"Please-- it's very important. Look at it again. Are you certain you've never seen, never heard of it before?"

"The old man bent close to the object, grizzled, bushy eyebrows furrowing. Following an intense moment's labored study, he slowly shook his head.

"No," he said, "I am sorry."

The stranger was persistent. "Then perhaps you might know of someone who could help me. Please. You must try." His expression pleaded with the elderly man. Compliantly, he thought hard--his deeply-lined, leathery brown face wrinkling as he absently stroked his stubbly grey beard. After a time, he looked up sorrowfully.

"I am sorry," he said, "but I cannot help you." He carefully returned the ornate object. The younger man accepted it, as if reluctantly. The old man studied his disappointment, then swallowed thoughtfully and asked the inevitable.

"May I ask," he ventured, "what is it?"

"That is a question," the stranger sighed, replacing the object in a sack and tucking the sack determindly under one arm, "I have been trying to answer myself. I thank you for your time." And he took his leave.

Barnabas roamed the pitted lane endlessly, taking little notice that the path he followed was no more than a mere dirt ribbon, badly rutted and dusty. He had no choice, really; no concrete road or sidewalk existed within miles. Actually, he detected few changes in the villagers' lives since his first visit to this country nearly two centuries ago. He glanced from one row of ramshackle lean-tos to another and tasted the hot, dry air bitterly. The road crumbled beneath his heals--still, it served its purpose a s a means of travel between more and more desolate villages which were beginning to take on a tragic similarity.

Even as dusk settled, the street remained crowded with people seeking relief from the stifling heat. A few of the men lifted their dark, sunken eyes skyward. Barnabas followed their gaze to the pale sliver of moon just rising in the eastern sky. He surmised from their conversation had been the weather, and the fact in August, to end the long draught. Barnabas, much to his own surprise, found himself yearning for the bitterly cold Maine winters.

TALES OF HOFFMAN

September 18, 1926

The hours of sheer agony were over, ending with one great tidal wave of excruciating pain that, mercifully, flowed away from her body now in ever-widening rings. Every muscle in her body ached as if she'd sealed the highest peak. In fact, she had achieved an even greater feat.

Quite pleased with herself, she gave in to her body's incessant demand for rest, surrendering to the damp softness of the bed, lulled by the hushed voices of her husband and the doctor conferring in the narrow hallway just outside the bedroom. She struggled to stay awake, to hear them. She didn't want to miss a moment of the most important day of her life.

Her husband joined her shortly. The way he dawdled at the foot of the bed, gripping one of the posts, his eyes never quite connecting with hers, set off alarms in her head. The jolt cleared her mind in an instant. It was then she noticed how strangely quiet the room was. There wasn't a sound...

"The baby..." she was barely able to choke out the words, fearing what his strained expression and shadowed eyes foretold.

"Doc says she's awfully small. Smaller than he expected, " came his vague answer.

"Let me see her!"

"You can't-"

"Why not? What's wrong with her?"

A huge lump closed his throat that, even if he could find the right words to tell her that their baby might die, he could never get them out.

The limp young woman drew herself up with great difficulty, throwing the bedcovers aside.

Her husband quickly resettled her with vague assurances that, "Doc Perkins is doing everything he can for her. All we can do now...is pray." His voice broke then, and she knew how grave the situation really was.

While his newborn daughter hovered between life and death in the next room, he condemned himself for not being here when Eleanor went into labor. The baby wasn't due for another six weeks. When he'd returned home that evening, he never expected to find his wife doubled over in pain. There was not time to get to the hospital. They were lucky that Doc Perkins had arrived in time to deliver the baby. If only he'd come straight from work!

He'd had an opportunity to earn a few extra dollars by running an errand for his boss. All he had to do was pick up a crate and deliver it to his boss's home. He never questioned the contents but suspected it was bootleg whiskey. If caught, he could have gotten into serious trouble by transporting liquor during Prohibition. But times were hard and he had a baby on the way. He'd been secretly putting money aside to buy that fancy crib his wife had admired in a store that was way beyond their tight budget. It was a beauty, not like the chipped, second-hand cradle his sister had offered them. It was painted white, clean and pure, with scenes of woodland animals frolicking on the end panels. Now the baby might not ever sleep in that crib and it was all his fault.

GATES OF HELL

"Barnabas?" Julia had entered the Old House to find it curiously silent, save for the muffled crackle of the fire in the next room. The chill from the woods still clung to her as she peeled off her scarf and coat and hung them on the rack. Hugging her arms together, she entered the sitting room and approached the hearth. Only then did she see him, sitting rigid in a plush chair, his hands folded under his chin and his eyes distant and brooding. Likewise, he became aware of her presence only then, and it took him a moment to find words. He started to rise. She caught his hands and guided him to his feet.

"You didn't hear me," she smiled.

"No." He touched her face, but his mind was still elsewhere. "I'm sorry--I really am glad to se you, Julia."

"Not exactly the way to greet a woman you're going to marry in only three months. Especially when she's about to dash off and leave you sitting alone for a week--much as you're doing now, in fact."

"I am a bit distracted, I admit. I have...not had a pleasant day. To see even the shadow of one cursed as I was..."

She scowled. "What?"

"Yes.I have had a visitation, Julia."

She pushed a chair close to him. "Tell me."

"I do feel I'd better. If only I knew for certain whether or not it was real..." He pressed her fingers. "but I saw her, Julia. As plainly as I see you now. She said nothing--but nonetheless I knew."

"Her? But who? Not--"

"It was a person you never knew, Julia. Her name was Mara Remington Scott, and yes, she was as I was. She came to Collinwood shortly before you did, some seven years ago. She had come to protect a woman she claimed was her niece--one hundred and twenty years removed."

"Her niece?" Julia scowled.

"Miss Winters." Seeing Julia's shock, Barnabas hurried on. "There was never any proof, of course. But Mara claimed to have turned the immortality afforded by her curse to an advantage, allowing her to keep vigilance over her family, whom her husband, practicing the Dark Arts, had determined to destroy. She herself...did not survive his onslaught. As for Mr. Scott, we delivered him to what we hoped would be his final rest, with the help of an amulet fashioned especially to render only him helpless. We locked him away--much as my father did me, so long ago. But I was a fool, Julia. I became free again, after all."

"And has he gotten free, as well?"

"Not yet," he shook his head. "I feel we would know if he had. But Mara Remington's ghost meant to warn me. Assistance is at hand for him, perhaps through a source she can not yet identify. Miss Winters is gone, but his hatred lives. Julia--" his eyes searched hers, and she saw their vulnerability clearly--"I wish you weren't going."

She covered his hands with her own. "I'll be back as soon as I can, Barnabas. If it weren't a patient..."

"No--I know. Perhaps it was simply my imagination, after all. I'd like to think it was. And I know you'll be back."

"I'll call every day. And I'll try to cut it short if I can, really. And whether you did dream it or not, I will be back to help."

"Yes." He lifted her hand to his lips. He was looking at her then, but what he really still saw was a palie, tortured face, with dark-ringed eyes that burned green in an engulfing darkness.

LOVE'S PALE SHADOW

Demon! the word was an angry hiss, distorted by the swirling sickness of a dream. Monster! They flung the words at her like stones and she, so newly risen into what was not full night, was confused and nearly defenseless before them.

Light. There was so much light, from the torches that ringed her and the twilight sky above, that it seared her eyes and face. Lifting her arms before her, she tried to shield herself, screaming the name of her beloved in fear and despair.

Foul spirit! Die the final death and trouble his man no more!

Wind fresh with the scent of the mountain beyond gusted fiercely, and the torches guttered before its passage. She caught a glimpse of him then. He knelt on one knee on the courtyard flagstones, paces away from where they held her, his oldest most trusted advisors flanking him. Struggling to rise, he could not, though no one dared lay a restraining hand on their king. Lifting his arms to her, he cried out her name thought his tongue seemed slurred and deadened.

This was not of his doing, she knew. They must have drugged him so they could do this, dragging her coffin out into the twilight and forcing her out.

The torch flames recovered and sprang upward again, nearly blinding her. But the image of her love, beautiful, so beautiful, her green-eyed Celtic king, she knew was burned forever into her inmost spirit.

Vampire! The shout hurled toward her was like a curse, emerging from a dozen throats. Be no more!

The twang of a bowstring reached through the echoing flickering sensations. She heard the hiss of deadly arrow, and pain--pain in her heart so great it must surely destroy her--knocked her to her knees.

The scream issuing from her own throat seemed to have little to do with her, as if something ripped her just then from her destroyed body with sharp talons. Jerked towards the darkening skies and oblivion, she caught one last glimpse of her betrayed love, screaming her name as if his heart would burst as well. Beautiful, her dark-curled love, and, it seemed, the only one to see her trapped spirit's unwilling flight to a world unknown....

Top of Page

Back To Whispers from Wyndcliffe