Subj: Collinwood 2001 Year One Part Fifteen
Date: 4/24/01 8:10:32 PM Central Daylight Time
From: N.E. Collins

Burke was on the phone with one of his many lawyers and he wasn't happy with the slow progress the man was making. "I don't pay you good money to drag your ass! Now I want some results and I don't mean maybe! Do you understand me?"

There was a knock on the door and he yelled at the sound of it. "Who IS it?"

A voice sounded back. "Room service."

Burke put down the phone on the desk and walked angrily to his door. "It's about damn time. Who do ya have to sleep with around here to get decent service anyway..." He stopped ranting in midsentence when he opened the door and there stood the lovely Carolyn Stoddard.

She cocked her head to one side and responded. "I don't know the answer to that one, but I was wondering if you might be interested in a close up look at what you like to stare at through your window. Because I CAN help you there."

Burke chuckled. "My, my, my. Whatever did I do to deserve this?"

Carolyn smiled a bit as she continued. "Not much from what I hear, but then my sources don't think very much of you."

Then before he could make comment on her tacky comment she went on. "Well? Aren't you going to ask me in?"

Burke's leering smile returned to his face. "Oh? Welcome to my parlor..."

Carolyn entered with a sassy sashay. "You're no spider and I am certainly not a fly." She propped herself sensually against the back of the couch.

Burke turned to her as he closed the door. "I was thinking more along the lines of the cat who ate the canary."

Carolyn gave her hair a toss about and intoned one word. "Meow."

"I've known about you all for years, but I wasn't sure how to approach the matter. From what I understand you have to be VERY careful with multiple personalities. I mean, the very idea that one person can have more than one person inside of them...well, it is just so strange. But interesting! And with a family background like yours, well, it's little wonder that something like this would have happened. And I want you to know that I am on YOUR side here, dear, and that your secret is safe with me." Nora Collins talked too fast as her niece began to prepare some sort of sleeping draught for her.

"What's that you're doing there?" She got no answer. "You don't really think I'm gonna take that, whatever it is you are whipping up there, do you?"

"Not only will you take it, but you will take it with a smile, Aunt Nora. Now, be a good girl and don't give me any trouble here. All these wild imaginings of yours can't be good for your heart. And we wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you, now would we?"

Aunt Nora asked, "We? We who?"

"Oh, Aunt Nora," she chuckled, "how you do go on."

She handed her the glass and gave her a command in a level voice that would brook no disobediance. "Drink."

Nora didn't want to, but she was more scared not to so she did and almost immediately she began to feel the effects of the medication. She laid back and continued to mumble and murmur her way into sleep.

"Your father was a bad sort. Took after Uncle Quentin, he did. The things that man used to do to women! You will tell the girl, won't you? You will tell her that she is one of us? It's only right that she knows?" Nora dipped her head and drifted off into a deep drugged slumber amid the stack of too many pillows and soap opera digests.

That's when she heard the unmistakable noised of a man coughing. She went to the window that partially open and flung open the blinds! There stood Mattew Morgan and from the look on his face he had heard everything that had been said.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.