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| Evie collapses in the drawing room |
Evie's heart was pounding as she stood in Tirymor's main sitting room in front of her in-laws. They stared back, their faces pale with fright seeing the woman they thought they buried now alive in their living-room covered in dirt, dust and debris from her grave.
"A ghost." Rebecca whispered to herself; Caspian lifted a brow.
Celeste stepped forward cautiously to get a better look at her former best friend.
"Evie, is that really you? How? How could ... how are you alive?"
Suddenly, everyone who knew the darkest secret of the family feared the worst: Was Evie now like Sebastian? One of the undead, one of the creatures that roam the world under the cover of night and eat, breath and thrive only in the darkest of shadows.
In Evie's mind, she knew what to say next. Her whole body told her Jacqueline was in that house. It was intuition, some kind of power that linked her brain with the woman who did this to her. She opened her mouth to ask "Where is that bitch, Jacqueline Gray" but nothing actually came out as she thought it would.
In her exhaustion, her eyes rolled to the back of her head and Evie fainted in the center of the gilded drawing room of Tirymor House.
The women gasped, Jacob and Caspian rushed to Evie's limp body.
"She's breathing, but completely out." Caspian replied.
"Dr. Ward! Someone get Peter Ward up here!" Rebecca shouted.
Standing outside the drawing room just outside the entrance hiding in the shadows, Gabriel's governess and sign language tutor Cora Taylor, chewed on her nails. She knew this was the perfect fodder her brother the reporter Baxter was frothing at the mouth for. He had been begging her to give him a scoop of all the ins-and-outs at Tirymor and the Lord family. He wanted dirt, and Evie literally brought it on her person straight from the grave.
"Evie? Evie wake up. Evie! Evie, wake up!" Jacob said, tapping her once perfectly peach toned cheek that was now the color of pristine pale page of a notebook.
As Celeste rushed off into a different room to call Dr. Ward, she passed her brother Johnathon who had just rushed down straits from his room where he had made love to his new flame Jacqueline Gray. The commotion of Evie's return broke up their intimate moment.
As Celeste passed him in a blur of dark gold chiffon and maroon underskirts, he grabbed his sister's forearm.
"What the devil is this?" He asked as she stared back at him, tears welling up in her deep brown eyes. "What's all the shouting?"
"It's Evie. She's alive, Johnny! She's alive, and she's passed out on the drawing room floor. I have to call the doctor." Celeste said as she unlatched herself from Johnathon’s grasp.
Johnathon gulped and slowly crept up to the open double door of the drawing room to peek in. Cora cowered further into the shadows unseen. .
As the attention shifted, rightfully so to Evie, Jacqueline peered over the staircase mezzanine. The writing was on a the wall for her if Evie was alive. She then quickly snuck out of the mansion and rushed off into the Tirymor Forest to hide.
Soon, she believed, the hunt would be on for her head.
****
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| Filipe & Fatima in her basement |
The next day, in the center of town as a cool breeze cruised across the island, Fatima Braga flipped though the pages of a book nervously. Her mind was unable to concentrate on the pages in front of her or even the bright sunny day that was just outside her door.
The snow had melted off weeks ago. Spring was now burning in the air but in Fatima's heart winter never left.
Tossing the book on to a small side table and getting up in a heap of dark taffeta, Fatima decided to finally meet her worries face to face... her worries that resided in the basement of her small house in town.
The book remained open on the table like a wild bass' mouth set to a page titled O LOBO DA LUA.
At the bottom of Fatima's basement stairs, three small lamps were lit. Glowing a yellow warm light on to Filipe Braga's sleeping body; Fatima's nephew had been held there since he was attacked by the wolf on Goode Island. She slowly made her way down the steps and found him peacefully sleeping with his wound dressings ready to be changed. Those wounds, violent bites from the wolf, were healing well thanks to Fatima's care, but she knew holding him safe in her basement was only going to temporary as they awaited the full moon.
She tightened the restraints around his wrists and ankles that were locked into iron hooks that fed deep into the rock that made up the floor of the basement.
Filipe rolled over and opened his eyes that met his caring Tia Fatima's.
"Bom dia." she greeted him in their native Portuguese.
He groaned. "I don't want to be here anymore."
"You know this has to be. I told you of what is to come once the moon becomes new and full again. Filipe, there is no changing the dangers that will occur when your body finally feels the pale blue beams of the moon." She explained.
"Your superstations are going to get the best of you, Tia. None of these things will happen. You know it, and I know." Filipe replied.
She pursed her lips and lifted a brow. "Very well. Then get up. If you're so sure that none of this will happen as I have explained, get up, reach for these locks and let yourself out."
Fatima tossed the key over to Filipe. It landed on his bare belly. He looked at her, her eyes steely and unflinching. He could see every wrinkle in her face. Not a single flicker of an eye or a blink. Her body solid and unyielding.
Filipe slapped the keys of his stomach, and they crashed down to her feet in frustration. "This is the aunt I wish I had back when I was growing up. Where was she? Where was she to come to my rescue when all went wrong. There were plenty of times I needed you." He said, his voice sounding like a brokenhearted child.
His words caused Fatima's face to finally soften. She sat on his bed and cupped one of his hands with one of hers. Her free hand touched the wolf's wounds on his body through the bandages seeing that the blood had dried.
In all other families, the two Bragas should have been close. She his only aunt, he her only nephew. Even if it was only through short visits or letters, they should have been in each other's lives; in any other family they would have been. All throughout his childhood Filipe had so many dreams of his Aunt in Lisbon. He loved her so much, from a far, and wished to have gone to Lisbon to live with her years ago. Of course those were fantasies of a child living with a strict father who only tried over and over again to keep his son far, far away from his sister Fatima.
The scandal that shrouded Fatima's past and destroyed the relationship with her brother was the final nail in the coffin. Filipe's father refused to ever let Filipe even speak of her as he grew. and when she finally did leave Lisbon and moved to Welshport she kept herself hidden so she could be near Filipe without any push back from her brother, Filipe's father.
She was in the village for years, hiding her secret scandal: an ex-nun who had had an affair with a priest.
Filipe never knew the truth and never knew her face as it had been unrecognizable to him with age and time.
The affair, which began before Filipe was born, left Fatima a black sheep. Unwanted. Pushed aside. Shamed.
"I was always near my boy." She said softly. “Even when you didn’t know I was near.”
There was silence in the basement. Filipe's mind began to wander.
"Am I going to die?" He asked suddenly, finally accepting Fatima's prophecy of the full moon.
She frowned. "Stop that, no. You are not. We will keep you here safe from the moon and the transition and I'll search for a way to make sure you never go through it again. There has to be something to make you clean again from the wolf's cursed bite. But it will take time, my son."
"You sound like my father when you call me that." He smiled. “He almost never called my by name. Always ‘son’”.
“Does that bother you, when I call you son?" She asked.
He shook his head. “No, I know what you mean.”
"Well...he was my brother, so it makes sense for us to use the same vernacular." She replied shrugging off the small talk.
Still holding his hand in hers she smiled to comfort him as the pain from the wolf bites returned. He squeezed her hand back. "Do you ever regret what you did? Do you ever regret never leaving the convent before, the right way, to have your own family?" He asked.
She paused before answering and looked her nephew in the eyes. They were deep, dark brown, they seemed like two big pools of chestnut and chocolate. His eyes... They were her eyes.
She had yearned for this type of closeness to him since the day he was born. She squeezed his hand back and simply replied "Yes."
He smiled back but did not reply.
Fatima got up from his bed, cleaned his wounds a bit and told him she'd be back in a few minutes with something to eat. She floated back upstairs and closed the basement door behind her. Her mind racing as soon as she landed inside the small kitchen where the basement stairs lead. Her past was coming back to haunt her in a way she had never thought. The secret she held so deep in her mind, a secret she thought died along with Filipe's father and mother was bubbling back up to the surface and she wasn't sure how it would become exposed.
The truth of her scandal was not only that she was a nun who fell in love with a priest.
There was more. There was so much more, and it was the true dagger in the heart of the Braga family.
Fatima and the Priest had conceived a child.
A boy.
A boy they called Filipe.
***
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| Mary & Charlotte attempt to find Filipe psychically |
Mary paced back and forth in her small cottage living room on Goode Island. She couldn't help fear the worst for her partner Filipe. Where was he? What had happened to him after he was attacked by the wolf? Why had none of her magical methods helped her find him.
Her pacing stopped in front of a large window that she looked out to the thick forest towards Welshport Island. She faint trace of a spinning lighthouse from the most western point of the larger island hit her steel blue eyes and it dawned on her.
"He's there. He's got to be there." She whispered to herself.
"We should try again." a voice said from behind.
Mary turned; it was her 15-year-old daughter Charlotte who had come to live with her. Morgan Thorne, the young man who had come with Charlotte seeking refuge away from the Lord family after he too was left in the mansion by his mother Genevieve, followed the young heiress into the room.
"I don't think it's safe," Morgan said to Charlotte. "We just talked about this." He added hinting at a conversation the two teens had in private.
Charlotte shook her head at her friend. "But Filipe is in danger, you said yourself that the wolf that he saved you from ravaged him, I saw his wounds myself Morgan. How can we just pretend he's not out there suffering. It's been weeks!"
"Alright, you two. Enough." Mary said, ever the stoic mother. She walked over to Morgan who's worry could be felt from in the air all around him. He feared the worst for Filipe but feared the return of the wolf that almost killed him even more. Mary put a hand on his shoulder to comfort the young man who seemed lost in the world all around him in more ways than one. "I know all of this is frightening, but I have to agree with Charlotte. If we don't try something again, anything, we may lose Filipe forever. I can't allow that."
"What do you think you and Charlotte will do?" He asked.
Charlotte gulped. "I can try. I can try to locate him psychically. I've been too worried to do it again like the first time, but we have to try. I'm willing to go there again."
"Do you think you can do it darling?" Mary asked. "I know that each time you tap into that gift you become incredibly weak afterwords. I'm worried about how much it takes out of you. You're so young, its very draining."
"I want to try." the young girl confirmed.
Mary smiled proudly.
"I want you both to understand something before we begin." Mary began. "I'm practically a novice at all this as well... we're learning together. Whatever happens, good or bad, if we find him or not, it's not your fault. I want you to know that this is a complicated situation, and we can't just go into the village and search for him. Even though I know he's there; he has to be anyway, it wouldn't work like that. No one would understand us and to be quite honest they may think us insane. The idea of a group of people searching for someone who may or may not have been attacked by a wolf and is walking the world like nothing would be very strange to them. That's why tapping into the gifts my mother bestowed on us is really the only way we can do this. The outside world --- they don't understand the world of the supernatural, even I still don't'. Not everything."
"They already think we're evil." Morgan said. "They think all the Lords are evil."
"We're not the Lords." Mary explained. "We are judged much differently"
"I am." Charlotte reminded them.
Mary smiled. "Well my sweet girl, You're their better angel."
Charlotte hugged her mother, a feeling and connection she had longed for all her life. "Listen," Mary began again, "if something should go wrong, now or in the future do not blame yourselves, none of this is your fault. Do you understand? None of it."
The youngsters nodded.
"I'll try." Charlotte replied.
Morgan looked at Charlotte, then at Mary and nodded "Me too."
Mary grabbed her daughter's hand and pulled her into another room that was dark and silent. There, they both sat on the floor. Morgan, who followed, carefully lit candles that were placed all around in them a circle. As the two women with special powers clasped their hands together and lifted them up as if their were the arms of a bridge, Morgan lit the largest candle in the room and slid it between mother and daughter brightening up their faces with the glow of orange light.
"Close your eyes now Charlotte, and let me into your mind where I can follow." Mary instructed.
Charlotte nodded and did as her mother said.
Combining Mary's new-found powers of witchcraft, and Charlotte psychic abilities made them uniquely stronger in the world of the supernatural. Together they were a creative team that could do anything if they knew how to control their strengths.
Mary then began to chant in a spell to enter her daughter's mind where she could search for Filipe.
"Viniam nunc ad inveniendum eum. Sequar. Sequar."
She followed a blinking light in her mind that lead her telepathically into Charlotte's powerful but young psychic mind. The 15 year old was still too young to control all she could do alone, her mother the witch needed to guide her even if she too were new at her powers.
The light blinked and blinked in the blackness of the two minds joining. This was like a tunnel the burrowed into the psyches of two worlds and as Mary entered she saw an almost identical Welshport Village that mirrored the real one just beyond the small dock of Goode Island
Charlotte was there too.
"Where do we go?" Charlotte asked.
"Feel." Mary answered. Charlotte replied with a strange look on her face. "Feel with your heart and your mind now with your hands."
Charlotte looked out into the ghostly empty village streets of Welshport. She didn't know if she should lead her mother left or right, towards the center of town or towards the edge near the sea. She didn't know what to look for, what message was to come to her; everything felt so strange and void.
"I ... I don't know." Charlotte said.
"Feel." Mary repeated.
Charlotte put her two hands up to her chest and felt her heart beating. Faster. Faster. Faster.
Then, as the minutes seemed to tick away faster and faster matching her heart beat they both heard the distant and violent howl of a wolf in the distance.
"It's not real." Mary said noticing Charlotte's fearful reaction. "It's something in the mind telling us to stay away. We have to follow it."
Mary grabbed Charlotte's hand and began to take her towards the sound of the howling wolf but Charlotte was stuck in her position.
"Charlotte, what is it? We have to follow the wolf. Its the sign we're looking for." Mary said.
Charlotte said nothing, only pointed to a black shadow off in the distance of the street. When Mary turned the shadow almost instantly rushed them both in a fierce and wild wind of blackness that engulfed them both. A horrible sound of screaming was in the wind. People crying blood-curtailing screams. Deathly howls that filled the air all around them. Mary clutched on to Charlotte who felt as if those black shadows of wind were lifting her off the ground and then, suddenly as quick as it came the blackness swirled around them and reformed into the shadow person again directly in front of them.
The face of the shadowy were looked as if it were hidden behind spiders webs. The eyes were familiar to both. Mary in particular felt as if she had seen them before. Maybe once. Maybe twice.
Then the shadows lifted and revealed the face of Fatima Braga.
"GO!!!!!!!!!!!!" She screamed at them as her arms lifted into the air.
Yet again, the dark winds blew, this time so hard it knocked the two women to the floor and when they hit the ground both awoke back in the small cottage on the floor of the dark room surrounded by the circle of candles.
When they woke, Morgan was standing in the room holding baby Caleb. The older boy shaking with fear.
"Did you find him? Did you find Filipe?" He asked as the baby cooed.
Charlotte stood up. A frightened look washed all over her face. The wolf in her visceral vision was not just a sign for them to follow... Charlotte could feel it was something else, in fact she could feel the wolf was SOMEONE else altogether. She kept this to herself.
"Well??" Morgan asked.
"He's with Fatima." Mary answered her breath short and her mind racing. "He's with Fatima!"
****
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| Nik & Aurora arrive to see Evie |
Back at Tirymor House, Aurora and Nikolas arrived to see Evie. They rushed in with the head housekeeper Jane, and as they passed into a large chamber that led to a back private staircase; there stood newlyweds Rebecca and Jacob.
Aurora froze, seeing Caspian, the man who. while possessed by a demon, soaked her mind with frightening thoughts and trickery and even convinced her to sleep with him conceiving a child in the process.
“Aurora.” Caspian said greeting the woman he unwittingly tormented for months.
“We’re here to see Evie, that’s all.” Nik said as he tugged in Aurora’s arm, but she stood firm.
“Congratulations are in order.” Aurora said turning to Nik. “I hear Rebecca and Caspian are married.”
“Well good for them, can we go now?” Nik replied.
“I hope you’re both happy. After all that’s happened that’s all anyone can ask for isnt it?. Happiness.” Aurora said.
“We were very sorry to hear of the loss of your child.” Rebecca replied. “I know first-hand the pain of the loss of such an innocent.”
“Thank you.” Aurora replied.
“I…” Caspian began unsure of what to say. He knew nothing he could say in his current state of good sense of mind could make up for the horrors he inflicted on Aurora and Rebecca when he was possessed. “I wish I could have helped or made things right—faster.” He said.
Aurora felt his sincerity. And Rebecca’s returning jealousy.
“She knows you’re sorry, Caspian. We all know you have other issues at hand that impaired your judgment.”
“I’ll say.” Nik said.
“We just want to see Evie and then we’ll leave.” Aurora replied doing her best to get out of the awkward situation with the man who fathered her child while possessed by a demon.
“If you need anything, Aurora, anything at all, please let me — us!—know.” Caspian said catching himself showing affection again for Aurora.
“She’ll be fine.” Nik replied pulling Aurora away from the group.
As he and Aurora followed Jane deeper into the chamber that lead them up and into the small apartments in the mansion where Evie’s suite was.
Aurora went along but turned to look one last time at Caspian who locked eyes with her.
Aurora quickly turned away and vanished up the stairs.
***
Upstairs in her old room, Evie tossed and turned. A fever had taken over her body, she wouldn't open her eyes. Yet the sleeping woman felt as if she could see everything all around her; her hallucinations were strong. She murmured in her sleep and groaned with anger over everything that had happened to her in the last few months.
Then, her eyes flipped open, bloodshot and tearful, and she saw standing there Dr. Peter Ward.
Her mouth opened and almost like a mad woman everything that she had suffered at the hands of the witch Jacqueline spilled out. Peter was locked in a trans as she recounted her tale but then, her fever once again took her to sleep and Peter made her more comfortable with cold towels and comfy pillows.
His heart ached for the young woman after all she had gone through, but was it true? Was there some sort of mad woman witch out there doing horrible things as Evie explained or was there really a mistake in medication that caused Evie's horrible sleep paralysis. What was even more strange, and confusing was Evie's account of Sebastian Lord, a man the whole world thought dead from an explosion, was the one that saved her.
"Doctor?" A voice said from the door.
It was Jane Donnelly, the head housekeeper of Tirymor.
"Evie's family is here." She added.
Peter nodded and left the bedroom and followed Jane to the adjoining room that use to be Gabriel's nursery.
"How is she doctor?" Aurora asked as she quickly stood up to greet Peter.
"She's sleeping now. She has a mild fever and is in and out of consciousness." The doctor explained.
"Has she been given any medication?" Evie's brother Nik asked, he too a new doctor who worked under Dr. Ward.
Peter nodded again. "Just to help her sleep, nothing too strong as I'm hoping her body will fight the fever off as natural as possible. She's been through something very traumatic, her whole system is fighting itself. It could just be stress induced and after what she told me happened I don't see it being more than that."
"What did she say happened?" Nik asked.
"Well for one, she knows she was drugged, but it wasn't by you, Dr. Jordan, in fact she says it was by...." Peter paused.
"By whom?" Aurora asked impatiently.
"This is where things get very strange, and I would keep this between the three of us as this family has a penchant for putting people in the mad house when they're not truly mad, but Evie said a witch had somehow put a curse on her making her look as though the medication had killed her. And then when she was buried, she came to, underground. Only to be saved by -- her husband."
"What do you mean her husband? Sebastian? That's impossible." Aurora replied.
"She must have been dreaming, a nightmare. None of that could possibly have happened. Evie was accidently given too much of a drug by a nurse. The nurse died by suicide in grief over her mistake. I was there! I know this for sure, it wasn't a witch for God's sake." Nik explained.
"I would agree with you Dr. Jordan, but your sister was very adamite of what she had experienced, and I was not about to challenge what she believes is true, not now at least." Peter answered back.
"And you're sure no one in the Lord family heard this?" Aurora wondered.
"I was alone with her."
Nik lifted a brow "I wonder what she said when she walked into the house."
"They said she opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out and she fainted. Surly if she had mentioned the rest of this, Jacob would have had her in the fasted paddy-wagon back to Churchill Green." Peter said mentioning the Villages new mental hospital on sight at Hope Hospital.
"Alright, let's just keep this between us. Can you do that Dr. Ward?" Aurora asked.
Peter nodded he could. "I want her safe too."
"Thank you." Nik replied. "Can we see her?"
"This way." Ward answered back.
As the three left through the interior door that connected the small adjoining room to Evie's bedroom, Coraline Tayler listened from the hallway behind the door with great worry over what she would have to do with the information. This moment of Lord family intrigue was exactly what she was sent to Tirymor House to uncover and expose.
Coraline was a mole.
But she wasn't alone in that hallway, Jane Donnely too watched from a different angle and wondered just what Coraline was doing eavesdropping on the family.
****
 |
| Jacqueline at Lockwood Thicket |
The following morning, Jacqueline Gray felt like a dead-woman walking. She paced back and forth in the small front room of Lockwood Thicket and pictured seeing the flickering red flames of torches through the glass of the cottage windows as villagers trudged through the forest set for her hanging.
It was inevitable, the witch believed, that once Evie explained what Jacqueline had done to her and how she had done it, her life would end.
Sebastian, the man she loved, could not be reached no matter how hard Jacqueline tried using her powers. Whatever happened to him, he was gone. No amount of magical powers of telepathy and mind tapping could find him for her.
"How could he have just vanished this way? Where did he go, where was he put?" Jacqueline thought to herself, recalling the visions she had after sleeping with a man she met in a drunken stupor, Johnathon De Viana.
In that vision, a small glimmer of an answer: Johnathon had hidden Sebastian away. But where? Where was the man she truly loved?
She sat on the floor, her eyes closed, her mind searching and calling for Sebastian using everything she had in her, but for Jacqueline nothing would work. Not only did Johnathon hide Sebastian in a tomb as payment to his sister Celeste but Evie did too when Sebastian freed himself and then freed her.
Evie hid him even better. Even deeper a hide. Further away where no one could hurt him, find him, take him away or worse.... destroy him for good.
But Jacqueline only knew of Johnathon's work, but not the place he did it.
Frustrated with the lack of explanation and the continued missing Sebastian, Jacqueline banged her hands up against her head and cried out screaming into the emptiness all around her.
Then a thought bubbled up in her grief-stricken mind.
"Johnathon. Of course!" She said out loud.
He was the answer to not only finding Sebastian, but perhaps her own salvation. She had to align herself with him, the son of Albert Lord, the brother and brother-in-law to Jacob Lord. This connection to the family that was like royalty in Welshport would keep her from a certain fate of death if anyone were to believe anything Evie was saying.
Jacqueline needed to keep this newfound relationship with Johnathon because her life depended on it. If she failed, then for sure her days were numbered.
She walked over to a mirror and dabbed a small bit of rouge on her lips and cheeks and wiped away the tears for Sebastian that stained them. She smiled a fake smile-- practicing for when she encountered Johnathon again and plumped her soft curls.
"Hello, I've been thinking of you." She said to her refection in a sultry voice as if she were talking to him. "Why don't we pick up where we left off."
The whole time she played to the mirror, her mind was locked on saving her own life. And Johnathon was the key.
****
 |
| Lucas & Winter come to Welshport |
Over in the village the newest citizen in town, Lucas Mural, strolled along the sea-side with his friend the man he called Winter. Winter had been a victim of an awful shipwreck months and months ago and was found on the black sand shore of an easter island archipelago known as the Azores Island where Lucas was from.
Along with Lucas' mother Silvina, they discovered Winter was from Welshport and together they came back in hopes Winter would find out who he was and who the woman in his foggy memories was.
In town, their mission would pay off as a group of fisherman were yelling and leaping from the deck of their fish trawler to the docks above where Lucas and Winter were walking.
"What the devil?" Winter said under his breath as he noticed the men leaping for joy.
"What could they be so happy about?" Lucas asked.
"A good catch? Found treasure? Look they're pulling something up from the water." Winter replied.
"No, they're dropping anchor." Lucas noted as one man from the boat leaped back on the adjacent docks and ran up the ramp all the way to the street-side dock where Lucas and Winter were standing.
"MATE! Oy! MATE!!! Cannit be you? No! NO! I cannit!?" The fisherman said in his Scottish accent.
Lucas and Winter looked at each other.
"Do you recognize him?" Lucas asked happily.
"O'course I do! This here is cap't Matthew Winterborn, it is! My god, man, how can you be 'ere? We all thought you and the rest o'your crew sank to bottom of the sea, we did! My god! MY GOD MAN!" The happy fisherman said shaking Matthew's hand profusely.
"Well, I don't know if it's me!" Matthew laughed. "I've lost a bit of my memory." He added.
"Aye! Its you lad! Back from the brink of a watery grave!" The fisherman laughed with a leathery smile that showed a sprinkle of missing teeth. "I can imagine y'did lose some of your 'istory. I once knew a man who'd fallen into the sea and was lost for almost 10 'ears. All those days out on the blue might'a been what did your 'ead in too, it was. But you really don remember a thing, now? Nothing at all?" The fisherman asked.
"Small bits and pieces, but mostly it's all a fog. Hopefully being here, back in this place I'll begin to remember things."
"You missed alot, y'have. Young Miss Evie Jordan's back too. You might wanna see how she's doin. Family up there in the Tirymor trees have always been a bit of a bunch of phantoms, they'd eat that miss up if she'd be 'ere all along. Seeing you back may be the happiness the poor thing needs."
The fisherman slapped Matthew on the back and flashed his gappy smile by welcoming him home one more time.
Lucas and Matthew stood on the dock in a stillness after hearing the fisherman speak of Evie. The woman of his visions.
"It couldn't happen better than that." Lucas replied with a grin as seagulls swirled over them.
"Do you really think this Evie Jordan is the woman?" Matthew asked.
"She has to be." Lucas replied turning to the fisherman again now back with his mates on the small boat. "They seem to think you're this Matthew, and by the looks of it, they're not the only ones." Lucas added as a small crowd of villages began to arrive and point and cheer for the long-lost fisherman.
"It seems so." Matthew replied. He then turned to Lucas, the sun bright in the sky swimming in a blue of fluffy clouds. "Excuse me!?" Matthew asked a woman with her teenage daughter.
"Captain, sir, Mr. Winterborn." She stammered. "Is it really, really you???" She asked.
"Its him! Its really him!" The teenage daughter replied.
Matthew smiled nervously realizing his ship's sinking hit the village hard and left the town brokenhearted.
"I, I think so yes. Can you tell me how to get to Tirymor?" Matthew asked them in reference to the Lord family mansion.
The woman's faces softened knowing exactly why he needed directions. The whole town knew of his love for Evie Jordan. The whole town knew how much they cared for each other and how much she had suffered at the hands of a terrible and cursed fate with Sebastian. The true love story, the fairytale the whole of the village believed in was not that of Sebastian Lord, handsome heir of the Lord dynasty and the beautiful English girl Evie Jordan, but the one of the dashing local fisherman Matthew Winterborn and that same beautiful English girl.
Matthew and Evie's was the love to last through the ages. Matthew was one of them, one of the people, one of the locals who had found his heart in the hands of the caring Evie. The were pulling for these two to make it through all of the horrors left in Sebastian's wake.
They, the villagers themselves, would be the guide to bring Matthew and Evie back together.
The mother and daughter separated and left a gap between them for Matthew and Lucas to walk through and pointed through a growing cast of villagers at the docks staring.
Then, the villagers too parted and all pointed up towards an enormous canopy of trees in the distance that made up the Tirymor Forest where the Lord's family estate of the same name held court.
"Go find her." The woman whispered.
Matthew smiled and turned to Lucas. "I guess this is it."
****
 |
| Genevieve in London |
Far away from the morning light in Welshport, a fire burned inside a small stove illuminating a very small London fat. The smell of the damp air filtered in through a crack in the front window where a pale toned curtain lifted slightly in the air as the cool breeze wafted in.
Sipping tea in the evening hours on the green sofa was Genevieve Thorne who had come to London based on Charlotte's psychic premonition that David Lord had been hiding there all this time; away from the ghosts of Welshport where he was framed for the murder of his wife Sabrina.
She succeeded in finding a man, a man that had the face of David Lord, but the life the man lived was not the same. At least not as Charlotte saw it in her vision.
Like Geneveive, he too was the exact likeness of the other half of the awful tragedy that was David and Sabrina's deadly love.
The bizarre coincidence, that she looked like Sabrina, and he like David, only made the entire situation more complicated. But not a drop of blood between them was Lord.
He looked at her with his intoxicating hazel eyes, deeply and sincere. He felt such a strong pull towards this woman from is own home country of America. Her face, soft and peach toned with the eyes so much like Sabrian's that they stung his lonely heart.
The man ran the story she told him over and over and over again in his mind of how she had come to a place called Tirymor House with her now ex-fiancé Johnathon. How the family once had a son named David whose wife Sabrina was killed and how she, Geneveive, now had almost every single memory of Sabrina's locked in her own mind.
He struggled to understand it all. How could it be? It sounded like a strange fictional tale so outlandish that it could not possible be true.
Genvieve remembered she had an old photo of David and Sabrina with her tucked inside a small pocket in her boddice. She pulled out the photo, its edges frayed and slightly withered for the months tucked away. She extended her arm to the man and showed him the photo.
"This is what I've been trying to explain to you, this. Look! It's us, it's our faces but it's not us. They ---they look like you and I." Geneieve explained.
The man shook his head in disbelief.
"It's not possible. I'm not a twin! You may be this woman's twin, but I for sure am not his." The man said.
"No, no, you still don't understand. We're not their twins. We're...ugh!!" Geneveive replied with frustration. "Its just some kind coincidence, something that happened. Some odd parallel that you and I were both born looking exactly like the two people in this photo. Sabrina, if she were alive today would be 10 years older than me, David 10 years older than you probably. We're not related. But we are connected. And that's what I'm here for."
"To connect to them?" he asked.
"I thought I'd find him here, but I was wrong. I found you. Another face yet the same face. Maybe you and I were meant to meet and meant to help Sabrina and David finally get justice for what happened to them. Jacob Lord viciously killed Sabrina on the beach near their home and framed his own brother for this crime. David adored Sabrina, and he'd never do anything like that to her. Sabrina is dead. She can't fight back for them and, well, David is forever a mystery. I don't know if we'll ever find him. But I have to do this, I have to get justice for them. She's a part of me now." Geneiveve said.
"Why? Why does it even matter to you?" The man asked.
"It's the right thing to do. Don't you understand? For some reason something in the universe made us look like them. Our paths have crossed, and we have to get them justice. It's what I feel in every bone in my body. And only you can help me."
"I don't know how I can help you miss." The man said.
"Listen, I came all this way to find you, well to find David, but I found you, and I gave up everything to do this. I left my own son in America to do this for Sabrina. It's become my passion--" Geneveive began before being interrupted.
"Sounds like more of an obsession, don't you think? To leave your own kid?"
She lifted a brow. "It was a very selfish choice, I admit, but I did it. And now I have to finish what I promised Sabrina."
"Promised Sabrina?" The man asked confused. "You said she's dead. You said you've never met her and that you just look like her, but you've never met. How could you have promised her anything?"
"I promised her in spirit. It's sounds mad, I know. I hear it coming out of my own mouth and trust me I was never like this before I found myself at Tirymor House, but something inside me now wants and needs to make this right for her. I'm connected to her. It's beyond my real understanding. She lives inside of me. I wouldn't have left my son so far away if I didn't truly believe this."
The man thought about it. She didn't come off as insane even though her whole story did: the spirit of a dead woman trying to find justice for her murder through her own look-a-like? It was like from a fable, a gothic tale that would end in some kind of moral plot twist where all would finally be turned right by the very lats page.
But it was real life. She was real. She was flesh and bones, and she truly believed that she was meant to find justice for this woman-- and this man David whom he, the man in London, did in fact look like.
Identically so.
"What if I agree? How would we help these two people?" he asked after a beat of thinking.
"I have a plan. A good one." She said.
He looked at the photo again. "And? What it is?" He pushed.
"Does this mean you're thinking about helping me?" Geneveive asked.
"Maybe." he answered. "It's been a very long time since I was home in America. I don't know if that's something I want to do, go back there and I assume I would have to go back to help."
She nodded. "Its the only way."
The man sighed. "America."
"Why did you leave?" She wondered.
He turned away from her and shook his head. "It doesn't matter." He answered.
She could tell he wasn't ready to talk about it.
"I'd like to at least know your name so that I can stop calling David in my head." Genevieve said, skillfully changing the subject.
He turned back and flashed his sparkling smile that dimpled just on the left cheek "Christopher."
"Well then, Christopher. I am Genevieve. We have a lot to plan."
He stared at her as she spoke in front of the burning stove. She was beautiful, that he knew for sure. Her perfect pink cheeks and her perfect pink lips moved as she spoke like she was made of the most beautiful peach. The tiny curls on the edges of her long black hair, the twinkle in her green eyes. She was intoxicating.
Inside his heart he felt something so sad. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The identical face of a woman long dead, and his the same as the man in the photo. He listened to her diabolical plan to finally get justice for Sabrina and David and was astonished at how detailed it was.
"More is to come." She said as she looked at the clock.
"It's late. You can stay here." Christopher said handing her the coat.
She smiled back sheepishly and repeated "More is to come."
She dressed in her warm coat, hiding her tiny frame from the cold London air and set off back to the room she had been renting.
He came to the door and yelled down the cobble stone street as Geneveive passed gas-lamp after gas-lamp in the fog "COME BACK FOR BREAKFAST!"
She turned back to Chrsitopher and laughed. "More is to come!!"
****
 |
| Evie & Gabriel reunite |
With a loud gasp for air as if she were back in her coffin again, Evie awoke safely in her old bed, in her old suite at Tirymor House.
She had beads of sweat on her forehead reflected the light from the fire in the hearth like little orbs of sunlight. Her mind quickly refocused on her little boy Gabriel and she jumped out of bed and headed to his room just across the hall from her to see him.
Evie pushed open the little boy's room and to her shock standing there was Rebecca Lord lulling the boy back to sleep.
Evie gulped remembering that Rebecca kidnapped Gabriel on the night of his birth and dangled him from the Lighthouse. She was out of her mind then, lost in the fog of the mind control set forth by the monster inside of Caspian.
But the image of Rebecca once again cuddling the little boy Evie adored more than life itself made her blood run cold.
"Rebecca..." Evie whispered and she slowly stepped into the dimly lit room.
Rebecca smiled as she turned to face Evie and quickly read the express on the young mother's face as alarm and horror.
"It's not what you think." Rebecca said as she extended her arms handing Gabriel safely into his mother's hold. "He was crying as I was on my way to my own room and I didn't want to wake you. He's fine. Just a little fussy." She added
"Thank you." Evie replied skeptically. "You can go to bed now, I'm fine."
"Evie you've been through something horrible. Something none of us can ever imagine going through and the fact that you're alive is testament to how strong you are. But we all should have known you were this strong, after all, since the day you set foot on this island you've seen nothing but darkness and tragedy and persevered it all. " Rebecca said.
"And may I remind you who was responsible for all of that? At least most of it?" Evie shot back.
"Us. This family. I'm not denying it. I never would. There was a time I'd do all I could to protect Jacob no matter the horrors he pushed on the world. I was wrong for that. It doesn't matter if he's my son, I should have stopped him and protected everyone. I should have protected you."
Evie lifted a brow "It seems to me the only reason you're seeing the light of day now about Jacob is because he tried to do you in too--- again if I recall."
"You're right again." Rebecca smirked. "But as they say, better late than never."
Evie took a breath.
"Have a good night Rebecca." Evie said, dismissing Rebecca coldly.
Rebecca, for her part, understood why Evie had yet to trust her. It would take a while before Evie could trust anyone around her and even around her child. But Rebecca was the type of person who never gave up when it came to having her reputation solid in everyone's eyes, even in the eyes of someone like Evie, a person she hurt so badly in the past.
Just then, Celeste walked into the room to check in on Gabriel, the little boy she took custody of while Evie was in locked away Churchill Green Asylum.
"Is everything alright?" Celeste asked nervously as Evie turned so that her little boy was away from Celeste's grasp.
"Just a mother and child reconnecting." Rebecca replied.
"Maybe I should...." Celeste said stepping forward towards Evie and Gabriel.
Evie jolted back like a mother bear guarding her cub.
"Celeste, leave her. She's fully capable." Rebecca said.
"But I'm...." Celeste again began before being interrupted.
"His Aunt." Evie replied. "I am his mother; you are his aunt. I will take care of my child."
"Let us leave." Rebecca said.
As Rebecca excused herself and Celeste leaving Evie and Gabriel get Evie turned to the little boy who's sparkling green eyes were blinking slower and slower into his little dream world.
"Daddy saved us," she whispered. "He saved us and he'll never be able to see you again. But he's safe. Safe forever. He gave up everything to save us, my sweet boy. Now, you'll find him in only in your dreams."
Evie's mind flashed to the cemetery and frozen earth. Sebastian digging and digging to free Evie.
She flashed to breathing fresh air again as soon as he saved her and kissing him and holding him on the cold hard ground as the sun of the new day was slowly peeking over the trees of the cemetery.
She held on tight to him in the dawn.
She kissed his cool face.
She cried over him.
Her tears falling on his pale cheeks.
Then, somewhere far off in a dark cold place.
Sebatian's eyes flipped open, and a single tear spilled out and onto his cheek as he too was having the same memories as Evie was of that morning under a dark purple sky of dawn.
He was out there. Locked away on his own terms to save his family from any more danger he would case if he were free.
Sebastian Lord had sacrificed is own freedom and agreed to be locked away somewhere in secret so he would never hurt the one's he loved again.
He was gone, but not the way others believed. Sebastian had Evie lock him away safely and his location would remain a secret for as long as Evie would be alive.
Forever, lost to all, but not to one woman who loved him most.
