Subj: Charade: Chapter 3
Date: 10/22/01 9:58:45 AM Central Standard Time
From: Nicole

December 2, 2008, Collinwood, 4:35 PM-NT

Gwynneth hated the house. It was a gorgeous, expansive place, but she did not like the vibes she received from it. She knew that William felt the same although he would never say so aloud. But that was the main reason they wanted to leave with Carolyn the day before; they needed a reprieve. They returned long after dark that night and had to go to bed the moment they set foot into the house.

Gwynneth had a fitful first few hours of sleep, culminating in a horrible dream in which her father was discovered to be dead. Although she wanted to scream the moment she awoke, she did not. She climbed out of bed and crept into their room. She was relieved to see her parents in bed, their arms entwined around each other in quiet bliss. She whimpered once and they both awoke. She ran into their bed, explained her dream, and they allowed her to stay in bed with them. Although she felt better and the rest of her night went by peacefully, she hated that she was there. Only babies had to run to their parents for comfort. Gwynneth, at least in her own mind, was no baby.

However, Gwynneth still found comfort in waking entangled in their arms, finding peace in their warm hands and the occasional kiss on the forehead. They still thought her to be a child. This was a fact that would always remain true. They were her parents and they would always see her as a petite five-year-old. Gwynneth was sure that there were some benefits to this but she had yet been able to think of any.

At noon, her father took her and William on a tour of the house. Although this tour did not ease her apprehension about the old place, she did enjoy the stories he told them about his life in the great house. Gwynneth knew that he was holding back; she could tell in the way the stories sometimes seemed disjointed, as if large pieces had gone missing or had been toned down for the consumption of children. She could understand. Her father was an old soul and had done many unsavory things in his long life. She could gladly wait years for the details he thought she was too young to handle. He would be surprised to learn that she could probably handle them now.

The most interesting stop on the tour was the east wing. The hall was dingy and in a good need of cleaning. This was not the fun part, although Gwynneth longed to explore the locked off rooms at a later date. The surprise was the room down the hall. Their father had just told them that the wing was abandoned. The room thought otherwise. The light that peaked out just below the door seemed brighter than other lights because of the total darkness of the rest of the hall. Yet just as quickly as it appeared, the light vanished. Gwynneth looked up into her father’s face to see true distress. He told the twins to remain still as he calmly ran down to the end of the hall. He took a deep breath and opened the doors. The room was barren: its walls had been stripped, its floors covered in decades of dust, and the fireplace seemed buried in soot. “I was only imagining things,” he mumbled. “This can’t possibly work the way it did before.” With that, he ushered the children from the east wing and into the main building.

But Gwynneth’s curiosity had not been eased. While she was supposed to be taking her afternoon nap, she snuck back the east wing. She spent a few minutes just staring at the door with her ears open to hear any odd sounds and her eyes plastered to the bottom just in case a light happened to flare on. When she realized that nothing could be discovered from only ogling the door, she walked up to open it. As she touched the handle, she felt a hand bare down on her shoulder. She slowly turned around a let out a sigh of relief. “Chris,” she whispered. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“I just arrived a few minutes ago. Gwyn, what are you doing here? No one’s supposed to be in this part of the house.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s something I remember from long ago. Bad things can happen in this part of the house, specifically in that room. It would be best if I took you back.”

Gwynneth could only sigh. As much as she did not like it, Chris was right. This would have been so easy had she not gotten caught! She could have just taken a peak inside, discovered that there was nothing special going on in this room, and wandered back to her room in time to be awakened for dinner. Now she knew there was some mystery associated with this room. As much as she wanted to be good, her innate curiosity kicked in and she knew that she had to learn the secret no matter what. “What happens in this room?”

“You wouldn’t understand,” said Chris. “It’s not the easiest concept for most adults to grasp.”

“Do you understand?” asked Gwynneth.

“Yes!”

“Then explain it to me.”

Chris groaned but took a seat on the floor. Gwynneth sat next to him, placing her hands on his knees and looking up quietly into his face. “You’re too young to think about this, but there will come a time when you’ll wonder what your life would have been like had you taken a path different form the one you actually took. In theory, there are other time bands where you actually did take the other path and your life is much different from what it is like right now. Now that room, for some reason yet to be understood, is a portal into another time band. Occasionally, the boundaries between our time band and the other one thin and we can look into that time band through that room.”

“Have you seen inside the room?” Chris nodded. “Did you see yourself?” Chris nodded again. “What was different? What were you like?”

“Lots of things were different for me there. The big thing, of course, was not being cursed. Apparently that time band’s Quentin of 1897 never killed his wife or I could have descended from another part of the family. But I was an acknowledged member of the family. I was the family lawyer.”

“Lawyer?” asked Gwynneth wildly. “Well, isn’t it better to be unacknowledged and cursed than to be a lawyer? God, you should be lucky you were born in this time band. And don’t laugh at me!”

“How can I not laugh at you, Gwyn, when you say something that silly?” Chris calmed quickly, although the large giddy smile remained on his lips. “But I’ll stop if you really want me to.”

“That’s good.” Gwynneth could not help but smiling up at him in triumph. Who said that the man cannot be trained? She almost enjoyed the sway she held with the attractive man sitting in front of her. But she knew that she did not control him. Chris liked her mother. Everyone knew it. Chris seemed to attach himself to anyone who made the attempt to help him; Constance DuVane had cured him and he attached himself to her with an obsessive fury. They all had thought that his passion for her had eased in the last few years, but Gwynneth knew better than to believe such nonsense. She knew that Chris was only biding his time until the moment was right for attack. Gwynneth could only deal with one problem at a time; this one would have to wait until later. “We saw a light in the room earlier today,” she said shyly.

“Really? You and Will weren’t up here alone, were you?”

“No . . . dad was with us.”

“I might have known,” moaned Chris. “Doesn’t Quentin know better than to bring children up to this part of the house?”

“I think he was doing this so that the east wing wouldn’t be the great mystery to us. He didn’t know that the light would turn on. He was trying to do the right thing.”

“And like always, he failed.” Chris rose to his feet and placed his hand out to Gwynneth. “Come on hon. You need to get back to your room.”

Gwynneth sighed and took his hand. She glanced back to the door and she saw the light. She pulled on Chris’ arm and pointed at the door. “Look, look! It’s starting again. The lights are on!”

Chris dropped her hand and went to the doors. He hesitated a moment but opened them, letting the doors swing open into the room. Gwynneth was amazed at the transformation. The once dilapidated room now glowed in the light shining from the ornate chandelier. The room was lushly furnished, well preserved, and carefully tailored to the needs of a specific person. Over the fireplace sat the portrait of a beautiful blonde woman dressed in blue. She stared off into space, her bright blue eyes focused on some unseen object as her white gloved hands lay in her lap. Gwynneth thought she looked like Angelique. Then she remembered that this was Parallel Time. It very well could be Angelique. “Nothing’s changed,” he whispered. “It all looks the same.”

A small girl suddenly walked into the room. The small girl looked just like Gwynneth. She took a seat next to the table and picked up a photograph that lay there. Neither Chris nor Gwynneth could see what the photograph looked like, but Parallel Gwynneth stared at with blatant intensity. It must have been important. A few minutes later, a woman walked in. The woman looked exactly like Constance. “Gwyn,” said Parallel Constance calmly, “I told you that you shouldn’t be in here.”

“I know,” moaned Parallel Gwynneth, “but I can’t help it. I heard someone calling me. I had to come.”

“But you shouldn’t be here. No one ever comes to this room anymore, hon. You need to stay out.”

“But I hear her, mother, I swear it!” insisted Parallel Gwynneth. “She said that I had to know. She said that I had to learn the truth. She said that he is trying to talk to you and that you don’t listen. She said that you normally shouldn’t listen to this man, but that this is the time is different. She said that it was most urgent.”

“Did the woman in the photo say that?” asked Parallel Constance.

“No, it was the other one.”

Parallel Constance dropped to her knees and took Parallel Gwynneth into her arms. “You need to leave this place. We’re not supposed to be here. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Parallel Gwynneth looked past her mother to an area that neither Chris nor Gwynneth could see. “Father!” she cried.

The moment the man came into complete view, both Chris and Gwynneth gasped. The man that Parallel Gwynneth called father looked exactly like Chris. Chris reached inside to close the doors, but Gwynneth did her best to pull him back. “You can’t close it, not now!” she cried.

“I can’t watch this,” he whimpered.

“Yes you can. It’s just an image. It means nothing!”

Chris thought about it a moment and stepped back. The man now stood next to Parallel Constance with his focused down on Parallel Gwynneth. “If your mother says you should leave, you should. Your mother knows more about this house than either of us and we need to trust her judgement when it comes to things that concern this house. Do you understand?”

“Yes father. Is Will here?” The man nodded. “Good, I’ll go play with him now, if that’s fine?”

“It’s perfectly fine,” said the man. Parallel Gwynneth jumped up from the post, hugged both of her parents, and scurried from the room. Parallel Constance slipped back to the floor and cradled her face in her hands. The man took a seat next to her and took her into his arms. “Is there anything wrong, Constance?”

“Everything’s fine, David. I just don’t want her in this room.”

“What’s wrong with this room? It looks fine to me.”

Parallel Constance laughed as she pulled away from Parallel David and went to her feet. She picked the photograph up off the table, frowned at the image, and placed it back on the table image side down. “I remember hearing weird stories about this room when I was younger. We were always warned never to come up here.”

“Because of the woman in the photograph?” asked Parallel David.

“No. And lets not talk about her.”

“Fine. Now lets talk about the woman in the portrait.”

Parallel Constance turned to face the portrait and smiled. “That,
dear David, is the portrait of one Angelique Stokes Collins. She was
Quentin Collins’ first wife and Daniel’s mother. There are quite a few
stories in the family about her. They say that, for a while at least,
she was able to transcend the grave and that she walked amongst the
living six months after her death. It’s all nonsense really. Maybe
not. When this house burned to the ground in 1970, this portrait had
not been destroyed. When the rebuilt Collinwood in 1972, they
refurnished this room almost the way that Angelique had, but they were
unwilling to rehang her portrait. They tried to hide it but it kept
popping up in this room. They say that Quentin eventually grew tired
of trying to dispose of it and just left it where it wanted to rest.
But we were all warned never to come here to gaze into the eyes of
evil.”

Parallel David stepped up to the portrait, his eyes focused on the
woman in blue. Parallel Constance walked up to him and slapped his
arm. “So you’re saying that it’s still not safe to ‘gaze into the eyes
of evil?’”

“I’m saying that you shouldn’t be staring into the eyes of evil
because you have mine to gaze into.”

A smile broke across his face and he leaned in to kiss her lips. “And
what do you suggest we should be doing?”

Parallel Constance grinned deviously, looked about the room, and whispered, “What we shall do is best kept quiet.” She walked up to the doors, and shut them, the whole time oblivious to the fact that Chris and Gwynneth watched them from the other side. Both Chris and Gwynneth put their ears to the door in the hopes of hearing some more conversation. The last thing either of them heard from the room was Parallel Constance’s intoxicated laughter.

Gwynneth looked up at Chris and asked, “Is it always like that?”

“Yeah.” Chris opened the doors to the room to see that it had reverted back to its dilapidated state. He mumbled some unintelligible curse word and shut the doors. Gwynneth could tell that the scenes from the room had disturbed him. The last thing he needed to see was look-a-likes of Constance and himself in a relationship. Or maybe that was what he needed to see? At the moment, Gwynneth did not care. “Can we tell anyone about this?”

“No,” whispered Chris. “This will be our little secret, okay?” Gwynneth nodded. “Good. Now lets get you back to your room before anyone figures out that you’re gone.”

Gwynneth reluctantly took his hand and let Chris lead her out of the east wing. She would keep the secret of what she had seen from anyone else. Chris, at least on the front, had nothing to fear. But Gwynneth was now energized about the room. There were so many questions she had to ask those inside its walls. She knew that she would have to make another trip to see what else would happen in her own private soap opera.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.