 |
| Filipe’s terrifying transformation begins |
In the basement of Fatima Braga's home, Filipe writhed with pain. The muscles of his body expanded and twisted around bones that began to thicket and enlarge. His face, although remaining human, hardened. He cried out in pain as the change from the moon pulled at every fiber of his DNA.
He ripped at his clothes exposing his naked body, clothes too tight for the creature he was becoming and then, his eyes, his soft chestnut-colored eyes began to flicker like a flame into a warm amber.
He stared up and the burning laps in his basement prison and without hesitation howled like the beast that bit him.
Inside her home, Fatima could her the commotion. She stood in a doorway panicked for her son that was raised her nephew. Her prophecy of the Lobo da Lua coming true below her feet.
She covered her mouth hoping to keep her own screams of fear from making the monster in the basement want her blood. The house shook, the walls and floorboards creaked. And then, a sign of hope, Filipe in his natural voice screamed for her help.
Fatima didn't know what to do. It was too dangerous to go down and see him, she knew the beast in him was begging to be fed and she could be the meal he desired. But that voice, that pained awful voice of the Filipe she loved so much begged for her mercy.
Fatima grabbed hold of her rosary beads and quickly went down into the basement.
The stairwell was dark, there was dim light at the bottom where Filipe was locked in chains.
She took one step at a time and when she reached the bottom, there he was, half man half beast.
"Please." he begged. "Please, do something."
"We have to wait." Fatima said at a distance. "The moon will go soon, and the transition will fade away. Mary promises she'll find a way help you after this first full moon, my love. We have to wait."
The chains rattled as Filipe pulled on them as hard as he could. Fatima's eyes looked at the bolts that locked the chains to the brick wall and could see them loosening. There was no way she could tighten them, she had to calm Filipe so he wouldn't notice his strength was indeed breaking the chains.
"Darling, please rest. You must rest until the night is done."
Filipe's head snapped in Fatima's direction, his eyes locking on hers. "Kill me." he said in a low growl. "Destroy me now."
"Stop it!" She shouted in horror to his request. "STOP THAT! I will not kill you!"
Filipe growled again, his teeth now sharp as shark's and he continued to yank on the chains hoping they'd break free. He pulled and he pulled. More and more brick broke away from the bolts. Fatima rushed over to the wall and placed her hands on the bolts as if that would do anything.
The beast grew wilder in Filipe. He was yet to fully transition, but the moon's full face would soon show, and this night was just the beginning of what was to come.
He pulled again, wanting to be out. Wanting his life. And then, with the power of something out of this world, from some other place, supernatural and wild, Filipe pulled one final time and the chains broke free from the wall. His thick strong legs yanked the chains around his ankles, and they too became free from the opposite wall.
He stood there half naked, hairy, growling. A monster in the face of the woman gave him life. He stumbled over to Fatima who cowered on the floor in the dust of the broken bricks. He sniffed her and growled hoping she's stab in the face or slit his throat.
"Kill me," he said softy. "do it."
"I will not Filipe, you have to stay here and get through this. Mary will help! She promised to find something in her mother's book to help reverse this curse." Fatima reminded him.
Filipe, angry with Fatima's refusal to end his painful existence howled like a monster and began to go up the stairwell. Fatima grabbed on to what was left of this shirt and his large hand now thick like a paw swung back and swatted her clear across the room.
Fatima hit the other brick wall of her basement and fell in a heap of black fabric from her dress-- out cold.
Filipe sniffed and snarled and went up the stairwell on all fours banging and beating the wood with this large thick feet and hands. He burst through the basement door tearing it from its hinges and like a trapped bull in a pen blasted his way through Fatima's house and through her front door vanishing into the night.
Fatima awoke, her head sore, a cut at her temple. She looked around slightly dazed and realized she was the only one in the basement.
She leaped to her feet, rushed up the basement stairs and through the broken door into her ravaged home and saw the front door of broken open -- Filipe was gone.
As Fatima stood in her doorway a cold summer wind washed over her. She was panicking, imagining the destruction that lay in Filipe's wake. Then the distant howl of the monster at the quarter moon.
"God help us." She whispered. "God help us all."
****
 |
| Charlotte enters in Mary’s room |
On Goode Island, Mary tossed and turned in her bed. Her mind flooded with the images of Filipe tied to Fatima's basement wall from his bed. She loved him with every inch of her soul. Her heart ached that he was now in the throes of something so unimaginable and something she could not save him from right then and there.
She remembered how they came together. Both trapped in the turret room of Tirymor House. Both finding each other in a world that was filled with danger and hate and cold-hearted liars that only wanted them to suffer. They found each other in the darkest moments of their lives, and she now was alone trembling in her bed hoping that she could find a way to break him free of the curse that could take his life.
As Mary attempted to lull herself to sleep by pushing bad memories out with good ones her 14-year-old daughter Charlotte burst into her room in her nightgown with a lit candle in her hand.
"My god Charlotte, what is it!?" Mary yelped startled by her daughter's alarming entrance.
Charlotte said nothing she only stood there with a strange look on her face.
"Charlotte?" Mary said as she slowly got out of bed. "Darling, what is it?" She asked again.
Morgan came out of the shadowy hall and passed Charlotte and stepped into Mary's room.
"She did the same to me in my room. She won't speak. She only holds out that candle and stares." He said.
"She said nothing? Nothing at all?" Mary asked.
Morgan shook his head. "But look at her eyes." He noted.
Mary got closer to her daughter and saw that her sky-blue eyes were now the color of honey and amber. The same color as Filipe's were now that he was becoming the moon wolf.
"Charlotte, tell me what has happened, what's keeping you this way?" Mary said as she grabbed Mary's hand and closed her eyes allowing the telepathic connection, they had slowly bound their psychic powers.
Mary was soon mentally transported into Charlotte's mind that had been somehow seized. In the darkness of the mind Mary saw Charlotte standing also holding a candle exactly as she was in her bedroom. Mary walked over to her, and Charlotte took a breath in and out almost as if releasing pressure within her body to finally speak.
"It's Filipe. It's finally happened." Charlotte said. "I can see and feel his whole-body change. When it happened, I became trapped I couldn't speak. I don't know why." Charlotte said.
"Darling it is the stress of your powers. You are taking too much on. You have to pass some to me; I can relieve you of so much of this. Together we can figure out a way to save Filipe." Mary explained.
"But I how can we? He's already gone." Charlotte said.
"What? What do you mean gone?"
"He's gone."
Mary furrowed her brow, "Darling, gone how? What do you mean?"
Then the two sorceresses began to see a small flickering light in the mind of Charlotte as if they were looking through a keyhole from a darkened room. They walked towards the tiny light that began to grow in size and soon it was a large disc of bright whiteness showing them a scene.
The scene were the docks on Welshport where two fishermen were preparing the boat for an early morning trip to sea. They carefully tied ropes and connected lures and hooks. Checked the weather, doubled checked their tackle.
But as Mary and Charlotte continued to watch the scene of the men by the docks, they saw the amber eyes of Filipe slow approach the fisherman and without notice Filipe, still halfway through his transition, attached the fisherman in a bloody fight tearing them to pieces.
The scene in Charlotte's mind quickly went to black as Charlotte and Mary came-to back in Mary's bedroom. Mary grabbed a sobbing Charlotte horrified at what they saw.
"What happened? WHAT HAPPENED??" Morgan screeched.
Mary's heart was pounding. Charlotte shook in her mother's arms terrified of what her mind had just shown her.
Morgan could see the terror on their faces, he sensed the slow-moving horror had just accelerated in their direction.
"FIND MY MOTHER'S BOOK OF SPELLS!! BRING IT TO ME!!" Mary screamed while Charlotte sobbed.
The time had come, a reversal spell was now too late, they needed to find something in Eliza Goode's book to save Filipe and save them all from death.
It was now or never.
****
LONDON
 |
| Christopher & Genevieve in London |
As night rolled on in Welshport, a mid-afternoon son shined over the city of London in England through a mist of overcast skies in a balmy summer. Walking through the streets together Genevieve Thorne had kept her promise to Christopher Wesley and met him at the outdoor market to discuss Genevieve's plans on seeking the final revenge on Jacob for what he did to both David and Sabrina --- their doppelgängers and her hope of him joining her in America to do so.
"It seems strange to me that you'd come all this way in search of a man you never knew. You'll have to forgive my skepticism." Christopher said as the pair walked through a crowded street market.
Genvieve picked up a rose at a flower stand and smelled it. She took out a coin and paid for the flower.
"At first glance at this story, yes, it is strange, so I understand why you'd feel this way." She answered, again smelling the rose. "But if you had something inside of you that pushed you and pushed you and pushed to help and finally make right the terrible wrong that had happened, I think you'd agree with me more. That's what I live with every day, Christopher. Inside of me Sabrina has left her memories of her love her life her passions --- and her pain. I live with them as if they were my own. This is why I need to do this. This was Sabrina and David's tragedy, but it's now left to me to correct -- and hopefully you."
"I never said I didn't agree." Christopher noted. "I just said it was odd what you'd do for two strangers."
She stopped on the slippery cobble stone street in the center of the street market and into Christopher's green eyes, something about him told her there was a real connection to Welshport, more than he wanted to admit.
She decided to push him on this.
"When you look in the mirror now and you know that your face is the same as David's, doesn't that make change how you feel about me? Don't you see what I see and how things in Welshport were left? David to this day is considered the killer of his own wife -- he's innocent. How does that make you feel?" She asked.
"I ... I don't know." He looked at her confused.
"What I mean," she added "is that now you know the truth of two people who suffered a great deal because a man wanted to have everything and anything that wasn't his to have to the point where he took a woman's life and framed an innocent person for his own crime, wouldn't you want to help the man that once had your face? I certainly can't let go of my connection to Sabrina, not after having felt Sabrina's anguish so deeply inside. Can you let go of yours with David?"
"And their child." Christopher noted again to Geneveive's surprise.
"Yes." She said curiously. "And their child. You're very interested in Sebastian. You've mentioned him twice now and yet I've barley spoken of him."
Christopher shrugged and looped his arm in hers and continued to walk the rest of the market "It just bothers me that that boy has had to live without his parents so long because of how what his uncle did."
"He was no longer a boy." Genevieve noted with a grin. "By the time of his very sad death he was married and his widow just a few months back gave birth to a son."
Christopher stopped again in his tracks "A grandchild! David and Sabrina have a grandchild!!??"
Another of Christopher's strange tells the curiosity of David's family.
"His name is Gabriel." she replied.
There was a clear emittance of glee shining from Christopher's face a joy that Genevieve could feel almost as if it was a radiating sun. She wondered, too, just who exactly Christopher was if he really wasn't David Lord. He was so determined to know more about Sebastian, the only child of the couple, even though Genevieve had never mentioned him. She wasn't sure how Christopher knew about Sebastian, and it was clear to her that Christopher was very much connected to David-- more than he lead on.
And perhaps he was David himself still forcing the disguise of this man named Christiopher Wesley.
"So tell me," She began "how did you end up in London anyway?"
"Long story."
"I have the time."
Christopher smirked "I was here for work. I came with a ship that fished the seas of the North Atlantic and received a job offer to stay and work for the fishing company."
"How long ago?" She asked.
"A long time." he answered without giving too much information.
"And you're all alone. You have no one with you. No wife. No partner. No ... no anyone." She said.
As they continued to talk they came through the end of the market and to a small area overlooking the river Thames. The water rushed by them in a green murky wash. It smelled like the sea as Christopher gazed off into the distance towards Tower Bridge.
"There was someone. About 5 or 6 years after I had finally found the flat I live in now. She and I were neighbors, she lived across the hall. I fell in love but it was somewhat of a failed affair. I couldn't keep thinking of other things while I was with her. Unfortunately things broke apart and I never saw her again." Christopher explained.
"I'm sorry." She asked.
"Well -- the saddest part is she and I had a son together. She took him." Christopher revealed.
"You have a child!" She explained.
He nodded. "Yes. He’s a young man now… his name is Adrian."
"That's a pretty name." Genevieve answered, noting the exotic sound of the boy’s name. "What were the things, the things that kept you from being able to be with this woman forever?" Genevieve asked as a several seagulls swarmed around them.
"My past. My future. All of that. You know how it is, you meet someone knew and those ghosts never leave you."
Genevieve knew, she had similar situation with Johnathon after her divorce from Morgan's father Steven.
"A new relationship does always have to contend with the one before. Sometimes past love makes the new love strong." She said.
"And sometimes it doesn't." Christopher answered.
His eyes were so mysterious. His entire demeanor was like a blank page, a canvas waiting to be painted. A person she felt like she knew but knew nothing about.
"I need you to----" she said before he came close and laid his lips on hers. They kissed, the fire the connection was there, true and real. She felt it but had no idea he felt it too.
When he backed away he apologized and she smiled, his face blushing.
"Who are you?" She asked as the sun slowly slipped out from under a gray London cloud and lit them in the brightest light they had seen all day.
"A man who needs to help you. I've decided, I want to help you." he answered.
"Then you'll return with me? You'll come to Welshport, for sure, and help me take down Jacob Lord once and for all."
Christopher pulled her in close, so close she could feel his breath fall on her face. He kissed her again and said he would. He would help her.
And there in London as Big Ben's bell tolled the hour, she felt her world come together and perhaps she had found the answer to so many questions. If Christopher was David, he wasn't going to give up truth anytime soon, but at least she had him in her corner.
Christopher or David, whom ever he was.
****
Back in Welshport over on the docks, two men gathered their belongings to head off out to sea. They were fisherman, a younger man and his son of about 30. Their ship, a fishing trawler from mainland Maine of the Collins Fishing Fleet, was headed their way to pick them up.
As the son bent down over this sea bag and fishing box, he heard snarling and heavy breathing behind him from the darkness.
The father walked over to the son. His eyes looking towards the sound. His face a frozen expression of terror.
The son slowly stood up staring at his father.
"Pop? What is it?" The son asked.
"Don't move." The father said putting his hand on his son's shoulder as if to lock him in place.
"What? Why? What's back there?" The son asked rotating slightly.
"NO!" The father shouted pulling the son back towards him, as the snarling continued to get closer. "I said don't make a move."
The breathing got closer. So close.
The son could feel the angry energy building up behind him.
The two men stood there in the dark, their breathing shallowing. Sweat slowly dropping down their foreheads and backs.
Suddenly a loud howl and a lunge from the shadows. Teeth. Screams. Claws. Blood.
Death.
Then .... only darkness and the sound of waves lapping up on the docks.
****
 |
| Gregory reveals his secret room to Asha |
The following morning in Welshport in an upstairs apartment just above the Constable's office, Gregory entered a small side bedroom with a small silver try of food and drink. In the room, tired to the bed was the unconscious Asha Hoffman. His desperate attempt to keep his secret quiet meant she could no longer walk among the other villagers. Her desire to tell the truth of what they did to Aurora and the child she gave birth to threatened everything Gregory had worked for.
Asha began to stir, she moaned and tried to roll over in the bed but being bound refused this motion. Her hair was a tangled mess over her face but when she opened her eyes she could see Gregory standing in above her through the strands of dark brown locks.
"What have you done?" She whispered.
"You're safe. Don't worry." He said in an equally soft voice.
She suddenly inhaled to let out a scream but Gregory quickly cover her mouth with one hand and removed a gag of a rolled up handkerchief from his pocket and forced it into her mouth.
"This didn't have to be this way, Asha, we're friends. We looked out for each other. I helped you with Andrew Kim, and you helped me with Caspian. But you're not cooperating anymore. I had to make a choice." The constable of Welshport said.
She began to cry. Her life slowly flashing before her eyes. An avalanche of questions began to swirl in her mind: What did she do to deserve this? Could she escape? Was she going to do? What was he going to do?
"Don't worry," he said trying to reassure her "there's nothing to be afraid of. I'll figure this all out and we'll move on somehow and someway. You just have to promise me you won't tell Aurora or Nikolas what we did. Can you do that?"
Asha, her eyes blood-shot from crying, her cheeks red and aching, nodded -- agreeing she would lie for him. But he didn't believe her. Something in his training as a police officer could see her body language was telling her truth -- she would NOT lie for him, she just wanted to be free.
"Tsk tsk tsk. I don't know. I really don't know." Gregory said. "I need to feel confident that we are on the same page, Asha. But I can't trust you."
Asha shook her head, she motioned to Gregory to remove her gag. She had to speak, she had to make him believe he could trust her and that their secret would be safe -- even though deep in her mind it was all a lie.
Gregory tilted his head and knelt down next to Asha and slowly removed the gag from her mouth. Her eyes were swollen from crying, her mouth dry. She licked her lips and took a breath "I won't tell anyone anything. Just let me go Gregory, let me go and all of this will be forgotten."
Gregory knew she was lying. He replaced the gag as she gasped and tried to spit it out.
He went over to the closet and opened it. He shoved the clothes aside revealing a small door. Asha attempted to peek to see what he was doing as the closet was slightly to the left of her and obscured.
She only heard the squeak of hinges.
Gregory had opened a small door deep in the back of the closet that lead into a secret smaller room. It was originally a private office where the Constable of the town, whomever held that position, could interrogate people in private. It was a room filled of history that centuries of Welshport Constables used to keep the village's secrets over time. Christian Evans, the Constable before Gregory, and Gregory himself had never used this small office. It had been empty for a decade but Gregory now saw a better use for it.
The constable went over to Asha and flipped up the hem of her long dress and untied her ankles then he went to her wrists and did the same. Asha rubbed her sore wrists and removed her gag surprised he was allowing this, but Gregory knew her fear of him would keep her silent.
"Get up." He said.
She was shaking in her clothes. She felt as if she was going to faint but remained as strong as she could. Everything she had done was rushing into her mind. Why did she trust him? Why did she ever trust him!?
"This room is where you'll remain until I figure out what to do with you." Gregory said pointing to the open door deep in the closet.
Asha looked over and saw only a black opening to the room. No light. No way of getting out.
Asha lunged for the bedroom door to escape, Gregory grabbed a loosened sash on her dress and yanked and Asha tumbled to the floor. He jumped over to her and grabbed her right arm, she swung back with her left and scratched him on his face drawing blood. He groaned with pain. His large frame was too much for and he picked her up by the waist and held her in place right in front of him. She tried to break free. Hitting him. Kicking him and just when she remembered to scream he covered her mouth and dragged her over to the closet and into the secret room that had no light. He tied her hands and feet up again on another smaller bed and wrapped a scarf around her mouth to muffle her crying.
Trapped.
"Don't worry. This is only temporary until I can figure out what to do next. You won't be hurt." He said.
The tears slowly seeped down her check and puddled at the top of the handkerchief.
He lit the small oil lamp that sat on a stool and told her he'd return with food and water shortly.
"I promise this is temporary." He said.
As he left her in the room behind the closet of his guest bedroom, she begged for him to come back and not leave her, but the door closed behind her and he was gone. She cried and couldn't believe what had happened to her. She felt the fear and panic begin to fill her body. To Asha, this felt like the end of the line.
On the other side of the closet door, Gregory too cried. He hated what he had come to, but Asha knew too much and wielded too much power with her breaking their pact.
"It won't be long." He said to himself through his tears cryptically describing the length of time Asha would be alive.
Then a knock at the front door.
Gregory's heart sank into his stomach. He composed himself and looked back at the closet. He covered the secret door again with the hanging clothes and went over to a mirror and realized he had three long scratches down his face from the tussle with Asha.
"Shit." he whispered.
The knocks became more and more impatient.
Gregory took a breath and slowly made his way to his front door and when he finally opened it there stood Dr. Nikolas Jordan.
"Thank god you're home!" Nik said pushing his way into the upstairs apartment. "I was downstairs and one of your deputies said they you hadn't come in yet."
Seeing Nik's panic-stricken face, Gregory jumped to worrying about Nik's mother Aurora. The woman Gregory loved.
"What is it? Is it your mother? Is she ok?"
"She's fine! She's still saying with my sister Evie at the new house over on the beach. She's fine." Nik answered knowing Gregory's devotion to his mother. "It's Asha. No one has seen her. I stayed at Evie's last night and when I came home Asha hadn't been there all night. I thought she might have picked up an extra shift at the hospital but no one there had seen her either."
Gregory gulped.
"What?" Nik aske noting Gregory's odd pause.
"Oh god, Nik, I'm so sorry. I've been so busy the last two days that I forgot to tell you about Asha."
Nik tilted his head. "I don't understand, what do you mean?"
"She left town Nik. She had a terribly emergency with her family and she left town. Yes, a telegram came early yesterday and she left and wasn't sure when she'd come back. I was supposed to tell you but I completely forgot to come by the beach house to tell you." Gregory said lying.
"No, that's not true. She wouldn't just leave and not tell me." Nik said.
"I'm sorry, kiddo, she did."
Nik's mind felt like it had been flooded with thoughts and none of them were making any sense. Asha had never mentioned anything going on with her family, for all he knew they were fine and living in Chicago. She would never not tell the hospital she couldn't come in, she would never do what Gregroy was telling him she did.
"Gregory she wouldn't just abandon everything here without notice." Nik said. "It's so unlike her."
"You're right, its very unlike her but it was an emergency and she had to go. It was my fault that you didn't get the message and I was supposed to tell the hospital too but again, I dropped the ball." Gregory explained.
"That's a very heavy ball you've dropped." Nik replied, his eyes narrowing with disdain.
"You’re right. I really apologize, I feel terrible about this." Gregory lamented.
As Nik tried to make sense of everything he had just heard and hoped that Asha would write him or find a way to send him telephone call to the hospital but with the length of time it would take her to get to Chicago from Maine, he had no idea.
As Nik turned to leave, his mind cleared and suddenly noticed the scratches down Gregory's face.
"What happened here?"
Gregory stood frozen in his doorway and had to quickly think on his feet.
"That's what I was busy with." He chuckled. "A wild scene at the Siren's Call. Two men fighting and I had to break it up. It was a mess."
"They look fresh." The young doctor noticed.
"OH! I just washed my face, probably irritated the skin again." Gregory again lied.
Nik nodded, somewhat believing him, but the entire conversation seemed off. He thanked Gregory for the information on Asha and went down the stairwell and back into the lower chamber that was the Constable's office. There were three deputies there and when he looked around the five cells where people were kept before seeing a judge, he noticed they were all empty.
"Say," Nik said to one of the deputies. "Has there been court hearing for the two people fighting at the Pub last night?"
The deputy looked at Nik strangely. "Fight at the pub?"
Nik realized his instinct was right -- Gregory was lying.
"Never mind, thanks." Nik said as he looked back up the stairwell to the upstairs apartment with deep suspicion.
Nik had overheard Asha and Gregory discussing what they had done to Aurora's child and how they had lied about everything that happened the night the baby was born. His heart was brokenhearted knowing that Asha, the woman that he loved, had once again lied to him about something so important in his life. She had promised no more secrets, and this one was the most devastating of them all. But her sudden disappearance, Gregory's odd behavior, and the secret they both shared put Nik in a very suspicious mindset -- and Gregory was the target of that suspicion.
"What have you done, Gregory?" Nik thought to himself. "What have you done?"
Back upstairs, Gregory began to panic. He knew Nik wasn't stupid. He knew that time was limited on Asha being in the secret-room.
The clock was ticking on poor Asha's fate.
****
 |
| Matthew & Evie meet at Gramercy Café |
Down the street from The Constable's station, at a busy Gramercy Cafe, Matthew Winterborn sat alone at a table nervously folding and unfolding a cloth napkin awaiting his guest. It h ad been almost two days since he and Evie reconnected at the bottom of the cliffs on the beach near her new home above the shore.
Moments later, an equally nervous Evie walked into the cafe in a beautiful blue dress and hat. She scanned the cafe from the door searching for Matthew and from his seat he could see her framed in the doorway with the bright light of the late afternoon busting from behind her.
It was as if his dream of the mysterious woman in his memory had come to life. Now more than ever he knew the mysterious women in his mind was Evie Jordan-Lord.
Then, she spotted him and her face lit up.
"Please sit, sit!" He said as she approached their table. "I've ordered us some coffee." He added.
"Thank you." She said, unable to release her gaze on the man she thought was lost at sea almost a year ago. "It's amazing that I'm sitting across from you again Matthew. Truly amazing. I never dreamed this could happen."
"Its a miracle." he answered as a waiter in a finely cut tuxedo brought them their coffee.
"How did you survive all those months out there?"
"Shortly after the ship sank I must have drifted on debris for a while until I washed up on shore in the Azores Islands. Do you know of them?" He asked.
"YES!" She exclaimed. "When I first came to Welshport, my ship stopped there to pick up more passengers. They're exquisite. Then what?" She asked.
“A very nice family took me in -- after they found me of course. I wasn't able to speak or anything and they nursed me back to health. It was a man and his mother, in fact Lucas, the man that found, is in Welshport now too. He came with me. He's starting a new life here."
Evie smiled; her smile was a shining beacon back to Matthew's old life. He saw her sitting right across from him and although his memories slowly came back to him there were still many holes. She was happy he was alive; she was happy that he made it back home, but her heart had since moved away from their relationship after the events when he was presumed dead.
"There is nothing else in this world I want than for you to be here and back to your normal life. How have you been doing?" She asked as she reached for his hand.
He squeezed it. He was in love again. He could feel it. She was the woman he dreamed of. His memory was telling him to return to Welshport and find her, and he did.
"It's been a slow process, to say the least, but Lucas has helped me. Being home has helped me and most of all seeing you has helped me." He answered.
"Oh Matthew." She said sipping her coffee meekly.
"It's true." He said. "When I was away I had several dreams that I now see as memories of a woman who looked just like Evie. She was you. She was telling me in words I could not hear to come back here. I came back and I found you almost instantly, it was meant to be." he said.
A sad expression fell on her face. He sensed it right away a sinking feeling came into his heart and he braced himself for the second shoe to drop.
"A lot has happened since you've been gone. You may not remember everything, but things became very volatile right before you left out to sea and they did not let up after we all thought you were lost. I wish I could go into more details but it's a very long and disturbing story, Matthew, it's too hard to tell you all at once." Evie explained.
"I know it's' been a while since we've been together but, I do still feel the same for you. That love never left me, I can feel it right now looking at you here. Its very strong." He said.
"I love you too." She answered. "But, Matthew so much has changed. I had to really refocus my life in the time you've been gone because of my son. Do you remember my son, Gabriel?" She asked.
Matthew searched his mind and there was an idea of a child but nothing clear. He knew that, obviously, life would go on if everyone believed he had died at sea, but he naively thought that perhaps if they found each other again that maybe their connection would rekindle slowly bur surly. Evie, right there in the cafe, splashed water on the spark he hoped to light.
"I wish nothing but happiness for you and your son Evie. I would never want to get in the way." Matthew said.
She watched the happiness Matthew first had when he saw her enter the cafe slowly slip away as they chatted. It was true that she loved him, still, but his time away had morphed her into someone else. She had to fight for Gabriel first and foremost. While he was gone, those tragedies and horrors she suffered truly made he push all romantic feelings to the side and she needed to get Gabriel back from Jacob and Celeste more than anything else.
"This doesn't mean we can't be close like friends." She assured him.
"I know." He said smiling as he sipped his coffee.
"Matthew, I feel awful, I know that maybe coming home and getting specks of your memory back would make you feel as if you could pick up where you left off, but things didn't stop for me. Not in the slightest." She said.
"No, of course, of course. It was silly of me to think otherwise. The world keeps moving doesn't it." Matthew said, the slight twinge of disappointment still in his voice.
"I feel awful." Evie replied.
"No, no, no." He attempted to assure her. "I completely understand! Your son comes first and whatever is going on with him, I, as a friend, will absolutely help you. That's really all I want. But the child's father, forgive me for asking, but are you still in love with him? Could that also be something you are grappling with?" Matthew asked.
She took a beat to answer.
"Matthew I'll always love Sebastian. Our marriage was cut short by heartless, selfish people who could only see dollar signs through their jealousy. We never truly had time to build our little family the way we deserved, at least Gabriel deserves. But yes, I do love him, but that too has changed. It’s a different kind of love now. One that is more symbolic of what was than what is. It’s also a love that, from now on, will be held from a far. That’s where he is, far, far away. And that's how it'll stay. For good." She explained.
"I see." He replied, his face showing his sadness. He had dreamed of her for months while he was lost and now his heart was breaking that he couldn't pick up where they had left off. "You must think I've been silly thinking we could just start again, I don't know what came over me." he added.
"Not at all. I... Matthew, look at me, I do love you, I truly do. You were the one person I felt most safe with. The one solid person I looked to that I knew would never ever leave me lost to the terrors that this Island can bring. Don't think differently." She said, her heart full to see his handsome face again, and then, she felt it. The passion for him did still exist.
Taking a breath, Evie paused to think. She thought he deserved to know exactly what was going on, the poor man had had enough days of his life in the dark, he had a right to know.
“They took my son from me." She said her voice shaking as the memory of Gabriel’s absence sunk in. "Jacob and Celeste Lord saw an opportunity to make sure they took whatever they wanted from me in a moment of crisis and did so. They paid off lawyers and a judge and figured out a way to legally take my child from me all the while illegally locking me away in an asylum. Now, I'm fighting to get him back and I'm not letting up. I've seen enough, I've learned enough, and I have no more time to allow this family to rule over me. They forgot that although I married in, I'm one of them too. I'm going to get Gabriel back, Matthew, and I will not let up until they give him back."
"That's awful! How could anyone take a child from it's mother?"
Evie nodded in an agreement. "Money, power and greed, that's Jacob's motive. That's always his motive. Sebastian lost his life for it."
As the two continued to reconnect over the past 8 to 10 months of their lives and what Jacob and Celeste had done a group customers at a table near Evie and Matthew were discussing the village's events the coming night celebrating the giant full summer moon to come.
There would be a village picknick in the park, a Moon festival in town square outside of Village Hall with booths and food and dancing and music. Later on in the evening there'd be a moon light parade lit by lamps that went from the edge of the village through town and up end just in front of Village Hall.
Everyone was excited about the Summer Moon!
But then, startling commotion entered the cafe from a woman who had brought in a newspapers with a truly terrifying headline.
The rest of the customers dropped the exciting moon celebration talk began to surround the woman to read the paper. Another man, the woman's husband, entered with more papers and started giving them out to several people at the cafe so that they too could read the horrible news.
"I can't tell what's going on." Matthew said trying to sneak a peek.
Evie too twisted in her chair to try and read a neighboring paper but couldn't.
Then, as if from out of no where, a paper fell to the table from above.
Splashed across the top were shocking words.
"TWO FISHERMEN FOUND GUTTED ON WELSHPORT DOCKS"
"Oh my god." Evie gasped.
"That's not god's doing, hon." Then man who dropped the newspaper and said. "It's a monster's mouth!"
"A monster??" Matthew asked. "What do you mean?"
The man's face froze. He slowly looked away from Matthew and stared at Evie and said "Ask your friend."
The man slowly walked back to the group and the rest of the customers in the cafe began to lift their eyes up from their copies of THE WELSHPORT GLOBE and stare are Evie. Everyone began to whisper and point. Everyone began to glare at Evie with eyes of anger and spite.
"Evie, what's going on?" Matthew asked.
Evie didn't know. She grabbed the paper from Matthew, and he came over and read it with her. In the article, written by Baxter Murphey, the murders were blamed on a rumor that Baxter had heard that would shock the small island Village. The murders were blamed on Evie's supposedly dead husband Sebastian Lord whom everyone believed dead, but Evie was quoted via a third party source as saying he wasn’t dead.
The salacious sub-headline then listed Sebastian as alive and sick; ill with a disease that made him murder and that the Lord family had been hiding this secret for years with lies of Sebastian's many disappearances and deaths.
“Sebastian Lord ALIVE! His ravenous mystery illness is of the homicidal nature!”
And the article continued Baxter’s fictional tale of what happened with murky truths, rumors working as narrative and pointing the finger squarely at the most powerful family on the island— the same family that owned that very paper. They, the article said, was hiding the creature Sebastian away somewhere and that he was let out at might to prey on the vulnerable.
"...these unlucky fishermen of our community were the first victims and by what this reporter believes won’t be the last. The Lords MUST answer for this." Baxter wrote in the article.
"Oh my god, no." Evie said again, her gloved hand over her mouth.
"This isn't true, is it?" Matthew asked.
"I have to go!" She said, dodging the darts of villager's sharp stares.
"Evie WAIT!" Matthew shouted.
Evie looked at him but did not answer. She tossed the paper bac on the table and quickly left to find the Lord family, hoping they hadn't read the article yet.
"I'd let her go lad." A man said as the rest of the cafe murmured in agreement. "They're nothing there in that girl that won't kill you in the end. Just look at these two on the docks. Ripped from stem to stern."
Matthew looked back down at the open page and read more of the article. Then more flashes of memories came to his mind. A fire. A giant blaze. A face of a man with vicious teeth, blood. A woman screaming. More fire. An explosion. Crying. Pain.
Matthew was having a memory of the night where his sister Alice tried to save them all from the monstrous vampire Sebastian. The article, to Matthew was beginning to ring true.
"Vampire." Matthew whispered. "The vampire."
