Josette's treatments began the same week as Carolyn's reappearance. The initial stages involved only minor injections,
Stokes's primary objective during these fragile first steps to monitor her reactions to the new serum pumping through
her veins.
So far, she hadn't any negative reaction. On the other hand, she apparently lacked any sort of reaction, which irked and
frustrated the impatient Josette. However, Stokes was relieved during the first week: had she been showing any
changes, it would have been too soon, too rapid, and he had a vague idea what would happen if the serum started
working all at once too quickly, and it wasn't exactly a cheerful picture.
He did not reveal this possibility to his patient.
A week after the first set of treatments, Willie as always was on hand before sunset to help Stokes set up the tests he
was to administer once Josette awoke.
Stokes observed Josette's servant closely as Willie wiped down a table for Stokes's more delicate equipment. Willie,
Stokes knew, was connected to Josette in ways the professor could only imagine; a blood pact that tied the reluctant
Loomis to the woman as a blindly obedient slave.
To be that close to Josette, yet to hate it, was intriguing to Stokes, though he could scarcely admit such a thought to
himself. However, he couldn't help his curiosity.
"You've had a hard time of it, haven't you, Willie?" The younger man started at the inquiry. Usually the professor was too
engrossed in his work to acknowledge Willie outside of giving directions or a few perfunctory civilities. Even now he
threw out his question in an offhand manner, not bothering to look up from the tubes he was pouring various smoking
liquids into.
Willie couldn't know how frighteningly aware Stokes was at all times beneath his blandly fatigued façade.
Willie cleared his throat awkwardly before answering. "You mean, me bein' Josette's…helper and all? Um, erm, I, I
guess so. Yeah, it ain't been real easy." He was unsure how much he should confide in Stokes, unsure of the
professor's true motives in this unique situation.
Stokes was no help, providing no emotional cues. His only reaction was a raised eyebrow as his eyes still focused on
the mixed liquids in the tube he busied himself tapping. However, as tired and uninterested as his voice was, his next
words were still personal, still probing. "How do you feel about your mistress, Willie? Do you hate her, pity her? Feel
strangely enthralled by her?"
Maybe it was that very lack of scrutiny in his questions that put Willie more at ease, or maybe the pure psychological relief
for Willie of not having to hide who he was now, who she was—either way, Willie felt himself suddenly anxious to
unburden himself. He twisted the washrag in his hands as his tongue loosened.
"Some, sometimes it's all three. Sometimes it's like she's three different people. Sometimes she's horrible, just awful,
more like an animal then a person. When she's like that she's unbearable, like she almost enjoys hurting people. Other
times she's—she's so sad, you know? So lost in this kind of…kind of…."
"Gloom?" Stokes softly interjected. Willie didn't notice the mist in the other man's voice.
"Yeah! Yeah, kind of in a gloom, or in some depressed sort of trance. Then that's when I really feel sorry for her. I…I ain't
sure how she turned into…." He swallowed. "Into what she is right now, but I can guarantee she didn't ask for it. And
yeah…sometimes…sometimes she seems so…so sweet and gentle, that I can't help but kind of like her." He shrugged,
a little abashed at all he'd just revealed. "So, yeah. I guess I kinda run the gamut toward how I feel about her."
Too busy staring at his feet, Wille couldn't see how during his description of her character Stokes' expression grew
darkly melancholy, his eyes wandering away from the precious fluid in the test tube.
The professor cleared his own throat as he addressed Willie again. "I can sympathize with your predicament, Willie.
You're good to stand by her. As I said, it can't have been easy for you. I know you lost a friend, a Jason McGuire, correct?"
Willie's voice was distant, muffled. "Yeah. Jason."
Stokes' curiosity turned strangely morbid. "You were even forced to bury him, weren't you?"
For the first time he looked at Willie. The man's head was down. Stokes could barely make out his tremulous, "Yeah.
Took him to an abandoned spot on the outskirts of Eagle Hill, by the One-Way sign on the road. Couldn't even mark the
grave properly. I just grabbed a big rock and stuck it there…so he'd have…have something. He…he was a good guy, in a
way."
He was surprised when Stokes laid a hand on his shoulder, a familiar gesture out of character for the usually
supercilious man of science. "Hopefully your suffering won't go on much longer, Willie. Soon, God willing, both you and
Miss DuPres will be free again."
Thankfully for the sake of the treatments and Josette's peace of mind, the injections began rapidly taking effect over the
next two weeks.
The return of warmth into her veins, red into her too-porcelain white cheeks, that faint flutter in her chest, worked magic
upon her character.
The terrorizing animal that would lash out from within her that Willie spoke of with such dread receded almost entirely. In
its place a charming, youthful girl of twenty tentatively stepped just outside the shadows, yearning for life, real life again.
Each night after the treatments, a wild giddiness would seize her. She'd happily take Stokes's hand in her formerly ice cold
one, now pulsating with heat, and invite him out of the basement into the Old House's sumptuous dining room.
For soon after the injections hunger and thirst slowly returned to Josette; a hunger and thirst for normal, earthy, human
food. While these cravings did not supplant her need for blood, it was enough to mark her progress as splendid, and
she was eager to satisfy herself. Willie soon added chef to his resume, and Josette delighted in treating Stokes as her
honored guest, sharing bottles of imported wine that had been stashed away along with the Collins family fortune
hidden behind the basement walls two centuries ago.
She came to admire and trust Stokes, respecting his intelligence not just where science was concerned—an arena that
had always left Josette a trifle baffled—but in culture and history as well. Not grasping the depths of how strong his
hypnosis on Carolyn was, Josette did not want to risk resuming her friendship with the young woman quite yet for fear of
triggering her memory; therefore, Josette started relying on Stokes, who knew her secret, to fill her in on events that had
passed while she slept in her coffin before her liberation.
For Stokes, these moments were some of the richest, happiest in his life.
Eliot Stokes was born and bred a scholar. He had dabbled in casual relationships in his youth with bookish young
women working in his various fields of study, yet always there was something lacking. And when he felt that lack, he
would quietly turn away from the woman to his studies. His obsession with the possibilities of curing ancient
superstitions though science, and solving the riddles of history through his own testable methods, satisfied him enough.
Satisfied him, but never set him aflame. He had allowed very little into his life that was not related to his academic
interests: science, history, the occult.
And now he had met a woman who embodied all these areas of intellectual pursuit, embodied them in a shroud of
grace, beauty, and a mystifying and intense charm, a haunted, hunted air hovering over her delicate features and deep
eyes.
He was under her thrall, but unlike Willie, he was all too willing to be there.
At the end of the third week of her treatments, Josette prettily toasted the professor, her crystalline laughter and dreamy
smile causing the older man to breathe heavily as he took her in.
"Professor," she said sweetly, "I cannot thank you enough, dear man. I feel a new woman! A completely new woman!"
She threw her head back recklessly, her laughter bordering on the hysterical side of happiness; yet it was so artlessly
youthful Stokes deliberately took no notice.
"You've been a most delightful patient, Madame," he returned graciously, watching her closely over his glass of Pinot
Blanc.
She whipped forward suddenly in her seat, and his breath caught as her warm little hand found his. Josette's voice was
breathless and quick. "Professor, how long do you think until I can see the sunrise?"
Stokes thought a moment, calculating in his mind. "Difficult to say, Josette. Your progress has been most remarkable,
better than anything I anticipated."
"So it will be soon?" She couldn't keep the high, eager note out of her voice.
"We wouldn't want to move things along too hastily." Seeing a vague puzzled look cross her face, he quickly added, "It's
best in these situations, of course, to keep on a strict schedule."
"Pooh," she pouted, leaning back.
He chuckled. "You are charming even when sulking, my dear. But as I said, your progress is wonderful. I doubt you will
have to wait too long till you see the day again."
He almost melted at the tender countenance staring back at him. "If not for you, I would never even dream of seeing the
sun again. You remarkable, remarkable man." Seemingly in some sort of gentle trance, she stood and informed him
she would be back in a moment. She glided into the drawing room. Her heard her footsteps disappear downstairs into
the basement.
She returned with a great relic: a long, sturdy black cane with a brilliant wolf's head made of silver that curved into a
handle.
Josette stared at it reverentially, holding it up in both hands as a devotee does a sacred sacrifice to its pagan god.
After taking in its craftsmanship, Josette stroked it lovingly as she spoke. "This once belonged to someone I loved
beyond the power of words to express, Professor." Her low, sleepy voice almost put Stokes himself in a trance.
"Someone I lost long ago. I have kept it beside me in my coffin all these years, slept with it each day even after Willie
freed me." She lifted her eyes to the window, where the horizon stretched before her in inky blackness. "The day I see the
sun rise over the sea again, is the day I present this cane to the one I love now."
She locked melancholy yet somehow ecstatic eyes on the professor, her smile achingly lovely.
Stokes alternated staring greedily at the cane and her, reflecting her ecstasy in his own pounding heart.
To Elizabeth's quiet dismay, Paul and Carolyn grew only closer in their mutual trauma-induced amnesia. Thanks to
Carolyn's constant entreaties, Elizabeth eventually reached a tentative peace with her truant husband while he stayed
under her roof, just lenient enough to allow Paul time alone with his daughter.
Paul observed his girl closely. He was, to be expected, doubly protective of her now. But also he could not let go of his
obsession with the faint but—to his mind—vital images of Willie that drifted through his memory whenever he thought of
Carolyn and her disappearance.
Yet Carolyn showed no fright, no shadow of uncertainty when the handyman was mentioned.
However—
There was a moment.
A moment when Elizabeth, Barnabas, or someone happened to mention Josette's name.
And under Paul's quick eyes he saw the briefest shudder wrack her frame, her face go white. Then it was gone. But it
was enough.
More images sped around him. Josette. Willie. The Old House.
One or all of them were implicated in this somehow.
And so Paul ruminated.
Yet on one brisk day as they walked back from another impromptu shopping binge, Paul and Carolyn were laughing
together—a sound neither of them had hoped to ever hear from the other again.
Paul was regaling Carolyn with old town gossip from when he had been a resident in Collinsport. Carolyn spoke through
her laughter as they entered Collins ground. "You really mean to say the bartender didn't even see the sailor drinking
from the tap?"
" 'Course not! They were both drunk!"
A meek, hopeful, "H-hi, Carolyn," interrupted their laughter. "Mr. Stoddard."
Paul stiffened and he slit his eyes at the young man before them, whose hands were stuffed rigidly in the pockets of his
leather jacket as he stared fondly at Carolyn.
Her smile was wide and welcoming. "Hi, Willie! What brings you out here?"
He shrugged as Paul inwardly raged at the tender eyes roving over Carolyn's face. "N-nothin'. Just, just figured I might
come out for a walk since Josette ain't got nothin' for me to do right now." He shuffled his feet as he cleared his throat,
glancing toward Collinwood. "B-Barnabas, he, he told me you were shopping, and so I thought I might come out and
meet you to…." He swallowed. Then he braced himself and looked at her once more. "To see how you're doing now that
you're back."
Carolyn's expression was so invitingly gentle, obviously touched at his concern, that Willie trembled where he stood. But
a sharp bark to her left dispelled any romantic illusion.
"Dammit, Loomis, what business is it of yours? You might fool them, but you don't fool me! You haven't changed. Stay the
hell away from my daughter and get back to the Old House."
Paul's fierce look brooked no room for argument.
Willie paled. He looked sadly at Carolyn. Then with hunched shoulders he slunk away down the path.
Carolyn turned perplexed to her father, mouth agape. She punched him in the shoulder, cross. "Jeez, Dad! What the hell
was that? Willie happened to save my life, remember?"
Grinding his teeth, Paul answered, "I wouldn't be so sure." Unconsciously, he fingered a paper folded deep in his coat
pocket, taken from a much bigger stack.
He didn't know what made him hold onto the old manuscript, but nonetheless the eerie lettering "INCANTATION TO
DESTROY JOSETTE DUPRES" burned into his fingertips as his eyes followed Willie's retreating form down the hill.
At last the day came, five weeks after the first injection, when Josette saw the sun rise over the calm sea.
Stokes and Willie waited with bated breath as dawn approached, both men watching her warily.
She stood straight and still, her back to them, never looking away from that distant point on the horizon. She waited,
waited, waited for the first rays of light to touch the sky.
Seeing her thus was like gazing at a statue. Yet she was very much alive, very much impatient to prove that she was
alive.
And the first rays came. They bathed her face in warmth, and she breathed them in, leaning her head back, eyes closed
and soft lips parted.
She had never looked so beautiful.
When Stokes and Willie could recover from the sight of her unearthly beauty highlighted by golden sunlight, they huddled
around her, checking her pulse, bombarding her with questions, monitoring her reactions.
At last Josette lazily opened her eyes, her expression unfathomable as she gazed at the professor.
"I am almost free," she whispered through smiling lips.
Yet Stokes was protective. He waited another three days before allowing her outside, keeping her under close
observation.
She never complained.
On the fourth day, a Saturday, she surprised Barnabas Collins by calling on him on a briskly chilly but still sunny
afternoon. Her face more wild and joyful than he'd ever seen, she invited him for a walk on the beach.
He watched her with happy confusion as she reveled in the sand beneath her bare feet, her slippers in the hand not
looped through Barnabas's arm.
"I've never seen you so well, Josette," he said.
"I've never felt so well, Barnabas!" She laughed and kissed him on the cheek, squeezing his arm as she rested her head
on his shoulder. "Never felt so free, so bold."
"I hope you never feel any other way." He kissed her on the top of the head. "Any particular reason for such glee, little
fellow?"
She shrugged carelessly. "Just happy I could get away for the day and see you, beloved man."
Her answer immediately warmed him to the core. "You know, I do believe things have taken a turn for the better around
here, I really do. First we get Carolyn back safe and sound, and now it seems her attacker has ceased its aggressions in
the area." He pulled her close to him, rubbing her back. "Let's hope it stays that way."
He was perplexed at the eerie vehemence in his love's voice. "It will. It has to. I'm sure of it." She stared ahead with hard
eyes.
Eager to keep her in her happy mood, he readily agreed. "Yes. Yes, it has to."
He stopped her then, taking her hands in his. "My dear, what with our mutual reticence and the awful recent events, you
and I haven't had a real chance to talk…well, to talk about us. After nearly losing Carolyn I've come to appreciate more the
people in my life." He tilted her chin back so that he could stare directly into those mesmerizing eyes. "I simply wanted to
let you know how much I cherish you, love you. Believe me, Josette, when I say that will never change. Never."
She shivered in his hold, soaking in the words coming out of that rich velvety voice. She felt hot tears sting her eyes, and
she was bursting with happiness.
"I feel the same, my darling," she was just able to whisper. Then quickly shifting moods again, she squeezed his hand
and pulled it toward the grass. "Come! I have something I want to give you!"
Laughing girlishly, she pulled the questioning Barnabas to the Old House, pertly hushing his queries. "Wait a moment,
nosy, and you will see!"
She left him standing cheerfully nonplussed on the Old House's wide porch as she rushed inside.
Returning, she held her hands coyly behind her back. Her eyes were bright pinpoints focused on her paramour. "I found
it while cleaning downstairs recently. I am giving it to you."
Barnabas gasped at what she presented to him, recognizing it instantly from descriptions in the Collins family papers
and the original Josette's journal. "My namesake's walking stick!"
He held the cane to the sun, inspecting it with shocked admiration as the light glinted off the wolf's shining head.
"Brilliant! It's absolutely brilliant! Oh, Josette, you have no idea how I used to pretend I was the original Barnabas when I
was little, and how urgently I wanted this stick." His smile faded as a glazed look entered his eyes. "Strange," he
whispered, "I…I honestly feel like I've held this before." He blinked, returning from whatever distant place he had
stumbled into. He suddenly pulled her to him in a fierce kiss. "I shall never let it leave my side. Never."
"Nor shall I," Josette answered.
They kissed again.
From far down the path, unseen by the couple, Eliot Stokes halted.
He saw Josette in Barnabas's embrace. He saw the kiss.
But what he saw most of all was the cane in Barnabas's hand. The tutor gripped it as naturally if it were simply an
extension of his hand, as if it truly belonged there, as if he had held it many, many times before.
What once was warm and new but a few hours ago in Stokes's chest turned cold and dark and old as sin.
Late into the same night, Jason McGuire's body lay still buried beneath the ground outside Eagle Hill cemetery, by an
abandoned road near a One-Way sign. The air was thick there and unpleasantly murky, the ground unsteady, the grass
yellow and dry.
Stokes's footsteps were leaden, slow, and decided as he approached the spot Willie had described to him. He found the
telltale rock.
His face was as grave and cold as Jason's makeshift tombstone.
Stokes held in his hand a thick book that looked no younger than the earth on which he stood.
He methodically opened the pages and stopped at a section in the middle.
The language he read out in his sonorous baritone was not unlike that written in the manuscript discovered by Paul
Stoddard.
He chanted for almost a full fifteen minutes before he felt it.
The ground beneath Jason McGuire's unmarked grave began to shake.
