He'd been asleep for so long, slumbering in darkness. It was a deep, incredibly dark darkness that Edith Collins had brought upon him.
'The powers curse her forever!' he raged within himself.
Because of what Edith had done to him - there would be only sleep now. Dark, uneasy sleep for a long time. For he found that in his dark sleep he could sense things going on in the House. He sensed them only vaguely. These things came to him in sporadic flashes of images.
First, he saw Edith Collins die, and in sleep he'd felt a twisted kind of joy. It had been like having a wonderful dream.
His spirit rejoiced as he felt proud Edith die half out of her mind - wanting to tell her grandson Edward some horrible family secret, but in the end, she had been unable to remember it.
...and so, she'd died confused. Terrified over something she couldn't remember. Troubled. Tormented...
'A fitting death for her,' he thought.
Immensely pleased by Edith's dying in torment, he'd nearly fallen back into total slumber, but something else in that time stirred his spirit. He sensed Count Andreas Petofi arrive at Collinwood.
How well he knew that name and the stories about Petofi's hand. The stories about Petofi were commonly told in occult circles.
For a moment - just a moment - he thought that maybe he wouldn't have to awaken and destroy the Collins family. Perhaps, Petofi would destroy them.
On one hand, that would have been disappointing, but on the other hand - it would have enabled him to move on and rest.
He would never be able to rest so long as that blasted family continued to thrive! Those children of Amadeus Collins...
Petofi might have destroyed them if that had been his intention, but it hadn't been, and in the end Petofi's schemes came to nothing. Petofi had done himself in by raising one from the dead to exact punishment.
In the end, one so powerful as Petofi had been his own undoing.
'There is a warning in that,' Judah thought.
Petofi's schemes coming to nothing meant that he would once more wait for the coming of her reincarnation, which would signal the beginning of the appointed time.
After that, he slumbered very deeply for a long, long time. During that long span, he saw no more images of events unfolding in the house.
He did hear faint whisperings in his sleep from time to time. Something about a Victoria Winters, and a Barnabas Collins.
However, the two names meant nothing to him, so on and on he slept. For a brief moment during his deep sleep, he'd felt an astral disturbance, and it seemed to him that someone in the house had been pulled back in time. It was Victoria Winters...
Yet, that interested him little more than the whisperings he'd heard on occasion. After all, who was Victoria Winters to him?
It wasn't until 1968 that he was nearly jarred awake by something suddenly felt within the house.
A formidable evil had suddenly manifested inside the house. He sensed it was an evil of a different sort than his own, and not his match in power - but it was a malevolent evil. Oh yes!
Yet more whisperings he heard when a medium was brought to the house to advise the family about the other presence. He did not allow that medium to reach his spirit. He despised mediums. He had no desire to communicate with her.
However, she had said one thing true, and he heard her. He heard her say that there was a curse on the house.
How right she was...
The medium called and called to whatever spirit may answer her. She called through every room and hall. Her presence had annoyed him, but not for long. Ultimately, she was frightened to death by this other evil. After this, his spirit saw more images of terror, and finally the family driven from the mansion, as evil laughter from the other presence echoed through all the halls.
The end of the Collins family had come before his appointed time, or so it had seemed then. Driven from their home by one of their own...
Once more, he felt he might rest - able to feel triumphant in the triumph of that other evil. Yet this was not to be...
There came a moment when he felt that evil leave as suddenly as it had manifested. It had left in a way he couldn't entirely explain. It was as though the ghost had come alive again and ceased to be a ghost.
With that, the haunting of Collinwood by that other presence was ended. It seemed the Collins family had escaped from the clutches of another evil come among them.
'...but it won't always be that way,' Judah thought.
...and his thought was almost happy. For he sensed that the time was not far off now. She was coming, and she would waken him from his slumber.
He would use the ghosts of the three that he'd brought into death to help him accomplish his plan. The ghosts of Daphne, Tad, and Carrie would serve him. They would have to. They were no match for his powers.
As Judah began to hatch his devious plot, in his spirit he rejoiced - for his day was at hand!
