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| Aurora & Gregory in his apartment in town |
The morning after Evie's funeral Aurora's obviously gloom still held tight to her heart. She sat in Gregory's living room where she was living now and held on to an old photo of Evie's as a young girl sitting in a chair holding a teddy bear. She remembered what a sweet child Evie was. How kind she was to animals and how her love of art started very early on.
Aurora's heart was broken in so many pieces. She wished things could have been different for all of them. She wished they had never had to come to Welshport. She wished she never had to live with the guilt of what she did to her husband Richard and how she held that disgusting secret of poisoning him so that she's receive the insurance money to keep her financially afloat.
The dark secret, Aurora felt, was the nexus of some sort of curse that took her newborn baby and Evie's life. To her the secret she hid from those she loved hung over her like a dark storm cloud that would not evaporate.
Of course there was no actual curse on Aurora that caused both of tragedies that rocked her family in such a short amount of time, but the pain Aurora felt for what she had done, for the secret held deep in her psyche, was enough t for her to believe she personally was finally being punished.
Gregory, all dressed for work, then entered the room buttoning his cufflinks and saw Aurora deep in thought with the photo of Evie in her hand. He sighed, his heart too breaking as he watched the woman he loved deep deeper into her depression.
"I wish I could take it all away." he said to her. "All your heartbreak. All the pain you're feeling now, if I could take it from you and drown myself in it Aurora, I would."
"It wouldn't matter." She replied. "I would want to take it back from you. No one deserves to feel this way. Not me or you, not my darling Nikolas who I'm sure is just as sick as I am. He loved Evie so much. I don't know how we'll carry on now just the two of us."
Gregory went over and fell to one knee. He took Aurora's hands and held them in his big warm hands and kissed them over and over. "You are not alone." He said "Nikolas is not alone. I'm here, and he has Asha. We can be a very good makeshift family. The four of us."
"You're very close with Asha, aren't you?" Aurora noted.
"I helped her a while back by helping her finally get justice for her father’s death. It was a long painful process for her and a crime I was investigating crossed paths with her father’s death from years before. She's become like a little sister to me.” Reigns explained.
“Her father’s death?” Aurora asked, feeling even sicker to know of more death near her.
Gregory nodded “ Her father was a patient of the same Doctor that Evie was once under the care of and he did some very awful things to Asha’s father to point of his death. I helped her bring him to justice." Gregory explained.
Aurora pushed a fake smile to her beautiful face "That's very kind of you to do that. Evie did mention that doctor but I didn’t know if Asha’s connection."
"Will you be alright when I'm out today?"
Aurora sighed and got up from the chair. She walked over to the fogged over second story window and looked out on to the street and watched as the morning sun shined down on the fresh winter snow. People were out and about doing their duties and living their lives just like nothing had happened, but of course that's how it had to be. Life goes on, Aurora thought, even though she couldn't bear to think of how her life was going to be now without Evie and still the ache of the baby's death tore through her heart.
"I'll be fine." She said still staring out of the window.
"I want to be sure you will, you've gone through so much in such a short period of time." The constable said, caressing her shoulders as he stood behind her.
"There's just something inside of me that's telling me that there is something off. Something just isn't connecting to me, and I can't find peace until I understand it. It's almost like something is eating at my mind, telling me AURORA LISTEN TO ME, THIS IS NOT WHAT IT SEEMS, but I just can't make sense of it. Maybe it's because I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to both of my daughters. They're both gone and they'll never know how much I loved them."
Gregory gulped. Aurora again mentioned the daughter she gave birth to that he and Asha took away before she could see that she actually had a son and that he did not die. He was in safe hands away from her and away from Caspian his birth father. Aurora could not let go of the fact that Gregory and Asha did not let her say goodbye.
"You know it was for the best, Aurora. You would have held the image of your child deceased in your mind forever. I couldn't let that happen." Gregory replied covering.
Aurora snapped around from the window to face him "That should have been my choice to make."
"That's cruel! I couldn't, no, WOULDN'T have done that! Even I can't get the idea of the baby dead in my own arms after her birth out my own mind, how could I subject you to it?"
"Gregory, enough! Face it! You should have let me; you know that I would have been more than capable to deal with the idea that my own child did not survive birth. It's a horrible, awful reality that many unfortunate mothers face all the time, but where my situation differs is twofold: I didn't get to say goodbye like many of those mothers do and I didn't get to bury the child. You too that from me and for that I don't know how I can forget, that's what I'm going to hold to. Your idea that you made that choice for me. It's going to stay for me for a very long time."
She began to walk from him, and he grabbed her arm and held her in place. "Please." he said softly as she turned to look into his eyes.
He was genuinely sad that he had done this to her. He loved her with all his heart and with every mistake that had made so far, he did it because he wanted her in his life more than anything without the shadow of her child with Caspian, a child she was coerced into conceiving while under the mind control of a monster. The child was in good hands, Gregory kept telling himself, and for now the secret was safe and he hoped it would be that way forever.
"I love you with all my heart I would never do anything on purpose that would jeopardize what we have. You understand that don't you? Doing something that may be seen as betrayal when it only comes from a good place?" He asked, darkly hinting at what she did to her own late husband.
Aurora gasped of the idea of him comparing her killing Richard for in the name of money to his taking her child that had died as the same. She hated herself for what she did to Richard. She could never ever forgive herself she made such a mistake in poisoning him, to Aurora it was a lapse in her sanity and in all of her morals. She would have never done it if she could do it again. She wasn't even sure how she hadn't killed herself yet with the guilt. The very idea that they were the same thing, that they both were ok in his mind was disturbing.
"Gregory, listen to me. I love you; I have fallen in love with you which is why this has become so difficult for me. I need this time to mourn my daughters and also come to terms with what you did and most of all what I did to Richard. Which is a very different situation. We cannot and should not ever, EVER, discuss it out loud again. I want to turn the page, I want to move on, and I want to push passed this as much as you want to."
"I want to. I do." he replied.
"I know. And as contradictory as it all sounds, I don't want to talk about it but we also can't pretend I didn't take a human life and we can't pretend you should have given me a chance to say goodbye and let that part of me go too. Its going to be very difficult to process all of this. it won't be easy. But i think together we can do this. We can find some sort of normalcy eventually." She smiled.
"That's all I want for you, that's all I'll ever do is try and help you reach the most happy you have ever been, Aurora. I love so much."
She smiled back at the handsome constable, it felt like a little ray of light had finally touched her storm filled life.
"Well, on that note, obviously, my sin is worse than yours. We have to sit with that. We have to sit with the fact that we've both done things we shouldn't have but mine is and always will be an act of murder. I hope that my confession won't dim your love for me as you allow it all to process."
"Aurora, I will never ever look at you differently, do you understand me? You were desperate and yes, it's something that I should look at with the mind I've been trained to use with the work I do, but my love for you is stronger than that. I will never ever look at you like you keep trying to make me look at you. You are my Aurora." He said pulling her close to him.
Their bodies touched. She could feel his pulse as she held on to his hands. "I love you." he said and landed a kiss on her soft lips that felt as if he went deep into her soul.
Aurora felt his love, she truly did. But it was a love that she felt she had to earn after all she had done to Richard. She would, in time, finally feel that way but for now her guilt and grief were trapping her mind. She'd find her way through the fog of this time in her life, but it would take a very long time and a very strong and loving man who had a dark secret of his own to help her through it.
They loved each other, despite all the secrets between them, and for now, those secrets were safely locked behind the door of Gregroy's apartment above the Constable's office.
****
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| Dr. Ward gets a visit from his wife & granddaughter |
That afternoon, as a Winter's bite still froze the air, Dr. Ward's wife Laurel brought their 3 year granddaughter Samantha in for a checkup with a pediatrician who had come from the mainland for a week of a appointments. The little girl was an orphan, as Dr. Ward's son and daughter-in-law had died the previous year in a terrible accident in New York City, leaving the young girl in the care of her paternal grandparents.
She was the apple of their eye and in recent days with the news of two of Aurora Jordan's children dying, one at birth and the other in much more serious circumstances, Laurel and Peter Ward held their little granddaughter a little closer thanking their lucky stars she too hadn't perished in the accident with her parents.
After the appointment, Laurel and Samantha headed to Dr. Ward's office in the East wing of Welshport Hope Hospital for a quick hello.
Dr. Ward, was deep in thought reading over patient files attempting to figure out what in the world he was reading. His tugged on his thick white beard with a pencil in his mouth confused at the numbers on the charts. They were Evie's charts. Her medication was clearly safe, but what she ingested, a much larger amount of what Nik had prescribed, was lethal.
It didn't make sense why the nurse would have read it wrong.
The truth, of course, was incredible and shrouded in the witchcraft of Jacqueline Gray who had shape-shifted into the body of the nurse. Evie was not dead but in a sleep,-like state buried alive; Jacqueline's heinous effort to keep Sebastian and Evie apart forever.
"Knock, knock!" Laurel said entering the room in a gust of navy blue and black holding tightly to the young Samantha.
"Oh! Come in, come in! What a surprise!" Ward said, finding his wife and granddaughter's faces a much needed escape from Evie's charts.
"We wouldn't dare come to the hospital without seeing our favorite Doctor, now would we?" Laurel joked with little Samantha.
"Well you're both a sight for sore eyes."
"Yes, I noticed you were nose deep in those papers. Anything wrong?" Laural asked.
Peter inhaled deeply "They're Evie Jordan-Lord's charts. The medical records that show what Dr. Jordan prescribed and what was given to her after we tested her blood. The levels are off just as we all suspected but ... well I shouldn't be telling you this, but Dr. Jordan's writing wasn't confusing to read. It's clear as day what he ordered. So for the life of me Laurel, I can't understand why the Nurse would make just a grievous mistake on Evie's medication."
Laurel lifted her brow as little Samantha fussed with the big bow around Laurel's neck.
"So this nurse, she did it on purpose?" She asked.
"It seems that way. Why else would she do it? And we'll never know." Dr. Ward replied.
"That's right she took her own life soon after taking Evie's. My god, such a dark tragedy." Laurel replied. "It's as if ... well, it's silly but its as if that whole family and anyone who's apart of it is terribly cursed. Since they day I met them, I cannot remember a single moment of their happiness."
"When you and Rebecca were friends, you already had a sense of their misfortune, did you?" Peter wondered.
"I did." Laurel replied. "I was there working in the mansion when little Vivi died."
Peter reached for his wife's hand seeing her face recall the awful history of the littlest Lord child dying when she was not older than Samantha.
"They certainly do have their troubles, the Lord." Peter replied as Samantha giggled and reached for her grandfather who happily took her in his big arms. "Since you're here would you ever think of going over to Churchill Green and seeing Rebecca? I'm sure she'd love to see a familiar face."
"See Rebecca? Here? She'd rather die than let anyone she knows outside her family see her in an asylum, Peter, you know how that could be with a woman like her. She'd go mad! No, I'd never do it. I could send her a note, or something more private but I'd never go to see her in person." Laurel replied.
"I think in person might actually be good for her Laurel. She needs someone from the outside world to... I don't know, bring her back to reality." Ward replied.
"Peter, its been years. Decades, even since I've had any conversation with her. She cast me out of her life the moment I brought Eliza Goode into her orbit. She blamed Eliza for Vivi's death and she blames me for introducing them. She'd never want me near her."
"Times are different. She's in a different place in her life."
Laure rolled her light brown eyes and turned to the window that shined a bright winter sun on her 65 year old face that still looked as smooth as a porcelain doll. Her hair a deep red that curled naturally at the tips. She took a breath almost as if it hurt and turned back to her husband and shook her head thinking about the day little Vivi Lord died.
and the events that happened after. Events Laurel Ridgeway-Lord was directly connected to.
"Laurel?" Peter said, noticing his wife daze off. "You ok?"
"OH! I was just thinking of how angry Rebecca would be if I showed up to see her at The Green. Never. I won't do it. I told you; I'd be happy to write her." Laurel said, covering for her trip down dark memory lane.
"Alright, alright." Peter said, handing Samantha back to Laurel. "Let me check to see which bed she's in so that your note gets where it's supposed to."
Peter sifted through the various papers on his desk. Being the chief of staff at the hospital, his work was never done. Forms and more forms, pages and pages of documents that he had to always sign off on. Then, he found Rebecca's file, opened it and was shocked to read that she had been released along with Caspian by Dr. Nikolas Jordan.
"This, this has to be wrong." He said slightly under his beath.
"What is it?"
Pater turned to Laurel and grabbed his goat and glasses but did not explain.
"PETER!" Laurel shouted at him as he dashed passed her to his office door and diapered as it slammed shut leaving Laural in the room with Samantha in silent confusion.
**
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| The young doctors: Nik & Asha |
Meanwhile, over at a small nurse's station standing together was Dr. Nikolas Jordan and his partner Dr. Asha Hoffman. Both still in a stunned state of mind after Evie's shocking death. Asha did her best to console Nik, he blamed himself for her death, but Nik was not giving into any of her placations.
"I'll never for himself." Nik said, the sunny winter day illuminating the white doctor's coat under his face.
"Nikky, you didn't do it. I saw the charts. Dr. Ward is looking through them today too, nothing seemed out of the ordinary on your part. The nurse, she either read it wrong or did it on purpose. You would never do something to hurt Evie. We all know that." Asha replied reaching for his hand.
Asha had a lot to make up for. She had lied to Nik about Alice Winterborn possibly being alive somewhere. She hid what she learned, a strange and bizarre tale of Alice's Native Dænian heritage of her being alive--- somewhere.
Regardless of if it were true or not, they both knew that Alice and Matthew believed in their ancestorial connection to reincarnation. To them, it was real. And Nik adored Alice and would do anything to respect her and her beliefs. Nik felt he had the right to know this, and it broke his heart knowing Asha had kept this secret.
For now this lie by omission was water under the bridge, Asha had done worse--she helped Gregory hide Aurora's baby with Caspian under a new name with Filipe and Mary. The baby was Nik's half sibling.
Another secret. Another lie, that seemed to be snowballing as Asha tried to keep her mind on Nik and not her betrayal to his family.
She pulled him close and held both of his hands now in hers. "I will always be here for you and I will always be in your corner." She said, her dark eyes welling up with tears as he stared at her knowing she did love him. He loved her too.
"Thank you." He said as he leaned in and kissed her on the lips. Their warm touch melting away all of the secrets she was holding, all of the past they were still scared by. Now, just in the moment, mourning Evie and loving each other.
"If there was any way we could make things better together, I would do it." She said as their lips parted.
"I know." Nik replied. "I'd do it too. Evie would do the same for me."
"Someday, when our heads are clear, and the sadness as drifted off you'll have your memories of her and that's the most important part." Asha added.
Nik nodded "And there are so many wonderful memories as kids in England. She had this special way of always make me feel like the most important person in the room. At parties, when we'd be sitting in a room filled with some of the richest and most fascinating people in the city all drinking and eating and dancing, she'd never let me drift off into boredom. She was there for me; we were the best of friends, and nothing would ever make her see me differently. My champion." he recalled.
"A true big sister." Asha smiled.
As Nik continued his memories of his sister, Asha's guilty flooded back over what she and Gregory did to baby Caleb. Giving him to Mary and Filipe would take the baby's out of Nik's world. He'd never be able to be a big brother to Caleb like Evie was to him. They'd never know each other and be able to sit and chat over Evie s that Caleb could have some kind of knowledge of his late elder sister.
She started to tear up, Nik noticed and thought she was sad about Evie's death, she was, but those tears were tears of pure guilt and disgust with herself.
"Come here." he said pulling her into a big hug. "Like you said, we'll be alright."
Suddenly, Dr. Ward approached and through the documents of Rebecca's release in front of them on the Nurse's station. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?" The Chief of staff shouted.
"Dr. Ward? What is it?" Asha asked wiping her eyes.
"Dr. Jordan discharged Rebecca Lord and Caspian Casador from the hospital without my knowledge or sign off. Why would you do that? Mrs. Lord and Mr. Casador had extreme issues with reality and are perhaps dangers to our society here on the island. Why would you do that Dr. Jordan, why?"
Nik took a breath and was too afraid to speak.
"Well? Explain yourself?" Ward shouted back.
"Dr. Ward, I had been treating both patients and I saw that they had significant gains in their comprehension and their understand of what happened to them and what they did. I don't see them as any kind of menace to our island, not anymore. Caspian, for example, seems coherent, conscious. He's no longer under the fog of the mental illness he was under before."
"His possession." Ward said with a scoff.
"Well, whatever it was yes. Scientifically, he seems back to himself again. As does Mrs. Lord. But they're out on contingency with my wishes, that they refrain from going back to Tirymor and that they stay away from Gabriel Jordan and that they meet with me every week."
"Nikolas, this is very serious. Caspian was under our care as a courtesy Father Ryan, a man who I deeply believe saw the face of something quite dangerous in Caspian Casador. We told him we'd protect the population here by keep Caspian in order and in the asylum. How am I going to explain that he's out again? People think he's dead!" Dr. Ward explained.
"The people of Welshport have a lot more to worry about than one man and his mental illness Dr. Ward." Asha replied as if anything in Welshport was as easy as that. "I think if we explain it in terms of medical reasoning, things will be fine. Unfortunately, Evie's passing seems to have gotten the attention of the newspapers not Caspian and Rebecca's release.
Dr. Ward took a deep breath in with frustration and looked over at Nik who was clearly still broken up about Evie's death and her funeral that had only been just the day before.
"If this comes back on the hospital, meaning, if they do something that hurts another person in this town, I'll make sure you're the one to blame, Dr. Jordan, I have it on paper that it was you not I who released these two. That's all I can say, I cannot protect you from anything that may come down legally if they indeed do something unspeakable." Ward warned.
Nik looked at Asha, then looked back at Dr. Ward hoping, he hadn't made a giant mistake but then nodded his head and replied in a soft tone "I understand."
Dr. Ward then excused himself after sending Nik into an anxiety fit, the young doctor's career was now in the hands of two people whose mental wiles were a giant question mart for all who knew them.
****
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| Lucas & the lost man in the Azores |
In the far-off Archipelago of the Azores in the north Atlantic, the mysterious a man who washed up on the volcanic black rocks months ago and had lost his memory watched the busy villagers work throughout the day on their regular duties. His tan skin seemed to glow like gold in the sun that was still high enough in the sky above the horizon to make him squint, but low enough to cast an orange sparkle over near by sea. His thick black hair had as many waves as the sea and his mind still searched for clues to his identity—anything that might point his mind in the direction to who he was.
He wondered every single day that he was missing from his family if they wondered if he'd ever come back or if they’d given up hope that he’d ever be found —and feared him dead.
In the months that he had been in the Azores, he learned the customs of the kind, beautiful people who took him in and watched over him as his body recuperated while in his deep sleep from the days lost at sea. He learned some of their language, Portuguese, and felt that he had become a small piece of their little rural island community.
They were so kind and welcoming to him, his new friends that Murals, Silvina and Lucas, but he still felt very out of place. He didn't know where exactly his home was, but the beautiful village, the small little island with the large volcano in the center was not it.
As the man watched a ship slowly come into port in the far off distance of the island, he suddenly had a flash again of the beautiful face of the woman with honey brown hair, bright blue eyes, delicate hands that reached for his face in his memory.
The man with no name blinked and she was gone. He tried again and again to see her face but just as quick as it came, the memory was gone.
"Bright like the sun." He said to himself under his breath.
"What's that?" Lucas Mural asked, appearing on the small road of the village.
"I was standing here and the ship out there, it was docking, and for some reason it made me remember something." He said.
"Another memory!!! That's wonderful. What was it? Your ship? Maybe the dock of your home?"
"No, the a woman again. She looked like summer. She looked like a bright ray of light." The man said.
"She seems to haunt you. Every time you see her, you become a little sadder. Do you think it's your wife? A woman you loved? It must be. If she was that important to you to suddenly appear in your mind, she must have been someone you cared for deeply." Lucas added.
"I wish I could remember more of her. Or even of where she may be. Its been so difficult not to be able to know anything since I woke up." The man said.
"Speaking about that, my mother and I were talking and ... well that's why I came out here and interrupted you."
The man turned to the Lucas and cocked his head somewhat confused. "What is it?"
Lucas continued "It's been weeks since you've been awake, and we can't just keep calling you 'him'...or anything like that. We'd like to give you a name, a name for now of course, until you find who you really are. No one deserves to walk this earth without a proper name. It’s silly, really, but we want you to be called something."
The mysterious man smiled. "That’s very kind. What should I be called?"
Lucas smiled and only said "Come inside the house."
The two walked from the little village and back down the road on the hillside and back to the cottage below to the where Lucas, his mother Silvina and the man with no name lived. As they entered, the older lady Silvina sat in a big chair in the room near a hot fire. Her hair was long and gray and fell around her shoulders. It was strange to see her with her hair this way, she only kept it up tight in a bun. She smiled as her son and the man walked in and pointed to the large sofa in front of him and urging him to sit.
He sat.
Lucas stood behind his mother looking nervous "What we're going to tell you now, we kept from you all this time because we didn't want you to be frightened or feel as if we were some sort of charlatans trying to hurt you. We only want to help you."
Silvina then said in Portuguese that she had hoped that his memory would have returned on it's own and that they wouldn't have had to resort to this, to which Lucas reiterated in English to the man.
"What does she mean?" The man asked.
"She'd like you to show her the palm of your left hand." Lucas said.
The man furrowed his brown flipped over his left hand and looked at it quickly, then showed her. With the quickness of a cobra bite, Silvina pricked the middle finger of the man drawing blood. The pinch shocked him and he quickly pulled his hand back. His eyes confused.
"Ai, Descupla menino, foi a unica maneira." She said to him in Portuguese. He understood this as her apologizing. Her face showed sincerity.
"What did she want with prinking me?" the man said.
"Watch." Lucas replied in a whisper.
The woman showed the stained pin. It was only a speck trace of blood on the very tip of the pin, almost invisible to the eye. If it wasn't for the fire burning bright beside them, they would have never seen the red stain shining in the light like the tiny ruby.
Silvina then removed a necklace from under her white wool blouse that had a locket on the end of it in a tube form. She pulled out the thin cylinder from the locket and then dipped the pin with the man's blood into the tube and then watched it light up like a small firefly.
"How... how is this happening?" The man said as if he were watching a miracle.
Then the woman's eyes went white. Her hair began to sway in a breeze that didn't come in through any window or any open door. She began to mouth a word, words that were unintelligible to anyone in the room.
"What's happening? What's going on with her? Silvina? SILVINA?" The man said, petrified by the woman's frightening trans state.
"It's ok, she is searching spirts for you, for your name." Lucas explained in a simple and strange way.
"The spirits???"
"INVER... INVERORRRRR..." Silvina muttered.
Lucas, speaking in Portuguese, encouraged his mother to keep pulling out the sounds of the man's name that the spirit world were sending her.
The fire in the hearth blew out. The room was completely dark. Silvina was breathing heavily. The sun had gone down.
Then there was silence.
The man sat there in the dark his eyes wide searching for any glimmer of light.
The fire burst on again in the heart lighting the room all on its own like an explosive had gone off and the faces of the three in the house were once again visible.
The woman's eyes had returned to normal, and Lucas stood by his mother who had a smile on her face.
"She has found your name." Lucas replied.
"How? How could she have?" The man said in an almost terrified tone of voice.
"My mother is a special woman. She has a way of connecting to the world that is not our world. I know how strange it sounds, but please do not fear her. She does this only with good intentions." Lucas said.
The woman looked up at her son and smiled. Then she walked over to the man and sat next to him and looked at the prick mark she left his finger. She rubbed it and told him once again how sorry she was for frightening him, all in her native Portuguese. Oddly, the man who had only a few phrases and words memorized seemed to understand every single world.
"O nome?" Lucas then asked his mother in Portuguese for the name.
Silvina looked into the man's eyes, his dark brown deep eyes and smiled.
"Inverno. Te-chamam Inverno." She said with a glimmer of hope in her eye.
"She said they call you..." Lucas began but the man understood perfectly and interrupted with a strange sense of disbelief in his voice.
"Winter... they call me Winter."
****
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| Celeste & Johnathon in the teal drawing room |
It had been a full day since Johnathon DeViana trapped Sebastian in a tomb at St. Thomas' Cemetary. He had not come home to report back to his sister Celeste who was anxiously pacing in her private blue painter drawing room in the east wing of the mansion as the clocked ticked away the hours.
She wondered where he stayed that night. After Johnathon met with Rebecca and Caspian by chance at the Siren's Call pub, he drunkenly took a room at the Village Inn where Rebecca and Caspian had also taken up rooms out of the eye of the Lord family.
Celeste worried unknowing her brother's whereabouts. She feared Sebastian had woken from his bludgeoning and done something awful to Johnathon but as soon as that dreadful thought crossed her mind, the drawing room door slid open and in walked a very disheveled Johnathon, hung over, tired, and still in the clothes he wore when he left the night before.
"Johnny!! Do you know how worried I've been about you? It's been almost an entire day, look at the time! Where have you been?" Celeste exclaimed rushing over to her brother hugging him in relief.
"After what happened I needed a break." Johnaton replied in a grizzled voice.
"You need water." She said rolling her eyes realizing he had been on an all-night bender.
"I need another drink." He joked.
"By the smell of you, you've had enough." Celeste said sounding more like his mother than his older sister. "Are you going to tell me what happened after you left here with Sebastian?"
"He's been taken care of and that's all I'll tell you." He replied. "The less you know the better."
She handed him water and sat back in on the sofa, a throw pillow in the shape of a white pug propped her up as she clasped her hands tightly on her lap like a schoolteacher ready to scold her pupils.
"Well?" Celeste said, after his long gulps of the water.
"Well? Well, what?" He replied confused.
"Explain yourself. Explain to me what I walked in on in Gabriel's room with you and Sebastian. You were trying to get him to-- what? Team up with you on something? Against me and Jacob? Johnathon that would have been your death certificate. Do you understand? Jacob would eventually come around to figuring out what you were doing, and he doesn't take kindly to being double crossed."
Johnathon rolled his eyes. "I've been told."
"Good, and I'll tell you again and again. You're treading dangerous waters here at Tirymor. No one except me is on your side. Jacob may do kind things for you but that's because he loves me and Fabian. You are connected to us, betray us with anyone, and I cannot protect you." Celeste warned.
"You're threatening me." Johnathon said with a seething tone in his voice.
"Yes, I am. You need to feel threatened." She said sanding up to face him. "There is no way I can protect you if you do something like trying to go behind my back. This family has no qualms about punishing one of their own for going against them, trust me I've seen it with my own eyes."
"No one has ever gone against Jacob Lord. He's gone against everyone else. He's the one that tries to kill and hurt and betray. Why can't you see that? No one has ever given him a taste of his own medicine but maybe someone should."
Celeste's eyes widened, her lips pursed, and she sighed with disappointment. "Do not let that person be you."
"If not me who?"
Celeste began to speak but suddenly stopped as Jacob walked in.
"AH! Little brother we missed you a dinner last night and the night before." he said with a glass of golden brandy in his hand from the bar in the library. "And by the looks of you, you've had a night like I haven't experienced in quite sometime. Where've you been?"
"Out." Johnathon answered quickly.
"Yes, I can see that. Out where?" Jacob snorted.
"Where's Gabriel?" Celeste asked trying to change the subject.
"Asleep. He just had a wonderful day with his new tutor Cory. She's doing wonderful things with him in these short weeks. Now...out where Johnny?" Jacob said turning the conversation on track.
"Yes Ms. Tyler is doing great work with the baby." Celeste said again trying to distract from Johnathon.
"Celeste, I'm talking to Johnathon." Jacob said, noticing what she was doing.
Celeste shot Johnathon a look and took a beat to answer for him "Johnny had a run in with Sebastian and things didn't go too well for him."
Jacob's eyes narrowed and his breathing stopped...."He What?"
"It's fine!" Johnathon interjected. "We won't have to worry about our dearly undead nephew, not now not ever. He's gone. I've made sure he's lost to anyone who searches for him."
"And how pray tell, did you do that?" Jacob wondered.
"Does it matter? He's gone, ok? Gone. You're safe from that side of your family tree and that's what you wanted all along. I took care of that for you. Let's never forget it." Johnathon said.
As they continued to talk, Coraline Tyler, Gabriel's communication tutor had been listening behind the sliding door that lead into the drawing room. She put her scarf around her neck and adjusted her hat and quickly left for the evening back to the village with the strange conversation she overheard swimming in her head.
"We won't." Celeste chimed in back inside the drawing room. "It's a good sign that we're all on the same page here and want all of the same things."
Jacob lifted a brow and looked over at Celeste who sparkled in the glistening light of the dim room. The orange tones that came from the light fixtures and chandelier made her seem like her skin was made of the most beautiful color of copper.
Jacob smiled at his beautiful wife whom he trusted and extended his arm to her. She walked towards him and fell into his one-armed embrace.
"Very well, I'm glad we can now see ourselves out of the conundrum of what to do with Sebastian. I just hope you didn't hurt him." Jacob said showing a glimmer of kindness even if it was overshadowed by his over-all cruelty.
"Nothing but a bump on the head." Johnathon replied as Celeste shifted in Jacob's arms uncomfortably, being the culprit of the Sebastian's bump.
"Late dinner?" Jacob then added to Johnathon.
"Yes, Rafferty could heat you up something." Celeste said mentioning the Tirymor House cook by name.
"I'll take care of it, but I'd like to freshen up." Johnathon said.
Jacob nodded and he and Celeste excused themselves leaving Johnathon alone in the pale green drawing room. He went over to the small bar and poured himself another glass of fresh water and downed it again to replenish the fluids he'd lost while drunk. He took a step back and saw the large painting of Rebecca Lord above the hearth.
He smiled to himself remember his new alliance with her and Caspian, and alliance that should proove fruitful if Rebecca was successful what she had planned. And Johnathon would do anything and everything to make sure she was. His future, his source of power was in flux, and it all depended now on Rebecca's success.
Betrayal was something Celeste warned Johnathon about, but he was as hardheaded and ambitious as any other male of the Lord family, and his new link to Rebecca showed just how much of a gambler with his own fate Johnathon truly was.
****
 |
| At home with Coraline & Baxter Murphy |
After a long day of being at Tirymor House getting to know the young Gabriel Lord, Coraline Tyler came home to her small house in the village and fell into a chair in a flurry of several layers of dark damask and chiffon.
Cory, as Coraline was called, had learned a lot about the Lord family in her few weeks as the baby's language tutor. She had been summoned by the family attorney and cousin Lear Lockwood to help teach the baby ways to communicate when he was ready without being able to use his hearing.
It was a task that would take years, and Cory, a professional at sign language, knew the earlier they started with the baby the better for him.
Cory took a big breath in and watched as the fire in her fireplace warmed her feet that were on a maroon embroidered ottoman. The fire was lit way before she even entered the house away from the cold of the coming night. Everything had been prepared for her before she came home.
There was even a cup of tea warming near the fire.
"How was your day?" A voice said coming from the hallway.
Cory looked up to see her brother standing there.
She rolled her eyes at him "I don't want to do this anymore." She told him.
"Oh, you knew it would take time, Gabriel is just a baby he'll start to understand signing eventually. Every day he'll learn more." Cory's brother said grinning.
"That's not what I mean." Cory replied. "I know full well how long it'll take for him to learn. My discomfort has nothing to do with that sweet little boy."
As her brother stepped out into the parlor Cory was resting in, the light from the fire revealed the face of Baxtor Murphy, the news reporter from The Welshport Globe who was always looking for dirt on the Lord family.
"Cory," he said staring down at her in the chair. "you knew exactly why I suggested your name to Lear Lockwood as the right person for this job. Not only are you a wonderful teacher but my sister. It’s the perfect marriage. You can help Gabriel and me at the same time. You promised me you'd do this. When we agreed on the details you said you'd go undercover for me and get everything you could on them. It's important! The people of this island deserve the truth, Cory! We can do that, together! I need you." Baxter explained.
"It's wrong Bax! I want to be there to help that little boy, but doing your snooping makes me feel...I don't know, dirty. And I haven't gotten anything for you yet." She answered.
Baxter sat next to her a smiled. "It's early. Eventually, something will happen good enough to report. Don't worry." Baxter answered.
She turned to Baxter and shook her head "It's wrong."
He bopped her nose the way patronizing older brothers would and poured her more tea "It'll be worth it. Exposing this family for the corrupt people they are, freeing this island from the hold of their bizarre mythology, will be the best thing we have ever done. They can never know we're related."
"They'd destroy me if they knew." Cory realized.
"They would." He confirmed.
"Fine, I'll keep going there for Gabriel, and if anything I see worth telling you comes up, then, well, we'll cross that bridge." Cory confirmed as she sipped from her tea.
Baxter smiled evilly then poured himself his on cup of tea. He was on a mission to be the biggest name in investigative journalism in the Northeast. For Baxter this would be the biggest story of the decade and his career: The fall of the Lord family Empire.
****
 |
| Donavon & Fatima at St. Catherine’s rectory |
The next day, as dawn had already stretched over the island and the sky lifted from the deep purples and lavenders to a perfect sapphire blue, Fatima Braga, the village's resident palm reader and Filipe's paternal aunt, met with Father Donavon Ryan at St. Catherine's Church rectory.
She was personally invited by him the day before when a nun came as a message and brought a note to her house. A note she somewhat expected after their interaction a month ago when she did a reading for the priest himself.
She spoke of a coming war, a war between things seen and unseen. From that day forward, Father Ryan's trouble with sleep got even worse.
Fatima entered a tiny parlor in the rectory that was modestly decorated with just two chairs, a table and a window with white lace curtains letting in the sun. There was a second table, set to the back of the room with candles on it lit for the large statue of the Virgin Mary towering over them.
Fatima looked at the youthful look of the virgin and crossed herself hoping whatever religious powers flowed there would shield her from her own terrible visions and dreams.
"Good morning, Dona Fatima." Father Ryan said using a Portuguese prefix.
Fatima bowed her head as Ryan shook her hand. "Your letter was vague Senhor Padre. What should I expect here today?"
"Please sit." He said extending his arm to the two chairs in the light of the window. "I have not slept well. Months of terrible sleep. I have this feeling that your prophecy is near. War you said."
"We're all in a perpetual war if you ask me. The reading I gave you could be seen as subjective; war could be meteorological. What is war? It can be anything. A war within one's self. A war between friends, family, nations. Religions."
"But you said between things seen and unseen. I need to know more. I need to grasp what will come so that I can be there, prepared, to help anyone who needs it. That is my job here on this island: to protect the souls of our citizens." Ryan said.
"You're a young priest, and a very lovely man." Fatima smiled. "But not even you can save us from ourselves, Padre. Not even you. Only we can do that. My own nephew who I've been estranged from for over a decade, almost two, has finally come to terms with our difficult relationship. Not in the way that I had hoped, he still remains distant. But I feel soon there may be a breakthrough, even thought I worry about him still. That is a war. A war between me and him, him and himself, the past the present and the future. It is life."
"Why do you worry about him?" Ryan wondered.
"I get a sense there is something on his horizon. Something I cannot put my finger on." She answered.
Ryan's expression changed, she could tell he was trying to make heads or tails of what she was talking about.
"You see," she began "he and his partner Maria --well Mary-- have new child. A child that was orphaned and a child that I see in my own visions as being the catalyst to something great. But I don't know if that greatness is positive or negative. It feels dark, but so much of this world is. I fear that I've become too jaded to understand my own dreams."
"Mary you say?" Has asked, she nodded yes. "Filipe and Mary? On Goode Island?" She again nodded.
"And their new child." She said agian.
"What is it about the child you dream?" he asked.
She tilted her head slightly and closed her yes. It was like a flash of the light from the window had filled her mind allowing for her to remember her dreams of the last few weeks. They were always of Filipe and of what she saw the night she roamed Goode Island in the dark watching and observing. She saw what baby Caleb had done to Sebastian, she saw how much energy the child exuded into the world. Something about the baby, something was amiss about him. She felt something animalistic about the baby almost. Something ravenous that lurked inside the baby that would someday, or could someday, be the greatness she feared.
"A wolf in sheep's clothing." She said.
"Who is?" Father Ryan asked confused.
"The baby."
Father Ryan stood up. He shook his head and wondered if he had made a mistake ever going to Fatima and asking her help in answering questions of the kind that only, in Ryan's opinion, God could answer.
"There is no way I would believe a child is some sort of... I don't know, I can't even say it out loud." Ryan said.
"The child has something in him, Father. What that is, I cannot say. It could be too early to tell. My nephew too, I know he senses it. I can tell there is something in his own mind that perhaps he worries about. What that means to me? I can't explain. This is the misery I am in. The confusion and the feeling being lost -- my inability to figure it all out."
Father Ryan took a small match from the table by the virgin's statue and relit an extinguished candle then turned back to Fatima.
"What do you propose?"
"We watch him." She replied.
He froze in place. "Watch him?"
"I fear this is the war I saw in your reading. The wolves are out, Padre Donavon, and we need to watch them and keep certain they do not feed." Fatima replied in a cryptic tone.
Father Ryan felt a shiver go up his spine and a tightening in his stomach. Fatima's words were disguised like she was speaking in riddles. She did this on purpose. She worried the spirit world could hear them if they knew what she was truly talking about. She feared if the truth of what she really wanted to say was not cloaked like a mysterious figure floating in a fog filled world, that the end would come faster than it was supposed to.
The wolf, symbolically howling in Fatima's dream was connected to the child Caleb and Filipe. What exactly would happen remained a mystery but the fear still haunted her every waking moment.
Something was out there, asleep for now, but hungry none the less. And soon, the war would break, and they both had to protect the Islanders from this hungry creature that could come. Maybe today. Maybe tomorrow.
Soon.
****
 |
| Evie in her grave, buried alive |
The afternoon clouds mimicked the snow-covered tombstones of St. Thomas's Cemetary with their white tones of frosty fluff. Jacqueline Gray, the witch she obsessed with Sebastian Lord, continued her frantic search for him. Her heart held tight to the idea that she'd find him, but she knew that without knowing for sure where he could be, it would be almost impossible.
Her powers could only reach him if his heart allowed, and for some reason, something in the universe was blocking her view into the realm of the shadows--- she was like a blind person when she tried to reach him supernaturally. Reaching out in the dark to feel, to sense, to grasp on to anything she could that connected her to Sebastian, but there was nothing.
This made Jacqueline even more furious.
Being at the Cemetery she thought that she'd find him---not in the ground in a tomb as he was; unknowingly to her, but because she felt he'd be there searching for Evie who was herself buried alive in her own snow covered grave.
As she approached Evie's resting place, it was bare. No footprints had been there since the pallbearers had laid her coffin in the frozen ground. There was no sign of Sebastian either. Jacqueline's hopes of finding her missing lover were drawing her anxieties and anger closer and closer together.
A dangerous mixture that turned Jacqueline into a petty person, ready to taunt and crush the soul of the woman she had buried in the ground.
"Wakey, wakey!" Jacqueline taunted out loud to the ground, Evie still in her sleep like state heard her in her mind.
"Jacqueline? Jacqueline, is that you? Are you here to take me out of here? Please! PLEASE! Please help me!" Evie said telepathically to Jacquline.
"I know that's what you want my friend, but it's not going to happen. Not today. Not ever. This is the end of the line for you. I truly wish things had been different, we could have been real friends but Sebastian's love for you would only leave me out in the cold, Evie. I need him. And I need to find him." Jacqueline said out loud to the grave.
In her mind, Evie could not understand any of it. She hadn't had any contact with Sebastian in so long but Jacqueline spoke about him so surely. She had to be quick with her words and do all she could to get out of the coffin.
"Jacqueline, think about it," Evie began in her mental connection with Jacqueline "if you let me out, if you take me out of this hole, Sabastian will come for me. He'll come looking! You'll find him! You'll be able to be together!"
Jacqueline furrower brow thinking of this, Evie continued.
"Once you're together the two of you can leave Welshport. Go off into the sunset and be apart of each other's lives for all eternity. I can be with Gabriel and I won't ever come looking. I promise you that. I can promise you more--- freedom. Happiness. Love."
"You'd really do that?" Jacqueline asked, this time in her mind to Evie.
"For my own freedom, yes!" Evie replied.
"Clever, clever, clever." Jacqueline said, again out loud towards Evie's fresh grave. "I thought you were smarter than that, Evie. I can hear your every thought and feel your every emotion. I can tell you're being deceptive. There's not a vibration in your mind that feeds to mine that I don't feel, I hear your voice and thoughts as clear as I hear the birds in the trees in this cemetery. You're never getting out of this place, not ever. This is where you'll be for ever. And when I find Sebastian he'll know of your death and that'll be the end of this love story gone wrong. It's done."
"NO! PLEASE NO!" Evie screamed in her mind.
Then, something awful began to happen. Evie began to feel her body soften. Her breaths became shallower, then deeper. Her eyes began to flutter. Her lips began to quiver. She was finally waking up inside of her coffin. Her body was slowly but surly coming back to it's life like form.
"What's happening." She muttered to herself.
Jacqueline then sent a telepathic message to Evie "I'm releasing you from the frozen state you've been in. There's no need for it anymore. I just want you to feel how serious this is, Evie. I want you to now just how trapped you, and understand that this is how I feel. I feel trapped too--in my own way. And Sebastian, his love, is the only thing that has been my salvation. I cannot lose him. I need to find him. And I will NOT ever lose him again."
Evie began to panic now that she could actually feel around her locked coffin. She felt tight, she felt her heart beating fast and faster and she began to shake and sweat.
Jacqueline continued to taunt:
"Slowly but surly the natural air that's inside your coffin will eventually run out, but do not fear. I've given you extra time on the clock. You'll live far longer in the coffin than a normal person buried alive would. But be warned, it's not forever, Evie. You'll last perhaps a day, two days, longer than anyone else."
Evie pushed up on the coffin lid. She pulled at the lid's lining. She screamed in the coffin but there was no way anyone could her here unless they too had Jacqueline's telepathic abilities.
"This is where you'll like forever. It's a beautiful part of the cemetery. I hope that'll make you happy to hear. They placed a small bench here too, right in front of your grave. Gabriel will have a sweet place to sit when he visits you." Jacqueline added as a way to dig into Evie's paniked heart even further.
The woman buried alive screamed again so loud that her own ears began to ring "JACQUELINE PLEASE!!!!!! HELP ME!!!"
But her voice went on def ears. Jacqueline was gone from the grave. On the surface there was only the Jacqueline's footprints and the sound of a slight winter breeze buzzing through the quiet cemetery trees.
Evie screamed and tossed and turned in the locked coffin over and over and over again. She kicked. She scratched. She punched. But there was no way out. She was trapped.
All she could do was scream and cry and move only inches to the left and inches to the right.
Her fate, like the coffin's lid, was sealed.
