Tue. May 12, 1970
Willie Loomis has returned to Collinwood... And once again, Willie will find himself the victim of a vampire... But this time, the vampire is the mind and spirit of John Jaeger, trapped inside the cursed body of Barnabas Collins...
John looked up at the day sky, thinking that the sun felt unusually hot in the middle of May. He was glad for the cover of the trees, but he still felt hot in his double-breasted suit. Where had it come from? Why was he wearing it. He tugged at the tie and loosened it. He was also extremely hungry, as if he hadn't eaten in days. Of course, he had just been in a large box for over twenty-four hours.
John wondered where his double had gone. And why had the man murdered Horace? John shook his head in confusion. The sun felt extremely hot, and he was becoming weaker by the moment.
"Barnabas!" a man's voice called out to him. John looked up in confusion at the shorter, sandy-haired man who stood before him, the other man's eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets in shock.
John shook his head in confusion. "Barnabas? Who's Barnabas?" But, in his confusion, he did begin to sense something—a scent of some sort that he had not noticed before.
"Barnabas," the other man stammered. "Barnabas—what are you doing here?" The man looked around anxiously. "What are you doing outdoors… during the day?"
"During the day?" John was really confused now. Why was this man calling him Barnabas? Did John look like this Barnabas person, now? John realized that he had hurried out of the Old House without looking at himself in the mirror.
"Barnabas, I think we better get you back to the Old House, right now!" the shorter man insisted. He grabbed John by the arm and tugged him back down the path home. John could smell the scent even more strongly now, and for the first time he realized it was coming from the man. He also realized he could hear the man's pulse flowing through his veins. John shook his head to clear his mind. "Wait a second, do I know you?" he demanded.
The other man stared at him. "Barnabas, what's wrong? You know me, it Willie! Willie Loomis!"
"I'm not Barnabas!" John insisted. He felt strange. His teeth felt funny, painful, as if they were bursting through his gums.
Willie eyes opened wide and he gasped in shock. "No, Barnabas! Not now—not again!" He started to run, but John was too quick for him. He grabbed Willie with his new, super-fast reflexes and pulled him into his tight embrace—like a lion latching onto an antelope…
Act One:
After Roger Collins paid Quentin Collins' bail, Angelique Rumson drove Quentin back to Collinwood. Not wanting to go back into the Great House just yet, Quentin agreed to go back to the Old House with Angelique for a while. Roger could only shake his head at them as they drove off. Now that Liz was back home where she belonged, Roger planned to have a long talk with her about their long-lost cousin who had showed up mysteriously just a few months prior…
As they drove up the driveway through the woods, Angelique saw the lights on in the downstairs drawing room in the early evening light, and thought that John must have come home while she was gone. "It looks like the lost lamb has returned while we were gone…" she mused out loud to Quentin.
Inside the Old House, the lost "lamb" had returned, but it was not John's body whom was pacing impatiently in the foyer—it was Barnabas Collins'. But, it was John Jaeger's mind, and as he looked in the foyer mirror, waving his hand in front of it, he wondered if Angelique had bought a trick mirror, or if there was some other diabolical reason he could not see his reflection. The sound of a car driving down the newly graveled driveway broke him from his reverie, and he peeled back the drawing room curtain to see who it was…
As they entered the Old House foyer, both Quentin and Angelique were shocked to find a familiar face standing there, waiting for them in all his spiky black-haired glory. "Barnabas!" Quentin exclaimed.
John stared at them with Barnabas' eyes. "Barnabas?" he asked aloud. He lifted up his hand with the onyx ring and stared at it. It was that name again—the same name the man in the woods had called him. He felt like he had heard the name before—was it Angelique who had spoken to him about a Barnabas?
Quentin stared dumbfounded at John, wondering who had let Barnabas out of his secret hiding place. Quentin looked confusedly at Angelique, and Angelique stared back at him, her eyes wide with fright…
"Do I really look like this 'Barnabas' person," John asked them. He pointed over to the mirror hanging in the foyer. "I really wouldn't know, as I can't see my reflection in the mirror…"
Angelique finally came to her senses and rushed towards the Secret Room. "How on Earth did you get out?" she exclaimed. But, halfway there, she heard moaning and stopped in her tracks. "Willie Loomis!" she gasped, looking down towards the sofa.
"Willie?" Quentin asked. He rushed into the drawing room to find Willie lying on the sofa where John had left him, two gaping neck wounds oozing with blood. So that's how Barnabas got out of the Secret Room! Quentin and Angelique turned and stared at John.
"Did Willie Loomis get you out of the Secret Room?" Angelique asked. She turned towards the bookcase and noticed the room was still open. Peering into the Secret Room, she saw Horace Gladstone's body lying next to Barnabas' coffin. A shocked Angelique turned back to John. "You killed Horace!"
"I didn't kill him!" John exclaimed. "He was like that when the other me let me out of that box! The other me must have killed him—well he looks the way I used to before… before this!" John held up his hands. He nodded towards the Secret Room. "I've been in that… box since the séance! Angelique," he pleaded to her, "Don't you know me? It's me, John! Don't you recognize me at all?"
"John?" whispered Angelique, not sure what to believe now. Was it possible that Barnabas could have used the séance as a vehicle to escape? She stared at Quentin for help.
"The same thing happened with me and Count Petofi, remember?" he said lowly to Angelique. "If John was in a meditative state, anyone or anything could have switched bodies with him!"
Angelique nodded. "We've got to hold another séance… " She turned back to John. "If what you say is true, and you really are John, then we have to switch back to your own body before it's too late…"
"Barnabas…" moaned Willie from the sofa. Angelique, Quentin and John stared down at him…
Act Two:
Meanwhile, Dr. Julia Hoffman came home from University Hospital, tired, but excited to start seeing new patients again. As Julia stepped into the parlor of Seaview, she switched on the light to find a tall, blond young man sitting in an armchair. Julia brought her hand up to her mouth and screamed raspily.
Barnabas quickly stood up and held his hands up in front of him. "Julia! Don't be afraid, it's me, Barnabas!"
Julia brought her hand down on her chest and stared at him. "What? No! You're that John Doe who was at Windcliff…" Julia remembered Jeb Hawkes, and wondered if this young man was one and the same. "What are you doing here?" she demanded. "Tell me before I call the police!" She looked quickly down at the phone sitting on a table.
Barnabas took a step towards her and then stopped. "No, I'm not John Doe, or John Jaeger as he calls himself now… We've switched bodies, Julia! I projected myself out of my body while I was chained inside the coffin—and into his!"
Julia stared at him in disbelief. Could he be telling the truth? Barnabas had projected himself into the past before—to 1897—so why not into another body? "Prove to me you're not John Jaeger—tell me something only Barnabas would know, or else I contact the police!" Julia reached down and picked up the phone-and then waited expectantly.
Barnabas mentally reached back into their past and retrieved a memory that no one else but the two of them would know. "I'm sorry I made you help me kill Dave Woodard, Julia!" Barnabas pleaded. "If I could do it all over again, I'd find another way…"
Julia's eyes grew wide with shock, and she set the phone back down. "Oh, Barnabas!" she exclaimed. Julia rushed into Barnabas' arms and flung her arms about his shoulders, sobbing raspily.
"It's all right, Julia... It's all right!" Barnabas patted Julia on the back, feeling a little embarrassed. As he looked down at the top of her head, he realized how tall he really was in this new body compared to his old.
Julia backed away, feeling a little embarrassed, herself, over her over-dramatic show of emotion. "How did you manage, to do it, Barnabas? Without the use of the I Ching wands?" It was so odd to be calling this tall, blond young man Barnabas.
"I don't really know, Julia," Barnabas answered. "I concentrated over several days to reach someone, anyone. And that anyone happened to be John Jaeger. Julia..." Barnabas knotted his blond eyebrows together. "There's something I haven't told you yet. I-I let him out! I let him out of his... my coffin! He's loose, Julia! In my body!"
Julia looked up at Barnabas in shock...
Act Three:
"I don't care, Hannah!" Angelique snapped into the receiver of her phone. "You're coming back here for another séance—or else!" Angelique slammed the phone down to see Quentin carrying Barnabas' modern portrait down from the attic. "Oh, good! You found it," she said to him.
Quentin set the portrait down on a chair and looked around the drawing room. "Where's Willie?" he asked.
"He's out in the old garden, burying Horace's body," Angelique told him. "I've instructed him to return home and forget everything that's happened tonight."
John looked over at her and shook his head with amazement. "I knew you were different, Angelique, but I never realized HOW different." He wondered to himself how much he really did know about her…
"I can't wait for Hannah," Angelique told the two men. "Let's start without her. Come, sit on either side of me at the table." Angelique sat down, with Quentin on her left, and John on her right. Barnabas' portrait sat directly across from her.
"We must touch hands," Angelique instructed. She stared over at John, slightly disturbed that it could still be Barnabas playing a trick on them. The three of them let their fingers touch, and they concentrated for someone or something to appear to corroborate John's claim.
John looked down at his hands, well, Barnabas' hands. How odd they looked to him, even now. The hands of a blood-sucking creature... John shivered. What other secrets had been kept from him while living in this house? He turned his attention to Angelique.
"We seek a being who knows the true identity of this man—this man who looks like Barnabas Collins…" Angelique called out to the dark shadows of the room.
A gust of wind blew the front door of the Old House opened, making the flickering candles in the room blow out. A dark, caped figure hovered in the doorway. "Who are you!" Angelique called to the figure. John stared over at Quentin with fright, but Quentin was no longer phased by the sight of spirits.
"I am the Ghost of Joshua Collins! Father of Barnabas and Sarah Collins! That man is not my son!" the ghost bellowed.
John smiled in relief, despite seeing an honest-to-goodness ghost appear right before their very eyes. Both Quentin and Angelique turned and stared at John with surprise on their faces. Angelique, in particular, who now wondered where the real Barnabas was, and what he planned to do!
Cast:
John Jaeger… JONATHAN FRID
Ghost of Joshua Collins… LOUIS EDMONDS
Willie Loomis… JOHN KARLEN
Dr. Julia Hoffman… GRAYSON HALL
Angelique Rumson… LARA PARKER
Quentin Collins… DAVID SELBY
and Barnabas Collins… CHRISTOPHER PENNOCK