Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis was paying the monthly bills much as her mother had done for several years as she heard the front doors open to Collinwood. She braced and feared for her son running into to disturb her or her daughter running in to ask her advice as she turned and peeked out the doors. Her cousin, Quentin Collins, was hiking his way up the stairs as she noticed him gasping his way up the stairs. He was turning in to an old man before her eyes.
"Quentin," She mused a bit. "Are you getting old?" She grinned a bit as she teased him.
"Maggie and I were almost to dinner when I realized I had left my checkbook behind." He called back to her from the balcony. "Now, are you sure Jamison won't be a problem?" He asked.
"Not a problem at all…." Carolyn added. "He, William and J.R. are playing up in the west wing."
"Well," Quentin thought of Maggie waiting outside. "At least, they're all out of our hair at once." He continued up the stairs and across the balcony as he entered the upstairs corridor. He quickened his pace a bit as he entered the West Wing and motioned for the same room he had lived in back when he was a scoundrel in the Nineteenth Century. Maggie knew none of his true past before Petofi had played with his fate and destiny and he had done well he had thought to reveal aspects of his past by relating them to her in believable scenarios. Now a happily married man with a son and daughter freed of gypsy curses and enchanted portraits, he found himself wanting to go to a peaceful dinner with his wife as he grabbed his checkbook and started to turn out again. Out the side of his head, he heard the screaming of the boys in the bedroom at the end of the hall. He started to turn out again as he left them playing in the huge suite and then stopped himself. They could not play in that room!!
"Boys ! Boys !!" He hurried to them, stopped at the door and started waving them out. It was the parallel time room! If Barnabas hadn't altered the past of another timeline to return to this present, he, Julia and Stokes might have been trapped in that reality where two ghosts haunted Collinwood! The boys wouldn't stand a chance in any world they became trapped in.
"Boys !" He finally got their attention. "You can't play in this room! Get out!"
"Aww, dad…" Jamison hesitantly turned out.
"Who unlocked the door?" Quentin was in a panic as he feared the worse. What if he had not had to return for his checkbook?!
"It was unlocked, Uncle Quentin." Young William, Barnabas and Angelique's son, looked up.
"They must be unlocking it from the other side….." Quentin mumbled as his eyes panned the room.
"Who's they ?" William remained ever curious.
"The ghosts….." Quentin tried to scare the young pre-schoolers out of the room. "The ghosts that swore to eat anyone who came in here !" That got a raise out of the boys as they both looked scared.
"Oh-no !!" Jamison looked like Maggie as his eyes rounded. "They're going to get J.R. !"
"I hope they like dweebs." William commented.
"J.R. is in there too !!" Quentin reacted as he feared the worst.
"Yeah," Jamison nor William realized the severity of the room. "We were playing hide and seek !"
"Oh boy….." Quentin rolled his eyes. "Look, go have your Aunt Carolyn give you some milk and cookies. J.R. will be down in a minute."
"O-tay !" Jamison had heard the phrase on the TV. As Quentin mustered his courage in this room he feared so much, he stepped into the room to find J.R. Willie would never forgive him if his son got lost in a reality where the Nazis had won the war or a reality ruled by apes. He stepped one foot inside and looked the room over as he hoped and prayed it didn't jump timelines while he was in it.
"J.R. !!!" He yelled for the boy.
"Yes," J.R, poked his head out of the second floor library outside of the room. He looked at William and Jamison.
"Uncle Quentin's looking for you." William told his cousin.
"Well," J.R. twisted his body a bit as Jamison's father lurked out of sight in one of the back rooms of the room at the end of the hall. "I'm here."
"He'll find you soon enough." Jamison answered as his father continued calling for J.R. in the far back rooms. "Let's go get some cookies !"
"Yeah," J.R. raced ahead as it turned into a race for the kitchen. Quentin meanwhile stayed behind not realizing the subject of his search was being pushed aside by his cousins racing down the stairs. He opened one closet in a back bedroom of this accursed room and then turned and scuffed the dust on the floor under his feet. He gasped a second as he thought of Maggie still waiting outside in the car to go out to eat at David's Seafood Grill outside of town. He couldn't leave her waiting, but he couldn't leave one of the boys in this room. Particularly this room ! He gasped and felt his anxiety welling up in him as he feared the both of them getting trapped in another timeline in another world. Just where was that boy ??
"J.R. !" He screamed harder this time and much more panicked as he leaned on an empty shelf he hadn't noticed before. The outside parlor was still devoid of furniture so perhaps he was still in his room. His heart was pumping faster as he feared the boy was already lost in another band of time.
"Oh god…" He feared the worst as the shelf moved. Was it a secret room ? A secret passage ? It looked as if it reached behind the fireplace in the front room as he peeked and noticed objects covered in darkness. His hand felt an electric switch as he hit it. What was an electric switch doing in a back bedroom no one had used in over two hundred years ?!
His eyes rounded at what he saw. There were several blue costumes hanging on a rack of clothes. Several of them even had red capes and familiar red and yellow crests more suited for a certain comic book man of steel, but they also had red skirts and form fitting bodices more suited for a young lady. There were also a few dark costumes made from black leather and black armor. A black rubber cowl rested on a table littered with all sorts of devices. He picked one up that looked like it was meant to be worn on the wrist. One long button rested in the palm of his hand as he pulled it on to his own hand. As he lightly pressed the button, a spray of liquid shot out of it that covered the wall with a quick-hardening nylon web. His nerves were hitting stress high levels as he quickly pulled it off. These were the objects of costumed crime-fighters from the boys comic books ! Could he had already stumbled into another world where they existed ? He just hoped he was wrong.
He started to turn out as he cocked his head upward. He heard the wind outside the mansion kick up as it rushed upon the estate. The trees on the estate rustled and scraped the house as he noticed something pass through the air outside the windows in the bedrooms. He stepped back fearing the worst as whatever it was loomed in close and now started entering through one of the windows of the outside room. A waiting open window sat ready for the airborne avenger coming through it. Two female hands reached for the glass panes from outside the house. Quentin's eyes widened in stressed surprise !
It was Carolyn ! She was just as young as the day he first met her if not younger. Her hair was as long as it once was before she married Willie and she was wearing one of the costumes he had seen behind the fireplace. A proud red "S" stretched in yellow across her bosom, she pranced down off the windowsill with a gleeful grin as she pranced into the room with a giggle.
"Carolyn ?" Liz's room came from the hallway.
"Mother ?"
"I was watching the news in the library." Liz gave her a disapproving gaze. "There was a news report from Germany about a strange blonde woman who came out of the sky and stopped a bus from nearly sliding off a bridge. Several Germans described you almost to a 't.'"
"Mother," Carolyn tugged off her cape and started unzipping her costume in back. "We've been through this before. I can't sit idly by doing nothing when I can use my powers to do so much good."
"Can't you at least use a mask like David does ?"
"And cover up my good looks ?" Carolyn answered giggling as Quentin felt like a voyeur for eavesdropping. Just where did he end up ?
"But it's not just the chance of being discovered," Liz gasped as she sat in a chair pushed to the wall. "Your father and I have never been quite sure just how strong you are. I'm scared to think you could still find something that could hurt you."
"Besides those nasty green rocks littered around the cliff where you found me as a baby?" Carolyn pulled her arm out of her sleeve as she disrobed. "David said he found all of those." She sniffed her costume.
"Whoa !" Carolyn was nearly down to her bra and panties. "That volcano on Japan left sulphur all over me!" She started striding out of the room with her mother as Quentin froze in fear where he was. He didn't dare breath. If Carolyn in this time-band was anything like the fictional Superman in his world, she could hear him. He just stood paralyzed where he was and hoped she did not have x-ray vision. He lifted his head and realized how Barnabas must have felt his time through the proverbial looking glass. He lifted his head and sent a mental prayer to the heavens,
"Please, God, get me home to my time with my wife and kids !"
PART TWO
Maggie Evans-Collins had sat in the car waiting for her husband for over twenty minutes before it dawned on her that Quentin would not be back out to join her and head to dinner. She came straight into the house and went directly for their bedroom and home in the west wing and started looking for him. She had asked Carolyn if she had seen him and she had answered truthfully that he had gone up to the west wing, but then Angelique came up to the house to walk her son home to the Old House and she too got involved in the mystery of the vanishing family member.
"This is ridiculous!" Maggie paused and paced in the drawing room as Barnabas Collins arrived. "No one walks into a house and just vanishes! It was even his idea to get dinner out tonight!"
"What's going on?" Barnabas briefly kissed Angelique's hand as Carolyn still acted a bit smitten by her cousin's Old World charm after all these years.
"Quentin's missing." Angelique answered. "He came into the house and just…"
"Dropped off the face of the earth." Carolyn quipped ironically appropriate.
"We searched everywhere!" Maggie frantically and frustrated pined and worried. "If he was hurt, you'd think he would be…." Maggie's voice was drowned out by the call of one of the children. The four adults looked up as young William Collins scampered into the room. Angelique shined a bit at her baby boy as he anxiously jumped around a bit to return back to the Old House.
"I'm ready!!" He looked up charmingly to his beautiful mother.
"Not now, baby," Angelique knelt to his size. "We're trying to find your Uncle Quentin,"
"Did one of the ghosts get him?" William asked half-interested.
"Honey," Maggie turned to the boy and looked at him not as his governess, but as his loving aunt. "Where did you see him? Where was he?" She asked worriedly.
"In the big room at the end of the west wing…" William answered truthfully as he looked to her. Barnabas looked to Angelique as he realized what room.
"Darling," Angelique knelt to his size. "You don't mean the big room with the double doors and the fireplace, do you?"
"That's the one!" The boy innocently confirmed it. Maggie noticed Barnabas turn pale and sit down in the sofa. Even Carolyn reacted covertly as she turned around. The former governess wondered confusingly as she watched the reactions.
"I don't understand." Maggie spoke. "Why are you all acting like that?"
"That's the Parallel Time Room." Barnabas started as Angelique gently prodded her boy off to play for a little while longer. "That room is, well…"
"Maggie," Carolyn looked up. "Don't you recall when Barnabas and Julia vanished for several months in the fall of 1971? The room is, well, cursed. It sort of opens into something called parallel time. I don't understand it myself. I wish Stokes was still with us to explain it."
"I'm quite aware of the legend and reputation of the ghosts of Collinwood." Maggie answered honestly. "I mean, to this day I'm still worried that Quentin's great-grandfather could still be lurking around me, but what does this have to do with my Quentin?"
"Maggie," Barnabas stood again as Angelique re-entered the foyer after briefly stepping out. She returned with a book from the study that she handed over to her husband. "This is it. 'The Life Story of Barnabas Collins.' Maggie, this book was written by a parallel time counterpart to our Willie Loomis. It is proof that there is another…world with a different Collins family living different lives. Julia and I lived among them during that whole time trying to find our way back. In trying to return, we also visited another deserted Collinwood in the far future and our only means back to this timeline was by altering its timeline to match our own."
"But it's just so…" Maggie looked at the book in her hands with Willie's full name on it. The pages she skimmed didn't mention the Julia Collins she had read about who had lived in the estate in 1840. Could she have really been the Julia she had known? Her mind told her to refuse it, but her heart was breaking for her husband.
"Maggie," Carolyn tried to console her. "I know it's hard to accept. I had a brief visit from one of those people while you and Quentin were on your honeymoon. My own counterpart as a matter of a fact. As hard as it is to believe, Quentin has… proverbially fallen through the looking glass."
"How do we get him back?" Maggie asked a bit victimized by the concept.
"I know those people." Barnabas turned dramatically for the foyer as he collected his cane and wrap from the nook by the front doors. "Angelique, in the meantime, I…" He turned looked for his beautiful wife, but she wasn't present anymore. He looked around the foyer for her as Carolyn glanced back to the drawing room.
"Maybe she's with the kids…." Carolyn started for the playroom downstairs with Maggie. Barnabas took one step then thought Angelique might want to stop him. He left one glance toward Carolyn and Maggie and then secretly and quietly stole himself up the stairs to the balcony overlooking the foyer and stepped into the upstairs corridor. Turning left, he stepped determinedly prepared for what he hoped to be his last adventure. He was a family man now and nothing was going to ruin the lives of the family around him. These people and children were the descendants of his brother Daniel Collins who had lived and died in the past so long ago. As long as he still had a future, he was going to protect them within the boundaries of his own power. He stepped through the open door of the partially restored West Wing and then froze a second as he saw a figure moving in the Parallel Time Room. He advanced closely for a better look.
"Angelique!" He thought he was seeing her counterpart in another time, but then she turned and looked at him. She had drawn a mystical symbol in the wooden floor with chalk and was just about to start some mystical ritual.
"Barnabas," She stood surprised. "Please, let me do this. I know more about traveling through dimensions better than you do. I can do this better than you can."
"No." He refused her help. "I will not allow you to endanger yourself. I will do it."
"Darling," Angelique reacted out of love. "This phenomenon does not work as you think it does. It's not just one band of time; it's many! Using my psychic and mystical powers, I have a better chance of homing in on Quentin and finding my way back."
"No," Barnabas refused her. "I will not take that chance. If something were to happen to me, I would rather prefer knowing you were here to take care of our children."
"But Barnabas," Her voice rose as she lightly relented. "If that's the way you prefer it. A kiss for luck?" She felt his hand encircle her waist as her lips closed over his. Barnabas lightly caressed her long blonde hair as his mind slowly left him. He felt dizzy as she reached to catch him and lead him to a chair in the hallway to sit down. Lovingly stroking his hair, she gave him another small kiss.
"I'm sorry, darling." She apologized tenderly. "It's just a short nap. By time you wake, I'll be back with Quentin. Just you rest." She stood up straight and pulled out of her hip pocket a tie that Quentin often wore. His unique and particular psychic vibrations on it would help her to lock on to him wherever her was in the multiverse. Their energies together would lead them back. Lighting the candles around her, she stood up straight and held her arms out ready to fly through the cosmos.
"I call upon Cronus, Father Time and father of Zeus to open the gates of infinity." She chanted. "I call upon Praamzius, weaver of fate to take his scythe and cleave the boundaries of this world and the next. Great Varuna protect me as I walk across the boundaries of other worlds searching for Quentin Collins. Great mystic Vainamoinen guide me as I break my binds to this world and the next. Open my eyes to worlds I do not see. Send me back upon the river of time that I might travel another stream of time. Lead me to where I might find Quentin Collins."
She heard parts of the room crackling like sparks of electricity. An accelerated figure she could not identify raced past her from his time in the future. Another shadow if another one and then another one flitted around her. Parts of the room grew dark as if her vision had dimmed as other worlds started poking through. She saw Collins family members that didn't exist popping in and out of sight. Some of them had scant images of her as she flitted through others in the room. Pockets of time and space folded as she even saw bare earth where Collinwood never existed. Gradually, she became conscious of how many worlds she was falling through.
"My god!" Angelique watched countless versions of Carolyn in different versions of the room with different versions of Maggie and with Elizabeth. Hairstyles and clothing varied as the room flickered in and out. She even saw versions of herself and of Quentin, but barely any of her beloved Barnabas.
"I never knew there would be so many!!" She watched in awe as rooms flitted in and out around her like a flicking light. Transparent phantoms of the denizens of these worlds passed by and through her as she tried to focus on Quentin. "I never knew there it would be so timeless!!" She saw a very pregnant Elizabeth in her thirties, Quentin wearing a Confederate Uniform, a very hippie version of herself, Carolyn in a Nazi uniform and then one particular image of her Barnabas. He seemed to notice her distinctly and started walking through the flickering doppelgangers toward her.
"Barnabas, is that you?" She saw his mouth open to reveal two sharp teeth. "You're not my husband!!!" She screamed as he grabbed and jerked her out of the protective symbols she had drawn on the floor. Everything turned white as if there was a flash of lightning as Angelique crashed to the floor.
Angelique landed in darkness. She gasped a second as she brushed her long blonde hair out of her face and looked around. There wasn't much room to maneuver as she felt something in her back. Where was she? A coffin? No, she refused to accept that. She tried to keep her wits as she reached up and touched wood. Under her was a thick shag rug. Reaching out around her, she felt one long support like the leg of a table and then another. It was a table and she was on the floor under it. Trying to gather her bearings, she crawled out from under the table cover over it and stood up. The room here was restored. It wasn't very luxurious, but it was a bit messy. Clothing was on top of chairs or tossed into corners. Assorted schoolbooks rested here and there. It was far more for a few kids. As she looked around, she heard a school bell ring in the estate. She was in a dorm room! The Collinwood of this world was a school as she heard several dozens voices and steps coming for her. She looked around and ducked in a corner and pulled a chair to conceal her.
"How do you think you did on that test?" A girl asked her friend as several other girls rushed for the back bedrooms.
"Lousy." The redheaded girl tossed books and paper into the sofa. "I swear Miss. Barrett hates me!"
"Why don't you transfer to Mrs. Parker?" Another girl answered. "All we do is take notes!"
"I can't change teachers until the end of the semester."
"Ladies," A familiar voice entered the room as Angelique peeked out. It was Victoria Winters!
"This room is a mess." Victoria announced. "This is my third warning. I want it cleaned up."
"Yes, Mrs. Winters…" The girls chorused as a third girl strolled in past them.
"She needs to get a life." The third girl announced. Quietly concealing herself once more, Angelique tried to sense if this was where Quentin had come, but she could not feel him nearby. She thought for sure this was he'd be nearby, but she felt no link with him. She had been plucked here for a reason, but for what?!
PART THREE
"So, Mr. Collins, how long will you be staying with us?" Liz Stoddard sat across from her new cousin at the dinner table. Quentin Collins sat across from Barnabas and Angelique as Carolyn sat by his side. None of them knew much about him beyond the fact that he was from England and that he was descended from the second Quentin Collins, a rather forgotten member of the family the family had been lead to believe had died childless.
"Well," Quentin sliced his roast as Matthew Morgan cleared some dishes. "Not very long, you see, I'm separated from my wife and kids right now and I'd really like to get back to them. While I'm here, I'd really like to explore the West Wing. From what I understand, that's where my ancestor lived while he was alive and I'd like to… Oh, find as many things that might have belonged to him."
"The West Wing?" Carolyn shared a secretive look to her mother since that was where she concealed many of her belongings as well as the strange craft that had brought her to earth.
"Well," Liz tried to be as gracious as possible. "Anything you can find you are more than welcome to have. Maybe Carolyn could help you look through the rooms. She knows those rooms better than I do."
"I'd like that." Quentin wryly looked across to her from across his cup of coffee. "Why, I just bet she could see just about anything?" Carolyn lightly gasped at the comment.
"What part of England are you from?" Barnabas spoke up as his wife lightly picked at her vegetables. Considering the secrets in his past, he was just as well suspicious as anyone else who arrived to the house using carefully picked words and scenarios that he himself once used.
"Uh, um, Borley…" Quentin claimed as Carolyn's eyes narrowed suspiciously to him. "That's, uh, where my wife is."
"How many children do you have?" Angelique asked.
"A boy, Jamison, about seven and a daughter, Amanda, she's five." Quentin reached to his wallet out of habit and flicked over the photos to cover his driver's license. "They're two of the greatest kids in the world."
"They're adorable." Angelique gushed as Carolyn looked at the pictures. Her vision meanwhile delved a bit deeper. Her special eyes could see Barnabas fifty feet in the background as she lightly gasped. Her x-ray vision then peered deeper and read his driver's license. His name was Quentin Collins as he had claimed, but he was supposed to be a native of Collinsport! Why had she never seen or heard of him before?!
"I know." Quentin replaced his wallet as Matthew strolled back into the room after removing the dishes. He paused and leaned down to Liz.
"Mrs. Stoddard," He started. "Mr. Malloy is here with papers for you to sign."
"Oh, yes," Liz lightly pushed her chair back. "Please excuse me; this won't take long." She rose as Carolyn did so too. She wiped her mouth a second and then hastened her step and stopped her mother just short of the foyer.
"Mother," She spoke in hushed tones. "I don't trust this Quentin Collins. He's only being partially truthful. I can sense the nervous tension in his voice every time he claims something."
"You mean he's not Quentin Collins?" Liz always trusted her daughter's superhuman instincts.
"He's a Quentin Collins, but I doubt he's ever been to England." Carolyn replied. "His wallet says he lives in Collinsport and I scanned him down to his DNA and he is related to us, but… His atomic vibration is off; it's as if his frequency is off with everything in this world."
"Darling," Liz paused as she nodded to Bill Malloy waiting in the drawing room. "You know I know very much about this stuff. If you think there is enough to be concerned about, keep an eye on him, and when you realize what he is up to, take care of him as you see fit, but… without revealing yourself."
"Yes, mother..." Carolyn lightly turned round to the dining room once more, but instead of entering, she lingered outside the door out of sight. Quentin peered back to see if she was there, but then relaxed a bit and enjoyed his dinner.
"So, Quentin," Barnabas looked up after eating some of his eggplant. "Do you work, or… do you have a business?"
"I'm largely retired." Quentin replied. "My kids take up much of my time and I spend the rest of my time just drinking and relaxing…" He saw an opening to get him home. "In fact, I just read this wonderful gothic old novel that starts out set in the Eighteenth Century. The oldest son of this wealthy New England family is cursed by this woman who wants to marry him and he comes back after death as a vampire…"
Barnabas started choking as Angelique drew her breath. They looked at him in shock wondering how someone could fictionalize their lives and past.
"Very…." Angelique looked at him in shock. "Interesting." She padded her husband as he reached to his brandy. Her head even lightly twitched a bit as she tried to accept the shocking realization from a man she had never met!
"I think so." Quentin was fascinated by the reaction. "You see, she gives him eternity to change his mind and he has several adventures despite this curse and even gets to be human again several times, but the curse just keeps returning to him."
"I see." Barnabas cleared his throat as Angelique sat frozen to her seat. "And how does… this story end? She dies of course and he marries his true love, correct?"
"Not exactly," Quentin continued his story. "She eventually learns that to love him is to let him go and she even gives up her life for him, but she survives anyway and they live happily ever after."
"Oh," Barnabas looked to Angelique with a wry look. "Well, he sounds like a foolish man to forgive her after so much death and tragedy." He refused to think he could ever have married the witch that had cursed him.
"Well," Quentin pressed on. "That's not the end of the story."
"It isn't." Angelique quaked a bit nervously.
"No," Quentin added more. "You see, his cousin who has been watching his back for several years discovers a portal in a room of their estate that has this weird habit of dumping anyone foolish enough to wander into it into different alternate realities which are nearly identical except for a few details. He seeks out the wife of the man who he knows is a witch and beseeches her to help him get home." Quentin turned and looked at Angelique. Her eyes rounded in shock as she looked to her husband in surprise and her jaw dropped.
"I'm afraid there is a problem with this story." Angelique spoke up. "If these… realities are as identical as they are different as you claim then what does this man do when he discovers the former vampire defeated the witch and married the true love in the other reality."
"What?" Quentin gasped. A lost look came over him as Carolyn stepped into view in the hallway. "I guess that means… I'm trapped here."
"Mr. Collins!!" Angelique placed her hand to her chest. "I am so sorry. If I had but the power to help you, I would, but… I'm afraid if my sister were alive here, she would not be in a mood to help anyone!!"
"I waited…" Quentin's heart sank as Carolyn came closer to him. "All night in that room for it to switch back, but… nothing happened. I…" He choked back his feelings a second. "Then became worried you all might discover me and slipped through the house and to the front door. My wife must be worried sick."
"Carolyn," Barnabas lifted his head to his young female cousin. "Do you know of which he speaks of?"
"Yes," She stood behind Quentin as he pretended not to notice her. "Professor Xavier and I discussed this in our talks about time travel. This idea is that just as there are many futures is that there are many pasts and each of them resonate in particular bands of time." She placed her hand on Quentin's shoulder to console him. "And there's counterparts to all of us in your world?"
"Yes," Quentin confessed. "You seem much younger than my Carolyn, but there's another Barnabas, another Angelique, Willie, David, Roger…."
"Uncle Roger is alive there!" Carolyn became excited.
"Carolyn," Barnabas sat back and wiped his moth with her napkin. "Get in touch with Professor Xavier. Maybe he would know of some means to get Quentin back home."
"Who's this Xavier?"
"He's the mentor of our son and daughter." Angelique informed Quentin. "He runs a very special… school. In fact, there may be a few things you should know about our world…"
PART FOUR
There was a third reality unknown to man. In this world, there was only one Collins left and she owned and ran a school out of Collinwood. In her personal life, Victoria Winters loved and dated Frank Garner, a young lawyer with whom she hoped to be the matriarch of a whole new generation of Collinses. The previous family had been completely wiped out through the "skills" of her sister. Carolyn Stoddard may have been beautiful and spirited, but what she had become obviously forced her to lose all aspects of her identity and ability to rationalize between right and wrong. Looking back now, Vicki thought Carolyn might have even been consumed with power and wished somehow she had met her sister in another time before she degenerated into something close to a demoness. For the present, she had to wrap up the school accounts before the school closed for the summer. The school may have been her home, but Vicki longed to travel to Martinique for a vacation with Richard. She didn't know why, but she longed to see the tiny Caribbean island.
"Mrs. Winters," Roxanne Drew turned into Victoria's office in the old study. "Before I go, I just wanted to let you know that that television crew called again. They still want to film a show on the ghosts of Collinwood."
"I do not want Collinwood on Unsolved Mysteries." Vicki barely looked up as she signed another check to pay for the costs of the school. Much of her funds came from her portion of the estate, but she still had to keep track of where the money of the parents of her students went. "The attention of being a local haunt is bad enough; I'd hate to think of the attention we'd get if we went national."
"Yes, ma'am." Roxanne looked out into the foyer. "Oh, and there's a lady here who wants to see you. She says you're related."
"Related!" Vicki reacted. She feared her sister might be back. "What does… she look like?' Her voice quivered in fear as her nightmares started returning.
"Oh," Roxanne thought a second. "Petite, blonde, very attractive."
"Blonde…" Vicki's hand started trembling as she looked over her assistant's shoulder. She breathed a breath of relief as the reflection in the hall showed an entirely different person than her psychopathic sister. The person she saw was very lovely and warmly grinned at the students in the foyer. She gasped a breath of relief. "I'll see her."
"Yes, ma'am.' Roxanne stepped back and departed with a gesture. Vicki placed her school's checkbook aside and hoped that this relative was nothing like her last. She stood and composed herself as this new relative approached and entered her office.
"Mrs. Winters," Angelique grinned and shook Vicki's hand before sitting down. "Allow me to introduce myself; I am Angelique Collins."
"Very good to meet you." Victoria shook her hand as Angelique already seemed to know her. "I understand we are related?"
"Yes," Angelique answered. "My husband is Barnabas Collins; do you know him?"
"Barnabas," Victoria did know that name. The man's ancestor had a portrait in the front foyer. "Yes, I know him, but I never got the chance to meet him. I believe he died several years ago. I… didn't even know he was married."
"Died." Angelique gasped a moment and quickly accepted it. It was just another of the differences of another reality apart from her own.
"You didn't know." Vicki realized.
"No." Angelique cleared her throat. "We've been separated for quite some time." She regained her composure. "Have you per chance met his cousin, Quentin Collins?"
"Quentin Collins?" Victoria sat back and thought of the name. "No, I don't think so."
"Well," Angelique leaned forward a bit. "You see, we were traveling together and became separated. I knew he wanted to come here so I came to try and catch up with him. Would you mind if I stayed around and saw if he was still on his way?"
"I guess that would be…" Vicki was taken a bit aback.
"I could be of a great advantage to you." Angelique's presence was never more gracious. "I overheard a little talk of… ghosts? I have certain skills as a… psychic and clairvoyant. I could give you a very private investigation."
"Very private?" Vicki opened her mind earnestly at the idea at before she knew it; she was showing Angelique to a guest room in the East Wing. She showed her the house as Carolyn had did for her a few years before and departed for dinner with Frank. The displaced sorceress meanwhile had to know the truth. How could a whole family be wiped out and leave behind one heir? What happened to this Barnabas Collins? What did he do? The answer was not in the Collins family Yearbooks; those only claimed that that family had been murdered, but by who and why? Even in her reality, the family had the habit of concealing its most horrible secrets behind fraudulent facades. The only ones who would know would be the victims, and fortunately they were still trying to tell Victoria. Where Victoria was too hesitant to listen, maybe they would tell her instead.
Angelique could feel the ghosts surrounding her as if she were in a crowded room. Quentin was still bound to his sealed up room and he wasn't talking. He had never learned his humility and was still just as crafty and opportunistic as he once was. Gerard moped in the sealed up playroom waiting for Tad Collins to be born again to release him, but if David was dead, why was he hiding his spirit from her?
"David Collins, come to me." Angelique sat on the floor of the attic with his prized mementos. It was growing past dark and he still had not appeared. Neither had Liz or Roger. Her only hope was to contact Barnabas, and anything of his might be at the Old House. Her only hope was that something of his might still exist. Her curiosity was peaking as she headed down the attic steps, but as she stepped on the second floor landing, she was confronted by a sudden figure.
"Barnabas!" She stared at him. He looked just as he did in life, but much more regretful. His cane held furiously in his hand, his head thrust down in his chest, he stared at her as if he had been waiting for her.
"You brought me here!" Angelique realized. "You know I'm not your Angelique! What happened here?! Tell me!"
He almost started to reply but instead reacted as if another person were coming. He looked ashamed a second and passed through the wall as Angelique turned her head to the voice coming closer.
"London Bridge is falling down, falling down…" Sara's ghost skipped past Angelique as she stood in stunned silence. Barnabas was afraid of her? Was he ashamed?
"Sara," Angelique followed her down the corridor. "Do you know what happened?"
"London Bridge is falling down, falling down…" The girl's spirit continued skipping and then stopped outside of the door to the top landing of the foyer to play with marbles. "London Bridge is falling down, my fair lady…"
"Sara, please tell me."
"London Bridge is falling down, falling down…" The child's specter hadn't even noticed her.
"Sara, please."
"It's all your fault!!!" Sara suddenly screamed at her. "All your fault!!"
"No!!"
"All your fault!!!"
"What did I do?!!" Angelique had no way of explaining who she really was to this trapped young girl. "What did I do? What did I do??"
"It's all your fault!!" Sara's voice joined a cacophony of other voices coming from nowhere as the door behind her crashed open to the balcony. Angelique looked up to what could only be a place memory being replayed behind Sara she was meant to see for herself. It was a scene from 1798 back when she first cursed Barnabas. She saw herself as she once was and then she saw Carolyn. Without Vicki, the pretty blonde heiress had been the one to go back in time, but Carolyn Stoddard was no Victoria Winters. Realizing who the witch was that threatened her ancestors, she and Angelique got into a fight on the top of the stairway of Collinwood. The person Angelique once was tried to push Carolyn over the railing, but the time-placed young woman got the upper hand and it was Angelique who fell down the stairs. Angelique Collins watched in utter shock at what was almost her fate. She saw herself crashing head over feet to the bottom, and then gasping at the bottom with a broken back.
"I curse you, Carolyn Stoddard!!!" The witch screamed with her dying breath. "You will be my weapon upon the Collins Family!! Return to your own time and eliminate every last one who dares love you!!! You will never know the touch of another!!! You may keep your beauty and youth, but you will never be happy!!! I curse you until the end of time!!!"
The witch suddenly dropped dead as her life-force gushed from her body as a presence of light. Carolyn watched in shock as it came straight her and eagerly entered her body!
Carolyn woke up screaming in her own time. Her mother was there as she tried to touch her, but Carolyn recoiled from her. Roger commented on how she must have lost it and suggested that someone call for a doctor to come to Collinwood. Carolyn refused to be touched by anyone, but the arms of her uncle's enemy; the one man she had been ordered to avoid.
"Carolyn," Burke Devlin slowly gained her trust. "It was just a dream. You never really traveled in time. You are just one normal incredibly beautiful young girl." He pulled her close. "You see, I'm holding you, and nothing is happening."
"Burke," The young heiress kissed him and pulled him tight. "But it was so real… I could have sworn…" She heard him choking and his size dwindling. She didn't dare look, but then she turned her eyes and let go. Burke was dying. His face was getting tighter and drying out. His hair was falling out and his body was caving into a skeleton he collapsed into a chair as a dried out corpse as she stared at him in shock unable to look away and a silent scream trapped in her lungs. Her head lifted to her reflection in the mirror and recognized Angelique's image there laughing at her. Right there, Carolyn Stoddard ceased to exist as a normal person.
"Remember what I told you, Carolyn," Angelique Bouchard grinned venomously. "Your touch will bring death to all who love you. Your beauty will be a curse. Now, return to Collinwood. We have work to do…"
Angelique Collins woke up in the hallway after living those events. Sara was gone as she shuddered where she was and realized the truth. If Victoria had not been there to travel back in time that was exactly what she would have done!
"It is my fault." She told herself. "It is my fault! To help these poor trapped spirits, I must clean up this mess of my counterpart. I must somehow destroy Carolyn Stoddard!!"
PART FIVE
Angelique had told Victoria a short but brief history of the ghosts of Collinwood and allayed the young girl's fears as well as she could. As she left on her date with her true love, Angelique stayed behind on the estate as Collinwood once more reverted to a dark foreboding edifice on the hill. The children were gone to the families and the staff and teachers went home as the blonde sorceress walked its empty halls and realized it for what it really was. Although a school in a public sense, it really was a home for the spirits of the dead. She wandered the house for almost an hour as if she were haunting the place herself and gradually wandered into the huge kitchen where she helped herself to the food leftover in the place.
"Sara." Angelique sensed the young ghost before she saw her.
"She's back." Sara looked up to her distantly.
"I know." Angelique answered. "I summoned her."
"Why?'
"To free your ghosts." Angelique turned to Sara as the petite young girl's visage vanished. She placed her mug of hot chocolate aside on the granite countertop and turned for the dining room. Ignoring the short back hallway to the drawing room, she instead slowly planned her attack by wandering through the once great dining room. Now converted to a school cafeteria, she strided softly and boldly to the front hall outside the former study and then turned to the front foyer. The spirits were getting restless as they noticed her and pulled away in fear. A few extra ones even reached out to discourage her. A truck driver that had been killed several years before, a young teenage couple whose car had been stolen, a middle-aged real estate salesman, and a handsome young man from Cape Cod. All of them had lost their lives to the psychotic former heiress and they and countless more vainly tried to protect Angelique from confronting their killer. Unafraid, the strong-willed sorceress pulled close the front doors were hanging open and swaying in the outside wind. Turning around to the drawing room, Angelique stared past the school trophy case at the returning heiress who now barely recognized her former home.
"Carolyn." Angelique spoke it as a warning. She watched the short blonde slowly turn around. Her hair was longer now and she seemed younger than ever after feeding upon countless victims. They glanced upon each other without fear.
"You're supposed to be dead." Carolyn remarked.
"Am I?"
"Now I get to kill you again!!" Carolyn grinned demonically and started to spring forward. Angelique waved her arm as a chair flung to the air and knocked the deadly young woman over the coffee table. Trying to stand once more, Carolyn turned her head to who she believed was her hated nemesis and was struck by another poltergeist barrage of flying objects. She howled at the pain blunt objects to her head and dived under the piano. Angelique strolled up closer.
"Carolyn," She spoke to her. "I can free you of your curse; don't force me destroy you."
"Do I look like I want to be cured?" Carolyn sprang up on the other side of the piano and pushed it across the room. The huge grand piano slid across the room and slammed into the narrow space of the double doors to the room as Angelique leapt out of its way and rolled over the sofa. Leaping to her feet, she started to wave her hand again as Carolyn grabbed it and then her throat. Angelique felt her soul being ripped from her bones!!
"How fitting…" Carolyn clutched her tight and stared into her eyes. "That your curse would be used to destroy you!!" She began forcing her to the floor. Angelique felt herself getting weaker and her spirit departing her body. She didn't feel as if she was herself anymore. She felt she was Carolyn!!! Her free hand trembled with her last energy as she gestured to the portrait of her Barnabas in the room and willed its frame from the wall. The huge oak furnishing flung itself off the wall through the twenty feet across the room and struck Carolyn hard!!!
Briefly freed, Angelique started coughing and crawling the back way to the dining room. She had brief seconds to regain her psychic strength before Carolyn would try that again. Her breath was fast and her heart was pumping as she tried to hold on to her life.
"That hurt!!!" Carolyn forced herself up and held on to her head. She braced on the arch to the back hall. "I'm going to drain you until you are…"
"Angelique!!!" That was Quentin's voice screaming from upstairs!!
"More meat!!" Carolyn threw the chairs away from the dining table trying to get to Angelique underneath. Her head looked up as someone stormed the dining room from the kitchen. A second later, there was a loud crash and she thrown outside through the doors to the gardens behind the house. Angelique slowly peered up as she noticed a strange young man wearing a leather bodysuit and a crimson visor over his face. Accompanying him was a beautiful African American woman with long white hair and an unshaved figure with thick black hair. They too wore leather bodysuits.
"Collins," Scott Summers powered down his visor after blasting Carolyn. "Do you know this woman?"
"Yes, I do." Quentin pulled Angelique out as he stepped in front of the shattered glass doors. "I guess I found you."
"Quentin?" Angelique tiredly and confusingly looked at him and these strange people. "Where did you come from? How did you find me?"
"Let's just say that you have a son in another world that followed your bed crumbs here." Quentin spoke metaphorically for the spells that she dragged here.
"Can we get out of here?" Logan looked around the ruined room. "This room gives me the creeps."
"Yes, lets." Ororo Munroe stroked Angelique's brow as Quentin lifted her up. Out the side of her head, she saw movement in the back garden. Carolyn was still struggling to stand.
"I'll take care of her." Ororo shielded her friends as Carolyn stared her down. The wind picked up a bit as the shattered doors flung open for the beautiful mutant to meet the cursed blonde. Thunder cracked as the psychotic heiress tried to estimate the skills of her new enemy.
"Do you know what happens to a toad that is struck by lightning?" Ororo asked as a storm stirred up over them.
"What?!!"
"The same thing as everything else…." Ororo answered as Carolyn heard another crack of thunder over her heard. As she looked to the heavens to figure out where this freak storm was coming from, she was blasted by a burst of lightning and knocked off her feet and off the edge of patio.
"Quentin…" Angelique struggled for him to let her go. She pulled herself from him just before they ran up the back steps. "I can't go now!! I made a vow to free these ghosts by killing Carolyn."
"I don't understand." Quentin paused on the bottom step as Ororo rushed to meet them. "Why is she trying to kill you? Why is she so dangerous?"
"In this world my counterpart levied a curse on her much more darker than the one I placed on Barnabas." Angelique answered as Scott Summers listened to her. "She's had over twenty years to absorb and steal enough life forces to become unstoppable. If I don't at least destroy her, the spirits of all her victims will be forever earthbound!!"
"Wait a minute," The man known only as Logan glanced around the dimly lit kitchen as he tried to understand what he was dealing with. "Are you trying to tell me, a laser blast and a bolt of lightning can't kill her, but a few words can? God, I hate magic."
The back door slammed open as Carolyn grabbed him from behind. Scott whirled around as he watched his partner and the petite blonde scuffling on the floor. Logan was a fighter, but why couldn't he take her!! Carolyn was but one woman!! Logan, however, knew the truth as he scuffled and tried to pull away from this human leech. He felt as if he was fighting an evil version of Rogue as his own soul started getting ripped from him.
"Blast her!!" Ororo screamed.
"They're rolling around too much!!" Scott tried to aim his visor on the two figures in the darkness. "I can't get a clear shot!!"
"Oh, yeah," Logan gasped for a breath as claws pooped from his hands. "Absorb this!!!" He plunged them deep into Carolyn's chest as if he was impaling a vampire. A scream issued from Carolyn's mouth as she fell aside.
"I have never seen anything like this in my entire life." Quentin watched as Scott helped Logan up to his feet. Angelique gasped and reached to Carolyn. She was bleeding to death if she wasn't already dead.
"She's gone." She answered as she felt another more powerful presence in the house. It was a psychic voice that even she could feel and detect. A psychic whose telepathy was even stronger than her own….
"Scott," The voice of Professor Charles Xavier entered her head too. "Matthew can't hold the gateway between the two worlds open much longer. It's trying to close."
"We're coming, Professor." Summers turned up the stairs as Quentin helped to support Logan. Angelique and Ororo noticed each other as they raced to the parallel time room up in the West Wing. Left behind in the kitchen, the body of Carolyn Stoddard was left behind for the authorities of this timeline to discover for themselves. As gasp came from her mouth as the mutant's energies healed her heart and stab wounds.
"Oh I like that……" She told herself.
Logan was gaining his strength back as he reached the room again. Angelique rushed past him and then froze. It was herself!! They froze and looked at each other in awed surprise. Barnabas Collins could barely tell which was his wife but for the clothes. Quentin's Angelique was a bit thinner and had much longer hair, and his wife had shorter hair and a bit more weight. There were also two other people. Professor Charles Xavier who sat in a wheelchair and a young man with bold brown eyes and trimmed dark hair. Angelique Collins wondered what sort of world that Quentin had stumbled into for himself.
"I hear you are some sort of witch…." One Angelique replied.
"Semi-retired…"
"Mrs. Collins," Xavier looked up with a noble and regal bearing. "I am Professor Charles Xavier. Angelique's son, Matthew, has powerful psychokinetic powers very much like your ability to create hexes. It was through his power we were able to find you."
"I'm honored." Angelique turned to the boy. "You look very much like my son."
"Quentin," Barnabas looked up as the dark room slowly brightened. "I said your Barnabas must have been a fool for forgiving her. Apologize to him for me. No one is ever a fool for anything done out of love."
"I'll give him the message." Quentin looked with a wry look to Xavier and his X-Men. Young Matthew looked to his teacher for a proper signal.
"Matthew," Xavier looked to the boy. "Can you find their world now?"
"Let me guide you, honey." Angelique the witch knelt by the young boy as her counterpart fretted a minute and then decided to trust her.
"Okay…" Matthew Collins answered as her hand held his. They reached to the doorway to the room as Carolyn charged to the far end of the hall. Angelique gasped as they saw each other again.
"Angelique!!!" The blonde psycho saw her and began charging for her. The image started fading away as Carolyn hissed and dived into the room. Quentin braced for the worst as she vanished.
"What happened?" Ororo looked around for her Carolyn's evil clone.
"She wiped herself from existence." Matthew looked up to the wind-goddess. He felt the room continuing to close as it fazed to another time-line, but instead he reached out and began tugging it another way. His mother's counterpart grinned to him as her magic as his psychic powers continuing tugging away at the ethereal reality of the room. The darkness even crackled as Quentin and Scott looked around. Logan fretted a bit as it looked as if the room was bending and twitching.
"I hate traveling between realities." He mumbled.
"Matthew," Xavier spoke. "You're doing well. Just keep letting Angelique show you the way."
"Yes, professor." The room cracked again and turned hexagonal and then into a pentagon. The doors to the hall split into two sets of doors and then popped into several surrounding them in a circle. Barnabas Collins noticed several counterparts of himself in each one. It looked like a museum funhouse as different doorways showed him with other Carolyn's, other Quentin's and several other people he did not know. They were all doing something else or another.
"Which one, Matthew?" Xavier asked. "Which is their world?"
"I'm not sure." Matthew looked around. "They all feel the same!!"
"Angelique," Quentin stood by. "Which one?" He looked around confused. "Which is our world?" They both looked around. It was definitely not a one that already had a Quentin, but which one was her Barnabas?! Which one?!
"There's so many…" She saw some more doorways popping in and popping out. Each of them had a Barnabas waiting for his Angelique, but which one was waiting for her? She looked to Xavier and his X-Men, to her counterpart and then noticed a doorway where Willie Loomis was nailing supports to seal up the parallel time room. "That one!!" She grabbed Quentin's arm and bolted toward it.
"God speed, Mrs. Collins." Xavier answered as Angelique gave a brief wave goodbye. Quentin briefly waved too as their opening folded around them and closed. Twelve-year-old Matthew Collins gasped loudly as all the doors vanished except one, their own. The room returned to normal.
"You did, excellent, baby." Angelique lifted up and kissed her boy. Ororo pushed Xavier ahead as Scott and Logan left the room too. It was an interesting visit across worlds but no one wanted to do it again.
"I'm proud of you, son." Barnabas brushed his hair with his hand. Matthew just turned and looked to his teacher.
"Professor," He acted as if he was in trouble. "I think I made a mistake. I think that other Aunt Carolyn escaped to another world."
Scott turned around in shock. Logan looked at Barnabas as the former vampire looked to his wife. Xavier tried to think of something to say as Ororo froze and looked back to the parallel time room.
"Let's hope that wherever she turns up," He replied. "She finds someone else capable of dealing with her."
PART SIX
At times, Willie Loomis found himself falling back on his duties as caretaker of the estate especially where there was urgency to attention. He might have been married to Carolyn and a father, but now he saw a need to seal up the parallel time room to prevent the loss of any of the children of Collinwood. He had hammered a two-by-four into the floor against the door and two more on either side. After a middle support, he was basically ready to seal up the room completely and forget the room ever existed, but Barnabas still wanted it open. He was still quite certain that his wife would be back to him.
"Barnabas," Willie looked up to his former master. "You think that…"
"I don't think, I know…" Barnabas looked to the empty room. "There is no other place Angelique could have gone. She's been gone with Quentin over night. She has to be somewhere… out there."
"Why don't we go downstairs a minute?" Willie stood up straight and dropped his hammer with a loud clang into his toolbox. "We'll get a cup of coffee, maybe a bagel…"
"Trying to seal us up alive?" Quentin appeared in the doorway and looked at the wood braces against the door. Barnabas and Willie turned round as Angelique slipped through the opening and rushed to her Barnabas. They hugged tightly and split a kiss between them as Quentin shook hands with Willie and then with Barnabas. A gasp of relief passed through their collective minds as Angelique looked at her one true husband and somehow knew she was home.
"I thought I'd lost you." Barnabas told her.
"I came very close." Angelique's eyes dripped with a tear of joy as he looked at her as a loving husband.
"You found Quentin?" Willie asked.
"Actually," Quentin made a wry look, glanced with a bit of respect into the room and then turned back to Angelique. "I found her…"
"Two different realities…" Angelique filled in her husband. "And people with abilities you would not believe… and we found our way home. This room is far more dangerous than I ever thought possible!"
"I'll tell you all about it over some brandy," Quentin turned for the way to the main house as they moved down the hall and out the west wing. They moved close as they compared notes of other Barnabas' and other Angelique's as they failed to notice a strange young face peeking from the second floor study outside the parallel time room. Young William Collins watched his parents heading away from him as he stepped out and looked to the room that his Uncle Willie was sealing up. His uncle had stoked his interest in ghosts as he stepped between the boards nailed up outside the room and looked around. He looked around the desolate and empty room with the exuberant interest of an eight-year-old boy. His eyes panned over the dusty ceiling, down over unpolished fixtures and to the dull worn wood floor.
"Mr. Ghosts…" He called out. "Come on out… I want to be your friend." His ears picked up a noise as he turned to the back bedroom. He noticed a figure gasping in pain on the floor. They turned over with a pass of their long blonde hair and started crawling out trying to regain their senses.
"Hi, Aunt Carolyn… Wanna play hide and go seek?" The boy looked to his favorite aunt.
"Aunt Carolyn??" The blonde beauty looked at this strange young man a second and then around the room. "I think I can live with that." She grinned sadistically. "Why don't you come over here and give your Aunt Carolyn a great big hug…" She beamed ear to ear as the boy started forward. He loved his Aunt Carolyn a lot. She would never hurt him.
"Get away from her!!!"
"Aunt Carolyn??!!!" The boy looked to the window in stunned disbelief and noticed his aunt coming into the room from that direction. She was clad in a blue costume with short red skirt and yellow belt. Across her bosom was stretched a proud red "S" against yellow and a long red cape hung from her shoulders. He looked at her unable to believe how silly she looked then turned a bit confused to his other Aunt Carolyn in a black sweater and violet slacks. She was as stunned as the young boy.
"Honey," His caped aunt looked to him. "I'm your aunt come here…"
"No, she's not… I am…" The other insisted.
"What's going on here?" The boy was getting confused. "Why's there two of you??"
"I'm your aunt, honey, give me a hug…." One of them beckoned to him with a desperate grin.
"Don't touch her!!!" The caped Carolyn jumped to push her counterpart out of reach of the boy, but found that to be a big mistake. The second she touched her, she felt a shock as if her insides were being pulled out of her. She screamed in pain as she and her doppelganger tussled across the floor a second and rolled into the fireplace. A quick punch to the chest and the maiden of might crawled in pain to the other side of the room to catch her breath. The burning feeling was leaving her lungs as her evil counter part grinned toward her.
"Oh… that felt good!!!" She grinned in delight and felt the sense of heightened euphoria and power tingling through her body and slightly subsiding. Her body was craving more of that wonderful power. She looked upon her superhuman counterpart cowering in fear and sprung upon her with devilish glee.
"No!!!" The caped Carolyn started leapt up to kick her evil counterpart away. She grabbed by the sleeve and flung her hard to the wall as the dust stirred in the room. William continued watching the spectacle unable to understand and figure out who was his real aunt. They both had the long blonde hair his aunt once had, but the one dressed like a comic book character was a lot stronger and a lot faster. The one in the normal clothes, however, seemed crueler as she used her own grand but limited to try and hit her rival. She tore a gridiron from the fireplace with little effort and swung it at her caped counterpart. The boy watching them fight jumped excited as his caped aunt blasted the solid iron gridiron with a laser blast from her eyes. Momentarily blinded by the flying iron fragments, the costumed heroine was knocked to the floor and then felt that touch of death again. She felt her counterpart's cold touch to her face and then her arms locked behind her head. She felt the burning returning to her as her strength started diminishing and her rival's getting stronger. She felt her life force being leeched for her as her eyes looked up to the boy. If she died, he'd be next!
"Go!!" She screamed in pain. "She'll kill you…" She whined in pain.
"Die already!!!" The other Carolyn hissed in delight as she felt herself becoming stronger and more powerful than she ever had been before. William Collins watched in fear. Who was his real aunt?? The one in the costume fighting to free herself or the one who was getting bigger, stronger and unstoppable as she absorbed more energies than she had ever taken before in her life. Who was his real aunt!!!
"Mommy!!!!" He turned and ran in fear through the doors, down the hall and into the main part of the house. As he rounded the corner, he crashed into his Uncle Willie and fell to the floor. His uncle looked at him a bit confused.
"What are you doing up here?" he asked the boy.
"Aunt Carolyn… the room… two of them… one of them getting big like a giant!!" The young man spoke hurriedly and scared as he rambled off words that did not make much sense. Willie looked at him, placed aside his can of beer on an old armoire and lifted the tyke up in his arms.
"William," He talked carefully to his namesake and wandered down the hall to the room. "Your Aunt Carolyn is downstairs with your dad, your mom, your Uncle Quentin and Aunt Maggie." He gestured to the empty parallel time room. "There's nothing there. You just imagined it."
"But it seemed so real…"
"Sometimes things seem very real." Willie straightened the young man's shirt. "But they really aren't. Now, you won't ever have to worry about this room ever again. I'm going to make sure you'll never see it again. Now, go down and tell your real Aunt Carolyn to give you some milk and cookies."
"Okay, Uncle Willie…" William hugged his uncle and smelled the beer on his breath. He stepped back and tore out of the west wing as his uncle wished he could take his own advice. He looked with fear into the room and wondered just how many counterparts of his wife there were out there. Were some of them powerful superheroes as Quentin described or dangerous female giants as Barnabas's son had seen? He was not ready to handle the concept as he pulled the doors closed, tied them together tight with wire and then tied the wire tight to his support beam. He then turned to his side, moved a piece of paneling, pressed it into place and then started hammering it tight. On the other side of the doors, his hammering echoed into another reality as morning reached yet another timeline. The dawn peaked over the estate of another day in another world as a pale and weakened Carolyn Stoddard stood outside the mansion with her mother in the cold.
"I think my strength is returning." She replied to her mother. "I can hear the train on the other side of town."
"That's good," Liz kissed her daughter then turned to the new grave in the Collins family plot on the property. It was a huge one almost ten feet wide and five feet wide. It took three men to dig it, but Matthew Morgan had covered it in himself with the tractor. He patted it with a shovel and smoothed the dirt.
"I've never dug a grave for anyone that big before." He answered. "Who was she and where did she come from?"
"Elsewhere," Carolyn answered.
"How did you kill her?" Liz looked with concern with her daughter. "You was near death when I found you."
"Well," Carolyn shivered for the first time in her life in the cold of the family cemetery. "When it dawned on me she was absorbing my powers, it dawned on me she was absorbing my weaknesses too, so I lasted just long enough to get one of those nasty green rocks and I jammed it down her throat."
"Well," Liz supported her daughter. "She won't be absorbing anything else…" They turned back for the house as Matthew finished covering in the grave. He turned away and returned to his duties as somewhere in the universe, the joyful spirits of another Collinwood found their bonds to earth broken and left them to enter their heavenly awards. Among them, another Barnabas and another Sara joined hands as they retreated to the next world hand and hand.
END