Dark Shadows: Angelique's Descent

by Lara Parker

  Still, something tugged at him, drew him farther. He reached the edge of the trees. As if in a dream, he trudged through the woods, searching for the fleeing phantom and still seeing nothing. Only the dark trunks stared out at him, until he noticed the unmistakable shape of the bird once again, this time on the reaching branch of one great oak. As he drew nearer, the owl cocked its rounded head in his direction, looking down at him curiously. Then it lifted, like a sail catching the wind, its wings silvering as it floated across the tops of the trees.

  Barnabas considered turning back. Some vague foreboding hung in his chest, but he kept on, crossing one more clearing and then another.

  Mysteriously, his thoughts turned to Angelique and their last encounter. At that time, her death had moved him to compassion. After inflicting lifetimes of suffering, she had been grievously contrite, and she had tried once more to lift the curse. “Is it possible for you to forgive me?” she had whispered. “All I did was for love of you.”

  He had been drawn into those azure eyes once again, brimming with tears, and he had faltered. His lips close to her cheek, he murmured, “Yes, I forgive you. I love you. I have always loved you.” Before she had died in his arms, he had said those words!

  What covenant had he made through eternity that would never release him from its grasp? And yet he had been amazed at her beauty, even in death. He had marveled at the shape of her arm and the curve of her shoulder as she fell against him.

  Over a century ago he had wavered in his responsibility to himself and to his family and risked everything: love, youth, and life itself, to be with her. Why? She was everything he despised; she was of questionable parentage, traitorous, violent, devoid of virtue. But she had kindled a fire in him; even now he remembered the pure agony of wanting her.

  That first night, after he had told her to leave, Angelique had walked to the door, her skirts flowing like molten gold over the carpet. Then she had turned to look at him with a gaze so unwavering, so filled with the promise of abandon, her opal eyes dark and luminous, a glistening drop on her lip, a gaze so knowing and so locked into his that he fell into the sea of it. She was liquid silk when he reached for her, with an odor all her own, like grasses near the sea, and her kiss was as he had remembered it, so full and moist, that he had imagined, as his body throbbed to her, that he could live on her mouth. Then he had lost all memory of himself as he plunged into the fierceness of her embrace, and she sucked the marrow from his bones and filled them with her own fire.

  Barnabas shuddered to think of her again. Surely she had been the pursuer, and he had been hypnotized by her power. How many thousands of times had he turned the facts over in his mind, arranging and rearranging them to leave himself feeling guiltless, without blame. He had lost his soul to Angelique. For a time that was true. He was sure of it. She had been ecstasy greater than any man should know.

  In that moment before her death, he had faltered in the strength of his resolution and spoken to her the words she longed to hear. Once again he wondered how he could have been faithless to his tender Josette?

  Josette! Her unblemished mind, her radiant sweetness, were as real to him now as they had been the day he met her. She was gently bred, full of kindness, delightful in manner and in conversation. Suddenly he had an overwhelming desire to see Josette’s grave, to stand at the place where the family had buried her after her desperate flight from the horror he had become.

  He was tired, exhausted even, from his futile search through the woods, but he decided to make his way to the graveyard. He felt certain that standing at Josette’s grave would relieve this sick sensation in his stomach.

  It was some time before he was moving along the cliff at Widows’ Hill. He was breathing hard from the effort, such exercise being rare since his cure. He resigned himself to the fact that he did not have the strength he had become accustomed to as a vampire, when these stretches of cliff and meadow were but a moment’s flight on the wings of the wind. When he stood at the spot where Josette had flung herself to her death, he could smell the salt air and hear the waves crashing far below. He looked out at the dark sea. The moon hung at the edge of the horizon, its dappled moonstream flowing across the water. He turned and started for the graveyard.

  At last he arrived at the entrance to the burial place of the Collins family. Jasmine twined profusely through the iron enclosure, sweetly perfuming the air, and there was another aroma, of gardenias, tropical and heavy in the mist, blooming waxen on black bushes by the gate. From where he stood he could see the mausoleum and the carved gargoyles of the vault, where his years of daylight had been spent, hidden behind a stone door, sleeping in a casket. His heart lightened in anticipation as he walked toward the place where he knew Josette was buried, remembering how often in the distant past he had come and stayed for hours, praying for her soul.

  But somehow he became confused; Josette’s grave was not where he remembered it. There were only flattened markers and toppled headstones, carved heads, and once elegant Victorian statuary now ruined by time. There were sepulchers enclosing the remains of the deceased, and here and there a stone sarcophagus stretched as a tomb. He began to wander, searching among the gravestones, disoriented and angry with himself. Had his mind as well as his body lost its strength with his transformation? He became impatient with his inability to recall Josette’s resting place, as if he could have possibly forgotten a thing so important to him, and he began retracing his steps, stopping by gravestones, brushing off leaves and dirt with his hand, attempting to read the names obscured in the shadowy dark.

  Thoroughly frustrated, he found himself standing beneath a large marble angel, deeply weathered and softened by moss. Barnabas had no recollection of having seen the monument before. The angel hovered above its guarded grave like a medieval figure from a Gothic cathedral, dark wings lifted against the sky. The deceitful moonlight played upon the rain-streaked features as if the tracks of tears were traced there. The marble drapery of the robes seemed to fold softly and float away from the body. For a long moment he stood mesmerized by the heavenly vision, and he reached out to touch the form of the leg beneath the garment, musing on the dissembling capacity of marble to appear pliable as flesh or as supple as fabric, when it was in actuality nothing more than cold, hard stone.

  Then his eye fell to the inscription, which was quite clear in the moonlight, and his blood froze! “ANGELIQUE BOUCHARD, 1774–1796,” and beneath it: “LOVE SLEEPS IN DEATH’S EMBRACE.” He was appalled. It was the grave of Angelique! Who had placed such a memorial there? An angel! Good God! Surely this was an absurd representation, he thought, superficially based, perhaps, on her name, but so incongruous with the woman it represented. He shivered unconsciously to think of her again—Angelique—his lover and nemesis, now gone, while he, having vanquished her forever, still breathed on this earth.

  The angel was abruptly transformed in his mind. No longer endowed with a gentle holiness, it appeared macabre and threatening. Barnabas backed away, more disturbed than curious, and the search for Josette’s grave ceased to be important. He had started toward the gate, intending to return to Collinwood, when he glimpsed the woman he had seen earlier—behind the far gravestones. It was she!

  She was moving quickly, her smoky shape wavering among the tombs. His throat tightened, and a new energy pulsed through his limbs. This time he was determined to stop her, and he rushed toward her as though she were his release from darkness.

  He was surprised, some moments later, to find himself on the grounds of the Old House. The mansion seemed to float in the moonlight, like a ghostly palace. He reached the brick steps, and his hand rested against one great alabaster pillar. He was out of breath. The portico was now deserted, and only the wind whistled through the columns, tossing frosted leaves along the long corridor of the porch. The woman was nowhere to be seen, and he was intensely disappointed and furious with himself for having lost her. He felt a vague premonition of danger, which he shook off impatiently, even angrily,
as he climbed the steps.

  There, suddenly, in the shadow of the porch, he saw her again. Something about her posture seemed to indicate that she had been waiting for him. There was a quickness to her movement as she turned toward the door. Now curiosity was burning in his gut. He was certain she was a ghost, leading him into the house.

  Once again he hesitated. Was it foolish to risk entrance there? It had been over a month since his cure, and the pain of his transformation had subsided to various annoying discomforts, with every sign pointing to the success of the medication and the permanence of the change. Still, it had been many years since he had felt the need for what one would call courage. He had been rash and arrogant as a youth, before the curse, possessing a willful craving for adventure. Now, once again life would be a challenge. He felt eager to risk, to pit himself against the perils of the world, to rejoin the land of the living. And the house held so many memories! He felt a sharp pang of regret that it was to be torn down. He suddenly had an overwhelming desire to walk through the rooms and hallways one last time. He pushed open the heavy door and jerked back when the hinge whined like a wild animal caught in a trap, and the bolt fell with a clang.

  Barnabas was met by a silence so deep it seemed the house was wrapped in a velvet cloak. Odors, both dank and familiar assailed his nostrils: the mildew of the carpets and drapes, the dust thick on the furniture, cold damp ashes in the fireplace, and the stale smell of things long abandoned, flattened and faded by a veil of cobwebs. There was another odor, less suffocating, but vile nevertheless—the putrid reek of decay and death. It hung in the air like wisps of smoke, and seemed to come from beneath the floor, as though the rats that lived in the basement of the doomed house had starved and perished.

  He walked across the parlor, his footsteps a hollow tapping, and looked out through the tall windows of leaded glass. He thought he heard a rustling sound, and he turned and gazed about the room. It was empty save for the shadows. Then he heard the sound again and glanced at the massive fireplace. He saw that a box of long wooden matches had been spilled and left there on the brick hearth, but the grave of the chimney was cold and dark. He steadied his nerves, closed his eyes, and listened. He fancied the air was fluttering with vague whispers and murmurings, but he waited, until he was certain he heard nothing except the dull pounding of his own heart.

  He moved with determination across the entrance hall and up the wide stair with a heavy banister to the rooms above, where Joshua, Naomi, Jeremiah, Sarah, and so many others once had slept. A ghost among ghosts, he wandered through each chamber, his gaze lingering on some remembered texture or pattern of rug or spread. All of the paintings and valuables had been long since taken away. But there were still papers and photographs, odd pieces of clothing, trinkets and toiletries—the undesirable debris of lifetimes—piled on chairs or floor.

  With inescapable sadness, he looked into Josette’s room. Memories flashed upon his inward eye and caressed his senses as he relived the freshness and sweetness of her face. He remembered with a hollow ache the delicacy of the hand she lifted to be kissed, the modesty of her glance when they had first been introduced, and her gentle voice. “Monsieur Collins. My father has told me you come from America and that you are a gentleman of enviable reputation and charm. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  Drawn down the back hall to the servants’ quarters, he now stood opposite Angelique’s doorway, which was closed. His heart skipped a beat as he imagined that once again he heard the soft rustling sound and something like a sigh. He paused, then, brushing aside the silly apprehension, turned the doorknob.

  The room was quite chilly, for the window had been left open. Barnabas remembered the few times he had entered this room in the past. It was much like the others, though smaller and less refined, and he realized with some distaste that his dealings with Angelique had usually been in his own bedroom, in the parlor, or elsewhere on the estate. He had always resisted coming here, and when he did it was for the purpose of making amends.

  With a sharp pang he recalled the night he had asked her forgiveness, hoping they could be friends, saying he would always think of her with affection, and she had, in her fiendish seductiveness, enticed him, melted his resolve, and lured him to her bed. “Lie to me,” she had whispered. “If all your pretty words were lies, then lie to me again.”

  With a shudder, he glanced at the small cot with its satin pillows, the small vanity, perfume dried to an amber stain in a crystal bottle. A faded green gown, which he recognized, with raveled lace at the collar, hung in the wardrobe. A single wrinkled glove and a bonnet with a limp ostrich plume lay on the shelf, grimy with dust.

  He was about to turn and leave when the fragile organdy at the window fluttered, and its ragged edge lifted a little and fell. He thought this must be the source of the sound he had heard earlier, for, even though the night was still, a breath of air rustled the curtain. As he watched, the breeze grew stronger and shuffled the pages of a small book lying in the dust on a table by the window, almost as though an unseen hand were flicking through them.

  Barnabas crossed to close the window, realizing the absurdity of the gesture, since the house was to be razed in the morning, and he began to feel somewhat ashamed, invading, after all these years, this private place that had belonged to someone he had known for so long. Better to let everything be demolished with its secrets, buried away beneath the earth. This little room, he thought, betrayed Angelique’s provincial roots. She was, after all, born to be a servant, despite her pretensions to wealth and gentility. Nothing about her chamber spoke of an aristocratic nature.

  And yet she had been determined to be his wife, even force him into marriage. She had returned again and again, in every lifetime, to taunt and plague him with her insatiable desires.

  There were times when his hatred of her was so intense that he plotted her death, and other times, fierce and unfathomable, when he had longed for her with unabated lust. There were times when he knew in his deepest heart that only she understood him in his torment, she being the cause of it, and only she shared with him his desperate secrets and his profound knowledge of evil. At those times he had allowed himself a sense of oneness with her, and even something close to—dare he to think such a thing—something close to love. If love is hatred’s twin, the only other emotion as all-consuming, then it was true that he had felt toward her a bitter and remorseless love.

  He reached for the casement. Angelique’s room was on the side of the house facing the sea, and far off the moonstream still glowed upon the water. Barnabas began to tremble, for the house was thick with fearful memories. He no longer possessed the strength of twenty, or the indomitable power of the Devil’s apostle. He was as vulnerable as any ordinary man, not only to physical danger, but also to the plagues of terror. It had been a mistake to come here. He stood at the window paralyzed, fearing to move and yet aching to flee.

  Once again a cold breeze swept into the room. The pages of the book ruffled as before and, undeniably, he heard a sigh, then a low moan—like the moan of pleasure in love—then another long sigh. The hair on the back of his neck rose, and he was suddenly certain that she was there.

  He turned and saw her, and his blood turned to ice in his veins. She was lying on the bed, which before had been empty, her filmy garment spread around her like the tissue of moonlight. Beneath its smoky mist he could see her breathing body and the graceful curve of her thigh. She held out her ivory arms, and he glimpsed the soft gleam of her eye and the invitation in her smile. With a savage effort, he backed away, wheeled, and lunged for the door.

  He ran like a madman, stumbling down the dark hallway, not stopping until he was in the dim parlor. He lurched for the fireplace, his hands jerking awkwardly at the scattered matches, grasping, breaking, cursing, striking, until at last he had a tiny flame. He cupped a quivering palm around it and, dropping to one knee, held it to the edge of the nearest drapery.

  The threadbare velvet caught and rippled as a stream
of fire ran up the edge of the fabric and hovered a moment beneath the golden fringe before it exploded in flame. The fire hissed across the top of the window, drenched the room in a golden aura, and hummed with the sound of burning. He wrenched the curtain loose, and a blazing part of it fell to the floor, where he dragged it to another tapestry and set that aflame as well. Now the room shone with the fires of Hell and was filled with a roaring sound, deafening and implacable. Then, buried deep within that tone—reverberating, pulsing, taunting him—he heard the echo of Angelique’s chilling laughter.

  Barnabas bolted, ran out into the night, and did not stop until he was in his own room at Collinwood again. There, from the safety of his window, he could see the glow on the edge of the night as the Old House burned like the torch of a distant volcano against the dark sky.

  Two

  Sunshine streamed through the tall leaded windows into the elegant dining room where silver and china sparkled on the white damask cloth. Collinwood matriarch Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, her brother Roger, her daughter Carolyn, and Julia were already at breakfast, speaking in hushed tones, and Barnabas was aware of an abrupt pause in the conversation when he appeared.

  “Beautiful morning!” he said cheerily, ignoring the grim atmosphere as he seated himself, reached for a linen napkin, and unfolded it upon his impeccably pressed trousers. He forced himself to concentrate on the bouquet of jonquils and anemones at the center of the table, their joyous creams and scarlets floating like impressionist watercolors against the parchment of the tablecloth. His sleepless night had left him exhausted; a hot cramp knotted his shoulders in a spasm, and his eyes burned as if particles of sand were trapped beneath the lids. But he was determined to remain composed, and he murmured a polite “thank-you” to Mrs. Johnson as she poured fragrant coffee into his cup. It was his cousin Elizabeth who broke the oppressive silence.

  “Barnabas, we have dreadful news.”