It seemed that for the longest time that the family had stopped celebrating the holidays, but now with three married couples in the family and six children underfoot, it seemed there was a lot more to find to celebrate at Collinwood. When Liz first met her cousin Barnabas Collins little under ten years ago, she knew he was a romantic, but she also sensed he might have been a confirmed bachelor. After that trouble so many years ago, she was more than surprised when out of the blue he announced that he was going to marry the very lovely and regal looking Angelique Bouchard, but then Barnabas mentioned that the two of them had been married and estranged for many years. Their marriage at the old house wasn't so much as a renewal of their vows, but a truce to their previous hostilities. Liz was a bit curious over what details had separated them, but then she knew it was none of her business.
Barely a year afterward, Barnabas and Angelique were expecting and had a son and what a son the little rascal was. They were always bringing him to the main house and the little brat was immediately always into trouble. Named after Willie Loomis, William Benjamin Collins could be a holy terror, but somehow, Angelique controlled him with a stern hand and a controlling stare. There was a lot in the huge estate to carry the young brat's interest and a lot more that no one knew about. When he wasn't carry home seashells and pieces of driftwood from the bottom of the cliffs near Widow's Hill, he was getting dirty and dusty in the rooms of the East Wing. The once mop-topped lad however was now cleaned and cut and looked less the holy terror everyone knew him as. Sitting between his parents, he happily ate his Thanksgiving dinner as his parents tended to his little sister in her high chair. Tiny four-year Sara Collins was a little doll to all concerned. She looked like a little fairy brought to life with delicate pigtails and an adorable white dress as she sat next to Carolyn. Following Barnabas and Angelique and even Quentin and Maggie, Carolyn was very eager for a baby of her own and when Willie finally asked her to marry him after a long courtship, she hurriedly accepted than to risk staying single. Bidding a fond farewell to her dearly departed first husband, she and Willie had a son nearly at the same time as Quentin and Maggie's daughter. Six-year-old Jason Roger Loomis was already learning to take after the antics of young William. Willie smirked upon his own namesake born to Barnabas, but when it came to his own son, he stuck to the same spare the rod and spoil the child rule his own father had imparted on him. As his own little rug rat ate with his hands, he saw something wrong with the boy's eating preference.
"JR, please learn to use your fork." Carolyn chided as she kept turning her head to her daughter trying to muster using a fork on her vegetables. Named for her grandmother, tiny two year old Elizabeth Loomis looked up with two of the brightest blue eyes and giggled like a fairy princess surrounded by a world of adults.
"Let him have some fun while he's young." Quentin grinned as Maggie nudged him. She balanced her three-year-old daughter Amanda in her lap as he pointed with a fork holding turkey and cranberry sauce.
"Take care of your kids before others." She told him. She distracted his attention to his son Jamison. Almost a twin for Barnabus's son, the young hellion smacked with an open mouth full of turkey while stuffing dribbled around his lips. He tried not to show favoritism for his boy, but he obviously had a lot more to share with the lad than he did for his daughter. He thought little Amanda with her crimson head of red hair was just as beautiful as the two little blonde girls in the family, but he was having a hard time trying to relate to her when she wasn't bringing him crayon marked drawings and being daddy's little girl.
It was all these new little people that made Liz sit smiling at the head of the table. She had a lot to be thankful for this holiday season while she beamed happily at the sight of the children of her cousins and her own daughter. Forever no nonsense, her brother, Roger, however, brooded at the other end trying to forget their sticky fingers and little feet he heard scampering through the halls at all hours of the day. This was also the third Thanksgiving his now grown son David had missed to hang out with his college friends in Burlington, Vermont for skiing. He might have never been meant to be a father, but just knowing he wasn't responsible for these riffraff of uncontrollable urchins meant volumes of happiness to him. Feeling a bit of familial pride, he glanced down at William Collins. Barnabus's little boy chewed turkey and ate it whole with a big beaming grin of juvenile pride and missing teeth.
"Did you have enough?" he asked.
"Not yet." the boy answered truthfully as he glared across to Quentin's son, Jamison. Their eyes met over the turkey with one thought in mind. Someone was getting that turkey leg!
"William, please eat some vegetables." Angelique gave him more brussel sprouts.
"Mommy," the boy picked one up in his hand and looked at it oddly as he tried to figure it out. "Is this the same as the very first Thanksgiving?" A nervous glance bounced from Angelique to Barnabas to Quentin and to Willie. Even Liz grinned toward the young man's naiveté.
"Yes, it is just like it." Angelique rolled her eyes as if she knew more than she should.
"Except there are no Indians to do the dishes." Quentin quickly quipped to a few brief chuckles and amused responses.
"Quentin," Maggie looked up. "Don't say things like that. I'll never get ideas like that out of their minds when I have to give them their lessons."
"Maggie," Dr. Julia Hoffman looked a bit tired as she looked up. "Is taking care of preschoolers different than taking care of David?"
"Very," The lovely auburn-haired governess with a wry look. "My worse problem was just controlling David, but now I've got a problem with one little leader uniting the others against me." She directed her gaze to one little boy in particular. Beyond the holiday turkey and adjacent to the cranberries and mashed potatoes, one young lad sat between Barnabas and Angelique feeding his delinquency fueled appetite. With a contented little belly, young William looked to his father and then to his mother.
"What's everyone looking at me for?!"
2
Thanksgiving leftovers were barely a few days old and Carolyn was in a mad rush to get the estate ready for Christmas. Already hoping for snow, she and Maggie were putting decorations everywhere and little Christmas trees up and down the main hall from the foyer down to the dining room. A much larger Christmas tree went in the drawing room to the left side of the room diagonally across from the fireplace mantle where Jamison had realized Santa would have to walk all the way across the room to leave the presents. Little Christmas reminders, some forgotten from her childhood, were placed in the study or the music room. Maggie even beamed like a child herself as Mrs. Johnson continued the waft of cinnamon Christmas cookies lingering through the massive estate.
"It's starting to smell like Christmas." She shined up to Carolyn as the attractive blonde heiress fretted with attention to the room and planned other decorations.
"I know," She answered back. "My god, after my father left us, mother barely made an effort anymore. I wouldn't know it was Christmas unless she said something." Carolyn paused a bit reflective on her past holed up in the place with just her mother until her Uncle Roger and Cousin Barnabas came to live on the estate. Eager to create holidays the children would have memories of she tossed tinsel on the Christmas tree and sprayed fake snow on the glass doors to the back garden. Of course, the last detail was the hardest of all.
"No, Carolyn," Willie came down the back stairs to the kitchen. "I'm not doing it again."
"But, Willie..." Carolyn smiled as she carried a familiar red and white costume. "You're the only one with the belly to pull it off. And the kids loved it when you stumbled coming down the stairs last year. "
"My back hurts thinking about it." Willie stood in the kitchen as Mrs. Johnson and an extra hired housekeeper named Charlotte Spooner now covered cooking the meals for the family. Willie just stood out of their way and opened the refrigerator to toss some leftover turkey to a piece of bread. Some lettuce, a piece of pre-sliced tomato and a dollop of Thousand Island dressing, he had a quick sandwich.
"Honey, I love you. I love our kids, but I'm not playing Santa Claus another year. Get another poor guy to sweat in that thing, please don't make me do it another year."
"I'll do it." Quentin came in the door from the dining room looking for adults to help him forget the kids taking over the estate. "I just love it when the kids tell me what they want."
"Thanks, Quentin," Carolyn smiled with the love of a mother and the strictness of a wife. "But Willie's our Santa!" She dropped the costume and beard into her husband's arms and left the way Quentin had come in. Willie gasped and flung the costume over the kitchen table as he ate his sandwich. Charlotte and Mrs. Johnson looked at the drama unfolding beyond them as they cooked and baked.
"Let's do this," Willie took a bite of his sandwich. "You play Santa while I hide in the West Wing and do reindeer noises."
"And if we can't pull it off." Quentin thought Willie's sandwich looked good and moved to the icebox to create his own.
"We pin our crime on Roger." Willie plotted.
3
Carolyn sat before the Christmas tree in the drawing room. She admired it and nostalgically remembered nearly forgotten holidays of her youth before her teenage years and stranger times made everyone forget the holidays as well as birthdays. Even after Barnabas came to Collinsport, it seemed all they did was pull out a pre-decorated tree and wish "Merry Christmas" once in a week, but now things were happier and more joyful as children ran loose on the estate. Dreaming of the years she had as a youth, she glanced once more over the tree then beamed toward her children as they peacefully sat around her and worked on their lessons from Maggie. Six year old JR sat on the floor with his math book as three year old Lizzie angelically sat on the couch like a model little girl in her tiny overalls and white long sleeved shirt. She practiced her letters as her older brother warped his numbers. Carolyn grinned as she sewed a stocking for Lizzie to hang on the mantel. JR was so excited this time of the year he was checking his already hanging with care for candy already to be placed in it.
"And what do you two want from Santa this year?" Carolyn asked her reasons for living. JR barely stirred from his math as if he hadn't heard her.
"A little sister..." Lizzie looked up innocently. She appeared so femininely innocent that Carolyn wished she could stay that way forever.
"A grenade launcher, a rubber life raft…" JR rattled off as he thought it out. "A surface to air missile, a bullet proof jacket..."
"JR," Carolyn cringed at the sort of boy she was raising, but then the mixture of the two other boys on the estate was also a part of the problem she was facing. "You are not getting all those things. Just who do you think you're at war with?!"
Out the corner of her eye, Quentin's seven-year-old son Jamison appeared suddenly in the drawing room doors and threw something. Carolyn watched with surprise as she watched a water balloon hit JR hard in the face and knocked him over. Carolyn dropped her jaw at the spectacle and the sound of Jamison laughing uproariously while her son sat drenched to the skin in a wet spot on the carpet.
"You little geek!!" Jamison cried out.
"Jamison!!!" Carolyn glared at him and dropped to JR. Her son wasn't in the mood to be embarrassed by his mother - he wanted revenge. He jumped up and charged after his cousin through the door under the balcony screaming his head off through the halls. Carolyn froze where she was unable to believe it. She grabbed a wad of Kleenex from the box on the small table and started dabbing up the water on the floor.
"But I can have a little sister, right?" Lizzie's big blue eyes turned to her mommy.
"Honey," Carolyn slightly shook her head as she pulled her little girl closer. "Right now is not the time.........."
"Mrs. Loomis, What happened?" Mrs. Johnson was starting to adjust to Carolyn's married status. She came running with a dishtowel already in her hand and noticed the wet spot in the carpet as she made an effort to dry it.
"Jamison's throwing water balloons again." Carolyn answered at wit's end. "Why won't Maggie just give that boy a good spanking?"
"Oh, she spanks him good." Mrs. Johnson recalled raising two children of her own after the death of her husband. "But that boy just won't listen until Quentin takes a hand. It takes a father to give discipline. A boy needs discipline from his father." She heard the front doors of the estate as young William Collins entered the foyer alone from outside. Trussed up in his little jacket, she eyed the boy with caution.
"Speaking of young men requiring discipline." Mrs. Johnson mumbled under breath.
"Hi, Aunt Carolyn," Little William shined with an infatuation for his lovely aunt then noticed his cousin Lizzie on the sofa. "Can JR come out and play?"
"I'm going to get you!!!" JR and Jamison appeared at the balcony atop the stairs of the foyer. Jamison was still a few feet ahead and JR was catching up as they slowed for the stairs and then shot across the bottom for the end of the main hall. William and Lizzie both noticed the spectacle together as the cries of young boys rang out through the estate.
"Yes, honey," Carolyn started standing as she patted William's body. "Go play with both your cousins outside." Her eyes flared with that suggestion.
"I changed my mind." William scowled in wise fear. "I think they're in enough trouble!"
4
The main house of Collinwood was dark and the doors and windows all pulled tight as the Arctic winds blowing against the estate whispered promises of a white Christmas. The snow-covered estate was crisscrossed with lines of footsteps, bulky amateurish snowmen and angel-shaped images being buried in layers of snow. A rented snow vehicle carried the Collins family from their distant estate to the holiday festive town. It was well past midnight as Josette Collins wandered through the estate the same as she did any other night. White and ethereal as she fazed in and out of the visible world, her fellow spirits of Collinwood also wandered this mortal world watching their descendants live on with scant knowledge of their existence. Josette sometimes stood in plain sight as Liz talked with Quentin and Maggie about restoring Rose Cottage for them to live in privacy instead of cooped up in the West Wing. Jeremiah himself was often there as well as his brother Barnabus's son and that descendant of Daniel's climbed trees or scared their sisters. He remembered what it was like to be alive as he watched the changing of the times as leaves turning and lamented not being able to join in with the living. Sometimes he remised that Barnabas and Angelique had not become tolerant enough to stay as husband and wife when their father was alive, but somehow he knew that their parents looked down from the heavens content and interested in the affairs of their children.
Unable to rest and eternally active, Josette peeked in on the current and newer descendants of her husband's family. Carolyn's daughter was just as cute as her mother was as a girl and Jamison as dashing as when Quentin was a boy on the 1870s. Peeking in on everyone eventually, she finally came to a rest in the drawing room near the darkened Christmas tree waiting alone for Christmas Day. Carolyn Stoddard Loomis had switched it off for the night, but she just switched it back on to sit and admire it. As she sat and looked at the tree, Jeremiah's bandaged and bloodied visage wandered past the doors with his face in its usual horrible state; it was an image from his physical death, but he could lose it if he desired. As he turned into the drawing room, he turned the gruesome image back into the handsome appearance he had in life. The scars faded away and he became pleasing once more for his wife as he sat down next to her.
"Are you going to make that fruitcake and leave it anonymously for them again?" he asked.
"Maybe." she grinned eerily resembling Maggie Evans once more. "Are you going to walk across the roof and give the kids a thrill on Christmas Eve?"
"Of course," Jeremiah grinned mischievously. "I love it when they start screaming 'it's Santa!' and rush to their beds." He paused as he looked to the modern tree. "I think the trees in our time looked better with the popcorn and candles and handmade ornaments. All this modern stuff is just fake junk sold a million times over. No originality."
"I know." Josette turned her head to an angle as she leaned toward him. "These Twentieth Century holidays lack the spirit of the holidays I lived through. I remember caroling and carrying gifts to for the more unfortunate. No one bothers to do that anymore."
"I recall when Barnabas and I were boys there was one Christmas at the Old House where we had actual candles on the tree." Jeremiah's eyes sparkled from the lights on the tree. "The candles caught the tree and popcorn hanging off it on fire and we came running with marshmallows to cook off it. It was a foolhardy thing to do, but it's a memory the modern kids won't get to have."
"Every twenty years something changes; sometimes for the best, I guess." Josette leaned into him. "I miss sharing things with Sara when she was still with us, but she's now growing up as Barnabus's daughter now and Angelique is raising her so well. I guess I can forgive her now for what she did."
"She did bring us together." Jeremiah took her hand and looked into her phantom visage. Even as a spirit, she was hauntingly beautiful. "The Widows are going caroling this week; want to join them?"
"Not just yet," Josette sighed at the tree. "I'd really like to take a trip somewhere and visit some other Earth-bound spirits. I hear there's lots of spirit activity in New York at this time of year and Desmond and Charity are always asking us to come see them. Let's finally go visit their brownstone before it gets knocked down."
"Sounds great," Jeremiah rubbed her pale white hand. "But let's not stop in Amityville again. Those idiots play rough."
The lights in the drawing room flashed on as Roger Collins looked through it. Standing in his robe and pajamas with a cup of warm milk in his hand, he looked at the lights on the tree and flicked the wall switch to turn them off. A deep breath exhaled from his lungs as he peered through the empty room.
"I could have sworn someone was in here." He turned the lights off before departing.
5
Christmas was a week away and the Old House smelled of cinnamon and sweet chocolate as Angelique baked for the thrill of it. She had to fight the compulsion to invoke spells into her cookies that every child who ate one picked up their clothes and washed their hands before dinner. She beamed brightly as the sugary scent reached her senses at once and then even quicker had children rushing down from upstairs. Her son, William, led the way with J.R. behind him and Jamison bringing up the end. They grinned at the smell of the cookies as they looked down to the light flickering in every tiny cinnamon crystal and hoped that they tasted as good as they looked.
"Can we taste one to make sure they came out alright?" Her son became deviously desperate to taste one of them.
"Can you pick up your room so I can see the floor?" Angelique moved the cookies to cool on a plate then grinned and pulled down three napkins. A cookie on each one, she handed them one at a time to the tiny little crumb-snatchers no taller than four feet high.
"There," She announced. "And be gone with you before I bake you into a pie!"
"Thanks mom!"
"Thanks Aunt An." The voices scurried and ran back upstairs as they rattled back across the upstairs floor to William's electric trains. Those sounds were echoed out as the happy homemaker heard the front doors to the foyer open and close. Looking down the hall, she saw her beloved husband hanging his cloak and cane as Julia just passed out of range. The petite doctor gasped for warmth as she hastened for the heat from the burning flames of the fireplace.
"Barnabas, what did Doctor Shaw say?" Angelique came out of the kitchen in the back of the Old House with the scent of cookies still in her hands.
"Don't call that quack a doctor." Julia headed straight for her chair in front of the mantel and near the Christmas tree. "He's nothing but a general practitioner, and a lousy one at that!"
"He said..." Barnabas began.
"He said...." Julia continued for him. "That my cancer can be treated with chemotherapy..."
"He said she could live another ten years if she got the therapy." Barnabas replied. "But then she threw her shoe at him..."
"And missed." The frail and thinning doctor shivered even in the heat of the flaring fireplace just before sounding sweet again. "Barnabas, you don't understand. Chemo is very invasive and unpredictable. It can do more harm than good. Believe me, I know. I've lost many patients due to it. If I die this year, or the next, what does it matter..."
"And we don't want to lose you the same way we lost Elliott last summer." Angelique remembered Julia now more as Barnabus's best friend and confidante than as a rival.
"That was a heart attack." Barnabas remembered being pallbearer.
"Julia, we've becoming more than friends in the last few years." Angelique continued. "You know Barnabas and I so well, I think of you as our sister. Please, why are you being like this?"
"Angelique," Julia shivered as a bit before looking to her, to Barnabas and then back to the former witch. "Don't get the idea that I'm afraid of the Chemo, it's just that…" She herself tried to understand it.
"Julia," Barnabas sat across her in his chair. "Is it because I married Angelique? Are you feeling you don't belong here at Collinwood anymore? That's not true. We need you here."
"Julia, I…" Angelique paused sensing her unattended cookies in the kitchen were in danger. "I want you boys to get away from those cookies!!" She called to the kitchen mystically aware of the three young men about to prey upon them. William stopped inches from taking one and looked to his cousins alone with him in the kitchen.
"How does she do that?" She asked out loud. Out in the parlor, his beautiful mother was confronting someone else.
"Well," Angelique thought. "What about my witchcraft? Let me try to cure her. If I can cure a former vampire and a former werewolf, I surely can… " She noticed them both simultaneously rolling their eyes. "And what is that all about!"
6
Two little faces poked through the double doors that opened to the foyer of the Old House. Their faces vaguely resembled each other and many thought the two cousins were brothers. Brown-haired, brown-eyed, the older one of the two had just had a haircut a few days ago. The other one had thick sideburns like his father and small curls like his mother brushing the collar of his plaid shirt. Mischief on four legs of unbridled juvenile energy, they represented childhood unleashed as they slipped inside looking around for signs of adults. The older one was the obvious leader as he checked for the sight of parents and then led the way against the forbidden enemy parental territory.
"Let's get something to eat, I'm hungry." the five and a half year old asked his younger seven year old cousin.
"In a minute." When little William rolled his eyes, his father always said he looked just like his mother. The two started lightly treading the short walk past the bottom of the stairs heading to the second floor for the kitchen in the back of the house. They noticed their Aunt Julia resting peacefully in the chair near the fireplace. They had to be as quiet as a cat and as quick as a rabbit. Her eyes seemed to be closed as if she were a sleep, but then her eyelids peeked open to small slits as she noticed the two tiny would-be thieves. Her eyes opened widely to the two crumb-snatchers who ran over Collinwood as if they were two giant pack rats, and pack rats they were! They found every shell, lost key, broken shingle, missing silver and old coin every deposited on the estate as if they were the family's lost and found. Of course they found everything some family members suggested, they took everything!
"What are you two rascals up to?" Julia asked; her voice a bit hoarse. William and Jamison jumped to attention like small soldiers; their little faces in surprised shock.
"We was...."
"We were hungry."
"Your mother took that big chocolate cake up to the main house just minutes ago. You just missed it." Julia chuckled at Barnabas and Quentin's boys as she gestured to them. "Come sit with me before I get old."
"Gosh, Aun' Julia. I bet you're older than my daddy." Jamison spoke with sheer juvenile innocence she just couldn't get upset.
"Your father is older than me." Julia straightened her lip as she knew the truth and turned to William. "And before you say anything, both your parents are older than both of us put together!"
"Why are you so sick, Aun' Julia?" William asked.
"I got a bad thing in me that won't go away." Julia answered. "And if I don't lose it, I could go away."
"No, you won't." Jamison spoke up. "Josette says if something happens to you that you can stay with her and Jeremiah!" Julia stared back at him a second as her mind absorbed the thought.
"Well," She leaned back. "That's something I needed to know !"
7
Barnabas stood in his father's old study staring at the ghosts of the past as he once more tried to accept the passage of time between his youth and the present. He picked up an old ivory pipe and remembered being a boy in the 1770s lighting it for his father the Revolutionary War hero. For his son's sake, however, he made Joshua a World War Two hero and his mother a former relief worker. He turned and eyed the numerous books that had fallen apart over the years. Many of them today might be collector's items as would the decor and bric-a-brac around them. Thinking of all the years they had rested here while he was trapped in his coffin, he glanced at the room that had been restored to its original condition then began carefully perusing books that had to be thrown out or he thought could be restored.
"Well," Barnabas continued his talk with Julia as he handled first print editions with loose covers. "Julia, the children are constantly talking with Josette's spirit. I wouldn't worry about it."
"I didn't say I was worried about it." Julia sat with a shawl wrapped around her as Barnabas shifted and moved around books over two hundred years old with others less than ten months old. "I just said I thought it was cute. You know, Barnabas, all these years of experiencing ghosts and such, it never dawned on me that I could become one of them. I'm neither a spiritual person nor a religious one, but before I came to Collinwood. I just always assumed that we winked out when we died. Now, I don't know what to think."
"Why is it so easy to believe in a soul and a afterlife but so hard to believe in spirits?" Barnabas asked as he stood back at looked at the empty shelves he'd created so far. "I don't think Jeremiah or Josette understand why they haven't crossed over, yet, I'm sure they'd rather be here than elsewhere."
"Maybe I'll just have to lead the way." Julia grinned for one of the few times since she realized she had cancer. She looked up to Barnabas as they shared a moment then pretended to become distracted as they refused to become ensnared by their fondness for each other.
"Julia," Barnabas stood over her. "Angelique and I were talking last night. She cured me, and she had a role in curing Quentin. Let her try to help you."
"Barnabas, I don't think it's that simple." Julia glanced out to Angelique and the kids at the Christmas tree. "I feel this can't be handled as lightly. Magic might be able to cure magic, but this I think will just have to run its course. If it's my time, I will have to allow it."
"Julia," Barnabas sat by her. "I once said I thought of you as my sister, but you've still been more close to me than I ever was with my real sister."
Julia forced a deep breath as he gave her a platonic kiss to her cheek. She paused a bit with a slight tear realizing just what good friends she was leaving and what sort of absence she'd be leaving.
8
Julia watched Doctor Shaw as she remembered his grandfather from her short time in 1897. The first Tim Shaw was a scoundrel and an opportunist, but his grandson was actually a much more compassionate family man with two children. Looking a bit like his ancestor, the faithful doctor was graying just a bit at the temples and becoming quite a hefty fellow, but he still treated all his patients like close friends.
"Okay, Dr. Hoffman." He had left Julia briefly waiting as he processed her cat scans. "Let's see how far the cancer is getting."
"You mean let's see if its far enough for you to force chemotherapy on me." Julia responded.
"That reminds me." He picked up her shoes from the floor and set them down on the counter on the other side of the room. "Dr. Hoffman, I'm not going to force a single thing on you, but in cases like this, believe me. My own interest is in the best possible care of my patients. I would never force you..." He paused a second to scan over her x-rays. "Well, that's weird."
"What is?" Julia grinned oddly toward him. "Did you actually find something on those silly plastic slides?"
"It's not here." Dr. Shaw looked at the label on the pictures and then to the envelope they came in. "The cancer's not here. Someone must have confused the prints; wait here."
Julia watched the forty-something doctor head out of his examination room as she hopped up on the cold linoleum floor. Holding the back of her paper gown closed, she stood up and analyzed her own cat scans. They were hers of course, but the grayish area where her cancer had been was now black along the images of her bones with the rest of the x-ray. To her, her cancer had seemingly vanished. She checked her name on the prints then straightened her lips and looked out the window facing Collinwood.
"Angelique.... you little minx........." She mumbled under breath.
9
With the word that snow was falling again, the Collins children briefly forgot it was Christmas Eve and ripping open their presents in order to crowd around the window. Their trails and snow forts and snowmen were briefly obscured behind the flurry of large white puffs of frozen white rain coming down from the sky. The entire estate was a bit brighter with all the white out and a lack of moonlight. The distant trees shorn of leaves appeared intimidating as their black trunks and branches reached up to the sky over the white landscape. The children's friends in town might not see school until January, but the Collins children knew that their governess wasn't going to let a foot of snow on the ground keep them from their lessons. Once nighttime came, it became time to attack the main house drawing room and rip open the paper wrapping from boxes under the decorated tree and scream their heads off in delight. Carolyn tried to stay ahead of them with a camera with Maggie backing her up with her camera. Little Amanda hugged her Barbie close trying to bring it to life and Jamison screamed victorious with his new toy cars. Young William sat confused as he unwrapped a sweater and tossed it behind him.
"Julia," Barnabas spoke in secret as Julia sat by him on the sofa near the fireplace. "If Angelique said she didn't do it, I believe her."
"Julia, I hadn't even starting forming a spell to help you." Angelique whispered as she looked down in front of her. A few feet away, the little kids tore into their gifts as if they were a pack of wild dogs on a three-legged cat. A flurry of wrapping paper flew into the air as Mrs. Johnson tried to stay a few minutes before they mess they could create.
"Believe me, I'm in the dark as much as you." Angelique continued. "This spell this time was not of my doing."
"Well," Julia sipped more eggnog as she still tried to keep warm. "Whoever did it, cancer does not just vanish."
"It's Christmas Eve." Willie sidled into the conversation. "Maybe Santa Claus did it."
"Barnabas," Quentin looked up from opening one of his gifts. "I can't believe it! Where'd you find it?!"
"Angelique helped me." Barnabas admitted as Quentin held up the antique silver watch in his hand. Roger looked over from drinking sherry to notice it with a bit of jealous envy.
"May I?" He asked to see it. "A lost heirloom?"
"My fath... I mean," Quentin paused as Maggie stayed by him. "It's the watch that belonged to Geoffrey Collins, my ancestor's father. It was lost when my grandfather was a little boy. No one knew where it was."
"It was in an old coat in one of the old bedrooms." Angelique answered as she kept secret that Geoffrey's spirit had told her where to find it.
"Willie," Carolyn was helping her little daughter Lizzie rip open her gifts. "Shouldn't Santa be here already?" Willie made a sly look toward Quentin as the old scoundrel took the hint and made an excuse to Maggie. Behind the auburn haired governess, Angelique made a short cute shriek and hugged Barnabas.
"What is that?" Maggie asked as Angelique grinned and connected a diamond brooch to her green and white sweater. It was a tiny pin shaped like a little witch on a broom. The witch-shaped brooch was covered in diamonds with a silver strand as a broom.
"I saw it in Portland and knew she'd have to have it." Barnabas had a wry grin knowing Angelique's capacity for collecting ceramic witches to decorate the Old House. To the rest of the family, the beautiful mother and house wife celebrated a proud Wiccan heritage.
"With Angelique," Liz grinned as children rushed up to her showing off new toys. "Even Christmas is touched by a little of Halloween." She raised her small glass of sherry to her lips as Maggie unwrapped one of her gifts.
"Quentin…" Maggie had her chance to be gracious as she uncovered her gift from her husband. It was a huge wooden frame around her parents' wedding picture. Staring upon her dearly departed parents' faces made her wish they were alive to meet their grandparents, but then, except for Carolyn's children, none of the Collins brood had any grandparents. Barnabas had reportedly lost his parents long ago as had Quentin. Angelique had apparently never known hers and Willie had left an unhappy childhood to travel the world. The portrait brought Sam and Chloe Evans to the present in spirit as Maggie wished her parents could have known her children. Maybe since this was Collinwood, they were here in spirit after all.
Quentin's voice began ho-ho-hoing as loud as he could from the foyer. All the children in the drawing room turned their heads to the direction of the sound as an oddly tall and roguishly handsome face under a shifting fake beard entered from the top of a familiar red and white suit. Five tiny voices cheered as the jolly padded man entered with a bag of gifts and candy slung over his shoulder. Carolyn rolled her eyes toward Willie who was conspicuously present.
"That ain't Santy Claus," Young William recognized the obscured face.
"That's Uncle Quen...." Angelique's hand covered her son's mouth as she pulled his ear close to her lips and whispered something to his five-year old little ears.
"Someone is getting a lump of coal in his stocking if he says another word." she whispered as she pulled him tight. She kissed his little face as all the younger children held on to their childhood.
"Well," Quentin's voice came muffled under the white beard. "What have I got here?"
"Santa!!!" JR pushed to the front. "Did you remember my grenade launcher?!" Quentin made a face and looked up to his mother. Carolyn's jaw just dropped in embarrassment as the yuletide joy was speckled with a bit of disgrace. Julia turned her head toward Carolyn at the same time as Liz.
"Carolyn," Liz wondered out loud. "How are you raising my grandson?"
10
It was past midnight and officially Christmas by time everything had finally settled. Liz had retired first followed shortly behind by Willie and Carolyn taking their children to their rooms. That was the hint for Quentin and Maggie to take their own two rug rats to their rooms in the west wing. Kissing his daughter good night, Quentin caressed her crimson locks and stopped a second as he heard something. It sounded like… but no, it couldn't be that.
"What's wrong?" Maggie asked him.
"I thought I heard footsteps on the roof." He answered.
In the parlor of the Old House, William Collins laid asleep on the sofa wearing the sweater his mother had made for him and with a 12-inch tall action figure of a dark-knight detective under his left arm. The floor beneath him was covered in shredded wrapping paper waiting for the fireplace as he heard someone walking through the room. The brown-eyed youth noticed first the snow falling outside again as he rubbed his eyes and then toward the bearded fellow in red who turned to him. His eyes grew wide and his tiny throat cleared as if he couldn't accept it!
"You're supposed to be in bed." The jolly fat elf looked down on him. The young lad was star struck as this person collected him and carried him toward the stairs.
"Are you...." The boy cleared his throat as he was carried to his room.
"Santa?"
The bearded stranger just chuckled a ho-ho-ho. He entered the lad's messy room strewn with toys, shells and pieces of driftwood and laid him in a bed covered in comic books. A minute to pull the covers over the boy, the bearded fat man patted William's head.
"Are you really Santa?" William asked.
"Of course, I am."
"Well," William showed signs of being gifted and knowing how to challenge the foolish claims his parents told him. "How do you cover so many houses in one night?"
"Not everyone celebrates Christmas." Santa confessed with a twinkle in his eye.
"Can reindeer really fly?"
"They get a running start."
"Why does Rudolph have a red nose?"
"He parents did a lot of drinking."
"Can I visit the North Pole someday?"
"I'm sorry," Santa tucked him in to his huge four-poster bed. "But I wouldn't get much work done up there if every little boy who wanted to visit came up there."
"Do you really have elves?" William asked.
"Another question and I'm skipping this house next year." Santa pulled his blankets and comforter back up. "Good night, and Merry Christmas." He patted the boy's mussed hair and careful treaded and silently strolled out over the minefield of debris on the boy's messy room. Carefully closing the door, he turned right for the back stairs to the kitchen where Barnabas and Angelique Collins relaxed and began retiring from the active night by drinking eggnog. Their heads turned to the image of Father Christmas before them.
"Thank you very much, Willie." Angelique kissed him platonically and handed him a fruitcake wrapped in plastic. "He's been such a brat this year he needed to be scared a little bit."
"You got to love the little guy." Willie pulled off the beard. "Merry Christmas, Angelique, Barnabas." He turned to his truck parked out the back door in the snow.
"Merry Christmas." Barnabas wished him well. "You've been more than a friend Willie."
"Merry Christmas." Willie took his hand. Neither of them was much for physically sharing their respect for each other by hugging, but the firm handshake meant much more than mere words. As Willie struggled against the wet snow at his feet and the snow in the air, the ghost of Jeremiah Collins leaned against the back of the house invisible and out of view as snow fell through him. He sipped a bit of spectral brandy himself as his brother and would-be counterpart temporarily departed each other. Angelique closed the back door as the Eighteenth Century spirit reflected on how times had changed and sometimes stayed the same.
"And a happy new year again." He toasted another new generation.
END