Subj: DS: Truth 8
Date: 2/4/02 11:19:19 AM Central Standard Time
From: Aesgaard

The sun was setting as Ben Stokes hurried for the Old House. His time was short as his master preferred him there when he arrived. He just reached the front landing as he heard someone yelling his name. "Ben !" Peter Bradford came charging out of the woods. "Ben ! I need your help !!"

"No !" Ben grabbed the door. "You can't come in here ! The sun's almost down!" He slammed the front entry shut, but it caught on his Bradford's boot.

Struggling for the door to open, Sam Beckett continued his masquerade as the Eighteenth Century lawyer as he struggled his way into the Old House. Shoving his way in, he nearly knocked Stokes to the floor. "Ben," Sam pleaded. "You have to help me save Vicki !"

"I can't!" Ben tried to ignore him. "Don't you see......I'm still under the real witch's control. She'd kill me if I said anything."

"Look !" Sam lurched the unshaven fat man to face him. "There are no such things as witches. The only power she has is your belief in her powers ! If you realize that, she can't control you !!"

"You're pretty stupid, Mr. Bradford !" Ben chuckled. "She's real ! I've felt her powers !! She turned Joshua Collins into a cat ! She forced Josette and Jeremiah to marry ! She even forced Josette from the edge at Widow's Cliff!! She does have power !!!!"

"No !" Sam felt he was arguing with Al. "Those things were coincidences. She made you believe what she wanted you to believe !"

"You don't know, you don't know......." Ben mumbled as he heard something. "You have to get out of here now !!"

"Stokes !" Sam pinned him to one of the pillars in the parlor. "You know as well as I do that Victoria is innocent ! You have to tell the court she is innocent ! How could you possibly live with her death on your conscience ! Can you live with yourself knowing you let an innocent woman be murdered by crimes she never committed ?!!"

"I can't, I can't,,,,!!!"

"Yes, you can !!" Sam screamed at him!

"No, he can't." another voice answered. Sam looked to the hall down from the foyeur. Another figure stood before the wrought iron door to the cellar. He had an aristocratic poise and a gaunt expression of somber expression. At his side was a wolf headed cane being held with ferocious determination. He resembled another man from another of Sam's leaps. A lost face in a swiss-cheesed mind that he could not remember.

"Mr. Collins ?" Sam stepped back. "I thought you were in England."

"You were made to believe that." Barnabus looked to Ben. "Did you take care of those things ?"

"Almost."

"Finish them." Barnabus turned to Sam.

"Mr. Collins." Sam spoke calmly now. "You must help me save Victoria." He suddenly remembered where he had seen Barnabus Collins before. A frenzied face in a coffin in 1967 that had attacked him, and left him near dead. He gasped at the realization. Thank god Al wasn't here.

"I'm afraid I can't." Barnabus lit some candles. "If but I could, I would, but I cannot allow myself to be seen."

"Your medical condition ?" Sam guessed. "It keeps you from going into sunlight ?"

"Medical condition ?" It had caused a reaction as Barnabus stopped and went into a trance. "I suppose it could be called that."

"Mr. Collins," Sam carefully and cautiously stood from him. "If I set the right conditions for you to come into court and speak, would you help ?"

"What sort of conditions ?" Barnabus peered back distrustfully.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.