Part 3: The Lunatic Yarn
Chapter 20

Feeling refreshed and peaceful since he had prayed, Barnabas shifted on the fallen log and looked about him. It was a pretty place. The sloughing of the boughs overhead in the faint breeze relieved him both with its sound and the gentle touch of cool air on his cheeks. He studied the sky; an expanse of lightest blue was being pushed out of sight as darkening clouds gathered. More rain, he thought. He allowed his eyes to travel over the fresh, grassy reach of his surroundings. He was quite alone, though he thought he had seen something moving. Ah, yes! Through those trees over there—

He realized that it was Julia. Julia, slowly walking in the woods, coming towards him. He was sure that she could see him seated here. The wind ruffled her hair. It's getting long, Barnabas thought. She looks romantic when she grows her hair long and lets it curl.

Julia approached, her hands in the pockets of her smock. She smiled at him and shrugged as she got closer. When they were near enough to speak, she looked about her, then directed her eyes to him.

"Barnabas," Julia began, "I owe you an apology. The simple fact of the matter is that I saw what I saw, but I never let you try to explain. I know you wanted to.

"I've loved you such a long time and wanted you so much, my darling, that I was angry to think everything was going away … the happiness I've had, the way I've felt in the two months since we've been engaged. I don't know whether I can make you feel what it was like. I thought I'd die. I'm an independent mature woman, a doctor. But I thought I'd die."

She came to sit with him on the fallen log, smoothing out her skirt. Barnabas settled his arm about her.

"But enough of that," she continued. "You know my feelings without my having to list them. Go ahead and say anything you want to say—whatever you wanted to explain. If you still want to."

"Julia, I do," Barnabas murmured thoughtfully. "When I went through the dumbwaiter and saw Roxanne there, I couldn't help it. I had to. You would have, Elliot would have, oh, any of us would have taken her. Knowing her history at least from parallel time and what was being done to her, I guess anyone would have intervened. I would have tried to intervene no matter who it was lying trapped on the exam table while Angelique squeezed out their life force.

"I think it became slightly mixed up with David—with the threat to him, and to hear those two men planning to capture him and use him. The moment I saw Roxanne, I knew I'd give my life to save her. Gladly. The urge was overpowering; it knocked me right over. I knew that I'd fight to the death to save her. And David, I'd fight to the death to save him. Well, we knew that already.

"The thing we didn't know, or I didn't know, was the force of what I was feeling now for Roxanne. It's the strongest force I've ever encountered in my life."

Julia was silent, looking down at her hands. Barnabas paused.

"Try to hear me, love. It is all clear to me now, but it wasn't so very clear when it was actually taking place. The emotions that took me over had nothing to do with romance or sex. They concerned instead—oh, righteousness, horror, outrage and pity. It was Roxanne there, but it could have been David; it could have been David—but it was Roxanne.

"Carrying her in my arms I felt rather like God, I imagine. I was righting a wrong. I was rescuing an innocent from hell.

"Maybe it is because I never had a child," Barnabas mused. "Why these feelings should suddenly strike now, I don't know. How can I explain this to you? I wasn't overwhelmed by Roxanne as a rediscovered love-interest, but—as—someone to nurture. To preserve. Like David, like Hallie. Like Amy. Every romantic and sexual yearning was stripped right out of it and I don't know why. What I was feeling, sexual passion wouldn't come close to.

"Have you never felt it, Julia, with a niece or nephew, or a young patient—or any of the children here at Collinwood—when they come to you with full confidence that you will fix what's wrong? Perhaps that's what it was. Since knowing David, I suppose that I have yearned for a child without even realizing it.

"In time, if you feel as I do, maybe we can find a young person to help raise. Or get involved with local at-risk youth, somehow. Or maybe we could adopt a child.

"Perhaps it is because I'm a middle-aged man now that my feeling for Roxanne is altered. What I feel for her, I think I recognize as the passion one would bear for one's child. I looked on her body, but it didn't arouse me. I wept and finally stole her—because the thing was just an abomination. Or perhaps I don't want Roxanne as a lover, because there is another woman who already has my heart.

"Another thing. When I first saw Roxanne, I thought she would open her eyes and love me instantly, just as happened last time. But she won't, because everything is different. I haven't stood over her adoring her while she was unconscious, talking to her despite her sleep, as I did in parallel time. This time I just took her as far from Angelique Stokes as I could. And now, this time, when Roxanne wakes, and finally speaks, even if it is only one word, we can let her go on her way. The Angelique of parallel time will be vanquished, dead, and Roxanne will no longer be under threat."

Barnabas shifted and studied Julia with sober eyes. "Does some of this make sense? I love Roxanne, but not like that. No longer like that. I don't want her to take your place. Julia, you are part of me; I've shared your bed and your love, and it is you that I want. Roxanne is a part of me no longer."

He turned to her fully and took her into his embrace. Julia stroked his cheek.

"I think I understand, Barnabas," she assured him. "I believe you. Let's go back to Collinwood and finish this. Let's find David, and see if Roxanne is able to speak yet. The others must need us and don't know where we are."

He agreed. But first he held her against him for a long, long time.

[

[

Buzz Hackett and Elliot Stokes reached the east wing dumbwaiter room together and found Roger there ahead of them. Hallie followed.

Roger whirled to Buzz. "You think something is going to happen? When? What?"

Buzz looked pale and sick. "Just about any time now. I don't feel so well. Time's just about up and I'm gonna have to be leaving, too. Soon as the dumbwaiter gets up here."

"What?" Roger cried. "Buzz, is my son coming back?"

In reply, Buzz merely pointed to the dumbwaiter.

The floor trembled slightly beneath them. There was a fast ticking sound coming from the dumbwaiter shaft as the compartment sailed up the recess toward them. The cables jangled and danced.

"Oh, my God," said Roger, pacing about, clutching his hair. Then he went to the dumbwaiter door and bent his head beside it with attention. The compartment was coming at a fast pace. The speeded-up ticking was accompanied by a hissing sound from within the shaft.

The compartment crashed into place behind the heavy door.

Roger was at it in an instant.

"David!" he cried, wrenching open the hatch.

The light in the room was sufficient for them to get a confused view into the dumbwaiter carriage.

Two forms crouched within, one gripping the other. The whites of their eyes were in strange, stark relief to their faces, which, impossibly, were streaked red. Both figures lifted their eyes to Roger. Both pairs of eyes were brown.

"Father!" screamed the smaller figure. David Collins thrashed and scrambled his way out of the dumbwaiter compartment and fell into Roger's arms.

"Father! I got him, I got him! They're after us!" David cried.

Roger gripped his son's head and strongly pulled it back so that he could gaze into David's face, which was streaked with tears and gore, his shirt spattered with bloodstains.

"What, David, oh God! Are you hurt? What happened?" Roger shouted, not knowing whether to examine David for wounds or just hold him tight.

"It's okay, David, you got him," Harry Johnson called shakily from the compartment. Elliot Stokes rushed forward to help Harry out of the chamber. Harry, too, was splashed with blood. Harry wiped his mouth with his sleeve as Elliot helped him to stand upright.

"Got who? What happened, Johnson?" Elliot asked.

David, his hair all on end, turned to Elliot.

"Please do something to stop the dumbwaiter so that they can't use it to come after us," he panted. "Those men—there are two men and they wanted, they wanted to kidnap me, or something."

"That's right," Harry confirmed. "When I got there, there were these two guys roughing up David, and David was shouting. I didn't know what was going on."

"Let's get out of here," Roger gasped. "Let's get to the bathroom or the kitchen at least so that we can wash off this blood and see if you're cut! Did they have a knife, a gun? What is that in your hand, David?"

David's fingers were clutched relentlessly around a long, slim object.

"I protected us with this," he gasped. "I hit him and hit him but he wouldn't let go, wouldn't take his hand away so we could close the door—"

"What? Slow down."

"Roger," Elliot hastily interposed, "I suggest that we disable the dumbwaiter for the present, by sticking a big piece of furniture half in and half out, so that it can't be used without our knowledge. This loveseat, or davenport, what have you. The dumbwaiter won't be able to go up or down with that wedged into it. Help me get this in there. Then we'll take these young men downstairs and get them fed and treated, and hear the story."

Roger and Elliot hefted the loveseat and approached the compartment.

"Wait," Harry told them, turning back to the dumbwaiter. He leaned in, looked about, and stiffened. Then he reached inside and brought something out in his hand.

It was small, oblong, and bloody.

"You really fixed him, David," Harry declared, his face now stark white under the streaks of blood.

David groaned, then turned away and retched.

In Harry's trembling hand was a severed finger.

.

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