November 1970 - Page 39

I knew the instant when the sun's rays hit Roxanne full force. My blood burned with her blood, and her final screams echoed through my mind. And then there was silence, soothing peace, and with it the realization that Roxanne was gone. I hope that her spirit has found peace.  

Such a short time ago, in our own time, Barnabas stood over her coffin, his feelings for her making him unable to destroy her, and now, to save my life, at the very least he must have contributed to her death. Weak as I am with blood loss, the thought of what he has done for me makes me cry so easily that my page is becoming spotted by tears, blurring the ink. I must stop writing anyway, since Quentin is going to see me back to Collinwood. If only I could go home, home to my own time and to the medicines and supplements that would build my strength quickly and make me feel whole again...but that home does not exist any more, and will not unless we can change the events that have so far proved unchangeable.  

*

What was Barnabas thinking, locking Lamar Trask in the Old House basement? All I wanted to do was to take refuge in my bed, but instead I ended up on a bone jarring trip in Drew's rented gig to the Old House to let Trask out and then had to stand about in the damp basement and hold my own against the accusations and recriminations of Randall Drew on one side of me, and of Trask on the other, each demanding explanations that I can't even begin to make, let alone make believable. At least that drew attention from Trask's declarations of hearing someone inside the wall. I've seen what is behind there, a skeleton hanging behind the bricks, the skeleton of Trask's own father. 

If only Barnabas would come out of hiding, for that is what he must be doing, staying out of sight until he is ready to deal with Trask on his own terms. I can't even warn him that Trask knows too much about him. It's more now than just suspicion. Not that Trask's put it all together correctly or that he has enough proof to do more than bluster. I wish that I could disappear from Collinwood, like Barnabas, or take to my room and plead that I'm just too exhausted to deal with it, but I am needed once again as a physician. Desmond is ill.  

*

Valerie and I came face to face for the first time since she tried to kill me. She was so surprised by my presence, my being alive and not undead, that she couldn't have known that Roxanne was destroyed. Leticia was present, so her words were phrased in terms of concern, but had Leticia not been so worried about Desmond, Angelique's tone would have given her true feelings of me away. "I've almost given you up for dead..." There was that smile on her face and hate in her eyes with her implication that my not being dead was bringing her no joy or satisfaction. All the time I lay waiting for death in the lighthouse it was that same smile that same look on her face as she stood over me, telling me of my fate. How I would have liked to have done something to wipe it off her face. How I wish that Leticia hadn't been present. I would have wiped that smile away as I told Valerie of how Barnabas rescued me.

She has lost this time, and I can't believe that she will not try again. I know what she is, and in any time or era, she has always been the same. So I know to trust little I see on her pretty smiling face, and to trust less of what comes from her lying lips, and yet, I believe her when she says that she is not the one behind Desmond's witchcraft caused illness. "I have never harmed any one for the sake of harming them..." How laughable that she feels that should make me feel at ease about her when she has tried to kill me, but then my ease for myself is hardly her goal, but to assure me of Desmond's safety from her. And it did. My feelings, so often right, tell me that she's not behind his illness, but those same feelings tell me that she's lying when she says she doesn't know who is. She's afraid! Who is it that she fears so much, and is yet protecting?

We parted on a threat. She is not done with me, and will deal with me. Why does that not surprise me? I have one satisfaction. Wherever Barnabas has been, it has not been with her. (1150-2)

Randall is dead, Daniel is dead, Quentin is in jail...Gerard is master of all of Collinwood. 

When I heard that Gerard was the new master, I feared that the end of our hopes for changing the past had come. At first in every meeting, I waited for him to tell me that it was time for my visit to Collinwood to come to an end. But Collinwood is running smoothly, and although I fear for Quentin, things do not seem as bad as they had before. I've heard that Desmond is doing well in defending him. Maybe we were wrong about Gerard. Maybe some small thing that we've done since our coming to the past has already changed something in this time. An inner voice warns me that nothing in Collinwood, past or present has ever been that easy, but is it too much to hope for?

There have been few pleasures in coming to the past, but what few we enjoyed have become even more illusive. We are a house of mourning. And we live in a time of rules. And I am a woman. And yet, for the first time since coming to the past, and having to live under the customs of this time, the restrictions they place upon me for the sole reason of my gender no longer irritate me to the degree they did, for now I use them for my own advantage. I plead feminine weakness to avoid Trask and his questions, or do I mean his accusations?

I also stay away from Valerie...I cannot keep calling her that, she is Angelique. I keep away from Angelique too. I am convinced she still would do much to see me dead. Although, Barnabas has assured me that I have nothing now to fear from her.

He came to see me, and for once we had time alone. "She will not harm you again," he said to me, sitting close beside me, my hand in his. "I have seen to that." He might have said more, but we heard someone at the drawing room doors and had to pull away and once more be brother and sister. I find our "relationship" straining to say the least, and not for the first time, wish that I had claimed a different, more closer one for us when I first came to the past. He warned me though, that perhaps at least for now, I should keep my distance from the Old House And Angelique. And I will.

At least, in this time of being alone I have regained my strength. (1153-1167)

It has been days since I have seen Barnabas, and since I knew that Angelique was away from the Old House, I was there to greet him when he rose. I told him of how well Desmond was defending Quentin, and then of my doubts about Gerard being changed by Judah. Little had I known that within hours those doubts would be proven false, and I would be back at the Old House with information that was to mean the difference between Barnabas' life and death.

Gerard and Trask have Ben's diary. 

Around and around we went, trying to tell ourselves that our enemies had no information that could harm Barnabas. Even in his diary Ben would never have betrayed Barnabas. And yet, at the same time, we are frightened because we knew that with Trask and Gerard's suspicions even an innocent comment in the diary could lead to exposing Barnabas' secrets...How could things be worse?

I tried to talk Barnabas into leaving, to going away where he would be safe from Trask and Gerard. He said that we couldn't go, not until we at least tried to rescue the future, and I reminded him that I would not be leaving, he would. I would stay and do my best on my own. Echoing those words he had told me in 1995, he said that he would never leave me behind, adding, "'you know that." And I do know that. And since he will not go without me, we are both staying, and I will help him...but help him do what?

*

This afternoon, I was in the Old House by the bookcase, waiting for the hour when Barnabas would awaken. Gerard came brandishing a gun, threatening me with it. He was going to kill Barnabas. I knew that I would have to protect Barnabas, even if it meant my life. I have faced death before, and determined that gun or not, I would have to stop him before he was able to get to Barnabas. As he began to open the bookcase, suddenly Barnabas' voice came from behind me. It was daytime and Barnabas was standing there! Alive!

I was as surprised as Gerard at Barnabas' appearance, but he was so busy gaping at Barnabas, I had time to hide my own emotions. When Gerard left, Barnabas confronted Angelique, asking for the price of her releasing him from his curse. Nothing, she said to him and to me, "I only did what any woman would do who loved Barnabas. Believe me." Believe her? 

I would have died for Barnabas, I said so, and then he said...how could he after he knew that just days ago the witch tried to have me killed...then he said to me, "Then Angelique has saved us both." How galling to be told to be grateful to...her...

After what he said to me...maybe it was because of what he said to me...how could I have been so careless to have revealed my feelings so completely? "I care too much for you..." the words echo through my mind, making me cringe to even remember I said them. But that was not the worst of it. Even as he tilted his head to urge me to talk on, I had to blunder on and on about him being a friend, and all the time he was looking at me, with that...look...in his eyes. And then he said, "You won't lose me, not now...I'm not afraid of anything any more...I'm ready for everything...I'm human now..." After what I nearly said, were those words supposed to have special meaning for me? Had he really wanted me to say the truth? I had already gone so far, should I have told him that I love him? Even if he had rejected me, at least I would have known...but would he have rejected me?

I will never know.

I know most of what what passed between them, Barnabas and Angelique. Whatever his feelings are for me, he has softened toward her, and I don't understand it. Or maybe I do. He is fully freed from his curse for the first time in almost two centuries, finally able to live a normal life, have a wife and family if that is what he chooses. She is far less reticent than I am, and he is in no doubt of her love for him. And she is already living in his house. A heady situation. I left the Old House, I cannot bear to watch her smiling at him, playing on his gratitude, knowing that he wants so badly to be in love that he is determined to fall even if it is for Angelique. But how can he have forgotten all the harm that she has done? 

Or has he remembered and is playing a dark game of his own? (1168-9)

Barnabas is missing. Only something terrible could keep him from helping Quentin. I've talked with everyone I can think of...even Quentin in jail. But no one knows where he is. Or admits to knowing. I suspect Gerard. Or if not him, Trask, for something about him, his obvious self-confidence, is different. But smug looks aren't proof. For the first time since we came to the past, I feel alone and afraid. 

Angelique and I have put aside our differences... as much as we are able to. We have called in the police, but they are useless. Their idea of modern scientific method is to hint with a wink that Barnabas will come home when he's ready and to spend the rest of their time filling their bellies in the Collinwood kitchens. As Angelique's powers do not include clairvoyance, I went to Leticia, but her second sight has been blocked from seeing Barnabas, and she cannot even tell if he is still alive or dead.

Angelique is frightened, terrified of Judah Zachary. She does not confide in me, so I am not certain of the hold he has on her, but it could explain her desperate need for Barnabas' love...the strongest bond between a man and a woman. She needs allies, she needs us. When she claimed that she'd give up all her powers to save Barnabas, I asked her if she loves him. She asked if I doubted her. With her face so full of pain, her eyes so earnest, I couldn't help but say that I supposed I didn't doubt her, not any more. But I do. The fact that my belief is so important to her, and her obvious relief when I said that I do, make me suspicious. Or rather more suspicious. 

She ruined Barnabas' life over what she called love, cursing him to a half-life. Poor Roxanne...the only crime she committed was to fall in love with Barnabas to earn her death. She tried to kill me, all but promised to do it again and has never said one word to let me know that she regretted it, or wouldn't follow through on that promise, all because she saw that Barnabas and I are close. Is that love? She says that she loves Barnabas, but I know what love is, and what power it possesses, and like clairvoyance, I do not believe it is a power that Angelique has. But for Barnabas' sake, I will give her time to prove her powers of love.

We thought to prove Gerard's alliance with Judah, or at least to prove Quentin's innocence by finding Judah's head. We searched the tomb, Gerard's rooms, Quentin's lab, but the head is nowhere to be found. Angelique came back from talking with Gerard, ashen and trembling. She had hoped to rekindle the romantic feelings that Judah once had for her, but all that he has left for her is hate. I am beginning to have a grudging respect for her. Afraid as she is, she's off to confront Trask and see if she can by one means or another, find out where Barnabas is. (1170-1176)

Eliot's come! It was as if his coming was a catalyst, for things are beginning to happen. Barnabas is safe! But I get ahead of myself in the telling of these events. 

Eliot came down Quentin's stairs, and a more welcome sight of a friend and comrade from my own time I could never hope to see. The relief of seeing him on the stairs drove my fears from my mind. My first thought was that Barnabas was able to send word of where he was, like he did in 1897. But then Eliot told of his finding out that Barnabas was missing by reading in Flora's journals of his disappearance, and his never being seen again. He didn't say, but Barnabas' body must have disappeared from where he sat, still and empty, over the wands as it did when he went to 1897, or why else would Eliot have been so concerned about Barnabas' disappearance when it would only be a matter of Barnabas' return to his body in our own time? Eliot knows of Judah Zachary and of the power of the severed head, and reminded me that he was an expert on the occult, implying that he might have other methods to help us. When I left him, he had the oddest look on his face, as though he was plotting something. Whatever he is and will be up to, he made me feel for the first time that we had some strength on our side of this battle between good and evil. Maybe that was why when I was waiting for him to come to Collinwood, after being well primed by me over who he was going to pretend to be, I fell into the first deep sleep I've had since Barnabas disappeared. 

I lay down for a nap, a sudden tiredness that I at first put down to the lack of sleep, but with the dreams I had - Roxanne came to me, leading me to where Barnabas was...or almost - I knew it was a vision sent to me. Angelique shook me awake before I could see past the dirty streets of the harsher side of town. But at least it was a start for somewhere to look for him. We waited where I had last been when the dream ended, but in the dark and poorly lit streets, there was no way to know which direction to turn. Angelique, certain that we would be too late to save him, pressured me to try to remember if there was anything more to the dream, until finally I snapped at her. "If you had not awakened me, we'd know where to go." It was then as I looked at Angelique, that I realized why Roxanne had given us no further help. "And with you here, Roxanne will not return to me." 

Once I would have gloried in the look of helpless anger on her face, but now...I no longer care. It was then I got to echo to the words that she spoke to me in Collinwood, about who was more important, Barnabas or Eliot. And I asked her, "Which is more important, to save Barnabas' life or your ego?" To save Barnabas, she left. Only a short time later, Roxanne's ghost came in answer to my calls to her. The vampire was gone, and all that remained was the lovely and lovesick woman-child that she had been. Weeping loudly, she led me to the wall that he was trapped behind. 

Trask may be a good mortician, but he is no wall builder. It didn't take long or much effort for the wall to come down. A miracle, perhaps, or because he had come to this time by way of the I-ching, or even some left-over power from having been a vampire, whatever the reason, Barnabas is alive, and is strong enough to go to court. How I wish I could see Trask's face when he walks into the courtroom. (1177-1179}

We've had a second ghost appear, but our ghost turned out to be no ghost at all. Joanna Mills, who everyone thought was dead, walked boldly into the court to testify on Quentin's behalf and we hoped that it would be the end of the trial. But her testimony wasn't enough. Not when Mordecai Grimes died naming Quentin as his murderer. The court already so unsympathetic, and fueled by Quentin's outburst against them, hurried to give their ruling. Quentin was declared guilty, and is sentenced to death. We have lost, now and for the future. (1180-1186)

*

More ripples in time? A battle of good and of evil? I do not believe in coincidence, and for whatever the reason, there have been more strange occurrences. The room in the ease wing has begun to change and Daphne has witnessed parallel time. Daphne's disappeared, Edith too, and I fear that the room has drawn them into another reality. But I have little time to worry about them. Another setback to our hopes. Joanna helped Quentin and Desmond to escape from jail, but Desmond was wounded and they were unable to leave on the ship as arranged. If I had not been here, I hesitate to think what would have happened to Desmond. Even with my more modern practices of sterilizing my instruments and with the almost primitive medicines I've been able to make in the Collinwood still room, it was touch and go, and there is still the very real risk of infection. But his spirit seldom wavers, and when Leticia is with him, he tries so hard to be brave and positive for her that it seems to actually do him some good.  

I watch Joanna with Quentin. She still loves him, but he is in love with Daphne. How hard it must be, but she will step aside for her own sister. I know what she must be feeling. I watch Barnabas with Angelique. At times he seems to care very much for her. 

*

Gabriel is dead of a broken neck. I hurried into the house, only to find Daphne telling the tale of how she had found out he had killed Daniel and Edith, his own wife. He imprisoned Daphne, holding her in one of the many secret places this house has, but she got away only to be captured again. The last she remembered was his strangling her. The darkness coming over her, and then when she came too, she was alone. Why he didn't kill her, and why he went up to the widow's walk, because all signs point that he fell from there, is something that we will probably never know.

*

I saw myself in the parallel time room. A woman from this time, cold, opinionated, alone. While Catherine, almost a twin of Angelique is young and alive. How close are we to the counterparts we see in these other times, living the lives that could have been ours? Eliot has looked into this room, Barnabas too. Is that how they see me, like this other Julia? First Hoffman, now this one. Are these women me? (1187-1192)

Another death. Samantha Collins. It was a poorly kept secret that she and Gerard were lovers. And no secret at all that she was leaving Quentin for him. And from what I found out, he was the one to find her broken body at the base of the cliffs. But when I came in this evening, fresh from treating Desmond's wounds, he said no word to me of her death, showed no sign of remorse or sorrow, his only concern was finding out if I had been treating Desmond. And threatening me with the law if he finds out I was. 

Samantha dying on the cliffs. She is still there in our own time, her spirit trapped, one of the Widows of Widows' Hill. Quentin in jail, in love with Daphne, her son away from home, her lover no lover at all, no one to mourn her. 

*

I am certain that I was not the one to have led Gerard to the fishing shack, and to Desmond and Quentin, it must have been Joanna or Daphne, but does it really matter who is to blame? They are back in jail awaiting execution. I have seen almost nothing of Barnabas in days, and never alone. He hasn't given up trying to help his family now or in our own time, and so I am not giving up either. I've been to the jail to change Desmond's bandages. We pretend that the end is not near. I warn him to tell them to send for me if his fever returns, and he thanks me and talks about the scar the wound will leave. Quentin pines for Daphne and his spirits are low. I can hardly bear this. (1193 - 1196)

So much has changed. Everything has changed.

Gerard is dead, taking Judah with him. Quentin and Desmond are free. 

Angelique is dead.

Trask is dead, and by Barnabas' own hand. And with his body left parallel time, it is a death that will be as secret as that of his father's. We are done in the past. Whatever our coming has accomplished or not to save the Collinwood of our own time, there is nothing more for us to do, and it is time to go home.

I thought that Angelique's death would bring me some sort of satisfaction, but I was wrong. So often times our enemy, in the end she was a true ally to us. She risked everything, her powers and her life, and in the end lost them both. When Barnabas told me she was dead, it was as though I was hit in the stomach. I could barely hear Barnabas telling me, and then he said how much he loved her. How many times had I heard words so much like them, and said with as much emotion? "I cannot bear to go on without her," "She was my Josette." "She made me forget Josette." Love comes easily, and deeply, to Barnabas for the short time that it lasts. But this time his words hurt all the more. What hold had this woman had on him that even in death he will hold onto to her. 

Is she really dead? Could I have saved her life? Was I afraid that if I checked to see if she was really dead as Barnabas thought, that I would find her still alive, and I would have to save her life? We will never know, for I ignored the waxen beauty on the couch and hurried to care for Barnabas and his wounds. 

The emotions that overwhelmed Barnabas seemed to have passed. It took little persuasion to talk him into going back to our own time, only an assurance from Desmond that Angelique's funeral would be taken care of. We are about to climb the stairs, and leave this time. With Desmond destroying the stairway, we will not be able to return. I can only hope that the stairs will take us home. (1197-1198)