The Lunatic Yarn

A Dark Shadows Story

Book 2

by Susan Rains

As before, this book is dedicated to Rusty

Cast List

Barnabas Collins . . . . . . . . . Jonathan Frid
Dr. Julia Hoffman . . . . . . . . . Grayson Hall
Roger Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . Louis Edmonds
Elizabeth Stoddard . . . . . . . . Joan Bennett
Elliot Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . Thayer David
Angelique Bouchard . . . . . . . Lara Parker
Harry Johnson . . . . . . . . . . . Craig Slocum
Willie Loomis . . . . . . . . . . . . John Karlen
Hallie Stokes . . . . . . . . . . . . Kathy Cody
David Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . David Henesy
Maggie Evans . . . . . . . . . . . Kathryn Leigh Scott
* Dr. Veronika Liska . . . . . . . Virginia Vestoff
Sarah Johnson . . . . . . . . . . Clarice Blackburn

* my creation

NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author's exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to "train" generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited.

Part 1

Mystery Date

Chapter 1

Hindsight is for after events happen, not before. Who then can blame Roger Collins and Elizabeth Stoddard for what they were about to unleash on Collinwood the day they found the dumbwaiter?

"Whatever it is, someone wallpapered over it!" remarked Elizabeth, watching her brother Roger knock and scratch at a bulky wall in one of the empty upstairs bedrooms of Collinwood's central wing. "Could it be a cabinet built into the wall? Why would someone paper it over?"

"And set an armoire in front of it as well!" Roger remarked, for though the room was now empty of furniture, a large, squat armoire had hulked against this very wall since time immemorial. Roger picked and tore at the wallpaper with his fingernails, trying to free a strip.

This room was slated for redecoration. It was spacious with big windows, but dark woodwork frowned at the brother and sister on all sides, and a busy Victorian wallpaper touched them with tendrils of anxiety. The paper clashed with a furiously figured carpet, further upsetting the senses. The heavy, forbidding drapes had faded to an uneven dusky grape color.

Both Elizabeth and Roger were dressed casually, ready to encounter dust and dirt. Roger wore a rugged old brown sweater with sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of slacks that had seen better days. Elizabeth had a red kerchief round her hair, and a blue-checked shirt with old-fashioned pegged jeans. She looked quite girlish. Her feet were in light, comfortable mules—about as close as Elizabeth Stoddard was going to get to a pair of sneakers.

They had intended to oversee some general cleanup of the central wing of Collinwood; it was Elizabeth's ambition to attack all the woodwork of the house, which some remote, misguided ancestor had slathered with unforgiving umber paint. She wanted to update it all in white or cream. She intended to redecorate all the rooms and see to the removal of the dark, imposing furniture and the decaying draperies, and to introduce light and freshness everywhere. And though her brother would probably give her an argument, she secretly hoped to be able to do some of the painting herself.

"Don't tell me that someone papered over a family portrait!" she marveled, stepping back and resting her hands on her hips as her brother dedicatedly scraped at the paper.

"Of some detestable ancestor? A three-quarter-view of Attila-the-Collins, with fez and sword, from the year 1315! Now Liz, you know there have never been any bad antecedents in our family," Roger joked, turning his head to smile at her, then turning back as he finally got a strip of paper loose and eagerly pulled at it. It made a dry whisper of sound. Elizabeth smiled slightly and shook her head, trying to get used to Roger's buoyant spirits. Since he'd met and fallen in love with Veronika Liska, a taciturn but lovely local physician whom he intended to wed, her brother had been a new man. A much happier one.

In the aftermath of a fall on the stairs that Roger had experienced at the start of April, Elizabeth had summoned an osteopath to help him with physical therapy. Though Roger and the pretty physician had exchanged snarls at first sight, their feelings had undergone rapid change. Roger now hoped to marry Dr. Liska.

As Elizabeth watched, a slim, straight crack in the wall was revealed under Roger's working fingers.

Baffled, she continued to observe as her brother pressed his thumbnail into the crack and, following its line, drew it vertically up the paper. He was tracing a definite rectangular shape. There was some sort of cabinet built into the wall. Marveling, Elizabeth blinked and then abruptly realized what she was seeing.

"Oh, Roger, could that possibly be a dumbwaiter? Oh, I think it is. That would make sense, because I remember that Father was brought to this room when he was so ill with influenza—but you were too young to recall that incident. I'm sure they used this room so that they could receive food from the kitchen via the dumbwaiter while taking care of him. And," Elizabeth continued, warming to the topic, "the stairwell is on the other side of this room. Of course. There must be a chute, a track of some kind, that runs beside the stairwell down to the kitchen. But I don't remember seeing a dumbwaiter door in the kitchen, do you? I wonder where it's located."

She broke off at the clatter of quick footsteps in the hall. David, not expecting to see them in this room, passed it by but then grabbed the woodwork and pulled himself back to the doorway again with a grin, banging into Hallie Stokes, who was right behind him.

"Aunt Elizabeth," David called, "Father! We're going out. We've got—"

"Not so close to lunchtime, David!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Please have your lunch first!"

"Why should they?" Roger broke in with a truculent look at his sister. He took the opportunity to draw his bare forearm across his face, displacing the perspiration there and leaving a streak of old plaster dust. "Lunch is cancelled in this house, as is every other meal, from here to eternity! If you eat at Collinwood anymore, you eat at your own risk."

Hallie laughed at Roger.

"Roger, for heaven's sake," interjected Elizabeth.

"Don't for-heaven's-sake me, my dear sister. Until I hear that Coterie has been re-established in this house, this radio is not receiving!"

"You know very well that Coterie will be back shortly," Elizabeth chided. "We couldn't keep them in the backyard! They've gone back to their catering offices in town, and in a very short time Tish and a few others will return to supervise all our meals."

Roger had swooned over the temporary catering service that had set up onsite and served Collinwood through the weeks in which their kitchen was being remodeled and the stove replaced. Now, after much negotiation, a Coterie staff member or two—Tish Lemon was one of the Coterie staff—would be absorbed into Collinwood's household as permanent chefs, or "meal advisors."

Impatiently from the doorway, his eyes running over the wall, David countered, "Well, then, can we go out for just a half hour and be right back? What is that behind the wallpaper?"

"We think it's a dumbwaiter that someone wallpapered over and no, I'd rather you didn't. Please go down to Mrs. Johnson, she must have your soup and boiled sandwiches ready for you."

David sighed loudly in exasperation and stomped off down the hall, followed by the quieter Hallie.

Later, David motioned Hallie into the cleared-out bedroom his father and aunt had been working in and followed her inside, shutting the door.

"What are you planning now?" Hallie asked suspiciously. "We can't play in here with that ball."

For David held a battered white soccer ball in his hands.

"Let's send it down the dumbwaiter," he proposed. "We'll wrap it up in a towel. We should paint streaks of blood all over it—the towel, I mean. Then, you go down to the kitchen and pretend to be crying, and tell Mrs. Johnson that you've accidentally cut off my head and sent it down to her in the dumbwaiter."

Hallie drew back from David in surprise. "She's never going to believe that! You think Mrs. Johnson is going to believe that I cut off your head? David, honestly."

"Fine! Then I'll go down and tell her it's your head."

With difficulty, David got the door of the dumbwaiter open. The teens grasped the ledge of the dumbwaiter opening and peered down the shaft, the seat of the dumbwaiter compartment suspended about eighteen inches over the backs of their necks.

Hallie suddenly felt uneasy.

The cavern of the dumbwaiter was silent and black, snaking downwards away from them and from all light, deep into its own secret darkness. A faint chill came up from the depths and touched their cheeks.

"It's a long way down, and it's dark as pitch," Hallie whispered into the musty expanse. "Why isn't there a crank so that you can send down whatever you want to send to the kitchen?"

"That's not the way they did it 'way back then. I think you just tug on this cable, you know, hand-over-hand, to get the—the dumbwaiter compartment thing to go down. Then they hear it land in the kitchen, so they open their door, put a tray and a pitcher on it, and do the hand-over-hand until it slams into your room."

"David, don't," she urged. "Don't send the ball down; don't involve Mrs. Johnson. She'll get angry."

"So what?"

"You're not thinking," she said urgently, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. "She'll poison us again."

David hesitated.

"You're right," he admitted thoughtfully. "But I'm sending the ball down to the kitchen anyway. We could pin a note to it that says, 'send up some chocolate cake immediately!' That'd be pretty funny."

Hallie snorted laughter, but remained nervous. David pulled experimentally at the cable.

"I wonder," he mused. "I'm wondering what kind of a cable this is. I mean—say Mrs. Johnson puts a hundred-pound tray on the dumbwaiter, does she have to pull up a hundred pounds with her own strength, or does the cable help? Do you know what I mean? Like maybe there's a counterweight on it?"

Hallie shook her head to indicate that she didn't follow. In truth, she wasn't very interested, and the sneaking cold air that came up from the black shaft chilled her and made her nose prickle.

"I wonder how much it's supposed to carry?" David mused, and Hallie read his mind even before his face broke into a look of excitement: "I wonder if we can take a ride in it!"

"Oh, I knew that that's what you were going to say. No, of course we can't ride in it! Do you really want to ride inside that thing? In the dark? The cable must be all rotted by now anyway and you'd—fall to your death, or something." Hallie moved purposefully away from the dark cavern in the wall, then spun for one final thrust.

"Anyhow, it's only for trays and dishes, you know? Or a pile of laundry or something. It's not for human beings."

"I don't know about that," David murmured, and Hallie followed the direction of his gaze. It was concentrated on words or figures machine-stamped into the copper-colored outer lining of the shaft. She drew closer.

WT CAP 300 LB

"Weight capacity three hundred pounds?" David exclaimed. "You're telling me that this house used to send three hundred pounds of dirty underwear down to the kitchen every laundry day? I don't believe it. That compartment's big enough for an adult to fit inside. Maybe two of them! You know what I bet this was?"

"No, what?"

"Part of the Underground Railroad!" David cried, excited. "I bet that this house was sending loads of people all over the house, or down to the kitchen for an escape, or up to the attic to hide, or whatever. Then, when the coast was clear, psshhhw! Off to Canada! This is neat!"

Hallie crossed her arms over her breasts.

"I suppose so. Do we have to stay in here all day? I want to get back to my reading list."

"Reading list!" echoed David, with disgust. "You're supposed to be on summer vacation. That school of yours is stupid. Who lets kids out for the summer but assigns them six thousand books to read over the summer? Are you going to be a wet blanket all this vacation?"

"Don't you call me a wet blanket," Hallie countered indignantly, her blue eyes sparking fire at David. "I'll have plenty of time to read and do all kinds of other things outside. You're just angry because I got out of school for the summer sooner than you did."

"Let's go down to the kitchen and find the dumbwaiter door!" David cut in. Before Hallie could agree or disagree, he had turned and sprinted out of the room. Hallie ran after him.

And so, that evening, Mrs. Johnson was desperately annoyed to encounter either David, or Hallie, or both together each time she turned from the stove.

"You damn kids," she breathed, stepping quickly from stovetop (where dinner boiled) to cupboard, where she drew out thick stoneware serving plates. "Your playing in here is a fire hazard! What keeps you in here, anyway? There is nothing behind that dumbwaiter door but empty space!"

David put his hands to Hallie's ear and spoke through them. "Her cooking is the real fire hazard," he whispered, his cupped hands making a hot, deafening distortion of his words. Hallie snorted and ducked her head.

"All very well!" retorted Mrs. Johnson, stopping and putting her hands on her hips and staring at them balefully. "I just hope that when you're my age you won't have to deal with disrespectful kids! Now shoo, both of you. There is absolutely nothing inside that dumbwaiter for you!"

David and Hallie gave up and broke from the humid kitchen, bringing a grunt of reaction from Sarah Johnson.

"She's right," Hallie ventured to David when they were up in his room again, "the dumbwaiter is boring. There's nothing in it and not much to do with it. We put something in it, send it to the kitchen, and pull it back upstairs again. That is so boring."

David sat slumped over his desk, his upper body sprawled over on it, his cheek against the hard, cool grain. He moved his hands and arms aimlessly over the desktop, like a swimmer. "I guess you're right," he mumbled, his ear pressed against the wood of the desk. "It's just I got excited. Never knew we had one. Now my father's all worked up, thinking that there must be a dumbwaiter over in the east and west wings too. The Collinses were always so rich that he figures everybody must have had meals sent up from the kitchen instead of running downstairs all the time to eat. Big deal. I don't see what's so exciting."

Hallie asked timidly, "Is your father going to marry Dr. Liska?"

"Looks like it," David sighed, with no change of tone or attitude. There was a moment of silence.

"I think it'll be good," Hallie ventured. "Dr. Liska is really pretty. And she doesn't—she's not one of those ladies who tells lies to your face, you know? I know she doesn't smile all over the place, but I like her. She's not fake."

David sat up, looking rumpled. "Yeah," he sighed. "My father's in love with her. You're right, she's not fake. Maybe it'll be okay. He asked me what I thought about it the other night."

Hallie settled back on David's bed and picked at the chenille bedspread, studying him as he sat at his desk. "He did? That's really fair of him. What did you tell him?"

"Oh, I told him it was all right. I like Dr. Liska. He made a lulu of a mistake on the last one he married; you weren't here back then. But Dr. Liska's good. That's why he's so batty about the dumbwaiter idea, see. He wants to live with Dr. Liska in the east wing or the west wing, and have Mrs. Johnson throw up dinner on the dumbwaiter all the time. I don't get why Dr. Liska can't just move into my dad's room with him. Why do they need a whole wing to themselves, for gosh sakes?"

"Well, David," Hallie blurted, "they're going to be newlyweds and they want—" she turned crimson—"they want to have sex in private. You know, without ten of us lined up outside listening to them."

"Well," David suggested, his eyes sparkling as he turned to her, "everybody wants to have sex in private, right? So why can't they just do it in his room? What're they going to have, monkeys jumping up and down and chasing each other in and out of closets?"

Hallie gasped, envisioning Dr. Liska's stern face with monkeys leaping behind her, and David's father rushing into a closet with no clothes on, slamming the door after him—and Hallie and David exploded into laughter together.

The giggling went on for some time.

"Anyway," David chortled, eyes still glittering with humor, "It is kind of disgusting to think about sex happening to your parents."

"I suppose," Hallie responded, and then got on another laughing jag at the vision of sex "happening" to Roger Collins—with a clash of cymbals, perhaps, and a puff of smoke.

Finally, the kids calmed down and were able to breathe normally again.

"We can put your dolls in the dumbwaiter if you want," David offered, not looking at Hallie. "You probably want to, right? We'll put them in there and they'll be trapped, like in a big chamber, and we'll stage a rescue effort."

Hallie was silent. David, who was thirteen and could only be made to play with Hallie's dolls on threat of death, was making a kind sacrifice. At fifteen, Hallie was perhaps too old for such things; but losing both her parents in an accident so abruptly just as she was entering her teenage years had resulted in her ferociously clinging to her childhood things. Mrs. Stoddard and Uncle Elliot had been understanding and positive about it, and Mrs. Stoddard regularly presented Hallie with boxed Topper Dawn dolls and accessories. Hallie loved them fiercely and would release her grip on them only when she was ready, and not before. Perhaps the time would never come at all.

"Thank you for thinking of that, David," she responded now softly, "but maybe some other time."

Roger Collins' instincts were right; the door of another dumbwaiter was found in one of the larger bedrooms of the east wing.

"This is perfect!" he shouted when he had discovered it and scrabbled away the wallpaper that covered it, "this will be lovely! What a romantic time it will be! We'll come back from our honeymoon and come here, and Coterie will serve us ambrosial offerings in this dumbwaiter! Once it has been thoroughly scoured, of course."

"Can you get the door open?" Elizabeth asked, watching him. "Roger, I have to wonder about the engineering of this dumbwaiter. Its location in the house, I mean. It's not connected to a stairwell like the other—it's not over the kitchen. How does this dumbwaiter connect to the kitchen?"

"Oh," responded Roger extravagantly, peeling off the old wallpaper, knowing nothing at all about the subject, "well! I imagine that there is a track behind the wall, yes? It will run horizontally until it comes to a dumbwaiter shaft that connects to the kitchen. You see? Then it will go down the shaft and be loaded, and pop upwards again, and get tugged along horizontally to this room. What is the name of this room, do you know or remember?"

"The Sweetgrass Room," Elizabeth answered absently.

"Oh! Oh, dear. I thought this was the April Rose Room. Isn't one of these rooms the April Rose?"

"Yes, the one next door. Roger, don't get too excited. That dumbwaiter door might be cemented shut for all we know." Elizabeth cupped her hands about her elbows and shivered for reasons unfathomable to herself.

Or perhaps it was just prescience.

The period after dinner saw a black-browed Roger alone in the drawing room, steadying himself with multiple brandies and helplessly burping with indigestion. Boiled meatloaf! Was it really too much to expect edible food in this house? How he missed the succulent dishes of Coterie. When he had calmed himself somewhat, he left the drawing room and went up to the Sweetgrass Room in the east wing to get the dumbwaiter door open, if it could be done.

The dumbwaiter door came unstuck. Roger pressed it wide open with satisfaction, then crinkled his nose in surprise at what lay on the floor of its compartment.

Lying in a huddled heap before him was a very familiar black crocheted yarn afghan with different colored inner squares.

Roger frowned.

Hadn't he just seen that afghan downstairs on the back of the couch in the drawing room? Of course he had. He'd been clutching at it as he'd downed brandy after brandy in an attempt to kill the taste of yet another botched dinner by Mrs. Johnson. That hadn't been five minutes ago.

Just for a second, a silly thought struck him. Elizabeth, being playful, had gathered up the afghan and stuffed it into the dumbwaiter in the kitchen, sending it up to the Sweetgrass Room for him to find. Just a weak little joke. He smiled to himself, but the smile faded before it could really take hold. Wouldn't he have heard the thumping and whirring of the dumbwaiter as it traveled to the Sweetgrass Room from the kitchen where she had presumably loaded it? Yes, he would have. And by what means had Elizabeth guided the dumbwaiter compartment to the Sweetgrass Room of the east wing when, by rights, as uneducated as he and his sister were in its use, it ought properly to have arrived in the empty bedroom of the central wing directly above the kitchen?

Roger stared at the afghan. He didn't want to think about this now. His mind was busy redecorating this room into a lovely, inviting bower for his new bride; he imagined Veronika's pleasure at this or that detail that he had imaginatively provided; he was full of action and importance and hope. He didn't want to think about a stupid afghan.

Roger did what anybody might have done.

He reached into the dusky compartment and drew out the afghan; he brought it to his nose and sniffed. It was fresh. It had the smell of happy expectation that comes with things made of yarn. It was a little cool from having rested in the compartment. Why, he thought, this isn't our afghan at all. Perhaps it has lain inside here for years, somehow protected from moths and damp. It smells fresh enough. But it's not the one downstairs in the drawing room. Because it can't be. Because nobody could have gotten it here.

He held the afghan in both hands as he considered. Then he tossed it to the floor and abruptly left the room.