Subj: PASSION ATE DARK SHADOWS Part Twelve
Date: 5/1/00 7:24:40 AM Central Daylight Time
From: N.E. Collins

Earlier in the evening Natalie had promised that someone would come and help Barnabas with his curse! She had sent out a psychic message appealing for assistance. She could not say whether the response would be from a friend or a foe, but she knew that someone would come. Joshua was skeptical at best, but what choice did he have? His only living son was one of the living dead! A vampire! He had seen it with his own eyes, and therefore could not dismiss it to flights of fantasy, or horror as the case may be.

As the two of them waited at the great house, Natalie looked back over the activities of the last month and a half. After the last card reading she had engaged in with her late niece, Josette, the events foretold had begun to unfold almost immediately. Barnabas had unsuccessfully attempted to kill his new wife, her former servant, Angelique, who in turn had placed the curse of the vampire upon him! Yes, it had been Angelique all this time, and not, of course, Phyllis Wicke who was the witch!

Ben Stokes at the urging of Barnabas had tried to free Phyllis at her trial, but when Angelique showed up he foolishly blurted out that "she was dead!", and so everything he said after was dismissed from the record. Natalie and Joshua could have intervened and saved Miss Wicke, but they were bound to secrecy in order to cover up their own indirection. Poor Phyllis was condemned to hang!

Five people had died, and one was missing since that reading. Barnabas was the first followed closely by his young sister, Sarah, who died of pneumonia. Then there was Mrs. Suki Forbes, Nathan's wife who had arrived in Collinsport unexpectedly. She had agreed to pose as his sister so Nathan could marry Milicent, thus ensuring both of their greeds for the rest of their natural life's! Suki's life was cut short when Barnabas strangled her to death!

Then Reverend Trask and herself had discovered Abigail Collins sitting up against a tree in the woods on the estate one dreadful morning. Her eyes were open wide and a look of sheer terror was stamped on her then dead features. She would wear that expression in death always! It was later learned that she had died of fright at the mere sight of Barnabas when he showed her his fangs. She had died of a heart attack.

The Reverend Trask had not died, but simply vanished and right before he was to give some very damaging testimony against Phyliss Wicke. Ben Stokes had delivered a letter to the court written in the Reverend's handwriting that denounced his accusations against the girl, but the court dismissed this evidence when Ben could not explain why Trask was not there in person.

And last, but not least, there was sweet, dear Josette who had met her tragic end when she fell off of Widow's Hill and was broken on the rocks below! The Cliffs of Sorrow had been the cards way of warning where her death was to be! If Natalie had only paid closer attention to what she had been doing, her niece may still be alive today! She blamed herself for her death and she also took it upon herself for Angelique fooling them all and placing the curse on Barnabas. She thought that if she had only been in her right mind none of this would ever have happened!

The thought passed through her mind again more slowly. "If I had been in my right mind? What does that mean exactly? How is my mind wrong?" The spell that Angelique had placed on her was beginning to lose it's hold, but whether this was by design or error remained to be seen.

There was a loud and sudden knock on the front door of the great house, and before Joshua could cross from the drawing room to answer it the doors flew inward on their own revealing a small shadowy figure standing quietly in the darkness of the storm which raged outside. An elderly woman stepped forward into the light and said, "The one you have sent me for to help, is gone."