness. Mud caked on his shoes and his feet sank into the wet ground with each step he took. He wandered aimlessly in circles before he realized he'd been outside for at least fifteen minutes or more.
Which means Barnabas probably knows I'm gone by now. Better be headin' back.
"You don't have to be afraid. He doesn't know."
The small, shrill voice that came from behind him startled Willie so badly that he tripped and barely managed to keep from falling face first on the ground. Once he had regained his balance, he spun around with wild eyes. They widened in further surprise when he saw the source of the voice - the girl!
She stood not more than three feet away from him in her little white dress and bonnet, with her long hair showing no signs of the rain that had poured down all over Collinsport a half hour earlier.
He frowned at her words, confused and more than a little afraid.
Had he said his thoughts about Barnabas out loud?
"How do ya know that?" he asked her, assuming that he must have.
"I just do," she answered his question vaguely in that mysterious way of hers and shrugged as if it wasn't anything for him to get worked up over.
But he was doing just that - getting worked up. His heart had started to pound and his stomach tied itself into familiar, tangled knots of dread. He wished she would have just said that she had overheard him.
It has to be. She overheard me, that's all. She don't know Barnabas…how can she? She don't know who I'm talkin' about. She can't know…she just can't!
"Who do ya mean, when ya say 'he'?" Willie asked her, desperately trying to keep from getting too panicked, assuring himself over and over in his head that they weren't talking about the same person. That would be impossible. He had only seen her once and Barnabas had never seen her at all, so she couldn't know Barnabas.
It was that simple.
Except ya know nothin' is ever simple around here, Willie Loomis…
"What a silly question!" She giggled, then turned serious. "Won't you play with me? I had a friend who used to play with me, but she's gone now. I can't find her and I miss her. David doesn't always come and play with me. I get lonely."
Willie started to tell her that he couldn't play with her, that she shouldn't play in the woods anyway, especially so close to the Old House, then stopped. He'd told her that the last time he'd seen her and obviously she hadn't listened to him.
And he had an idea.
"I tell ya what," Willie gave her the best grin that he could muster under the circumstances. "If ya tell me the name of the person ya mentioned, I'll play with ya for awhile, what do ya say?"
Please say yes. I gotta find out what ya know. I gotta make sure ya don't know anything about Barnabas.
For your own sake and for mine…
She didn't say anything, instead she just stared. She folded her tiny arms and set her lips into a pout. Her wide, innocent eyes clouded and peered out at him through narrowed lids.
For a moment, as he waited for her reply, a strange feeling came over him. There was something about the way she was looking at him, something that made him uneasy. He realized that it was her eyes that caused that feeling.
There was something about her eyes…something familiar that made Willie feel colder than he had before. But then she smiled. The smile not only lit up her face, but brightened her eyes as well.
The feeling left him.
"You know who he is," she stated matter-of-factly. "You're funny, Willie."
"Hey, how do ya know my name?" Willie demanded, nearly hysterical as a result of what she'd said. "I never told ya my name!"
"I know lots of things," she informed him proudly, then frowned. "I even know some things I wish I didn't."
No…!
"What do ya know that ya wish ya didn't?"
What if she knows about Barnabas!
What am I gonna do? I'll be forced to tell Barnabas, I can't keep it from him. He'd know somethin' was wrong and I've already told him about seein' her the first time. But maybe….maybe he'd just think I'm imaginin' things.
Maybe I am imaginin' things. Maybe I'm goin' crazy, losin' my mind. Maybe she ain't really standin' there, maybe she ain't even real….maybe….
"I have to go, and you do too. He was thinking about her, but he knows you're gone now," she nodded in the direction of the Old House. "He'll come looking for you."
Willie wasn't thinking, if he had been, he wouldn't have done it. He wouldn't have turned around to glance fearfully back at the Old House. He would have kept his eyes on the little girl who knew far too much for someone her age.
Then she wouldn't have been able to disappear again.
But thinking before he acted wasn't something that Willie was very good at it, even after he thought he'd learned that lesson, so he turned around and when he turned back, the little girl was gone.
"Hey!" Willie cried out.
Just like before, she had vanished, like she'd never been there talking to him in the first place.
His first thought as he entered the Old House and walked tensely into the drawing room was that the girl had been wrong, that Barnabas hadn't realized that Willie had left. Barnabas wasn't pacing, or even standing by the window. He was still in his chair.
But his dark eyes were no longer vacant, or staring at the fire. They were staring straight at him, glittering dangerously.
"Where did you feel the need to go without informing me, Willie?"
Willie swallowed hard in an attempt to down his fear.
"I…I just went for a walk, Barnabas."
Barnabas rose from the chair in one smooth motion and circled him, studying him so intensely that Willie felt a tremor run through his body. He twisted his hands together to keep them from trembling.
"A walk, Willie…are you sure that was all you were doing?"
He cringed as he felt Barnabas move to stand directly behind him. He could feel those eyes, those damned eyes, staring at the back of his head. Staring right through him. Willie struggled to keep breathing.
Out and in, nice and slow.
"Well, yeah, Barnabas. I just needed to go out for a few minutes, get some air. That's all."
Out and in, nice and slow.
"You needed some air," Barnabas repeated. He made the words sound small and insignificant, pathetic even. Willie flinched. "Perhaps because you feel you should not have to suffer my presence, as I have to suffer yours."
Willie's eyes widened.
This ain't goin' good at all…
"Barnabas-" he stammered, struggling for the something he could say and failing to come up with anything that he could make sound believable. It didn't help that his heart was pounding so fast that it felt like it was about to burst out of his chest and the fear that he had been holding down was fighting to break free of his weak control.
He didn't want to tell Barnabas about the girl. If he told Barnabas and Barnabas believed him, she would be in danger because of him.
If Barnabas suspected that she knew his secret…knew what he was….
Would Barnabas kill her?
If he felt threatened enough, would he kill a harmless little kid?
He already knew the answer.
The knowledge made him sick. He felt like screaming. He knew that if he opened his mouth though, he wouldn't scream. He would just cry and beg. He would beg Barnabas not to hurt her and cry because he wouldn't be able to stop Barnabas if he decided to do just that.
"I do believe that you are lying to me, Willie."
"I'm not lyin'," he protested weakly, though he knew there was no way that Barnabas would believe him. Hell, he wouldn't have believed him himself.
"Willie…." Barnabas's voice took on a dangerous edge. "Willie, we have been over this before. Do you remember when I told you that you are never to lie to me? Do you recall our conversation?"
He nodded. He remembered the "conversation" very well.
He remembered the pain.
"Then perhaps you should not make the mistake of lying to me now?"
It was phrased like a question, but Willie knew it wasn't a question. It was an order. His breathing had become erratic. He forced himself to respond.
"Barnabas-"
He stopped short when he felt the cold hand grip his shoulder so tightly that it felt like the bone was going to shatter beneath its grip. He cried out in pain, but Barnabas didn't let go, he merely used his hold on Willie's shoulder to pull him savagely around.
Willie swallowed hard as he found himself face to face with Barnabas, whose eyes were narrowed into near slits and regarding him with absolute fury. He knew that if, if, he got another chance to answer, it would be the only one he would get before Barnabas would hurt him.
He should be used to it - Barnabas hurting him. But somehow he wasn't. Somehow, it still terrified him, still made him shake.
"It's just…I…I…" Willie began to stutter as the grip on his shoulder tightened even more than it already was. "I saw her again, Barnabas! Right outside! I didn't tell ya 'cause I didn't think ya'd believe me, but I had to check, I had to be sure. I went out to look for her and she was out there! The little girl!"
"The little girl," Barnabas sneered. The steel grip on Willie's shoulder eased, but the pain was still excruciating. Black spots marred his vision. He nodded weakly, defeated.
"She wanted me to play with her. She said she was lonely. But Barnabas, she…she…I think she knows somethin'…somethin' she shouldn't. She talked about secrets that she knew but wished she didn't." His voice dropped to a reluctant whisper. "And I think….I think she knows ya, Barnabas. I think she knows what ya are."
Willie sent a silent, useless apology to the innocent little girl whose life he had just endangered.
I'm sorry! I didn't want to, but I had to! I had to tell Barnabas, I can't keep nothin' from him! I'm sorry!
Barnabas let go of him completely and he stumbled back, but he managed to keep himself standing. All he really wanted to do was fall to the floor. His shoulder was throbbing and he found it took too much energy to try and stop his trembling, so he stood there, shaking uncontrollably.
"That is absurd," Barnabas hissed, more to himself than to Willie.
Willie didn't say anything, partly out of fear - well, mostly out of fear - and partly because he didn't know what to say. He didn't understand what was happening. He didn't understand how a grave that had been in the ground for over a hundred years could suddenly not exist anymore, or how a kid in a white dress could disappear so quickly right in front of him.
He watched as Barnabas paced the drawing room, then slowly lowered himself back into his chair. He pressed his hands together and twisted his black ring back and forth on his finger.
Willie had come to recognize it as a nervous gesture.
Strange, that gesture. Disconcerting. It was such a normal thing. It was the same as Willie constantly running his hands through his hair.
It was normal, but Barnabas wasn't.
Not at all.
"What…" Barnabas paused, and no matter how crazy it seemed, for a minute, Willie would have sworn that Barnabas was actually struggling for words. "Describe her to me, Willie."
Willie pictured the girl in his mind. It was pretty easy to do, since she didn't really look like any other kid he'd ever seen.
"She had long, straight hair. She was wearin' a dress, but it was kinda weird…old fashioned. I ain't seen any other little girls wearin' that kinda dress. She had a lace bonnet on her head and it seemed old fashioned like the dress."
"How old was she?" Barnabas asked him, in a low, quiet tone not at all like the cold, demanding one that he had used until then.
"I don't know, Barnabas, maybe around ten." Willie shrugged nervously.
"Ten…" Barnabas echoed softly, clearly affected by his description of the girl. He suddenly looked as tired as Willie felt. Willie's brow furrowed at Barnabas's reaction. At first he thought it was a trick of the candlelight, the sudden sadness that appeared out of nowhere on Barnabas's face.
"Barnabas, ya know her, don't ya?" Willie couldn't stop himself, the question flew out of his mouth before he remembered that keeping it closed was the better thing to do.
But Barnabas made no move to reprimand him. To Willie's surprise, he only uttered a single word, a name.
"Sarah."
Barnabas had whispered the name as though it were one of the most important names that anyone could have been given, like it was royalty. The only name that Barnabas had ever said like that before was Josette's. He rose from his chair and turned away from Willie, staring out into the night as if he expected the little girl to be just beyond the glass.
Just beyond his reach.
Instantly, Willie understood. He knew.
He knew because he remembered. He remembered the night Barnabas killed Jason, when he'd told Barnabas that Jason was his friend. He remembered when Barnabas had begun talking strangely, like he never had before, about caring for someone.
Willie at first hadn't believed that Barnabas could care about anyone, but when he listened to Barnabas's words, he had heard an emotion that he'd always thought was foreign to Barnabas. He'd heard true adoration. Not the kind that Barnabas had for Josette, but an innocent, pure devotion that Willie figured to be beyond him - beyond what Barnabas was.
He remembered after they had disposed of Jason's body in the secret room, when he'd seen the names carved into the walls of the mausoleum and made the connection that they had been Barnabas's family. He remembered reading the name of Sarah Collins and the date of her death and realizing that she had been the one Barnabas had been speaking of. The one he cared for.
His little sister, Sarah Collins, who had died in seventeen ninety-five.
I was talkin' to a ghost! Either that, or I'm finally takin' the plunge off the deep end…
But he knew he wasn't crazy. If he could just throw away the insanity of it for a moment, it almost made sense.
The old fashioned dress and shoes. The way she disappeared faster than she could have ran from him. The way she had pointed to the Old House when he'd asked where she lived.
She had lived here. Over a hundred years ago…
Her eyes had been so familiar and frightening to him because they belonged to another as well.
They belonged to Barnabas. She'd had his eyes.
Willie stood numbly in the middle of the drawing room and gazed openly at where Barnabas stood in front of the window, trying to reconcile the cute little girl with the cold, destructive being before him.
For the life of him, he couldn't. He just couldn't.
But he kept trying.
Within the rooms of Collinwood, there were those in peaceful slumber, but there was no peace for the young woman who called herself Josette. Her dreams were filled with distorted remnants of her forgotten memories, memories that were buried so deeply in her soul that she could not access them in her waking hours.
Death draped over the darkened room, a desolate unwavering shroud.
He lay in the bed before her, so very still. The silence was suffocating, stifling.
She could not breathe, for he no longer drew breath.
He had been her breath.
Her life.
He was gone.
All that was left was a hollow shell of pale skin and haggard features that betrayed every moment of misery that he had suffered in his last hours, and his promise. It echoed around her, around the shattered fragments that had once been her heart. It revived her dying soul with its faint shard of hope.
"I will come back for you, Josette. I will come back."
She would hold on to that small piece of hope and pray that it would not desert her. Destroy her.
She would mourn him, but she would await his return. She would weep with tears of sorrow, then cry tears of joy when she was in his arms again.
He kept his promise. He returned in a world of ominous twilight and invited her to cross the threshold into that world, to take his hand and exist eternally with him.
His death had not been the end.
Her death had been the end.
He had kept his promise.
She had broken hers.
The hem of the white lace dress she was wearing brushed against the ground, which was cold and hard beneath her feet. The wind wrapped around her, warning her away from the towering, forsaken white edifice that shimmered in the moonlight, and still she neared it. It beckoned to her.
He beckoned to her.
The wind howled in protest, formed the shapes of those that would stop her. Those who did not want her to reach the old mansion. Reach him.
A man with a face swathed in bandages and pained eyes that peered out from them. He called to her, called her his wife. He begged her to turn, to run away.
A woman with blonde ringlets and startlingly clear blue eyes taunted her, laughed cruelly as she passed.
A little girl stood on the front steps of the large portico. She smiled at her and pointed to the doors that would lead her to him. "He's waiting for you."
She walked to the doors and placed one hand on the wood. She gazed over her shoulder and saw them staring at her.
She knew those people. They had been a part of her life, before it had been torn violently asunder.
She turned their back on them.
The doors groaned as she slipped through them. She closed them resolutely behind her before facing her final journey. Slowly, she climbed the stairs, ignoring the damp chill that permeated the air, the malevolence that lay within the veneer of sorrow.
The curse buried in the shadows.
With each step, she drew closer to him. She could feel his essence within the walls surrounding her. The house was saturated with it. She knew where she would find him. She knew where he would be.
Her room.
The one that he had made for her. The one that she had slept in when she still believed that they would be husband and wife, and live a happy, fulfilled life together. They would never live that life, but they could be together. All she had to do was open the door to her room and step into his welcoming arms. He would forgive her for leaving him because she had returned, and they would never be separated again.
He was standing by the foot of her bed, his black cloak spilling sinuously to the floor. He held out his hand to her, and his onyx ring gleamed in the muted candlelight.
They were a portrait of contrast as they faced each other. His hands were cold, her own were warm. The satin of her dress brushed against the velvet of his cloak as he swept her into his arms, light brushed against dark.
One would eclipse the other.
The light would destroy him.
The dark would be her death.
He lowered his lips to her throat, caressed her heated skin with his icy fingertips, and smothered her scream with his love.
