Dark Shadows 2: The Salem Branch

by Lara Parker

  “David! Come see what I made for you.” She rose and moved with such languid grace, her dress floating over the leaves, that Barnabas thought she was a mirage. She approached, raised her thin arms, and placed a necklace of glass beads around David’s neck, then stepped back to admire him.

  “Gee. Thanks,” said David, a bit bewildered as he looked down at the necklace. “Cool.” She turned to Barnabas, and David said, “This is my cousin, Barnabas Collins. Barnabas, this is Charity.”

  Barnabas was about to speak when the girl lifted her body against him and kissed him on the mouth. “Welcome to Paradise,” she said in a husky voice. She was not so pretty up close; her skin was freckled, and the pupils of her eyes were huge and very black. But she turned and took David by the hand, and Barnabas was mesmerized by the twinkling of her dress. It seemed to be made of prisms.

  “Are you making necklaces?” David asked her.

  She answered in a slow drawl, “Beads and brownies. Makin’ brownies and beads.” She closed her eyes and reached for David’s hands and spun him with her, her hair thrown back, her bare feet patting the dirt, her skirt flickering, as she chuckled with sounds of her own mischief. Barnabas stood in a stupor watching them.

  “Everyone is down by the stream.” She led them into the trees. They hiked down the long steep slope toward the water, where Barnabas saw the naked flower children sunbathing on the rocks or wading in the rapids. He could not make out which one of the girls was Toni, but after a moment he saw that David had joined them to laugh and play in the water with a young girl. They had removed their clothes and were holding hands as they walked unsteadily across the low rapids. Her body was like a dancer’s, softly curved, with firm muscles in her legs. Her long dark hair fell over her breasts.

  Time seemed to be shifting, moving in jerks. To Barnabas, the campers were like nymphs and druids as they frolicked in the spangled light. He sat alone on the bank of stream and watched, suddenly weary. Lulled by the music of the falling water he glanced up into the thick of the forest, at the endless gray trunks. All around him in the air, leaves were gently floating, fluttering, clinging to branches and twigs. Below by the stream, the woods were aflame with vermillion, and Barnabas lay back and gazed deeper and deeper into the unfolding amber, and then, he imagined, into the golden iris of the eye of God. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

  WHEN HE WOKE it was dusk and he was alone. He sat up and stretched his cramped body, then rose to his feet. Everyone had vanished. The creek still gurgled over the rocks, but the forest was shadowed and still. The trees loomed above his head, their color drained of light, and the leaves beneath his feet rustled under his step. His first thought was of David, but he decided the boy must have gone back to the camp. He felt a chill. The night air was damp and, with no sun to heat the forest, smelled of winter snows. A scurrying sound in the leaves made his heart jump, but he realized it was only a squirrel or a small bird. As he trudged up the steep incline, the sound of the creek subsided, and he could hear sparrows in the bush twittering themselves to sleep. In the dying light between the trees, the forest rose around him thick and restless.

  He heard no sound before he felt the creature leap upon his back. It clung to him with claws that pierced the fabric of his coat, and hot breath burned his cheek. Alarmed, he arched and grabbed for whatever was glued there, spinning to get hold of it, but it dug in and rode him. Then he felt pain such as he had never known: razors ripped at the back of his neck, his scalp, stabbed his cheek and tore the skin, and something hooked to the flesh of his back and pried his collar loose with its claws. The sharp pain flooded his body again. He roared an oath, and batted at his back, thrashed about in the air, as the jabs moved into his hair. Terrified that his eyes would be next, he doubled over and rolled on the ground. But the fangs were in, and deep, and whatever it was rolled beneath him.

  When he heard the sucking begin, he shuddered, then quivered, then fell into the dark.

  SEVEN

  HE WOKE WITH A LONGING for blood, with a thirst that thickened his tongue, parched the inner layers of his cheeks, and burnt his throat raw. The hunger was deep in his body as well, as though his limbs were traversed with thousands of tiny empty rivulets. He lay with his eyes closed, and on the backs of his eyelids he could still see the bright red leaves tossing in restless patterns against the pale sky. Their color came out of the bowels of the earth; or was it, as the Indians taught, from the great bear in the heavens who was wounded and rained his blood into the trees.

  How long had he lain there, the damp earth rising up through his clothes? He could feel the cold of the leaf mulch invade his body and creep into his bones. He longed for the warmth and comfort of blood.

  The loamy earth gave forth a sweet odor of decay as he rose on all fours and staggered to his feet. Instantly, he swooned, and the tall trees splintered and reeled. He reached and caught a low branch to steady himself while the forest around him bowed and swayed.

  He felt his neck inside the collar of his jacket and, with a sharp intake of breath, found the two jagged wounds, tender and swollen. Barnabas breathed a long sigh. That was the reason his body felt so light, as if burned to ash, and why his head throbbed with a leaden timbre behind his eyes. He looked up towards the road. Would he be able to climb the hill? Forcing himself to move slowly forward, he fell against a rock outcropping, pulled himself up, then lunged drunkenly through the smooth trunks of beeches. When he heard his heart rattling in his chest, he was too frightened to go further, and he collapsed again in the leaves.

  He dozed, but woke to a scurrying in the underbrush and froze, not breathing. It was some animal—a rabbit, or even a raccoon. He wondered what sort of creature would be active this time of night. What nocturnal being worried the dry leaves and scratched toward the smell of blood he knew he reeked of? Some curious beast who was hungry as well, sniffing and searching, bright-eyed and drawn by the long taut wire of instinct. The scratching came nearer, and Barnabas prayed it was not a skunk or a porcupine, or even a badger, but he braced himself for the sharp teeth and claws he knew it would use to defend itself. He concentrated on the sound of the scurrying, little twigs breaking and earth flying, and then he could hear it breathing near his face, the quick, jerky clicks of a wild animal, now panting beside his ear.

  He was amazed at the speed of his own hand as he grabbed it, and his fist closed on writhing fur. A high-pitched screech told him it was only a wood rat, small and terrified. Barnabas glimpsed its beady eyes shining into his own and saw its rounded ears twitch, and for a moment he was amused that something so small could have made so much racket. He sank his teeth into its belly.

  JULIA FOUND HIM and, with Willie’s help, carried him back to Collinwood. How they managed to transport him in secret through the back entrance, down the hall and up the stairs to his room, he never knew. But he remembered how Willie had wiped the blood from his face and shouldered him when he could not walk, and dragged him when his legs collapsed, while Julia, his arm across her thin waist, murmured encouragement.

  Once he woke and saw the golden needle in the lamplight, hovering and quivering, bright as a diamond, before Julia gave him his injection, and the battle for his body began anew. He lay in a chasm of pain, too deep for consciousness, but when Julia placed the cool compresses on his wounds, he roused and saw her face looking down at him, skeletal and drawn, her eyes dark pools of worry.

  He thought she asked, “Who did this to you?” just as he had asked the poor fool in the cellar of the Old House. And he tried to answer her but his mouth was too dry to speak.

  Twinges and spasms rent him all through the night. It all returned: the sweat, the stench of his body in the sheets, his skin crawling with the pricks of fire ants, stings of scorpions, stabs of ratchet-legged centipedes. When he drew close to waking, he thought, how many have suffered in this way because of me? He was tortured by the memory of the many times he had hunted and fed on innocent waifs and homeless creatures in dark streets
down by the wharves, and he shuddered with remorse. But when he was deep in dreams, he felt in the fiercest part of him that he longed to return to that life. How could he have found the vampire’s existence so barren, when it had been so vivid and defined? All those years when he had felt trapped, he had in reality been able to see clearly, for desire for blood had been his life’s sole purpose. That, and secrecy. How simple life had been.

  Julia kept the curtains drawn, since once again he feared the sunlight, the searing pain in his retinas. He tossed in the sheets, despising his weakness; strength and courage were buried away in the past. There were times he woke to the sounds of his own moans from the waves of heat or the horrendous cold, and shame washed over him.

  At times he heard the murmuring of the family outside his door, and once David came into the room and knelt by his bed and whispered.

  “Cousin Barnabas, I’m awfully sorry. I’m just so sorry. I feel so bad that I left you in the woods. But you know what happened, don’t you? Those brownies, well, you know what they had in them, don’t you?” He leaned in closer. “It was pot. The girls made them with pot, and they got us both really stoned. That guy Jason didn’t tell us what was in them and we ate them. I don’t remember anything except that I couldn’t find you, and I must have gone home without you. What attacked you? Was it a wild animal?” Then David spoke to Julia. “He’s going to get well, isn’t he? He’s going to be okay?”

  “He’s going to be fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Barnabas,” David said, “You have to get better. You still want to go to Salem don’t you? For Halloween?”

  “Just leave him to rest, David,” said Julia. “Come back and see him tomorrow.”

  Later he woke and saw the sun streaming in his window and Julia standing there in the bright light, her back to him, leaning over the table. She had the needle in her arm, and he saw her draw back the syringe and her own blood flowed into it. He lurched up and reached for it, startling her. She jerked back and dropped the hypodermic, and stood there staring at him, her face ghostly white, her arm hanging by her side, the needle dangling, still in the vein, and he could see the blood pumping through the tube and flowing into the vial.

  These waking moments were few and fitful, but his overlapping dreams were more intense. The window blew open and a bat fluttered over him and flew at his face. He heard its plaintive squeaks, and saw its ruby eyes. It came for him, again and again, and he lay there, paralyzed, his arms refusing to move, and he could not ward it off, was helpless to protect himself. He heard Angelique’s voice, her fury like an icy blast that wrapped itself around his body and pinned him to the bed.

  “You wanted your precious Josette so much. Well, you shall have her! But not in the way you would have chosen. For you will never rest. And you will never be able to love anyone, because whoever loves you will die.”

  The curse echoed through his brain as down a dark cavern, and then he saw her sorrowful face and heard her begging him to forgive her. He had wooed her, and loved her, and then he had abandoned her for another, for Josette, her charming mistress, in sun-drenched Martinique, when he had been a brash, romantic soldier just beginning the adventure of his life. How long was he meant to suffer for his callousness? And yet, after so long, was not this other, darker existence now his truer self? Was it really possible that Julia could cure him again?

  Once, he grew terribly cold, and he did not know who it was, but a woman lay beside him and pressed her body against him, giving him her warmth while he shivered so violently he thought his bones would shatter. She drew the quilts over them both, and he felt her naked stomach against the skin of his back, and her breath on his neck. He panicked and struggled to escape, but again he was helpless and could not move his body so weighted down, as with lead, and she wrapped her arms around him and would not release him and warmed him with her fire.

  EIGHT

  Salem Village—1692

  IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE, as the children were leaving, Judah Zachery caught Miranda by the wrist and bade her stay. She felt her skin shrink like pig’s tripe and the hairs on her scalp lifted.

  “Where were you the evening last, Miranda?”

  She stood in stony silence and glared at him.

  “You were there, were you not? You bewitched young Lucinda and she fell to her death. Your wickedness has found you out, Miranda, and I shall go to the magistrates.” She tried to pull away, but he held her in a grip like a vise, until she thought the bones in her wrist would shatter.

  “Answer me! We are alone in this room, and I will have the truth.”

  “How could my wickedness reveal to you any truth? If I am so wicked, as you say, then all my utterances must all be false.”

  She saw him redden, then falter, and his body sagged. “Why dost thou treat me so, Miranda? Have I not been fair with you? Why this contempt I do not deserve?”

  “You know why.”

  “I wish to make you my wife someday.”

  “Death would be my choice over a life with you.”

  She saw his face darken. “Answer me now. Were you with the Whaples child in the woods last night?”

  “I need answer you nothing. I am neither wife nor consort of yours, nor in any sense your property. You have no rights over me, Judah Zachery.”

  “You are all to be whipped in the square, even little Betty. Shall I show you what is to come?” Again she tried to free herself, but he turned and dragged her to his desk, opened the drawer, and took out the cherrywood switch. She pulled away but, still holding her by her resisting arm, he sat heavily in the chair and twisted her body across his knees. She smelled the grease on his clothes and his stale odor. Grasping both her wrists, he pinched them together, pressed them hard against her back, and with the whip hand, he tugged at her skirts until they were up and over her head and she was smothered in woolen folds. She tried to wriggle free, her body rigid, but he pressed the bones of her wrists together until they seemed ready to splinter, and with clumsy jerks he loosened her pantaloons and drew them off. She writhed when she felt his body buck a little and his back straighten. The switch sang in the air before she felt its scalding snap, and she arched, and she could hear him grunt. The bulk of him rose more beneath her pelvis each time she cringed and shrank against him. She did not cry out, but wrenched her hands until the tendons of her wrists stretched to wires, and she squirmed to flee the blows, knowing her every movement gave him pleasure. Finally a silent scream—not of pain but of fury—cast a cloud over caution. There slipped from her lips a muttered rune and the cherrywood listened and caught fire, turning in his hand to a burning rod. With an oath he flung the whip in the air, and stared at his hand where the switch had left a mark more vicious than any it had inflicted on Miranda, a welt of swollen blisters across his palm. With another curse he jerked her body free of his. She fell to the floor and pulled her clothes about her. Judah gaped at his scalded palm and back at her in disgust.

  “Witch,” he said as faintly as a breath.

  “Aye. And best you remember it. For I know you, Judah Zachery, and see your wickedness as clearly as you see mine.”

  He glared at her, eyes blazing. “Thou art what I’ve always known thou art. A witch and a demon.”

  “Beware who you speak to of this,” she said. “You have committed the sin of lechery.”

  He grimaced, and then spoke in a raw whisper. “Then wilt thou sign the book?”

  “Never.”

  He reached for her and grasped her behind the neck and pulled her to him. His breath was hot on her face and she could smell the bile from his stomach on his breath. “I will have you,” he whispered, “even if I have to kill you. The Court has already called for you to be examined. You will come to me begging for support.”

  “I will not.”

  “But who will protect you, Miranda?”

  MIRANDA KNOCKED SOFTLY on the entrance to Andrew’s hut. A soft rain was falling, the hour was late, and when he opened his door, he left only a small crack
for her to see into his room. He showed a scowling face above the oil lamp he held in his hand.

  “What brings you here at this time of night, Miranda?”

  She shook the water from her hood, lifted it back over her hair, and spoke as if to scold. “Such a sharp greeting, Andrew. Does it not please you to see your betrothed?”

  He opened the door a bit wider, but his large frame loomed in the space, and he answered in a halting voice. “In truth it is a pleasure, but you cannot be in this house alone with me.”

  “And will you refuse me comfort from the storm?” She placed her hand on the rough wood and looked up into his broad and ruddy face. His small hazel eyes were set deep under heavy brows and his beard was reddish in the firelight, as was his shoulder-length mass of hair.

  “’Tis unseemly, lass, and that you know better than I.”

  She lifted her chin and smiled. “The banns will be published in the fall. Even if someone were to see us, they would think no ill on it. Let me come in.”

  “Nay, girl, I cannot.” He glanced nervously over her shoulder. “I am expecting yeomen to come any moment, and if they were to find you here there would be shame on it. I beg you, be on your way and I will see you on the morrow.”

  She thought he must be dissembling. Surely there would be no visitors at this hour, with the wind whistling and the rain flying about. “Hush, Andrew, and take heart. No one has followed me. I am shivering and wet through, and I have brought you a cake made by my own hand.” She pushed by him, and with a helpless whimper he stepped aside, leaned out and swiveled his head around in the dark, then quickly drew back and barred the door.