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| Shattered Love: Evie & Sebatian |
It was a cold winter night. Colder than any of the rest throughout the season. The snow had fallen and packed in about 8 inches on the ground. Several orderlies at Churchill green did their best to clear all the paths around the building but as fast as they could shovel, more snow would suddenly fall.
There was a light blizzard overhead. Ice cold air swirled above the two little islands in Maine's Frenchman's bay. Evie stood staring down to the ground from her hospital room in the asylum. The second time she had been locked in one on false pretenses.
She thought about Jacob and how sinister he was and how he’d turn her one time best friend Celeste into his own Lady MacBeth … these thoughts filled Evie’s mind like her breath fogged the small square of glass in front of her.
She felt devastated. Defeated. The tranquilizer she had been given to calm her had slowly warn off and her mind felt scattered.
There were glimpses of thing that broke though this fog…she slightly remembered the conversation with Rebecca.
She slightly remembered Nik visiting her.
She watched as the flurries of snow came down and pushed out the orderlies.
Evie's mind quickly moved on thoughts of her life and Sebastian and her baby. She missed her baby so much. His little face appearing in her mind. His little cheeks plump and pink dimpling with a smile as he saw hers. A memory again foggy from the medication.
She began to cry, she began to sob. She began to pound the glass with her hand with anger. She was furious now, the anger quickly overtaking her like a hot flame burning through the driest piece of tinder. She was angry that this is where she was sent, that Jacob and Celeste had lied, that they'd convinced a judge by some kind of obvious monetary persuasion that she was not in her right mind to watch over her own child.
Her cries turned to screams. Loud, blood curdling screams that sounded like they came from a banshee screeching in flight through a dark sky. She was broken, saddled with the awful truth of her life now being trapped in an asylum once again under false pretenses.
She knew she was not mad. She knew she was being manipulated and tricked and forced to be where she was under the false and devastating lies told about her. She worried, of course, that she'd never leave. She worried that her new friend Jacqueline was somehow involved in all of it. She felt betrayed on every front.
Her friend. Her supposed in-laws. Everything made her furious.
Evie again released a scream so loud that her vocal cords felt as if they were about to rip from her throat. She felt as if she were a dragon screaming out her frustrations instead of a raging fire.
Evie’s pain was so intense; it was a feeling of being alive without being able to enjoy it in any capacity. Especially not the ability like other young mothers to be near her beautiful baby boy…to touch him, to kiss his little face, to hear his little coos, hold him while he slept, to nurse him, to tickle is tiny toes. It was all too much to bear.
In her fury, Evie turned and noticed a side table with a small white porcelain vase sitting on it with the whitest winter roses she had ever seen. She slowly walked over, sniffling and rubbing her red and puffy eyes; her face swollen from crying and grabbed the porcelain vase filled with the roses and threw it across her hospital room and watched it crash up against the white wall and shattered all over the equally as white floor into what seemed like a thousand pieces.
Evie fell to her knees, breathing heavily as Nik, her loving brother and attending doctor quickly rushed in with a nurse.
"My god, Evie, please get up, please!" Nik said, falling to her side and hugging her tightly.
"Should I get anything for her doctor?" The nurse asked.
"I didn't want to use a sedative, but we may have to. Please get her something to help her rest." Nik ordered reluctantly.
“Yes Doctor.”
"No, Nik, please. It makes me sleep too long. I, I lose time. I lose memory." Evie said out of breath from the stress of the moments.
"Evie, let's move you to the bed and off the floor. There’s glass everywhere.” Nik said, helping is distraught sister up. "Nurse." Nik added, motioning for the nurse to indeed bring the medication, she nodded.
"I keep going over and over in my mind that my baby needs me, Nikky. I need to get back to him. What am I going to do? How am I going to get out of here?" She asked, now sitting on her bed.
"Lie back…listen to me, I need you to try your best and rest and relax. I have a plan, do you hear me? I have a plan but it's not going to move fast and if you continue to act out like this I don't know if I’ll be able to do this. They may put you somewhere away from me, and if that happens the plan will be off and I won't be able to get you out." Nik explained.
"You think you can? But how? What do you mean? What's your plan?" She replied frantically with hope.
"The details aren't for you to know about just yet. You'll just have to trust me, Evie. Do you trust me?" Nik asked, squeezing her hand.
Evie, still puffy from her breakdown and her voice hoarse from her screaming squeezed out a very scratchy "Yes."
Nik smirked, hoping she was serious, as he held her hand.
**
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| Jacqueline’s shapeshifting into Evie’s nurse |
The nurse down the hall and in a medication room that had everything charted and marked down in small injectable jars for the right medication for anyone in the hospital was familiar with the tranquilizer that Evie was often given to rest. She searched quickly for the two clear bottled that prescribed to Evie.
The nurse finally found the vials and grabbed them and when she turned to leave she screamed in shock when she saw Jacqueline Gray suddenly appear in front of her as she walked through the wall and lunged at her.
Without saying a single word Jacqueline's lunge merged their two bodies together. The jolt of powerful energy made the nurse release the two jars of medication from her hand but just before they could fall and shatter to the ground, the now possessed nurse grabbed them only centimeters from hitting the white tiled floor.
Jacqueline, now inside the nurse, smiled sinisterly at her close call. Then she passed a metal rack of medications with long metal bars that made up its shelves, the reflection showing back in the metal bars was that of Jacqueline in the nurse's outfit -- showing the woman possessing the nurse.
Jacqueline had come once again to the hospital to be sure Evie would remain where she was, locked in Churchill Green for as long as possible away from the loving eyes of Sebastian that man they both were in love with.
Jacqueline, as the nurse, then filled the two syringes with the medication and quickly went back to Evie's hospital room.
**
"Doctor." Jacqueline said as the nurse. "I have the medication."
"Thank you, could you please administer the medication to her, I have a few patients to see. I'll come back and check on her later." Nik instructed the nurse.
"Of course." The nurse replied.
Nik left the room, Jacqueline stood there watching Evie squirm in her bed wishing the nurse wouldn't give her any medication, but she knew she had to rest. She knew that she had to trust her brother and do what she had to do to then hopefully get of out the asylum before any more lasting trauma occurred to her psyche.
"Just relax." Jacqueline said in the nurse's voice.
Evie gulped and rolled up her sleeve then turned her head towards the window so she wouldn't see the needle going into her arm.
"This is all to keep you safe Evangeline, for you to stay here and be safe is all this hospital wants. If you cooperate things won't be so bad here. You can stay as long as you like. Safe. Away from all the terrible things at Tirymor." Jacqueline said in the nurse's voice just before the needle was going to go into Evie's arm.
Evie did not say a word, she held her breath and closed her eyes.
But then... a familiar scent hit her nose. The scent of Jacqueline's ghostly perfume floated all around her as the nurse approached.
Evie opened her eyes and in the reflection of the glass of the window in front of her she saw Jacqueline Gray in the nurse's outfit. Evie gasped and turned back to look at the nurse. then she turned to the glass and saw Jacqueline. Evie screamed seeing that Jacqueline was somehow in the room but wasn't. She jumped out of the bed and pushed the nurse aside and went and stood on the other side of the room.
"Why, why do you look like that?" Evie said, her breathing heavy and deep.
"What do you mean?" The nurse said in a devilishly and sinister voice as she slowly walked towards Evie
"YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN!!!!" Evie screamed.
"Evie, calm down. There's nothing to worry about. Just relax and let me give you this medication to help you sleep. You'll feel better once you sleep."
"STOP RIGHT THERE! Stay back... do not come close to me, I swear to God I will scream!" Evie said quickly reaching down and grabbing a shard of the vase and sticking it out in front of her as protection.
"You don't want to do anything that'll make people think you're crazy do you Evie? I think you're already in enough trouble as it is." Jacqueline said still closing in on Evie.
"Jacqueline, why are you doing this? What do you look like this? What is going on?" Evie asked, her heart beating faster and faster.
"Evangeline, I think you're losing your mind." Jacqueline said in the Nurse's voice. "You see something that's not here. You see something that isn't real. Who is Jacqueline?"
"You... you're doing all of this aren't you? It's been you this whole time making me feel like I'm seeing Matthew. Why? Why are you doing this to me? WHY?" Evie said sticking out her arm with the vase shard further out to keep the possessed nurse away.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Jacqueline said with a very sinister voice.
Evie began to feel cornered. The witch was coming closer and closer, the needle ready to pierce her skin to make her sleep and then, god only knew what Jacqueline's plan would be. Evie, for that matter did not want to allow herself to be under any kind of medication administered by someone clearly manipulating her life through tainted dreams, nightmares and now her nurse's body.
Evie took a change and lunged at the nurse with the shape piece of the porcelain. The nurse lifted her hand up and suddenly a ball of energy swirling like a fire ball leapt from the her palm and into Evie's body instantly dropping Evie to the ground. The shard of vase fell from Evie's hand and slid across the white tiled floor.
Jacqueline knew now she had no choice. Evie would tell everyone what she saw. She knew that even the faintest memory could spell disaster for her if she were to be exposed. Mary would know for sure that Evie was telling the truth, should Mary even hear of this.
Evie began to moan as she was slowly coming out of the shock rom Jacqueline's energy burst. Still in the nurse's body, Jacqueline decided to end this battle there and now.
"Evie, you're going to go to sleep now. I'm going to make you sleep."
Jacqueline grabbed the syringe and placed it in Evie's arm. She injected her with the medicine into her arm and watched as Evie's eyes slowly began to go into REM sleep. But that wasn't enough. She knew Evie would wake up, she knew Evie would at some point come to and tell everyone the truth and even as farfetched as the truth was, someone would believe her, someone would trust Evie's story and investigate and expose Jacqueline.
That was her fear.
That was her worry.
Jacqueline, in the nurse's body, closed her eyes and raised both hands over Evie's body and raised her from the ground magically moving Evie's body back on to the bed. Evie's hospital gown swayed in the air as she floated back and carefully down on to the bed as if she had never gotten out.
Then a spell:
"Sleep here, girl, and raise you not
All the faces you forgot
No one shall be privy to your voice
This is the spell of my choice
Sleep deep here, move you wont
No one sees you, no they don't
From now until the end of time
Listen to my spell in rhyme."
Evie fell into a deep sleep. The deepest sleep ever.
So deep her heart rate slowed. One beat. One beat. One beat.
Nik then entered back in the room and saw the nurse standing next to his sister as Evie's face looked pale and cold.
"What? What's happened?" He asked.
"I gave her the medication and she fell into a sleep, just like you wanted." Jacqueline said.
Nik saw that something wasn't right. He went over to his sister. He checked her pulse. He looked over and saw the two vials of medicine.
"How much did you give her? Not both of those did you?" He asked.
Jacqueline nodded yes.
"NO! THAT'S TOO MUCH!" Nik screamed. "Evie? Evie wake up. Wake up Evie!! EVIE!!!"
He checked her pulse on her wrist. On her neck. He listened to her heart.
There was nothing.
"No. NO!!! Evie!!! EVIE WAKE UP!!!" Nik shouted.
But to his eyes, to everyone's eyes. She was dead. Evie was dead.
Behind his back, Jacqueline in the nurse's body smiled.
Nik was in shock and began to sob over her body. His face was buried in on her stomach has he cried for his sister.
But things were not as they seemed.
In her mind, Evie was alive. She could hear everything. She only appeared dead. She only looked as if the medication had taken her life, the spell was a macabre tick by Jacqueline to take away the one person that would surely destroy Jacqueline's life, the life she had struggled to gain again. The love she had so wanted and suddenly found when she and Sebastian met in Boston.
Jacqueline could not allow Evie to expose her. She could not allow Evie to take Sebastian back, even though that was only a strange paranoid thought and nothing something Evie had ever even entertained.
But The witch was desperate.
"Nikky... Nikky... Im not dead. Can you hear me? CAN YOU HEAR ME?" Evie said in her mind.
"He can't year you Evie. No one can. No one ever will. This is what is going to be what the rest of your existence will be. To hear the world around you as you lay in a grave. I've given you this gift so that when your son grows and visits you at your grave you'll at least be able to hear them above ground. I hope you'll be happy." Jacqueline said telepathically to Evie in her mind.
"YOU EVIL, VIAL WOMAN!!!! RELEASE ME!!! I'M NOT DEAD! I'M NOT DEAD! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS????" Evie screamed back in her mind to Jacqueline.
"Because --- If you take what is mine, I'll have nothing ever again. Goodbye my friend. Rest in peace." Jacqueline said coldly as she slowly walked over to Nik who was still sobbing on his sister's supposed dead body.
"GET AWAY FROM ME!" He screamed at the nurse.
Jacqueline slowly left the room and then walked back into the medication room where she separated from the nurse who saw and heard everything while under Jacqueline's control.
Jacqueline now out in her own body faced the nurse who was petrified in her place. Then again, Jacqueline did the unthinkable and moved a finger across from her left side to her right side and the nurse chocked there standing and fell to the floor. Dying.
Jacqueline then vanished from the hospital leaving nothing but horror in her wake.
****
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| Lear introduces The Lords to Coraline Tyler |
The next day, a blustery cold frost scarred the windows at Tirymor House. Icicles hung from the mansions steeples and parapets making the house look like a freshly frosted white birthday cake.
In the green drawing room on the first floor, the hearth burned brightly. Jacob and Celeste were looking over the forms they had a court approve to take over Gabriel's guardianship and with it total control of his Lord family inheritance.
Celeste had been uneasy about the decision since her confrontation with Evie. The two friends had grown more and more contentious in their relationship, for obvious reasons. It had not been an easy choice for Celeste but for her to feel secure in her position as the new mistress of Tirymor, she knew she had to remove anyone in her way.
Evie was in her way. And Gabriel was key too to Celeste's own son Fabian's success.
"Don't look so down, my love. This is for the best." Jacob reminded her.
"I can't help but feel like I've given into some kind of dark force. I don't know if we did the right thing." Celeste admitted.
"Why? Because Evie was your friend? She is still your friend. She's just now less powerful than you. Imagine if she were still here doting after her child that held a higher standing than Fabian? What would you do then, if say, my mother died? You know very well that Sebastian's heirs held a much higher place here in the family than me and my own. I don't want to repeat myself, my love, but I will one more time....this was the right move." Jacob said to Celeste who only furrowed her brow.
"Sir?" the head maid Jane O'Donnell said, entering in from the brightly sunlit hall. Celeste and Jacob turned to the entrance. "Mr. Lockwood is here to pick up the paperwork and he's brought someone with him." She added.
"Please, send him in." Jacob ordered.
"Jacob, Celeste, hello." Lear said, as Jacob and Celeste returned the gesture. He entered the room with a young woman who looked around the in awe of the majesty of the green drawing room. Her eyes darted back and forth as if she were in a museum, filled with the finest pieces of art and furniture the world had to offer, but right there in the Lord family home.
Tucked under the woman's arm was a leather-bound folder of papers. The brown of the leather matched perfectly with the dark blue of her dress that went to the floor and crumped like paper at her feet.
"I assume you're here for these." Jacob said, handing Lear the guardianship papers signed for the judge.
"Yes, thank you. Also I'd like for you to meet Miss Coraline Tyler. Coraline is a very gifted teacher who I think would be wonderful to be Gabriel's new tutor. She's been trained on a language that can help Gabriel learn how to communicate without speech. As he grows he'll need someone like Coraline by his side." Lear suggested.
"It's a pleasure to meet you Miss Tyler, but Gabriel is quite little. Don't you think it's too soon for teachings?" Celeste wondered.
"Well it's actually never too soon, please call me Cory." The teacher said. "You see our minds begin learning quite early, of course how what I would begin to do is learn more about Gabriel and customize lessons just for him as he grows. It would obviously start off only a few hours a day and expand as he grew." Cory added.
"And you just decided to seek her out Lear?" Celeste wondered, feeling as if the family lawyer overstepped his position.
"I know what it looks like, trust me, but I'm paid to think two steps ahead of anything that might come along and if a judge should have a look at all of this and decided what we've done here is perhaps not in the best interest of the child, at least having Miss.Tyler on the payroll showing that you are taking everything into consideration for Gabriel's hearing loss and learning, it might soften any judicial blow."
"He has a point." Jacob said. "That's what family is for." He added reminding the room Lear was his material cousin.
"Very well, but if its all the same to you, I'd like to maybe start next week. With Evie's time at Churchill Green just starting this week, I want Gabriel to have time to adjust with out his mother and time for me." The now mother of two said.
"Oh! Absolutely, I agree." Cory said.
"May I?" Jacob asked reaching for Cory's leather folder realizing it had all her credentials.
She smiled and passed the folder to him. He quickly glossed over the paperwork and seemed happy with who she was, what she could do, and most of all how it good it would look on him and Celeste to have her on board for the baby.
"And you've been to court before? I mean, you've had to deal with situations like ours?" Jacob asked her. "That's important because you may be asked to speak to a judge should he need to know how we are doing as parents for the little boy."
"I have not, but I don't see that being an issue for me if I need to." Cory replied.
"Jacob I'm sure things will be fine as soon as we file these." Lear added holding up his papers. "With Sebastian dead and Evie out in an asylum, we've covered all bases. As far as the law is concerned you two are the legal gradians of Gabriel Jordan Lord. Final." Lear stated/.
Celeste turned and shot Jacob a look. They both knew that Sebastian wasn't dead and had yet to hear of the news from the night before that Evie had succumb to some strange mysterious tragedy at Churchill Green. She worried, of course, that everything would come crashing down on them like a house of cards that crumbled in the wake of some slap of a hand.
Celeste felt like they were in a fragile state, frail to the touch. The whole situation was as thin as the ice hanging on the building outside because Celeste was smart enough to know that nothing in Welshport lasted forever. Nothing stayed the same for long, and Sebastian could rear his monstrous head and destroy everything even if Evie remained at the Asylum.
"Lear, my boy, we trust you. Thank you again for all you've done." Jacob said brushing off Celeste's worried glance.
"I'll get these to the judge as today to be filed." Lear said.
"And please, let me know as soon as you'd like me to begin with the baby." Cory added.
Celeste smiled and nodded, and Jane returned to escort the two out of the mansion but not before Cory turned back around and looked at the couple, Jacob and Celeste, who huddled together by the giant piano by the window.
The three made eye contact, which made Cory feel uneasy as if she were watching them discuss her with her still in the room. She quickly turned her head and followed Jane and Lear out.
As the two walked out of the room, in walked Johnathon who was, as usual, listening to the conversation as it went on.
"Enjoying the halls little brother? That's where I usually find you, listening in, very carefully." Jacob said.
Celeste rolled her eyes at Jacob "Hi Johnny."
"What's all this?" Johnathon asked, sorting through Cory's paperwork.
"Just a few things that we're looking into for Gabriel. Coraline Tyler is a teacher that helps the hearing impaired. We're thinking of hiring her to help us with his needs." Celeste explained.
"Right, now that you're his parents." Johnathon said lifting a brow.
Celeste sighed, "You don't understand the whole situation, Johnny, you should know better than to jump to conclusions."
"Conclusions? How can I conclude anything when everything is being hidden from me anyway? I want to know why Ive been held back at the company. I've been doing everything I can to get more involved like you said I could," Johnathon began turning to Jacob "but every time I step into some off or some sort of meeting where I think I can be of service the room falls silent and everyone turns to you. I hear things all around about how you're such a danger to your own family and now, now I see that everyone that's ever been here close to you has either died mysteriously, vanished or sent up to an asylum. So? What's it going to be for me? Death? Mysteriously vanish? Are you going to drive me insane and take whats mine? Go on, tell me!" Johnathon said, suprising Jacob with this out of the blue rant.
"I'll ask you to take down your voice." Jacob replied coldly.
"Johnny..." Celeste began to speak but was quickly hushed by her husband.
"I want to know what the hell you want from me? Hmm? We've brought you into this house. You've become part of the family; you're in fact related so closely to the two of us being Celeste and my half-brother that I think you'd feel safe in our presence, and yet you let gossip about what may or may not have happened in the past to dictate what you do at the office. You're imagining everything Johnathon, no one is hiding anything from you." Jacob said.
"What I want? I want what's been held back from me all these years. I want to be treated like the son of Albert Lord that I am. I am tired, damn it, tired of being treated like a secret. Hidden. Forgotten. It's over. Treat me the way you would want to be treated as a Lord." Johnathon replied.
Jacob shrugged. "Fine."
"Fine?" Johnathon said.
"Fine." Jacob repeated unbothered. "I don't have anything against you Johnathon, you have Celeste to thank for that. She loves you, she's known you all her life and I'm not threatened by you. Not like you think I am or what you think other's have had to deal with before you. Keep your mind at ease, Celeste, your dear sister is what's saved you. You'll get more to do at the office. I promise."
Johnathon looked at Celeste, she stood there breathing hard worried about her brother's future and both Jacob and Johnathon bunting heads. But Jacob did truly love Celeste, he would never hurt Johnathon unprovoked.
"And Sebastian?" Johnathon said suddenly, surprising them all.
"What? What do you mean?" Celeste wondered.
"He's still lurking in the shadows. I heard Lear Lockwood, your lawyer, say he was dead. They don't know, do they? Do you really feel safe with that --- monster --- hunting this island. Searching for his child? For Evie? I've already seen his strength and he's not at all anything I want to run into again."
Jacob pursed his lips. "I'm afraid my new baby brother is right."
The fire crackled heating Jacob as he sat back down closer to the red flames of the hearth. He knew that Sebatian was a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode and when he discovered his child was now the ward of Jacob and Celeste all hell would break loose.
"Neutralize him." Johnathon said as Celeste gasped.
"Johny, please."
"He's right again." Jacob added. "I tried and failed, but this Sebastian is no longer the nephew I knew. He's dangerous. Too dangerous."
"What do you think we should do?" Johnathon wondered out loud.
"Hasn't he suffered enough? I mean my god, look at what he is and what he's become? We want to make things worse for him?" Celeste said.
"Worse? He can't get any lower than he is, darling." Jacob said. "This might be putting him out of his misery."
"I'll take care of it. I can do it." Johnaton suddenly replied.
"What?!?" Celeste shouted, shocked to see her brother's newest side so cold and cutthroat, more like a Lord every day.
"He's in my way too. He's in all our way. If he isn't removed from, the way I think he should be, he'll only make things much worse. I'll do what I have to do to take care of my family too. And if that helps me surge in my position at the company and in this family then so be it."
Celeste stood up, she walked over to her brother and grabbed his hand. She looked into his dark brown eyes, they were still the kind eyes she grew up with but worried they were getting darker, more silent. Crueler. She loved him so much. They had been through things that no one had ever known. She wanted him to be happy, she wanted him to succeed in his life where ever he wanted to, but this, the idea of killing Sebastian once and for all to get himself more power seemed sinister. The words her hears heard were strange coming from his mouth.
"Think about what you're saying." Celeste told him in a soft voice. "Jacob already said, you're safe from him. I have secured that for you."
"It has to be done." Johnathon told his sister Celeste.
"But by you?"
"It has to be done." Johnathon repeated to Celeste.
Celeste lifted a brow and stared at him in a way he had never seen before. “Johnny if you do this, if you truly decide on taking the on— there’s no going back. This is what we will expect of you. I want you to be sure you know what you’re getting into.” She warned.
Johnathon smiled at her attempt to shake him down “I’m not afraid of dark shadows, sister.”
“Maybe you should be.” She warned again quietly to herself as Jacob then chimed in.
"Very well! The decision is made. Take care of our vampire nephew of ours as fast as you can, and I guarantee you control of the New York Caller. Complete editorial control of our most popular New York magazine under our house. It'll be yours. All of it."
"Deal."
And with that, there was silence in the room with the exception of the cracking fire in the hearth. Jacob had yet again set his crosshairs on Sebastian. The nephew he’d always been jealous of, the son of his missing brother who he has also always seen as his biggest threat.
The vampire's days, or nights rather, were numbered. The clock ticking away his deathly world into the oblivion. This moment of truth: when it would happen and how it would happen would change the Lord family forever.
****
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| Sebastian is stalked outside of Goode cabin |
As night rolled in with a frozen wind from the east bring snow that touched stuck to any surface exposed, the glowing lights within the cottage on Goode Island was an inviting beacon to anyone who'd come across it.
The trees of the thick woods that surrounded the lonesome cottage, were like long fingers reaching up to the black and gray sky. The winded pushed them back and forth as if they were hands waving in a small little boat that made the treacherous cold trek across the narrow bridge of water that separated Welshport Island from Goode Island.
But the passenger tying his boat to the post at the tiny Goode Island dock, was not alone. There was another brave person who travelled across the narrow thrashing waters of the straight between the islands too, hiding in the snow, a shadowy figure watched as this new person carefully made their way towards Mary and Filipe's cottage.
The second person, a man, felt the eyes of the first person watching. He could also feel that first's person's presence as he walked through the slush of the cold night snow in the air that'd freeze any skin it touched. He heard the howling of wayward wolves in the distance. He turned around quickly to face this mysterious watcher but there was no one there. Not a person. Not a wolf. Just the face of winter starting back.
The person approached the door of the cottage. No answer at first, but the glowing fire showed that The Braga family; Filipe, Mary and their new boy Caleb, were home being warmed by the fire in the hearth.
The person knocked again, and this time Mary opened the door and was shocked to see her cousin Sebatian standing on the other side. His face pale and cold as the snow falling from the dark sky above them.
"My god! Sebastian, what are you doing here??" She asked grabbing his arm and yanking him into the warm house.
On the other side of the room Filip made himself look bigger by putting out his chest, standing firm in his place in front of the baby Caleb's crib.
"You shouldn't be here." Filipe growled.
Outside, a shadowy figure, totally covered in wools and knits with even their face covered for protection from the cold, watched carefully in the window undetected.
"I had to see you, both of you. I needed to come and I needed to say what I had to say." Sebatian said, his voice soft and kind like the Sebastian both Mary and Filipe remembered.
"You've already said enough, Sebastian. You've done enough too. Everything you have done or have created, has led to this moment in time and at this point there just isn't a place for you here." Filipe said
"Stop it." Mary replied to her partner. "Sebastian, I don't want you to feel unwelcome especially after all you've been through, after what we've all been through but perhaps tonight was not the best night to come here. We need time to process everything in our lives without you... here."
"But that's why I came," Sebastian began "you can't move on with your lives after Louise's death if I didn't come here and apologize for my part in it, because after all I did bring Jacqueline here."
"We needed her." Mary replied.
Filipe rolled his eyes, unaffected by Sebastian's very late mea culpa.
"She should have never hurt you Mary. I know that there's nothing I can do to bring back Louise and change any of it but I had to come here as soon as I felt the time was right to tell you that. And... to tell you, that this will be the last time you see me."
"What do you mean?" Filipe asked.
"I mean that I'll remain where I am at Lockwood Thicket and stay off Goode Island forever. You deserve peace and...." Just before Sebastian could finish his sentence the baby stirred in the crib that Filipe was hiding.
Sebastian's eyes narrowed, confused as to why they had a baby in their house when Louise had passed away after the physical atlercation between Mary and Jacqueline.
"A baby?" Sebastian said under his breath. "What is this?" He asked louder.
"Don't come any closer!" Filipe said to the vampire with his arm stretched out.
"I was told Louise died! My god, did you bring her back Mary? Did you make your child like me to have her back??? How could you do that? How could you make a child suffer like I am suffering??" Sebastian shouted.
"Sebastian! STOP!" Mary yelled. "Calm yourself. This child is not Louise, I would ever do to her what my mother did to you. Nothing would ever make me repeat that mistake on anyone. My sweet Louise has gone to heaven and there she will stay because that is what was her godawful fait. This child, is a boy. An orphan that needed a home and parents. We brought him in because we were parents without a child. The fit was perfect timing."
"A boy?" Sebastian repeated. Suddenly the antenna went up in his mind and he slowly walked over to the baby's crip where Filipe stood like a great wall as if to say "get through me if you dare". A more cooler headed Mary shot Filipe a look showing that she trusted Sebastian in this moment. Dangerous as he was, there in their house he was not going to hurt baby Caleb.
Filipe stood aside and Sebastian looked into the crib. At first he was petrified that somehow it would have been his own son Gabriel in the crib, taken and used as some kind of carrot to dangle over Sebastian's vampire heart. His paranoia was always on red-alert.
But the baby, cute with pink cheeks and a dusting of light brown thin hair with 10 chubby fingers and 10 chubby toes was not Gabriel, Sebastian could instantly see this baby was new. Younger by many months but just as sweet as he slept.
"What is he called?" Sebastian asked.
"Caleb." Mary said softly.
The shadowy figure in the cold outside watching every move Sebastian made from the window, shifted in the dark carefully observing, leaving mental notes in their mind of Sebastian. His movements. His body. His unnatural sense of being and most of all Filipe's clear adgitation towards him.
Back inside, Sebastian at the baby and reached in, Filipe jolted but stopped himself when baby Caleb grabbed Sebastian's finger and squeezed.
"Congratulations." Sebatian said turning back to Mary and Filipe as the baby still held on. "You're all very lucky to have each other. If Only Gabriel and I...." and as Sebastian's voice trailed off, a warm feeling came from his finger. The strange warmth was one that he had not felt on his own flesh since the day he turned into the creature of night.
He looked down ad the baby was still holding his finger but in Sebastian's mind a bright light sparked and he could see only the color red, vibrant and blood-like. He could hear screams of torture. Anger. Fire flickering, raging with heat. Sebastian's eyes rolled to the back of this head as the baby held on to this finger. The fire in the heart raged as the two connected.
Mary began to panic. "What is this? What's going on? Sebastian? Sebastian let go! Let the baby go!"
"It's ... it's Caleb that is holding on." Filipe said.
"Separate them!!!" Mary screeched.
Filipe quickly leaped into action and pulled Sebastian's finger from the baby's tight little grasp. Sebastian fell backwards on to the hardwood floor that had a red and yellow Persian rug from one side of the wall to the other.
Mary rushed over to the baby as Filipe checked on Sebastian.
"Sebastian? Sebastian?" Filipe said slapping the vampire's face.
Mary picked up the baby and cuddled him in her arms as Filipe helped Sebastian up.
"Are you ok?" She asked her cousin.
"Something ... something came to me when he touched me. It was like he showed me something."
Filipe sat Sebastian down on the sofa. "What do you mean 'he showed you something.'"
"A vision."
Mary shook her head. "No, it couldn't have come from Caleb. He's just a baby. There's no way! What did you see?"
Sebastian closed his eyes and remembered the fire. The heat. The red color of blood everywhere. He then recalled that just before Filipe separated them, he saw a face. He saw a house. It was a split second, but it was clear as he could recall even in that short time.
"What? What did you see?" Mary asked, her heart pounding in her chest, her bright blond hair sparking like gold threads in the light of the fire.
"Evie. I saw Evie. And I saw blood and fire. And I saw Tirymor. I have to go, I have to go there!!" Sebastian said leaping to his feet and rushing towards the door and the frozen world outside.
His quick movement forced the person watching to hide deeper in the dark shadows of the winter night.
"Where are you going??" Mary said as Sebastian pulled open the door, the cold wind blew in. Snow dusted the entrance of the small cottage and Sebastian turned back to his cousin and Filipe and only said "Back Tirymor."
As Sebastian quickly made his way out in the snow back to his little boat where he'd cross the small body of water once again back to Welshport Island to search for Evie, the person in the shadows too lurked about.
This was a woman. A woman whose instincts had pushed her beyond her more fearful will to come all the way from the comfort of her own home on Welshport Island to check on the Braga family and she certainly got more than she bargained for. She lowered the hood of the thick wool clock she had been wearing slightly, only enough to peek out and watch Sebastian make his treacherous journey across the water and back to Welshport. The light the moon, a greying blue, spilled out from behind some of the winter clouds that covered the sky and had finally stopped expelling snow to reach the cold face of Fatima Braga, Filipe's estranged aunt and fortune teller who had been secretly watching his house for days and days since the baby had moved in.
She knew now that the baby indeed had some sort of power, some sort of mystically connection that became even more activate once he touched Sebastian's hand.
Sebastian, Fatima wondered, was what was even more peculiar. He was a mystery she feared to unlock but she knew she had to. How was this man she knew of by name only alive? How? She knew his story from the papers. She heard the rumors. She knew what was said all around town for almost 3 years now that the heir to the Lord family fortune.... was dead.
Yet... there he was. In front of her. Breathing, a face as hard and as cold as stone, but breathing.
Fatima knew now even darker creatures than those she could ever imagine were in town.
This frightening realization made her sure, that she had to do what she had to do.
Destroy Sebastian Lord for everyone's sake.
****
 |
| Surprise visitors at St. Thomas’s Church |
As the sun lifted over the ice-covered hills and snow-topped roofs of the village, Father Donavon Ryan and two nuns from the small local abbey carefully walked along the pews of St. Catherine's church replacing the tiny bibles in the back cubbies for that evening's mass.
As they did their morning chores, the Chruch door opened, and in walked a refreshed looking Rebecca Lockwood-Lord in thick robes to shield her from the winter and Caspian Casador on a crutch, with healed scars and dressed back in a perfect black suit.
The nuns gasped and froze in place realizing who they were.
Donavon stepped forward down the center of the church's isle in his own thick winter black robe. He was shocked to see Caspian, the man he had expelled the demon from and watched burn in his bed before sending him off in secret to Churchill Green.
"What is the meaning of this?" Father Ryan asked blocking the nuns from the strange view of Rebecca and Caspian.
Caspian turned his eyes down to the ground.
"There's no need for any kind of alarm sounding, Father. This isn't what you may think it is." Rebecca said holding tight to Caspian.
"Mrs. Lord, what's going on? What are you two doing out of the hospital?"
Rebecca smiled slyly. "I'm healed father."
Donavon furrowed his brown unconvinced.
"Father, there are a lot of things in this world that we need protection from and I think you'd agree that our souls are top on that list. Over the course of this past year and a half Caspian and I have been on this journey together and thanks to you, he's been saved from something no human could ever come back from." She explained.
"I'm not who I was Father." Caspian added. "Your help, the exorcism worked. I promise you. I wouldn't be able to step foot in this room, in his holy place, if I were not being true to myself and to what you did for me."
It was true, Father Ryan realized, that if Caspian still was filled the dark spirit that inhabited him he wouldn't have been able to pass through the doors of St. Catherine's. The question was now, what on earth were they doing there the church so early in the morning.
"I am pleased of that Mr. Casador. I truly am, but I still don't know what I can do for you now, unless you're looking to be confessed. That I can do, happily." Father Ryan replied.
"We would appreciate that, Father." Caspian answered.
"And that's it? Confession?"
Rebecca looked at Caspian and Caspian at her. She smirked again, like a cat that ate the canary.
"There's more." She said.
The nuns looked at each other worried of what was to come from the expelled matriarch of the Lord family.
"And that is?" Father Ryan wondered.
"My son Jacob has been working overtime in making sure that I am kept out of our family's business. I realize that what I did has caused incredible distress among my family members, I do not deny that what I did to my sweet Great-Grandson was ... inconceivable. It was horrible. It was the work of something evil, and I will forever live with that on my conscious. But Jacob, he's doing something just as underhanded and cruel, and I need to stop him." Rebecca explained.
"What have I do to with your family's dealings? I'm can only offer you spiritual guidance and help in that realm, Mrs. Lord, nothing else." Ryan explained.
"Rebecca..." Caspian said. "Tell him."
Rebecca nodded her head "Father, that's why we are here. Jacob has already ripped the company out from under me and he's done so using our family's lawyer, my own nephew's Lear's legal brilliance, and money. He's paid people off to erase me from the company's control, but he's missed one very important loophole in my late Husband's will that will thwart all of Jacob's dealings."
"Again, I don't know how I can help either of you." Ryan said frustrated with Rebecca's caginess.
"My husband's will, which should be still enforced because I am still alive, instructs that if something should happen to me, the company should be placed in the control of my next of kin, which are my sons and heirs. Unless I am married. Then it passes to my husband."
Donavon stood there in the center of the church's isle his stomach felt sick. His eyes darted back and forth from Rebecca to Caspian and from Caspian to Rebecca. They were serious. They were really asking him to do it.
"Marry us." Caspian said finally.
Donavon felt the words coming up from his stomach and choke in his throat. Rebecca was truly wanting to marry Caspian, the man who was once possessed by the devil, who had come to control her and Aurora's mind, who had raped Aurora even, and she wanted to marry that same man all to derail Jacob's usurping of her control of the family company.
"This... this is am abomination, Rebecca! How can you ask me to do this? Do you even love him? You want me to marry you just so that you can twist it in the face of your son? I can't do that! This is a house of god, where I bind people to his love with their love. You're asking me to ...to... make a fraudulent statement in the house of god! At that alter right there? I can't. I WONT!" Father Ryan shouted as the nuns huddled togehter with their hands covering their mouths.
"Donavon, I understand how shocking it seems knowing what you saw of me before." Caspian began. "But I sincerely want to help Rebecca this way. She deserves to have what she had before I came into the picture and this is truly the only way we can do it. And we do not have much time. The paper work has most likely already arrived with the bribed judge and we only have today to be declared married. I destroyed many lives when I was ... what I was... this is me trying to fix what I did."
"By marriage???? This is absurd! Do you even love her?" Donavon asked in a voice that echoed in the rafters of the beautiful St. Catherine's.
Caspian didn't even take a second to answer and looked at Rebecca and said yes.
"I do. I do love her."
Rebecca pulled close into Caspian's arm that she was still holding and cuddled him close.
Donavon stood there in complete shock, but Rebecca continued to beg. The priest turned to the nuns who shot each other looks and shrugged back at the priest.
"I.... I ..." Donavon answered. "I will marry you." He said reluctantly.
"Oh Thank you Donavon. Thank you!!" Rebecca answered.
The three then walked up to the alter. Four large candles, two on each side, were lit to allow the light of the holy spirit to enter the room symbolically. The two nuns were asked to stand as witnesses and Donavon put on his ceremonial robes.
The whole time, as he prepared to marry the two, his face showed concern and confusion. But in his heart he knew that he could not deny two people who, oddly, seemed to be in love. For Real.
There was no shortage of doubt in Donavon's mind about Caspian. He wasn't sure what to believe, but the fact he stepped foot in the church and right before the ceremony began, crossed himself with holy water was proof that he was truly no longer possessed.
But the stain of Caspian's past still lingered, and Donavon was a reluctant cohort of Rebecca's last-ditch effort to take back what was hers.
Now in his robes, and facing the new couple, Father Donavon Ryan began the ceremony of marriage between Rebecca Lockwood-Lord and Caspian Casador.
The entire thing happened in a flash, but took about 30 minutes. Donavon blessed the two, as he would with any couple who loved each other and came to him for marriage. He rained holy water over them again with a sparkling silver aspergillum and watched Caspian like a hawk for any signs of evil.
There were none.
Finally, at the very last moment under the eyes of their lord, the nuns and Father Ryan, Caspian kissed his new bride.
They stared at each other in the bright light of day in the glow of the four large candles. He kissed her again and turned to Donavon and smiled his scared face as best he could. Caspian reached for Donavon's hands and took them into his, cupped them tightly and shook them.
"Thank you for saving me....again." Caspian said.
Then, together as a man and wife, Rebecca and Caspian vanished into town to make it known of what they had done leaving Father Ryan and the two nuns stunned.
"Father," one nun said. "What have we done?"
Donavon turned to her and patted her back "God only knows Sister Mary Ruth. God only knows."
****
 |
| Charlotte & Morgan escape Welshport |
That afternoon, the sun shot through the sky finally bringing some warmth to the tiny island slightly melting the winter frost. The streets were filled with dark slush of snow and dirt that had been pushed off to the margins of the cobble stone streets. The center fountain of Main street had been shut off and the large marble bowl had filled with the slush of the winter blizzared from the night before.
Walking through the sluggishly, sleepy streets of the village, were two children carrying large suitcases and headed for the docks near the edge of the village.
At a glance, the boy and the girl seemed to be strangers, looking for their way out of town, but close up these were deliberate disguised Charlotte and Morgan who had snuck out of Tirymor House freeing themselves of Jacob's iron clutches.
For his part, Jacob had seemingly washed his hands of his elder child Charlotte who had rebelled against his rule, Morgan though wouldn't let his best friend travel alone. Together the two wanted to be free of the echoing lonely halls of the mansion they saw as some sort of prison where the adults were constantly at each other's throats and the children were left to their own devices.
As the two walked closer and closer to the docks to take a taxied boat over to Goode Island to be with Charlotte's mother Mary, the passed a small newsstand that was on the corner of the street.
Charlotte gave the stack of newspapers, her family's Welshport Globe, a double take when she saw the face on the front page.
"OH MY GOD!" She gasped.
"What is it?" Morgan asked turning back when he realized he left her three steps behind.
Charlotte picked up the newspaper, and showed Morgan.
"Eh, there young gal, that's a 10 cent paper. If you have the money it's yours, hon, if you don't put it down." the grizzled newsy said.
Charlotte said nothing and Morgan grabbed the paper from her. "This is Evie." he said.
"She's dead." Charlotte replied grabbing the paper again from Morgan and reaching into a small pouch she had tied around her wrist that had loose change and bills.
"Thank you." She told the newsy.
"How? She wasn't ill was she? This can't be true." Morgan replied as the two 13 year olds continued on their walk.
"I--I don't know. She was taken from us and they put her..." Charlotte paused and turned to her left and looked down Haiden Street. The long street went up a hill straight to the Welshport Hospital that they could see now in the clear day. Peeking out from behind the main hospital building was the red bricked Churchill Green Asylum.
"... they put her there." Morgan said, finishing Charlotte's sentence.
"I just can't believe this. I don't want to believe this. This is awful. Poor Gabriel, he'll never know his mother again. He'll never know Evie." Charlotte said with tears in her eyes.
"Let's not stop. Its cold, please, we should get to Goode Island as fast as we can." Morgan reminded Charlotte. "As soon as we get there we'll piece together what's going on, alright?"
Charlotte said nothing and just looked at the hospital. "I don't feel her gone." She said.
"What?"
"She's not gone, I'd feel it if she were gone. This has to be wrong. Evie isn't gone. She's not dead."
Morgan huffed "Charlotte, the paper said she was, look, read it again. This Baxter Murphy person says so. He said his source works at the Asylum, and that a nurse was killed and that Evie died too. Look, it's right there. You're just in shock. My grandmother Sybil was the same way when my father died. My mother had to convince her that my father was gone, it was the shock. She couldn't understand it. Please, we have to go."
"No, Morgan you don't understand. I know these things. I feel them in my heart and in my head sometimes its like I know it before it happens. And I had no inkling that Evie was gone or was hurt or sick or anything like that. I'd feel it Morgan. Something isn't right. This report, Baxter, it's wrong. I swear it, it's wrong." Charlotte insisted.
"Alright now, there's no need to get upset." Morgan answered. "Take a breath and relax. We have to get going. There's no time to waste anymore. Please. Let's go."
Charlotte nodded her head, tucked the paper under her arm and picked up her suitcase once more. She then began her trek down to the waterfront for the boat to Goode Island with Morgan but kept glancing back up the hill of Haiden Street at the Asylum staring down at her as if it were teasing her to find the truth.
"She's not dead." Charlotte thought to herself. "She's not."
****
 |
| Asha comes to Gregory’s flat |
While she slept, Asha Hoffman came to tell Gregory the good news about the child.
Gregory let her in, and put his finger to his lips telling her to keep her voice down.
"Aurora is asleep." he whispered.
"So early?" Asha whispered back.
Gregory cocked his head "Its been a long week."
Asha sighed and removed forms from her satchel. They were copies of forms that had been turned into the state and courts locking Caleb's adoption by Mary and Filipe.
"Done. The baby is now in the hands of capable parents who will love and care for him more than ... well, he'll be safe." Asha added.
"If he's safe and away from us, then your secret too is safe. No one will ever know that you lied about Andrew Kim shooting Jacob.”
Gregroy shook his head.
"Gregory none of this feels good to do. I think what we've done is sinister. Aurora deserved to know, and despite my disgust with my own involvement with this I still think it was wrong."
"You know it had to be done, Asha. There was no way Aurora would have been able to raise that child the way she raised Nikolas and Evie." He said.
"I do. I do know that. That baby would have been a reminder, constantly, of what she suffered at the hands of Caspian Casador. Now he's gone. Now the baby is gone. She can start fresh she can start a new." Gregory said
Then, a bedroom door from the corner of the apartment creaked open.
"Is that how you really feel?" A sleepy-eyed Aurora asked hearing just Gregory's last statement.
"Do you really feel like would have been hindered to raise my baby girl because of who her father was? Or is that what you think of yourself?" Aurora replied still thinking she gave birth to a girl and not a boy.
Aurora's face dropped. Asha's head snapped to Gregory.
"Boy?" Aurora said.
"What?" Gregory replied nervously.
"You said boy. You said I would have been kind to the boy. I didn't have a boy. Or did I? What's going on here? Dr. Hoffman what are you even doing here?" Aurora said, her mind now spinning in confusion in her attempts to connect the dots.
"I misspoke, Aurora. Please just sit down, you just woke up and you came in on a conversation that you may have misheard." Gregory said.
Gregroy paused and turned to Asha.
He was pale. His eyes swollen from crying.
"Nik!?" Asha said rushing over to him. She removed her coats and put them around his shivering body.
Nik turned his head up from his shoes and looked his mother Aurora in the eye. His tears began tall down his warn tan skin, he body was stiff with anxiety and hurt and everything that happened to a person who's suffered a great loss.
The night before Evie did die. At least that's what Jacqueline wanted everyone to believe.
Nik sat his mother down and tried to calm her. Gregory brought her water as she slowly and suddenly fainted there in Nikolas's arms. It was only seconds that she was out but she came to and Asha helped Aurora to the bedroom leaving Nik and Gregory alone.
Nik sniffled and hugged his own body for security. "A mistake in medication. A nurse, she gave Evie too much of something I had ordered and then.... and then she was gone. She just feel asleep and didn't come back."
Nik nodded.
As they mourned, Aurora repapered in the room. Her face red with crying, her spirit seemingly ravaged by the loss of now two daughters.
"NO!!!" Aurora shouted. "You didn't let me say goodbye to the child I gave birth to before she left this earth, I will say goodbye to Evie, my first born properly. Nikolas take me to your sister."
Aurora then grabbed her coat and hat from the coat rack by the door that she opened letting in the cold air again from the winter world outside. She stood there like a soldier and waited for the rest of the group to follow her to the hospital morgue.
****
 |
| Islands of the Azores |
As the drama continued to rain down on the two small island in Maine's Frenchmen's Bay, further east over the icy waters of the North Atlantic beyond mists of sea air and cold winter winds was another group of small islands.
The archipelago of nine islands that belonged to the republic of Portugal were shrouded in fog as the winter night rolled on brushing wild ocean waves on to the black volcanic rocks that made up the islands' shoreline.
On this particular island, one of the nine known for it's giant dormant volcano in the center, villagers were coming home from evening prayer in the village of Saint Roque. Through the mists of the nights, one cottage made of perfectly placed black rocks and wood, sat nestled below a large wooden canopy holding up dried grape vines that remined from the summer stalk.
The window of the cottage glowed the yellow light of lighthouse, a beacon to the returning home neighbors that there was someone home who skipped the village's nighty mass.
The oil lamp inside sat beside an old woman named Silvina Mural who was knitting on her rocking chair that had warn down the wood below its U-shaped rockers.
Silvina did not live alone. She was a woman of 77, a widow, and had a son named Lucas who lived with her and watched over her and cared for the small plot of land of grapes, potatoes, chickens and pigs of theirs.
The Murals were a quiet twosome; Lucas had lived there all his life and had siblings in Lisbon. They'd left the tiny rural island in search of work and a better life for the own growing families on the mainland and Lucas stayed behind to watch over the family home and their widowed mother.
Things were always quiet here, in the village of Saint Roque, until several months ago on an early summer night when Lucas came home with a shocking discovery when he was out at sea fishing for their dinner.
It was an unconscious man, Lucas found, drifting on a large heavy piece of wood that seemed to a part of a ship, or a boat.
Lucas took his catch and tossed in a bucket and quickly rowed himself over to the man drifting out at sea. That day, he helped into the boat and took him home and had a doctor come to check home him.
Months passed, and young tanned skinned man with thick black hair had not woken up from his deep sleep all this time. Lucas and his mother prayed every day that the poor man, who had no name, no home nothing of his own, would wake up an finally tell them his story of how he got where was.
The one thing, which had been occurring more recently, was the man would often moan in his sleep, as if he were attempting to wake himself from a terrible nightmare something dark and twisted that haunted him in his dreams and made him sweat in his sleep and rock back and forth in his bed, so much so Lucas would often have to hold the man in place in his bed.
On this night, Lucas brought in the man's soup which had always been able to eat. Although the mysterious dark haired man had been drinking broth for month, and was able to swallow and he had lost a significant amount of weight due to his coma like sleep.
But then, as Lucas prepared to spoon the soup into the man's mouth as the nurse of the village had taught him, the man's eyes suddenly sprung open surprising Lucas who screamed and fell backwards on to the floor spilling soup all over the floor.
The man, was frightened too. He had been in a bizarre sleep state for almost 5 months and had not been able to wake and had been taken care of by the Mural family as if he were an invalid.
"Where am I? What...what is this place?" The man.
Lucas recognized the man was speaking English. He had studied English for years and when he stood up he was almost gleeful that he could understand the man.
His mother, Silvina, rushed in as fast as her old legs could take her. "O que é que se passa!?!??!" She asked wondering what the noise of Lucas was.
Lucas held out his hand to his mother and tried to communicate with the man he found at sea months ago.
"Do you know your name?" Lucas asked slowly walking up to the man as if he were an untamed tiger.
The man searched his mind, but there was nothing there. He could only see the to new people in his life and wonder who they were. Where this small little rustic cottage was. And who he was.
"I don't know, I think I'm... I think my name is Lucas." the man said.
"Lucas!?" the old woman said hearing her son's name come from the stranger.
"No, no, I am Lucas. Perhaps you heard my mother and the doctor speak to me while you were asleep all these weeks. I am Lucas, this is my mother Silvina. You do not recall what you are called?" Lucas asked again sitting on a stool next to the bed
The man again searched his mind. "No."
"Lucas, mostra o papel que o encontramos nas calças. Anda vai, mostra-lhe!" Silvina said to her son in Portuguese.
"My mother reminds me we found papers in your pockets when I found you on da sea." Lucas said in his almost perfect english.
"You found me on the sea?" The man asked.
"I did. I was fishing, I fish every day. And I found you. Floating there. Like a little boat. Alone." Lucas said as he opened a drawer with the papers they had found on the man.
"A boat." The man said.
Suddenly a memory. Of a boat. Crashing waves. A storm. Screaming. More waves. The taste of saltwater filled the man's mouth.
"Are you unwell?" Lucas asked seeing the man get lost in the strange memory. "These I found in your pockets when I search for your name, identify. Where you are from."
The man, still in the bed he had been in for months, looked at Lucas' hand and saw the perfectly square folded papers. He took the little bundle and carefully opened it. The papers had been damaged by sea water and some flakes fell to the bed. But when fully unfurled the man saw what the secret of the papers held.
"A map." The man replied.
"We do not recognize the place." Lucas as his mother Silvina looked on hoping that would jog the man's memory.
The writing had been warped from the water but there was one word clearly visible and had been saved from the water.
The man read the word out loud ...... "Maine?"
