How long has it been since Barnabas went back in time?  Odd, but I would need to sit down with a calendar to answer my own question.  One day is very much like another.  We have become automatons for the most part as we go about the necessary business of daily living.  We try to behave as if everything is normal.  We try to act as if David was not dying.  We try to pretend that Barnabas is merely “away” in a conventional sense.  These are illusions we create less for each other and more for ourselves. 

In a strange way, we are a well-matched group.  All of us possess the ostrich-like ability of burying our heads in the sand rather than face the truth.  I never realized how very much alike we are in that respect.  Maggie’s years of covering for an alcoholic stand her in good stead now.  Amy too, is no stranger to denial.  Mrs. Johnson retreats to the stoic New England attitude of minding her own business.  Willie has drawn on aspects of the criminal code that are markedly similar.  They concentrate on the mechanics of caring for the household despite their own emotional stress and the lack of modern conveniences. 

As for the Collinses, I am suddenly reminded of a conversation I once had with Vicki when I first came to Collinwood.  I had woken up to hear a woman’s uncontrollable sobs.  I investigated, but for the life of me, could not pinpoint the direction from which they originated.  When I mentioned the incident at breakfast, the family all denied having heard any noises whatsoever and quickly found business elsewhere. 

Of all people, Vicki explained it to me.  “They heard it too.  I know I have.  I’ve searched and searched myself.  It’s a ghost,” she told me simply. 

I think I must have looked skeptical at that because Vicki smiled and told me she had not believed in ghosts either.  She furrowed her forehead, I remember that and told me, “The Collinses--” she broke off and pointed to the newspaper.  “It’s like America’s position on China.  They refuse to acknowledge the Chinese government although it’s been around for a long time, because to admit it exists would mean facing certain things.  Things they aren’t ready to acknowledge.”   It goes against every thing I’ve ever learned about defense mechanisms, but if it keeps them from going mad . . . 

Poor Vicki.  Life might have been easier for her if she had able to keep her eyes wide open or if she had kept them firmly shut.  It was the in-between position that brought her so much trouble.  I see that now, just as I understand why the Collinses tend to stay under the covers when things go bump in the night--it’s too late for that now.  I was never very comfortable staying on the middle ground in any case. 

Barnabas is gone.  I saw his body vanish before my eyes.  Professor Stokes is convinced Barnabas is dead, but I refuse to believe it.  He is not dead.  He cannot be dead. 

It is hard to believe that the discovery of vampires once seemed incredible to me.  After the events of today, I’m inclined to place that with the prosaic now.  It seems almost mundane.  Despite the origin of his curse, the affliction of Barnabas Collins still has a medical cure.  What has happened of late . . . 

Barnabas has sent me a letter.   He is in danger, as is apparently Quentin Collins.  The letter is vague where it should be specific.  That is no surprise--Barnabas often leaves out the necessary details.  I should be used to that by now.  I showed it to Eliot Stokes without thinking, but I believe I covered adequately.  Barnabas is alive.  That’s all that matters.  There’s still time to save him. 

September 1897 

For the first time, I truly understand how Barnabas must have felt when he came to a century not his own.   There is a great deal of difference between knowing history and living it.  I speak the language, but not the idiom. 

I should set the journey down.   Diminish it.  Contain it with words.  I cannot do it now.  I am still emotionally and physically drained.  Later perhaps. 

Maybe this time paradox would make sense to Eliot.  It is the kind of complexity that he would delight in.  It is giving me a headache.  Thinking about the time between my arrival here and my recovery is frustrating.  It feels like I am reaching for elusive puzzle pieces that compose a picture I’m not anxious to see. 

Barnabas refuses to leave.  His reasoning is specious, but somehow he’s convinced me to stay.  How does he do it?   I capitulate every single time . . . 

I’ve actually just come back from meeting the local Satanist.  Barnabas didn’t tell me he’s a dead ringer for Nicholas Blair.  Actually, I’m beginning to realize just how sketchy an account Barnabas has given me.  I don’t think I’ve ever done so much fast talking in my life.  The suggestions Barnabas made for my cover story were painfully inadequate, but I improvised and have an assortment of components for the cure.  Why oh why am I reminded of something Omi once told me about substituting ingredients in a recipe?  “One is fine.  Two--eh.  Three or more--make something else.”

Petofi is clinically insane.   I realize this is a highly unprofessional diagnosis, but one look at him is all I need to know that.  There is no reason in those myopic eyes.   I don’t need extensive time to evaluate his overdressed aide-de-camp either. 

I can laugh about it now.  Aristede is a bully, although he thinks himself a very sophisticated person, which of course, was belied by his deathtrap, which would not have been out of place in a “Perils of Pauline” serial.  Not that it wasn’t terrifying to have a loaded gun staring me in the face.  It was.   But there are less dramatic and equally effective ways to kill someone.  I say all this with twenty-twenty hindsight, but it is fortunate that we’ve learned my astral body cannot be harmed.  I make a poor Pearl White.

Barnabas thinks he has found Josette again.  

He looks at me with that superior expression as if to say, “You could not possibly understand.”  He has seen yet another woman who he thinks is Josette.  That worries me more.  He knew the others weren’t Josette.  He wanted them to play the role, but he knew better.  This is different. 

I wish I could understand just what it is about her that obsesses him so.  His hyperbole notwithstanding, none of my research suggests she was anything but a pleasant, beautiful and rather simple young woman.  Barnabas seems to have invested her with qualities she never possessed. 

This is going to put us all in terrible jeopardy. 

So now Barnabas believes Edward’s houseguest is Josette, or so Quentin tells me.  We are caught in an unfamiliar time period.  Half the town and most of his family are hunting Barnabas down--aware apparently that he is the vampire.  We have a deadly enemy: the meglomanical Count Petofi, who is determined to evade his enemies and journey to 1969.  Our only allies are Angelique and Quentin.  The former cursed him to vampirism in the first place.  The latter, I admit I do not know well, but his ghost thought nothing of killing a child to assuage his guilt.  And Barnabas could care less.  He has found Josette. 

Either Elliot or I should have come back instead of Barnabas in the first place.  As much as it kills me to say this, Angelique is right.  Barnabas has rewritten history almost completely. 

Petofi has just left looking smug.  He took particular pleasure in reiterating that I was “friendless and without protection.” 

He remains determined to go to 1969.  It is for that reason alone, that I am alive.

I am not quite as friendless as the count seems to think, but the nature of the friends I do have does little to reassure me. 

I cannot believe I am writing this, but I would rather be dealing with Nicholas Blair.  Whatever Mr. Blair’s faults and despite his demonic agendas, he was neither insane nor in love with the sound of his own voice.  Petofi, I suspect, thinks of himself in the third person. 

This rectory must have been beautiful once.  I’ve found a room that gets the morning sun.  For once, I have no distractions.  The story Beth’s ghost told me is literally haunting me now.  I have been where she was, or rather almost was.  She lost herself in her love for Quentin.  I’ve come close to that with Barnabas.  I thought I had regained some distance and set up the necessary barriers to prevent that from happening again.  Now I wonder . . . All I know is that life without Barnabas is inconceivable. 

(covers episodes 829-848)