Subj: Out of the Past, 5
Date: 11/12/01 2:25:14 PM Central Standard Time
From: R J Jamison

Three Weeks Later

Carolyn sat in the Study at Collinwood with the tarot cards Elizabeth had found earlier. She and Professor Stokes had played with them that first night but Carolyn had felt little coming from the cards. Each night since their discovery, Carolyn had spent time trying to gain their fidelity. She laid them across the table in a spread that she had dreamed of the previous night. She covered the small table with the cards.

“Still playing fortune teller?” Roger entered the room.

Carolyn laughed. “Uncle Roger, we should be the last people in all of Maine to be skeptical about the supernatural.”

Roger moved about the room in search of something. “I am tired of the supernatural elements of this house. And I should think you would want to steer clear of it as well.”

“Roger!” Elizabeth came into the room. “I found it in the Library.” Elizabeth held out a folder to her brother. “I made several notes in the margins, please ask Accounting to run another report addressing my questions.”

Roger nodded. “I’ll see to it tomorrow. Now, why don’t you discourage your daughter from trifling with those cards?”

Elizabeth moved to peer over Carolyn’s shoulder. “I’m rather fascinated by these cards and what Carolyn has learned of them.”

“What have you learned?” Roger rolled his eyes.

Carolyn, while irritated by Roger’s condescension, answered his question. “The cards are quite fragile and old. Professor Stokes believes they are from the Caribbean Islands.”

“And Josette Collins was from Martinique.” Elizabeth added.

“Not Josette Collins again!” Roger exhaled in frustration. “Why is everyone so fascinated by her? Frankly, who cares, she died two hundred years ago!”

Carolyn’s eyes blazed with irrepressible interest. “But Uncle Roger, to think that she may have practiced a Caribbean religion such as voodoo or Santeria is not something in our family history.”

“Why don’t you ask Barnabas about it, I’m sure he could tell you. He was always such an ‘expert’ on Josette Collins.”

Elizabeth eyed her brother. “Barnabas is no longer interested in the past aside from admiring the furniture. He did confirm the dates of the jewelry we found. I suggested Carolyn not bother him with it beyond that.”

Roger smirked. “He would most likely be personally insulted if anyone suggested that Josette practiced some non-Christian religion.”

Carolyn shook her head and looked away from her Uncle. “Tonight, I can’t explain it but I think they will show me something.”

Elizabeth sat next to her daughter and watched as Carolyn gingerly touched the several cards on the table. Roger stood to the side watching skeptically.

“I thought I would ask the cards about our family’s near future. This card represents us.” Carolyn touched the elk card. “This one. . represents the recent past, the twin birds represent travel. Barnabas and Julia just returned from Brazil. This card I believe is our near future.” Carolyn leaned in closer to the card. “The brook in this position represents . . .” Elizabeth and Roger while Carolyn tapped the card. “It seems to represent the past, gazing into the past.” Carolyn shrugged and began gathering them up. “I am still not in tune with these cards. The previous owners presence is still strong.”

“Again I recommend putting away those silly card. Who knows how long they sat in the room. They could’ve been left there when Elizabeth and I were children rather than by Josette Collins.”

Elizabeth’s brow became furrowed. “That is true Carolyn. The West Wing was used when we were children.”

“Who stayed in that room?” Carolyn asked.

Elizabeth considered the question. “I believe the last time anyone stayed in that room for an extended period was when I was a child, before Roger was even born.”

“But you used to talk about a woman who used the room,” Roger reached back into his mind. “She was an actress or something, Louisa something. . .”

Elizabeth’s eyes grew wide with recognition and fond remembrance. “Yes, Louisa Roussin!” Elizabeth pronounced with a strong inflection of a French accent. “She was the most alive person I had ever met! She wasn’t an actress, just terribly melodramatic.”

“Roussin?” Roger remembered his earlier encounter that evening.

“Yes, she was French or something. She had a terribly strong accent, at times anyway. I often think she put it on for show.” Elizabeth jumped up and walked hastily to the bookshelves. “I think I have a photo of her. You know, she would’ve been the type of person to have those cards and the jewelry. She was so flamboyant.”

Roger contemplated the name. It was familiar. He looked down at the mail in his hand an noted a movie magazine that David had left in the car earlier. On the cover was James Arness of Gunsmoke. He remembered “The ironic thing is that,” Roger interjected. “A man at the café introduced himself to me and Barnabas a few weeks ago. His name was Jeannot Roussin.”

Elizabeth pulled out a large photo album. “Jeannot Roussin, it must be a coincidence.”

“Liz, when is anything around here a coincidence?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Roger, what could this man have to do with Louisa? She wouldn’t even be alive any longer. I knew her forty years ago, when I was a young girl.” Elizabeth flipped through many pages before stopping. “Ah, hah! She was in this picture of New Year’s 1929. . .” Elizabeth scanned the photograph for the face of Louisa. Elizabeth finding the spot, looked up at her brother with disappointment etched on her face. “You can’t see her face.”

Roger peered down at the spot Elizabeth noted with her finger. A defect or flash of light obscured only one face in the entire photograph, that of someone standing next to a ten year old Elizabeth Collins. “Roussin said his wife knew Barnabas.”

“What else did he say?” Carolyn stood next to her mother.

“Nothing more, only that he was sure his wife and Barnabas would ‘run into’ one another some time.”

“Louisa?” Elizabeth asked. She peered down at the empty spot in the photograph. “I can’t even remember what she looked like now.” Elizabeth closed the album with sadness. “Father said she had the most wicked laugh.”

“She was a friend of Fathers then?”

Elizabeth after returning the album to the shelf turned to face her brother directly. The knowing look in her eyes said many things. “Roger, she was more than a friend to our Father.”

Carolyn watched in amusement as Roger absorbed the implications of his sister’s revelation. She reveled in the irony of the moment; Elizabeth laying out a little known truth and Roger being offended by its revelation. Things usually happened in the opposite manner between the two siblings. “But I was born in 1929!”

Elizabeth smiled. “Mother forgave Father his little indiscretion and you were the symbol of that forgiveness.”

Roger grimaced. “Thank you for that bit of information, Sister.” With that he departed. Behind him Carolyn giggled.

“Uncle Roger was conceived as part of Grandma and Grandpa’s reconciliation?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Yes. But on some level Mother never forgave him. It occurred here, in her house right under her nose, so the expression goes.” Elizabeth remembered how the thick walls of Collinwood could not block out her parents arguments. “And she never forgave me either.”

“Whatever for?”

“I adored her, Louisa that is. She was the most dramatic and interesting person, even I could understand why Father wanted her. She had lived everywhere and told the most vivid stories.” Elizabeth’s eyes clouded over as her mind filled with memories. “She was arrogant though. She acted like royalty and expected to be treated as such.”

“Why have you never mentioned her before?”

Elizabeth considered Carolyn’s questions for several moments. “Honestly, I haven’t thought about her in, I would guess, thirty years or so.” Elizabeth turned to face her daughter. “How could I have not thought of Louisa once in thirty years? I was going to be an actress because of her.”

“She was an actress?”

“Oh no!” Elizabeth laughed. “That would have been too beneath her. As I said, she was imperious. She would never have contemplated a life with ‘show people’ but she did socialize with them.”

“Mother, you haven’t told me one thing that sounds endearing.” Carolyn took up the tarot cards from the table and headed toward the corridor.

“She could weave a spell Carolyn, that’s all I can say. As I tell you of her now, I realize she doesn’t sound too appealing but to an impressionable young girl, isolated in this small town and dreaming of an adventurous life, Louisa Roussin was a beacon of hope.”

“Well, since that was way back before talking pictures, I guess you had to have something.” Carolyn laughed and waited for her Mother’s playful swat.

“Carolyn Stoddard! Don’t be so insolent!”

Dark Shadows is a Dan Curtis Production.