10
Barnabas and Angelique advanced on the front doors of Collinwood with Quentin Collins and Willie Loomis together as a united force. The former caretaker had been quickly debriefed to get the kids out of the house and leave everything to the rest of them. There was a bit of nervous tension as they stopped and looked at each other not wanting to see what was inside. Barnabas squeezed the door handle and pushed through as Roger stood in the foyer, turned and glared at him.
"Barnabas Collins!" He sounded upset. "You have the unmitigated gall to return here!"
"Roger?"
"Roger? Who's this Roger?" He glared back at him angrily. "You take off with a grand lady as the Lady Hampshire and return without her? Your ex-wife by your side... If you've harmed Kitty..."
"Edward?" Quentin looked back with odd amusement.
"Quentin," Roger postured a bit and noticed a difference in him from being younger than he once was. "My god, you look as if you've run behind by a carriage. Why do you look so old!" From the study, little Christopher Loomis ran out of hiding as the young boy jumped into Willie's arms.
"Daddy," The boy was scared to death. "Mommy and everyone's acting weird!"
"Show me." Willie asked.
"Carl, do you know this strange child?" Roger mistook his nephew-in-law for a great-uncle as Barnabas and Angelique entered and scanned the drawing room. Quentin grinned amusingly.
"Edward," He looked up grinning. "For all these years, there's been something I wished I had told you."
"What?"
"Shut up!"
Willie entered the kitchen as his teenage children J.R. and Lizzie manipulated their mother's condition to get pizza for dinner. Giggling between them, they pulled another pizza from the oven as Carolyn listened and danced widely to the wild rock and roll from the radio.
"I think I like this!" She danced widely as she spoke in a Cockney East England accent. "What you say this was? Pizza?"
"Oh, yeah, sure..." J.R. shot a dirty look to his younger sister with an overzealous grin. His mother's sudden new personality was so easy to be manipulated! "Are you sure you gave us all the credit cards?"
"What do I want with those things?" Carolyn pouted like a spoiled brat. Lizzie swung around and saw her dad holding her little brother.
"Dad," She started. "Mom's lost it!"
"Get out to the van now!" Willie ordered them. "Take your brother!" J.R. and Lizzie realized the fun was over and stopped what they were doing. They were forced and escorted out the delivery exit by their father as Willie Loomis turned to his wife looking oddly at him.
"Carl, why did you do that?" She sounded ridiculous with that accent. "I liked those kids. They were real friendly."
"Carolyn, please..." Willie escorted her calmly and carefully out of the kitchen and through the dining room. "You're not well. This just isn't you."
"What are you talking about?" She was lead to the downstairs bathroom off the main hall where Barnabas had locked Roger in. Briefly opening the door, they pushed Carolyn in as well and locked the door as their prisoners began pounding on the door.
"Willie," Angelique gasped tiredly at the feat as she heard clapping. "Take the kids out for a few hours." She looked up.
"Long time no see, Barnabas." William Collins stood on the balcony over the foyer looking down as Willie looked up and rushed out. "No respect for old family members?"
"Petofi..." Barnabas glared to his son. "How dare you return to Collinwood? How dare you terrorize my son!"
"Terrorize?" William chuckled as Barnabas, Angelique and Quentin advanced on him. "Why are you so melodramatic? I thought this was a reunion."
"Reunion!" Angelique scoffed torn as Petofi's mortal enemy and as a mother who saw a new malevolent personality out of her son. "I want my baby back to normal."
"A casualty of war, my dear." William walked past her on the stairs and headed to the drawing room and poured a sherry. He paused a second to the pounding noises in the downstairs bathroom, beamed vindictively once more and turned back to the drawing room. "He has no time left."
"No!"
"Oh, yes."
"How did you survive that fire at Tate's studio?" Quentin asked the question on their minds.
"Quentin, my boy," It was odd watching William drinking sherry. "You're an old man! How's your portrait!"
"I destroyed that thing years ago with no thanks to you!" Quentin wanted to strangle William but for his parents present and the realization it was not his favorite nephew really saying these things. "It took me forever to chip away at the spells on it, every witch, medium, sorceress… but it was worth it."
"I can fix that."
"No, you won't." Barnabas stepped forward. "How are you still alive after all these years!" He watched the face of his son laughing at him.
"Couldn't fool you, could I, Collins?" William downed his sherry and started to pour another as Angelique took the bottle to avoid having to watch her son imbibing alcohol. "Well, now," William continued. "I sure fooled the gypsies. They thought I had died too. You see, Collins, I've been around much longer than you think. These eyes saw the Impaler kill the Turks and a thousand renegade colonists break ties to England. I laughed with King Henry as he killed his wives and as a foolish Frank king sign the Magna Carta. My only problems were the gypsies. My alleged death allowed me to go into hiding for a very deep sleep without fear of being discovered. Unfortunately, after all these years, I discovered my body was giving out on me. It could not survive the pangs of immortality I had forced on it nor the standard of high living I was so used to. When I noticed in the newspaper that the son of Barnabas and Angelique Collins had been granted a literary scholarship to a prominent college, I knew I had found my answer in the form of the best revenge ever."
"No!" Angelique's eyes welled with tears. "Not my baby!"
"A casualty of war, my dear." William peered at her with such a look of evil she could not believe it and then to Quentin finally aging with the times. "Now, Quentin, your portrait?"
"I don't think so." Quentin grabbed the vase from the piano and cracked it over William's head hard. Watching her son falling to the floor, Angelique dived to her son's body and held on to it not as her enemy, but as the body of the boy born from her own body.
"Quentin!" Barnabas turned to him.
"I've been prepared for this contingency for years." He knelt to Angelique. "Can you help him?"
"If Petofi'll let me..."
"This is my plan..."
At Rose Cottage, darkness was rolling in as Maggie reheated last night's meat loaf and cooked some vegetables. She glanced back out as her guest was still sleeping in the chair then turned back to her cooking. The little TV on the counter was on near her with the volume turned down. The local FOX affiliate was running the credits to "Raise The Titanic." The Jason Robards and David Selby movie was ending as tonight's promos started.
"Hi," a voice came over the credits. "This is John Walsh and tonight on America's Most Wanted, we're looking for a supposed count so vicious he makes Dracula look like a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. We want this guy so bad and you can help us. Help us tonight to catch Andreas Petofi."
Maggie stopped and turned to the TV.
"Between 1953 and 1958, Petofi was blamed for the deaths of no more than seventeen missing kids." Walsh continued. "Last month, he escaped from Rushmore Sanitarium in Rockport, Maine. Help us to find this psycho tonight!"
Maggie looked to the face on the TV and the man in the chair in her living room and turned the noise down on the TV. She felt her heart skip a beat as she backed slowly to the phone on the wall, picked it up and hit the button for the sheriff's office.
"Hello, Don." She murmured silently. "I think you and your men better get over here..."