In all the days of her life, no one had ever guessed accurately Angelique's age since she had married Barnabus. Most of the family agreed she had to come about Maggie in age, somewhere around 1943, or maybe she was as young as Carolyn, being born around 1946. Barnabus and Quentin had taken the secret of her seeming immortal longevity to their graves and Willie had come close to guessing the truth just before he passed away in 2022. Nevertheless, Angelique Bouchard-Collins astounded everyone by surviving even Roger's son, David Collins, who had left the ownership of Collinwood to Angelique's daughter. Had Angelique's son William had lived; he would have inherited the house and grounds instead of his younger sister. Next in line was William's surviving son, William Barnabus Collins, but he still owned and preferred his father's home over off of Seaview Road.
Family members, however, thought Angelique was younger than even Carolyn and that Barnabas had unwittingly married younger than him. Since moved into Liz Stoddard's old room, Angelique mostly wiled away her time reading her son's novels over and over and waiting for her grandchildren to visit. Her blue eyes had grown bluer than ever and the flames in the fireplace really brought them to life as they sparkled and brought her to life. Her long blonde hair had become platinum blonde and even longer than Carolyn's once was. Any of the gentlemen in town would have her as a bride, but the former Mrs. Barnabas Collins held her husband's memory in check through the portrait moved to her room in the Main House from the Old House.
"Grandma," Angelique's granddaughter, Angel Haskell (Sara Michelle Gellar), pushed the door open as she carried in a tray. Her mother had named her Angelique, but the lovely lady preferred just to be called Angel. "I brought your lunch upstairs."
"And do you think I'm too old to go up and down those stairs?" Angelique grinned to her favorite granddaughter.
"No, course not." The girl bashfully turned her head away. "It's just that... well, mom hates it when you complain. I don't like it when you two argue."
"It's not arguing." Angelique looked to her namesake. "Your mother and I have a different way of getting along. Ever since she was your age, she wasn't happy unless she was exactly speaking her mind. Oh, your father and her used to have so many fights because if it, it was a wonder that they even married."
"I guess," Angel sat on her grandmother's bed and watched her eat her dinner. "Oh, we got a message from Cousin William. He's coming home from California and says he's bringing a surprise."
"Oh, good heavens," Angelique looked up as she swallowed part of her pork roast. William was the only son born of her son. He had followed his father's footsteps be becoming a writer and then turned it into making motion pictures in Hollywood. Rarely coming home, his presence was a happy chance to have all her grandchildren in Collinwood. "The last time he brought a surprise it was to tell us he was dating that actress..."
"Yeah," Angel rolled her eyes. "I'm surprised they lasted as long as..."
"Angel!" A voice echoed through Collinwood as Samantha Collins (Holly Marie Combs) stuck her head into the room. "I'm borrowing your pink sweater!"
"Not my pink one!" Angel had to fight her Uncle Jamison's daughter for privacy. "You'll stretch it out!" She raced out to save it. Angelique just shook her head slowly and recalled her daughter as a teenager fighting with her cousins back in the Eighties.
"I think I've lived through this already." Angelique grinned in amusement as the family still learned to live with each other.
PART 2
The calendar on the wall read 2045, but the Collins family still endured. Sara Collins-Haskell (Lara Parker) was the new grand dame of the estate following the death of David Collins five years earlier. She had a handsome husband named Joe Haskell (Robert Rodan), the son of another earlier Joe Haskell, with the roguish looks of his father and three children. Her oldest son was William Haskell (David Boreanaz) who followed the same personality, which the late Quentin Collins had left behind. Tall and good-looking with just a bit of the same belated pomposity of his Uncle William Collins, a writer and ghost-hunter who was shot by an alleged burglar in his Seaview home.
His younger sister was Angelique Haskell (Sara Michelle Gellar) who followed the same vivacious path left behind by Carolyn Stoddard. Called Angel by friends and family alike, she was the sweetheart of the estate who had a big heart and a wonderful generous personality.
The last of the Haskell children was Adam Haskell (Tobey Maguire) who had been named after the nephew of Barnabus Collins. A clone of J.R. Loomis in everyway, the youth excelled in the fact he did not have to get a job as long as he lived at Collinwood, a role he obviously lived to the fullest. Of course, if he could have any job, he wanted to follow his Uncle J.R. and race cars in the Cannonball Run across the country.
The only other teens living on the estate were Matthew and Samantha Collins, the children of Jamison Collins (Gil Bellows), the son of Quentin Collins. A widower now these seven years, Jamison had been a police officer after leaving the estate in 2010, but now he inherited the mantle and responsibility handed down from Willie Loomis. A former would-be football star, now the current chairman of the board at Collins Enterprises, he had single-handed pushed the million-dollar business into a large billion-dollar company owning several small businesses in Boston and Bangor as well.
"Dad," Standing by the front doors of the foyer, Matthew Collins (Ashton Kutcher) watched his father come down from the second floor of Collinwood. "If it isn't any trouble..."
"Fifty dollars..." Jamison pushed the money into the boy's hand as his Aunt Sara watched from the drawing room.
"Great!" The young man spent more time in the main house than down at his grandparents' home in Rose Cottage.
"You need to better manage your money." Jamison continued for the drawing room. "I'm not always going to be here to give you loans."
"Yeah," The boy spun on his heel to run out. He pulled open the front doors and nearly ran into the figure about to knock on the door.
"Uncle William." He stopped and recognized his cousin the moviemaker.
"Don't call me that." The young man had grown to resemble his cousin's own grandfather. "I'm only ten years older than you are." He shook the young man's hand as he was in a hurry to run off. Turning round, he looked ahead to the faces waiting to greet him. Jamison stood at attention and thought his father was back to life. William Barnabas Collins looked like a younger version of Quentin Collins!
"William, you're home…" Jamison welcomed him home first. "How are you doing? Still making those horrible movies in Hollywood?"
"They're not that bad." He turned to his Aunt Sara. She had grown to resemble a younger version of his grandmother. Beaming ear to ear, Sara pulled him close, hugged and kissed him and then marveled over seeing him back to the estate.
"You look almost exactly like Uncle Quentin now." She ran her fingers over his sideburns as he forced a chuckle.
"Well, it happens..."
"Where's this surprise you warned us about?" Sara looked at him.
"Well," William looked at her. "Brace yourselves. I met a girl, and I got married."
"Married?" Jamison started to pour some sherry.
"To whom?" Sara recoiled. "We never got to meet her."
"Her name's Laura and you're going to love her." William grinned. "I didn't want to thrust her on you too fast so I asked her to wait outside on the veranda. She's beautiful and smart, and I love her so much."
"Well, it's not me who has to judge her," Sara answered. "It's your grandma. You know she's the real power of Collinwood."
"Can I go up and see her?"
"Let me prepare her." Sara turned grinning and shaking her head in disbelief. Hoping her mother was in a good mood, she ran up the stairs at a stead pace and jogged across the top landing. She had a brief glimpse of her nephew's wife for a moment before entering the upstairs hallway and hurried on to her mother's room and knocked briefly on the door. Still lying in bed, Angelique felt just a little lazy and way too comfortable as servants and her daughter waited for her hand and foot.
"Mom," Sara paused in the door. "My idiot brother's kid is finally home again, and he wants you to meet his wife."
"He what?" Angelique paused briefly in shock and then beamed proudly. "Oh my goodness... Yes, please. Let me meet this young lady."
"Grandma? May I come in?" William had arrived upstairs and peeked into her room. Sara slipped out quietly, but in the hallway, she quickly welcomed her new niece-in-law to the family and hoped the young woman got her mother's approval.
"Of course, darling." Angelique looked up as one of her son's children entered to meet her.
"I don't want to make you mad." He left the door to the room open. "But I met and married this great girl. She's so beautiful, I know you'll like her."
"Is she just like me?"
"Yeah…" He grinned a little bit and motioned to the door. "And a lot more."
Angelique turned to her night table and turned up the light on it to brighten up the room and remove the dark shadows in the corners. She looked up to the young lady entering on her grandson's arm. She was short, blonde and very pretty, but the sight of her made her shudder. Her eyes widened as she recognized her and realized that one curse from the family's past was not completely gone.
"May I introduce Laura Murdoch-Collins…" William beamed ear to ear as his grandmother and wife met, and then watched as his grandmother turned pale and struggled to speak. Shaking her head slowly, Angelique felt her heart was about to explode. She wanted to say something, but for the first time she remembered, her mouth was opening and closing, but there were no words.
"Grandma?" William saw her strange reaction. "Are you okay! I'll get you some more water. Laura, please stay with her..."
"Of course, sweetheart." His bride looked to him and then toward her husband's grandmother. She lifted her head with a pompous look, raised her left eyebrow and lightly flashed a grin. "You do recognize me, don't you? You thought you had killed me when I tried taking Jamison and Nora, didn't you? My, Angelique, you haven't aged gracefully at all." She looked down as she felt something in the blanket.
"No!" Angelique started to get out of the bed. "I fought you before. I can do it again!"
"My, " Laura wasn't worried and held her down. "These electric blankets can be so dangerous..." She watched as wafts of smoke came up around the elderly woman's bed. Angelique started screaming as the blanket refused to let her move. Within minutes, the whole bed was up in flames. Everyone hearing her screams raced to the confusion as before them Laura raced downstairs toward them.
"The electric blanket is smoking!" She told them. "What do I do!"
"Mom!" Sara tried to speed to the rescue, but Jamison knocked her out of the way. William dropped the pitcher of water and grabbed the fire extinguisher from the bathroom instead and raced ahead of them both. The entire upstairs was filled with smoke and the fire alarm was making the situation worse making noise as Adam Haskell left his computer game and ran into the confusion. Sara was pushed back as she realized her mother wasn't screaming out in pain any more.
"Mom!" Her eyes were full of tears as Jamison held her back. William emerged from the smoke after emptying the extinguisher. His eyes were tearing up more from the tragedy than the smoke.
"We lost her..." He barely looked up. "Her entire bed went up with her." Sara exploded from grief.
"Why didn't she get out of the bed!" Jamison asked.
"I'm so sorry, darling." Laura embraced her husband to console him. Behind her, she felt a dozen eyes on her. "But what could I have done? I'm just a single weak female..." An evil grimace emerged on her lips while she pulled him close.
PART 3
It was a cold a dreary day as the family returned for one last time to bury someone in the old Collins Mausoleum at Eagle Hill Cemetery. Family wept and cried in misery as Angelique was buried between her Barnabus and her first-born son. Sara cried continuously as her husband held her close. Her children were hit hard by the emotion as they too felt the lost of a grand woman who loved life for all it offered and never once acted anything like an old woman.
William Collins pulled Laura closed to him as the grief consumed him. He needed his new wife now more than ever. It seemed as if an immense cosmic scale ruled his life. Every time he became happy, an equal or larger amount of sadness had to be thrust upon him. For marrying Laura, it seemed as if his beloved grandmother was taken from him. It was too great a price for him.
"Sweetheart," Laura looked into the faces of the family. "Let me take you away. This is bothering you too much."
"I..." He couldn't talk for a moment as his breath appeared in the cold wintry air. "Can't stand to see her being placed in that vault. She... was the most loving person in the world. She took care of my sister and me after my parents died. She was..." His voice trailed off as his feelings overwhelmed him.
"Darling," Laura took his hand. "Let's move back to California. I don't want to live here. I get the feeling your family's blaming her for her death."
"Don't be ridiculous." William looked at her as she stroked his sideburns. "They don't think that. It was an accident."
"Was it?" Someone spoke while William turned round. Allison Collins (Calista Flockhart) stood behind them dressed in black. Her eyes red from crying, she looked at Laura confused and distraught. "You were the only one in the room with her! Why didn't you help her out of the bed when the blanket started smoking? Why didn't you unplug it? Why did you kill my grandmother!"
"Ally!" William held Laura close.
"It was an accident!" Laura screamed. "I was afraid! I didn't know what to do. I tried to get help!"
"You left her to die!"
"Ally," William sounded just like his Uncle Quentin and even had his same warning stare. "That's my wife you're speaking of. Would you listen to yourself? You're talking about murder. She wouldn't do that."
"Let her say it!" Laura began crying. "She's right! If I had known what to do, your grandmother would still be alive!" She turned and ran down the hill from the mausoleum and between the tombstones. Darting between the old markers, she ran toward the cars on the old gravel road.
"That wasn't fair!" William turned to his sister. "Ally, you may be my big sister, but when you attack my wife, you attack me. I don't want to hear you saying things like that in my presence, do you hear me?"
"That woman killed our grandmother."
"Grandmother died from a defective heating blanket." William stared her down. "What are you going to imply next? That Laura's a witch and put a curse on the family?" He turned away in disgust to find his wife. Ally scowled and folded her arms as her Aunt Liz (Madonna Ciccone) came down the hill. The vivacious blonde had been a singer in New York and California since leaving Collinsport. Now a major singing star, the daughter of Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis had found her destiny and now returned home to the city in Maine to where she thought she'd never return.
"I can't believe he married her." She stopped and folded her arms. "You know, I can't place my finger on it, but there's just something I don't like about her."
"I know." Ally looked back. As she turned round, some of the other mourners had broken up. Jamison and his kids took one path as William Haskell (David Boreanaz) checked his watch and came down toward him. His sister, Angel (Sara Michelle Gellar) was with him briefly then noticed their mother left behind. She went back to stay with her as he took one look at his blonde aunt the rock singer and hugged her.
"Aunt Liz," He mumbled through his grief. "It's great to see you."
"Good to see you too, sport." The granddaughter of Liz Collins Stoddard forced a grin as they parted their platonic embrace. She realized how cute and handsome he was becoming and gave him a brief kiss. "How are you holding up?"
"You know," The younger William gasped as he pushed his hands into the pockets of his dark suit. "I was never close to grandma as Angel was, but... I still miss her. It's not going to be the same with her not being around."
"Will," Ally looked toward the older part of the cemetery. "Who's that? I don't recognize her."
The three of them watched a woman with long dark hair leave secretly from the mausoleum. She had been present before the funeral and had stayed during the whole thing. No one had talked to her, but she had seemed genuinely distraught with everyone else by the death of the first Angelique.
"Ma'am?" Sara's son called to get her attention but she just continued walking. She stepped toward a tombstone, passed her hand on it and turned around one of the large oaks of the cemetery. William Haskell glanced as she vanished behind it.
Lizzie Loomis and Ally Collins rushed to look for her. Wondering if she had fallen and became obscured in the maze of markers and gravestones, they tried to search her path, but found nothing disturbed. The leaves continued to crunch under their shoes where they tread. None of them were broken earlier by the strange woman. Haskell stopped and looked at the tombstone the woman had touched.
"Victoria Winters-Bradford. 1771?-1801"
PART 4
William Haskell (David Boreanaz) passed his gaze over the books in the Collinwood study one more time hoping his mother hadn't removed the book he remembered. Finally, he saw a dark blue book with the words "Collin Family History - 2020" on it in gold letters and pulled it down. His cousin Allison and their Aunt Lizzie watched as he thumbed through the pages.
"I know I heard that name before." He skimmed the pages. "Here she is, Victoria Winters-Collins, illegitimate daughter of Liz Stoddard... no, wait, too recent... I need to go back to the start of the Nineteenth century."
"I remember that." Lizzie Loomis gasped a bit and sat down near her niece Allison. "I was, what, eight or ten when Grandma died and admitted on her deathbed that mom had a half-sister. Everyone had conniptions about it and mom was screaming at me more than usual. Everyone got so stressed out."
"What happened to her?"
"She had left Collinwood years before to get married." Lizzie answered. "No one knows where she went."
"Here's another." William read from the Second Chapter of the book on the days after the Revolutionary war and the building of present-day Collinwood. "Uh...'and it was said the deaths of Josette and Jeremiah were caused by the witch Victoria Winters who did escape her fate and left the hapless governess Phyllis Wicke to take her place. However...' the book adds an addendum, 'this rumor may not be accurate as Reverend Silas Trask left a confession exonerating Winters before vanishing himself. Winters would go on and marry the magistrate that defended her, Peter Bradford, and live in peace on the far side of Rockport until 1801 when the warlock Jebez Hawkes did kidnap her demanding her secrets. Refusing to give them, she was flung off Widow's Hill before the eyes of her beloved son and husband.'"
"Horrible." Allison Collins mumbled.
"So we've got the ghost of one Victoria who knew Aunt Angelique lurking around the grave of an earlier Victoria Winters." Lizzie folded her arms.
"Doesn't make sense, does it?"
"Maybe Aunt Victoria was a descendant of the first one." William added.
"What gets me is: Aunt Vicki left Collinwood before Grandma married Grandpa Barnabas. What's the connection between Victoria's ghost to grandma?"
"I don't get it." Allison heard a commotion in the foyer and peeked out as her Aunt Sara (Lara Parker) slipped back into the estate. Uncle Joe (Robert Rodan) consoled her a minute as she headed up stairs crying. Standing up, she missed her son Adam (Tobey Maguire) dashing for the kitchen.
"How is she?" The boy asked.
"She's having a hard time." Joe poured some sherry for himself from the cabinet in the drawing room. "She's having a hard time believing your grandmother is gone."
"And Angel?" Joe's nephew, William Collins, asked about his sister.
"She wanted to be by herself." Joe sipped the drink in his hand. "I think she drifted down to the Old House."
Angel Haskell (Sara Michelle Gellar) unlocked the doors of the newly deserted Old House. Her cousin, William, was supposed to inherit after Barnabas had passed away, but he now had his own home in Burbank, California. The forlorn blonde stared distraughtly and directionless at the sheet covered furniture then pulled the cover off her grandfather's picture. She barely remembered him as she realized what a striking figure he actually was and how much her grandmother loved him. She looked around the room as if she were looking for some one. If her grandmother's spirit lurked anywhere, it would be here.
"Grandma?" The girl asked the darkness. "Are you there?" She turned slowly for the foyer of the impressive mansion. Pausing at the bottom of the stairs, she took each one at a time as if she were just a bit scared of what she imagined upstairs. Gradually becoming enveloped by the huge maw of shadows she reached the top of the stairs and looked into the first room. The door slightly open, it had been once called Josette's room, but later it was her mother's room. The furniture was covered in sheets glowing in the darkness like short fat ghosts. She turned down the hall and peeked in to her Uncle William's room. The door had been closed off after his death in 2005. Grandma Angelique used to come in here and cry herself to sleep mourning the son she had lost by a burglar's hand. If she were to appear, it might be here. This was the only room whose furniture was not covered in sheets. A picture of Elaine Vassal sat by the bed next to another picture of Ally McBeal from Boston. Both girls reputed cursed the day her uncle married someone else.
Sara felt herself guided somewhere else. She slowly strolled back out and down the length of the mansion. Her legs carrying her somewhere else, she found herself at the door to the attic and forced herself to open it. It was as if someone was expecting her. She glanced up the stairs behind the door and forced herself to ascend up into the attic.
There was a light behind the steps to the cupola on the roof. Beyond the wrought iron stairs, Sara thought it was a lamp left on, but as she forced herself to look deeper into it, she saw something else. A figure prostrate across the trunk in a very old dress. It looked as if it were from the turn of the Eighteenth Century… a blonde servant of some sort. The figure felt as if someone was looking at it then turned around to face Angel.
"Grandma!" Angel's lip trembled as her eyes filled with tears. She looked younger than she ever was and silently stood and held open her arms. The younger girl rushed into the arms of her grandmother's spirit and hugged her. The ethereal arms of her lost grandmother encompassing her felt cold as ice, but she didn't care.
Down on the floor, the lock on the trunk popped open by itself. Angel turned and looked as the lid lifted itself wide. It was filled with old clothes rapped in plastic, but there was something else. Something pushed down to the bottom. She looked down into it.
Her grandmother's spirit had vanished as Angel found herself alone. She dropped to her knees and pushed her hands through the old clothes until she felt something. It felt like a book. A large book! The moonlight wafting in through the garret window revealed the title of it.
"A Journal Of Spells and Curses By Angelique Miranda DuVal."
Angel Haskell gazed deeply upon the title and then pulled the book close to her bosom trying to absorb all the mystical energy in it to her body. New memories rushed to her mind she had never realized as her grandmother's secrets invaded the crevices of her mind. Her beloved grandmother was so much older than anyone believed. She was a child when Collinsport was built, a young sorceress and a witch by the age of twenty. She had traveled the world, seen the pyramids, fell in love and spent ages drifting from the afterlife and back out of the power of love. Angel closed her eyes realizing the truth of her much loved grandmother, and then gasped with a new being, a new purpose and a new destiny.
"No one kills me and lives to get away with it." Angel's eyes flared with revenge not seen since the days of Joshua Collins!
PART 5
Samantha Collins (Holly Marie Combs) drifted through the house lightly treading her feet along the corridor for her bedroom. Outside the estate, it was cold and windy. The clouds were overcast and the entire estate was covered in forever night as the heavens mourned the death of Angelique Collins. The woman was a great-aunt to Samantha, the mother of her father's cousins. Wondering if the woman had joined the many spirits of Collinwood, Samantha lightly quickened her step past the bedroom where Angelique once slept fearing that if she was too slow that the woman's ghost might pull her inside and continued to her room at the end of the hall across from that which had been her Aunt Carolyn's. As she moved, she passed her Uncle David's room. He had passed away sometime before and left his room to her cousin William Haskell. Slowing to a stop, Samantha paused and eavesdropped a moment to peek through the crack in the door. William, her cousin Ally and her Aunt Lizzie Loomis were seated around a table in a circle with their hands pressed down to form a circle. The room was dark except for a solitary burning candle and William was talking out loud to the dark.
"We are calling the spirit of Victoria Winters…" He implored to the spirits of the house. "Please appear to us and tell us what we what to know. Tell us…" He paused. "What is the secret of the first Victoria Winters? Why do you walk? What are you trying to tell us?"
Samantha tried to keep from laughing. This was too good to be true! She could not pass on an opportunity like this. Mustering her resolve, she grimaced mischievously and altered her voice to a discreet whisper.
"I'm… here…" She voiced to the room breathlessly.
"Aunt Vicki!" Lizzie (Madonna Ciccone) reacted to the ghost of the woman who should have been her mother's sister. Ally gasped at the contact, but William wasn't quite sure. His ears detected that voice from the door. As his head turned to that direction, he noticed Samantha watching them. He stood up and moved to confront her!
"What do you want?" He voiced angrily.
"What are you doing in there?" Samantha asked incredulously. "Are you having a séance?"
"No!"
"Yes, you are!" Samantha started giggling. "No one's tried one of those in over twenty years! Can I join in?"
"No!" William Haskell (David Borenaz) scowled and slammed the door on her. Cackling and laughing down the hall, Samantha just continued on her way. Across the hall, Angel Haskell sat in her room brushing her long hair and humming under breath at her vanity. Filling the void of the late Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis, she vainly remained focused on her looks while Samantha stood looking at her. Somehow realizing she was being watched, Angel turned her head and looked back upon Samantha with a distant glare belonging to another world. Determined, focused and adamant like a person who would do anything to protect her privacy, she sent a chill into her distant cousin that forced Samantha to step back and honor that privacy.
The room across the hall had belonged once to Maggie Evans and before that it had belonged to other governesses to the Collins family children over the years. These days, Samantha called it her own. Delicately sliding off her exterior wrap of her nightgown, she emerged attractive and chaste and tossed her wrap over her chair. Pulling down the blankets and comforter of her canopy bed, she pictured herself as a princess in a desolate castle preparing for bed. Over the mansion, a trace of thunder cracked and added to her setting. Her perfect brunette locks cascaded down over her back and shoulders before draping over her pillow. As she tried drifting off to a world of Arthurian romance and knights in shining armor, she heard a noise in her room that reminded her that some castles had ghosts. Opening her eyes, Samantha wondered if her cousins were now trying to scare her for a change. Turning over in her bed, she looked over and recognized the ghost of Victoria Winters (Alexandra Moltke)!
"Do not be afraid of me, granddaughter of Quentin Collins…" She spoke. Her hair was coal black, her eyes were brilliant shining blue and her skin an ethereal white. She was dressed in a long period dress from another century with buttons crossing down from her collar and a long faded skirt in an immaterial state. Looking upon her, Samantha froze in fright and her eyes widened in fear. The ghosts of Collinwood were real!
"You must know the secret of Laura Murdoch…" Victoria continued. "Every child born to her is destined to die. Twice she has been foiled. For her to be truly destroyed, she must be stopped a third time…" She raised her hand to Samantha. "Rise and walk with me…"
"No…" Samantha whimpered fearfully and shrunk to a fetal position. Her bedroom door now opened and she feared what other former governesses were going to come parading through her room. She pulled her comforter over her head and heard Angel's voice in her room.
"Victoria Winters…" Angel commanded the spirit. "Return to Widow's Hill…"
Samantha peeked out and the ghost was gone. In its place, her cousin Angel (Sara Michelle Gellar) had come from across the hall. Somehow, she had sensed the ghost and even more incredibly had driven it off. Her head turned slowly to Samantha and looked down to her. Leaning down over her, Angel adjusted her cousin's blankets and lightly stroked her hair in the same manner of her grandmother.
"Angel…?" Samantha was not comfortable with her over her.
"I'm handling everything." Angel confessed, held Samantha's head in her hands and closed her lips over hers. There was a brief shriek from the young brunette and attempts for a struggle. Samantha's legs kicked to free themselves from the blankets, she tried to free herself from Angel's steel-like embrace and then her mind began drifting away. Her hands fell limp and Angel gasped from taking a breath from her distant relative.
"You saw no one." She whispered adding to her spell. "You will not recall a thing." She straightened up and began departing in the knowledge Samantha would never recall encountering Victoria's ghost. Her feet took the path to her grandmother's room and entered it with bold determination. Coldly focused and adamantly locked in her decisions, she advanced on the desk in the corner and looked down on the journal from the Old House attic. She palmed the name on the cover fondly and then sensed she was not alone. Looking up, she saw more ghosts. Looking upon her were the ghosts of Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard (Joan Bennett) and Barnabas Collins (Johnathan Frid)! Elizabeth faded away with the shade of Victoria by her side, but Barnabas advanced upon his granddaughter's body in deep restrained woe.
"Angelique," He spoke. "Please don't confront Laura. You're still not strong enough. Depart our granddaughter's body and return with me to the Old House. There are other ways…"
"Barnabas, my beloved…" Angel tearfully caressed her long lost grandfather's face. "Our son's voice screams from beyond the grave. I cannot allow his children to be cursed by the Phoenix. I must confront her one last time and remove this one last stain from our family."
"Angelique…" Barnabas felt himself forcefully returned to the Old House. Angel gasped lightly, looked upon her grandmother's book and turned away. Her steps quickly carried her down the corridor, through the door over the upstairs landing and down into the foyer. From the drawing room, her mother looked out to her hastening to the front entrance.
"Angel," Sara Collins-Haskell (Lara Parker) looked up to her. "I thought you'd gone to bed."
"I've got something to do." Angel answered. "And besides, with grandma gone, I want to be called Angelique now."
"Sweetheart," Sara reacted with obvious glee and excitement and pulled her daughter into the drawing room. "As long as you're up, you might as well know the good news. I just talked to William and Laura down at the Old House. They just realized they're expecting! We're going to have a baby on the estate! Isn't that wonderful!"
Angel gritted her teeth with distaste and stepped back. The Phoenix was with child! What of her revenge! Was there no end to this curse! Her mother looked back at her with curious wonder at her unusual response.
"Angel?" She asked. "What's wrong?" Sara watched her daughter turn and back away from her. She was upset. Distraught, furious and confused, Angel turned toward the piano and then aimlessly wandered down the back hall into the dining room. Her feet continued carrying her along into the kitchen where her brother Adam (Tobey McGuire) and cousin Matthew (Ashton Kutcher) looked upon her with distant interest. Finishing off the last of the chicken from that day's dinner, they silently watched Angel look upon them distantly and then vanish up the back stairs of the kitchen.
"A girl thing…" Matthew guessed.
Angel's steps carried her back up to her bedroom, but instead of entering it, she turned through the door to the west wing looking for a place to lose it. Unlike a hundred years ago, there were few parts of the house for someone to be alone. Matthew had the room of the late Quentin Collins because it was part of the side tower and Adam had the room across the hall because of the secret passage to the attic. Beyond the upstairs library was a large suite once known as the bedroom of Joshua and Naomi Collins, but it had been sitting empty since the 1840s. According to rumor, the room opened into other parallel times and other realities. It had even once been boarded up, but as Angel pushed open the doors, she saw her grandmother, Angelique Bouchard-Collins alive once more and another young woman she did not know!
"Grandma," The younger woman replied with an ego. "I have seven Grammies, five Music Awards and even two People's Choice Awards. Why can't I have one of the biggest rooms in the house for my son and me."
"Lainey," Angelique looked upon her granddaughter. "Do you recall your father's ghost stories about Collinwood? The Parallel Time Room?"
"Is this it?" Lainey Collins (Kelly Clarkson) looked around excited. Her grandmother just silently guided her out of the room and into the hall. Closing the doors, Angelique looked upon the daughter of William and Ally Collins.
"You tell me…" She pressed the doors back open and they both took a breath. In the room, Angelique Carolyn Haskell, an alternate reality counterpart of Lainey's cousin, was screaming at the top of her lungs and tearing the room apart as a woman possessed!
PART 6
The hills of the estate of Collinwood once more ringed with promise. William and Laura Collins had had a baby girl, Charlotte Angelique Collins. Everyone was happy and excited for them except for Angel. She had become moody and withdrawn, often vanishing in to the parallel time room to read that ancient journal. Matthew had even heard her talking to someone, but when he looked in Angel would be alone. Samantha would hear her as well. It sounded like Angel was getting advice from her grandmother.
"Whom are you talking to?" She asked.
"Grandma." Angel answered distantly. "She's alive in another time."
"She is?" Samantha realized she wanted less and less to do with her cousin. The blonde prima donna looked up coldly, "Where are you going, Angel?" She looked to Angel grabbing her jacket from the window seat of the deserted room.
"The Old House." Angel answered. "I've got business to handle."
"But there's a bad storm coming."
"Who do you think started it?" Angel announced under her breath as the winds wafted through the estate. "And for the last time, my name is Angelique!" She hissed viciously.
Down in the Old House, Laura Murdoch-Collins (Donna Millay) carried her baby daughter to her crib as winds buffeted the outside of the three hundred year old structure. Becoming pregnant was the best thing she could have done. It forced William to stay in Collinsport and continue living in the Old House so that his daughter could get the same humble atmosphere growing up he had received here. They just couldn't get that in California, but right now Laura wished she was there as thunder and winds tried to break into the house. The roof whistled as drafts of wind moved the contents up there around. Outside the ancestral manor, trees bent from the wind and leaves crackled and scratched over the roof. Every time she started to put the child down again, the baby started crying again. Alone by herself in this house, Laura cooed to the child and wished William returned home. The phone rang in the foyer as she held Charlotte with one hand and pinned the phone under one ear.
"William, darling, is that you?" She grabbed the phone.
"Yes, honey it is." His voice was crackling as the phone lines threatened to break their connection. "I'm stuck at my father's old house. I'll be there as soon as it lets up. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine, dear," Laura admitted. "It's just the baby is scared. You be careful. I'll see you soon enough."
"Okay," William watched the weather through the windows of his father's abandoned study. "The radio reports are saying we're being hit by two storm fronts and its moving east. It should be over by..." The line went dead.
"William... William..." Laura clicked the phone then hung up. Mildly concerned, she peered down into Charlotte's tiny brown eyes. They looked like two tiny embers sparkling in the light and looked to her with such trust. It was a look Laura had seen several times before in several other children.
The front doors downstairs in the foyer crashed open as someone burst inside. Laura pulled her daughter to her bosom as her wayward visitor sought solace from the storm. Pushing and sealing the doors with all her might, Angel Haskell pulled down her hood and pulled her long hair out of her eyes.
"Not a fit day for man or beast..." She looked up onto the upstairs landing to her cousin's wife with a strange look.
"What are you doing out, Angel?" Laura looked to her as she jiggled her infant.
"I got stuck walking from Rose Cottage." The girl lied while looking back at her with an odd stare. "And by the way, I prefer Angelique now that my grandmother's gone."
"Oh, that's right." Laura headed back in to the nursery in Josette's room. "You were named after your grandmother. I heard you didn't handle losing her very well."
"We all know how she died…" The younger Angelique followed as she got a response. Laura paused to acknowledge her then ignored her.
"And how she was murdered." Angel continued.
"Murdered?" Laura sat in the rocker under Josette's portrait. "I thought it was an accident with a heating blanket."
"But we know the truth, don't we, Laura…" The young woman glared back at her with such intensity she practically was her grandmother. Laura was so taken aback by the look she didn't realize that her cousin-in-law had taken Charlotte from her arms. Angelique Haskell cooed and made noises to the baby and started to put her in the crib.
"She'll start crying again." Laura told her.
"No, she won't." Angelique covered the sleeping baby with a blanket as Laura stood and looked down on her. Tiny Charlotte was actually drifting off as she looked to Angelique.
"You know, Laura," The young woman glanced menacingly to her again. "If you hadn't become pregnant, my grandmother's spirit would have had her revenge."
"I don't know what you mean." Laura stood before her unintimidated.
"You killed me, Laura!" Angelique's voice came from her granddaughter's body. "I may not have been fast enough to deal with you then, but I'm back!"
"I'll just have to kill you again!" Laura slowly backed away as Angelique Haskell came toward her.
"No, you won't..." Young Angelique Haskell came after her. "I have survived two world wars and the sinking of the Titanic! Nicholas Blair couldn't kill me and he had more power than you! As far as the Titanic, I met someone on that ship so long ago who introduced me to people who know all about you!"
"Don't you forget, Angelique…" Laura stood before the spirit of the one person who once had the power to destroy her. The windows of the master bedroom burst open behind her as she stood her ground. The storm outside rushed into the house as they stood before each other for the last time. "Witches are vulnerable to fire!"
"And you have no more powers!" Angelique screamed at her. "You see, on the Titanic I met a certain Asgardian thunder-god who told me he was my ancestor. Thor also introduced me to the ancient Gods of Egypt, and the Great God Ra has been upset by the abuse of your powers and your dishonor to him. He has sent his servant to retrieve you for punishment..."
Laura saw movement outside the window pounding in the wind. There was a figure floating in the air outside the house. It looked like an old Egyptian canoe bobbing in the air. Its master was a man. A jackal-headed man as a matter of fact. He controlled his craft in the bobbing winds as he stepped through the window and became a tall powerful black man wearing the head of a jackal over his own. He was adamantly serious as he grabbed Laura by the sleeve of her sweater and pulled her off her feet.
"Great god, Anubis! Carry off this false immortal!" Angel beseeched his presence then turned to Laura. "I think you're in deep…" Angelique added as Laura began screaming. The former Phoenix realized she was being carried physically to the underworld and grabbed the windowpane to keep from being dragged into the old funeral dirge. With one hand, she grabbed Angel and began dragging her as well. Angelique's voice screamed from her granddaughter's body. Tall, thin and muscular, Anubis held on to Laura. His brown eyes peered back into the house from his bald Egyptian head wondering what to do. He had his orders, but they did not involve a certain blonde sorceress within a mortal shell.
"You're coming with me, Angelique!" Laura screamed over the winds. With her body hanging out of the house, the storm and rain doused her and drowned her voice out under the elements. "But I will be back!" Her eyes looked to her daughter beyond the house.
"Not this time, Laura!" Angelique's voice screamed under cracks of wind thunder pounding the estate. "This time, you won't be coming back! This is positively your last chance!" The sky was dark and the trees around the house rolled and shook in the wind. Laura screamed herself as Anubis continued pulling her closer and deeper into the boat of the dead. The younger Angelique clung to the house herself and then heard her cousin's daughter begin screaming from the storm shaking the house. Her fingers digging into the windowpane, she felt Laura pulling her deeper into the boat with her and the jackal-headed god of the underworld. The son of Osiris looked to her with the wisdom of almost five centuries and tried to keep his boat steady under these earthly winds and obeyed the orders of his ancestor.
"Great Gaea, Mother Danu!" Angelique felt her fingers slipping from the Old House as the rain saturated the water-filled pane. "Deliver me strength!" A hand reached from the window and then another. Her eyes looked up to her grandfather's sprit. Clutching her arm, the ghost of Barnabas Collins began pulling her back to earth. Jeremiah and Quentin Collins reached to Angelique as well while Laura continued pulling. The shade of Willie Collins stood beside the son of Barnabas Collins and pulled Angelique back to earth. Weather and storm whipped up the earthbound ghosts and returning spirits and clutched tightly at the young witch. Laura turned her rain-filled eyes up to the specters of Josette Collins and Victoria Winters pushing her deep into the barge of the dead. Anubis looked around the sprits surrounding him and clutched Laura even harder. The ghost of Carolyn Stoddard-Loomis lifted Angelique up and passed her to Maggie Evans-Collins. The spirits of Roger and Barnabas Collins greeted Angelique and helped her through the window. The apparition of Joe Haskell Senior beamed upon his granddaughter's body and then turned to fade away back to his family farm off the estate. There was a great crash and Angelique hit the floor of the bedroom. Above her, the window slammed shut to her and sealed Laura forever off from the mortal realm.
Angelique Haskell looked up as the ghosts faded away. Anubis had departed as well with Laura and the worst of the storm. The wind continued blowing, the trees beyond straightened but for their tips and a more gentle rain blessed the roof with a multitude of drops dancing over the cupola and eaves of the mansion. The only other noise left in the house was Charlotte's infant screams. Lifting herself up, Angelique turned her head to the screaming infant and raced to the pitiful screams of the child and picked her up as cooing to her in peaceful soothing sounds. The storm still cracked a bit further away and the winds still whistled outside, but they also seemed to abate as their purpose was fulfilled.
"Don't be scared, Princess," She talked to her. "Your grandma..." She paused realizing her identity. "Your Aunt Angelique is here to take care of you." There was a crash downstairs as she pulled the child to her bosom. Could Laura have escaped after all! Her head turned and looked to the door to the hallway. She gasped peacefully relieved when her cousin William Barnabas Collins (David Selby) appeared to his daughter.
"Angel," He looked around. "I ran from my dad's house and through the woods. Where's Laura?"
"Laura?" Angel looked up. "What do you mean? I thought she was with you. She asked me to watch the baby as she tried to reach you at the other house." She lied.
"She went out in the storm!" William appeared in shock and pulled his thick plume of brown hair back as the wind stopped whistling through the roof. "Angel, are you sure?"
"Of course, I'm sure." The baby was sleeping in her arms now. "And by the way, I prefer to be called Angelique now."
"Why?" The grandson of Barnabas Collins looked at her confusingly. "Where'd that come from?"
"William," His cousin looked at him with an odd look. "As long as there is a Collins Family, there will always be an Angelique." She grinned with a look belonging to their grandmother, the original Angelique Collins.
END