Sunset was minutes away. Winter days were all too short, and the five-mile hike to Eagle Hill cemetery was all too laborious in the deep piles of snow. Are we too late? Has he arisen already? Am I going to my doom?
Ben Stokes escorted her to a granite mausoleum no larger than a fisherman's hut. He opened the latch of a wrought-iron gate. Hinges squeaked in the cold.
"They brought him in here," Ben told her.
Angelique entered an empty stone room. Vacant. No tombs; no coffins yet. The walls to either side held narrow windows decorated in mosaic stained glass as fine as any cathedral. Opposite the wrought-iron doorway, the far wall had three shallow archways going nowhere. Framed panels of granite blocks each had a die-cast lion's head affixed at the peak. Each lion's head was biting an iron ring. This was the place that Barnabas had once seen in a nightmare. Even before the servant crossed the empty chamber and reached to the iron ring, Angelique knew of the secret panel behind the wall. But in his nightmare, Barnabas had seen a coffin wrapped in chains. Why would Joshua wrap his son's coffin in chains if he does not know that he is a vampire? Can a premonition be only partly true? Or am I doomed to fail?
"Hurry," she said in a quavering voice. "Show me where he is."
Ben Stokes explained, "Mister Joshua said that during the revolution he used to hide munitions and supplies from the British in here."
He reached up easily to the height of the archway's peak. He pulled the iron ring in the lion's mouth. A chain extended a few inches. A latch dislodged. Stone on stone grinded as the panel opened inward. Darkness beckoned.
"Wait here," she said.
"I hate you. Even in death, you can't let him be at peace."
Angelique gripped the wooden stake in one hand and the mallet in the other. "You're wrong, Ben. That's why I'm here: to give him peace."
She ducked the low frame of the archway. Three blocky steps descended into a smaller chamber, just wide enough to contain a brass candelabra and a single wooden coffin. One whisper, one plea to the spirits of fire, and the wicks of nine candles flared up their brilliance. Shadows softened from black to brown.
Ben Stokes growled from the outer chamber, "You always wanted to be with him. Now, go to Hell with him." He tugged on the iron ring once more. The hidden latch retracted. The stone door slowly rotated and closed tightly shut.
If she were not so terrified of the sunset, she would have laughed at the simple man's pathetic attempt at vengeance. As if a stone wall is able to contain me?
The coffin was on a pedestal block elevating its lid to above her waist. Not only was she spared the labor of chiseling him out of a crypt, but she did not need to sink to her knees. In the end, she would finish with him in the same way as they had first met—standing face to face. Bon jour, mademoiselle, he had said when kissing her hand for the first time. Good day... He would never see another good day's light again.
Angelique raised the lid of his coffin. Hinges creaked a long, slow grind. She stretched her arms high overhead. Not being a very tall woman, she had to press her belly over the corpse to push the lid all the way open.
Barnabas lay quietly dead on a pallet of teal satin. His own father had laid him to rest with great care, expecting that he would never move again. He was dressed in all his gentleman finery: a black tailcoat with velvet collar, a vest of magenta satin, a cravat of indigo silk, and a jeweled medal pinned to his lapel. Eyes closed, his face had no expression. At peace. He was free, for the moment, of all the torment and fury. Her heart ached to see him like this. If only he had loved her, it would not have come to this!
Fear gave her strength to raise the long wooden stake over his chest. She aimed the point very carefully at where she knew his heart to be. She adjusted the angle to be sure of penetrating between the ribs on the very first blow. She knew she would not get another chance if she missed.
As soon as she raised the mallet, his eyes opened.
Terrible eyes, rimmed in bloody scarlet, glared up at her. His mouth snarled and she saw his fangs. She desperately brought the mallet down, trying for a strike, but he was too quick. He caught hold of her upraised arm.
"What are you doing?" he growled.
"Forgive me!"
His other hand clutched her throat. His thumb and fingers turned to an iron vice that squeezed her windpipe. Open-mouthed, she rasped and strained to draw air. Her sights blurred. Firefly sparkles clouded the inside of her eyelids. Distantly she heard the stake and mallet drop clattering to the ground.
He arose to sit upright in his coffin.
"Where are we?" he demanded, his voice hoarse and dry.
His grip on her throat eased, more out of curiosity than mercy. She was able to push away from him. Air clawed its way into her lungs.
Angelique staggered to collapse on the stone steps leading to the secret panel. She caressed her own throat and performed a brief spell of healing on herself. Only then was she able to speak again. "We are in the Collins mausoleum at the Eagle Hill cemetery. It's a hidden room, I'm told, where your father used to store munitions during the revolution."
"The mausoleum?" He swung his legs over the edge of the coffin. With the lithe grace of a panther, he alighted to the ground. "Why am I in a coffin?"
"I never meant for this to happen. I tried to cure you, remember? I made that brew."
Barnabas paced restlessly around his coffin. He looked to the ceiling and the bare stone walls, a caged predator seeking out prey. He was dark and terrible, and yet, even still, she adored him.
He said, "I remember being in bed... with a fever... bitten by an enormous bat... afraid I would die. I could feel the life draining out of me... the darkness consuming me from within... the light fading away..."
"I did everything I could to prevent it."
"Prevent?" His pale hand stroked around the frame of the coffin. His long fingers traced the inner lining of ruffled satin, touching the indentation in the pillow. "I was in a coffin because... I died?"
"Yes," she answered in a trembling voice. "You are dead."
With both hands, he slammed down the coffin's lid. "Then, how is it I am standing here talking to you? Is this more of your witchcraft?"
"Yes."
He advanced on where she lay on the steps. All a shadow in flickering candlelight, he crouched over her in a predatory stance. "You cursed me."
"Yes." Angelique burst to her feet and sidled away from him. He dogged after her. She maneuvered to have the coffin on its pedestal as a barrier in between them—as if that would stop him. "You shot me! I was so angry."
"You're not angry now." His lips spread out into a thin grimace. She could see the pointed tips of his fangs. "You're afraid of me."
"No," she whimpered. They continued the slow macabre gavotte of her backing away and him step by step pursuing her in a circle around the coffin.
"Don't lie! I can hear your heart pounding. Your blood is quickening with fright. You're afraid of me, or more precisely, you're afraid of what I have become. What have you done to me, Angelique? Am I so terrible that you can't even bear to look at me?"
"The curse," she began to say, and paused to try and think of how to tell him the truth. Her words had to be chosen carefully if she were to stand a chance of surviving the next few minutes. Somewhere inside that maddened predator thirsting for human blood, there might still be flicker of the tender man he had once been. "It has made you one of the living dead."
He groaned in such a low voice that she could not be sure if it was anguish, or confusion, or simply the growing hunger.
"But you can only walk about at night. By day, you must return to your coffin to sleep as the dead man you are, or the sunlight will destroy you."
"What else?" he demanded. "There's more, isn't there?"
Every part of him ached in the need for drinking blood. She could almost hear his veins and arteries crackling under his skin. He had to know instinctively what he craved. Yet something of the rational man still remained; the Jeffersonian scholar was thinking philosophically about his current state of being. Cogito ergo sum. His brows furrowed in the effort of trying to find reason in an unreasonable situation.
"You'll find out soon enough."
"More cryptic answers... more lies... I will not suffer your torment anymore!" He gripped her throat again. This time he relished the slow squeeze. Their bellies pressed together. His legs straddled her skirt. He pushed her backwards on his coffin's lid and bent forward over her, almost cracking her spine in half.
"What's wrong, witch? Can't use your magic to stop me from killing you?"
He allowed her enough air to gargle, "I could if I wanted to."
Fingers and thumb on either side of her windpipe squeezed and released, squeezed and released, toying with the idea of clamping down and crushing the life out of her. It was a game teasing her with the hope of perhaps allowing her to live. He enjoyed her terror. His gleeful grin twisted, his fangs growing longer into two sharp points.
"I don't believe you," he growled. "You're lying to me, you bitch, as you've always lied to me."
"No, no, I told you before. I do not wish to make a puppet of you. I love you, Barnabas!"
"Love me?" he snarled. "I remember your curse—every word of it. I shall carry those words of yours for all eternity. I will never be able to enjoy anyone's love. According to your own edict, all who love me must die. Therefore, ma cherie, you must die!"
He leaned into her, one final time. His forearm crushed her chest. She gripped the velvet lapels of his coat but was too weak to push him off. Alongside her, his left arm seized the ridges of molding on the coffin's lid so he could pull his whole weight into her, harder and harder, his body like a rack of stones pressing her flat. His iron fingers squeezed out her breath and the clamp prevented her from drawing in more. She surrendered to his powerful dark embrace. Purple and green sparkles turned to silver, then gray, and then she had a sensation of rushing forward into a bright light.
Angelique stepped back from herself, suddenly free of the choking pain. She watched her own body tumble out of Barnabas's lethal grasp. The limp corpse fell onto the floor of the mausoleum. Its emerald and black striped dress spread out in a half circle. The blonde hair was still perfectly coiffed. The aqua eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Lifeless. He has killed me. Perhaps now he will believe that I truly do love him.
She floated like a white shadow unseen behind him. He turned a knob hidden under the second step. The secret panel made a grinding noise of a stone-on-stone as it opened. Barnabas emerged into the main room of the mausoleum where Ben Stokes nearly fainted with shock. Dear loyal Ben Stokes. Their voices blurred as master greeted servant. She heard the men's voices indistinctly as if she were underwater and they were people on shore. Soon she lost interest in them.
Her spirit passed on easily through the elegant wrought-iron gate and outside to the foggy cemetery. She viewed the other ghosts—ones who had been there all the time but her mortal eyes had been unable or unwilling to see. They were the blind, the forgotten and the despairing who lingered in the graveyard. One hovered beside each headstone like lost children waiting in the rain for their parents to come take them home.
There stood Jeremiah whom she caused to die. He turned to gaze at her, his head still wrapped in bandages from when the musket ball cracked his skull in half. No forgiveness showed in his stony gaze, but neither was there blame. She offered no remorse. They exchange a stare of acknowledgment.
So he has killed you too, Jeremiah's voice echoes on the cold wind.
And I have killed him, she replied.
Not completely. Jeremiah's tone was neutral. Whether he meant it as a compliment or a condemnation, she could not be sure. Either way, his opinion no longer mattered. His bandaged spirit turned away from her, resuming a quiet contemplation of his own name chiseled into the head stone.
Angelique swirled about to face the mausoleum. Among the other dead, Barnabas was an imperfect ghost who had not left his flesh. She saw the gnawing hunger inside him. She heard the pulse of his urgent need to consume human blood. How steadfast, to restrain himself from chewing into loyal Ben Stokes, not to drain him like a bag of fine wine. A little bit of his humanity yet remains, but how long until that too fades? You are cursed for eternity, and I am now eternal. Our marriage vows said, 'til death do us part, and now we are both dead. But we will never part. When you prowl the night, I will be your shadow. When you sleep by day, I will stand guard. You will never be free of me, nor I of you, Barnabas Collins.
The End