Subj: 1897 Post Script
Date: 10/23/00 1:05:37 AM Central Daylight Time
From: ReAnne Moreau

NEW YORK CITY, 1904

Quentin Collins' eyes widened in astonishment as he opened the door to his brownstone. The bedraggled figure on the doorstep was a part of his past that he'd never expected to see again.

"Magda! What on earth are you doing here?" He could only stand and gape. If it hadn't been for those remarkable eyes he might not have recognized her. Magda wore not a single piece of jewelry. The brightly colored clothes had been traded for threadbare castoffs much too large for her small frame. She looked half-starved and exhausted.

"Quentin, please, you got to help me." Having finally reached her goal, she had no more strength left.

He caught her as she more or less fell into the room. Afterward she could vaguely recall being carried into a bedroom. She managed a hot shower, washing the grime of the road off her skin for what felt like the first time in ages. Wearing one of Quentin's nightshirts, she was fed hot soup and fell into an exhausted sleep in his bed.

She awoke to early afternoon sunshine and Quentin Collins. He sat sprawled in a chair by the side of the bed, his head lolling to one side. She watched him sleep for a few minutes. He had been her enemy, ally, reluctant friend, a reminder of the evil she had done. Coming to him hadn't been easy, but she'd had little choice. And despite everything, he'd taken her in.

"Quentin ... Quentin, wake up." She shook his arm until he snorted and sat up, looking around in confusion. "What you doing here? You didn't sleep in that chair all night?"

He looked embarrassed at having been caught napping. "No, I haven't been here long. You were having a nightmare. It seemed to help when I sat and talked to you." He looked her over carefully; she seemed much better this morning. "Magda, what's going on?"

She avoided his eyes. "They come to me in the night, sometimes. The dead ones. The ones who died because of the curse I put on you."

"I know. I dream about them, too. Sometimes Jenny comes - I don't know if it's really her or just my guilty conscience. We're both murderers, Magda. It shouldn't surprise you that we don't have pleasant dreams." He scrubbed his face with his hands and rose from the chair. It hadn't escaped his notice that Magda had avoided
answering the question he'd asked. "I'm going to make some lunch. Get dressed - then you can tell me what the hell you're doing in New York."

Magda looked around for the rags she had worn yesterday. "Where are my clothes?"

"I burned them. There are some new things in those boxes over there." He pointed to a table in the corner of the room and grimaced. "I did *not* enjoy having to ask a giggling shop girl what size underthings to get." Quentin scowled and made his escape to the kitchen.

She couldn't help grinning. Quentin was more easily embarrassed than she would have imagined. The two dresses, one dark blue and the other hunter green, were well made but plain. She chose the green, admiring the way it flattered her skin tone. Quickly combing her hair, she was about to join Quentin downstairs when she noticed another, smaller, box on the dressing table. Inside was a jeweler's box containing two gold earrings made of tiny coins.

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Quentin heard the soft jingling behind him as she entered the room and grinned. "Those things are better than a bell around your neck. I hope you're hungry, I've got enough stew here to feed an army. It's pretty much what I've lived on since my housekeeper quit." He dished up a couple of bowls and set them on the table, moving to the icebox for a bottle of milk and a carafe of cold beer.

"I'd offer you some beer, but in your condition you'd probably fall over." Getting no response, he gave up the nervous chatter and just watched Magda as she moved stiffly to sit at the kitchen table. She limped a bit and Quentin noticed that she wasn't wearing the new shoes he'd gotten her. Her feet must have been badly blistered from walking. She was much too thin and there were still dark circles under her eyes.

"You didn't have to do this, Quentin." Magda gestured at her new outfit, the table laid out for lunch.

"What the hell was I supposed to do, let you lie there in the street?"

"I don't take charity from nobody." Her chin lifted proudly.

"Of all the insufferable, stubborn ..." He was already regretting taking her in and the wild impulse that made him purchase those earrings from a street vendor. " All right; I give up. You've seen the state of this house. I have better things to do than cook and clean all day. I need somebody to get things in order around here, and you obviously need a place to stay for a while."

They glared at each other for a moment. Magda finally nodded and began eating her lunch. To Quentin's amazement, she finished two bowls of stew, several slices of bread and most of a bottle of milk.

"When was the last time you ate?"

"I don't remember." She fixed him with a knowing smile. "What happened to your housekeeper? Maybe you got fresh and her husband objected?"

"She was sixty if she was a day, and she objected to my odd hours. Now stop evading the question! What are you doing in New York?" A sudden chill crawled over his skin. "Has something happened to Lenore? Is that why you're here?"

Magda rushed to reassure him. "Lenore is fine. She's very happy with her adopted family." She paused, unsure of how to proceed. "Take a good look at me, Quentin. I know I look like hell; life ain't been so good to me lately - but do I seem any older than when you left Collinwood?"

He took a moment to examine her face carefully, trying to see beyond the signs of fatigue and deprivation. She had the most extraordinarily expressive eyes and right now they were reflecting a depth of pain and fear he had never seen in them before. Magda averted her gaze and Quentin continued to search her face. Its angular contours held a certain exotic beauty, he had to admit. She looked exactly as he remembered.

"I'm not much of a judge of women's ages, but I'd have to say you don't look any older." He wore a puzzled frown, wondering if this was some kind of gypsy trick.

Taking a knife from the table, Magda ran the blade quickly across her palm. She clenched her fist as the first drops of blood oozed out of the shallow cut. Quentin watched in shocked fascination as she held the fist closed for a few moments, then opened it and wiped the blood away with a napkin. A pink line of rapidly healing flesh ran diagonally across her hand.

Quentin drew in a shaky breath and leaned back in his chair. "Tate."

She nodded. "Remember you said that one of the shadows in the background of the portrait looked like the figure of a woman hovering over you? I didn't see it so much myself, but it must have been there. Tate probably didn't even know he painted it."

Quentin recalled the swirling, amorphous background of the portrait. The billows of black almost seemed to move as you looked at it. He'd fancied that one of those swirls resembled the shadow of a woman, standing menacingly over his own image. He'd wondered if it was meant to represent Jenny's angry spirit. Most of those he showed it to either didn't see the figure or thought it was just a trick of the light. Evidently not.

"How did you first realize ....?"

Magda leaned back in her chair, unconsciously twisting the napkin in her lap. "I stayed in Collinsport after you left. I didn't have nowhere else to go; if I went back to my people I would be tried for Johnny Romano's death. Besides, I wanted to stay close to Lenore to make sure she was alright." Her face lit up as she spoke of the girl. "She's a beautiful child, Quentin. She's got long red hair like her mother, and big brown eyes. She has her mother's love for music and her spirit." She shook her head. "But she's got a lot of you in her too. I never seen a child with such a talent for getting into and out of trouble. Lenore can walk into a room covered head to toe in mud and in five minutes have you convinced it's the funniest thing you ever seen."

There was a hint of tears in Magda's eyes as her smile faded. "I had a good life in Collinsport. I never expected to like living in one place, but I had a little cottage and my garden and I was happy. I made some money telling fortunes and selling herbs. Then about a year after you left, I dropped a glass in the kitchen and cut my hand. It was deep, all the way through the skin." She had pressed a clean towel to the wound and sat at the kitchen table waiting for a wave of dizziness to subside and the bleeding to stop. Magda realized it would probably require stitches. She decided to risk a look at the wound before heading to the doctor's office.

Amazingly, the wound appeared to have closed a bit. As she sat at the table in stunned silence, the skin repaired itself before her eyes. Within half an hour there was only a little pink scar to show where the cut had been.

"I knew then what that shadow on your portrait meant. I didn't know what to do. I tried to find you, but you disappeared. Somebody finally told me you joined the Merchant Marines, but nobody knew where you went."

She had given up searching and settled into her new life in Collinsport, saving up as much money as possible. After several years, people began to compliment her on her continued youthful appearance. She knew that it was time to leave, before the compliments turned to suspicion.

"I heard about a caravan passing through Rockport - new immigrants who wouldn't know nothing about my troubles. I'm ashamed to say that I lied to them, my own people. I gave them a false name and said that the rest of my caravan was wiped out by influenza during the winter. I had my own money and could support myself telling fortunes, so they took me in. I rode with another widow. She told fortunes, too, but not so good as me. I thought I was safe."

"But they found out about you."

Magda nodded. "The old woman didn't trust me - and she didn't like it that more people came to *me* to have their fortunes told." There was a kind of grim pride in her voice; Magda had always been an astute business woman. "I didn't know it, but she had relatives in Boston. I don't know how she found out about me. One night the men confronted me and said they was taking me back to Boston to stand trial for killing Johnny. When I tried to run one of the men hit me. His ring cut my cheek."

They had tied her up and put her in front of the campfire under guard. The old woman just sat there watching her. After a few minutes her eyes widened in horror. She called the others over and wiped the blood from Magda's cheek. They all stood there watching as her flesh healed itself.

"They accused me of being a witch. They were afraid I would call down evil spirits on them, so they beat me until they thought I was dead and left me by the side of the road. Everything I had they took to give to Johnny Romano's family as payment for my crime."

Magda seemed to huddle in on herself, as if the cold of that horrible night still penetrated her bones. "I woke up in the dark, alone, with nothing but the clothes on my back. It was a while before I could move, but I finally managed to get up and start walking." Her gaze shifted to the far wall, moisture glinting in dark eyes. "It feels like I ain't stopped walking since then."

Quentin had to swallow before he could speak. He knew only too well that the portrait that enabled them to survive terrible injuries didn't do a thing to take away the pain. "How did you live? It would be hard enough for a man to survive in those circumstances . . ."

"I managed. I went from town to town, taking cleaning jobs, farm work, whatever I could get. When I couldn't find work . . ." She looked Quentin defiantly in the eyes. "There are ways for a woman to get by, even a skinny old woman like me." She tried to shut out the images of the things she had done for a scrap of food or a place in front of a campfire. Returning to Collinsport had been out of the question; she would only have been confronted by the same dilemma that drove her away. The only option was to keep going from one place to another, never finding work that offered anything more than stark subsistence.

The blood had drained from Quentin's face as he imagined the things Magda had endured. As much as he once hated her, her suffering still touched him. By the time he left Collinwood he had come to respect Magda's strength and, almost against his will, to like her. He ran a hand absently through his hair. His feelings for this woman were complicated and would take time work out.

"I don't know what to say, Magda. As angry as I was, I never wished anything like that on you. I know what it's like to be desperate and cut off from everyone you love. I was just lucky enough to have lifted enough of Judith's jewelry to be desperate in comfort."

Magda chuckled mirthlessly. "You and me, we're two sides of the same coin. You killed my sister in a blind panic and I cursed you in blind rage. Now we finally stumbled into each other in the dark. Maybe it's our punishment to be stuck with each other."

"How *did* you find me? I didn't exactly send out calling cards with my new address."

His question earned him a genuine smile from his former sister-in-law. "I was working in a fish market on the coast. I happened to glance at the paper I was using to wrap the fish. It was that rag you write for - and there was your name on the page, Quentin Wolfe, theater critic." She rolled her eyes.

Quentin became defensive. "I had to come up with a new name on the spur of the moment. It was pure inspiration," he declared.

"You were drunk," Magda translated. "I knew it was you the minute I started reading. You write just like you talk." She wouldn't admit the relief that had swept over her at finally having found Quentin, the one person with whom she could share her secret. "When I finally got to town I went to the paper and said I had a message to deliver. They gave me your address."

Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes. She had used the last of her strength, her last little bit of hope to seek out her former enemy.

A warm hand touched her shoulder briefly as Quentin rose from the table. "You're safe here, Magda. It's not exactly Collinwood, but you can stay as long as you need to." He moved toward the door to the living room, giving her time to compose herself, wondering what the hell he'd gotten himself into.

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.