B9/CH11: FALL OF THE MAITRIARCHY

Verity, posing as Mary, makes love to Filipe

On a windy morning, branches from a beech tree scratched the glass of a bedroom window of the Braga home in the village. A couple kissed passionately in the second-floor bedroom in the dim light of the early day.

The wind's unyielding soft howl kept in time with the heavy breathing of the couple, Filipe and Verity, as they slowly began to seep into each other, making love. Filipe believed the woman beneath him was the woman he truly loved: Mary. 

But Verity's switch with her identical twin to take over her life had already taken shape and gone further than she had ever realized. It had become the perfect plan.

She was now making love for the first time. Her emotions and hormones swirled together like a hurricane. She felt like a fire growing hotter and hotter the more she took in Filipe and breathed in his breath. She scratched her nails down his back as the pressure of their lovemaking deepened inside of her. She could feel his body's weight on her, it felt like nothing she had ever felt before. Safe. Warm. Protected. It was erotic, and passionate and she wanted more and more of it and didn't want to stop.

She moaned, hoping to keep him in rhythm with her body's lust, he reciprocated. 

Verity, clearly enjoying her first experience as a real person making love, then slipped out from under him, they rolled over and she startled his body. There was something about her, Filipe noted, something different. Wilder. More insatiable. It was sexy and he liked it but different.

He reached up to her chest; she grabbed his hands and sucked one of his fingers. Verity, masking as her twin Mary, felt every thrust from Filipe's body devouring every second in ecstasy until they finally exploded in unison. Her tired, slick body fell to his side as she quickly cuddled in his nook. 

Filipe kissed her on the neck right below her ear. His stubble tickled her.

"Don't ever shave." She said.

"You usually like me clean shaven." He said with a grin.

She reached up and wiped a sparkle of sweat from his forehead. "But I like you like this now." 

"Ok." he smiled. "That'll be so much easier for me on the shit. No need to take a shaving kit." 

"Ship?" She asked.

He cocked his head to the side. "Yes, at work. When I set out to sea on the fleet." 

"OH! Yes. That ship." Verity said, quickly recalling Filipe's fisherman occupation. 

"Are you alright?" 

She nodded that she was and kissed him. "Let's go again." She said.

"Again? I have to get up! I'll be out to sea again later this evening. You know that." He said.

"Can't you say you're ill and can't go out with them today? What good would a sick fisherman be all the way out there on the sea?" Verity asked, her voice soft and whispery like a schoolgirl's.

"I can't do that." He said, with a grin. "As much as I could stay in bed all day with you, I have to make us some money and you have Caleb to look after." 

Filipe got up out of bed. She watched as his caramel nude body still dripping in areas with the sweat of their love making as he got his clothes and began to dress to go down to have a meal before leaving out to sea. Verity, grabbed the sheets from the bed and wrapped herself in them. Her tussled hair a flurry of blonde curled and scrunched like a nest. 

"Aren't you going to get out of bed?" He asked her, his voice surprised at her lack of movement.

"Can't your mother watch over Caleb? Or Charlotte?" Verity asked.

Filipe turned back around to Verity from the dresser he was pulling a pair of socks from. His brow furrowed. She noted his expression the realized she'd said something wrong. Something Mary would never say. 

"I mean for a minute as I get up." Verity replied trying to cover.

"What's going on with you?" He asked, his question pregnant with wonder as slowly he began to add up the slight differences in his wife of two years. "You've been a little off since right after the trials. Is there something you're not telling me?"

"I'm fine! Really! I know, I know, I've been a bit out on the moon and not myself, but I'm trying to get back to that. That's what this was for." She said hinting at their very fun morning love session. 

Filipe flashed in his mind to just a few minutes before of their bodies tangled up in nude sweaty love making. It was more passionate than ever, it was more erotic and adventurous. 

"All that was just to -- to what? Make up for something? What are you making up for?" He asked sitting on the edge of the bed.

"For being so off. I know it can't be easy to deal with someone who's had so much going on in her life. I'd do it like that every night if you wanted." She said.

"Mary, I want you to be you. That's why I fell in love with you. You were the most natural, the most real, the most compassionate person I had ever met and that's all you need to be with me. Whatever happens to you happens to me. You don't have to make up for anything." Filipe said as he reached for her face and cupped her chin with his hand.

She allowed her face to fall into his large palm, he touched her lips with his thumb, she kissed it. 

"That's why I love you." She said in reply. "I'll always love you." She said.

"I love you too." He replied. "Now, I got to get downstairs for a quick bite before I had to head off. Come on, miss lazy, lets get dressed, let's go!"

He reached over and started to tickle her sides. She didn't feel it. She looked at him strange, and he then looked at her strange. "What happened? No longer ticklish?" He asked.

"OH! I am, yes, Sorry. You see? I'm off." Verity admitted, as she got out of bed. "I’m still getting back to normal after everything — you understand.” She said trying to cover.

“Mary the trial was quite a while ago. I know that what you, Evie and Matthew went through hell all to help me in my condition, but you seemed to be getting back to you. Now … well now you seem lost again. What can I do to help?” Filipe asked noting his cure for lycanthropy was the source of the witch trials. 

“I’m fine. Truly. I am. I’ll get back to myself again. I promise. Now let me get dressed for breakfast."

She quickly went into the adjoining bathroom. She closed the door and stood in front of the long body length mirror in the corner. Her naked body a perfect expression of the female form. She was breathing heavy, her nerves torn to shreds as Filipe questioned her. 

She looked at herself, she saw Mary. She saw herself. Then she took another deep breath. She was faltering, her mistakes now mounting. She needed to keep this new life she was so in love with tight in her hands like a treasured pearl. 

Verity needed to do much, much better to keep it all together — exposure would mean death.

Filipe went back to the dresser and switched the socks for warmer ones. As one pair went in and the other pair came out, he noticed how much they looked alike, yet he knew they were different. Mary looked like Mary, but she too felt so different. He stared at the bathroom door and wondered what in the world could have made her change this way. She was slightly meeker when she spoke, but in bed she was much more adventurous. Perhaps, he wondered, if she needed to speak with the new psychiatrist in town, Dr. Pascal. Maybe something had switched in her mind while she was in jail, while she was suffering under all that stress during the witch trials.

Maybe he needed to talk to Dr. Pascal first -- and alone.

****

Mary pleads with Jacqueline for help 

Over on Goode Island, still trapped in the pit below the cottage, Mary tossed and turned on her dirty mattress. She was sweating, yet her body felt chills. She had been imprisoned here for weeks now, her mind still hoping to be saved -- somehow, some way. Illness had moved faster than a rescue and Mary was now fighting on two fronts, to stay alive in the pit, and the fever that was overtaking her. 

In her mind, as the rush of blood pushed through her veins and into her brain, images of her twin Verity posing as Mary haunted her. It was as if she were watching herself with her husband and children but she knew better.

She saw Verity sitting at her place at the table, sleeping in her bed, holding her husband and kissing her baby good-night. The entire feverish nightmare overtaking Mary's frail and ill body manifested into a blood curdling scream that blasted from her body like a banshee in the night.

Upstairs, Jacqueline Gray was preparing for yet another shift at Churchill Green where she was shapeshifting into a disguise, a nurse named Isabel. 

As Jacqueline fastened a small silver Rod of Asclepius pin to her apron strap, the scream from below echoed into the house.

Jacqueline stared at her yet un-shapeshifted face in the mirror. Mary's scream bore into Jacqueline like a knife. It was feral, dark and deeply painful yell. The witch, posing as a nurse, could not resist any more and went back down to the pit where her coven sister Mary was held prisoner. She followed the dark steps down into the basement and saw Mary's lantern on. Jacqueline peeked over the edge, her hands touching the crusted over salt Verity had encircled the pit with to deter Mary's own powers and saw Mary now off her mattress and in the corner of the hole with her knees up to her chest. 

 

"Mary..." Jacqueline whispered over the edge. "You're unwell."

Mary looked up, her face stained with dirt and soil from attempts at climbing out. Her hair wet with sweat and her eyes glistening with tears and red with sorrow. 

"Jacqueline, please,” Mary began taking in slow breaths, “please help me out of here." 

The voice was weak, tainted with exhaustion. 

"You know I can't do that. I've already told you if I interfere with this the council will destroy me. That was my punishment for what I did during the trials, I have to stay out of this." Jacqueline reminded Mary.

"LOOK AT ME JACQUELINE!!" Mary roared, in a burst of her last bits of human energy. "I'm ill, very ill. I need to get out of here and get help, and only you can do that." 

A sudden wave of empathy washed over Jacqueline. She knew had she never used her powers against Mary, had she never betrayed the coven with lies and exposure, Verity would have never been created by the council. It all stemmed from Jacqueline’s anger, her thirst for revenge of years of loneliness and abandonment and the death of her unborn child. 

“What made you sick? I could bring you medicine.” Jacqueline offered.

Mary shook her head, “I don’t know. Maybe the food, the water might be tainted or unclean? I haven’t washed in days.” 

“Some kind of infection?” Jacqueline wondered.

“I don’t want to die here Jacqueline.” 

Jacqueline looked away and towards the staircase that led back up to the house. 

"I’ll bring you medicine, I work at the hospital now, I have access to — " Jacqueline said again but was interrupted by Mary.

“Isn't that just as intrusive into the plan as helping me out? Don't you see, whatever you think you can do verses what you should do is all the same. Please just get me out of here and then we can get me medicine." Mary said.

Jacqueline said nothing. Mary stood up, her body managing to hold itself up with the help of the dirt walls. She walked slowly closer to the side where Jacqueline was looking down into. Mary fell to her knees, coughed out a spray of blood. She looked up at Jacqueline with her mouth red. She extended her hands that had caught the blood drenched cough and showed them to her coven sister.

"This is going to be the end of me. You can stop it. You -- Jacqueline -- you can save my life." 

“Medicine. That’s all I can do.” The punished witch said then vanished back up into the house.

"No... NO DON’T GO! Jacqueline! PLEASE! COME BACK!!! No!! JACQUELINE!!!" 

Mary's screams did not go unnoticed. Jacqueline heard every shrieked word. It surprisingly tore into her that her hands had been tied by the council in such a way. There was no love lost between Jacqueline and Mary; their differences went bone deep, painfully so. But it felt different now to see Mary suffering in a way that felt crueler than anything Jacqueline could have cooked up in her own twisted mind. Mostly because Verity had left Mary unable to defend herself. 

That cursed ring of salt blocking Mary from using her powers and saving herself. To Jacqueline that was a sin against witch. Unfair warfare between sorcerers. 

It was one thing to stab an enemy in self defense, it was another to blindfold them then stab them in the dark and they could not fight you back. 

Jacqueline's body began to swirl like a whirlpool of light and dark colors turning into the woman named Isabel that she had created as a disguise to allow her to walk freely in the village. Her skin, still a beautiful mocha color, her jaw squarer, her eyes wider, her lips slightly thinner. Her mind the same. 

As Mary continued to feel the new illness consume her body, Jacqueline (as Isabel) left the cottage. The gulls above her floated up from the dockside and into the air in big heaps of glowing white feathers. Crows from the edge of the shore of Goode Island called to their avian siblings from atop their beech tree vantage points announcing Jacqueline's departure to Welshport Island.

She shapeshifting witch was not directly going to Churchill Green to be with Johnathon as she had been doing for weeks now in her magical disguise. She had one more stop before that -- she was going to see Verity Spencer and find a way to make her end her torment of her twin sister Mary once and for all. 

 ****

While Jacqueline made her way to Welshport Island from Goode Island, over at Tirymor, Jane stood in a large window in the east wing drawing room that faced the long pebble encrusted path that led from the front gates. 

Her face was frozen in worry as she saw an automobile from the village puttering up the path. She held on to a silver kettle of tea, hot to the touch, in one hand and an empty saucer and cup in the other.

Rebecca entered the intended person to receive the tea, with her dog BeeBee in arms. She walked slowly towards the preoccupied Jane and turned to the window just as the automobile vanished behind hedges off to the side. 

"Who was that?" Rebecca asked, cuddling BeeBee. 

"Oh, Ma'am, I'm sorry, I didn't see you come in. I don't know. I couldn't distinguish who was driving." Jane said, lying. She saw.

Rebecca furrowed her brow and then went to the table and sat for her tea.

"How are you feeling today, ma'am?" Jane asked, hoping to calm Rebecca as she knew what was coming shortly. 

Rebecca did not answer audibly. She nodded. 

"Perhaps you'd like to take BeeBee out for a wal---" Jane said just as she was interrupted by the mansion's butler  

"Ma'am." A butler said from the door of the drawing room.

Jane gulped.

"Visitors." He said. 

Rebecca sighed "I wasn't expecting company. Is it Ms. Braga? I don't think I had an appointment with her." 

"No ma'am." The butler replied, his face white as a sheet.

Rebecca noticed and felt a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. She let BeeBee go, the dog ran over to the butler and peeked it's little fluffy head out to see who the visitors were. He barked, yapped at the strangers, just as the butler shifted to the side and allowed the visitors to enter.

It was Constable Justin Ryan and two of his deputies. 

"Mrs. Lord-Casador, I apologize for entering at this time, I know you weren't expecting company." Justin said.

"What is this?" Rebecca asked, as Jane quickly made her way out of the room to find Jacob. 

"We're here because we have some official and unfortunate news and business to handle with you." Justin answered. 

"I'm sorry -- with me? How so? She asked.

"I think you know." Justin replied. "We have some important questions to ask you about the day of the accidental poisonings at the hospital that led to Dr. Hoffman's death."

Rebecca took a deep breath that felt trapped inside her bodice. She grabbed at her chest, the feeling deep in her chest. She went over to two large sofas that were over to the side and offered the police officers seats. She sat down, stoic, regal almost otherworldly to the eyes of the three men who had never seen the famous matriarch of the Lord family up-close and personal. 

"Will you tell us where you were that day? The day of the poisoning and death?" Justin asked.

"Well, I was... I was here." She said.

"Here? The whole day?" Justin pressed.

She could tell he knew more. "No." She replied but gave no more.

"Where else?" One of the deputies asked. 

"I did go out, I went to the hospital." She said.

"You were there -- that day?" Justin asked.

She nodded affirming but again not going into detail.

"Constable, I would truly like to know what this all about? If you have something to ask me, point blank, please do so because I'm not a woman who likes a man who beats around the bush." She said.

"Yes, of course, you like things direct. I've heard that about you." Justin replied.

"Then you'll indulge my reputation and tell me what you want to know." She said, the bitterness seeping out into her words like acid. 

"Were you involved at all, with what happened with the poisoned patients and the untimely death of Dr. Asha Hoffman?" Justin asked. The two other deputies quickly removed note pads to record her answer. 

Rebecca's jaw clenched like a steel bear trap around an unfortunate hunter's leg. As her chest heaved up with air, she opened to reply with yet another misguided lie, but her son Jacob entered the room with Jane who seemed out of breath.

"Careful how you answer." Jacob replied.

"Mr. Lord, we were just discussing what Mrs. Casador was doing at the hospital that day." Justin explained.

"I've been informed." Jacob said, his eyes flashing over to Jane.

"Your mother was just about to tell us." a deputy said.

"Is that so? Mother, what's your answer?" Jacob moving over to his mother to see if she'd be honest with the police as she was with him when she confessed.

Rebecca didn't know what to do, she hadn't thought about this happening, she didn't look into Fatima's cards and see this happening in her own home. She couldn't say anything, she couldn't tell what they wanted to hear. She hoped a lie, she wanted to tell them a lie, but there was something in Jacob's face that raised the hair on the back of her neck.

She could tell, just in the eyes of her eldest son that he was responsible for the police sitting in her drawing room asking her questions about Asha's death.

"Mrs. Casador?" Justin said, pulling her out of her thoughts and back into their conversation. "Can you answer the question?"

"Answer it mother." Jacob added. 

Rebecca stood up. BeeBee rushed back into the room and dashed up to the sofa and sat in the spot Rebecca was in. She looked into her son's eyes and just behind she could see a painting of his father, her late husband Albert Lord. The comparisons of their faces in her eyes -- the two of them shared the same brow bone, eye shape and ears. She began to feel something in her stomach again. She began to hear herself begging for breath. 

She turned white and turned back to Justin as he and the two deputies stood up watching her begin to hyperventilate. 

"Tell them." Jacob said, his tone cold and unfeeling. 

"What have you done?" She whispered to Jacob.

"Tell them!" Jacob said. Celeste then entered the room. 

"What is this?" Celeste asked.

Jacob turned to his wife, a small half smile skimmed the top of his lips. 

"My mother was about to tell the police, who came all the way into the Tirymor Forest from the village to ask her what she knows about the very tragic death of Asha Hoffman, and she was about to answer, TRUTHFULLY. Because she knows what she told me." Jacob said.

"Jacob --- what have..." Celeste began but Rebecca's next action finished Celeste's sentence. 

Rebecca's had went clear across Jacob's face. The smack cracked the silence in the room. Her arm was so far off to the side Justin was able to grab it and hold it so Rebecca could not slap Jacob a second time -- and she tried.

"Please, Please Mrs. Casador, please calm down. Please." Justin said. 

Rebecca began to sob and in seconds she fell to her knees and let it all out as if all finally came crashing down on the realization of what Jacob had done. 

Her mind flashed to her crime. Her broken heart. Her hope to help Asha with her own broken heart, now that Nik had moved on behind her back with Danielle. Yes, Danielle, the common denominator between the two women. How Danielle's presence in Caspian's life was tearing Rebecca's relationship apart. The young nurse represented Viktor, the man Caspian once was and how detrimental that former identity seemed to be to Rebecca and her relationship to Caspian. Danielle, the new love in Nik's life was just as threatening to Asha who adored Nik to no end. 

It was all out now; Celeste's cried as she watched one of the strongest women she had ever known get her arms tied together in front of her and walked out of the very mansion, she ruled like a queen in her palace be taken off.

BeeBee barked uncontrollably as his mistress vanished down the front marble floored corridor. Jane grabbed hold of the white fluffy dog and held him tight. All the staff came out of their work spots to watch it all happen, shocked, horrified and unable to make sense of it. 

Rebecca had confessed. Finally -- a member of the unbreakable Lord family had finally cracked into rubble. 

"I cannot believe you actually went through with this." Celeste said to her husband.

Jacob turned to her and arched a brow "It was a long time coming, and now dear wife, the rest is ours to lose."

"The rest?" She asked in a whisper as she and Jacob walked out onto the terrace to watch the police car drive off.

"The empire." He grinned. "Its ours for the taking." 

As Celeste let it sink in, the Jacob turned in his mother as leverage to finally and truly take over the family fortune, she realized Jacob's blood was colder than she had ever thought. He may have warmed when Fabian was born, he might have softened and let things go for a short time, but the cruel Machiavellian plotter, schemer and vicious businessman she believed had disappeared was still inside him. 

And he just showed her not even the woman who gave birth to him was safe from his ambitious treachery. 

The iron front door to Tirymor House closed and Rebecca watched from the car as the mansion, the place, her safe place got smaller and smaller and smaller and fell behind the growing trees of the forest that surrounded it and hid it away. 

She'd return there -- no more.  

**** 

Danielle & Nikolas at her home  

Later that evening, at her home in the village, Danielle sat at her vanity with two large candles lit. The sun hadn't yet set but her room felt dark enough that she needed light. She stared into the mirror as she looped drop pearl earrings into her ear. So many questions flooded her mind as Nik Jordan entered the room.

He looked handsome, dressed in a tuxedo. His face glowing with perfection. She turned to him and smiled the saddest smile he'd ever seen.

"Oh, don't do that." He said. "This is a happy occasion. We're going to a wedding." 

"I know its supposed to be happy but I can't help but feel all of this is my fault. Had I never come back to settle my mother's estate when she died I would have never come across my father. I would have never pursued the idea that he truly was my father Viktor and Rebecca would have -- " She paused still unsure of their theory on Rebecca's guilt was right.

"You can't do that to yourself." Nik said lifting her up out of the vanity's chair. "If Rebecca really did all of this and tried to frame me for it, that's something she has to live with and the law will have to decide whether or not she should be punished. You cannot punish yourself. All of this is a tragedy from the very beginning with Asha and my mother's child -- all of it happened before you came back. Somehow, this is where it led and we have to all live with the final outcome." 

"I hope Cora and Aaron aren't too upset that I won't be the picture of happiness at their wedding." Danielle said.

"I'm sure they'll understand. To be honest, I'm surprised they invited us. I don't know Aaron too well and Cora and I had only minor conversations, but she's been so close to Evie and my mother through her time with Gabriel, so I guess we're all sort of connected." 

"Have you heard from your sister?" 

Nik sighed and shook his head. "Yet another mystery for us to chew on, no. When Matthew left, we all figured he'd go after her and even he's gone off the radar. No letters. No messages. Nothing." 

"I don't know, Nik, maybe we should just stay here. You just got finished being questioned by the authorities -- it just feels strange going out to celebrate." Danielle confessed.

"No, no, no -- we did nothing wrong. Hiding out just feels like we're admitting to something. We shouldn't vanish from the world just because people think we did something that you and I, our friends and family, know we didn't do." Nik replied, but Danielle couldn't be convinced.

He reached over as she turned from him and looked into the mirror again. He hugged her from behind as they stared into the mirror at each other. Nik kissed her cheek and she snuggled to his arms.

"I've fallen very much in love with you, Danielle." He whispered. "Nothing, and I mean nothing will ever come between us." 

She turned back to face him. His eyes were so soft and she could tell that he was in love -- she was too. His sincerity felt almost too good to be true but there was nothing stopping her from really believing him. No matter what happened next she knew he'd be by her side and she'd be by his.

She held his face and kissed him there in her room in her gown and drop pearl earrings. He pulled her close and held her in his arms as a ring rang on the telephone in the hallway.

The paused, not expecting any caller at that time of the evening. Danielle went over to the hallway and picked up the candlestick phone and put the receiver to her ear. 

"Yes?"

The voice on the other line wasn't clear at first but then repeated after Danielle gave no answer. 

"Is this the home of Danielle Holten?" The female voice asked.

"It is." 

"Please hold. Patching through Constable Justin Ryan." The operator announced.

Three clicks and Justin came on the phone.

"Danielle, Its Justin.?"

"Yes, Justin, hello. What is it?" She said as Nik slowly made his way into the hall. 

"I have good news. Mrs. Casador has confessed to Asha's death and the other poisonings." Justin confirmed.

"WHAT! That's... I... I don't know what to say!" She replied.

"Dani?" Nik said.

"I hope you and Dr. Jordan understand I was only doing my best while the investigation was on-going. Please let him know that the constable's office has cleared him now that we have confirmation on the actual perpetrator. I've already spoken with Dr. Ward. Your suspensions will likely be lifted soon. But I'm sure Dr. Ward will confirm that once he gets the go-ahead." 

Danielle let out giant sigh of relief and thanked Justin then leaped into Nik's arms dropping the phone to the ground.

"What is it? What's happened?" 

Danielle kissed Nik again and began to explain the call. "It's over." She said. "It's really over!" 

****

Aurora is not home ... alone 

Aurora arrived back home to the Beach House in a flurry of worry for Caspian and anger at Rebecca. She tossed her coat over the sofa and fell into its deep white cushions allowing its cozy folds to hold her in place as the worry continued to overtake her. 

Suddenly she felt eyes on her. It was like someone was in the corner of the room watching her. This weight on Aurora made her jump quickly and stare at the blackness… she slowly made her way to that area of the parlor where the heaviness emanated from holding her breath the whole time. She reached for the lamp, shaking as she  pulled its beaded switch illuminating that darkened corner.

There was nothing there, only the pale wallpaper and photos framed of her grandson. There was only the light now and the sound of Aurora’s thumping heart.

Aurora took a breath of relief and returned back to the sofa and her thoughts on Caspian's manic disappearance and wondered where he could have gone. 

As she sat there, a figure in silhouette fluttered in the background from yet another of the house. Aurora, this time, heard the clumsy footsteps. She jumped up again and backed away from the sofa staring directly into the darkness that was the other room she believed empty but clearly was not. 

"Who's there? Come out. Come out now." She said forcibly. 

Aurora took two paces to the left near a hearth and grabbed a fire-poker. She lifted it up into the air and demanded the person show themselves to her.

Then, slowly creeping out from the darkened area of the room, entering into the light of the parlor came Caspian Casador.

Aurora gasped.

Caspian was disheveled. Unshaven. His face was emotionless and empty. He stared at Aurora like he did a long time ago -- when he was something else. Something much more sinister and not of this living world.

"Caspian...?" She whispered, the poker still raised. "Caspian?" she repeated.

He did nothing at first, he just stared at her and walked closer. Aurora's breath became shallower as something in her told her this man, the man she felt she was finally reconnecting with after tragedy took their child had returned to the creature that had raped her and conceived that child. No more was he the kind Caspian who had turned a new leaf since the demonic possession left him, no more was the man she thought would help her finally reconnect her fractured family. 

"Who are you?" She asked, believing that he was truly possessed again.

"Who I always was. Who I've always been. This is me, Aurora. This is who I am." He said in a growl.

Aurora's expression showed confusion.

"My name is Viktor." He replied in a cold tone of voice as he slowly moved around the white sofa coming closer to her.

"Viktor?” She asked but soon her mind began to connect the dots “The man you were before --- before you took the name Caspian.”

“At your service.” He answered, bowing slightly.

“I don’t understand, this is who you were before the possession?” She asked, he nodded. "How did this happen?"

"The how really doesn't matter, does it? I'm here now. And I’m not leaving. Nor ever again.” 

“What do you want?” She asked, her hand shaking with the poker still tightly gripped. "To be as you were?"

“As I was?” He thought. “I can be honest with you. We've been through so many things. You see Aurora, I was never a good man. Never a man who watched out for his family like he should. My wife Lina suffered with my awfulness. Dani too -- the poor girl all but abandoned her mother for nursing school away from here to free herself of the wretched life I gave them." Viktor admitted.

"Then you want to make amends?" Aurora hoped, she slightly lowered the poker.

"Amends!?" He laughed. "Its too late for that. I fell prey to the darkness that all humans are prey to and when the darkness overcame me and created Caspian and was summoned through a force, I never felt more alive.” He asked rhetorically.

"I -- I don't understand. A force?" 

"You can thank the late mistress of shadows...Eliza Goode." Viktor confessed revealing the late Eliza's hand in forming the evil entity that eventually took hold of Viktor's human body and inhabited it as Caspian.

"You're frightening me." She replied. 

"Ohhhhh am I frightening? Poor you!" he mocked with a chuckle. "Have I sent you to a place you feel threatened? By the look of it, I have. No one holds an iron poker above their head like that if they're not threatened." 

"Caspian, you're not well, something is very, very wrong." Aurora said.

"On the contrary, Aurora I have never felt more right! And that name -- THAT NAME! Caspian! I chose it for him but I can't stand to hear it. Viktor, Aurora, this is the name I want to live by. It's the name I was born with." Caspian said as he got closer and closer to Aurora. 

Then in a split second he lunged at her. She lifted the poker up higher ready to swing but he blocked it with his hand and yanked it from her. The force of the pull threw Aurora to the ground. She screamed and began to crawl, a futile attempt at an escape. Caspian grabbed her heels that were peeking out from under her dress and pulled her back. He got on top of her and held her down. 

"Viktor is the name of the man you see now, and it's the name of the man who'll take your life." 

Aurora's eyes were as wide as saucers as his hands went down around her neck and began to squeeze. She felt the heft of his body on her, she could not move she could not breath. She began to see spots and a darkness floating above her like a smoke, the lack of oxygen pulling her into it faster and faster.

Then Caspian literally leaped off of her. She choked, the air flooding back into her lungs. She turned to see him rolling around on the ground as if he was on file. 

He got up, his body contorted in a strange position as if he was physically pulling himself in two directions. 

"Caspian!!! Please, please stop!" Aurora shouted from the floor as she continued to catch her breath.

Caspian lurched to the left, the right. He fought his inner self tearing at his clothes screaming in anger towards the two men in one body. 

He fell back into a wall, a mirror tilted to the side and Caspian faced it. The mirror reflected something awful, his face but cold and menacing not the face looking in. 

"This is no longer yours." The reflection said.

"GET OUT!!!" Caspian shouted to the mirror.

"THIS IS NO LONGER YOURS!!!" The reflection said again, screaming it this time splitting Caspian's mind into two again. 

Caspian fell to the ground, pulling the mirror down with him. It shattered into pieces. Aurora got up from the floor, she lunged for the door but Caspian grabbed her by the forearm and yanked her back.

It was the Viktor's face she saw again.

"Going somewhere?" He grinned evilly. 

She screamed and he grabbed her by the neck and began choking her. She gasped, ripping at his hands with hers hoping something, some kind of force inside of her would stop him from killing her. She reached over, grabbed a vase and crashed it over his head to no avail. He was unstoppable.

She continued to choke and walk backwards as he held her. She saw the blackness come again, slowly seeping into her eyes as she blinked with lack of air. In a last ditch effort she grabbed a picture from a wall they bumped into. She pulled it off the wall and placed it in front of Viktor so he could see his reflection. Caspian's face. 

Caspian in the glass of the picture lunged forward which made Viktor's head lunge forward into the glass, the reflection and body being as one. The glass shattered all over Viktor's face cutting, slashing him. He screamed and fell to the floor letting go of Aurora who fell to the floor as well. She was unconscious but alive. 

Caspian finally came about, shocked, horrified of what his alter ego Viktor had done to Aurora; what he did to Aurora. It was his hands, even if his mind was doing the devil's work. He crawled over to her, his face bloody slashed. Then Viktor took over again.

The man's body jumped up, almost as if he had not felt a thing. He took the fire poker that he found on the floor and made his way to Aurora. His homicidal instincts now in overdrive and just before he drove it down over the unconscious woman's head, Caspian yanked back control over the body they shared and threw the poker across the room, then pulled his body forward so far so that he fell over the sofa and crashed into the glass top of the coffee table slashing his body even more and knocking him out cold.

Both minds now unconscious in a heap of broken glass and blood.

Aurora in the corner slowly seeping into the blackness of death as her breathing slowed. She, along with the twisted double mind of Viktor and Caspian. 

B9/CH10: THE STRANGE CASE OF CASPIAN CASADOR

Victor/Caspian, Caspian/Victor

The dark sky over the small island of Welshport felt like it was muffled by deep purple clouds that came from the east. Their cold plumes of cotton candy air drizzled with a night rain onto the wet pebble drive of Tirymor House. 

Caspian, his mind still in it's split, walked up barefoot to his old home. He stared at the glowing lights of one of the back studies wondering who in that room he would find and wrap his large hands around their neck. Jacob? Perhaps Celeste or even his recent ex-wife Rebecca.

As the crazed man continued through the back area of the mansion through the lush gardens, he could feel his heart pounding erratically in his chest. The good side of him fighting to come out couldn't restrain itself any longer. There was no way out for Caspian's goodness, it was trapped now, eclipsed by a manic and unpredictable face that wouldn't stop before killing again. 

And again.
And again.

He stood there in the garden near a trio of large back French door; tall, brawny and dark and watched as Jane, the maid, scurried about doing her last duties of the evening. Perhaps her neck was ripe for cracking in his hands. He almost salivated at the thought.

The pitter-patter of the large fountain near him broke his concentration. Caspian stepped over to it and looked into the deep basin. The water rippled in the glow of the moon's obscured light as Caspian looked into the water. 

The reflection he saw broke into different versions of himself with every shimmer of light that cut through the gloomy water. One second smiling evilly the other furrowed and concerned -- and then back again to evil. It was the break inside of his mind literally showing itself in the ease of the fountain's water flow.  

Caspian knelt down, his bare feet slipping in the wet grass as he steadied himself. He looked into the pooled water of the fountain in the basin and watched his reflection shifted in expression before his very eyes. 

"No.... NO!!!" He shouted at the water.

He lifted his fist, high above his head, and slammed it into his face in the reflection breaking it in a large deep splash. He continued to beat the water as if he were beating himself, killing the thing inside of him that was breaking him and turning him back into the darkest thing that had ever walked this earth.

When it was all over, he was soaking wet. His white undershirt was stuck to his skin like a second skin. His hair slick and dripping with rain and fountain water. He crawled over to the other side of the fountain hiding himself from himself. He cried there, hoping the evil inside him would leave. But as he buried his face into his knees sitting there in the dark, wet gardens of Tirymor House, a gnawing truth came to his mind again in his own devilish voice.

"Try again Viktor." 

Caspian got up, his face cold and wet from the light drizzle. He pounded the sides of his head with his fists trying to force the laughing in his mind to stop. He ran towards the house, his body suddenly jerked and he fell to the ground. He pulled himself by his fingernails carving deep gashes into the dirt and grass and he pulled himself up by the large stone flower-pots at the edge of the steps that led up to the mansion's French Doors.

The laughing, deeper and more maniacal that before, continued as Caspian continued to tell it to shut up. The crazed man ripped the flowers out of their pots throwing the soil everywhere. He rushed back down the garden path and fell back to the floor hiding once again behind the fountain that initially started this torment. 

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" He screamed as a loud thunder rolled out over the sky above him. 

The voice once again laughed at Caspian as his face quickly switched to the darker evil man inside of him. The torment enflamed the poor man's heart and mind with his real name Viktor, whispering across his cracked lips.

 All Caspian could do that night was sit there and cry and laugh and go back and forth between those two emotions and personalities fighting for dominance and control --- and prayed -- for death. 

****

Jane reveals island gossip to Jacob 

The next morning, Tirymor House felt like a busy train station. Flowers were being brought in by the crate from the village to refill the large stone pots someone had dug up and thrown across the gardens.

Jane stood in half circle shaped breakfast room, with floor to ceiling latticed windows, and shook her head.

"Tsk tsk." She said sucking her teeth with a hand on her hip.

As she watched the gardeners feverishly replant all the flowers before her mistress Rebecca, who was in her room upstairs awaiting the arrival of an appointment, could see it. That wasn't all Jane had on her mind, she was eager to see Jacob, her other boss. 

News, she had for him, about Rebecca being a target of a peculiar investigation by the new village Constable. The titillating story was burning the tip of her tongue, and she knew it would benefit her to show her loyalty to the younger Lord, the man who'd eventually become king of the manor if Rebecca truly ended up vanishing into the maw of the justice system for whatever crime she'd committed. 

"Who mowed Holland?" Jacob sent entering the breakfast room hand-in-hand with his young son Fabian who jumped into the chair at the table with it's wooden booster.

"Sorry?" Jane asked.

"The flowers. What's with this giant delivery of flowers?" He asked reaching for the glittering silver coffee carafe. 

"Oh! Yes, some animal dug up all of the pots outside in the garden, I called in a favor in the village and they've come to replace them before Mrs. Casador sees them. I wouldn't want her to be upset -- any further." Jane said.

Jacob's eyes narrowed. 

"Any further?" He asked sitting down next to his son for breakfast.

"Yes sir, you see I've heard some distressing news last night and I fear it might come to pass today at sometime. Perhaps, you'd like to know of it first, before Mrs. Casador hears?" 

Jacob smirked; the young maid had always been a bit of an enigma to him. They'd had the benign conversations in the past about flower bills or the fust in the library, or an off color joke here and there but never anything that seemed to regard the family in this way, that was always Rebecca and Celeste's department. 

This interested him.

"What, pray, could you have to tell me about Mrs. Casador?" Jacob asked as he poured Fabian a glass of juice. 

"Well, sir, it seems the new constable may have some distressing and hopefully alleged information about Mrs. Casador's strange involvement in the death of the woman doctor, that, Asha Hoffman. You know who she is, don't you? The woman who has been in that coma and then came out of it and now suddenly has no memory. Well, I overheard a conversation at the police station, and it was quite alarming to say the least. I thought you should know." 

"I know." He replied.

"You --- you know? Already?" 

He nodded. 

"Miss Donnelly, nothing, and I truly mean this, NOTHING, happens in this town, in my business and most especially in my family -- and their staff -- that I don't know about. I always know first." he said.

"Of course, yes, I don't know what I was thinking." Jane said as she blushed.

"Know what first?" Celeste asked entering the room in a beautiful pale dress. She looked at both Jane and Jacob as she walked over and kissing her son on the cheek patiently waiting for their reply.

Jane said nothing. She curtsied and scurried out of the breakfast room allowing the Lords to discuss family matters in private.

Now alone with his wife and son, Jacob sighed, "Miss Donnelly thought she was Baxter Murphy and was pleased to hand me the latest gossip on the family. She clearly forgot whom she was speaking to." 

"Oh? What gossip?" 

"DEATH!" Little Fabian shouted with a giggle and a face full of butter and toast.

Celeste furrowed her brow and wiped his face clean "Darling!" She said to her son. "Jacob what is he talking about?" 

"Jane overheard at the police station that they believed my mother had something to do with that awful event at the hospital that led to Asha's death. And, well, they're right unfortunately." 

Celeste sat back in her chair, her face frozen in shock but still not fully understanding just how bad things were for Rebecca. 

"She -- she's involved?" Celeste asked.

Jacob nodded. "Deeply." 

"Fabian, meu amor, I want you to go upstairs and brush your teeth. Go now, then get your books ready for your lessons, alright?" Celeste ordered, the littlest Lord complied happily and ran off into the next room and traced his fingers along the walls of the corridors that emptied into the foyer and the grand staircase that took him upstairs.

"I guess it's good Rebecca is upstairs waiting for her guest. What did she do exactly?" Celeste asked in a hushed voice.

"Yes, that card reader is coming." Jacob said mentioning Fatima Braga. "Not sure how such a stand up man like Filipe can allow his mother to run around telling fortunes for money." 

Celeste's face froze hearing her former partner Filipe's name. It felt like a stab to the heart remembering just how good he was to her, and how she betrayed his trust with Jacob.

"Never mind that." She said, quickly switching topics. "What do the police know?"

"She poisoned Asha. And those patients. She confessed it to me just last night. She's in quite over her head with all this and frankly, I saw this coming. Mother hasn't been herself since she married Caspian. Now that that's over, she's gone off the deep end." 

Celeste let it sink in. She sipped her coffee and stared at all the food on the table then looked at the empty plate to the side of her that was meant for Rebecca. 

"Alright, so what is your plan? How are you going to get her out of this?" She asked her husband.

Jacob looked up over his newspaper and furrowed his brow unsure of what she was talking about. But of course, Celeste would quickly worry and want to help Rebecca out of it, this was her mother-in-law, no matter how difficult Rebecca made Celeste's life at Tirymor she was still her son's grandmother. It was an honest and obvious place for her mind to go.

But Jacob, who was born the eldest son in a world where money, power and legacy were all that mattered, had no intention of doing anything to help his mother. It wasn't as if this were the first time.

"This is Rebecca's doing. Rebecca is going to get herself out of this. I'm not going to do a damn thing." He replied simply.

"Jacob, you're not serious?"

"Of course I am." He replied, not telling her he had already called the Constable Ryan the very second of Rebecca's confession and told him. "We have our own family to think of. The business. Having Rebecca haunting these halls as an accused murderess, especially of someone like Asha, would destroy everything my father built. It'll be like gas on fire. We're battling quite the blaze thanks to Sebastian's shenanigans and Evie's witch trial, and David being Christopher or Christopher being David -- whatever that is. One more scandal and this house of cards will fall. We can't afford that." 

"How can you say that?!? You yourself have been just as liable for a large part of this so-called family fire, Jacob. You'll just throw Rebecca to the wolves?" Celeste asked.

"I've paid my price." He replied shortly.

"YOU HAVE!?!" Celeste laughed sarcastically. "How? How, for example, have you paid for Sabrina?" 

The name shot out of Celeste's mouth like a bullet to his brain. Sabrina Spencer-Lord his late sister-in-law. The woman he was infatuated with and killed in a crime of passion on the wet sands of Bellemore Beach. His brother's wife who at one time haunted the entire house of Tirymor through the eyes and body of his daughter Charlotte. 

Those days were gone, Sabrina and her spirit were gone, but the lies and secrets surrounding her death and Jacob's twisting of the truth by convincing a drunk David that he had killed his own wife in a rage had never left the anyone's memories.

"How dare you bring that up!" Jacob shouted, quickly standing up and throwing down the newspaper. "I've paid dearly for my mistakes. Look around, do you see a man who's living out the best of this life? No. I'm constantly bombarded with the sins of my family members as if they were mine. I have no will to do anymore protecting, not after what happened with Christopher. He's here, he can handle things with mother." 

"You have never answered for what you did to Sabrina, or Mary or Sebastian and even Me. You've been able to skate by in this world constantly free of consequences with your money and your power, Jacob. You know it's true." She said.

Jacob scoffed at her.

Celeste continued "By not helping Rebecca its just one more notch your belt and one more family member out of the way of this little empire you're so sick with. Fine, let it be how you want, let them do what they will with Rebecca but I will not support it." 

"Support it? I haven't asked you to. There's nothing you need to do but continue to mother our son and be my wife. That's all you need to do. That's what your job is." 

Celeste felt sick to her stomach. He had reduced her to some kind of empty vessel of a person to only be a mother and wife. She had never felt so discarded so unseen by him before. They had always had a volatile relationship. One born from scorn and hurt and blackmail. Their mutual adoration of their son Fabian cooled this for a time and even brought them together as team at one point, but this union seemed fractured. Celeste needed more, and Jacob only wanted to give just a piece of what she needed. And it was usually the piece she least liked of him. 

"I'm the mother of your child -- not a nanny or a governess. That should count for much more than just what you think I should do. I have an opinion and I won't be silenced because you disagree." She said.

"Your opinion is for me to cover up for my mother again; she killed someone Celeste!" He shot back.

She rolled her eyes, clearly, he wasn't seeing how hypocritical it was for him to now take the moral high road when he'd done the same. Multiple times. 

"I'm going to this one last thing, and then I'm going upstairs to sit with our son in his lessons. This is your mother we are talking about, Jacob. Your son and daughter's grandmother. The woman who helped your father build this family up to where it is today. If you don't help her in whatever crisis she is going through mentally and emotionally she may be undergoing at this moment I truly don't know what to say to your character. I have always, always kept my hope that the man who did those horrible things in the past was more like the man who is gentle and kind and so loving to Fabian. Try to be more like that man than the man who'll turn in his own mother to the police without offering her some kind of help."

Celeste wiped her hands with the perfect L monogramed linen napkin and dabbed the corners of her moth with it. Then tossed it to the table. She turned and left the room leaving Jacob to stew in her final words. 

Jacob had been cruel to many of his family members in the past. His greed outshined the good in him, but what Celeste was not seeing was that he was now just paving the way for more of that good to shine on him -- and her. He could not protect Rebecca now without staining himself and yes, her and Fabian. He was in a predicament now, one that made him convinced that what he did was the best thing to do for his young family and better -- for himself professionally. 

It looked bad, doing this to Rebecca who had yet come down for breakfast. But he knew the future of his family and their business - their empire was for him to take. 

And so -- he took it by leading Constable Justin Ryan to his front door to arrest his mother for murder. 

**

Celeste receives a phone call 

As Celeste passed into the foyer and on her way to the large staircase to find her son, Jane peeked out of the larger drawing room the family called The Gold room thanks to all of its glittering chandeliers and electric light fixtures on the wall near the equally as gold frames of various long dead family members.

"Ma'am." She said in a low voice yet still catching Celeste's attention. "There's been a call on the telephone for you." 

Celeste showed a confused look. The family rarely got calls on the new telephone, and when they did it usually wasn't good news.

Celeste entered The Gold Room and walked over to the candlestick telephone that was set up by a desk near the far corner. She put the receiver to hear and the lifted the mouthpiece up but before she spoke she turned to see Jane slowly making her way out.

Once alone, Celeste took her call.

"Mrs. Lord, this is Dr. Pascal at Churchill Green, I hope I'm not bothering you this morning."

"Doctor, good morning, no not at all. Is it Johnathon? Is he ok?" She asked of her brother whom Dr. Pascal was treating. 

"Yes, but I don't want you to worry. He's fine. I just wanted to ask if by chance you could come see me." He asked.

She quickly blushed the idea of seeing the handsome doctor again was enticing even if it were steeped in the tragedy of her mentally ill brother. 

"Yes, I'd love to come see you -- Uh... because I'm sure you have something to tell me about Johnny, of course." She replied; the corner of her mouth slightly tugging with embarrassment. 

Dr. Pascal chuckled, "Well that's wonderful, but yes, it is about Johnathon. I've finally come up with a good enough treatment for him that I'm hoping to start soon. His medication helps him but the therapy I have written for him I hope will do much more work. But I don't want to go anywhere into his psyche without seeing you -- uuh -- I mean speaking with you first." Julian replied.

"I see. I will be happy to go down, yes. Thank you, Doctor." She said.

"Julian, please. Call me Julian." 

She blushed again as Jacob entered the gold room hoping to finish his paper. She turned to her husband as he walked in, their cold stares freezing any warmth of given to her by the voice on the line. 

"Yes. Of course." She said, agreeing to call him by his first name without Jacob knowing the nature of her conversation, and her slight crush.

"Can we set an appointment, say after lunch? 2pm?" He asked.

"2pm. Yes." She said. 

"Wonderful. See you then."

"Yes, ...." She said but then turned back away from Jacob and finished her sentence "see you then Julian." 

"Who was that?" Jacob asked sitting on the sofa across from her at the desk.

"Johnny's doctor. He's made an appointment for me." She said.

Jacob laughed. "Now you're seeing his psychiatrist? Perhaps that's a good idea. Madness seems to be as contagious as the common cold around here. 

Celeste rolled her eyes and quickly left the room in a huff and set off to help her little boy with his schoolwork, again leaving Jacob to stew is in schemes. 

****

Rebecca meets with the sage Fatima 

Later that afternoon, Rebecca meticulously arranged a bouquet of white hydrangeas in a large sphere-shaped vase in the center of a round table she had set up in her large bedroom. The table had two chairs that faced each other with a long dark tablecloth that hit the floor. She had been preparing for this personal visit all day, and wanted to be sure everything was perfect. 

She dusted the room herself. She made sure each and every single mirror had a thick black sheet over it; a custom she knew had to be done to keep the spirits in their place. She asked two nervous house maids to help her draw the large draped to shade the room and light candles. They whispered to each other how strange their mistress' behavior was, never witnessing Rebecca's rituals this closely. 

Rebecca saged the room. The perfumed smoke swirled around the bed, the doorframe, the covered paintings and glass of the mirrors. The maids waved the smoke from their faces as they showed they'd finished the part of the job.

Rebecca inspected the lit candles as if they'd been lit for a funeral. 

Then, a knock on her bedroom door broke her concentration as she checked over her very carefully curated room. She shooed away the two maids in the room who opened the door allowing the head maid, Jane, to enter. 

"Your guest has arrived ma'am." Jane said.

"Thank you, Jane, you can show her in." 

"Before I do, you didn't come down for breakfast and I wondered if you wanted me to bring you anything to eat. Cook says you weren't down for dinner either." Jane noted like a mother to a child.

"Miss Donnelly, if I were hungry I'd make it to dinner luncheon or breakfast, but I have too much on my mind at the moment to worry about food." Rebecca replied curtly as she ran her boney yet elegant hands over her corseted empty stomach. 

"Yes, ma'am. I'll show your guest in."

"Thank you." 

Jane, knowing all too well why Rebecca's appetite was off, left the room and in her place entered Fatima Braga, the fortune teller of Welshport. 

Fatima entered dressed in her finest dress. It was black with lace trim. The sleeves went all the way do her wrists and she wore lace gloves that mirrored the same lace pattern that was on her dress. Her thick white hair cascaded down her back like the whitest waterfall, and she curtsied to Rebecca as if she were meeting a queen. 

Rebecca smiled curiously, the two women had met before many times in the past few years in secret while Rebecca searched for a new spiritual guide, to no avail allowing for Fatima to take up that role as de facto. But it had been quite a long time since they'd had an appointment.

Fatima could sense right off with the energy in Rebecca's movements that things were heavy.

"The flowers are lovely Mrs. Casador, thank you for the invitation, my own household is quite upset with so many of my family staying there. This is most accommodating to me, and I thank you." Fatima began.

"It's my pleasure. I am in desperate need of your council and, here in my private apartments at Tirymor is as good as it gets." Rebecca said, motioning for Fatima to sit at the table across from her. 

Fatima too to the table and removed the ancient deck of tarot cards from inside the coat pocket she had over her arm. It was a black box, the deck inside gnarled and withered with decades of use. The two women sat in the dim light of the room that glowed with candles as Rebecca removed a rosary from her dress pocket and began fiddling with it. 

"Are you well enough for me to here?" Fatima asked, noting Rebecca's gaunt nervous look.

"Well enough." Rebecca answered removing the flowers from the center of table and off to the side. 

"As I place the cards on the table, please delve deep into your mind and tell them what you need to know, only speak this in silence. Let the cards hear you from beyond your psyche. Only they will hear the precious cause you need answered for. I begin to place the cards, four of them, face down in front of you on the table." 

She lay them as she said, one - two - three - four. All face down. Rebecca kept her eyes closed and continued to fiddle with her silver and gold rosary. She pushed the thoughts she needed to be clarified by the tarot to her mind. Her heart suffering from the loss of her marriage, the death and illness she caused. Where would her life lead now? What or who could save her now?"

"Ready?" Fatima asked.

Rebecca opened her eyes and nodded; the green of her irises seemed to glow bright in the dimly lit room. She placed her hands flat on the table while the rosary wrapped around one like ivy around a tree.

Fatima turned the first card 

"The 5 of Cups. This tells us that there is much question surrounding your place in the world. You, as a matriarch, are at crossroads. A thin bridge of time that tells you that the time of your life has ended. One that has been built up over decades and decades and now the job is done. Where should you go? Whom should you turn to. These are the questions the universe asks us all. yet how should one go about this? That is the mystery of the 5 cups. Each one does not give a definitive answer but only the notion that there is still more to come, more cups of life to fill. Only you can do this. Only you can find those clues."

"Fill my life. Yes." Rebecca whispered. "Go on."

Fatima turned the second card "The Hermit."

Rebecca froze. 

"A ghostly card that bring us all to the edge of our seats. Why? Because this is a card that represents a person, a real person in our lives, that only brings us news of things to come or things that are not yet real. They hide away, at least seemingly so, from our regular lives and when they appear they have nothing but danger in their voice. They wish to inform you, to give you the things you need to perhaps cross the new bridge of life the 5 of Cups is pointing you towards yet -- we caution ourselves in their presence but perhaps we must learn to trust the hermit when times say so." 

"I must learn to trust." Rebecca replied.

"Its one of the most difficult lessons we must learn." 

Rebecca sighed and pointed to the third card.

"The inverted Queen of Swords." Fatima said, her face clearly showing concern.

"It's me." Rebecca said, knowing the cards quite well. "Inverted." 

"The swords point downward, signaling a self-inflicted wound, Rebecca. The path you've chosen or will chose, which is connected to the 5 of Cups, will at some point damage you. Nothing is clear to me aside from that. The Queen of Swords represents strength and fragility at the same time. Upright, she is crowned in her glory, inverted her crown falls, the swords she holds close once weapons to protect her, now signaling they've been used to destroy her regency. Rebecca..." Fatima paused the reading and put her hands over the card. "Are you alright?" 

But before Rebecca could answer someone knocked on her bedroom door. It cracked open and Jane put her face in. "I'm sorry to bother you ma'am, but someone else has come to see you."

 "I'm rather busy, Jane, can you tell them to come back?" 

"I -- tired but she...." Jane began before the door pushed open and Aurora Jordan stepped in.

"I don't have time for your regal protocol Rebecca, this is urgent." Aurora said, clutching her handbag close to her body as if it were a protective shield. 

Rebecca slowly stood up from the table. Fatima's heart felt as if it were about to leap out of her chest. The tension was heavy, oppressive even. The obvious reasons for their icy body language had just sent divorce papers to Rebecca and had been staying with Aurora at Bellmore Beach since then.

"You've interrupted my appointment, I think you should leave." Rebecca said coldly. 

"I can come back." Fatima inserted herself as she stood.

"SIT!" Rebecca ordered, Fatima remained standing but said nothing. 

"This is urgent." Aurora replied, as Jane quickly scurried away. "Caspian is unwell. And he's missing." 

"What do you mean unwell?" Rebecca wondered, half concerned, half happy in his unwellness. 

"Its his headaches, they've come back, with much more force. He's ... unhinged. Dangerous even. I'm worried about him Rebecca and I'm hoping you can help me understand what's happened to him since the events at the coves where the headaches began." Aurora asked.

"I don't know anything about headaches. I know he had some an injury when he hit his head and Dr. Ward was helping him with some of that but I don't know anything about increased headaches." Rebecca replied honestly. 

"Where would he go?" Fatima asked out loud. 

Rebecca walked over to Aurora, her arms tightly wound around her body holding herself close. Her face was a frozen look of disdain towards Aurora whom Rebecca saw as the winner in the love triangle, when Aurora had no intentions of portraying the other woman in the drama in Rebecca's mind-play.

"He needs help, its very urgent that if there is any information you may know about where he might be, it would benefit everyone in our lives if you helped." Aurora replied.

"Benefit?! ME? Oh please, this would only benefit you, you're the one who's going to gain from us finding him. Why not let him come back whenever he wants to come back. Why should I have anything to do with it." Rebecca scolded.

"Because he's your husband." Aurora recalled.

"Ex-husband, Aurora. You know that."

"Rebecca she's trying to find Caspian to help him." Fatima added.

"Oh, she's done enough of helping him in more ways than one, yes, she knows all about helping Caspian in ways that perhaps I was too old, to grandmotherly to do for him. Isn't that right Aurora? You know how to help men in those ways. With your legs wide open, that's the way you help men, isn't it?"

Aurora turned red. Her heart felt as if it were to explode and she slapped Rebecca across the face with the back of her hand. Rebecca yelped loudly, the sound of the slap paralleled a thunderclap in the middle of the night as Rebecca raised her own hand to the stinging burn on her skin.

Fatima audibly gasped and stepped between the two waring women who'd never come to this type of behavior before. 

 Jacob, rushed int the room seeing a scene that seemed locked in time.

"What the devil was that?" He asked of the Rebecca's screamed.

Aurora turned back to him and arched her brow "If Caspian comes here, be careful. Call the police." She said and left the room and the mansion saying nothing more. 

"Jacob, I think your mother needs to rest." Fatima replied.

"I don't need to rest. I DON'T NEED TO REST!!" Rebecca scared as she reached for one of the chair at the round table. 

"She's fine. Everything is fine." Jacob replied. "Perhaps you should leave Fatima. Come back another time."

Fatima nodded, agreeing and went to grab the cards on the table, one of them turned face down. When the fortune teller went to grab the cards, the one face down fell to the hardwood floors -- face up.

The Hanged man card straight up met Fatima's eyes.

She swallowed hard realizing it's signific in Rebecca's overall reading. Death and tragedy. 

"Rebecca, please take care of yourself, alright? Rest." Fatima said feeling uneasy as she left.

"What am I do now? If feels like the vultures are circling. What I did was -- was an accident and now I feel the walls closing in." Rebecca said, her face blush with the mark of Aurora's hand.

Jacob sighed, knowing the truth, knowing that indeed there were vultures circling her, and he was one of them but that needed to be kept on the side. He could not lead on to her that her life was about to change for the worse. 

"You need to relax and figure things out for yourself. There's nothing in Fatima Braga's tarot that can make it happen for you. What will happen, will happen and we need to deal with it when it does. Nothing can be told in truth without knowing all the details. Those cards don't know all the details." Her son said.

Rebecca narrowed her eyes, she thought he spoke like the hermit in her cards. The cold honest truth flowing from his lips like a ice cold bath.

"Those cards should not be mocked. They point me in the direction I need to go." She replied simply. 

Jacob reached down, grabbed her rosary that had fallen on the ground when Aurora slapped her. She looked at the glittering silver and gold beads in his large hand and squeezed them into his fist. He knew what he did, he called the authorities on his own mother to finally put an end to her crime but at the same time to take control of the family he's been trying to lead for decades. The divorce was one cut, the coming arrest would be the death wound to Rebecca's rule.

He could see her spinning in thought, wondering what she needed to do next to protect herself. There was a slight hope in her face that perhaps Jacob, ever the illusive escape artist when it came to crimes one did, said nothing of the sort.

"There, there." Jacob he finally replied, standing over his mother seated in the chair. "Pray." He added handing her the rosary. "The end to this is coming sooner than we think, we'll be ok." 

She took the beads, her sons words seemed kind, washed in a spiritual hope that she needed. Unfortunately for her his words were as laced with poison as Asha's medication was.

Just outside the mansion Aurora got back into her taxicab that was ordered to take her home to Bellmore Beach. Hidden in the trees, obscured by the greenery and beauty that was the grounds of Tirymor House, was Caspian Casador, cold - hard - hungry to kill. He knew where he needed to be. He knew who he needed to take away from this place, this earth, this world.

Aurora's life was now in the crosshairs of a maniac. 

B9/Ch9: SHIVERS AND DREAMS

PRESENT DAY - BELLMORE BEACH 

Bellmore Beach house today 

Evie sat in her living room on the pristine white sofa, holding her breath as her mother Aurora recounted the events of the last several months. Matthew held a fussy Gabriel in his strong arms and moved over to where Evie was sitting. The shock of Aurora's story burrowed holes in their minds. Gabriel reached for his mama and signed “mama sad” the rubbed his eyes. 

“No, no, mama not sad.” Evie replied in sign language. 

"He's sleepy." Aurora said of her grandson, Evie nodded, still unable to shake her mother’s story from her being. "Maybe we should take a minute and lay him down upstairs." 

"I can do it." Roman offered. 

Evie shot her cousin a look, surprised that he would volunteer. "Are you sure?" She asked.

"I’m sure you still have a lot to go over, and Gabby wouldn't be the first little guy I've rocked to sleep. Before I lived at Cyfrinach, I worked at an orphanage in Leeds." 

Evie looked at Gabriel and began to sign to him "Cousin Roman take you to sleep." 

Gabriel frowned "No Sleep." He signed.

"Nap time, yes." Evie signed to the child. 

"Want play in garden with M." Gabriel signed back, the single letter M referring to Matthew.

"After nap." Matthew said, as Evie signed back to him the same. 

Evie then handed Gabriel who decided he liked that idea, to Roman and the two went upstairs. 

Once they had disappeared into the second floor, Evie sipped on her cooling tea. "I just can't believe Rebecca would do something like that." She said of what she knew of Asha's death so far.

"Can't you?" Aurora replied. "We’ve always known she’s capable of anything when she felt cornered. Like a caged tiger." 

"Poor Asha." Matthew said.

“Nik must be heartbroken.” Evie added remembering her brother’s romantic connection to Asha. 

“Everyone was. They didn’t even have a funeral for her. Her family requested her body sent back to Philadelphia. There’s been no closure.” Aurora added. 

"And  -- Timothy and Baxter's attacks were --- by the same attacker?" Evie asked, still piecing things together.

"There's more." Aurora answered with a deep sigh.

"Wait Eden? Why was he here?" Matthew wondered, going back to whom they encountered when they first got home coming down the stairs.

"Yes, Eden," Aurora replied, blushing, "I'll get to that too." 

Aurora then grabbed her own cup and saucer of now cold tea, her throat now lubricated enough to continue. She swallowed hard and picked up where she left off. 

BACK 10 MONTHS 

Caspian confronts a nightmare 

On a warm night, one of the first Welshport had had after a cold snap broke over the region, the air seeped in through a cracked window in one of the frothily colored bedrooms in Evie's Bellmore Beach house. In bed, Caspian tossed and turned like a large stone forcibly pulling over the the bottom of the sea by the current. 

His mind was unable to rationalize what he had done. A vision of his own hands around someone's neck. Tightening and tightening until the person could not breath. He could hear them chocking. He could see the outline of the person's head and their arms reach up from the bed and try to fight for their lives. 

Then the chocking became less and less, and the person jolted slightly to the left where a beam of moon light from the slightly drawn drapes fell on their face. It was Timothy Churchill -- who died right there in his bed. Caspian got up from Timothy’s bed where he had knelt over him and he saw himself or someone like him in the mirror sweaty, grotesque, cold-eyed and monstrous. 

A killer who smiled at himself, pleased with the murder.

In the dream, Timothy’s room suddenly flipped upside down, and Caspian was now dropped in the middle of a dark street. Fog floated all around his legs and body that were once again on top of another man. Caspian was choking this man too. Punching him and then going back to this throat and holding it tighter and tighter until he had to make a quick exit as someone in the distance approached. The street too open a place to finish the job. 

As Caspian passed the window of a closed shop, he once again saw a happy disheveled version of himself bleeding from his lip, a souvenir of his attempted murder of the man lying in the fog. Caspian ran off, turned back and watched the fog slip away revealing the victim as Baxter Murphy. 

Faster and Faster Capsian ran in his dream until he was suddenly running down a vacant, dark alley somewhere in town. He stood in the shadows and saw another man. This time, no choking, he jumped on the man and began to pummel him with his first, kick him in the side. The sound of cracking bones ricocheted into the night air and an orange beam of light from the gas street lamp beamed down on to the face Christopher Wesley groaning and hold his battered body in the fetal position. 

Still trapped in this dream, Caspian again began to run away from his third victim, he ran into the night. He ran until the village vanished and became darkness. He now lost in his own conscious of shadows and fog. Suddenly a large blur of black, a figure, stood in front of him holding it out a gray withered hand. 

Caspian saw the thing, the person, the creature, grow larger and larger in front of him. Wind ravaged around them blowing the giants black robes all around Caspian. He tries to scream but the wind choked him. A giant scythe appeared before the creature now clearly showing itself as the Grim Reaper. The Reaper swung his scythe towards Caspian who screamed like a coward in the dark bog that was his psyche only to finally wake himself and Aurora in his bed at Bellmore Beach. 

Aurora reached for him, feeling his sweaty body. He pushed her off. 

"What is it? You were screaming." She asked as he jumped from the bed as if his whole body was on fire. 

He was shaking. He was sweating. Aurora got out of bed grabbed her sleek robe and wrapped herself in it like it was armor to protect her from whatever man she was looking at.

It wasn't Caspian, not the Caspian she knew. This was another man, another person all together. 

He paced in the small area between the bed and the door; his white sleeveless undershirt soaked to the skin with sweat and his strong legs, like tree trunks, peeked out from bedroom shorts holding him solidly in place. 

"Caspian, what is it? Please tell me." Aurora asked. 

He turned and shushed her. "I can't hear your voice. I don't want to hear your voice damn it!!" He shouted. 

Aurora stunned, held her breath and watched as Caspian began to wince in pain. 

"These headaches, these cursed headaches!!! They're unrelenting. They keep coming, even in my sleep. They come!" 

"You have to speak to Dr. Ward, Caspian, you have to talk to him!" Aurora exclaimed. She had no idea how bad things had gotten. But she could see it now as she saw it at the police station. His mind was fracturing. Even Caspian's face, the handsome stoic man she was starting to fall in love with despite of the darkness that made up their relationship was slipping away back into something she wanted to run from.

"I don't need doctors. They can't give me what I need, what my body wants to keep itself alive!" Caspian shouted.

"I don't understand!" Aurora said back, holding herself tightly. "I want to help you Capsian but I can't understand what you need from me and if you don't want to seek help from the doctors, what can I do?" She begged.

"STOP CALLING ME THAT!!! THAT'S NOT MY NAME!" He shouted back.

Aurora froze. "Calling -- you? What? You don't want me to call you by your name?" 

"It's not my bloody name and you know that." He repeated. "That name comes from nothing. It comes from a place where I can't get back." Caspian replied.

He began to walk towards Aurora. She gulped, slowly backed away but bumped into a chair that was near her. They were now staring at each other. He stood there, his face dark, the sliver of man she tried to forget. She tried to put in her past. The demonic thing that took her and tricked her and pretended to be someone else who slept with her and made their child now known as Caleb.

As he walked towards her, his arms began to lift, his fists opening ready to reach for her throat but then he saw his reflection. The face was his yet not his. His eyes were his yet not his. The shadow of something so much darker was finally setting foot in his body and he could not escape it. 

The face in the mirror turned and smiled at him, but the reflection did not match the man staring back. Aurora saw this, she gasped and screamed. She fell to her knees frightened of what she had just seen, the reflection not matching the face of the man staring into the glass.

Caspian lunged at the glass breaking it with his fists. He turned, bleeding from his knuckles and reached for the bedroom door and quickly vanished down the hallway. 

Aurora made chase, she quickly followed him. She could hear him breaking anything on the walls the reflected his face, a face of the creature that was slowly returning into his body. 

When Aurora finally made her way to the bottom level of the house, glass from picture frames, mirrors and even a side window had been broken into pieces. The front door left open.

Aurora went to the door. Her robe blowing in the window that came from the cashing sea outside the house. 

Caspian was gone. He'd escaped into the night in only his undershirt and dark bedroom pants. No shoes. No coat. 

Aurora did not call for him. She could not speak. She could not scream.

She just stood there in the cold shivering in fear. 

****

Coraline finally faces her past

The next day in a small quiet neighborhood on the north side of the village where the houses were covered in wisteria and willow, Coraline, Lear and Lucas stood together in front of a red door that belonged to a very prominent Welshportonian. 

Coraline stepped forward and reached for the golden door knocker and clacked it three times. The small round knob on the underside of the knocker had worn away a groove in the red paint on the door, a scar to show it's age. 

"Maybe Cora should have come alone." Lear said, looking around the quiet seaside neighborhood.

Cora and Lucas said nothing. They were there to finally put an end to a long, long part of her story. 

The door began to open. Standing behind it in a flowery dark dress with an apron on and wash rag in her hand was Laurel Ridgeway-Ward, the woman the threesome believed had been behind Cora's black-market adoption thanks to Dr. Ward accidently connecting the name on the documents of the person who brokered the baby adoption being his wife's maiden name.

Laurel smiled nervously, seeing her visitors, she instantly knew what this was about. In the back of her mind she had expected this long ago but had hoped the day would never come.

"Mrs. Ward, how are you?" Cora asked cautiously. 

"Coraline, boys, hello. What can I do for you?" The Doctor's wife asked.

"We wanted to see you about something, something we think you may have an answer to. It would help me understand some peculiar things we found in my adoption forms." Cora stated.

Laurel froze. 

"It's quite the story, Mrs. Ward," Lear interjected "and we thought we'd come and ask you about it in person, and in private." 

"Oh? Your adoption? What would I know about any of that?" Laurel replied, again playing along. 

Lucas arched a brow "You really don't know?" He asked.

"I don't, no. What is it you think I would know." Laurel replied.

Coraline sighed, "Show her." She said to Lear. 

"This is incredibly unethical, and I'm only doing this because you're my sister." Lear said under his breath as he reached for something in a briefcase. 

Lucas watched as Laurel had no reaction to Lear saying he and Cora were siblings, when the world had only known her as Baxter Murphy's sister. This, to Lucas, proved she knew exactly what they were there for. 

"Wait---" Lucas interjected, reaching his arm out to block Lear who had papers in his hand -- the adoption papers. "Did you hear what Lear said?" he asked Laurel.

"I did." She replied.

"You are not shocked then, to learning Lear and Cora are siblings?" Lucas asked again.

Laurel sighed and stepped aside from her door, she reached an arm out and told them to come in.

"We should talk about this inside, please." She said, stepping aside from the doorway.

Laurel untied her apron and led the group into a brightly lit parlor on the other end of the front of the house. There were photographs of her late son, late daughter-in-law and granddaughter Samantha who ran into the room and grabbed Laurel by the waist. 

Samantha was like a ray of light from the sun in person form. Her hair was blond and bright, her eyes blue like the sea that surrounded the island. Her little white dress was perfectly fit and shifted in crunching chiffon as her black patten shoes tapped along the hardwood floors.  

"I'm hungry nana." the almost 5-year-old Samantha said, then quickly becoming shy when the visitor's eyes became glued to her pretty face. 

"I know honey, we'll have lunch shortly, just go on back into your playroom and when nana and her friends have finished, I'll come fetch you for lunch, alright?"

"But my tummy grumbled and grumbled." Samatha said in a shy voice, her face lowered into her chest.

"Did it now!?" Laurel giggled. "Well, I don't see why you can't help that ol' grumbling tummy to a bit of fruit nana has set out on the table in the kitchen. There are slices of apple on a plate, you can have one or two of those. But not too much, I don't want you to spoil lunch." 

"OK!" Samantha shouted as she rushed off to find her apple slices.

"Please sit." Laurel told her guests. 

"She's quite beautiful." Coraline said of Samantha.

"She is, yes. She reminds me a lot of her mother, my daughter-in-law. My son, too, usually when we argue. My son was a lawyer like you Lear, he loved to argue. So does Samantha."

"Maybe one day she can step into her father's shoes." Lear said.

"Did you know him?" Lucas asked.

Lear nodded his head "Briefly." 

"I assume you're all here for a very detailed explanation." Laurel began. "And I really don't have one that will make you feel better; the details might be painful to hear."

"You'll tell us why you were involved in such things? Your maiden name listed in the forms. Why you helped my father sell me? Coraline asked.

Laurel sighed, blushed with shame "It's despicable. Don't think I don't know what I did was despicable. It didn't start that way -- about money. It started with me seeing women trying to have children or losing their children and not being able to have their own. I worked at an orphanage, one in Bangor, and then one in Winter Port. The children there usually came quite young and lived there for years and years. When we had visiting days where potential parents came to see if a child would fit with them, the older ones were always left out. Couples wanted babies. When I started getting involved it was so that I could get children who needed homes adopted sooner, before they would ever set foot in an orphanage. But, I couldn't do both. I couldn't work at that place and help babies find homes on the side. So I left the orphanage." Laurel explained.

"When did it begin to be about money?" Lucas asked.

"It didn't take long." Laurel replied. "In between working at Tirymor as Rebecca Lord's lady in waiting, a job that didn't pay my bills but still gave me time to help children find homes, a man came to me and asked if I could help him and his wife. He already had a check signed to me for $100. I took it and I found a child for him. We forged a bit of paperwork so that the child would go to them that same day and it was done. Word of mouth is a powerful tool."

"So people started to come to you? In secret?" Lear asked.

"Always in secret. I lived two lives. I worked for Rebecca Lord, I met Peter, we married, I had a son. It was all just my real life. All along I was this the face behind a hand full of adoptions for people who needed children -- they were desperate even." Laurel explained.

"How did it go from you being paid to find children to you being paid to sell children?" Cora asked, knowing she was sold by her father Henry Lockwood. 

Lear, Henry's other child, braced to hear another truth about his destitute father and the sin he never wanted to believe. 

"I don't know how much of this you want to hear." Laurel said.

"I want to hear every word." Cora said, her tone unflinching. 

Laurel sighed -- "Henry was broke. He had no money. Nothing. He gambled it away. Even the payments from the Lockwood Estate Rebecca was giving him. She loved her brother and continued to help him financially with their family's money, but he continued to squander it. By the time you were born Coraline, as Maggie, your mother was ill. She was dying. Your father couldn't pay for her medical bills and his gambling debts. He brought you to me and begged me to find you a home. I knew what he meant. He needed you to not only have a good home where you could be cared for but where he could get money. I agreed. We forged a death certificate, your mother -- god bless her soul -- turned a blind eye and allowed it. Knowing she was too ill to care for the two of you. I kept you here for a few weeks and then I met the Baxter's who were trying to have another child. It all worked out." Laurel explained.

"How did Dr. Ward not question it?" Coraline asked.

"Peter did question me. All the time. I lied to him. I've lied to him for decades, don't you see? This is why I stopped. Coraline, you were my last baby. I -- I wanted nothing more to do with it after what Henry and I did. I worked hard to help parents who needed children find them, but once it went the other way in selling them, I just couldn't look my husband in the face anymore. I stopped. It was done." Laurel said.

"Thank you for telling me the truth." Coraline said.

Laurel said nothing, just half smiled. She felt shame in her heart but knew what was done was done. She could not control what the world saw of her now. 

"I suppose you'll tell Peter now." The doctor's wife wondered.

Lear and Lucas looked to Cora to see her reaction. She was tone faced, like a porcelain doll. Her skin fresh and soft cheeks blushed and plump. Then she furrowed her brow in thought.

"No." She replied, Laurel's eyes widened with surprise. 

"No?" Lucas asked, equally surprised.

"No. I think what's done is done. Henry and Lorna Lockwood are gone I can never reconnect with them in this world. My adopted parents are gone too. They loved me. The raised me well. Nothing changes that. Baxter and Lear both know who I am now. I think it's over." Cora said. "I can live with knowing who helped Henry and why. Telling Dr. Ward what you did Laurel will only extend the grief of this whole mess even more and I think I want to put it to bed."

"Do you really mean that?" Laurel asked, tears of relief filling up in her pale blue eyes. 

Coraline nodded and reached for Laurel's hand. "It has to be over now." 

The two women got up from Laurel's plush parlor sofas and hugged. Lucas, who wanted a bit more bite out of Coraline's confrontation, shrugged and got up from his sofa too. He buttoned his jacket. He turned to his partner Lear and smirked "Alls well that ends well." Lucas whispered.

Lear gulped in relief knowing finally it was all over. He walked over to his sister Cora and hugged her tightly. 

"I'm sorry for everything, Coraline. I really truly am." Laurel said, tears welling up in her eyes.

Cora smiled and reached for the older woman's hand and squeezed. A small symbol of finally letting it all go.

"Let's go, I think there's a little girl in the other room waiting for her lunch." Lear said.

The three saw themselves out and Laurel went and found Samantha playing with a doll in her playroom. The grandmother knelt down next Samantha and caressed the young girl's head.

"Who's ready for some lunch?" Laurel asked.

"I AM!!" Samantha shouted. "Who were those people?" 

"Friends of mine." 

"What did they want?" Samantha asked.

"Just to talk." 

"About what?" 

Laurel smiled and began to braid the girl's hair as they sat there on the playroom floor together. 

"About -- something called the truth." Laurel answered. "Do you know what truth means Samantha?" 

The little girl dropped her doll, it's head bumping the side of a play table. Samantha looked up at the ceiling as if the answer would be there and then blurted out "NOT A LIE!" 

"Right!" Laurel laughed. "The truth is not a lie. And we don't lie do we?" Samantha shook her head hard. "No we don't. We do not lie." Laurel confirmed. "Now go wash up so we can have a bit to eat."

Samantha bounced up from the floor and ran into the adjacent bathroom to wash her hands. Laurel got up and put the doll into a bin that had several other of Samantha's toys. She thought about what she said to her granddaughter. That they don't lie, yet she had lied. She told Coraline that she was her last baby. 

But that was a lie. 

There was one more baby Laurel had helped find a home for. One baby who was now all grown up. One baby who's name was locked in Laurel's mind and that she would never reveal. 

****

Justin pores over the poisoning case 

Across town at the newly rebuilt police station, Constable Justin Ryan and a deputy sat in the Constable's office that had a fresh coat of white paint on the walls. A photograph President Woodrow Wilson hung on the wall in a thick black frame. 

The new door, oak and heavy, remained opened as the usually quiet police station buzzed with activity due to the odd and strange attacks in the village over three different nights. The new constable, Justin Ryan, wanted answers and it was unclear if the secretive lifestyle of Welshport would give him what he needed.

Looking over papers with timelines and history of who was who and what happened, Justin looked out into the open area of the police station. He worried he'd gotten in over his head. Not only was he and his deputy investigating the attacks in the village, but also sudden death of Dr. Asha Hoffman and other patients poisoned at Hope Hospital. 

Could all the crimes be connected and if they were connected, could Nik Jordan and Danielle Holten's theory that Rebecca Lord-Casador was somehow at the center of it all. 

Nothing seemed clear, not in regard to the attacks in the village, but the poisoning of Hoffman and the other patients at the hospital was incredibly plausible. 

"I can see the motive here." The deputy said, reading over Nik's statement. "But was there opportunity? Did anyone see Mrs. Lord-Casador at the hospital that day?" 

"Dr. Jordan did." Justin replied. "Which puts us in another pickle, can the accused person be a good witness? Would he say anything to get himself off the hook? Anyone would." 

"But why her? Why choose Rebecca to pin this on?" The deputy wondered

As the two chatted, a woman walked into the front area of the police station just feet away from the open door. She had come to register the license of an automobile for her employer who had just purchased the car. It was an usual arrand to run for her, but the usual person had to be somewhere else that day, so she took up the task. 

She had heard of the new constable, gossip around her circles was that he was incredibly handsome and the brother of the parish priest, whom the woman had already knew to be a very handsome man. She wondered, could the brother be just as beautiful? She didn't think it would hurt to peek. 

As she looked in through the crack of the opened door between the doorframe, she saw him and was not disappointed. 

"Nikolas and Danielle said Rebecca has some sort of issue with Danielle being Caspian's daughter. He allegedly suffers from some sort of memory loss and Danielle, according to the couple, represents a time of Caspian's life that Rebecca was not apart of. His real name is Viktor. It's all very tangled up but the gist is they believe Rebecca's possessiveness over Caspian, keeping him Caspian for herself is what drove her to do this." 

The deputy gnawed on the edge of a pencil absorbing it all. "That's .... that's fucking a lot." He said.

"A lot!" Justin confirmed. "But could this woman, this Rebecca Casador really have it that bad for Caspian? To the point where she tries to off a bunch of people to frame it on this couple?" Justin wondered.

"Where does Hoffman fit in?" The deputy asked.

"Nik and Danille think Rebecca somehow wormed her way into getting Asha to tell her where the medication was, and who was administering it, and they think this was Rebecca's way to get rid of Danielle for both Asha and herself. See its a love triangle with a bit of serrated edge. Rebecca was doing double duty."

"That's quite the crazy feat." The deputy said allowing the bizarre story to sink in. 

"But it could have happened—right?” Justin asked. 

"What do you think?” The deputy replied shooting back the question.

Justin stood up. His mouth twisted to one side in thought as he gazed out the window of his new office that looked out into the town. Off in the distance he saw Village Park, the crown jewel of downtown Welshport bustling with people. Everyone in town knew this place had secrets and strange ones at that, and yet chose to live here still, could it be possible someone as high in stature as Rebecca Lord-Casador could do such a thing and people in the village would trust him, the district attorney and still judge the case in a jury? Justin wasn't a naïve to know he had to have good hard evidence for a jury of Rebecca's fellow Welshportonians to convict her. 

"I do." Justin said. "I think she did it. But we have to find more evidence to prove it." 

Standing outside the door still listening and now in utter shock was Jane O'Donnell. Rebecca's closest maid.

Jane put her hand over her mouth to muffle the gasp she wanted to exhale. She was white as a sheet. She quickly dropped the paperwork into a box to register Jacob's new car and ran into the street and hailed a Taxi. She had no intention of keeping this information to herself. 

She needed to tell someone, someone who with enough power and prestige to quickly do damage control before the story got out. Jane chose the one man she could think of: Jacob Lord. 

****

Aaron and Coraline 

Later that evening, Coraline came home to a quiet house. There were lights on in the front room. She turned to the hallway as she hung her coat on the wall towards the back bedroom where a light was on.

"Aaron?!? Are you home?" She asked as the large framed bearded man emerged from the room. He was dressed in a clean fresh suit, his beard nicely trimmed. He looked as if he was going to some gala or business dinner with his employer Jacob Lord.

"Well you look nice. What's the occasion?" She asked as he greeted her with a kiss. "Is Jacob taking you out on a date?" She added in jest.

"I just thought I needed to look nice for you. Today is a big day. How did it go with Laurel?" He asked as he held Cora in his arms.

She sighed "It went well. Laurel finally came clean about everything, and I accepted her apology and it's over. Its all finally over." 

"Do you really think so?" 

"I do. She explained what she did, how she helped Henry Lockwood and why he came to her. I don't think she meant to cause harm, although much harm occurred, but in the end the Murphy's raised me very well. They loved me, they cared for me, they gave me a family even if I already had one. The Lockwoods raised Lear well too, so I don't dare say I missed out on a good family. I had my own. Just the wrong one." Cora explained rather diplomatically. 

"Speaking of the Lockwoods -- what will you go by? Are you now officially back to being Margaret Lockwood?" Aaron asked. 

Cora's head went back slightly as the idea never came to her. She had legal right to that name, she had proof as much proof as she needed to take back the name and family standing that was rightfully hers but then she wondered about what it would mean to be a full-fledged Lockwood again, a member, through Rebecca her paternal aunt, of the Lord family. It would mean so much to her financially and socially but at the same time, there was much to worry about stepping back into that role. 

"No." She replied simply surprising him.

"No?" 

"No, I think I'm good. My mother gave me the name Coraline Mary Taylor Murphy, that's who I've always been. That's who I'll always be no matter who my real family relations are. Lear is my brother and so is Bax. I have two brothers. I have two families. That's just my reality now." 

"Well I can tell you Lear and Rebecca may feel a little differently. They'd probably want you to go by your real name." Aaron said.

"It's my choice, and I think Lear will understand. Rebecca -- well, I don't have anything to prove to her. She can take me or leave me." Cora said proudly.

"Well what if you went with a different name all together?"

Cora tilted her head "A different name? What do you mean?"

“There’s some official business to take care of, you and I. Did you forget about an agreement we made a few week ago?” Aaron asked coyly. 

She did remember. But happily played dumb. 

Seeing her pretend to forget and not wanting to spend a second longer without her with his ring he reached into the pocket of his jacket and went down to one knee. 

He pulled out a small box, opened it showed her a beautiful gold band diamond engagement ring he had chosen for their engagement. 

"Coraline Mary Taylor Murphy, will you —officially—do me the honor of being my wife?" 

Cora gasped, not expecting ring such an extravagant ring. She covered her mouth in shock and pulled him back up. His tall frame towered over her and she cried with happiness as reached for his lips on her tip-toes and kissed him. She put the ring on and could not believe how beautiful it sparkled.

"You have to say yes or no!" Aaron laughed. "You can't just take the ring!" 

"OH!!! YES, YES! OF COURSE! YES!" 

He then kissed her again and lifted her up in his arms as if he was already taking her over the threshold of their little house in the village. He carried her all the way down the hall and into the back bedroom where he laid her down on the bed. They began to remove each other's closes. One garment at a time and made love for the first time as an engaged couple. 

She was never happier. 

****

Rebecca and Albert’s ghost 

The night came quickly, and in a room at the top of the third story of Tirymor House, was a less happier woman tossing and turning in her large wood-framed bed. The guilt of what she had done had eaten away at her mind like a monstrous worn consuming all it can see. 

Rebecca Lord-Casador was the guilty woman, she had done the unthinkable and taken a life.

In her mind, a dark cloud took hold. She saw herself floating in a place she could not recognize with her eyes but she smelled something familiar. Cigar smoke and cologne. Albert's cologne. It was a scent of fresh flowers but mixed with cedar that reminded her of him and she turned all around in this black lonely place in her mind as she slept but could not see him.

Then she heard him.

He called to her, her name echoing in this blackness. She called back but he did not appear. He called again to her and she reached forward into the dark blackness and suddenly a hand grabbed her by the wrists and yanked her into a further black hole in her mind. She felt herself falling and falling and she could not see where she was falling and then, just as fast as she fell she stopped and her feet hit the a suddenly appearing floor.

"You have hit rock bottom, haven't you?" Albert said appearing finally into a light that came from no where.

"Albert, my love, my dear love! Is it really you??” She begged to know.

He smiled in his ghostly hue and bowed as if to take his place center stage. “You’ve been a bad girl.” He said. 

“WHAT HAVE I DONE!? Help me figure this out. I have to make it right." She told the face of her dead husband.

"Help you? You've done a fine job all one your own, isn't this what you wanted?" Albert replied.

"Wanted?"

"Yes! Of course, this is what you designed, Rebecca, this is what the whole plan was for, isn't it? Killing an innocent to somehow place the blame on that girl Danielle. Well you've certainly succeeded in something along those lines." Albert replied.

"I never wanted someone to die, how can you say that to me?" 

"Oh, come now! You've done this for your own gain and now you have to live with it, woman! Live with what you've done and be happy for it. That's all you can do now. I see you, I've seen you plan this and you with your own hands and mind dropped those drops of belladonna into those patients medications and allowed it all to happen. Never once did you have second thoughts." Albert accused.

"You're saying something so horrible to me! The mother of your children!!" 

"MOTHER!!!!" He laughed. "You were never a mother. Nannies raised the boys and you let our daughter fall in then die, then bringing that witch Eliza around as if she could do anything. Our whole family has suffered in darkness and shadows because of you Rebecca! YOU are the one who has brought these curses -- these maladies of madness-- these horrific sins or murder and greed and lies. The grandson you adore lost to the world, the granddaughter you practically raised abandoned you. You deserve all the weight of the globe to crush you now -- for all you've done and all you should have done to correct coarse. May god help you now." 

"Albert, how dare you, how... how can you speak to me this way!" Rebecca screamed.

Albert did not reply. He only laughed at her from beyond the grave. His face was winching with pain as he laughed. His eyes began to bleed as the laughing would not subside. His skin began to crack, melt and his eyes fell out of their sockets. Rebecca watched as the man she knew as her husband Albert Lord began to literally rot in front of her as if she had opened his buried coffin and saw him decompose right in front of her eyes. Albert's voice echoed over and over again "MOTHER! MOTHER!!" 

"MOTHER!" A voice shouted waking Rebecca up from the nightmare.

It was Jacob. He had heard her screaming in her sleep from down the stairs into the second floor and into his room which was quite a distance away.

"What the devil is the matter with you? You've been screaming for practically 15 minutes. I finally had enough of it and came to see what the matters was. Are you unwell?" Jacob asked. 

She did not respond at first. She sat up in bed, sweating, and reached for a glass of water on the side of the bed that was dry. She stared at it, confused, she had put it there full and hadn't had any.

She looked at the glass for a strange amount of time, never replying to Jacob. He could see that she seemed to be in a daze. Finally, the frustration boiling over, he yanked the empty glass from her hand and knelt down so that he was in her eye-line. 

"What's happening to you???" He asked. 

"Jacob, I have to tell you something and I need you to help me. I need to know what I can do to fix something that I've done and I need do fix it fast. But I don't know how to fix it, so you need to help me fix it because you know how to do these things, you've done it before. You're good at this, yes -- it has to be you. You'll help me, you'll help me." Rebecca rambled as she got up from her bed and reached for a silk red wine-colored robe that was draped over a chair in the corner of her room.

"You're not well." Jacob replied quietly from the shadowy side of her bed. He stepped forward into the glow of the light and Rebecca could see his face was as white as sheet. She was actually frightening her unfrightenable son. 

"Of course I'm not! I've had a grotesque nightmare and I have to confess -- I have to confess to you!" She said panicking. 

"Alright, sit down, sit there and tell me what is going on." Jacob said.

She listened and sat down in the soft chair at the other end of her room. Her small Maltese BeeBee that had been sleeping with her on her bed jumped into her lap and folded himself into a white puff ball. 

She didn't know where to begin.

"Is this about the divorce papers? Have you done something with them?" Jacob fished. 

"No." She said, she pointed to her desk where the divorce papers, signed, were.

"Then?"

"Asha Hoffman is dead." She said suddenly. "I'm responsible."

"YOU?" Jacob replied shocked. "The papers said the suspects were that girl Danielle and maybe even Nik Jordan. Constable Ryan was still investigating. How does any of that have to do with you?" 

"Because it was me. It was ME, Jacob! I did it all and planted evidence on Nikolas. I've done this. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean for her to die, Jacob, it was an accident." She explained.

"Did you tell anyone?" He asked.

"NO!" She shot back. 

"How did you do this?" He asked.

"I used an extract the hospital uses as a sleeping aide that calms the body into a good sleep. At the last minute I put too much into one od the medication cups and -- and it ended up in Asha Hoffman's room. She took it and died." 

"Where did you get this idea? And -- WHY? Mother WHY?" 

"Asha herself gave me the idea. I had no idea she was one of the patients going to be administered the medication. She was set to be discharged. She and I had a deal, I was going to get rid of Danielle for the two of us. Nik had gone behind Asha's back and had begun a secret relationship with Danielle, and Danielle stood in the way of Caspian and my marriage. She was getting closer and closer to Caspian and bringing more and more of his life as Viktor to the forefront. I just -- I wanted only to make her look inept at her job, not kill people!" 

"All of this because of one nurse." Jacob replied, condensing Rebecca's motives to rid Nurse Danielle Holten as frivolous. "Now look where we are. Had you been honest with Caspian about his life as Viktor when you learned it none of this would have happened." He added in a scold.

"He would have left me!!!" She shouted back.

"Oh please mother! PLEASE! You have no idea what he would have done. But -- that's the way this has all come to ahead and now we have to come to a decision, don't we?" He said.

"YES! Yes, please, Jacob, I'm your mother you have to help me figure a way out of this. I have to make sure no one ever knows what really happened. I have to, I can't go back to that asylum and I can't go--" the lord matriarch paused when she thought about other places the law would put her if she was convicted of murder "I can't go anywhere, just here. Just here, I need to stay here with you and the rest of my family!" 

Rebecca began to pace the room. Beebee in her arms whimpering as she squeezed her tiny little white fluffy body. 

"Alright, alright, just relax, now. We'll think of something." Jacob said. 

 "Will you? Will you think of something?" She begged as he walked her back to bed.

"Try to sleep. I think I can handle this, but I need you to sleep. If people come sniffing here, I can't have you look like you have two giant sea bags under your eyes. You have to play it normal." Jacob instructed.

Beebee jumped out of Rebecca's arms and sniggled up into the little bed he had made out of a pillow next to where Rebecca was laying. She crawled back into bed and pulled the covers over her. A cold wind blew into the room from the open French doors of the terrace. Jacob walked over and latched them closed.

"So, you'll help?" She asked again.

"I'll do something." He said. "Go to sleep mother." 

"Sleep. Yes. I have to try." She said.

Jacob waited for a second in the room to be sure she closed her eyes and tried to sleep. She did her best but still sleep never reached her for another half hour. By then Jacob had already been downstairs in his study. He picked up a glittering glass of brandy and watched as the clock struck 11pm. He had a powerful piece of information, something that if revealed could tear the family apart. But Jacob knew even more was at stake should Rebecca's secret involvement in Asha Hoffman's death come to light too late. 

Holding on to the secret, hiding it away to protect Rebecca was what Jacob should have done. Any ordinary son would, even if the mother was truly guilty, as Rebecca was.

The stakes were too high. 

The truth was too dangerous to hold on to and, he knew Rebecca's divorce was coming. She'd become weak, she'd become detached and she had become too dangerous in her own world to keep around.

Rebecca's downfall was Jacob's rise.

He reached for the telephone that had been installed in his study only a few months earlier. He spoke to the operator that was on the line and asked to be linked to the Constable Justin Ryna as soon as possible.

The operator confirmed and Justin's phone rang.

Justin's office was empty. The phone kept ringing. It was loud. The sound echoed into newly rebuilt hallways of the station.

Then the phone in Jacob's ear clicked. 

Someone answered.

"Yes, hello? Yes --- Jacob Lord here. Good to hear you too. Yes, yes, thank you. I'm sorry for calling at this hour, but I have some information you'll need in regard to the death of Dr. Asha Hoffman at Welshport Hope Hospital.... that's right. My mother, Rebecca has confessed to it. Rebecca Lord-Casador killed Asha Hoffman.