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| The Village of Welshport |
The Village of Welshport had a quiet feeling this morning. The sea could be heard all around it crashing up against the wooden planks of the docks and the rocks along the shoreline. Small puttering automobiles mixed with people on horseback fluttered across the village's cobble-stone streets as one of the two street cars that swung around the twisting streets dinged its tiny bell as it stopped at the Maine Street post allowing its passengers to quickly jump off.
One of those passengers was Nikolas Jordan, Evie's brother who had come all the way from England to find her after she had neglected to write the family for months and months since her arrival and subsequent marriage to Sebastian.
Nik had grown frustrated with the lack of transparency the Lord family had given him when he discovered she had been admitted to a mental institution on the Main land without any input from her own family. To add to his frustration the one person he had come to seemingly trust had not gotten back to him on anything--Christian Evans, the constable in charge of all things law enforcement on the Island.
Christian's own mental state was fragile since witnessing Evie being dragged off so traumatically to Windcliff and the horrible nature of Gaspar's body found at the bottom of the stairs in an alcove in a bloody heap of body parts that once was a young man.
Nikolas, dressed in a sharp dark suit with a perfectly dusted bowler hat and a bowtie that had tiny little specs of gold woven inside its stitching, quickly made his way into Christian's office. Christian was there, he had not gone home in several days. He couldn't sleep, he couldn't think or process anything that a normal minded person could.
When Nikolas walked into the office, there was nothing orderly or professional about it. Papers were strewn all over the desk and chairs. The sofa was piled high with blankets and pillows where Christian and been sleeping and he was still there, in his normal day clothes unshaven and smelling of days and days without bathing.
"Good God man! Where have you been? Ive been waiting for you to get back to me about Evie. Its been almost a week and a half since we went out to Windlcliff! I haven't been able to get a hold of you since!" Nik asked entering the office.
Christian, in his make-shift bed on the sofa, rolled over and rubbed his eyes that had heavy dark circles under them.
"Just leave me alone." he said, his voice grizzled and scratchy from many nights of drinking.
"What's happened to you?" Nik asked pushing papers around the desk as if he knew what they were.
"Leave me ALONE!" Christian yelled back, throwing a pillow at Nikolas from his sofa turned bed.
"Listen to me chap, you said you'd help me and so far all I've gotten from you is a complete breakdown of what I thought was a stand-up man of the law. This whole village needs you! I need you! EVIE NEEDS YOU!" Nik argued. "Get up!!"
"No. I don't want to leave this place, now when that monster, that thing is still out there. It’ll get us. It’ll get us all. I can feel it in my bones." Christian groaned in a paranoid voice lacking any kind of coherency.
"What! You’re not making any sense!!” Nik replied surveying the room that was littered with empty liquor bottles. “What about Evie? I thought you were in love with her. I thought you wanted to help her just as much as I do. You know she needs us." Nik added.
"Evie? EVIE? Ever since the day I met her things have gotten worse and worse. I can't do it anymore. I can't be the one that saves her. I tried, and look where it got me!" Christian said.
"You can't give up. She doesn't belong in that hospital!" Nik shot back.
"Hospital!?! She's not even there anymore! SHE'S GONE!" Christian said shifting quickly on the sofa back around to face Nik.
"What? What do you mean she's not there anymore?"
"She's gone! Like everyone else. She's gone like Sebastian and Mary and Georgina. They're all gone. Just gone!" Christian said, making no sense.
"Christian, listen to me, what the hell are you talking about? How is she gone? Gone how?!" Nikolas wondered, his heart now beating faster thinking that perhaps Evie had died now that Christian was lumping her in with three people Nik suspected were dead too.
"The other day I was at the Lord's mansion with the letter I received from Eliza Goode about Mary’s death by suicide. I still don’t believe she did it. It had to be him. He did it! Like he did it to all the others.” Christian said flouting conspiracies only his hung over brain could handle.
“‘Him’ who??” Nik asked. “This person took Evie?”
Christian frowned seeing the disbelief on Nik’s face.
“The head of Windcliff burst in to Tirymôr just as I was explaining Eliza’s note. He said that Evie and another ‘patient’ had escaped the hospital and that she was gone. No one would find either of them. I don't think anyone ever will. People are disappearing every day. I can't keep up. I can't do this anymore! I feel like every time I put my mind to something another thing happens that is much more worse. Its.. its a curse!" Christian replied to Nikolas somewhat relief that Evie had not died.
"Then that's wonderful! If she's out of that place maybe she came back here. Maybe she's back on Welshport!" Nik replied in glee.
"You don't think we would have already found her? She isn't on the island." Christian dissented.
"She would have come here wouldn't she. You're right." Nik added. "Well then we need to find where she went and how she got out. There was another patient, who? Who was it? Maybe Evie went to where that person's family is. If we find out who it was we can trace..."
"ENOUGH!!!! God dammit Nikoals! I don't care anymore. I don't care about anything." Christian screamed as he finally got off the sofa and went over to his messy desk and opened a drawer where there were several empty bottles of rum. Christian shuffled through the clanking glass and found one bottle that had a good half a bottle left and swigged it for breakfast.
"You're losing it, old man, I can't have my only friend on this island lose what's left of his mind." Nik replied.
"You don't need me. This will all be done with as soon as dead and gone. Its only a matter of time before whatever the hell curse this is come for me too. Just go! Go back to London! Go back to wherever you want to go back to. Just get the hell out of this village and off this island before its too late!" Christian said in a sloshy tone voice.
"You need to eat something. You need to get yourself together and help me. Evie is counting on you." Nik replied ripping the now empty bottle out of Christian's hands.
"Evie doesn't need me. She's better off without me and if she's really out free on the main land, she's better off there. If she comes back here, she's a bigger fool than anyone ever knew." the drunk Constable replied.
As the two men continued their conversation a small convoy of horse-drawn carriages were beginning to make their way through the winding streets of the village. They had come from the docks at Welshport marina from the very first fairy of the day ordered specifically to come on an emergency terms.
The convoy, 3 carriages in total, galloped its way through the streets. Small automobiles with their black canvas tops all pulled over to let the horses through. People walking along the small streets wondered what in the world was the commotion and why they those carriages were rushing around town together in such a quick succession. A carriage was not a strange sight in the least, but three together almost galloping in unison in one direction was peculiar.
Then, the convoy arrived at its destination. Constable Christian Evans' office.
Out stepped Stephen Phillips-Moore, a Magistrate of the county in which Welshport resided and another man no one knew. They knocked on the office door startling Nik and Christian then they pushed their way in.
"Constable Evans." Magistrate Phillips-Moore announced.
"Sir. Yes... what are you doing here?" Christian asked straightening his disheveled appearance as he greeted the man in charge of the area, thus in charge of Christian.
"We've come today because of several complaints about your conduct. We are very concerned with what we've heard and I for one can no longer allow you to be in this position in your state of mind." The Magistrate said.
"State of mind?" Christian asked as Nikolas stepped aside allowing the men to enter.
"This is your replacement, Constable. This is Constable Gregory Reigns. He is here to make sure this community is protected and safe. No more will you need to worry your mind on the ins and outs of this village. You've been released from duty and I have required you to undergo a battery of psychological." the magistrate replied.
"WHAT? On who's authority?" Christian yelled.
"Mine!" The Magistrate replied handing him a legal paper that he signed along with three different judges on the main land that ordered Christian off Welshport to undergo the tests.
"This is outlandish!!! I WILL NOT leave my post!" Christian screamed back.
The magistrate turned and snapped his fingers and 4 other men rushed in and remanded him by tying his arms behind his back. Christian fought them back and they fell to the floor. There was rolling around and screaming and pushed thrown but in the end Christian was indeed taken into custody.
The Magistrate excused himself and went out with Christian and the 4 men. Nik followed and watched and Christian was placed into an awaiting carriage.
"What's going to happen to him?" Nik asked just as Gregory, a tall blond sharply dressed man from New York City who came out of Christian's now former office and shrugged a "who knows."
Nik looked over at Gregory who handed him the Discharge paperwork that showed the signatures of everyone who had signed agreeing Christian's mind wasn’t well enough to serve as the island’s Constable.
One signature stood out… the one that was most important in the whole incident—- Dr. Andrew Kim’s.
It was Kim who had ordered Christian’s removal and order for Christian to be delivered to him at Windcliff on grounds of mental issues. It was Kim who had made sure Christian was replaced at his post as Constable of the village using Christian’s strange and disturbing outburst he witnessed at Tirymôr house just days before as his reasoning for a medical discharge.
But Christian’s mental break was real. And painful. And filled with terror from what he saw the night Gaspar was brutally killed.
Dr. Kim was not working alone. Rebecca too, still furious with what the fact Christian and Evie had made love had Kim do this. She, and her money, were the force and power behind it all.
In fact, Gregory was personally chosen by Rebecca to replace him. And the Lord money talked — he was ruthless and cunning. The perfect person to stay out of the Lord family’s hair and still do their bidding in her highest seat or the Island’s law enforcement. In essence Christian’s replacement Gregory was a paid patsy for the Lords.
"This...this is nonsense. Why would Dr. Kim do this?" Nik asked, not knowing the Lords were once again behind another person being taken to Windcliff.
"Just be happy he's gone, alright. He's not well. He'll be taken care of. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an office to clean up in more ways than one." Gregory replied.
Running down the street towards the Constable’s office after seeing all of the commotion was Filipe Braga.
"What's happening? Where are they taking Christian?" He asked Nik who was paralyzed with shock of the whole event.
Nik did not say a word and only handed Filipe the paperwork that ordered the discharge.
"Windcliff." Filipe said in shock.
"He's right. This place is cursed." Nik said.
"Cursed?" Filipe replied in a somewhat fake question as he knew full well that there were in deed dark forces afoot around Welshport as he saw them first hand at Eliza's cabin.
"Nevermind." Nik said, feeling totally at a loss now without Christian. "I'm never going to find Evie, I'm never going to find my sister." Nik added under his breath to Filipe's shock.
"Sister?? Evie is your sister???" Filipe replied in surprise, finally knowing the truth.
Nik looked over at Filipe and nodded yes. His face showed sadness, defeat. Filipe's heart broke for him as the carriage carried Christian off to parts unknown at Windcliff Sanitarium. Filipe could feel it in his heart that perhaps things had gone too far. He had to tell Nik what he knew and what he saw the day they visited Eliza and what happened after that with Sebastian. The whole story needed to come out and Nik needed to know it if they were ever going to find Evie again that all of his secret keeping was to keep everyone alive.
Sebastian was out there lurking in the darkness with a thirst for human blood and all Filipe wanted to do was to keep everyone out of the “monster’s” way. But now he thought his way of doing things was wrong. Now Filipe thought perhaps his strategy needed to change.
Maybe Nik could rewrite the mess Filipe felt he had made keeping the secret of Sebastian’s return from the grave.
"Come with me, we have to talk." Filipe said and he grabbed young Nik Jordan and took him to a private place where they could finally discuss the truth.
****
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| The Winterborns: Alice and Matthew |
On the docks at the marina in town, ships from various fishing fleets came in with the mid-day catch to disembark and empty out their large vats of various tuna, marlin, and swordfish for the market in the village and to send around to fish-markets all over New England.
A young man, dark hair and tan skin like caramel, was on the dock near his company's trawler reorganizing nets and fishline for the next outing on the sea. The wind blew softly through his thick hair as a overcast sky marked a long off shore storm brewing somewhere over the vast dark blue Atlantic.
His dark thick wool jumper smelled of the fishy world he caught each day and held the stains of old catches of the past. His thick fingers that tied the lines up and the nets in large bundles held tiny little cuts, the marks of a true fisherman in the area.
His name was Matthew and his 35 years of life was a mostly a happy one despite the lingering troubles of his family’s past.
As Matthew continued his task while his shipmates were on board scrubbing and cleaning the deck for the next turn out to sea, the lip of the sea that washed up on the boat ramp began to pull back as if a large wave were coming in. Matthew noticed the strange looking pull of the water and then saw ripped and bubbles 10 feet from the surface, then 9 feet, then 8 feet. Something under the water was coming up to the air and Matthew couldn't keep his eyes off of it.
As the strange creature below the glassy sea was getting closer and closer to the inclined boat ramp. It swam in large circles like summersaults in the water. Swirling and diving in a the most gleeful way any free creature of the deep blue would.
A fisherman from Matthew’s ship glanced over the bow of the boat and saw the small but off sun light catch the glimmer of emerald green sparkles from the swimming creatures skin flashing near the surface and smiled.
“That’s a big one, she is.” He whispered to himself of the sea creature.
Matthew dropped his fishing lines and nets and stared at it too. Slowly the creature began to take shape as it reached the surface.
There was hair. There was a face. there was a person coming up from being completely submerged in the water. It was Alice Winterborn, she had been under the sea this whole time, all night, fresh from her escape from Windlcliff on the mainland.
Matthew's eyes grew, his jaw dropped and he quickly made his way off the dock and down on the boat ramp where the water splashed high on his ankles then to his mid-shin then to his thighs where he finally met Alice and helped her up on to the surface.
Her skin, when returning to fresh air returned to its normal human form, a bronze gold that shimmered in the sun. Her body felt heavy now, after being so long underwater. She smiled at him and held tight to his hands as he helped her up the ramp with her soaking wet clothes. The dress she had on had put on at least 30 more pounds as soon as she hit the fresh Welshport air.
Her smile to Matthew, of course, was not because she was happy to be back on the surface, in fact she enjoyed her time in the ocean--its where she and those like her felt most at home--no, her smile to Matthew was because she knew him and he knew her.
Matthew and Alice were siblings.
He helped his sister up the ramp and took her over to an area on the docks that was hidden by large crates that had been discarded by an old shipment. He grabbed her by the shoulders and looked in her face -- it was his little sister for sure.
"What the hell are you doing here??" He asked her concerned for her wellbeing.
"I came to find you! I'm free!" She said hugging him and soaking his front with her cold wet body.
"Ali, you're supposed to be at Windcliff, you can't be free. You’re not safe out here! How did you get out? How did you get here?" He asked looking back out in the ocean where she came from thinking he had missed some sort of boat she came on.
"I swam." She replied simply.
"SWAM!” He shouted at her flippant response. “You...you didn't do what I think you did, did you?" He asked, knowing her well enough to guess how long she had been under the water.
"I did.” She replied confidently. “You know I couldn't stay out there in the hospital forever. It was only a matter of time, Matthew, and I'm finally here and we can be a family again. But that's not all I need." Alice added.
"No, no, no, Ali, you can't be here. You need to be where you were. That place was where you were getting the help you needed. We agreed! We agreed that me placing you at the hospital was the best thing for you. You're not supposed to leave without me knowing or having you discharged. Come on, we should get you back. I can get us a taxi and we can.." Matthew said before being interrupted by his sister.
"NO! Matthew listen to me. I'm not sick. I've never been sick and I don't want to go back there ever again. That place is a horrible place for people like us and I don't ever want to go back." Alice said referring to Matthew as "us."
"Ali, I..." he began as he looked around to see if anyone had noticed her come out of the ocean.
"I Know you've given up on the gifts mother nature has given you, and I wont put it against you; the world certainly has never understood our kind. But that doesn't mean we all have to hide. I don't want to hide anymore." She said holding his hand tightly.
"But it's not safe, its never been safe. Does Andrew know you’re here???" He added referring to Dr. Kim very familiarly.
"I’m no longer worried about how Andrew will react to my life.” She replied matter of factly.
“Ali!!! We’ve been entrusted to him!” Matthew reminded her. “He’ll be worried.”
“Im not scared of being out here Matthew. I never was, but the truth is I came here because I need your help finding my friend. A friend that I met at Windcliff and I fear that she may be in danger." Alice replied.
"A friend? Who?" He asked.
"Her name is Evie and she's in danger. I know she is. I can feel it in all my body. I have to find her and save her. The other night I was only able to escape because some one, some thing, came and took Evie from the hospital too and he... there is something about him that I could tell was dark. Evil. I dont know how to explain it but I need to get to her to make sure she is ok. Please help me, Matthew. You're the only other person I trust on t his whole planet." She begged.
Matthew looked down at his sister whom was practically 4 feet shorter than him. Her big brown eyes were innocent and kind and he knew her powers and her gifts were real. He knew, from the past, that she was usually never wrong with these types of instincts and psychic connections. Their family, their people, were native to this area and to Welshport before it was Welshport. They were connected to the spirits of the earth that gave him strange and unique abilities to live on the land, in the air and in the sea. There were very very few of their kind left on earth and the ones that did remain lived in hiding and acted as their human counterparts like Matthew did. The two Winterborn siblings were virtually the last of this mystical Native American tribe.
Only Alice continued to live as her people did--in her truth and in her powers.
To keep her safe Matthew had her admitted to Windcliff in hopes people would just assume she was insane and in a way, Alice understood this as his way of protecting her from the dangers of the human world, so she never protested. But now, with becoming friends with Evie and witnessing her abduction, she had to turn the page on the chapter of her life where she was locked away like a secret.
She was ready to emerge and find her friend, her only friend, and saver her from the thing that took her,.
"Here, take these keys and run to my apartment -- 1338 Swinton Street. #11. You have clothes there. Change and rest I'll be home in three hours. Once I'm home we'll....uh..." he paused unsure if he should promise to help her knowing she would call in this promise. He was sure she was being honest about what she saw, he could sense her truth--that power remained with him--but to help her could only place them both in the public eye and that was a huge fear of his.
"Well?" She asked taking the keys from her brother waiting for him to finish his sentence.
"Ill be there and we'll talk about what to do next." He said with a smile as she stepped out of her puddle and smiled. She knew he'd be home like he said. Then, like a quick gust of wind she was gone.
Matthew wasn't sure what to do next. His sister had a very powerful connection, still, to the world around her. It was an ancient gift she refused to part with, unlike him. But whatever dangers Alice felt when seeing Sebastian take Evie, Matthew feared worse if they were exposed as their people once were many many years ago.
Matthew gathered his belongings and went back to the boat where his shipmates had been looking for him. He joked that he had to quickly use the facilities before getting back on the grimey fish trawler and they teased him for being too particular.
Then, they set to sea to finish out their day. All Matthew could do was stare on the island and wonder what was next from his mystical sister Alice and think about Dr. Kim and how he must be losing his mind over his sister missing from Windcliff. They had, after all, become like family over the years.
****
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| Charlotte gets a visit from her father Jacob |
In her quaint room with the pink cloud wallpaper and giant doll house that was a replica of Tirymôr House, Charlotte Lord sat on a small wooden chair painted white staring into a mirror as she combed her hair. It was shortly after an evening dinner and she was still dressed in her lovely white dress with the tiny pearls sewn into the lace that went around her neckline. Her deep blue eyes were sad with the thoughts that swam around in her 10 year old head.
She was plotting the death of her own father. The man who had brought so much pain and sorry into their family. It made Charlotte sad to have to go to this extreme measure but what was inside of her made her feel like there was no other choice: the spirit of her dead aunt, Sabrina Lord.
As she continued to comb through her beautiful long thick blond hair, the glass in the mirror changed like the ripples of a pond to reveal Sabrina, a start contrast of beauty to her young niece, dark hair, fair skin but the eyes, the eyes were the same deep blue. Seeing her aunt reveal herself this way was not shocking or frightening, it had become customary and often to Charlotte, and in her loneliness she often welcomed the visions.
"I can sense how worried you are my darling. I feel so horrible that I have to put you through this." Sabrina said in her ghostly voice.
"Do you really believe Celeste can do it?” Charlotte asked not knowing Celeste had already failed once at the plan. “She seemed so frightened when we told her the plan. I worry that she wont be able to. Or ... or even maybe, father might hurt her in return." Charlotte said.
"We can't worry about what is to come, only worry about making sure Celeste continues to keep herself on task. Your father has more plans in his acrinol to hurt more people. Celeste included." Sabrina said, her all-knowing mind still lacking the knowledge too that Celeste had failed at her first attempt to kill Jacob.
Charlotte took a deep breath and sighed. She got up from the small child sized vanity and went over to her doll house and unlatched the key and opened it up doubling the doll house's size where she could easily enter and play with the tiny dolls that lived in it. She grabbed the doll that looked like her father and grabbed the doll that looked like her and held them in her hands. A small tear rolled down her cheek as Sabrina's spirit lifted itself out of the mirror and in a blue haze surrounded young Charlotte with a hug.
As the two comforted each other in a moment of sincere sadness concern for the effect of what it would mean to take a man's life even if he were pure evil, Jacob made his way up the long winding staircase and down the dimly lit hall towards his daughter's room. As he approached, her heard his daughter speaking but no one else replied to what she was saying. He listened at the door that was slightly open.
"What if daddy finds out what we're doing? What if he takes you away?" Charlotte asked Sabrina.
"He can never take me away. I am apart of you. Forever." Sabrina replied in a voice only Charlotte could hear.
"He scares me sometimes and I think he wants to hurt me too. I know he wouldn't but then again how could daddy hurt you and not hurt me?" Charlotte wondered.
Jacob's brows furrowed. What was she talking about he wondered? Who did he hurt that she knew about? He pushed opened the door and found Charlotte alone with her dolls in her hand.
"Darling, who were you talking to?" He asked as he slowly walked into her bedroom and looked around.
"Talking to?" Charlotte asked nervously.
"Yes. I heard you. You were talking to someone." he replied suspiciously.
"No, I wasnt. I wasnt Daddy, I was playing. See?" She replied holding up the dolls of herself and him.
Jacob didn't believe her, even though he didn't hear another voice reply, never the less he looked around the room for her cohort. He opened the closed and pulled back the clothes on the hangers. No one there. He passed a large Chinese screen that was standing in the corner of the room and only found a small chair with a giant teddy bear sitting on it grinning at him. He walked back to where Charlotte was, standing in the giant doll house and bent down an looked inside, then looked at the dolls in Charlotte's hands.
"So you were only playing." he said, she nodded her head. "Hmm...who is this?" He added picking up a doll from a random room in the dollhouse that had long dark hair, a white dress and very pale skin. It was a doll of Sabrina Lord.
"Its.... well its, umm..." Charlotte said too scared to answer.
When Jacob stood up straight again and turned to his daughter he saw the most shocking thing, the ghost of Sabriba in the Mirror behind Charlotte dressed exactly like the doll in his hand. He screamed and fell backwards into the doll house crushing into shards. Charlotte screamed too and fell backwards, the doll in hands flying under her bed.
"BEWITCHED!!!" he screamed as he go up and rushed over to the mirror and picked it up and slammed it to the ground shattering it into peices to match the broken doll house.
"DADDY STOP IT! PLEASE!!" Charlotte screamed.
"Where is she? How did she get here? Tell me! TELL ME!" Jacob screamed grabbing his 10 year old daughter by the shoulders and shaking her until she screamed with fear and her face was red.
"I Don't know know what you are talking about? Please daddy, let me go! LET ME GO!" Little Charlotte said trying to release herself from his grip.
"You're lying to me! You're lying to your father. I know what I saw Charlotte, tell me how she got here. Tell me what she wants. TELL ME!" Jacob said.
But just as Jacob finished his sentence, Charlotte's face morphed into Sabrina's as she said in a hiss like voice what she wanted "your life".
Jacob screamed again and fell backwards and hit his head on the corner of the vanity. When he opened his eyes again Charlotte's face had returned to the cherub like painting it had always been. She was kneeling in the heap of shards of her doll house, breathing hard. Shaking in fear.
Jacob groaned in pain but realized what he had to do. For his own protection. He grabbed Charlotte by the hand and she screamed in fear. He pulled her along with him out of her room, down the dimly lit hall, turning a corner to a locked door that he opened with key from his vest pocket. The door opened to a dark stairwell that lead up to a small turret of the house that had a bed room in it that once belonged to a favorite maid of Rebecca's but had long since been closed off.
Jacob dragged little Charlotte kicking and screaming up that narrow staircase and threw her into the turret bedroom.
"You'll stay in here until you tell me exactly what your dead aunt wants from you. Don't even think about seeing the light of day until then." He said growling with evil.
As he closed the door behind him, Charlotte rushed it but was too late. She was locked away in a dark circular room now that smelled of dust and sea air from the one broken window.
Back in the main hallway of the house, Jacob adjusted his vest and replaced the key in the pocket, his ears def to the cries of his daughter locked away in the turret to suffer unknown terrors alone in the dark.
****
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| Rebecca confronts Eliza on Goode island |
The late afternoon sky filled with the cotton ball like clouds whos white caps were only made more brilliantly white thanks to the gray of their bellies. A fresh storm from the north had given these misshapen mountains in the sky their shadowy undertones but no storm would deter Rebecca Lord from arriving by boat with Hamstead to from Welshport Island to it's satellite Goode Island.
She was a determined woman to understand what had happened to Sebastian. She knew in her heart of hearts that the hermit Eliza Goode, hidden in the tiny forest that surrounded her quiet cabin on the island that bore her name was responsible. Indeed, there was no doubt about it because Rebecca knew Eliza well. They had history. Their families had connections and ties far before Jacob and Mary's torrid and deadly affair.
Hamstead tied off his boat and helped Rebecca out of it, her right hand grasping tightly to his as her left elegantly lifted the front hem of her dark beaded dress. As her feet made contact with the small dock wooden dock withered and cracked with age, she steadied herself and adjusted her beautiful dress and hat that looked like a tiny folded black envelope with three small silk dahlias crowning the top.
"Wait here for me Hamstead. If I do not return at half passed 3, come for me at the cabin. Bring this." Rebecca said, removing a small silver revolver from her tiny hand bag.
Hamstead lifted a brown "Yes ma'am."
Rebecca then turned and made her way though the wooded area on the island filled with strange sounds in the thickets and trees. She looked up at the various old branches of the small forest that reminded her of Tirymôr Forest that surrounded her family home. So tall were these trees that they all seemed to connected at the top of the sky.
She continued on her way, following a dirt path shrouded in a strange New England fog that only came to about the tops of her knees. Her long dress swishing its way over the grass and plants like a broom sweeping the dirt off a kitchen floor, and then as the weird fog of Goode Island finally began to clear and the shade of the Burch trees lifted there was Eliza Goode's cabin, just as Rebecca had remembered it from her first visit long long ago.
Rebecca could hear Eliza busy inside as any normal woman would be in her own home, but she knew this old friend, and foe, was not a normal house wife, but ever the polite woman, she knocked. The noise from inside the house went silent and for a few beats nothing could be heard. Rebecca took a deep breath in knowing that any second the woman she had so wished would have disappeared from the face of the earth would open the door and be standing right in front of her. A woman that she had wished she had never crossed so many years ago.
**WELSHPORT ISLAND 37 YEARS EARLIER**
A young Rebecca, 37 years old at the time, sat up in her bed. Her hair long and red like a most beautiful auburn waterfall of curls. She was patient. And quiet. Just waiting.
Then, her husband Albert quietly made his way in with their two sons Jacob 13 and David 11.
"Show mama what you made for her." Albert said, his perfect hazel eyes glimmering with a glow of love.
The boys sweetly handed their mother each a painting they had made of her...and their baby sister Victoria.
"Oh, my boys! She is so sweet and beautiful in your paintings. But... David, is this me here?" Rebecca asked pointing to a dark figure he had painted holding his baby sister.
"Yes. I painted you said because, well you’re alway sad." The 11 year old said in a whispery voice.
"It’s because of Vivi." the elder boy, Jacob said taking the calmness out of the room with his quick and old turn back to reality.
Rebecca smiled and at them attempting to show grace over devastation; then grabbed Albert's hand as he sat next to her on their bed. He squeezed it hoping it would make her feel more secure. But she still felt the pain of losing her only daughter just days before.
After the boys and their father left the room allowing her to rest, a maid and Rebecca’s closest confidant came in to clear and tidy up Rebecca's room as she rested. The maid had been a very loyal woman to he family for years and saw just how devastated Rebecca was about losing her baby. She came over Rebecca still seated in the bed and curtsied.
"What is it Laurel?" Rebecca asked noticing Laurel, the maid, wanted to tell her something.
"Forgive me if I'm being too forward, but I can see how clearly broken hearted you and your whole family is about little Vivi's ...passing. I know how spiritual a woman you are so you must know her few days of life were meant to be just that.” Laurel said as Rebecca smiled politely.
“They were very good days with my baby girl.” Rebecca added.
“Mrs. Lord, because of how much you have given me and so many of us here at the house and of course how the family's business has provided so much work for the people of Welshport over the years with printing presses and ink factories and papermills and so on... I want to give you something too; in return for all of the support. Perhaps if may bring you new happiness, or at least return some of it." The maid Laurel said.
"Oh that's very sweet, but you don't have to do anything of the sort. Just do your job as well as you have been doing and that will be payment enough, I assure you." Rebecca said humbly.
"No, no. Please. Let me help. Tomorrow I will come back here to Tirymôr with someone who....well Mrs. Lord, I guess we could say she is somewhat of a soothsayer. A healer. A woman with extraordinary gifts. She's done so much for my own family that I trust her with my life." Laurel said.
"A healer?" Rebecca wondered out loud. "What would she do?"
"Miracles. She would do miracles. I promise you this." Laurel added.
"And she will help me feel better after my child has died? I find that hard to believe Laurel. I don't know if I will ever get over her death. You understand.” Rebecca said before glazing over in memory. “She ... was so pretty. So much a gift so quickly taken from me. I don't know if this spiritual woman can do anything for me, but thank you." Rebecca said.
"What if she could bring her back. What would you say then, madam?"
Rebecca's eyes widened as if Laurel had told her the lord himself had returned to earth. It was the most bizarre thing anyone had ever told her with a straight face. It was almost comical. Childish even, to believe that someone could even begin to believe that another person could bring back the dead.
"Laurel, my dear, you must be joking."
"No madam. She has done it for me. My own sister, ill with influenza, she died in my arms 4 years ago and when we called Eliza to my home, on suggestion by a neighbor in the village, she came and revived her. They call her Lady Lazarus. She has powers, madam, that only god himself could have. She is gifted." Laurel explained.
Rebecca became silent in thought. It was strange for her to even entertain this type of conversation, almost heretic in nature. But if it were true, if this Lady Lazarus named Eliza had brought back to life Laurel' own sister perhaps, just maybe, she could do the same for Victoria.
"You think she could really bring back Vivi?" Rebecca asked using Victoria's family nickname.
"I do." Laurel answered confidently.
Rebecca thought about the day Vivi was born. How happy she was, how rapidly the birth went. How the doctor saw the umbilical cord around the baby’s neck how they struggled to get the baby out. How Rebecca was going in and out of consciousness while the wet nurse cried uncontrollably.
When Rebecca awoke, her husband Albert said the wet nurse and the doctor had gone and has taken Vivi. The baby did not make it after a few days after being born. Rebecca screamed into a pillow. She never held her.
"Very well.” Rebecca said to an eager Laurel after the memories washed away of the night Vivi died. “Bring her here tomorrow, but do not tell my husband. Just say she is a woman of the village come to wish me well." Rebecca ordered.
Laurel smiled and nodded, her heart filled with happiness that she could help her mistress heal from the pain of losing her baby.
When Eliza came to visit the next morning their meeting was cordial. She was a woman of about 30 years of age and she came along with Laurel and a small girl who was around the age of little David Lord that Eliza said was her little sister named Sabrina. Sabrina was the daughter their mother gave birth to late in life. Their mother had not survived child birth and Eliza was now raising her.
They talked about motherhood. They talked about family. They talked about little Vivian-Victoria — Vivi as the family nicknamed her.
Then, Laurel took Sabrina into the nursey with the boys and Eliza began to feel on Rebecca's stomach, her empty womb. She began to chant in a whispery Latin, a language Rebecca was familiar with from so many masses, but the words were strange and not anything she had ever heard before.
Then, a pain. A piecing pain that ran Rebecca's entire body. It almost felt as if someone was stabbing her over and over and over in the stomach. She began to bleed almost as if she were having a miscarriage but she was not pregnant. She was not with child. Her white sheets became stained with the red, her body began to cramp up. Rebecca screamed in horror and Laurel rushed back in and gasped in shock.
"WHAT HAS HAPPENED?!?!" The maid said, as little Sabrina came in and rushed to a corner of the room terrified of the screams.
"I was, I was trying to bring her child back!" Eliza said, heart beating her in throat.
"What have you done!?" Rebecca screamed into her pillow still clutching at her bleeding womb.
Eliza stepped back from the bed horror as Laurel did her best to calm her mistress. Eliza had made a mistake in her spell to try and bring back Vivi.
It would later be obvious what Eliza had done, she had accidently made Rebecca barren. Rebecca's womb would never again carry a child for Albert, a sibling for the boys. Instead of bringing back Vivi, Eliza made it so that no other child could come after Vivi.
Rebecca would forever try and find a person to reverse this horrible affliction. She would seek out other soothsayers and fortune tellers and spiritual guides for the rest of her days to bring back the life in her that Eliza had taken.
GOODE ISLAND, PRESENT TIME
The cabin door swung open and there stood Rebecca's old foe.
They looked at each other as if they knew that this encounter would some day come to pass. It had to. Their families would be intertwined forever after David married Eliza's little sister Sabrina and Jacob and Eliza's daughter Mary had an affair.
They were family, by various connections. Their mutual love of Charlotte and Sebastian too was something they often found them on a mutual cease-fire in their own war but the hated in Rebecca never dissipated over Eliza making her a barren wife for Albert.
"To what do I owe this visit?" Eliza asked, standing squire in her doorway.
"Sebastian." Rebecca replied. "What have you done with him?"
Eliza's large green eyes lowered and she stepped aside for Rebecca to enter. Rebecca wasnt sure if she wanted to go into the witch's home, but there was no sense in having a conversation on her door step. She crossed herself, squeezed the rosary that was tightly gripped in her hand and stepped into the cabin.
The smell of brewing tea and sage filled the room. There was a boiling stew in a pot on a stove for lunch. Two places set at the table. Rebecca at first didn't think twice of the double place settings and moved on quickly to the question at hand, her grandson and Eliza's nephew Sebastian.
"What did you want to know about him? Would you want me to read his cards and try to contact him?" Eliza said as if she had no idea he was walking the earth as an undead vampire.
"Contact him? Why don't you just ask him to come out of one of your back rooms or from under your house or wherever you're hiding him. I know you're responsible for his...ungodly return from the dead. It has your bewitching fingerprints all over it, Lady Lazarus." Rebecca said
"Lady Lazarus. I havent heard that in decades." Eliza smirked.
"Well? Where is he?"
"Rebecca, I don't know what you know and I dont know what you think you know. I have no idea where Sebastian is right now and that is the truth." Eliza said truthfully.
"Like you don't know where Mary is." Rebecca said sarcastically, adding on to Eliza's crimes of aiding and abetting criminals.
"She's gone. She left in the middle of the night and she's gone. I was sure Christian Evans would have told you by now." Eliza said.
"You helped her kill Sebastian and now you help Sebastian come back to life, I dont even want to try to understand you wicked thought process because I am a woman of faith and to go into your diseased mind would only bring me illness too.. but I want to see my grandson and I want him to go back to where he was. He died Eliza, as unfair as it is, Mary took his life and that's how god wanted it." Rebecca said.
"God wanted it? God did not order Mary to do what she did Rebecca. Murder is not God's doing. And I for one and would never excuse Mary's horrible choice but before you and your family begin to point fingers just at Mary I would hope you also look in halls of your own home." Eliza said, hinting at Jacob's involvement and coercion of Mary to shoot both Evie and Sebastian for him.
"I don't know what you mean." Rebecca answered.
"Of course not. How could you? Ask Jacob." Eliza simply replied.
"Jacob is not the matter at hand. You are. Sebastian is. He's attacked a maid of mine and I believe he's killed my spiritual advisor Gaspar. Whatever you've done to him has made him an animal. I want you to reverse it and make it right." Rebecca said.
"Your spiritual guide was con artist my dear. Trust when I say that. And I was told Gaspar simply went back to France, not dead." Eliza said, smirking at Rebecca who exposed the lie about Gaspar's disappearance. "Don't worry. He was bleeding you of funds to pretend he knew what I know. He deserved it. Tea?" Eliza added, taking the kettle off the fire and pouring them both a cup.
"That's neither here no there, the point is what Sebastian did! My Maid! She was attacked by him, I know it! I found his ring Eliza! There is no way his ring could have been next to Georgina if he did not come back from the grave. And now she's missing. I fear her dead." Rebecca said.
"There is nothing I can do about any of it. Its all done. Sebastian is what he is, and has done what he as done just as Mary did. I've corrected a mistake by her and this is the only way. I thought you would be pleased that he is back, in any form." Eliza replied.
"Pleased? Pleased that you have a way of bringing things on to my family that only leads to pain and suffering? I have never forgotten what you took from me so many years ago. You took and you took and now its lead to another generation of our family and it seems to have gotten much worse. This is thing you have done to Sebastian is worse than what you have done to my poor body. I want it reversed."
Eliza squinted her eyes. She was irritated. Annoyed. But there was nothing she could do to right the wrong of making Rebecca barren. It was a horrible mistake that she wished she could fix but it was so long ago, so much pain had already been caused that even if she could reverse that would Rebecca allow it? Probably not. But the issue of Sebastian wasn't any different. He was what he was.
"No going back. It's done. If He comes here again, I will tell him to go see you so you can see for yourself what he has become. He now has the choice to live what he wants to live, Rebecca. I merely was the conduit to correct my daughter's failure, her mistake. Why isnt it the same with you and your son? Jacob has made and is making mistakes every day. Yet you have yet to attempt to fix them for the sake of the health of your family. I wish for you to understand that and at least do in your capacity what I have done in mine." Eliza confessed.
"Jacob is far from perfect, but he is not a--" Rebecca began before being interrupted.
"A what? A murderer like Mary??" Eliza laughed. "My darling woman open your eyes!! FOR ONCE! Open them! See what he has become! He is the monster here. Not Mary. NOT Sebastian. Not me! Jacob, it is he who has caused all of this tragedy and pain. Think of Sabrina. Think of Evie and what he did to Mary and her relationship with Charlotte. Think of all of that, and what does it mean to you?" Eliza said to Rebecca who's face held all signs of pain of the thought of her evil son.
“Jacob does what he does for the sake of my granddaughter.” Rebecca said trying to justify her son’s twisted ways.
“You forget, she is my granddaughter too.” Eliza reminded Rebecca who quickly changed from concerned mother to tigress ready to rip the throat out of a gazelle as she lunged for Eliza and grabbed her wrist tightly.
“You will never…EVER…be apart of Charlotte’s life, as god as my witness.” Rebecca growled.
Then, as the two women bickered over their mutual granddaughter, Georgina appeared from a back room. She was the source of the second place sitting at the table.
"Mrs. Lord." Georgina said softly breaking the tension between the two matriarchs.
"MY GOD! Georgina!!! What are you doing here?" Rebecca exclaimed quickly running to her healed maid.
"I came here because I knew of Ms. Goode's healing powers and she has helped me. I feel ... I feel like a new person." Georgina said, hiding the fact she was really Mary now in Georgina's body. A disguise no one would ever decode.
"Come, come away from this witch and back with me to Tirymôr. We have to get you to Dr. Ward right away." Rebecca said, grabbing Georgina's hand and moving her away from Eliza who knew she was really her own daughter Mary--the plan had worked.
"Yes Ma'am." Georgina said.
"I will ask you to never involve yourself in my family again. Ever. Again. Can I have your word?" Rebecca said as she turned back to Eliza who stood up from the chair and dropped her tea cup on the table. Eliza curtsied to Rebecca and put her hand on her heart and smiled.
"You have my word that I will not involve myself ---in anyway irresponsibly. So long as you take care of this girl as if she were your own child." Eliza replied.
Rebecca seethed with fury over Eliza's words on this meeting and opened the cabin door and pushed Georgina out as if she rescued her from a witch's clutches then turned back around one more time to look at the woman who took so much away from her. Her eyes darted with anger, her stomach ached like it did the day she became barren in her bed. Rebecca grabbed at the ache in her stomach and growled "Don't ever come near my family again. Georgina, come."
Eliza patronizingly curtsied again and Rebecca vanished into the forest. Mary turned one more time to look at her mother Eliza through Georgina's face, eyes and body and gave her a little wave goodbye. She wanted to cry, Eliza wanted to cry too. It was like they may never see each other again, but the two kept their composure and suddenly Georgina vanished too behind Rebecca to the docks where Hamstead was waiting.
Mary, now as Georgina, would finally be reunited with her daughter Charlotte in the best disguise a witch could fathom, another woman's face.
Eliza then closed her cabin door and sat back at her table. She knew in heart this was not the last she would see of Georgina. Or Rebecca.
They'd meet again. Soon.
Eliza then opened a drawer in her kitchen that had several different types of cutlery. She hurriedly shoved over the silver cutlery causing a clanging sound and found a long piece of twine that was underneath the cutler she used to tie up random branches of her flowers.
The twine was old and made of an old cotton strong.
Eliza picked up the twine and cut a foot long piece of it off. She sat at her table and lit a candle and began to murmur to herself a long drawn out spell. A spell that would flip a horrible event in her past backwards, something she told Rebecca she could not do.
It was a lie.
As she murmured her spell, she began to unravel the thin pieces of twine from its long string, symbolically unraveling her mistake of the past. Strand by strand, tiny thin layer after thin layer came apart in her hand and fell to her feet.
"Revertere, Revertere, Error, Abrogare. Locum novum fac anima tua." She whispered into the candle light.
Then, a cold wind from no where blew into the kitchen and blew out her candle.
She was in the dark -- and not alone. She opened her eyes and in the shadows of the kitchen doorway stood a dark figure in silhouette.
"Is it you? Have I done it?" Eliza asked the shadowy figure.
The person did not speak and only nodded their head confirming that Eliza did indeed succeed in her spell of the unraveling.
"Then you will be my gift to Rebecca. May you ease the pain by eliminating the worst of them from her life." Eliza said.
****
 |
| Lockwood Thicket |
As the sun finally began to dip behind the horizon Rebecca, Georgina and Hamstead made their way back to the docks near the Welshport lighthouse where they had a horse and carriage waiting for them to return them to Tirymôr house, deeper in the Tirymôr Forest another secluded cottage that had been many years deserted had life inside of it once more.
This cabin, known as Lockwood Thicket, was once owned by Rebecca's family: the Lockwoods. No one had lived in it in over 80 years. Once in a while, the Lords would go there and visit, stay a few nights as a little vacation from the massive estate of Tirymôr, but for the most part it lay empty after Rebecca immediate family abandoned it.
Inside, a sleeping Evie was finally coming to.
She opened her eyes and saw the straight jacket from Windcliff in ball on the floor. She had been freed of it. She looked around the small bedroom and got up from the bed that had fresh sheets on it. She looked out of the tiny window and saw that the sun had set and she was in forest somewhere. She looked around the room and saw three candles and a lantern had been lit for her so that when the sun went down and she awoke she would not be in the dark.
She looked over to her right and saw a desk and went over to it and picked up a silver frame with the the photos of a young Lord family in it. A Young Rebecca, her late husband Albert and their three children, young David, young Jacob and the infant Victoria that would not survive shorty after the black and white photo was taken.
Then, the bedroom door opened and there in the shadow of the cottage hallway was Sebastian Lord, his eyes seeming to glow beyond his glare and startling Evie.
She screamed and through the silver picture frame at him, the silver grazing the skin on his forehead and burning it.
Sebastian growled in pain and the tiny bruise left by the silver quickly healed and Evie gasped in terror at seeing her dead husband again, in front of her and most shocking of all alive.
He stepped into the room lit with candle light and showed himself to her.
"Hello Evangeline."
His voice echoed in her mind and her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted into a dark world of sleep, her mind attempting the greatest escape of all.
Sleep.
