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| Welshport Hope Hospital |
Welshport Hope Hospital was a buzz with activity despite it small size. Jacob Lord had survived the mysterious shooting the night before, his heart was beating but weak. His surgery was successful and the two bullets in his chest were removed.
It was touch and go and Dr. Peter Ward had called for extra supplies from the mainland to help in his recovery. Ward was concerned, however, that any infection that could occur would eventually take Jacob's life.
As Dr. Ward came out of Jacob's room signing off papers on the check up and handing them off to a nurse who scurried away to retrieve the prescribed medications, the Lord family, Rebecca, Charlotte and Georgina rushed down the hall in their long dark dresses, Rebecca's eyes shaded by a small vail from her feathery hat. They were eager to find out how Jacob was doing.
"Ladies." Dr. Ward greeted them in a calm voice. "He's resting now, the surgery went well. He'll need 'round the clock care for a few days, perhaps a week, until we can clear him of anything dangerous in terms of infections. It's going to be quite the uphill road for Jacob."
"Can we see him?" Rebecca asked.
But before Dr. Ward could answer, the new Constable on the island interrupted after appearing from behind a closed door.
"Before you see him Mrs. Lord, I'd like to ask you a few questions."
Georgina gulped.
“And you are?” Rebecca asked.
“Constable Gregory Reigns. I’ve replaced Mr. Evans.” He replied to Rebecca’s irritated facial expression.
"Well? Go on then. Questions about what?" Rebecca asked stiffening her body.
Dr. Ward, who was no stranger to the oddities and scandals that surrounded the Lord family after surviving his own attack at the family home not long ago, quickly excused himself to call his wife in the village to tell her he'd be late at the Hospital after seeing other patients.
"How is he?" Constable Gregory Reigns first asked.
"Dr. Ward says stable, thank you." Rebecca replied. "Do you have any idea who did this?" She added.
"Well that's what I wanted to ask you about. I had some agents ask around the staff at Tirymôr, and some of them said you were unaccounted for for a period of time last night." Gregory replied.
Rebecca scoffed, "Are you insane?"
"I'm only asking questions." He replied as Charlotte gripped Georgina's hand tightly.
"You're insinuating that I had something to do with my son's attempted murder, do I have that right Constable? Because if that is the case you're already on the wrong path which doesn't bode well for you or your department." Rebecca replied back.
"The servants said there was some kind of altercation or confrontation last night involving Mr. Lord who then ran off. Something to the effect of things he had done in the past coming to light and some kind of violent attack to Evie Jordan. I don't see her here either, which seems odd being that she is part of the family." Reigns noticed.
Rebecca's eyes narrowed in frustration that anyone in her household would leak the very personal argument the family had when Sebastian returned and exposed Jacob's betrayals to the family and even the knife to Evie's throat.
"I think you've been slightly misinformed." Rebecca replied.
"You weren't very happy about any what you were told last night, I can imagine. In fact the staff said you seemed infuriated. You could have come to the park and returned home with amble time of committing the crime." Gregory reported before Georgina jumped in.
"Constable, this is very off putting. Mrs. Lord is Jacob's mother. His MOTHER! She would never ever do something like this to him. Ever." Rebecca's personal maid Georgian said.
"Exactly." Rebecca added. "We're here to see my ailing son. He almost died and I'd like to eventually get to that instead of standing here being interrogated!"
"Well, then," Gregory continued "we can easily end this here. Where were you Mrs. Lord?" Gregory asked turning from Georgina back to Rebecca.
"She was with me." Charlotte answered truthfully. "We spent a long time together last night in the chapel. We prayed together."
"That's right." Rebecca said again, reaching for her grand-daughter's free hand. “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. Dr. Ward can vouch as well. He came to Tirymôr late last night to tell us of Jacob.” Now all three women were chained together by their interlocked hands, Charlotte the common link between Rebecca and Georgina, they formed a wall of strength that Gregory could see he would not break with any interrogation.
"Interesting.” Reigns said looking over at Dr. Ward. “Time is fickle that way, we have plenty of it do evil deeds but it seems never enough of it to cover them up. But Very well." He said passive aggressively.
“If you continue to insinuate that I had time to leave the mansion shoot my son AND THEN return home to pray with my granddaughter in time for Dr. Ward to show up and not notice any kind of disturbance within the household you obviously have never driven around this to Island before. It wouldn't be a one quick ride to the village and back, Constable. I suggest you look elsewhere for you leads on this crime." Rebecca said confidently.
“It’s true, I am new here and have yet to time precise distances.” Reigns replied seemingly giving up on the Rebecca as the suspect but keeping her in the back of mind.
"Do get your act together sir," Rebecca chimed in again. "We're still dealing with the fact Christian Evans let Mary Goode get away with shooting my grandson, don't let this shooting slip through your fingers."
Georgina, who was truly Mary in disguise, gulped.
"Oh! Speaking of Christian." He added before turning and leaving.
"What is it? Another accusation?" Rebecca snarled.
" — he’s dead." He replied with an eyebrow lift.
"Dead? What are you talking about??" Rebecca asked as Georgina gasped in shock.
"So you really didn't know?" he asked.
"Constable, I have, YET AGAIN, no idea what you are talking about. I know that the former Constable was taken to Windcliff recently, the poor man was dealing with a mental situation that I cannot bear to get into. I can only imagine how hard it was on him, but I have no idea about his death. Was he ill?" Rebecca wondered.
"He was found shot to death next to Jacob. Interesting that Dr. Wars didn’t tell you last night.” Gregory said.
“Constable Evans’ family yet to be contacted in Philadelphia. I was bound by his privacy to not divulge that.” Dr. Ward shyly informed.
“You aren’t exactly giving me confidence in the island’s law enforcement Mr. Reigns. You’re barking up the wrong Welshport Birch tree.” Rebecca replied sarcastically.
“In an investigation ma’am we go along the best source of information that we receive and your family’s fight the night Jacob was shot seems contentious enough that perhaps would lead to a suspect under his room, it’s actually very plausible.” He explained.
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “So tell me, why was Evans there anyway? He was supposed to be at Windcliff.”
“Apparently they were in a fight in the park just before the murderer came up and shot them both. Jacob survived. Christian did not." Gregory said filling in the women. “I’ll leave you to your ailing son.” He added just before tipping his hat and setting off down the hall in the hospital into a flurry of busy nurses in their long dark dresses and white aprons marked with large red crosses.
Georgina looked at Rebecca who was clearly concerned about what was going on. The troubles inside their family seemed to amounting daily. Now, whoever attempted to take Jacob's life was also guilty of taking Christian's. A murderer on the island had two victims on their checklist.
A truly strange and bizarre set of events.
"Mrs. Lord," a nurse said softly "we'll need you to read and sign off on these forms."
Rebecca nodded and Georgina followed suit allowing Charlotte to sneak off into her father's hospital room where they'd finally be alone.
**
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| Charlotte & Sabrina in Jacob's hospital room |
As Georgina stood as if she were on guard next to Rebecca as she sifted through the hospital papers with the nurse, Charlotte snuck off back down the hospital corridor and slid into Jacob's room.
She stood at the door in the room that was dimly lit. It smelled so clean and fresh. He lay there, skin ashen and pale fresh from surgery. She looked at her father sleeping calmly and couldn't believe how kind he looked. Innocent even in his slumber. His hair was perfectly combed thanks to the kindness of a nurse. His left arm carefully folded over his stomach while his other arm lay at his side injected with a fluid to keep him healthy while he slept.
Charlotte walked towards her father carefully as if she were too scared to wake him. She pulled over a small stood that was next to the bed and stood over her father and then in a split second of a time a light from deep inside her chest began to appear. It was white, circular, and burning hot like the sun. The white light from inside Charlotte's chest began to grow as it flew out of her. Bigger and bigger into the room illuminating everything in side and as it grew it began to take the form of a woman in white.
It was Sabrina.
Charlotte's eyes stared at her dead aunt, the spirit that lived inside of her and saw that Sabrina was now glowing in the same white light standing over Jacob's sleeping body.
Sabrina's hair was flowing as if a breeze was blowing in from the closed window. Her white dress too seemed to be flowing in that same mysterious breeze.
"Jacob, Jacob, Jacob." Sabrina's echoing voice said to her comatose ex-brother in law. "Sometimes the spider gets caught in its own web."
"He looks so innocent." Charlotte whispered.
"But he's not. Not of anything." Sabrina reminded her. "We tried to make sure he didn't hurt anyone else and look what happened. Someone ended up trying to destroy him when we couldn't. And yet again, the snake survived."
"Maybe after this he'll change?" Charlotte hoped.
"He'll never change Charlotte. This is our chance." Sabrina continued as she swooped over in her ghostly form nearest Charlotte. "We can do this together now. We can finished what the shooter tried. We can end this monster's whole life and finally save everyone from his future cruelty!"
"But what if he can change!?" Charlotte asked again.
"No! Charlotte, my darling, no! Please realize he would never. He will never! He took my life and tried to take your mother's too. Think of all the pain that will end once he's finally truly gone. We can end this once and for all. Think of Sebastian. Think of Evie. All of us."
Charlotte knew the truth. She knew her father was a tyrant and a monster who had done terrible things to so many people in her life including her own mother. She took a deep breath, her little body heaving a huge gulp of hospital air. Then, after a few seconds of thought, she nodded her head agreeing to Sabrina's plan to finally end her own father's life.
Sabrina smiled, then moved back into Charlotte's body as the little girl closed her eyes to feel the impact of the blaze of light and energy from Sabrina's possession. A force of power filled the little girl's body once again as the spirit of Sabrina Lord filled every cell, every ounce of tissue, every blood vessel and every hair. Charlotte's eyes then opened and they were glowing.
The possessed little girl pushed the stool closer to her father and then stood back atop it. She was looking over his sleeping body and slowly slid a pillow out from under head. The little girl, with the power and energy of the angry ghost living inside of her lifted the pillow over Jacob's face and slowly began to bring it down.
The body was a child's but her strength was of a powerful spirit angry with decades of past fury. Charlotte and Sabrina pushed down on the pillow more and more smothering him, trying to close off his breathing. Jacob's hands began to shake. His whole body began to twitch and jerk in the bed. He didn't know what was happening to him as Charlotte's eyes continued to glow with anger and pain--- some of her own, most from Sabrina.
"CHARLOTTE!!!" Georgina screamed from the door as she quickly closed it behind her.
Hearing Georgina's voice snapped Charlotte out of her trance and her eyes returned to normal.
"Mama?" The little girl said, knowing Georgina was truly her mother Mary in another woman's body.
"What on earth were you doing? My god, give me that!" She said snatching the pillow from Charlotte's hands.
"I... we... I don't know." Charlotte said.
"You must stop this obsession with your father. I more than anyone know just how much he deserves to get punished for his crimes, but you cannot be the one to do it. Do you understand me? And ... tell... Sabrina that too." Georgina said revealing she knew what was really going on, in fact she had her own frightening encounter with Sabrina the night she shot Sebastian.
"We only wanted to right the wrongs he did." Charlotte said, her voice weakened from the possession.
"I know my love. I know." Georgina said pulling Charlotte in for a giant hug, holding her tightly as the young Lord heiress began to cry into her chest.
**
Outside in the hall Rebecca continued her similar trail of thought from the night before: how’d she do anything, give anything to fix the mess of her family.
To fix her whole life. Her whole world.
Suddenly, while Rebecca was lost in thought and filling out paperwork, a man dressed in two thick cloaks shuffled over to Rebecca and lifted up a rose that was wilting in his hand and offered it to Rebecca as she handed back the hospital forms to an awaiting nurse.
“For your trouble ma’am.” The man said in strange accent, his face weathered from the sun, his hair dark brown but the eyes, Rebecca noted, his strange eyes were so deep and youthful he couldn't have been more than 50 and they seemed to look straight through her and yet they were almost kind. Strange but kind.
“Excuse me?” Rebecca asked stepping back in her long dark dress that shuffled across the white tiled floor.
“I can see the show of pain on your face ma’am, this rose will do you some good, I have the idea that your thoughts are clouded with pain and worry.” The strange cloaked man said.
“Of course they are worried, I’m in a hospital.” Rebecca said looking down her snobbish nose at the man who was clearly of what Rebecca saw as lower class Welshportonian.
“That may be ma’am but I see more than the natural soul. I can feel the darkness swirling about. The rose, take it. It’s a gift.” he repeated.
“I’ve had enough of soothsayers and foreign magicians. Go on, go!” Rebecca said to the man as she handed him a silver dollar which he refused. He reminder her too much of her old friend the con-artist psychic Gaspar DuBois.
“Very well… very well I will go. But if you search for anything to calm your heart, at any point in time, be sure to search the village for me. Ask for me Caspian Casador." He said smiling politely.
"Casador? That's not a surname I'm familiar with here on the island. Where did you say you came from again?" Rebecca asked, her suspicious nature starting to peak interest in the strange man.
"Casador...an ancient word for HUNTER. I am rather new here." She stranger said adding. "I have recently come to the aid of ... shall we say, a friend near by. Never the less, Madame, I can see deep into the eyes of those who need. I sensed you. I sensed your need. Perhaps I can be the one who you can count on, because someday you might, I can see it.” Caspian said introducing himself and the off golden charm of a circle and a star sparking on his golden necklace.
“You can see it? See what?” Rebecca asked, cautiously but curiously.
“We all have to wait, isn’t that the case? We wait for the right moment to shine. I’m patiently awaiting my own moment and soon, you too will see that day in your life. And I will be there if you need me.” The strange Caspian explained in an odd form of double talk.
Rebecca raised a brow confused and felt as if she should never have asked. She smiled politely then walked off towards Jacob’s room, but the man did intrigue her. His mystery. His deep dark eyes. The words he spoke were odd but she knew they these fortune tellers and soothsayers sometimes used off sentences to get a good hot dollar.
But Caspian asked for nothing, not like Gaspar. The sign of someone who might have true gifts was one that wanted nothing for his gifts, he asked for no money.
Noting this trait, Rebecca turned back after only a few steps to speak to him further but Caspian was gone.
“Where did he go?” Rebecca asked an orderly that was standing near watering a plant.
He looked around. “Who ma’am?”
“That man, the man standing here I was talking to.”
The orderly looked around again and shrugged “There was no one here ma’am. Just you and I.”
Rebecca felt a chill go up her spine then saw the single rose Caspian had offered Rebecca at the foot of her dress. She removed her leather glove and bent down to pick it up by it’s thorny stem then, at the risk of sounding insane talking about a man who may or may not have been in her presence she rushed off to Jacob’s room.
**
"What's this?" Rebecca asked entering the room, with the rose clutched in one hand.
Charlotte looked at Georgina who smirked sweetly at her daughter. "She's just having a hard time seeing her father this way."
She lied, but Rebecca smiled and felt a sweetness in her own soul seeing her granddaughter so overwhelmed by her love for her father---albeit all a lie.
"There there." Rebecca said, pulling her in to hug her too. Georgina then fixed Jacob's pillow and the three sat silently at Jacob's bedside in vigil.
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| Nurse Asha Hoffman at the morgue |
Elsewhere in Welshport Hope Hospital, Asha Hoffman, the nurse that worked with Dr. Kim at Windcliff and helped him brainwash Christian into the monstrous, human flesh eating creature he was at the time of his death, lurked in the darkened corridors of the hospitals morgue.
She slyly wore her nurses' uniform despite not being on duty as she would work some days at Windlciff and other days in smaller community hospitals like Welshport Hope. She was a nurse on a mission.
Asha had been closely watching Dr. Kim's work and she was quiet disturbed by what she learned of his practices. Disturbed too of how Andrew used mind control and manipulation of Christian to create a whole new psyche using a past patient's behaviors that were deadly. This was not only unethical, but to Asha it was immoral for Dr. Kim to do. But something else, something so much deeper bothered her about the source memory training and tissue samples of the patient Andrew used in Christian to turn him into a ravenous flesh eater that the dead patience once was. This was personal pain for Asha. Deeply personal.
She walked slowly in the dark morgue careful with her steps in her hand a lantern that lit her way through the stainless steel maze of tables.
Suddenly a flurry of noise scurried in the corner in the darkness.
She gasped and turned dropping the lantern to the ground. Asha quickly fell to her knees in fear, grabbing the lantern and seeing it was only a mouse huddled in the corner of the morgue hoping she'd drop a morsel of anything to fill his mouse-belly.
Asha, rolled her eyes and got back to her feet and turned back around to the darkness. As the light from her now dented lantern shown to the back of the room she found what she was looking for.
She scurried over to the table, just as quick as the mouse did to the corner of the back of the room, and saw the white sheet covering the person on the table. It was Christian's body. She slowly pulled the sheet back revealing his pale gaunt face.
He was handsome, she thought. Somewhere, somehow he lost his way and fell into the snare of Dr. Kim's cruel plot to use him to take care of Jacob.
"This shouldn't have happened to you. It never should have gotten this far. I should have stopped it when I had the chance. And it’s not the first time Kim has done this. It’s finally time I do what my father should have done to Kim before he……" Asha said to Christian but paused before finishing. She then put the lantern down next to Christian's face and pulled out a syringe from her apron pocket.
She rolled Christian's arm over revealing a frozen blood vessel under the gray skin and injected him with a large amount of preservative. Then she removed the glass of the syringe and added another with the same liquid injecting him again and when that emptied, she did it again with another. And another. Then she pulled out a separate group of syringes that were filled with serums, proteins and various vials of adrenalin to jump start the tissues of Christian's weakening heart that, if they worked, would bring him to life.
It was experimental. Never done before. It was a gamble but one she had to try to get what she wanted in the end. This gamble, with Christian's life, had everything on the line even her medical career.
As she patiently waited to see if it had worked, waiting for any sign of life, she looked down in her large white pocket and counted all 8 syringes that she had brought to bring Christian back to life. The clock was ticking. Every minute counted.
This HAD to work.
****
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| Celeste happily welcomes Evie back to Tirymor |
Later that late afternoon as the dust settled at Welshport Hope, Evie rearranged her bedroom now that she was back in the halls of Tirymor House. Her things had been placed up in the turret covered in white sheets to shield from the mold and cool sea air and the dust and dander of the centuries old house build by Lord ancestors.
As Evie and two male servants scoured several trunks of her things Celeste De Viana walked in with a giant grin on her face, but carful to hide her ever growing baby bump.
"It's so good to have you back, I can't say it enough." Celeste said rushing over to give her best friend a hug.
Evie smiled and squeezed her friend back feeling Celeste's baby-bump press up against her.
"I think that everything finally seems to be working out, thank goodness. Even though this was not the way I wanted my life here on the island to go, it's seems that finally some good seed has sprouted in this crazy garden." Evie said ignoring what she felt press up against her.
Celeste frowned for a second. "Well, are you sure about that? There's no doubt that I'm happy you're here and safely away from that dreadful Windcliff but do you really think things are getting better? Sebastian ...well... what about Sebastian?"
Evie took Celeste by the hand and took her over to a large blue velvet love seat that was bathed in the light from the large checker-grilled window of her room. As the two sat and the cross pattern of the window shadowed their two beautiful faces, Evie sighed at the thought of what her beautiful husband had become.
"The irony is, I wouldn't want it any other way. Which is to say, I'm trying to be look on the bright side. Sebastian is alive, I wish things never happened as they did, but the alternative is that he would be dead. I can't stand the idea of that." Evie confessed.
"Are you prepared to share your life with him in the way it is now, his condition is, well, peculiar." Celeste added, as she was only told his life was saved by a strange new medical procedure that forbad him from being in sun light, thus he could only come out in the day.
No one, not a single soul on the island of Welshport really knew the full truth of Eliza's spell of life ever-lasting on Sebastian, and of course Evie couldn't be the one to break it to her friend. Not now, anyway.
"He has suffered so much. All that has happened to both of us at the hands of Jacob is truly traumatizing, and we're trying to, as best we can, move passed it and become better people of it. Jacob's schemes and torture won't ever tare Sabastian and myself apart again. I won't let it."
Celeste smiled politely, if not nervously, as she too had been a victim of Jacob's twisted schemes. In fact, her baby---their baby---was fruit and proof of his evil and twisted games with her. Celeste squeezed Evie's hand tightly as if to show a forceful solidarity, and kissed her on her cheek.
"I'm here for you. I will always be here for you. And whatever happens from here on out you will never have to worry. I think we've all learned our less about Jacob Lord." Celeste said.
"You know sometimes I think that something in his life made him the way he is. Something a long time ago, maybe in his childhood or adolescence came and made Jacob's mind split and created this ... this... awful person full of hate and anger and jealousy and, well, evil. At least that's what I want to believe because at least that way we can hope that what he is going through now will change him. Otherwise, he was born with this ingrained in him. Then nothing would change him. Not even two bullets to the chest."
Celeste took to heart Evie's words. They were almost as wise as any old truth-telling soothsayer from the village that read people's palms or spoke to ancestors alive only in their spirit form. It frightened Celeste too, knowing that she was bringing a child into the world with a man that diabolical. But it was the choice she made, and she would live with it just as Evie would live with Sebastian now in new form.
"Am I interrupting?" Nik, Evie's younger brother said from the door as the two male servants left to bring in more trunks from the upstairs turret.
"Nikky!! No, no, no come in!" Evie exclaimed.
"I just wanted to see how things were coming along. One of the maids said Charlotte and Rebecca were still looking after Jacob. How is he?" Nik asked.
Celeste got up from the velvet loveseat, her form still marked on the plush blue cushions.
"Ill let you two reconnect, I have to meet with Filipe soon." Celeste said smiling at the cute brother and sister team. As she passed Nik too noticed her growing belly.
"I'll see you at dinner Celeste." Evie replied as Celeste nodded in agreement. "Come in! Come in!" Evie followed up yanking on her brother's arm over to the love seat again. "Tell me, is there any other news about mother?"
Nik gulped. "Nothing but I'm really eager for her to arrive. I can't even fathom how devastated she is all alone on the ship thinking of father." He then answered speaking of his father's passing.
"I can't believe he's really gone."
"Do you think ..." Nik paused. "I just wish I could have said goodbye."
Evie's eyes watered as she pulled Nik in for a hug as the Welshport sun enveloped them in a warm hug; holding them together in the light as they reconnected as a tiny little Jordan family.
"I'll have a special mass for him at St. Catherine's the first Sunday after Mother arrives. I think he'd like that." Evie whispered holding her brother's hands as the two whipped tears.
"I think so too."
"Then when mother arrives, we'll be together again. Even with out father, we'll be together again. I promise, Nikky, we'll be ok." She said attempting to reassure her younger brother.
He smiled at her and pulled her in for another hug. She giggled and squeezed him tight. They were together now, holding on to their dreams and to each other. But as time would pass they'd need each other once again. Sooner than they would ever think.
****
Over in the village, Matthew Winterborn was preparing a bag before he left off to sea for another round of fishing with his fleet. He carefully folded a thick warm sweater and a change of undergarments before he slipped into this dark boots and buttoned up this blue flannel shirt that would help shield him from the icy Atlantic sea wind.
As he carried his bag out into his small apartment living room, his sister Alice stared out of the front window onto the darkening street as dusky slowly approached.
"You going to be ok while I'm gone?" He asked just beyond the bedroom doorway.
"I'm worried." she said without turning from the window.
"Oh, I'll be ok! I've done this trip a million times." He smiled.
She then turned, in her dress that seemed to shimmer in various tones or dark green like the fin of a deep sea creature.
"I don't mean you. I know you'll be ok. The ancestors tell me you'll always be ok. The sea is in your blood. You're safe there." Alice said smiling. "It's Evie. I'm worried for Evie." She added.
"Evie? Why?"
"Last night I dreamed of ... a dark place. A very dark place. It was a sign of things to come. I can feel it in every bone in my body." Alice warned.
"Alice, please..." Matthew began as he rushed to her side and grabbed her hands. "I need you to stay away from Tirymôr. Whatever you do, just stay away from there. If you want to see your friend, have her come here. Will you do that?" He pleaded.
Alice took her hands out of her brother's grasp and smiled politely. She nodded agreeing that she'd stay away from the home of the vampire, the man they both new was alive and well in flesh and bone but something in Alice told her she couldn't just let go of that fact. He, the man she dreamt of in the black bog of darkness was pure danger -- her dream was an omen.
"I have to be sure she's safe. You know that. I can't just let him be around her without checking on her." Alice said.
"Alice.... listen to me, I'll be gone for three days out to sea and I don't want you to do anything until I get back. No matter what you dream, no matter what signs the spirits of our ancestors tell you, no matter what the earth tells you to do. DO NOTHING." Matthew ordered holding his sister in place at the shoulders and locking eyes with her.
Alice took a deep breath and sighed, but agreed to let her dream go --- for now.
****
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| Rebecca & Sebastian discuss his future |
The sun had set three hours before. The crows were now nestled in their nests above the birch and oaks that surrounded Tirymôr House, especially in a large plot of those trees that shaded the western park of the mansion that most of the family rarely went into.
In this western wing, there was a smoking room and a small library. The room was used decades ago by Albert Lord as his private office. It was smaller than the main smoking room on the second floor in the east wing and two of its' four walls were filled from ceiling to floor of books creating a V shaped corner of literature's greatest treasures.
When Sebastian was not at Lockwood Thicket, he chose this side of the mansion to stay in when he came to see Evie. He found solitude here. He found peace here. But most of all he found the darkness here as it was the last sun would touch as it set on the western horizon of Welshport Island.
As the sun dipped below the green hills of mainland Maine, Rebecca arrived in the western wing with a candle burning in her hand and two orbital glasses tucked under her am.
She stepped up to the thick wooden door of the private quarters where Sebastian had slept away the day and knocked loudly. The echoing of the knocks had barley vanished into the rafters of the high ceilings of Sebastian's private part of his family home before he opened the door to his grandmother Rebecca.
"We should talk." She said, as he voice echoed just as her knocks did.
Sebastian lifted a brow and stepped aside allowing her and her large black dress with the sleeves that were attached and made gloves covering her hands in like a black blob of satin and chiffon.
"To what do I owe this early evening visit? I thought you'd be at my uncle's bedside." Sebastian sneered.
"I was at the Hospital. All day. But now he sleeps." Rebecca replied placing the two wine glasses down on a large dark table as she slipped over to the side desk and opened a drawer removing a dusty bottle of wine.
"Ahh.. sleep." Sebastian said with a sinister grin.
Rebecca smiled at it lifting it up to her candle light and blew some of the dust off the label. "Perfect Port, 1890. Your grandfather's favorite." She said, as Sebastian looked at her strangely. "He left this here years ago before he died. I never came back in this room. He loved it here. It was peaceful. But I knew he had these little bottles hidden around everywhere."
"I was expecting Evie. She should be here soon. She said she'd come see me as soon as the sun set... did you only come to drink with me?" Sebastian asked as he sat on a dark leather sofa.
"Not only, no, and I wont interrupt Evie if she comes.... I came because I wanted to catch you before you inevitability went about your night seeing your beloved Evie. There are things we need to discuss, the two of us, before you just move on with your life, in whatever capacity you call this a life that is." Rebecca said sitting across from Sebastian pouring them both the wine.
"There isn't anything I can do about what has happened to me grandmother, you know this. Who I am now is who I will be for all eternity. I cannot change it, no one can. It's simply reality."
Rebecca nodded, her face showing no emotion. She knew he was right but there was still the question of how they'd explain his sudden return. She picked up the orbed wine glass and sipped.
"You didn't think of what the papers would say about your sudden rise from the grave? What people in the village will say? They already gossip about us like we are some sort of carnival side show. Now we'll have to quell the tide of whispers about you. This is for your own protection, darling and these are things we should discuss as a family. There's nothing we can do aside from hiding you and that is out of the question, I will not hide you like an animal." Rebecca added.
"The papers?? We own the papers! Almost all of them on this side of the country. We could say whatever we want. Or say nothing. We say what is news and what is not news. Or we can be more creative." Sebastian said seemingly more diabolical of the mind than Rebecca could remember.
"You seem confident in that." His grandmother replied.
"Grandmother, Baxter Murphy wont do anything at The Globe unless you tell him to. You know that." Sebastian added mentioning the Editor of the The Welshport Globe by name, the man in charge of Lord Publishing's biggest news paper.
"Perhaps, but Mr. Murphy isn't my entre concern." She replied.
"Oh?"
"No Sebastian!! Baxter may well be in our pocket working for our papers, but what of the media outside our publishing power? We need to make sure that we create the narrative instead find ourselves on the defense of it. Like you said, we say what news is and what news is not. If someone gets wind of your miraculous return before we can get ahold of it first, it could cause a giant scandal that I don't know we would survive." Rebecca replied, her worry falling into Sebastian's ears as true.
"Fine." he replied, sipping on his own wine glass and getting up to stand next to the roaring fire. "There's a simple story we can craft. Many people were here at the wedding when I was shot. We can say that it was some elaborate kidnapping plot gone awry. They, these fictitious kidnappers of mine, kidnapped me before the wedding and had an impersonator here. He was the one who died. Not I. That is what we will say." Sebastian said spouting off a perfect explanation for his sudden return from the grave.
It was impressive, his twist to his story. Rebecca was indeed pleased with the story they'd weave into the papers to explain his return, but at the same time it was very unlike Sebastian. He was different, not only physically but emotionally too. It hurt her heart to sense how cold he was now, impatient, unbothered by his new reality. It was as if all he wanted was for her to leave and for her to stop bothering him. His mind had a target and it was only Evie he could think of. He was incredibly in love with her. All he could do was think of her, dream of her, wish for her, want for her. It was tunnel vision and his new life as a man of the shadows was only about Evie.
This was a part of the spell that worked as a side-effect. Evie was the last thing Sebastian was thinking about before he died, and when he was turned into a vampire by Eliza to bring him back to life, it would be as if his last living memory was his only obsession in this second chance of living. His death locked his mind on only one thing --- Evie Jordan-Lord, his widow.
"Very well." Rebecca said, as she stood up from the sofa and drank the last red drops of her Port wine. "I will have one of the papers put out the story and the rest of our publications will pick that up in the next few days and run with it. We'll be safe that way." She added.
Sebastian, his body warming in vein by the fire, bowed his head showing a sign that he wanted her to leave. But before she did, Rebecca walked over to him and touched his face. It was chilled. Pale. But at least it was his face.
"I prayed for you to return. Somehow. Someway. But I didn't know this would be the answer to my prayer. I feel as if I caused all of this. Every horrible thing that has happened, I feel is all my fault. Had I not played with the spirit world, had I not attempted to reach Albert in the after life using Tarot or seances and charlatans who told me they could do it all with the simplicity of staring into those ridiculous crystal balls...had I just had faith in myself and what I loved most, the power of love, I would have been fine a widow and perhaps I would spared us all. Especially you." Rebecca said still touching his face.
Sebastian took a deep breath and drank from his wine glass then slowly moved his grandmother's hands from his face and kissed her leaving a red wine stain on her cheek from the wine on his lips.
"You are not powerful enough to have done this to me. Only Eliza can say that, she's the one who made me. And no one, not even you grandmother, can ever be rid of me. Remember that." Sebastian replied coldly staring deep into his grandmother's eyes with an icy empty look.
Rebecca pulled her hands from Sebastian's light grasp and wiped the red wine stain from her cheek. She took a deep breath and said goodnight to him. She quickly moved out of the room Sebastian was in and made her way back to eastern part of the house where the family was usually in. She searched several rooms, almost frantically, for Hamstead after her encounter with Sebastian. His final words to her coming off cold and dangerous. Her body still unable to rid itself of the overwhelming chill she felt when he told her no one would ever be able to be rid of him.
It felt like a veiled threat. It felt like a warning. It felt like a reason to worry.
Rebecca continued to rush down the various rooms and halls in Tirymôr House but did not find Hamstead. Instead she found Georgina, knitting a scarf for Charlotte in a private parlor.
"Find Hamstead!" Rebecca shouted, out of breath.
"Ma'am, what is it? What's happened?" Georgina said throwing the yarn and knitting needles to the floor as her mistress seemed panicked.
"I need him to chart our boat and set it for Goode Island." Rebecca replied as she plopped down on the sofa and began fanning herself as the warmth finally began to return to her frightened skin.
"Goode Island. For Eliza?" Georgina asked, wondering what Rebecca wanted with her mother, as she was truly Mary Goode living in Georgina's body as disguise.
"Just find him girl! Lady Lazarus owes me a favor and now, I plan for her to pay up in the form of remedying my grandson Sebastian's...." Rebecca barked before she paused.
"Sebastian's what madam?" Georgina asked as Rebecca paused for a beat.
"His Life."
****
 |
| Celeste’s encounter on the dark street |
As the mon floated in the sky behind a veil of fog that swirled and spun in an off coast breeze, Celeste de Viana walked along the narrow cobble stone streets of the village on her way home from Tirymôr. She contemplated her baby and the news of her pregnancy and how it would affect her life in the future. She couldn't bear to see Filipe's face when the time would come for the truth to come out.
Perhaps, Celeste thought as a late night seagull fluttered in the sky above he head and landed on the Siren's Call Pub sign, she could pass the child off as Filipe's.
"You'll be sorry Miss! You'll be mighty sorry for what you've done to yours!!!" Drunk man said slobbering on himself as he was thrown out of the Siren's Call Pub startling Celeste.
"What?" She asked, confused about his words.
"I see you for what y'are! I see for what y'are! I see you for what y'are!!!" He kept saying, drunk and smelly as he waddled his way down the street into the night.
Celeste had no idea what he was saying but she followed him as quickly as she could down the street into the foggy night. She could not see him in the dark, and the gas street lamps had been burned out, but she could hear his footsteps and his echoing drunk voice.
"See you... I see you!!" The drunk man said in invisible to her eye.
"What do you see? Who are you talking about?" She replied into the dark, not knowing what she felt so compelled to follow the stranger.
"For what y'are! Y'are A LIAR!!!!!" The drunk man's voice screamed as he suddenly appeared in front of her face.
Celeste screamed and fell backwards onto the wet cobble stone street. Her hands both falling back behind her steadying her body up in a puddle of smelly sea water.
When she looked back up at the drunk man standing before her, his stubble scratchy and white on his face, his eyes winkled with crow's feet and weather beaten from years at sea. His head, bald and shiny reflecting the moon.
"I don't know you." Celeste said stading up and holding her baby-bump.
"Don't you? Look closer." He said, as his breath floated to her face smelling of whisky and canned tuna from the cannery just over on the mainland.
Celeste, her eyes squinting in the dark of the night make out who she was looking at in the shadows of the night, in the fog, in the pale light of the moon by the docks of downtown Welshport.
It was her dead father Paulo.
Celeste gasped at the sight of him. He smiled at her once he saw she recognized who he was, but it was a cruel sinister smile. One that made her stomach knot up like a rope from one of the ships Paulo once sailed.
"You forgot I can see you -- always, didnya Celeste? I see when you are honest. And I see when y'are not. I see when y'are happy and I see when y'are not. And I know. I know. I know. I know." Paulo said, his voice chilling her to the bone.
"You died. You drowned in a shipwreck when I was a 14. You can't be here!" Celeste said to her father as the lights of the gas lamps on the street suddenly lit and flickered with fire.
"LIAR!" He yelled.
Suddenly, as the fog became thicker and harder to see through, Paulo's eyes changed. They almost looked as if they had fallen out of his scull. His face began to rot. His lips feel off his face like the flesh of a cooked chicken. His body turned green with decay. His voice screamed in the dark and he lunged at Celeste on the street.
She screamed and woke up in bed next to Filipe.
"Hey, hey hey... are you ok??" Filipe asked reaching for her but she pulled away so he would not feel her firm stomach.
"I, I had a nightmare. I'm sorry I woke up." She said as he turned to his side of the bed and lit a candle.
"Are you sure you're ok?" He asked concerned. Her face showed no solace that she was truly awake and not on the street with her father's haunted corpse.
"I'm so sorry honey. Please go back to bed. I'm just going to get a bit of water and come back to sleep." She said as he smiled and kissed her hand before she walked into her kitchen.
While in the kitchen she realized the stress of keeping the secret was getting to her. She was not only worried all day long if people could tell, but she was also now manifesting her stress in her own dreams while she slept.
As Celeste sipped on her glass of water and tip-toed over to a leather satchel bag that was hers and removed the pouch of powder that Eliza had given her if she had chosen to take with water to end her pregnancy The potent poison would hurt her not, but would cause her body to reject the fetus growing inside of her, a child that was conceived not from love but from blackmail and cruelty.
She opened the pouch, saw the powder and put it over the glass of water ready to sprinkle it and then drink.
But she could not do it. She could not end the baby's life.
Her choice was final.
She would indeed have Jacob's child. But how would she tell Filipe?
