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| Johnathon drags Sebastian to an old tomb in the Cemetery |
A blistering cold wind washed over a hardened ground at St. Thomas's cemetery. Ice had formed on the bows of the trees and formed icicles on each of the letters on the monogrammed gate of the graveyard.
A long drag mark in the snow lead up the snow-covered hill and through the cemetery with a set of footprints that seemed to stagger here and there from where a small car had been left running with its lights awaiting the return of Johnathon DeViana.
St. Thomas's Cemetery was enormous and old, a place that had generations of islanders in tombs and graves from the first families of settlers right down to the most modern citizens. The Lord family, of course, had their own large plot of land with a giant mausoleum where the bodies of Lord family members in the past had been entombed or their ashes had been buried.
Johnathon dragged the unconscious body of Sebastian Lord from the car and up the frozen cemetery hill; those were the drag marks that could be seen in the snow. He had heeded Celeste's warning to take care of his mess and Sebastian, the only thing Johnathon knew to do with someone who was one of the undead was to take him back to a grave and trap him there; the way he thought Sebastian should be.
Johnathon searched the grounds and found the Lord family plot, but then quickly thought twice about putting Sebastian there. It was too easy. If someone were to be looking for Sebastian's body this would be the first place they'd look --- rationally of course.
Then, in the corner of his eyes, Johnathon saw a large private tomb of a woman named Annabella Collins. It was a large marble structure that looked like a tiny chapel flanked by several large beech trees that had been stripped of their leaves from the cold winter snow. The woman was from a wealthy family in a neighboring fishing village from the mainland and had died in the mid 1740’s… her private fortress like tomb was perfectly hidden and deserted for Johnathon’s task.
Suddenly, Sebastian began to stir.
Johnathon panicked and quickly began to drag Sebastian through the graveyard from one end to the other to the Collins woman’s tomb. The little gate outside of the tomb had been broken and abandoned over the years as there hadn’t been a visit from a member of the family in decades; Johnathon easily pushed it open with kicking it and continued to drag Sebastian’s waking body.
Sweating, panting, pushing for breath, Johnathon finally got to the top of the 8 steps of the tomb. As Sebastian continued to come to, Johnaton opened the tomb door and entered into it’s mausoleum, inside he saw a trap door that was used for grounds keepers to move coffins around below the floor to make room for more family members. The door was covered with various leaves and dried vegetation but Johnathon was able to find the iron handle and opened up-ward. He pulled hard and the giant cement block lifted up revealing the single 175-year-old casket in the mausoleum vault that belonged to Annabella Collins.
Johnathon covered his mouth with a white handkerchief and opened the coffin exposing himself clouds of ancient dust and revealing fragments of old clothes, jewels on the bones of the woman that had been buried there.
Johnathon then dragged the waking Sebastian into the vault and dropped him into the dusty forgotten coffin and slammed the lid shut . Johnathon quickly searched the room and brought in pieces of a broken cement bench and placed the giant blocks on top of the coffin.
Block after block of thick slabs of cement sealed Sebastian into his new unmarked grave locking him in.
Then Johnathon replaced the thick cement trap door that could only be opened from the surface inside the Collins tomb with it's tiny windows that shined the pattern of two crosses from the outside over the slab over the coffin.
Then, to secure the block further, Johnathon brought in more rocks; ice cold and covered in snow and put them over the trap door. There was no way Sebastian could get out, Johnathon thought to himself.
Sebastian suddenly awoke in his coffin. He only saw darkness. He pushed up against the lid and he could not move it. He banged on it and screamed for release. He fought hard up against the sealed coffin lid but there was too much weight for him to push it off.
The trapped vampire screamed a god-awful blood curdling scream that knocked Johnathon backwards onto his backside and into a mound of slush and snow.
Scared for his life, Johnathon backed away from the sealed trap door shivering in fear and the cold. His eyes were wide like giant globes of white horrified at the animalistic noises Sebastian was making as he desperately tried to free himself. A wind blew in, ice cold like the Arctic, and rocked the tomb's gate back and forth in a loud squeaking symphony.
Then — silence. Quiet like the dead.
Sebastian's roar was too much for his body: he blacked out in Annabelle Collins coffin.
Johnathon stood up, adjusted the rocks from the outside so that they were more secure and quickly escaped the tomb and locked the gate behind him.
He stepped out onto the grounds of St. Thomas's frozen cemetery and stacked everything he could find in front of the gate to obscure that he, someone, had been there and had dragged a body though the snow and trapped it inside the small tomb marked COLLINS.
Johnathon then rushed back to his car, erasing his footprints in the snow as he went, and looked back at the Collins tomb in the distance and noticed it was almost directly across from the larger more elegantly style and kept up Lord family tomb.
The Lord Tomb, he realized, would be his own final resting place when the day would come.
A shiver ran up his spine as the sound of peeling owls in the cold darkness of the night made their presence known.
He jumped back into his car, puttering in the winter night and drove back towards the village and Tiyrmor House to report back to Celeste that Sebastian had finally been taken care of.
****
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| Seeking memories in the Azores |
In the mid-Atlantic, an archipelago of nine volcanic islands floating in waters of green and blue winter’s touch brought strong winds, rain and powerful crashing waves that bashed up against the black rocks that made up the islands' shores.
In center of the archipelago was one island crowned with a large mountain volcano that cast a triangular shadow on the little village below.
After weeks of endless sleep since being discovered floating on the surface of the sea, the man with no name stood in gifted winter clothes on the thick black slabs of stone staring off into the distance that made up the ocean's secretive world.
He wondered, as the sea crashed beneath him, what mysteries would be unlock once his memories returned.
If he could just remember what the state of Maine meant to him perhaps finally some sort of answer to who he really was and how he got to lost in the sea. He couldn't understand how he survived so long without food or water. He couldn't understand how he could have been asleep for all this time in Lucas and Silvina's little house without ever waking up and knowing exactly what had happened to him and where he came from.
As he searched his mind for any sort of clue as to who he was, a vision of a woman entered like a foggy distant memory. She was beautiful, with eyes of bright blue and green much like the sea below. Her hair a honey brown with hints of light colors like the sun. His memory showed her turning to him slowly, dressed in a sky blue dress with white sleeves, her hair slightly curled at the shoulder.
She smiled brightly as their eyes met in the memory, and her dark maroon toned gloved hand reached for him but as his own hand reached back in the memory --- it stopped.
That was all he could remember of her, of his past. Not a voice. Not his own name. Only the woman in his mind, and the state of Maine in his pocket.
The man with no name, his skin tanned and golden, his hair waves of chestnut brown, cuddled himself in the salty cold air and closed his eyes trying to bring back more memories of the beautiful woman. The waves blow him suddenly rushed his mind and he found his myself at the bottom of the sea floating along ship debris.
He could see himself in his mind, as giant whales swirled around him and with the power of their great tails pushed him up towards the ocean’s surface with large currants of water.
This memory was so vivid in the man’s mind. He could still feel the pressure of the ocean all over his body. The whales saw him there, and were not threatened; they saw him as one of their own yet they knew he belonged on the sand not underwater.
He floated an underwater sensing all the currents of the sea. Everything around him felt untouched by the wolf above — he was alive somehow underwater, his body unbothered by the lack air. He could remember seeing a flash of glittering fish scales pass him as he floated. It was like a green fish-tale. Then a face. A person’s face.
But how could it be? How could fish have a human face? This creature in his memory was guiding him. Helping him. Keeping him alive by bringing air to the surface and breathing it into him through his lips.
As he floated in that memory he could see the surface light brake on the waves above him. The force of the whales currents suddenly pushed the man with no name up, the fish with an human face vanished happy to have helped him.
When the man’s head broke the surface it was hit with a large beam from the shipwreck knocking him unconscious. But he remained on the sea protected by the whales and creatures until he washed up on the island shores.
This was his memory. The whales. The creature who helped him breathe …and like waking from sleep the man snapped out of his transe and found himself still on the windswept black rocks of the island in the shadow of the dormant volcano. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest, then a hand on his shoulder. It was Lucas, the local man who found him, joined him watching the sea.
"Toma." Lucas said in Portuguese handing him a mug of hot tea.
"Thank you." The man said, then corrected himself with the same word in Portuguese "Obriagado."
"I can see you so lost in your head." Lucas said as a ship's foghorn wailed over the ocean's blasting waves. "You must understand that you could have been lost on the sea for a very long time. Your memory is slowing to return, but it will. It will not be lost forever."
The man sipped from his tea. "Things are coming back."
“A memory??” Lucas exclaimed.
A flash. Or several flashes. I saw myself under the sea after this shipwreck and … I was saved. By whales or…I don’t know. It was almost like they understood who or what I was.”
“Whales and dolphin have always been the true friends of the lost sailor. I know many of fisherman who has his life to today because of them. They truly do understand where we belong.”
“I felt like I belonged there too. That’s the strange part.” The mysterious man said feeling silly for even saying it. “But before that though I saw something else.”
“Oh? What was it?" Lucas asked.
"More like who…A woman. A beautiful woman that I knew or know. I didn't hear her speak or myself speak to her but I saw her face. It was so clear; it was as if she were right there in front of me. Something about the sea and the salty air must have triggered that memory of her. Could she be a fantasy? Or real?" The man with no name wondered.
"It is hard to know for sure." Lucas said. "But if she felt real to you perhaps she was. Perhaps she was the woman you loved."
"Do you think so?" The man asked Lucas.
"Love is such a powerful emotion. It lasts forever. It never dies, not even when we die, love stays. It's like our souls, love is our soul. It stays on this planet long after we are gone. That is what you see, love. Someone you love." Lucas explained.
The man smiled at Lucas' romantic theory. It did comfort him to hear that perhaps she was someone he loved somewhere out there. Somewhere in Maine. "You sound like you speak from experience. Have you loved a woman like that before?"
Lucas smiled shyly. He did love like that before. He did love someone forever that would last, what he thought, would have been the end of time. But it did not last. The love he fought for, the love he held so close to his heart so long ago drifted away and never returned-- in the physical form.
"I did. Long ago. When I was in the army, on the continent I did have a love. It was a complicated situation that I was not prepared for and neither was ..." He paused.
"Neither was she?" The man asked as he stood in Lucas' pregnant pause.
"It doesn't matter now. It was a long time ago and when my father died, I came back from the army to take care of my mother. Eventually, I discovered God had decided that It was not meant to be." Lucas explained.
"Oh." The man said. "She died."
Lucas did not reply in words, only another shy smile and shrugged. The man with no name took the hint that Lucas did not want to talk about it and further, a subject that was obviously very painful.
"It was what it was for the short time that I had it, but yes, I can say that at some point in my life I did love someone this strongly where I too see their face in my memory. Their smile. Their eyes. But it's gone now." Lucas finally replied.
"I hope that I have a chance to see her again." The man said.
"You may still. We have ships that leave the Azores Island all the time for America. We can find a way to get you on one of those ships to take you back--- to your home." Lucas said.
"How would I? I don't even know my name or how I would get to Maine."
"The company that runs the cruise from here to America is a British liner. Red Star. It doesn't need to know your whole story to allow you to sail. We could give you a name, something general, and get you on the ship. Once you're in American then you can figure out how to get to Maine. New England is cluster of states, it wouldn't take you long to get there from where the Red Star ship docks." Lucas explained.
"It's that easy?" The man wondered.
"We just have to get the money to buy the ticket. That is the first thing we should do." Lucas said.
"Would you help me?"
Lucas smiled and took the man's empty tea cup. "Come, mama has lunch. We'll figure things out for you."
The man's hopes suddenly lifted to the surface of his heart like it had been drowned in sadness and loss for so long. If he could truly go back home, to Maine where that little map in his pocket said he was from, he could finally unlock who he was. Perhaps reconnect with the woman in his mind, and finally be back where he was supposed to be.
Lucas and the man had gotten very close, almost like brothers, and Lucas would do all he could to help the man finally find himself. Nothing would stop them to get him back home.
****
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| Breakfast on Goode Island |
As breakfast was served, perfect white plates of eggs and sausage a warm oven heated the room with a familiar calm that no one eating had felt in a very long time. The talked with full mouths and giggled with silly stories like the perfect family of a mother, a father, their two young teens and their baby.
At first glance, this was picturesque and wonderful. Something out of a picture book of family coming together in a winter wonderland sharing a meal and enjoying each other's company. But as the plates were cleared by the two teens Morgan and Charlotte and they set off to their rooms to read as instructed by Mary, Filipe asked where she had run off to when she returned so late last night.
Mary sipped from her white coffee mug that had painted blue doves floating inside and out as if they'd flown in through the window on the cold winter wind and into her mug.
"You'll be angry if I tell you." She replied.
"Angry? I wouldn't be angry. I was worried, all I night I waited for you until I fell asleep. I didn't even hear you come in when you did, not until I heard you whispering next to Caleb's crib. Where did you go?"
"Mary!"
"See!" She replied. "I knew you'd disapprove so of course I left without telling you where I was going but I had to confront her. I had to tell her that all of this is her fault. Evie's death is not some sort of horrible event that happened out of no where like some freak accident. Filipe, I can feel that she'd involved somehow. She must be, I'm telling you, I feel it in my bones."
"We both know that she's not who she said she was and that we've somehow overlooked the fact that we trusted a complete stranger. She's gone behind our backs and done things that feel like she's always had ulterior motives. I mean not telling us she was going to see Gabriel to place a protective spell over him, secretly befriending Evie, becoming involved with Sebastian after we warned her of his danger. It's all very strange, but that is why you need to stay away from her. She's just as dangerous as Sebastian is."
"Sebastian is lost Filipe, he only exists in this world because of what my mother did to him," Mary said as Filipe lifted an eye brow.
"I remember very well what your mother did to him." He said showing the scar on his wrist where Eliza took his blood to feed Sebastian back from the dead.
Mary took a long blink then carried on "he's not dangerous in a way that feels purposeful. I truly believe that he can be helped. But Jacqueline, I see her differently."
"Mary listen to me," Filipe said "there is really no point in debating which of them is more dangerous than the other. Putting them together makes it a tinder box I don't want to be around when it's lit. And that goes the same for you, I want you to leave her alone."
"Leave her alone?" Mary said standing up to be eye to eye with the man she loved. "She's the reason our little baby Louise died, Filipe. Her actions have caused the most painful thing to ever happen to me in my whole life, the death of my second child. I know very well how dangerous she is. She's someone who's mind is stuck on one thing, and that's her obsession with my cousin's. It doesn't matter to her that she can never really be with a man like him; a man that is no longer of this world the way you and I are, the way she is. I won't allow her to walk around Welshport doing whatever she wants and putting anyone she thinks is standing in her way in more danger. She's taken my baby's life and she's probably taken Evie's. I want it to stop there."
"I hope this isn't about Morgan and I being here." the beautiful Charlotte said.
Mary tilted her head and rushed over to Charlotte and hugged her.
Filipe inhaled deeply. "Yes, it seems your cousin has gone missing."
"Sebastian can never go missing. He's dead." Charlotte replied.
Filipe and Mary shot each other's looks.
"Yes. In between." Mary replied.
As soon as Charlotte's hands wrapped around the baby and she lifted him into her arms a jolt of powerful energy surged into Charlotte's mind. She could see something flashing brightly in her head. It was as if a bright light had been flipped on and a show was playing before her on a white screen of bright sunlight.
"Charlotte? Charlotte, honey are you ok?" Mary asked seeing her daughter's sudden blank expression.
"What happened?" Morgan asked appearing in the kitchen from the hall. "She's gone again." He added.
"Gone again? What do you mean?" Filipe asked.
"Sometimes, when she touches things or something touches her she goes into this world. It shows her things. It tells her things." He explained. "But it scares me."
"Charlotte? Charlotte!!" Mary shouted.
"What is it? What were you seeing?" Mary asked her.
"Who is he?" She asked.
"What?" Filipe asked. "He's Caleb." He answered back confused with Charlotte's question.
"No, but where did he come from?" Charlotte added.
"He was an orphan. Asha Hoffman, Nik's girlfriend, delivered him to a widowed mother on Welshport who did not survive his birth. Why?" Mary informed her.
Charlotte took to steps to the baby in Filipe arms. He giggled and reached for Charlotte again but she made sure this time her new adopted baby brother stayed in Filipe's arms.
"No. That's not the truth." Charlotte said. "There's something more. He's from somewhere, or something else. I don't...know…something else." Charlotte kept repeating.
"Charlotte, honey, maybe you should go rest. What do you think?" Mary said, motioning for Morgan to take her into her room.
Morgan quickly rushed over and grabbed Charlotte by the hand and escorted her back into her bedroom where he sat her on her bed. She sat there and stared at the wall wondering what she was seeing, what the baby was showing her when she was holding him.
Morgan quickly moved back towards her bedroom door.
Morgan furrowed his brow "Huh?"
"Who's Caspian?"
Charlotte turned to Morgan who was so naïve and innocent to everything that Welshport Island was and to everyone who was on the island from worlds unknown. He was a sweet boy who acted his age while Charlotte was much older and wiser beyond her years. In a way she envied that he could be his 13-year-old self and grow the way a 13-year-old should without seeing or feeling all of the terrible things she did. She shook her head and said nothing to his question.
"No, come on, tell me. Who's Caspian?" He pushed.
"I shouldn't have said anything." Charlotte replied. "I don't even know what I saw or what I heard. It didn't make sense. None of it could make sense. Its nothing."
"I know you, and I know that when you see what you see or feel what you feel its never just nothing, so go on. Tell me. Who's Caspian?" Morgan asked.
Charlotte gulped, licked her lips that had dried from the cold air in her room and simply replied the best way she could: "He's the devil."
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| Nik & Aurora mourn Evie at St. Catherine’s |
A somber afternoon chill warmed under the bright midday sun as mourners from all over the island ushered into St. Catherine's Church for Evie's memorial. The font line of the pews were already filled by friends and family. Aurora sat center holding tight to Nik's hands as three nuns came through the back of the Church to the front with a prayer book gift to Aurora from the Church.
Aurora accepted it graciously and hugged the nun who handed it to her.
Towards the back of the Church, The Welshport Globe's most prolific editor, Baxter Murphy, and other reporters scribbled every detail of every moment of the now very famous funeral.
The locals had gathered outside all trying to catch a glimpse of any member of the infamous Lord family. Even Catherine Randall-Ruth, the woman Evie met on the ship from England to American 3 years ago made her way from her social teas in New York City and came to Welshport to pay her respects as she had been reading every twist and turn of Evie’s now folklore-like life in the papers.
As the church’s ancient organ mixed with quiet prayers and whispers that swelled in dramatic form, an usher came by the alter and lifted the lid of Evie's casket to an audible gasp from the audience.
Evie looked quiet literally alive. Yet she did not breathe.
Her face was almost pink, instead of the customary and usual look of an ashen face of someone who had recently passed. Her lips were pink and soft to the touch—almost in a perfect pout.
Off in the corner of the church a face no one recognized, a face of a woman who had come in under a strange disguise, in fact she was not even real. She was Jacqueline Gray once again using the face of a person that was not hers; a face she could use to easily walk among the people safely.
Jacqueline watched Evie’s bewitched body carefully as she lay in her coffin. Her perfect face her, hair glistening in the sun that slipped through stainless windows in colors of blue, green and pink.
Mary and Filipe, slipped in too through the back and sat on the opposite side of where Jacqueline was. Jacqueline lifted a brow realizing the more inexperienced witch Mary had not sensed her behind the face of the mysterious lone woman she shape-shifted into.
"I don't know if I can do this." Aurora whispered to Nik who grabbed her hand to kiss it.
"We're together." He said, as Gabriel in Celeste's arms chirped up.
Nik and Aurora looked at the baby turning their heads in unison, the only remaining part of Evie on earth. Aurora teared up realizing she had no control of Gabriel's wellbeing and the baby reminded her of her lost child.
"Please someone. Someone come over to me and see that I'm alive. Please Nik, Nik, please hear me somehow! Come over to me, touch me. Look at me Nik! PLEASE LOOK AT ME!" Evie said in her mind, her body frozen like the trees in winter.
"They can't hear you Evie. There's no use expressing all that energy." Jacqueline replied to her telepathically.
"Jacqueline? You're here? YOU'RE HERE! Please stop this! I'll do whatever you want, I won't tell anyone what you did, just please release me from this hell. Please! I can't listen to my family cry over me when I'm not dead, Jacqueline, please. This is cruel! THIS IS CRUEL!!" Evie shouted in her mind.
"This is what has to be done, they have to believe you're gone forever. Its the only way I can be free, don't you see?" Jacqueline replied.
"Free? Free of what?" Evie asked.
But Jacqueline did not reply as Father Donavon Ryan began his eulogy of Evie.
"Good after noon." Father Ryan began as the audience replied in kind. "It is always the worst part of my position as the head of a congregation to be here, standing before you all, while one of our own has been lost. Not too long ago, Evie was here in this Church with her baby. We talked about her life and what she felt was worrying her. She was honest with me. She was open She wanted her child to have the best life possible and by that she too wanted to be healthy and happy. Evie understood that those two things went hand in hand."
Aurora, red eyed and sniffling looked over at the baby Gabriel again, as Celeste held him tight.
Jacob shifted his body to block the baby from her view.
Father Ryan continued "It is a tragedy to say the least of how things then turned out for this young woman who had her whole life ahead of her."
"FATHER RYAN!!!" Evie screamed in her mind. "MY GOD, PLEASE!!!! LOOK AT ME! I AM NOT DEAD!!!"
"When we look back at our own lives, I hope that we can try and remember Evie and her son. They are now separated form each other until they meet again, in which I hope is a very, very long time. May Gabriel forever have people in his life who will always shine a light on Evie's memory and may he always hold her close as best he can. Losing her will forever shape his world, and never really knowing her will do that even more." Father Ryan lamented. "Let us pray."
As the service continued through prayers and the singing of psalms, the light in the sky turned colder and the clouds began to shift overhead shading the St. Catherine's Church. An hour and a half later, the nuns began to scatter around the church helping people as they all began to file out and go back home to remember Evie in their own ways.
The casket, with Evie's incredible bright and perfectly serene body lay open when suddenly, a nun realized it should be closed. She came over and crossed herself and began to close the lid.
"NO PLEASE!! STOP!!!" Evie screamed in her head as she heard the bending of the hinges closing.
"Wait!!" Aurora shouted.
The nun stopped in her tracks and lifted the lid up. "Of course, Mrs. Jordan." she said stepping aside.
Aurora with Nik's help, walked over to Evie's sleeping body and looked into the coffin. It was the first time she had been this close to her daughter since she saw her body at Churchill Green. She cried and little and only looked at her hoping for some sort of sign that it was all a mistake. Evie too did everything she could in her frozen state to move; A pinky. An eyebrow. The twitch of her foot. Something. Anything to show that she was truly alive and not dead only cursed by a jealous, cruel witch who only wanted to remove Evie from this earth to keep her away forever.
"I wish I could have saved you." Aurora said in a whisper.
"Mother, let's say goodbye now. I don’t want you getting sick now, it may be too much for you." Nik said, as aurora reluctantly agreed.
"NO NIK! I'M NOT! I'M HERE! I'M STILL HERE!" Evie screamed.
Jacqueline lifted a brow from the back of the church and watched, hoping no one would touch Evie.
Aurora began to lower herself to kiss Evie on the forehead. She got closer and closer. Jacqueline held her breath hoping the touch of Aurora's lips wouldn't feel the Evie's warm body proving she was alive.
Just as Aurora got to Evie's forehead, seconds from kissing her, centimeters from her lips touching Evie's skin, Aurora looked up when she heard a sound from the small rosary chapel in the corner of the church. It was Gabriel's cooing in Celeste's arms.
Aurora abandoned her last kiss to Evie and slowly walked over to the chapel still locked in Nikolas' protected hold. In the chapel, the Lord family maid Jane O'Donnel was holding baby Gabriel was Celest was kneeling at the tiny rosary alter in front of the statute of the Madonna and child.
Aurora, in a sort of daze from her grief floated over to Jane and the baby and touched his sweet little face. Jane froze unsure of what she should do. Celeste crossed herself and replaced her rosary beads in pocket slit of her dress and turned to see Aurora attempting to take hold of Gabriel.
"My baby." Aurora said, her mind in a cloud of sadness remembering Evie and the baby she had just lost at birth.
"This is Gabriel." Celeste said quickly stepping in and taking Gabriel from Jane before Aurora could touch him.
Aurora snapped out of her daze. "He's not yours." She said to Celeste.
"Legally, Aurora, he is." Celeste reminded them. "Nikolas, I am sorry for your loss but you and your mother both know that this is the best for Gabriel. He needs a stable life, and we can provide that for him. Aurora, I know what you've lost, two children in such a quick time frame so I know you're not thinking clearly."
"Evie was your friend, your best friend. How could you have done this to her?" Aurora replied.
"I did this because she was my best friend, Aurora! She loved this baby, and I will take care of him for her. Forever."
"I want him. Give me the child." Aurora said, reaching for the baby in her arms.
"Aurora, no!" Celeste shouted as Nikolas grabbed his mother and pulled her back.
"GIVE ME MY CHILD!!!" Aurora shouted.
"MOTHER!!" Evie shouted in her mind hearing her mother scream.
Gregory and Asha rushed into the rosary chapel as the two women tussled over baby Gabriel who was now in hysterics himself.
"Aurora, stop! STOP!" Gregory said as he helped Nik console Aurora.
"Get a hold of yourself!" Celeste said pulling the baby and turning to shield him from Aurora's clawing hands.
"You will never ever be his mother. NEVER!" Aurora shouted, her mouth foaming with anger, her eyes red with terrible grief. "I just want my baby back! BOTH OF MY BABIES Nik!!! I want them back! I WANT THEM BACK!!!" Aurora added.
Nik grabbed his mother and pulled her into a hug. She crumbled in his arms as he helped her out of the chapel. Asha shot Gregory a look knowing they were responsible for half of poor Aurora's devastation.
"Don't say a word." Gregory whispered to her.
"Ma'am we should go out the side door." Jane said to Celeste who agreed as the began to grab their coats to leave.
In her casket, still open where she could hear everything, Evie tried with every bit of energy in her body she could to move. She pushed in her mind, she tried to thrust herself but it was impossible. Jacqueline's spell was in total control.
"Dear god, please help me out of this!" Evie said in her mind.
Stepping up to the casket now in the commotion of the entire event, hidden behind a face she shape-shifted into, Jacqueline looked into the coffin. "It's too late for God now Evie. You'll meet him on the other side."
"Jacqueline, please!! You're doing the wrong thing! This isn't right!" Evie replied.
Jacqueline said nothing in response, she only grabbed the coffin's lid with both hands and slammed it shut.
All Evie could do now was beg in her mind for freedom. She cried. She screamed. She raged in her head to be released to be out of the coffin and walking again. She feared what was next. She worried that when it was time to bring her to the cemetery, they'd bury her, and she'd lose herself in the darkness of the grave. She begged and begged for Jacqueline to free her, but Jacqueline fell silent and left the church leaving Evie's coffin to the pallbearers who'd soon come and take Evie away from the Church to St. Thomas's Cemetery.
Outside the Church, Jacob awaited Celeste, Jane and the Baby while he smoked a cigarette with his Page Aaron Hamstead when suddenly Mary and Filipe approached.
"Thank you for coming." Jacob said to them.
"We came for Gabriel, not for anyone else with the last name Lord." Filipe said coldly.
"I can see you both have finally, somehow, found each other and are happy. This is good, this is what really should have happened years ago. The two of you and Celeste and I. That is the true combination. I'm happy to have helped in anyway of bring you together." Jacob said in a puff of smoke.
"Yes, perhaps having us locked up in your turret was the nicest thing you could have done." Mary said sarcastically as she referenced Filipe and Mary's first-time making love when they were both Jacob's prisoners.
Jacob rolled his eyes. "What does a murderess like you have to do in Welshport anyway Mary? Come to shoot another groom in the stomach?" Jacob said again referencing his history with Mary.
"I've come a long way since then. I don't fall into traps from psychopaths like I used to. And at any rate, I don't need to be harassed by you any more. I have what I want." Mary said.
"Our child." Jacob replied. "And what bewitching have you done to take her away from me? It it something I should ask the priest to exorcise? You know he can do that, don't you?" Jacob said.
"Charlotte came to me on her own will. Morgan too. I would neve turn her away. That being said, don't you dare try and come to the cabin and threaten her or try to make her go back. She wants nothing to do with you or the Lords or anyone on this side of the Frenchman Bay again. That's it, that's all you need to know now." Mary replied.
"Just keep yourself where you are." Filipe reiterated.
"You're both perfect for each other." Jacob smiled. "And don't worry, I have my hands full with my two sons, when Charlotte's ready she'll come back to her hereditary home. I won't pressure her." Jacob said.
"Let's go!" Celeste said appearing out from the side of the church and quickly jumping into their awaiting car.
She turned, while in the car with the baby and made eye contact with her Ex Filipe. They hadn't seen each other in what felt like ages. He looked at her and she seemed different. It was Celeste but it wasn't. She had changed so much after being with Jacob. The way she sat even, stiffer. The way she held her head up: tighter. She was in body the Celeste he once loved, but her heart and soul had been completely devoured by the powerful maw that was the allure of the Lord family of which she was now queen of.
"What's the matter?" Jacob asked Celeste through the open window.
Celeste mouthed "Aurora."
Jacob lifted both brows and excused himself from the daggers of eyes that were Mary and Filipe. Father Ryan came quickly down the steps of the Church.
"Before you go, sir!" Father Ryan began. "The ground is too hard for burial. I've instructed the pallbearers to take Evie in the morning to her resting place. I also let Dr. Jordan know."
Mary grabbed on to Filipe with tears in her eyes and Jacob sent back a sad nod he understood.
Then, The Lords dove off. Aurora could be heard in heavy tears getting into her own car with Asha, Gregory and Nikolas as the rest of the guests shuffled out of the church and headed back to their warm homes to hope this was the last tragedy the Lords had to face for a long time.
****
 |
| Johnathon, Rebecca & Caspian at the Siren’s Call Pub |
That evening, in the smoky the Siren's Call pub was bustling as usual with regular patrons of sailors and other locals all drinking away the day that had been mostly occupied with the news of Evie Jordan-Lord's funeral. There was a sense in the air of overwhelming mourning of a young woman who they all knew by name and face but most never actually met in person.
Her life in Welshport had become a thing of folklore and myth thanks to her several tragedies.
A few talked of times they ran into her in town, or saw her walking along the stone paths of Village Park. In smokey corners of the pub others whispered stories of her marriage to the so-called Prince of Welshport, Sebastian Lord, and his mysterious secret life that they all knew seemed too good to be true.
"They say he lives still. But I don't know." One sailor said sipping on the foam of his ice cold beer.
"Whatya mean, still? The family said he died of some sickness after coming back from that kidnapping?" The friend replied, regurgitating the story the family put together to cover for Sebatian's vampirism.
"Nah, lad, all a bunch of secrets and lies the Lords spew to cover up what's really goin' on up there at Tirymor. It’s not a house lad, it a world of smoke and mirrors. Ain’t nothing there that makes sense or connects to reality, see? Something never been right with dem Lords. None of’em." The first sailor answered back.
"You think they're hiding him up there? And let her die? That makes not a lick of sense either, mate." A third man replied to the rest of them shrugging off the local folklore.
On the other side of the Pub, smoking cigarette after cigarette in nervous acceleration, was the exhausted Johnaton DeViana who had just returned from locking Sebastian in a stone tomb in St. Thomas's Cemetery.
He worried that the rocks and slabs of concrete he placed over the opening of the trap door of the tomb would not hold the vampire, the creature that was Sebastian Lord. He worried he'd find himself face to face with the monster after he'd free himself. He feared the worst, his own death at the hands of the thing he locked away under the ground.
He looked down at his hands, weathered and slashed up from carrying the rocks and saw them shaking. He took another gulp of his whisky when suddenly in right in front of him entering in through the darkened front door of The Siren's Call, was Rebecca Lord and Caspian Casador, just 3 days after their wedding and their release from the asylum.
The room feel practically silent with the exception of a few whispers and glasses clinging in the back of the pub being washed.
Seconds passed, and the room full of men and women holding their breaths at the sight of Rebecca and Caspian puffed into the regular chatter again, back to normal. Johnathon, however, remained eagle-eyed on his father's wife and her new husband.
Rebecca locked eyes with Johnathon and his half empty booth and she and Caspian walked over.
Johnathon gulped and began to sweat, his nerves starting to spike wondering what she would say to him.
"You look like you've seen a ghost, Mr. DeViana." Caspian said with a crooked toothed grin.
"Well, he has, dear. It's not every day a man comes face to face with the devil." Rebecca joked. "No, no, that's childish of me. Johnathon, forgive me." Rebecca replied.
"What's the meaning of this? Why are you here?" Johnathon asked.
"May we?" Rebecca asked gesturing to the empty seats in the booth.
Johnathon shrugged.
After sitting, a barmaid walked over and took Rebecca and Caspian's order: a glass of white wine for her, a whisky for Caspian and another for Johnathon who perhaps had already one too many.
"There's no reason to worry about anything, we're not here to cause you harm." Rebecca said.
"Evie died." Johnathon blurted out.
Rebecca's brow furrowed. She had read it in the papers in the Inn where they were hiding out before revealing themselves free of the asylum and ready to confront the family that betrayed her. It was hard for Rebecca to even comprehend it; she had spoken to Evie not too long ago when Evie first arrived at Churchill Green and wanted to help to get her out too, but her premature death had not been something she thought would be the remedy for Evie's freedom.
"I --" Rebecca began before pausing with her voice choking in her throat. "I don't even know how to put that together in my mind. She deserved better than what Jacob did to her. Much better. And I should have helped her faster. I blame myself for all of this, to be honest. Had I never placated Jacob perhaps Evie and Sebastian would be alive and things for all of us would be different." Rebecca explained.
"Jacob didn't kill her." Johnathon replied latching on to his fresh whisky.
"He might as well have." Caspian chimed in. "Jacob hides his evil better than anyone I've ever seen, and considering my own past, that's saying a lot.
“I guess coming from you Caspian, a man who hid his evil like no one I have ever seen, it mean something.”
Caspian lifted a brow “Not that I have to explain it to you, but that wasn’t me.”
“Ah yes, the devil made me do it.” Johnathon smirked. “I shouldn’t joke, I apologize. I know you’ve also lost someone and I’m sorry.”
Caspian and Rebecca looked at each other confused.
“Lost someone?” Caspian asked.
“Aurora Jordan. Her baby? She lost her child. Your child. Word on the island is it was a still born girl.” Johnathon said as the alcohol began to slur his speech and break all his inhibitions. He continued “Say, how did you both get out of the asylum? We were sure you'd be there for as long as Jacob could pay the judge and doctors."
Rebecca shifted in her seat uncomfortably with the news of the baby, Caspian was stunned speechless.
"Uh…” Rebecca intervened attempted to shift control of the conversation again “Jacob cannot control everything around him the way he thinks he can. Not forever anyway."
Johnathon shrugged back "Seems like he's doing pretty good for himself so far."
"Johnathon, I would be very careful with the alliances you're forming, Jacob is my son, I know what he's capable of, YOU know what he's capable of. Whatever he's promised you, whatever seed he's sewed in your mind will not bear fruit, I can guarantee that. He's poisoned the patch." Rebecca interjected.
"What makes you think he and I are in any kind of alliance?"
Rebecca cocked her head to one side "You're very transparent. And besides, my spies at the company have filled me in already with everything that's happened since I've been ousted. You may have been given some kind of vanity position, something to place on your door plaque in front of your beautiful office at Lord Publishing that faces the sea, but that's all you'll get if you trust Jacob. A plaque and a view."
"Why are you telling me all this? What makes you think you'll be able to change anything now that you're free and clear of the insane asylum---and to be honest this whole conversation makes me feel like we should all be there." Johnathon scoffed, the alcohol seeping deeper into his blood stream.
Caspian turned to Rebecca and lifted a brow coyly awaiting her answer.
"There are things in this world that I know I cannot change. The things I've done in my past to people I love all to protect our family and our company have resulted in -- well -- where we are today. This is not a pleasurable thing I am admitting to you Johnathon, my mistakes have been catastrophic, I full admit that. But things are about to change. For the better." She said showing him her ring finger with two wedding bands on it.
"I don't understand." Johnathon replied.
"There are loopholes in Jacob's paperwork that cause everything he's done to take full control of the company away from his mother if she is married. He never realized that she would probably find love again, and if that should happen, according to Albert's ironclad will, the company falls into the hands of Rebecca AND her new husband. This statute is within the grace period of when Jacob assumed control meaning, Rebecca had up until just yesterday to be married and reshape the company she owns with her new husband." Caspian said. "A marriage that predates yesterday nulls and voids Jacob's power grab."
"But that was until yesterday?" Johnathon asked, attempting to put the timeline in his mind.
"We were married 3 days ago well within the grace period of nullification." Rebecca said with a smart grin.
Johnathon laughed our loud. The laugh echoed in the Pub causing people to turn and glare at the threesome. Johnathon couldn't stop laughing, he was hysterical. He had kissed Jacob's ring, he had done digging to find something to thwart Jacob all he could but found nothing. He even went ahead and decided to help Jacob and Celeste by pushing for the to gain control with the promise of a position and even went to the far reaches of a cemetery in the middle of the night to literally bury the one person who could blow it all up.
And all of that, all of the pushing and shoving and grabbing for power, the fights with Genevieve, the break up with Genevieve, all of it was for nothing because Rebecca had, once again, the upper hand.
She would always have the upper hand.
"I wish I knew what the joke was." Rebecca said her hysterical step-son Johnathon.
Johnathon wiped tears of laughter from his eyes and begged their pardon "It's not that you said something funny, not at all. But -- well it's just that I knew something like this would happen, I guess deep down inside I knew it was all too good to be true. I just wish there were things I hadn't done."
Rebecca turned to Caspian curious "Like what?" She asked.
Johnathon couldn't be open to her, no yet, not with the uncertainty of what would happen to him if Sebastian could be free. He looked down at the scratches on his hands that had stopped shaking. Rebecca noticed them too. She said nothing.
"There's more." Caspian then said.
"There always is." Johnathon said in a drunk voice. "What is it?"
Rebecca leaned in, her eyes locked with Johnathon's bloodshot eyes. He saw how serious her reaction was. How stern her face had turn, how stone cold her expression was. A chill ran up his spine as the candle from the table flickered with her breath on it.
"The gazebo at Tirymor in the garden." She said softy above the flickering flame.
Johnathon's eyes narrowed "What about it?"
"That's my insurance policy, if Jacob doesn't comply with the handing over MY business back to ME and Caspian, we'll dig up what's under the gazebo."
"What's under the gazebo?"
Rebecca paused again and gave Johnathon a half smirk.
"Jacob's biggest mistake ever."
Jacob brushed it off, still unsure what she was talking about.
"And why are you telling me?" He asked. "Aren't you worried I'll run back to Tirymor and tell Jacob?"
"No, I'm not worried. Because if you truly, and I mean truly, want to be apart of Albert's legacy, you'll align me and leave Jacob to the wolves. He's done enough to his siblings. He's done enough to his nephew and his daughter. He's done enough to me. Albert's company, a company Albert put his heart into and gave his life for. A company built by every head of the Lord family since the day they came to this tiny god forsaken island and made it theirs. It cannot and will not be taken over by a man who kills, lies, imprisons, and destroys his own family members. I promise you Johnathon, you will be safe if you help me do this. Albert's son deserves a better more respectable future that what Jacob has planned for you. I give you, my word." Rebecca said.
Johnathon sat there in his foggy mind. The whisky didn't make his decision making any easier, but he could see that Rebecca was serious. She was sure of herself, and she knew exactly what she was talking about.
Johnathon reach over the table and grabbed her double gold ringed hand and shook it sealing the deal of their new alliance.
And deep in the frozen hard ground under the Gazebo in the icy Tirymor House garden lied the bones of Gaspar DuBois, the man Jacob hired to con Rebecca into believing in the strange and the supernatural to keep her out of the office and in the mansion. The man had been gutted like a fish and found in a pool of his own blood in the dark corner of the mansion's foyer; Sebastian's very first victim, a brutal feed.
Rebecca had never known how Gaspar truly died, but believed Jacob had something to do with it. Now armed with her marriage to Caspian and the insurance policy in form of blackmail of the dead body under the gazebo from over a year ago Rebecca was on track to reassume her life, take back her home.... and most of all, reclaim her empire.
