2
"My name is Victoria Winters." A young lady struggled to write in her diary amidst the jostling of her train car. "My journey is beginning, a journey that I hope will finally open the doors of life to me and link my past with my future, a journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place to the edge of the sea high atop Widow's Hill and a house called Collinwood… a world I've never known with people I've never met, people who tonight are still only shadows in my mind, but who will soon fill the days and nights of my tomorrows.
"I've never known much of my past. Never known much of who I was or where I had come from. I was a girl without a family, a person without a past living in a world where I was dependant on the kindness of strangers who became my only relatives. I have spent much of my life dreaming of a mother and a father, of finding brothers and sisters and finding an inheritance not of money and riches but of love and an identity, and then last month a few days after my 35th birthday, I received a letter from a woman named Elizabeth Collins-Stoddard, a woman who claimed that she was my mother and it was time for me to be called back home to Collinwood, her home near the tiny seaside town of Collinsport, Maine."
Victoria looked out the window a second before she continued writing. It was not a moment to decide the thoughts she wanted to describe but merely an internal effort to repress the excited anxiety welling up in her.
"It's been such a long time, and I have so many questions." she wrote. "What should I tell her? What should I ask? Should I be angry, or should I be happy? Maybe I don't want to know why she left me at that foundling home where I was raised. All I know is that she has finally found me. I really don't know this woman other than what she claims. I really hope that she will like me. It would be embarrassing if I did not turn out to be the person she had hoped for…"
"Excuse me…" A tired figure stepped into view of her eye sight. "This kid is kicking my seat back here… Can I take this empty seat next to you?"
"Of course," Victoria looked up to him, lifted her over-night bag from the seat and placed it down between her feet. "Go ahead." The passenger car was quite crowded since leaving Portland. Businessmen, traveling salesmen and commuters had crowded on board for the train trip to Bangor where Victoria was getting off to catch a one-hour ride to Collinsport. Moving tiredly, her fellow passenger had lifted his briefcase to the overhead rack and was draping his coat over the top of the seat. She tried to guess which he was… businessman returning home to his family or a traveling salesman? His light blonde hair was mussed like a small boy, but his five o'clock shadow suggested he had been on the road for several days living out of motels. He dropped his weary bones down next to her and sighed tiredly in his worn light grey suit. It was as if he had finally found a perfect seat, exhaling deeply once more with a light grin before turning his dark brown eyes toward her.
"College student?" He asked.
"Excuse me?"
"I noticed you writing…." He mentioned. "I figured I had a fifty-fifty chance of guessing you were a writer or a college student. I guessed college student."
"Oh, no…" Victoria responded slightly embarrassed. "One of my teachers at the home where I was raised gave me this empty diary when I left." She paused with a light reflective grin. "I just thought now was a good time to write something in it."
"Nothing wrong with that." Her male traveler looked away briefly as she placed her pencil in her diary and leaned forward to place it in her bag. "So, what awaits you in Bangor? A boyfriend?"
"I'm not going to Bangor." Victoria confessed. "I'm heading to Collinsport."
"Collinsport?" Her response intrigued him. "Beautiful town… I've been through there several times. Nice people, good fishing… just one of those towns that look as if it hasn't changed in over a hundred years."
"I've never been there before." Victoria answered. "Have you heard of Collinwood?"
"The big house on the hill?" Her guide responded. "Oh, everyone in the area knows of that place, but I didn't think the family lives there anymore?"
"Why not?"
"Well," Victoria's male acquaintance reacted unsure how to react as if he was holding back from reporting gossip or if he was trying to form his own opinion of the stories he had heard of which there were many. "You're going to hear several versions of it from the locals but the main idea is that a local girl from the diner was hired as a governess on the estate. About a year after she started, she was attacked on the property and left for dead. She struggled to stay alive for a few months, but she eventually died. No one ever figured out what had attacked her, but the family was so embarrassed by what had happened that they closed the house and moved away… at least, that's the way I heard it."
"Well," Victoria leaned back in her seat. "Maybe they're opening it back up."
"That would be nice." Her traveling companion stroked the palm of his hand over his thick dark blonde mustache and appeared nostalgic of past events. "I'd love to see the inside of that house again…" He then loudly cleared his throat. "But then you have to realize that working as a financial advisor sometimes gets in the way."
"I guess so." Victoria looked up when she heard the door to the back of the car open up and the train porter walking up the middle aisle back to the front of the train. As he passed, she made an effort to catch his attention.
"Excuse me?"" Victoria looked up with a turn of her long brown hair falling backward over her left shoulder. Her beauty obviously humbled the porter as she grinned pleasantly to him. "How much further to Bangor?" she asked politely.
"About twenty minutes ma'am." The porter checked his time piece and continued on as Victoria beamed excitedly for the moment and then contemplated on continuing on with the writing she had started in her diary, but she didn't want to be rude to her male escort. Talking was a much better use to pass the time than thinking of stuff to write about in her new diary. She hoped Mrs. Stoddard would be able to tell her the exact day of her birth. The teachers who had discovered her at the foundling home in which she had been raised had theorized her age and given her the day she was left with them as her birthday. She had been secretly cared for with money that had been anonymously provided, but when she reached adulthood, it all stopped. Someone had stopped the one link to discovering her past. Numerous questions danced through Victoria's mind as she rehearsed them and memorized them for her mother.
"I wonder what we can talk about for the next twenty minutes…" Victoria responded.
"Maybe we should at least introduce ourselves…" Her companion introduced himself. "I'm Paul…"
"Victoria…." The young lady identified herself. "Victoria Winters…." She acquainted herself with this fatherly gentleman unaware her presence was also noticed by a figure nervously smoking a cigarette which he postured with to an unseen audience existing only in his imagination. The lone dapperly dressed figure sat alone in a back seat of the train car and glanced upon her with mild interest and remote curiosity. To him, she seemed a bit out of place, but he stayed by his choice to never interfere in the lives of others and merely comment on what he knew was to occur unaltered in the future. He turned and looked out the window as he pictured the eyes and minds of many watching these events and waiting for his cosmic narration.
"Submitted for your approval," he started. "Miss Victoria Winters. Five foot seven and a hundred and ten pounds of female innocence displayed in an attractive female image. Unfortunately, she is not heading toward the Collinwood you know of. The date is now April 3, 1973; at least eight years later than when a similar Victoria Winters in your world was hired as governess to one David Andrew Collins. In this world, Victoria was no such governess, and the Collinwood we are being invited to is not the one with which we have grown familiar. One fact has been changed in its past resulting in consequences that are different and disturbing. You see, this Collinwood stands on a rather windswept hill near a dark slope that just happens to descend down into... The Twilight Zone."