This chapter shows Barnabas Collins and Margaret Josette Dupres discussing difficulties in remembering how much has happened since they've been married and reflecting on how their problems were solved.

I did an extensive amount of research in re-carnation hypnosis and its startling results. Dr. Ian Stevenson was getting his start around the time Dark Shadows was already a staple of many homes so it culminated well in all of my stories.

I also put this together months ago on the trouble with the lack of gaining commentary from my many readers. The mentality in this new age of device technology and obliviousness to the human needs of fan fiction writers struck a chord when my spouse read our usual Q and A columns one weekend.

And I had also tested my audience here on Friday the 13th of December 2013 to see if they could understand the necessity for reviewing by posting episode 15 of "The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows" and expressing why positive feedback was so important. The large audience returned for this episode but...

This attempt to garner support failed, of course.

However my being infuriated that an audience of readers could be so aloof and uncaring for two years was coupled with the fact that I'd gotten the harsh news about the death of a dear friend. And I was not in any way informed kindly of his death. It was done with a lot of hostility. So I dedicated this story to him considering the lack of human touch displayed in modern times and especially online.

A Day In The 1960's

Dedicated to the memory of my dear friend Rich, who passed away December 4th 2013

...

My bride and I have been looking over our journals in hopes of finding one particular evening of rapturous pleasure.

I do see. There are a number of missing pages. Perhaps our archivist knows wherein they've gone? Haven't seen her much lately. She's been investigating other necessities with dear Victoria, who of course, always was a member of this family. The two do spend much time engrossed in the details of this estate. How it does give me peace of mind. Perhaps they're both looking over the finer points and seeing which are too explicit, possibly, for this release. Ah well.

"Darling," my Maggie returned, "they could be making prints of them."

"By hand? Or that other invention?"

"Yes," she answers, "isn't it peculiar that the man who invented xerography left so much in the way of funding to promote the work in the study of reincarnation?"

"Why is that?" I ask.

"One would think that a man with such an invention would have left money to… well… cloning or something of that nature."

Ah, now that I understand these things. I can see what she means. I've only perused the essay of Dr. Ian Stevenson's "The Evidence for Survival from Claimed Memories of Former Incarnations". Apparently his work is something we too, must be grateful for.

"Of course," she continues, "I must be grateful not to feel the need to hold anymore Tea Dances for the time being."

I need cast toward Her a deeply knowing tone, "Kitty…"

"Oui?" she answers, trying to confuse me. I have to laugh a little at this.

As our archivist has told us, in the time she comes from, many people have several different names. Any confusion to my dearest, whom I still voice as a bride, it's simply more romantic, is relegated to an ease of comfort when all comes to surface in the truth. It took a lot for us to reach this point of bliss. Three incarnations to reach me… wasn't it obvious to anyone what was to be? It was to me as I went through time and experienced it. But still, we do have certain parapsychologists to bless for all of this. This is why my father-in-law sent the proceeds I paid him of the painting he destroyed for me to such researchers.

And I'm glad to hear of this Dr. Stevenson and his work. It looks as if it will be a long series of investigations for him. And he never reveals his findings to be the proof, simply evidence. Of course, this is all well and in-order for me… as I… have my proof. And our journals, which could be disclosed except that there are several pages missing right now… or it could be our archivist is keeping them to herself. And I wouldn't blame her. They are rather heavy going. And I must admit, difficult to pen. My hand shakes even now over the details.

"We can't remember how the bathing room was constructed," speaks my lady, "I want to say it was built into my room, but maybe that extension had been already been adjoined at the time. Can't you remember, Barnabas?"

"No, Josette, I cannot. I only remember…" I falter.

"Oh," she smiles, speaking lowly, "it was… rather… wet…"

"Yes… it was…"

"And…" she breathes, "those moments as we reached the floor… when I told you…"

"When I… explored you?" I whisper in her ear.

"Hmm," she begins to almost moan, "yes. Might… we?"

"Yes, my love," I tell her, "Let us… go… upstairs."

When Victoria and I arrived at The Old House, we called up the stairs, then noticed our couple were beyond busy… presumably, considering what we over heard. Ahem!

"Hmm," she said, "let's sit outside and read that newspaper you brought."

"Good idea," I agreed quickly, it'll likely be a while."

We found a decent spot on a bricked garden planter a fair distance away from any noise. Victoria rattled open the paper and sniffed, "Oh… my…"

"What is it?" I asked.

"This paper must be from the future! Ours wouldn't introduce topics like this! Hee, hee, hee... Looks like we just can't get away from the subject," she laughed, "This advice columnist got a letter… Seems a lady is extremely pushy to get her... sex-toy business off the ground and a friend needs to know how to politely decline her gatherings."

I belted out, "Tell her to take her butt-plugs and SHOVE IT!" Then I proceeded to roll off my seat onto the ground and lost myself in riotous laughter. I noticed some time later that Victoria was notlightly tittering as I expected, but rather shaking so hard with mirth as to nearly weep on the paper.

"You don't understand," she told me, seeing my surprise.

*I* don't understand? I thought. Wasn't that usually her line? But anyway…

"Peter & I were looking over that catalogue you leant us," she went on between chuckles, "He suggested trying those out and…"

"You told him to take his butt-plugs and shove it?" I grinned.

"Practically!" she almost shouted.

"Well, I'm with you there, Vicky. Still whatever floats ones boat, I suppose."

After calming down more we looked over the etiquette columnist. Perhaps that would bring more sobriety out from our shared hilarity. She read the query:

"Dear Agony Aunt: Let me begin with the worst of it (You would well be advised to brace yourself). I am 19 and have not written thank-you notes for holidays and birthdays for about two years now.

I'd like to make amends with my family members who sent me nice gifts that I didn't thank them properly for, but I'm not exactly sure what the right course of action is at this point. Do I just send out thank-yous for the gifts I received this year and try not to draw explicit attention to how remiss I have been in my correspondence? Can I apologize for not sending thank-you notes in the past?

I'd like to acknowledge what they sent me before, but I'm sure I've forgotten some of the things I've received (which is horrible), and I don't want to make it sound like I'm ungrateful by omitting them. I also don't want to make it sound like I'm asking for gifts in the future or try to furnish excuses (I don't have any).

I really just want to apologize, express my gratitude and move on, but I'm struggling to figure out how to do that."

Victoria stopped to reflect and then looked at me, "You know, this is all sounding a little familiar."

I sighed, "Victoria, what doesn't seem familiar around this estate?"

"True," she said, "but what I mean is, you and I have been doing a lot of work trying to get these memoirs accurate. On my end people are pretty grateful and help a lot, but it sounds like in the future you come from they don't know how to tell you."

"Okay," I said, "that's correct. Maybe the columnist has some good advice. What's the response?"

Victoria cleared her throat and began, "Dear 19: You are not the worst. The worst are ingrates who, far from being repentant, try to cast blame on their benefactors for being so selfish as to expect any response to their generosity. In fact, your relatives have been especially generous in continuing to send you presents in the absence of responses."

"Ah," I said, "that's a good point. I've definitely had people angry at me, mostly when I've shown alarm at their ruining my belongings."

"What?" she asked.

"Oh, a little desk, a pair of headphones… Long stories," I sighed, "Keep reading."

She continued:

"Still, your record is pretty bad, and I am gratified that you are ready to make amends. You are, I presume, prepared to grovel."

"Goodness!" I marvelled, then reflected, "well, that's likely a facetious statement."

Victoria winked and read on:

"Your letters should begin with enthusiastic thanks for the latest presents, then go into high praise for their past kindness. For the past presents that you can recall, write specifically about how you have been enjoying them all this time.

Then comes the self-flagellation. The important part is to refrain from offering any excuses. Claiming to have been busy, even with examples of the demands upon you, only annoys people. It prompts them to reflect that they, too, were busy, but made time to send you presents.

Rather, it should be about how ashamed you are not to have acknowledged their warmth and consideration, which means so much to you. I understand that this seems a grim task. But I promise that you will feel better afterward."

Victoria folded the newspaper and rested it between us on the planter. We stared into the woods, and listened to the waves nearby for a minute.

"Why is it so hard for your people to talk to each other?" she asked me, "I mean, you said there are all these wonders in the future that make it so simple to communicate, once you have the knack of using the tools."

"Well," I replied, "we don't all want to bother with learning how to use the tools for one thing."

She was stunned, "But why not? They can do so much good!"

"It's often been a puzzle to me, Victoria. I took the time to finally learn how to communicate with people better, but by that time no one seemed to want to talk to each other anymore."

"I can't imagine a world like that. With everything going on in this day and age, it sounds like it's just going to get worse."

"No, Vicky," I explained, "it does get better in many ways. But it is very lonely and aloof much of the time. Everything people are doing in your time period to make the world better gets rather taken for granted in my generation. The nice thing is less people are apt to be outright rude and in detail, but we haven't yet found the way to tell each other what's good about one another specifically. Especially," I had to heave a sigh here, "my own spouse. He reads books like he drinks water, but even he has a hard time really explaining what he enjoys exactly. I have to catch him laughing and then be sure to ask him before he forgets."

"Yes," she smiled, "I suppose it's much easier to hear it from someone in person. But from what you've told me, everyone is mostly using machines to connect and… in all of that time… well, they're not really connected at all. Those telephones you talk about sound awful, all static and no warmth?"

"Ah," I answered, "it's not just static, a lot of the words and sounds cut out. It's really muffled. I get the impression the people using them just pretend they can hear what each other are saying."

Victoria gave a laugh through her nose, "Sounds like how this place used to be."

"I know," I told her, "Still… I have hope. There is an intense amount of brevity, but perhaps I haven't found the right people yet to really tell our story to. It takes all kinds to make a world. Someone, quite a few people, I believe, are out there who want it and who want to discuss it and share what they enjoy about it."

"But," she asked, confused, "why do you want to stay here with us?"

"I want to see it through," I told her, "everything needs to be patched up and I need to find the way to describe it clearly."

"That's very sweet. Although… aren't there people in that future, in 2014, that you miss and that you love?"

"Quite a few," I confessed, "but they're scattered all over the country and some even across the pond, as they say. And they rarely make much of an effort to spend time using all those new inventions to let me know in return. So now, it's you and me, and these archives."

She took a breath, "All right. I understand. But… why here? Why us?"

"Well," I told her, "if I may paraphrase something that, in a strange way, you, Maggie and Josette told me almost two years ago…"

"What? How could all three of us say the same thing?"

"I think you'll get the gist of it, Victoria."

"All right," she said, "what did we tell you?"

"Like I say, I am paraphrasing and maybe adding something to it, but it's why I keep on here in this town. You see, for most of my life I've wanted a place where I belonged. A place where I could feel at home again… Feel loved again. And I found that place here at Collinwood… and with… you all."

Now I understand I had to track down my true audience because they likely did what I'd done; hunted out what they wanted from 2007-2011 finding Anything-Goes, Alternate Universe and bits of good but mostly mediocre material that they neither enjoyed much nor gave them any relief. Having given up they had no idea I was here after that.

Of course, in Alternate Universe there is always one thing that can happen; as a reviewer pointed out on a story I read: "I never can see how Barnabas, in canon, ever loving Julia, tho... I don't see it as in character for him." In AU? Sure. In canon? Nope.

Yes, a rare time I did not review a story I read. She pretty much expressed it for me. Why bum out the person who wrote it even more?

I likely had a large audience of Anything DS readers who got lazy from the "lovely" new device technology with crappy keyboards and no real love of Barnabas' strong devotion to Josette Dupres, nor the need for Maggie to find herself and be paired with the most loving gentleman in Dark Shadows if given a teaspoon of a chance to find happiness. (Joe Haskell? Seriously? P'ff!)

But the beautifully devoted Helena wins all of our hearts for her appreciation of so many creators, her true adoration of Barnabas Collins regardless of most dames picked out for him and her ability to give selflessly in friendship and constructive-praise.

As for any old readers returning to my work who might claim no commentary came due to my spiraling into drunken ravings of angst after discovering how large the readership was for "The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows". I did ask very nicely for quite a while and ya just kept taking. After working my bum off since 2011, though having posted it 14 February 2012, well, what did you expect?

But the usual writers will often tell me, that's just the way fanfiction works. Nah, it's a DS problem. Even with much lower stat numbers in the other fandoms, The Ghost & Mrs. Muir fans reviewed in a week and a half after I got "The Pit of Ultimate Dark Shadows" to them. The Addams Family fans? 24 hours. That was all it took. :)

As Julia Hoffman might, I'd get fed up with Barnabas Collins not showing me affection and go in search of people who did.

So with warm gratitude to my new readers and listeners, Pollyanna Whittier might tell me, "You looked for the good in Dark Shadows fans, and you found it, didn't you?" ;)

Rest In Peace, Rich. Thanks for introducing me to a percolator. And thanks for being a Dad when all I had was far too close to Jason McGuire.