Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

As before, this book is dedicated to Rusty

Cast List

Barnabas Collins . . . . . .  Jonathan Frid
Dr. Julia Hoffman . . . . . . Grayson Hall
Roger Collins . . . . . . . . . Louis Edmonds
Elizabeth Stoddard . . . . . Joan Bennett
Elliot Stokes . . . . . . . . .   Thayer David
Angelique Bouchard . . . . Lara Parker
Harry Johnson . . . . . . . .  Craig Slocum
Willie Loomis . . . . . . . . .  John Karlen
Hallie Stokes . . . . . . . . .  Kathy Cody
David Collins . . . . . . . . .  David Henesy
Maggie Evans . . . . . . . . . Kathryn Leigh Scott
* Dr. Veronika Liska . . . . Virginia Vestoff
Sarah Johnson . . . . . . . .  Clarice Blackburn
. . . . . and surprise guests

* my creation

June, 1971

Hindsight is for after events happen, not before. Who then can blame Roger Collins and Elizabeth Stoddard for what they were about to unleash on Collinwood the day they found the dumbwaiter?

“Whatever it is, someone wallpapered over it!” exclaimed Elizabeth, watching her brother Roger knock and scratch at a bulky wall in one of the empty upstairs bedrooms of Collinwood’s central wing. “Could it be a cabinet built into the wall? Why would someone paper it over?”

“And set an armoire in front of it as well!” Roger remarked, for though the room was now empty of furniture, a large, squat armoire had hulked against this very wall since time immemorial. Roger picked and tore at the wallpaper with his fingernails, trying to free a strip.

This room was slated for redecoration. It was spacious with big windows, but dark woodwork frowned at the brother and sister on all sides, and a busy Victorian wallpaper touched them with tendrils of anxiety. The paper clashed with a furiously figured carpet, further upsetting the senses. The heavy, forbidding drapes had faded to an uneven dusky grape color.

Both Elizabeth and Roger were dressed casually, ready to encounter dust and dirt. Roger wore a rugged old brown sweater with sleeves rolled to the elbows, and a pair of slacks that had seen better days. Elizabeth had a red kerchief round her hair, and a blue-checked shirt with old-fashioned pegged jeans. She looked quite girlish. Her feet were in light, comfortable mules—about as close as Elizabeth Stoddard was going to get to a pair of sneakers.

They had intended to oversee some general cleanup of the central wing of Collinwood; it was Elizabeth’s ambition to attack all the woodwork of the house, which some remote, misguided ancestor had slathered with unforgiving umber paint. She wanted to update it all in white or cream. She intended to redecorate all the rooms and see to the removal of the hulking, dark furniture and the decaying draperies, and to introduce light and freshness everywhere. And though her brother would probably give her an argument, she secretly hoped to be able to do some of the painting herself.

“Don’t tell me that someone papered over a family portrait!” she mused, stepping back and resting her hands on her hips as her brother dedicatedly scraped at the paper.

“Of some detestable ancestor? A three-quarter-view of Attila-the-Collins, with fez and sword, from the year 1315! Now Liz, you know there have never been any bad antecedents in our family,” Roger joked, turning his head to smile at her, then turning back as he finally got a strip of paper loose and eagerly pulled at it. It made a dry whisper of sound. Elizabeth smiled slightly and shook her head, trying to get used to Roger’s buoyant spirits. Since he’d fallen in love with Veronika Liska, a taciturn but lovely local physician whom he intended to wed, her brother had been a new man. A much happier one.

In the aftermath of a fall on the stairs that Roger had experienced at the start of April, Elizabeth had summoned an osteopath to help him with physical therapy. Though Roger and the pretty physician had exchanged snarls at first sight, their feelings had undergone rapid change. Roger now hoped to marry Dr. Liska.

As Elizabeth watched, a slim, straight crack in the wall was revealed under his working fingers.

Baffled, she continued to observe as her brother pressed his thumbnail into the crack and, following its line, drew it vertically up the paper. He was tracing a definite rectangular shape. There was some sort of cabinet built into the wall. Marveling, Elizabeth blinked and then abruptly realized what she was seeing.

“Oh, Roger, could that possibly be a dumbwaiter? Oh, I think it is. That would make sense, because I remember that Father was brought to this room when he was so ill with influenza—but you were so young you probably won’t recall. I’m sure they used this room so that they could receive food from the kitchen via the dumbwaiter while taking care of him. And,” Elizabeth continued, warming to the topic, “the stairwell is on the other side of this room. Of course. There must be a chute, a track of some kind, that runs beside the stairwell down to the kitchen. But I don’t remember seeing a dumbwaiter door in the kitchen, do you? I wonder where it's located.”

She broke off at the clatter of quick footsteps in the hall. David, not expecting to see them in this room, passed it by but then grabbed the woodwork and pulled himself back to the doorway again with a grin, banging into Hallie Stokes, who was right behind him.

“Aunt Elizabeth,” David called, “Father! We’re going out. We’ve got—”

“Not so close to lunchtime, David!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Please have your lunch first!”

“Why should they?” Roger broke in with a truculent look at his sister. He took the opportunity to draw his bare forearm across his face, displacing the perspiration there and leaving a streak of old plaster dust. “Lunch is cancelled in this house, as is every other meal, from here to eternity! If you eat at Collinwood anymore, you eat at your own risk.”

Hallie laughed at Roger.

“Roger, for heaven’s sake,” interjected Elizabeth.

“Don’t for-heaven’s-sake me, my dear sister. Until I hear that the services of the Coterie Eaterie have been re-established in this house, this radio is not receiving!”

“You know very well that some Coterie staff will be back shortly,” Elizabeth chided. “We couldn’t keep them in the backyard! They’ve gone back to their catering offices in town, and in a very short time Tish and a few others will return to supervise all our meals.”

Roger had swooned over the temporary catering service that had set up onsite and served Collinwood through the weeks in which their kitchen was being remodeled and the stove replaced. Now, after much negotiation, a Coterie staff member or two—Tish Lemon was one of the Coterie staff—would be absorbed into Collinwood’s household as permanent chefs, or “meal advisors”.

Impatiently from the doorway, his eyes running over the wall, David countered, “Well, then, can we go out for just a half hour and be right back? What is that behind the wallpaper?”

“We think it’s a dumbwaiter that someone wallpapered over and no, I’d rather you didn’t. Please go down to Mrs. Johnson, she must have your soup and boiled sandwiches ready for you.”

David sighed loudly in exasperation and stomped off down the hall, followed by the quieter Hallie.

Later, David motioned Hallie into the cleared-out bedroom his father and aunt had been working in and followed her inside, shutting the door.

“What are you planning now?” Hallie asked suspiciously. “We can’t play in here with that ball.”

For David held a battered white soccer ball in his hands.

“Let’s send it down the dumbwaiter,” he proposed. “We’ll wrap it up in a towel. We should paint streaks of blood all over it—the towel, I mean. Then, you go down to the kitchen and pretend to be crying, and tell Mrs. Johnson that you’ve accidentally cut off my head and sent it down to her in the dumbwaiter.”

Hallie drew back from David in surprise. “She’s never going to believe that! You think Mrs. Johnson is going to believe that I cut off your head? David, honestly.”

“Fine! Then I’ll go down and tell her it’s your head.”

With difficulty, David got the door of the dumbwaiter open. The teens grasped the ledge of the dumbwaiter opening and peered down the shaft, the seat of the dumbwaiter compartment suspended about eighteen inches over the backs of their necks.

Hallie suddenly felt uneasy.

The cavern of the dumbwaiter was silent and black, snaking downwards away from them and from all light, deep into its own secret darkness. A faint chill came up from the depths and touched their cheeks.

“It’s a long way down, and it’s dark as pitch,” Hallie whispered into the musty expanse. “Why isn’t there a crank so that you can send down whatever you want to send to the kitchen?”

“That’s not the way they did it 'way back then. I think you just tug on this cable, you know, hand-over-hand, to get the — the dumbwaiter compartment thing to go down. Then they hear it land in the kitchen, so they open their door, put a tray and a pitcher on it, and do the hand-over-hand until it slams into your room.”

“David, don’t,” she urged. “Don’t send the ball down; don't involve Mrs. Johnson. She’ll get angry.”

“So what?”

“You’re not thinking,” she said urgently, nudging him in the ribs with her elbow. “She’ll poison us again.”

David hesitated.

“You’re right,” he admitted thoughtfully. “But I’m sending the ball down to the kitchen anyway. We could pin a note to it that says, ‘send up some chocolate cake immediately!’ and she wouldn't know who was talking to her, my father or Aunt Elizabeth or us. That’d be pretty funny.”

Hallie snorted laughter, but remained nervous. David pulled experimentally at the cable.

“I wonder,” he mused. “I'm wondering what kind of a cable this is. I mean—say Mrs. Johnson puts a hundred-pound tray on the dumbwaiter, does she have to pull up a hundred pounds with her own strength, or does the cable help? Do you know what I mean? Like maybe there's a counterweight on it?”

Hallie shook her head to indicate that she didn't follow. In truth, she wasn't very interested, and the sneaking cold air that came up from the black shaft chilled her and made her nose prickle.

“I wonder how much it's supposed to carry?” David mused, and Hallie read his mind even before his face broke into a look of excitement: “I wonder if we can take a ride in it!”

“Oh, I knew that that's what you were going to say. No, of course we can't ride in it! Do you really want to ride inside that thing? In the dark? The cable must be all rotted by now anyway and you'd—fall to your death, or something.” Hallie moved purposefully away from the dark cavern in the wall, then spun for one final thrust.

“Anyhow, it's only for trays and dishes, you know? Or a pile of laundry or something. It's not for human beings.”

“I don't know about that,” David murmured, and Hallie followed the direction of his gaze. It was concentrated on words or figures machine-stamped into the copper-colored outer lining of the shaft. She drew closer.

WT CAP 300 LB

“Weight capacity three hundred pounds?” David exclaimed. “You're telling me that this house used to send three hundred pounds of dirty underwear down to the kitchen every laundry day? I don't believe it. That compartment's big enough for an adult to fit inside. Maybe two of them! You know what I bet this was?”

“No, what?”

“Part of the Underground Railroad!” David cried, excited. “I bet that this house was sending loads of people all over the house, or down to the kitchen for an escape, or up to the attic to hide, or whatever. Then, when the coast was clear, psshhhw! Off to Canada! This is neat!”

Hallie crossed her arms over her breasts.

“I suppose so. Do we have to stay in here all day? I want to get back to my reading list.”

“Reading list!” echoed David, with disgust. “You’re supposed to be on summer vacation. That school of yours is stupid. Who lets kids out for the summer but assigns them six thousand books to read over the summer? Are you going to be a wet blanket all this vacation?”

“Don’t you call me a wet blanket,” Hallie countered indignantly, her blue eyes sparking fire at David. “I’ll have plenty of time to read and do all kinds of other things outside. You're just angry because I got out of school for the summer sooner than you did.”

“Let's go down to the kitchen and find the dumbwaiter door!” David cut in. Before Hallie could agree or disagree, he had turned and sprinted out of the room. Hallie ran after him.

And so, that evening, Mrs. Johnson was desperately annoyed to encounter either David, or Hallie, or both together each time she turned from the stove.

“You damn kids,” she breathed, stepping quickly from stovetop (where dinner boiled) to cupboard, where she drew out thick stoneware serving plates. “Your playing in here is a fire hazard! What keeps you in here, anyway? There is nothing behind that dumbwaiter door but empty space!”

David put his hands to Hallie's ear and spoke through them. “Her cooking is the real fire hazard,” he whispered, his cupped hands making a hot, deafening distortion of his words. Hallie snorted and ducked her head.

“All very well!” retorted Mrs. Johnson, stopping and putting her hands on her hips and staring at them balefully. “I just hope that when you're my age you won't have to deal with disrespectful kids! Now shoo, both of you. There is absolutely nothing inside that dumbwaiter for you!”

David and Hallie gave up and broke from the humid kitchen, bringing a grunt of reaction from Sarah Johnson.

“She's right,” Hallie ventured to David when they were up in his room again, “the dumbwaiter is boring. There's nothing in it and not much to do with it. We put something in it, send it to the kitchen, and pull it back upstairs again. That is so boring.”

David sat slumped over his desk, his upper body sprawled over on it, his cheek against the hard, cool grain. He moved his hands and arms aimlessly over the desktop, like a swimmer. “I guess you're right,” he mumbled, his ear pressed against the wood of the desk. “It's just I got excited. Never knew we had one. Now my father's all worked up, thinking that there must be a dumbwaiter over in the east and west wings too. The Collinses were always so rich that he figures everybody must have had meals sent up from the kitchen instead of running downstairs all the time to eat. Big deal. I don't see what's so exciting.”

Hallie asked timidly, “Is your father going to marry Dr. Liska?”

“Looks like it,” David sighed, with no change of tone or attitude. There was a moment of silence.

“I think it'll be good,” Hallie ventured. “Dr. Liska is really pretty. And she doesn't—she's not one of those ladies who tells lies to your face, you know? I know she doesn't smile all over the place, but I like her. She's not fake.”

David sat up, looking rumpled. “Yeah,” he sighed. “My father's in love with her. You're right, she's not fake. Maybe it'll be okay. He asked me what I thought about it the other night.”

Hallie settled back on David's bed and picked at the chenille bedspread, studying him as he sat at his desk. “He did? That's really fair of him. What did you tell him?”

“Oh, I told him it was all right. I like Dr. Liska. He made a lulu of a mistake on the last one he married; you weren't here back then. But Dr. Liska's good. That's why he's so batty about the dumbwaiter idea, see. He wants to live with Dr. Liska in the east wing or the west wing, and have Mrs. Johnson throw up dinner on the dumbwaiter all the time. I don't get why Dr. Liska can't just move into my dad's room with him. Why do they need a whole wing to themselves, for gosh sakes?”

“Well, David,” Hallie blurted, “they're going to be newlyweds and they want—” she turned crimson—“they want to have sex in private. You know, without ten of us lined up outside listening to them.”

“Well,” David suggested, his eyes sparkling as he turned to her, “everybody wants to have sex in private, right? So why can't they just do it in his room? What're they going to have, monkeys jumping up and down and chasing each other in and out of closets?”

Hallie gasped, envisioning Dr. Liska's stern face with monkeys leaping behind her, and David's father rushing into a closet with no clothes on, slamming the door after him—and Hallie and David exploded into laughter together.

The giggling went on for some time.

“Anyway,” David chortled, eyes still glittering with humor, “It is kind of disgusting to think about sex happening to your parents.”

“I suppose,” Hallie responded, and then got on another laughing jag at the vision of sex “happening” to Roger Collins—with a clash of cymbals, perhaps, and a puff of smoke.

Finally, the kids calmed down and were able to breathe normally again.

“We can put your dolls in the dumbwaiter if you want,” David offered, not looking at Hallie. “You probably want to, right? We'll put them in there and they'll be trapped, like in a big chamber, and we'll stage a rescue effort.”

Hallie was silent. David, who was thirteen and could hardly be made to play with Hallie's dolls on threat of death, was making a kind sacrifice. At fifteen, Hallie was perhaps too old for such things; but losing both her parents in an accident so abruptly just as she was entering her teenage years had resulted in her ferociously clinging to her childhood things. Mrs. Stoddard and Uncle Elliot had been understanding and positive about it, and Mrs. Stoddard regularly presented Hallie with boxed Topper Dawn dolls and accessories. Hallie loved them fiercely and would release her grip on them only when she was ready, and not before. Perhaps the time would never come at all.

“Thank you for thinking of that, David,” she responded now softly, “but maybe some other time.”

Roger Collins' instincts were right; the door of another dumbwaiter was found in one of the larger bedrooms of the east wing.

“This is perfect!” he shouted when he had discovered it and scrabbled away the wallpaper that covered it, “this will be lovely! What a romantic time it will be! We'll return from our honeymoon and come here, and Coterie will serve us ambrosial offerings in this dumbwaiter! Once it has been thoroughly scoured, of course.”

“Can you get the door open?” Elizabeth asked, watching him. “Roger, I have to wonder about the engineering of this dumbwaiter. Its location in the house, I mean. It's not connected to a stairwell like the other—it's not over the kitchen. How does this dumbwaiter connect to the kitchen?”

“Oh,” responded Roger extravagantly, peeling off the old wallpaper, knowing nothing at all about the subject, “well! I imagine that there is a track behind the wall, yes? It will run horizontally until it comes to a dumbwaiter shaft that connects to the kitchen. You see? Then it will go down the shaft and be loaded, and pop upwards again, and get tugged along horizontally to this room. What is the name of this room, do you know or remember?”

“The Sweetgrass Room,” Elizabeth answered absently.

“Oh! Oh, dear,” her brother said, slightly deflated. He wanted this room for Veronika and himself and had believed it carried a more romantic name. “I thought this was the April Rose Room,” he ventured to his sister. “Isn't one of these rooms the April Rose?”

“Yes, the one next door. Roger, don't get too excited. That dumbwaiter door might be cemented shut for all we know.” She cupped her hands about her elbows and shivered for reasons unfathomable to herself.

Or perhaps it was just prescience.

The period after dinner saw a black-browed Roger alone in the drawing room, steadying himself with multiple brandies and helplessly burping with indigestion. Boiled meatloaf! Was it really too much to expect food in this house that the human digestive system could handle? How he missed the succulent dishes of Coterie. When he had calmed himself somewhat, he left the drawing room and went up to the Sweetgrass Room in the east wing to get the dumbwaiter door open, if it could be done.

The dumbwaiter door came unstuck. He pressed it wide open with satisfaction, then crinkled his nose in surprise at what lay on the floor of its compartment.

Lying in a huddled heap before him was a very familiar black crocheted yarn afghan with different colored inner squares.

Roger frowned.

Hadn't he just seen that afghan downstairs on the back of the couch in the drawing room? Of course he had. He'd been clutching at it as he’d downed brandy after brandy in an attempt to kill the taste of yet another botched dinner by Mrs. Johnson. That hadn't been five minutes ago.

Just for a second, a silly thought struck him. Elizabeth, being playful, had gathered up the afghan and stuffed it into the dumbwaiter in the kitchen, sending it up to the Sweetgrass Room for him to find. Just a weak little joke. He smiled to himself, but the smile faded before it could really take hold. Wouldn't he have heard the thumping and whirring of the dumbwaiter as it traveled to the Sweetgrass Room from the kitchen where she had presumably loaded it? Yes, he would have. And by what means had Elizabeth guided the dumbwaiter compartment to the Sweetgrass Room of the east wing when, by rights, as uneducated as he and his sister were in its use, it ought properly to have arrived in the empty bedroom of the central wing directly above the kitchen?

He stared at the afghan. He didn't want to think about this now. His mind was busy redecorating this room into a lovely, inviting bower for his new bride; he imagined Veronika's pleasure at this or that detail that he had imaginatively provided; he was full of action and importance and hope. He didn't want to think about a stupid afghan.

Roger did what anybody might have done.

He reached into the dusky compartment and drew out the afghan; he brought it to his nose and sniffed. It was fresh. It had the smell of happy expectation that comes with things made of yarn. It was a little cool from having rested in the compartment. Why, he thought, this isn't our afghan at all. Perhaps it has lain inside here for years, somehow protected from moths and damp. It smells fresh enough. But it's not the one downstairs in the drawing room. Because it can't be. Because nobody could have gotten it here.

He held the afghan in both hands as he considered. Then he tossed it to the floor and abruptly left the room.

Chapter Text

David heard his father trot past his room. He knew that Roger had been into the east wing, exulting over the dumbwaiter there. He had told them all about it at dinner. Now, David heard his father's footsteps on the stairs, rapidly going down. It was about 8 p.m.

David was vastly bored so far this summer vacation period. The weather was odd; not really warm enough for swimming or camping, every day dull and cloudy. He thought back to when he was a kid and the house had been full of mystery. Now, his schoolfriends were off doing other things. Hallie wasn't adventurous and Amy wouldn't return to Collinwood from her summer camp for at least another week. And anyway, Amy was just a kid.

Bored! David rose and took exaggerated, dragging steps to the door of his room. Well, he'd go see the dumbwaiter in the east wing, then. And maybe he'd get up into the compartment and sit there a while. The compartment wasn't quite long enough to sleep in—at least the one they'd found in the central wing wasn't. Were there two dumbwaiter carriages, or just one? For apparently there was more than one dumbwaiter shaft in the house. The east and central wings were a good ways distant from one another. If there were two dumbwaiter carriages, and different people using them, wouldn't the carriages crash into each other sooner or later?

He slipped quietly into the hallway. Probably everybody else was downstairs. He took himself to the east wing, which wasn't locked anymore since his father and Aunt Elizabeth were thinking about updating it and getting rid of all the dark furniture in all the wings.

David found the right room and put his hand on the old-fashioned engraved copper doorknob. Then he twisted the knob and entered.

The overhead light, when he snapped it on, was working, but weak. He glanced about the stale room and then approached the dumbwaiter. He noticed the crumpled afghan on the floor but paid it no thought. Pressing the heavy dumbwaiter door open all the way, he lifted himself onto his palms, brought up one leg, and clambered inside the space. David scooched in and settled his shoulders comfortably against one of the sides of the carriage. He had to turn his face to the left to look out into the room.

The compartment was okay. It really probably could house two people, even two adults. His hands lazily wandered the floor of the compartment and drove softly through dust and crumbs of dirt. Then his touch encountered something else; a stiff, fanlike semicircular protrusion in the floor. It felt like the rounded fin of some sea creature.

David sat up and frowned down at the protuberance. It was a wheel, a semicircle of a wheel standing out of the floor. He pressed his hand on it and felt the prickled copper edge of the wheel bite softly into his palm. It looked like it was made of brass, and it resembled a fan. He grasped it and tugged upwards, but it stayed firm and unmoving. Well, what was a wheel doing inside the dumbwaiter bay? Surely it couldn't be for—

David shifted abruptly in the compartment and scrambled to his knees. A wheel on the floor of a dumbwaiter! Would it do what he thought it would?

Squatting comfortably, he leaned over the little wheel. It was only about 4 inches long, perhaps 3 inches high and barely a quarter-inch wide. He pressed his fingers against the scalloped design in the brass and gently, slowly “spun” it away from him.

The compartment in which he sat began to sink. It fell smoothly two or three inches below its door-ledge in the wall. David felt a thrill of excitement. He carefully ran his fingers over the wheel, letting the flesh of his hand get lightly caught in its upper grooves; then he slowly rolled the top of the wheel toward him.

His compartment began to rise. His view of the room began to be cut off from the top, and the inside of the carriage became shadowy as the light from the room was narrowed.

He chuckled softly. This was a discovery. A dumbwaiter that someone sitting inside could steer! He was so excited that for a moment it made no sense. Then he remembered his earlier conjecture about the Underground Railroad. This was evidence, then, that the Collinses had participated in aiding people trying to escape Southern slavery. Better yet, if the fugitive heard a commotion in the house, he or she could quickly board this compartment and use it to secretly reach another refuge!

Where would the dumbwaiter go? To the attic? The kitchen?

He brought the compartment level with the room again, and scrambled out carefully, noting that it didn't dip or shift as he disembarked—as long as the inner wheel was not touched, it seemed that the carriage remained solid and stationary.

David rushed from the east wing to find Hallie. She could hardly believe the story of the dumbwaiter's “steering wheel” without seeing it firsthand, so he insisted that she accompany him back to the room, late though it was. It was Hallie who pointed out that this dumbwaiter, too, had the legend  WT CAP 300 LB machine-stamped into the copper of its lower frame.

Hallie was also responsible for a second discovery.

With David seated within the dumbwaiter bay and demonstrating the mechanical wonder of the little brass wheel, Hallie stood beside its frame, absently tapping and scraping at what looked like an edge of torn paper wedged into the left side of the shaft's door-ledge. The paper flaked away as she rubbed her finger across it. Then she saw that an actual folded paper was fixed there, having perhaps become accidentally stuck in the crack long ago. She slid inquisitive fingers into the crack to see if she could get purchase on the tail-end of paper. She could; she slid the paper toward herself and it came slowly, and much longer a piece than she had expected. It was perhaps half a sheet of dry, crackling paper, chipping with age on one of its sides.

With a feeling of satisfaction, Hallie flapped the fragile paper at David.

“Someone wrote a note and stuck it here,” she teased.

“What's it say? Read it,” David urged from the shelter of the compartment, as Hallie cautiously unfolded the stiff page. The message was brief, and the bottom of the page jagged and ripped.

“It's torn right in half. It says,” she began, reading,

Cross this threshold, which is a passage to a world unknown but long deserved, though

it appear only a dumbwaiter fashioned by the fallible hands of man. It is, under

heaven, the gateway to all that you desire. Deposit your dreams and hopes behind

this little door and you will be afforded that for which your soul has clamored. God     

“A note from God?” David asked, leaning forward to look at the page Hallie read from. “Good grief. You know, some ancestor of ours must have been really crazy. Deposit your desires in the dumbwaiter? Oh, boy.”

“Perhaps it was a game,” Hallie offered, shrugging. “You wanted to play with the dumbwaiter, so there must have been other kids in the past who wanted to play with it too. This is probably a game someone made up.”

“Yeah, well, I am going to take a ride in it and see where I go,” David affirmed, settling back into the carriage with a look of determination, his hand on the small brass wheel. Hallie felt a tremor of fear.

“Don't ride in the dumbwaiter, David. What if you get stuck, or what if the cable is rotted? Please don't.”

David slumped.

“Well,” he reckoned, beginning to clamber out of the compartment again—the idea of a rotted cable frightened him even though he didn't quite credit it—”tomorrow we'll see about it, I suppose. Here, give me that note. I wonder what year it was written.”

“It's in old-fashioned writing,” Hallie offered, handing over the paper with relief. She liked David, but too often he proposed activities or pressed her into doing things that frightened her. If he went down in the dumbwaiter and it got jammed, and he couldn't get it going again, she'd have to summon help, and since she was the oldest and supposed to know better—oh, they wouldn't blame her, David was naturally rambunctious and responsible for his own choices, but they'd be disappointed in her. Roger Collins. Elizabeth Stoddard, whom she loved. Barnabas Collins and Quentin—who was just dreamy. She bit her lip.

Hallie Stokes wanted nobody on earth disappointed in her.

She wanted to be loved.

Sometimes she secretly dreamed about Quentin, sometimes about Barnabas. They were both far too old for her, but she had feelings for both men. She dreamed of cuddling in their arms while they stroked her hair and vowed to protect her. She dreamed also of Willie Loomis and of Chris Jennings. One afternoon, Willie Loomis, exhausted after a day of housekeeping at the Old House, had smiled so kindly on her, and he had looked gentle and sweet and warm, so appealing—

Well, all right, this was all normal. At her age she was supposed to be attracted to almost every guy she saw. Even David had the facial features that would make him into a handsome man one day, but he was too young, and they'd known each other as pals for too long for there to be any romance lurking.  But gosh, all the rest of the handsome men around Collinwood lately—Mr. Olivo, who was Mrs. Stoddard's beau, and that Joe Haskell … even Roger Collins had his moments. Oh, well.

Hallie was used to staying at Collinwood when she wasn't at school, and that was a good thing; it seems that she and David had returned to Collinsport smack in the midst of mating season. Everyone was suddenly dating someone else, and even a couple of weddings were on the horizon. Even Uncle Elliot had a woman! Hallie had been flabbergasted upon coming home and seeing the remote and moody but gorgeous Angelique in her uncle's little house.

Love was in the air. Why should not she, Hallie, yearn for some of it, too?

She and David finally left the east wing dumbwaiter room and drifted off to their separate bedrooms. David had left the torn note behind in the dumbwaiter compartment after one fast glance.

Neither of the kids had regarded the fallen afghan.

Roger placed both hands on the black afghan with the multicolored squares. Here it was where it belonged, draped over the back of the sofa in the drawing room. So, the afghan upstairs in the east wing was a duplicate.

A small matter, but now it was settled. He wasn't seeing things, and nobody was playing games; it was merely a second, and identical, afghan. He put it out of his mind.

A brief look around the first floor told him that everyone had probably gone upstairs to bed.

He made certain that the front door was secured, put out the lights, and went up to bed himself, not realizing that his body now carried contagion.

Hallie sat in her nightgown in her room doodling in a school notebook. She couldn't seem to gather her thoughts. Finally, she tossed her pencil down, got up and went over to her bedroom closet. She reached up to the shelf and drew down a long, well-worn box. It was a board game that she'd had for years, called “Mystery Date: Meet Your Secret Admirer!”

Carolyn had played it with her, and Maggie, and Mrs. Johnson. David had scoffed at it, but that was all right.

This game was Hallie's favorite.

Small, stiff cardboard figures of elegant young women served as tokens to be moved about the board, players landing on different squares. “Take a card”, “Swap 1 card with any player”, and so on … or “Open the Door”, with a big blue question mark after it. Behind a plastic door set flat in the center of the board lurked one's mystery date. A player grasped the toy “doorknob” of the door and turned it, which shuffled the selection of “mystery date” cards beneath. Then the door was pulled open (upwards) from the board, revealing either the image of the handsome skier, or the smiling hunk with the bowling ball, or the gentleman in the spiffy tux—or the dreaded disheveled dud. Nobody wanted to draw the dud.

This game held a fascination for Hallie, and playing it was always fun, but she was usually content just to sit and look at it. She could spend hours poring over the board. There was a sort of allure in it for her; the heady suspense, the limitless possibilities of what dream date might wait behind the plastic door (although, truly, there were only 5 date pictures provided), the prim colored blocks about the board on which to move one's token. A girl could fall upon any combination. Roll the dice, four steps, draw a card … the cards provided you with services and items you needed for your upcoming date. A hair set, an attractive parka (for a ski date), an elegant pair of dancing slippers …

The mystique of the game was greater than the sum of its parts. She couldn't put it into words, but for her it all betokened a future of love and softness and understanding. One day, amid a furor of excitement, a young man would come and rescue her from something—perhaps merely the danger of loneliness—and shelter her in his gentle embrace. Then she would know the thrall of unending love.

Hallie ran her hands over the smooth front of the box. What she was about to do was miserably stupid, probably, but the idea had come to her whole and clear, and she meant to act on it. She rose and found a heavy dispenser of Scotch tape in her desk and took a piece. Then she tore a strip of paper out of her notebook. Taking up her pencil, she scribbled a rough, hasty ‘X’ in the center of the paper.  She drew off the game's box top and put it aside. She wasn't going to set the game up for play; she only wanted to turn the little toy knob of the plastic door.

She turned it, and it took her a few tries to come up with the picture of the “dud” date, a slovenly figure with a hand on his hip, no tie, and loose, paint-splattered pants. One pants leg was tucked into a boot and the other hung unevenly. He was laughing and looking as though impressing a girl was the last thing on his mind. Hallie pressed the strip of paper over the dud figure and secured it with tape, so that now he was blotted out. With a quiet sound of satisfaction, she closed the small plastic door of the game and settled the box top back onto the box.

She rose in her nightdress and slipped silently out of her bedroom, carrying the board game, and went in the direction of the east wing.

Hallie let herself into the east wing room where the dumbwaiter was, softly closing the door behind her. Her heart raced as she clutched her board game against her. She was frightened to come alone at night to one of the untenanted wings of the house, but she wouldn't have a witness with her this night for anything. She was ashamed and elated at what she was about to do.

Hallie approached the dumbwaiter and placed her board game inside it. She then drew out the stiff, aged note that she and David had earlier prized out of the crack it had been stuck in, and read it again.

Cross this threshold, which is a passage to a world unknown but long deserved, though

it appear only a dumbwaiter fashioned by the fallible hands of man. It is, under

heaven, the gateway to all that you desire. Deposit your dreams and hopes behind

this little door and you will be afforded that for which your soul has clamored. God     

“God,” she whispered, “please send someone.” Her throat closed up after that and she didn't know what else to say. A kaleidoscope of feeling, shimmering and brilliant and all different colors, shifted through her. Maybe she didn't need to say anything further.

Other people had found magic within the dumbwaiter—the note attested to it. She wanted a little bit of magic too.

Hallie reached into the compartment past her board game, and slowly turned the brass wheel in the floor of the carriage. She pushed it away from herself and the compartment began to sink. She shook her head and reversed direction, drawing the knobbed wheel toward her, making the dumbwaiter rise. She continued to do it until the floor of the dumbwaiter was almost eye-level and her arm could no longer stretch out to the wheel anymore. Ducking slightly, she reached into the grayish, cool dark of the shaft beneath the carriage and closed her fingers about the cable. She pulled on it, and the dumbwaiter with her board game inside it rose once more. Hand over hand, David had mentioned. But how far should she send the compartment? And who said that up was the right direction, anyhow?

She didn't have much choice there; though she could use the wheel to steer the mechanism downwards, she didn't think she could get the carriage lowered enough to be able to reach the cable in the space above the carriage. So—up it was.

As slowly and quietly as she could, Hallie did a careful hand-over-hand until the dumbwaiter disappeared upwards. She continued for some seconds, then stopped when it felt right to stop.

Surely God would understand what she was saying?

Late in the night, nearly two hours after Hallie had returned to the central wing, David had appeared in the east wing himself, on his way, of course, to the dumbwaiter.

He'd been careful in his preparations. He had with him a flashlight and a screwdriver. He'd been to the bathroom before leaving the central wing. And he'd slipped a note under Hallie's door, just in case things went wrong.

Hallie, it's 2:10 in the morning and I am going to go ride the east wing dumbwaiter and see what it does. If I'm not back in my room by the time you wake up maybe you better come looking for me and tell my dad or Aunt Elizabeth or Barnabas or somebody. Thanks! David

If a cable snapped and delivered him, within the dumbwaiter, all the way down to the kitchen, well, he was pretty sure the fall wouldn't kill him. He'd just start yelling and banging as soon as he heard someone moving around the kitchen in the morning. The fall, if he fell, was probably only a story-and-a-half's descent anyway, and he'd be protected within the carriage. And he didn't believe the cables would be rotted, anyhow.

David entered the dumbwaiter room and closed the door behind him. He had changed out of his pajamas into a regular shirt, slacks and shoes. Now he crossed the silent, shadowy room and approached the darkened dumbwaiter shaft.

He flashed his light at it and was astonished to see that the compartment was gone. How could it be gone? They’d left it parked, as it were, right here before he and Hallie had departed the room last time. Hallie was asleep in bed; he'd checked. Where had the dumbwaiter taken itself, then?

Perhaps—yes, it must have been his father, who was so excited about the dumbwaiters. He must have visited the room again and pulled the cable to make the compartment descend or rise. Probably testing to see if it could possibly reach the kitchen from this wing.

David took his flashlight in his teeth and reached for the exposed cable. He slowly pulled it hand over hand so that the compartment, if it were on a lower floor, would come up to him. No compartment appeared, and the cable grew taut and refused to budge any further. Okay, that meant that the compartment must be in the attic. He reached for the twin cable and took it hand-under-hand, waiting for the dumbwaiter to descend to him. The pulleys moved smoothly. There, something was happening. In a short time, the compartment arrived.

It was empty, clean, and inviting.

David let go of the cable and wiped his hands on his pants. He took the flashlight from between his teeth and laid it in the compartment. Feeling behind him to make sure he still had the screwdriver in his back pants pocket, he grabbed each side of the dumbwaiter frame and hauled himself into the chamber.

He settled in and chuckled. Sitting cross-legged, his tongue out and touching his top lip in anticipation, he touched the little brass wheel in the floor of the cell, pushing its ridges away from himself in a slow, smooth motion. The compartment he rode in began to sink away from the room. He continued to work the wheel in this deliberately slow motion; he didn't want to cause the cable to bunch up or something. It was pretty old, after all.

And now! Destination: Kitchen, probably, he thought to himself.

The carriage sank downwards and David with it, slowly vanishing from view, until only the slithering cables above the compartment could be seen in the east wing room he’d just left.

In this fashion, David Collins disappeared from the face of the earth.

Hallie didn’t even see the note on the floor of her room until she was up in the morning and dressed.

She stood brushing her hair before the mirror, dressed in a lavender angora sweater and dark, short skirt, and plain loafers. Today was the twenty-second of June, but who knew what the weather would be? Her tiny bedside transistor radio had forecast an inviting day in the mid-sixties, but with the usual proviso to be on the lookout for thunder and lightning. Collinsport always had thunder and lightning.

She set down her brush and finally saw the note on the floor in front of her door, in her mirror. Hallie froze, then whirled away from the glass and hurried over to pick up the note. She read it in horror.

Her hands spasmodically crumpled the paper as her heart rose to her throat. The game! David must have discovered her board game! With the lightning flash of vision that sometimes hits us, she knew that David had immediately guessed her intentions, the dreams, the prayers behind what she had done. As with X-ray vision, he would be able to glance at her and view, instead of her corpuscles and bones, her very longings and wishes!

But was he in his room now? Or downstairs apprehensively awaiting a breakfast of scrambled eggs with boiled hash-browned potatoes and (oh, awful) boiled bacon and boiled toast? Shuddering in reaction to more than one of these prospects, Hallie scurried from her room to visit David's bedroom, his note clutched in her fist.

Chapter Text

“June is a perfect month,” Elizabeth told her guests at breakfast happily, “for making plans. But I feel that about every month. And I’m afraid that we won’t have any June weddings this year, with July so close, unless we hurry! Oh, I think the caterers are here—Roger placed an order with Coterie to cater our breakfast this morning; I believe that's them now,” she concluded, hearing a stir in the hallway. Julia and Barnabas sat forward, looking a little brighter on learning that digestible food was to appear. They had been braced for Mrs. Johnson's hot orange juice, boiled corn muffins and deadly coffee.

Elizabeth entered the foyer and welcomed the caterers, who followed her into the drawing room, bringing delicious aromas with them. There was a large mushroom-onion-spinach omelet for sharing, there were croissants and toast, butter, and heavenly hot coffee. Veronika Liska served herself rapidly and began to crunch toast. Julia Hoffman, on an easier schedule that didn't dictate inhabiting a clinic ten hours a day, was able to linger over coffee and eat more slowly. She and Barnabas exchanged the secret glances of mates as they passed coffee and cream to one another.

They, and Roger and Veronika, were here with Elizabeth Stoddard to discuss definite wedding dates. Barnabas had proposed to Julia two months earlier.  Since Collinwood was going to have two weddings this upcoming season—one here, and one in the Old House, both wedding parties enthusiastically intending to engage Coterie to cater their event—it was a good idea to get together now and plan, and choose the days they wanted for their ceremonies.

“Well!” cried a perspiring Roger, smiling at his beautiful fiancée, “Veronika and I have discussed this, and if it won't interfere with Julia and Barnabas' plans, we have tentatively chosen the weekend of July sixth. Veronika can get time off and have a physician fill in for her. I can arrange to have nearly three weeks off around that time from the Cannery, if we put Quentin in my spot to oversee things. It’ll have to be July, because it’s impossible to get a physician substitute for August.”

Barnabas and Julia quickly glanced at one another, and Barnabas took her hand with a meaningful look on his face. She gave him a slow smile. Elizabeth noticed this.

“Barnabas, Julia? Is that perhaps the same date that you two had chosen?”

“It is,” Barnabas admitted, his eyes twinkling. “But we have thought of other dates as well. And truly, we don't intend to have much of a ceremony at the Old House. Julia and I—” he turned to Julia—”We'd be just as glad to have a Justice of the Peace and a witness or two.”

Roger had been blinking hard. “Witnesses,” he grunted, a little nonsensically. He began to fan himself.

“But I want to be at your wedding!” Elizabeth wailed. “I can't be at your ceremony and at my brother's on the same day. That is, unless—”

“But this is really no problem at all,” Veronika declared decisively, brushing her lips with a napkin, “I can just as easily arrange these same plans for late September. I've made some calls. I can have Dr. Delvecchio take the clinic for the last two weeks of September; it doesn't have to be Dr. Torres in July.” She smiled. “Although my fiancé tells me that September is a bit too long to wait.”

Roger, whose eyes were glittering feverishly, now wiped his sweaty brow with his sleeve and gestured with his toast. “Well,” he barked, “perhaps this entire venture is a mistake!”

Veronika looked at him enquiringly. Roger was behaving oddly. Julia leaned forward.

“There really isn't any trouble, as far as I can see,” she commented. “Barnabas and I could be married on the fifth and Veronika and Roger on the sixth, or vice-versa, or even on the seventh—or any other day. Coterie could cater both events. We need be mindful only of one schedule, Veronika's and Roger's. Though I've got to be at Windcliff for a period of time before autumn.”

“I was going to suggest—a double wedding!” Elizabeth chirped. “Then we would all be together and have a major affair, with Coterie handling it. But this is only if all of you decide that this appeals to you. I saw these little calendar cards the last time I was at the drugstore. You can refer to them in picking out dates if need be.” She floated around their circle of chairs, passing out the cards.

The idea of a double wedding was attractive.

Roger was now rhythmically rubbing sweat from his cheeks and looking a bit the worse for wear. He gave a very loud, gusting sigh. Veronika looked at him and laid a gentle hand on his sleeve.

“Are you all right?” she asked softly.

He suddenly opened his eyes wide and stared at Julia Hoffman. After a second, Julia noticed this and returned Roger’s gaze. She smiled, but Roger's face remained unmoving and somehow strangely speculative. He looked as though he was considering an idea that had never occurred to him before. He kept his eyes on Julia's face.

“Then there is always the avenue of young lovers,” Barnabas murmured handsomely, “or, perhaps, of smart ones. Have a civil ceremony on one day just to be married, and hold a reception on another day with guests, caterers—”

“Yes,” Julia seconded, “we could do that if anyone's in a rush. It would give the people at Coterie time to—”

“I'll do it!” Roger suddenly burst out, slapping both his thighs with an explosive sound and trying at the same time to stand up. “Julia Hoffman, will you be my bride?”

Everyone started at the loud noise Roger had made, and Julia and Veronika laughed.

“Wait now, Roger,” Barnabas chuckled, “you've got the wrong redhead. This one here is mine.”

Roger had lurched to his feet. “The wrong redhead!” he bellowed in a voice loud enough to make the chandelier above them chatter, “so it all comes out at last! I can't be married.” He wove drunkenly away from his chair, his face bright red. “Won't, by God!”

He stumbled violently sideways, nearly landing in Veronika's lap. She instinctively reached up and grasped his wrist to steady him, and gasped at the heat coming off his skin. Roger crabbily pushed at her to free himself.

“Rather marry Julia, anyway. It’s Julia for me!” Roger blurted.

“Roger, can you possibly be drunk at this hour?” Elizabeth asked crossly.

“I’ve always preferred Julia and you women all know it,” Roger continued, slurring his words. “Hell, I’d rather marry Barnabas than stand up with this—this—maniacal—shrew!” He began to pant, eyes wide.

Elizabeth gasped. Veronika rose from her chair.

“Roger!” Barnabas thundered loudly, furious.

“What!” Roger shouted back, swaying before Barnabas, who was now on his feet with everyone else.

“Julia, help me,” implored Veronika, gripping Roger’s wrist tightly. “Something’s wrong. He's as hot as a furnace.”

“I’ll put you in a furnace, you little humbug,” Roger muttered absently, trying to pull away from Veronika. Julia quickly approached from his other side and put her hand to Roger’s forehead, starting in surprise when she felt the baking heat of his skin. Roger closed his eyes and tried to kiss Julia’s wrist.

“My bag, Barnabas, please!” Julia urged. “Quick!”

“Is he sick?” Elizabeth asked, her eyes wide. Barnabas hurried to the drawing room doors and swept them open. When they had arrived for breakfast, Julia had deposited her locked medical bag on the hallway table.

He hastened past Hallie Stokes, who had been about to knock on the door. Her wet eyes and upset expression didn’t register with him as he seized Julia’s medical bag and turned back to the room.

But Roger turned and caught sight of Hallie lurking in the doorway.

“Now, there’s one!” Roger roared, shaking free of both doctors with such violence that Veronika lost her footing and fell against the sofa. A manic light shone in his eyes. His breathing was ragged. He stumbled over to Hallie and, in one superb movement, swept her off her feet and into his arms with hardly a break in his stride. Hallie gave a whimper of astonishment.

Rather than physically grapple with Roger lest Hallie be injured, Barnabas hurried ahead to the front doors of Collinwood and blocked them with his body. “Put her down, Roger,” he ordered.  “Hallie isn’t part of this.”

“Stand aside, cretin. I’ll take what I’ll take and do what I want around here,” Roger panted, gripping Hallie against him and swaying. In his peripheral vision Barnabas could see both doctors as they scrambled up behind Roger. Each woman had been into her medical bag; each was preparing a syringe. Barnabas nodded over Roger’s shoulder and told him, “Before you hurry off to your wedding, you mustn’t forget to have your blood tested. That is the law, yes? We can do the test this instant. Can you put Hallie down and perhaps take your jacket off?”

Roger halted for a moment in confusion. He gently released Hallie and staggered back a little, trying to think.

“Take off your jacket, it’s too hot,” Veronika invited, sliding Roger’s jacket from his shoulders. Roger made a quick irritable movement as though to try to keep it on, but Veronika was successful. His shirt was plastered to his body. He blinked tiredly and then stared at Julia as she stepped in front of him and began rapidly unbuttoning his shirt, a syringe gripped in her teeth.

“You’ll have your marriage license in no time!” Julia enunciated cheerfully over the tube as she deftly yanked the tucked shirt out of Roger’s pants. “How do you like that? We aim to please.”

The shirt, drenched and limp, fell to the floor with a slap. Elizabeth, who had followed the group out in to the foyer, put her hands to her cheeks. Veronika was already on Roger’s right, vigorously cleaning a place on his upper arm with alcohol and a cotton swab. Roger gave his head a quick shake, like a dog, and great drops of sweat flew from his face.

“Wait a minute,” he murmured, “wait. I don’t want—Why is it so cold out here? Oh!” Roger grimaced and pooched his lips, frowning.

“Get him?” Julia asked out of the side of her mouth.

“Yep,” Veronika muttered under her breath, removing the syringe and pressing a square of gauze against Roger’s arm. Julia had not used her syringe, which she now took from between her teeth, capped and slid into her jacket pocket.

“Brava, doctors,” Barnabas said quietly.

“Come with me, Roger!” Julia encouraged the bare-chested man, taking his arm and turning him back to the drawing room. “We’d better sit down and have breakfast! And I think you’re feeling a little tired now.”

“Yes, I am,” Roger admitted, and when he lifted his eyes to Julia’s, she noticed that he was having difficulty focusing.

“Well, let’s get you comfortable,” Julia invited. “Elizabeth, can you get a shirt or something for him to put on? That one is wringing wet.”

Elizabeth hurried from the room, looking very worried.

“He’s talking, breathing,” observed Veronika, sitting beside Roger, who frowned at her. She put her stethoscope to his chest. Julia stood on Roger’s other side, taking his pulse beat. There was a second of silence. Barnabas stood apart, watching.

“It’s like winter in here,” Roger whispered. “I’m so cold. What are you two doing to me?”

“Do you have pain in your chest or your arm? How about your back, or your jaw?”

“No,” Roger sighed to Julia.

“He’s exhibiting symptoms of shock,” Veronika fretted. “Are you bleeding anywhere?”

“Roger, did you happen to strike your head this morning?”

“Did you touch something unusual,  drink something before breakfast? You weren’t intoxicated this morning,” Veronika averred, studying him with critical concern. Roger shook his head at them both and put his face tiredly into the palm of his hand. “Julia, I want to get him to the hospital,” Veronika uttered in a low voice.

“Agreed. Roger, answer us, were you sniffing anything or touching anything, like poison ivy or poison sumac?”

“No, I haven’t been out of the house. What would I be sniffing?”

“Were you down in the basement, perhaps? The attic? Someplace moldy, perhaps?”

Veronika rapidly got out her blood pressure cuff and began wrapping it about Roger’s arm. He looked at her in confusion. She smiled at him. “Know who I am?”

“Who you are? Yes, of course I know who you are. What a thing to ask.”

“Who am I?”

“Who would you like to be?” Roger quipped, evasive.

“It couldn’t be thyroid storm, could it?” Veronika ventured to Julia.

“His heart is racing. Let’s see what the blood pressure says. Roger, were you drinking something or—did you use some chemicals, glue, this morning? Some sort of paint?”

“No, no, of course I didn’t.” Powerful shivers gripped him; his teeth rattled together. Julia released his wrist and reached for the afghan behind him and draped it over his shoulders as Veronika let off the pressure of the blood pressure cuff.

“I want to take it again,” she asserted. “I can barely get a reading.”

Julia looked up with interest. “Really?”

“Here, try? Roger,” Veronika requested, passing the blood pressure cuff to Julia, “Does your throat feel tight? Does your tongue feel strange, or itchy, or like it’s too big for your mouth?”

Roger threw back his head and laughed. Julia wrapped the cuff on his other arm and began to pump.

“No, of course not. What a silly person you are today!” Roger chuckled, smiling at Veronika and touching her nose with his fingertip.

Veronika continued to question Roger while Julia went to the telephone and requested an ambulance. The doctors had an idea of what they were hunting for, but they couldn’t get much information from the patient, who was trying to entertain them by doing his best impression of someone with “a tongue too big for his mouth,” and chuckling.

Ultimately, when Roger was bundled into the ambulance, he was still clutching the black multi-colored afghan from the drawing room.

“Barnabas,” Hallie began tearfully, “May I speak with you?”

“Roger is going to be all right, I believe, Hallie. He just got sick. You must have been frightened to have been grabbed up like that.”

“Yes,” Hallie admitted, “and it was strange, because he was so hot—like a stove—and he was so angry. I could feel it,” she shuddered, wiping a tear from her face.

“He'll be back soon and he'll be himself. The doctors will see what is wrong and give him some medicine. Are you all right?” he queried, leaning back and regarding her anew.

“N-no, well, I need some help, because David is gone, and he left me this note,” Hallie confessed, handing the note to Barnabas. She bit back tears as he read.

“What's this, now? David went to the dumbwaiter? Why would he do that in the middle of the night?”

“You don't know about the wheel,” Hallie exclaimed, and unhappily explained that the dumbwaiter compartment in the east wing had its own steering device, an unusually generous capacity for weight, and had come with what they'd taken as a written invitation to enter. “He's not in his room, and he isn't in the breakfast room, and he isn't in that east wing room, because I looked. And I checked the dumbwaiter in the kitchen and that's still there, and empty,” she finished tearfully.

“Did you open the dumbwaiter door in the east wing? Perhaps he's sleeping in there.”

“I didn't check,” Hallie admitted, feeling like an idiot. “I just looked into the room.”

“I'd better come with you and see,” Barnabas decided. “Heaven help us if he's stuck somewhere.”

They went together to the room in the east wing. Barnabas opened the dumbwaiter hatch and found the dumbwaiter gone. He quickly summoned it, using the cable. It seemed to have been lowered to the bottom of the house. It came up empty.

Barnabas frowned. He hadn't remembered the dumbwaiters of this house until Roger had mentioned them at dinner the night before. Now David was somewhere in the house, since this compartment was empty and Hallie had found the kitchen compartment similarly uninhabited. He thought quickly. David could not have fallen down the shaft, for he would have been lying on the top of the compartment they had just brought up. But could he have fallen into the shaft while the carriage was parked above? Possible. And had perhaps desperately grabbed one of the cables, dragging the compartment after him—  

“Hallie,” he began, turning to her, and she felt a pain in her chest at the concern in his eyes, “Can you please go to the Old House and get Willie and Julia and bring them here? I want to search the house. I'll get Mrs. Johnson and Harry, and we'll start. And please, as you go, call David's name everywhere outside, both ways, yes? And if you see anybody else on the way—your uncle, or Joe Haskell, or anyone you know—ask them to come too. We want to find David fast. I don't think,” he hazarded, “that David would write a note like this and then hide from you the next morning as a joke.”

Barnabas pressed David's note into her hands. “Show this to Julia and Willie. Go ahead. We'll find him,” he concluded, trying to smile.

After Hallie had departed, Barnabas went immediately to Harry Johnson's room, which was empty. Hurrying down to the kitchen, however, he located both people he sought.

He set Harry and Mrs. Johnson the task of searching every room of the east wing, starting at the top of the house. He described the room that had the dumbwaiter in it. They were to search the entire wing, reporting any locked doors—David was famous for getting into locked places. Barnabas quickly took himself to the basement, trying to work out in his mind where the dumbwaiter hatches might be down there. He feared that David might have fallen down the shaft while the carriage was above and while reaching, perhaps, into the shaft below it to grasp the cable or something else. He knew that there was very little chance of such a thing; David was no fool; but the boy hadn't appeared for breakfast, and that, on top of the note he'd written, was enough to frighten Barnabas.

With a heavy kitchen flashlight, Barnabas searched the basement and easily found the dumbwaiter door panel below the kitchen. Try as he would, all his strength would not open the door. He banged his flashlight on it and shouted, “David!” but received no reply. That door was going to have to be forced open. What if David were lying behind it, injured?

Barnabas tried hard to locate the other dumbwaiter door. He had been a young man when this house was constructed, but he couldn't remember anything about the east wing dumbwaiters. Was it conceivable that David had located yet another one, in the west wing perhaps, and gone there to experiment? But the note was about the east wing—but—after he'd written the note, had he gone to the west wing nevertheless?

Barnabas grimly mounted the basement steps once more, and encountering nobody, began to search the first floor, shouting David's name.

Veronika Liska had accompanied Roger to the hospital and had been several hours delayed reporting to her clinic. Fortunately, her sisters, Panna and Connie, on being alerted, had reached everyone who had an appointment that morning and had rescheduled their visits. As a doctor, Veronika wouldn't simply hang around the hospital waiting to see how everything turned out; she was in consultation with the attending physicians, describing Roger's behavior, offering diagnoses, reading his test results. Once Roger's vital signs had stabilized and he had returned to a normal color, and had stopped his prodigious sweating and strange behavior, Veronika, after sitting with him for a little and reassuring him, had been obliged to depart and take up her own duties.

Elizabeth had found herself detained in a waiting room several hours until Roger had returned to normal, with Veronika visiting her every thirty endless minutes to reassure and update her.

“He hasn't had a stroke or heart attack or anything like that,” she shared with Elizabeth. “I thought perhaps that it was a thyroid matter or a panic attack, but Julia felt right away that it was something anaphylactic—a terrible allergic reaction to something. His thyroid tests out fine. He wasn't intoxicated or taking a bad drug—his blood and urine are clean. He's practically back to normal now. I'm afraid we're just going to have to go over with him the events of the last 24 hours, find out where he'd been, what he'd touched, oh, anything out of the ordinary, however minute. Roger has no real food allergies, but perhaps he'd eaten something he didn't realize he was allergic to—or has never been allergic to before. I'm going to speak to the Coterie people, in case there was something in their coffee blend or in the omelet that might have triggered this, but apart from that—” she stopped and smiled, taking Elizabeth's hand. “The king's himself again. We're just going to have to quiz him and see if he recalls anything.”

Elizabeth gripped Veronika's hand with both her own. “Thank God you were there and knew what to do. Let me say that anything my brother might have been yelling this morning is untrue. He rhapsodizes about you—you should hear him. Please forgive the things you heard today—he was not in his right mind.”

Veronika patted Elizabeth's hands. “I know that,” she smiled, her serious blue eyes looking into her future sister-in-law's with frankness. “I'll admit that he had me for a minute or two. Didn't know whether to give up the field to Julia, Hallie, or Barnabas! Or sock Roger in the jaw! But I don't think we'll have much more to worry us today. The IV he's on has swept whatever it was out of his system, and he'll stay here a few hours for observation. You can go in and see him. I've got to get to the clinic.”

The women parted, and Elizabeth went into Roger's room.

Roger sat in bed in a hospital johnny, glowing with health as his sister entered.

“It can't be Coterie,” he told her immediately, “I'll never believe that their breakfast touched this off, and all I had was toast. Elizabeth, what happened to me, did I pass out? I remember feeling strange, but nothing else. Did I collapse?”

Elizabeth sat down. In an ironic tone she uttered, “No, you did not.” Then she quickly pressed her head against his blankets, and wept.

Shocked, touched, her brother reached for her hand. “Why, Liz,” he chided softly. “I'm fine, lovey. I'll be home in a trice. Veronika says I have the heart of a steed. It wasn't a stroke, and if they'd only remove this IV line from my arm, I'd get dressed and walk out of here and show you how fit I am.”

“Forgive me,” breathed Elizabeth, gathering herself. “I was so frightened. Roger, you had us all absolutely horrified!”

“What on earth did I do—fall down and foam at the mouth? Tell me, I beg you. I have no recall.”

She let him have it. Before she had finished speaking, his face had gone white. He threw the blankets from his legs and ordered, “Where are my clothes? I have to go to Veronika at once!”

She placed a cool hand on his arm. “You will do no such thing. You will stay here under observation until the hospital says otherwise. Veronika understands you better than you do yourself—both she and Julia immediately knew that you were seriously ill. Roger, I'm sure it was the dumbwaiter; it must have had dirt in it, or mold, or—someone even could have spilled anything in there, some sort of poison, a hundred years ago. It didn't occur to me until just this moment. I think the dumbwaiter is the element the doctors are looking for.”

“But you were with me! You didn't become ill.”

“How about the east wing? You opened the dumbwaiter door there, didn't you? I wasn't with you then. Do you remember, was there anything on the floor of the compartment? Some powder, perhaps?”

“The east wing? No. Well, there was an afghan in it that looks remarkably like that one,” he commented, gesturing to a plain bureau in the room on which the black and multicolored afghan from Collinwood reposed, neatly folded. “Identical. I thought someone was playing a joke. But the afghan itself was clean, and not moldy or powdery or anything else like that. There was no odor when I removed it from the compartment.”

“These dumbwaiters,” Elizabeth mused. “They're the only really significant new thing that you've had any contact with that I can see. I'll phone Veronika. I'll tell the doctors! We will have to keep the children away from the dumbwaiters until they can be thoroughly cleaned or fumigated. Or perhaps there is mold in the shaft? Those spaces were sealed away from fresh air for a long time. Who knows what awful thing might have been growing in them?”

Chapter Text

Her spirits sinking as David's absence lengthened, Hallie took herself out of doors for a break in the woods. She had found Julia and Willie at the Old House, and the party had encountered her uncle Elliot making his way toward Collinwood, so all had come together, calling worriedly for David as they walked.

Now everyone was up in the east wing room, stamping on floors, tapping on walls, running downstairs to the basement, trying to figure out where David was and whether he was stuck somewhere behind a wall. Blinded by tears, Hallie had left the others to go wash her face, but then in the bathroom she had been overcome with a strong urge to be alone. Outside. She dried her face, blew her nose, and left the house.

All of this was her own stupid fault. All right, so David was headstrong—she was the older one, she should have stopped him no matter what! Made him swear to keep clear of the dumbwaiters, instead of just standing there looking at him with her finger in her mouth. Or—she should have gone immediately to Elizabeth Stoddard and told her—told her—

Hallie stopped walking and leaned her back dejectedly against the trunk of a tree. Told Mrs. Stoddard what? Hallie wasn't an overmastering person. She couldn't prevent David doing whatever he set his mind to. She could hardly have tied him up in his room! Hallie couldn't see herself stalking off to tell Roger Collins or Mrs. Stoddard on David for any reason, unless he was proposing to do something utterly dire. And anyway, he had gone and pulled this stunt while she was sound asleep! While this consideration should have exonerated her of any feelings of guilt to a great degree, it only made her feel worse.

Hallie pushed up from the tree trunk and slowly ambled on. She stepped through the shaded glade, headed for the sun. Ahead was a lovely cleared space, a meadow of sorts, practically blazing in the bright sun. She loved the cool of the forest, but just now she wanted to be in the sunshine. Narrowing her eyes against the glare of the light, she glanced over the clearing and was surprised to see that someone else had found their way into the sunshine ahead of her.

She couldn't think of who it could be, since practically everyone she knew was in the house searching for David. Then she recognized the curve of a shoulder, and the plait of curling hair, and saw that it was Angelique.

Hallie hesitated, but Angelique, seated on a fallen tree, turned her eyes and saw her. They stared at one another for a moment, and then Angelique looked away.

Hallie strode up to her, then paused, uncertain.

Once more, Angelique cast her large eyes at Hallie. Then she gave a faint smile. “Come, sit down,” she invited the girl in a hushed voice.

Hallie drew near and sat, gazing on Angelique.

“I haven't seen you,” Hallie began. “What is wrong?”

Angelique stared dully before her. She took her time before answering.

Her hair was swept up, as usual, but in loose Grecian style, in a lovely knot at the back of her head that released cascading waves to her shoulders. Hallie stared at the knot of hair, trying to figure out how she could replicate it this evening in her bedroom before the mirror, with her own hair.

“Are you living at Collinwood?” Angelique asked rather than answering Hallie's question. “I seem to have bumped you out of your uncle's home. I was supposed to be staying in the caretaker's cottage. At least—that's where I started out. But now I'm staying with Elliot Stokes.” Angelique stopped, and a tremulous shiver touched her frame.

“Don't you like him?” Hallie asked, concerned.

Angelique considered.

“I have always preferred being alone,” she replied in a low voice, “all my life. Alone was best. But now, at this moment in time, I absolutely don't want to be alone. Not—not while I'm sick like this.”

“Are you sick? I heard you weren't well, but my uncle said—that is,” Hallie came to a halt, and her face flamed. “He told me that your emotions were making you sick. That you were so upset, you made yourself sick. Is that what happened?”

Looking steadily out over the waving grasses, Angelique's lips were touched by a wry smile that Hallie didn't understand.

“Well,” she finally replied, “I'm having a hell of an adjustment to make. I suppose your uncle told you about that as well?”

“An adjustment? Well, yes, Uncle Elliot said—he said that you were trying to get used to a different way of living. But that's all he told me,” Hallie reported virtuously. “But if there's something I can do to help you, I'd be glad to.”

After a moment, Angelique turned her face once more to Hallie. This time she lifted one hand and stroked curling tendrils of hair softly away from the girl's face.

“Thank you,” she responded in a quiet voice. “Tell me, Hallie, have you ever made a mistake? A mistake so terrible that it shook your whole life to pieces? But—you're too young to answer such a question.”

“I don't know what you mean,” Hallie murmured, uneasily, “but I've made mistakes in my life, yes. Awful ones. Even mistakes where someone got hurt because of me.”

Angelique studied the ground before her. “Oh yes,” she mused. “I am acquainted with that sort of mistake. I've hurt more people than I can probably remember. I don't think that that's the way I began, but that is what happened.” Angelique leaned back on the tree trunk, her elbows supporting her. “Your uncle might not want you to talk very much with me, in fact. You really should be afraid of me.”

“Well, I'm not,” Hallie protested honestly, frowning at this statement. “I want to talk with you. I don't have anybody to talk with. Maggie's been gone for months, and anyway, I could never get myself to ask her about—I mean—” Hallie blushed again. “The thing that made you so worried and sick, did it have to do with falling in love? Is that what happened the night of the party? Did you fall in love with someone that night?”

This question brought a slow smile to Angelique's lips. She glanced at Hallie again.

“No, I didn't fall in love,” she answered, studying Hallie's crystalline eyes. “I was in love already.”

Hallie lowered her gaze. “What is it like? How do you know if you love someone? What if you love the wrong person? How can you tell if someone loves you? I can't ask my uncle all this,” Hallie muttered hastily, “or at least, perhaps I could ask him, and he would take time and try to answer me, but it's too embarrassing. I want to talk with a woman. I can never get private time with Mrs. Stoddard to ask her. Have you—have you been in love more than once? Has anybody ever broken your heart?”

Angelique was silent. Then, evading the girl's question, Angelique asked her, “Is there someone at Collinwood whom you believe you love? Let me see. Quentin, of course. Or Roger—do you have a soft spot for Roger? Then there is Elizabeth's striking new beau. Then there is Joe Haskell.” Angelique shuddered slightly as she mentioned Joe's name, and Hallie wondered why. “It wouldn't be Garvey. There's Harry Johnson. Then, in and around Collinwood, we have Willie Loomis, Chris Jennings, and—Barnabas Collins.” She shifted slightly. A corner of her mouth trembled. Hallie noted this, fascinated.

“I'm going to guess you're in love with Quentin. Is he the one?”

“No,” Hallie breathed, “no, of course not—well, yes. The thing is, you see,” she confessed, her voice falling to a whisper, “I think that I could love any of them. I do love all of them.”

At this, Angelique stared at Hallie with piercing attention. “Truly? You do? No one more than the other? Well, you do. I could never understand something like that. For me, it was always one man. Well, that only means that you really haven't been in love yet.”

Hallie felt a rush of concern for this strange, stunning-looking woman who looked so wan and strained in the sunshine. “The man you love,” she ventured, “is he one of them? One of the men you just named.”

“He might be. But I'm sure you would find the discussion wearisome. You have quite a bit of beauty, you know,” Angelique told the girl. “You should use it to compel one of those gentlemen to pay you some proper attention.”

Hallie laughed with pleasure. “Well, I couldn't do that,” she gasped.

“I don't see why not. Tell me, what has been happening these days at Collinwood?”

“David is missing, and we can't find him no matter what we do. Even his father is up there searching for him though he's not supposed to be!”

Angelique frowned. “I don't understand. Why shouldn't Roger look for his own son?”

“No—I mean—Roger was very ill, and we think that that room in the east wing did it. The one with the dumbwaiter. So they were trying to keep him out of the room—Roger, that is.”

Angelique wrinkled her brow faintly, trying to follow the narrative. “I'm afraid I don't catch your meaning. Well, anyway. He's not sick anymore, is he?”

“No, but it was awful! Oh, he did things. He went to the hospital.”

“Did he?” Angelique asked, with decreasing interest. “That's too bad. Mind you don't get sick. Now, let me ask you this.”

“Yes?” Hallie asked, wriggling with anticipation.

Locking Hallie's eyes with her own, Angelique asked, “Have you ever thought of studying witchcraft under a teacher?”

The house had been searched. Willie, Barnabas, Elliot, Julia, Harry and Mrs. Johnson had tramped through every room, calling for David. Elliot had finally advised phoning the Fire Department to see if they would come and assist and possibly get into the dumbwaiter shaft. Eventually, one of Collinsport's smaller firetrucks arrived with four volunteer firefighters. Julia suggested to them that they wear protective breathing gear in case the shafts were full of mold, and when one of them told the others how old the house was, they all agreed.

Blueprints of the house were produced, and the hatch of the east wing dumbwaiter in the basement located. One last dumbwaiter was indicated in the west wing, but upon examination, it was found that its basement hatch was heavily cobwebbed over and hadn't been touched in ages, and the dumbwaiter stations in the west wing rooms were papered over and undisturbed.

In the basement, with their equipment, the firefighters quickly opened the dumbwaiter door that Barnabas hadn't been able to budge. David was not lying at the bottom of the shaft. The firefighters checked the insides and the tops of both dumbwaiters, and then sent both to the highest location they could with the cables. Two firefighters then scaled the entire inside of both the Central and east wing shafts until emerging into attic rooms, where a partner fireman was waiting to help them get the dumbwaiter hatch open.

The Fire Department finally left, recommending that the family get in touch with the sheriff.

In the midst of all the excitement, the phone had rung. Mrs. Johnson had passed it to Julia Hoffman, who heard from Elizabeth of Roger's medical findings and the theory that some type of mold, or even poison or some drug, from the dumbwaiter had caused Roger's unaccountable illness. Elizabeth was vehement in her request that Julia and the others keep David and Hallie away from the shafts until more could be learned. Julia bit her lip as she listened. Neither Roger nor Elizabeth had any idea that David was gone and was last understood to have been inside the east wing dumbwaiter!

“The boy is missing,” Elliot mused. “He's not at the bottom of one of the shafts. He's nowhere in the house and we haven't found a trace of him outside. Roger and Elizabeth are going to return from the hospital soon and walk right into the middle of this.”

“If only we had access to a psychic,” Julia fretted. Possibly one might have been found, but the one they would have immediately pressed into service was Carolyn Stoddard, David's cousin. Carolyn, who was away with her boyfriend Chris Jennings on a short vacation in New Hampshire, had recently begun showing remarkable psychic ability. Possibly Carolyn could help over the telephone?

Barnabas tiredly laid his face in his hands. He was deeply worried about David. They all were. Why was there no sign of him?

“I don't suppose that there is any way the I Ching would help us,” Julia offered tentatively. This brought no reaction from Elliot. “This is preposterous. Where is he?” Julia cried.

Elliot sighed and looked at his friends, who gazed back with eyes of pain. “All right. Let's do some utterly creative, off-the-wall thinking. David's—on the roof. Could he have reached the roof from the shaft and is now stuck there? One of us ought to go out and scan the roofs of the house. David could be, oh, sleeping in Roger's car. We haven't checked all the outbuildings, you know. David's on Widow's Hill. It's entirely possible that you were right, Barnabas, in your theory that David wrote the note, delivered it to Hallie's room, went to the east wing, returned, then went—let's say he went outside. Possibly he fell, and was injured. He might be unconscious somewhere on the grounds this very moment.”

At this portrait, Julia leapt up from her chair and began to pace. “That's it, then,” she exclaimed. “We must put this matter in the hands of the sheriff immediately, and if Elizabeth and Roger return in the middle of the search, well, so be it. Barnabas, will you call?”

Barnabas looked desolate. He nodded to Julia and went to the telephone to make the call.

“What a pity Angelique is unable to help!” Julia exclaimed, giving Elliot a worried smile. “I am certain that she would have been generous with her aid in this case if she still had her powers. Tell me, how is she?”

Elliot raised his eyebrows. “Difficult. Furious. Shy, friendly, unfriendly, unsure. Disturbed to the point of being physically ill, actually ill, and crying herself to sleep. I wish I could be of more help to her. She is trying to learn what it is to be a human being again and this is—well, an unimaginable challenge. She could use some woman friends.” Elliot turned a piercing eye upon Julia. “I was going to enlist Elizabeth, but I understand that there is something of a history there. Cassandra Collins was a baleful presence in this house. As Cassandra, Angelique nearly killed Elizabeth. I don't know why Elizabeth still accepts her as Mrs. Rumson, but there you are. The human mind is a limber organ.

“Angelique knows my feelings for her, and while I'm hardly the man she would have chosen, she seems content to remain with me for the present. If 'content' is indeed the word.”

Barnabas returned to them, looking tired. “The sheriff is coming and bringing men to search. He suggests that we start looking in the nearest outbuildings until he arrives. He's going to try to get a local search dog from someone and wants us to have an article of David's clothing ready, to give the dog a scent to follow.” Barnabas looked terribly worried.

Julia stood. “I'll go and ask Mrs. Johnson to make coffee, the search party might want it.” She took Barnabas into her embrace and he squeezed her tight.

“I wonder,” Elliot muttered. “Could there be a supernatural aspect to this sudden disappearance?”

Julia turned in Barnabas' embrace to stare at Elliot. “Oh, no,” she breathed.

“What makes you suggest such a thing, Elliot?” asked Barnabas.

“I don't know, “ Elliot admitted slowly. “he has disappeared so entirely. And why would a teenage boy climb into a dumbwaiter? For what earthly reason?  It's something that a five-year-old might have done. No one was with him to move the dumbwaiter from room to room if that's what he wanted. Barnabas, might we look at David's note once more?”

“I have it here,” Barnabas allowed, reaching into a breast pocket. “I took it back from Hallie when she returned with you. As for David expecting to get anywhere in the dumbwaiter, Hallie told me that there is a wheel in the dumbwaiter carriage by which one can send the compartment up or down, supposedly, while seated inside. I didn't even think of mentioning this—I thought David had somehow fallen into the shaft or was trapped behind some locked hatch somewhere.”

Elliot took the note in his hands but kept his eyes on Barnabas' face. “Let me understand this,” Elliot stated. “If I climb into the dumbwaiter, there is a device in the floor by which I can take myself up or down the shaft without another person pulling the cable?”

“That is my understanding. It must have been David's understanding.”

“So David and Hallie have been climbing in and out of this dumbwaiter,” Elliot went on, “which supposedly made Roger Collins so ill that he had to be hospitalized—and yet my niece is well.” Elliot got up fast from the couch. “Or is she? I must see her at once.” He sped to the hall and bawled out, “Hallie!” in the direction of the stairs.

“She was fine when she came to the Old House!” cried Julia, following Elliot out into the foyer, Barnabas behind her. “But I see what you mean! Roger hadn't been near the dumbwaiter this morning when he showed his symptoms, but yesterday he had been. You think that there is some type of incubation period, depending on the kind of allergen we're talking about. Ordinarily, human reaction to such a thing is immediate.”

Barnabas now went to the stairs and cried, “Hallie!” Turning back to them, he clarified, “Then you think that perhaps there is some chance that David is lying somewhere or stumbling about someplace with the same symptoms Roger was suffering? And that Hallie will come down with it, too?”

“Dear heaven,” Elliot muttered, but then his niece appeared at the top of the stairs—the same lovely, timid girl as always. She hurried down to them as all three studied her critically.

“Uncle Elliot,” she said in a low, pleased voice and stepped into his embrace. He kissed her forehead. It was slightly warm—in other words, normal.

“Tell us more about this note David wrote to you,” Elliot asked, producing it. “Why does it say, for instance, 'I'm going to go ride on the dumbwaiter and see what it does'? What did David imagine it was going to do, other than go up and down?”

Hallie gulped. “Uncle Elliot, we found a piece of paper in the dumbwaiter shaft, a note from maybe the eighteen-hundreds—it's up in the east wing room, I guess—it said—well, it was funny. Something like, 'bring all your wishes and hopes to the dumbwaiter and they'll be granted.' We thought it was a game from long ago. I don't think David actually thought he could travel anywhere in the dumbwaiter—”

“Travel somewhere?” Elliot cut in. “Hallie, show us that eighteen-hundreds note.”

“Wait,” interrupted Barnabas, “Is it safe? Perhaps we ought not to let Hallie near the dumbwaiter again because of whatever it is that got Roger so ill. But my God, she and I were just up there in that room and at the dumbwaiter!”

“Hallie,” Julia commanded, brushing past Barnabas, “You're not to go into the east wing room, do you understand? There might be some dust or mold in there that's dangerous, that made Roger Collins sick. Just take us to the room or wherever the note is.”

Hallie led them to the east wing and indicated the door of the room, which was ajar. They walked in and looked about. Hallie peered in from the hallway. “That's probably the note there, in the corner,” she offered.

Elliot leaned over with a grunt and picked it up, and read it aloud. Then he stared at Hallie.

“Did you children think that this was a magical invitation from God,” he boomed, “to a wonderland of some sort? Hallie, what was on David's mind when he entered the dumbwaiter? Or perhaps we can deduce that from this note.” He sighed and regarded his stricken niece. “And so, he's entirely vanished.”

“I'm going in after him,” Barnabas blurted. Julia gasped.

He turned to her rapidly. “We won't find him in some outbuilding or at Widow's Hill—at least, I think not. I feel that he is right here in the house!”

“I seem to feel that too, though it might not be rational, linear thinking,” agreed Julia.

“Let me get in and see where I go,” Barnabas insisted.

“Ah! Exactly David’s words!” noted Elliot. “Please, let's let the sheriff and his men have a crack at the case before we consider this option. Agreed?”

Barnabas hesitated. “All right,” he allowed, “but I am going to re-enact David's voyage in this compartment if we don't find him very soon. What if there is a ledge off the shaft and he's stuck there, or unconscious there?”

“It was the three-hundred-pound weight capacity,” Hallie explained as they all went downstairs again. “We got excited. David thought the dumbwaiter had been used to send people up and down the house in the Underground Railroad because of the wheel, but I guess it was the capacity that first got us to notice the dumbwaiter; that people could get in and ride.”

“Of course,” Elliot agreed. “Barnabas, do you know anything about Collinwood having a historical connection with the Underground Railroad?”

“No,” Barnabas admitted thoughtfully. “But isn't that something that would have been kept very quiet? While the work was going on, anyway.”

“David thought that someone designed that wheel in there so that slaves could escape and get from room to room to hide from the police if they had to,” Hallie insisted.

Julia slipped her arm through Hallie's. “Let's get you some dinner. Maybe by the time we're done, the sheriff will have found David.”

Mrs. Johnson, wearing rubber kitchen gloves, frowned at Harry, who was similarly gloved and frowning. “I'm going to scrub it as fast as I can and then we'll close it up again,” she declared grimly. “There's nothing wrong with this dumbwaiter, or so I'm told. Mr. Collins wants it as clean as I can get it.”

“Well, what am I doing here?” Harry complained.

“You’re here in case the thing's so big that I can't reach all the way. Now hush. Get me that basin and the cloth.” She turned away from her son and opened the dumbwaiter kitchen hatch—this was the one connected, as far as anyone could figure, with the central wing, not the east wing—pushed wide the door, and grunted.

“Well, how in the world did this get in there?” she asked, and, as Harry watched, she slowly removed a black and multicolored afghan from the compartment. “What—one of the firemen, perhaps, but I don't understand.” She turned to Harry. “Take this out into the foyer, will you please, and leave it on the table out there. This afghan belongs in the drawing room unless the kids have been in Maggie's room among her things. She's got an identical afghan. I'll figure out which one it is when I'm done with this.”

She pressed the afghan into Harry's gloved hands.

Chapter Text

June twenty-second was a banner day at Collinwood. Roger hospitalized, David vanished, the sheriff and Fire Department both summoned to the house. And Maggie Evans came home from France.

David, Hallie and Amy had been sent off to school for the Winter/Spring semesters while Maggie had been abroad. An unexpected insurance payoff on the life of Sam Evans, from a policy Maggie hadn't known existed, had stimulated her desire to see the French towns where her father had fought in the war. Taking two cousins with her, she had made it an unforgettable holiday. Now she was returned to Collinwood as the tutor-governess of Hallie, David and Amy. Maggie had recently done coursework in tutoring children who had different learning styles. She had three pupils, all with different scholarly troubles, and all with past exposure to trauma.

Both girls were orphans; David's mother was dead. And Elizabeth Stoddard wasn't certain that boarding school was the right place for any of them over the long-term. So, for the time being, Maggie's place among the Collins family was assured. Besides, the entire family adored her.

Maggie entered the house with a sigh of satisfaction, the taxi driver kindly conveying her bags to the foyer. Her repeated calls to Collinwood from the bus station, to which she'd traveled from the airport, had fetched only busy signals. But as she removed her smart light-green suit coat and placed her purse on the foyer table, she met Harry coming out of the kitchen.

“Hello, Harry,” she called brightly. “I've just come from the airport! I've been flying all day. How is everyone?”

“Hello,” responded Harry, stopping in his tracks and staring at her in surprise. Then he dumped the afghan on the center table and stripped off his gloves, and smiled. “Welcome home. Want me to bring your bags up to your room?”

“Oh, yes, please, would you? Who's home?”

“Barnabas Collins and Dr. Hoffman are around somewhere—Hallie's upstairs—Roger Collins and Mrs. Stoddard are up there, too.”

“Great,” Maggie replied, dimpling. She stepped forward and fluffed up the afghan that Harry had put on the table. “What’s this doing here? Do you need me to bring this up with us?”

“Oh, no,” said Harry, shouldering Maggie's overnight bag and tucking suitcases into his arms, “My mother has to figure something out about it. I mean, she's not sure whether the kids took it from your room or whether it's the one from the drawing room.”

Maggie held the afghan before her eyes and expertly fingered its edges. “It must belong to the drawing room, then. Mine has a cigarette burn on it from my father smoking, and this one hasn’t.” She replaced the afghan on the table and followed Harry up the stairs.

Needless to say, Maggie found the household in an uproar. Roger had been nonplussed to hear that his son was missing and might be suffering the same experience that he had had. He had to be physically restrained and repeatedly threatened away from the east wing room. Julia had finally given the distraught Elizabeth Stoddard a sedative. Maggie, on hearing about the situation, went immediately to Hallie and then to Elizabeth to try to provide hope and comfort.

Forty-five minutes later, she reappeared downstairs.

At his mother’s request, Harry had been trying to make himself useful by cleaning the hearth in the drawing room for Mrs. Stoddard. It was a rare day that there was not a fire going there, but now that it was past the middle of June and warm enough not to have the fire constantly, it was a good time to sweep out the ashes. Harry might not have liked the task, but he had developed a sincere regard for Elizabeth Stoddard in the time that he had been staying at Collinwood, recuperating from surgery.

Harry squatted before the fireplace with a stiff brush and small shovel, carefully scooping ash and fragments of wood into a lined wastebasket, now brimming. He soon realized that he’d either need two wastebaskets or would have to pause and empty this one before continuing. He stood up and took the wastebasket into his hands, turned and saw Maggie.

She was standing in the doorway of the drawing room, observing him. Her posture was odd, her chin lowered, her eyes upturned to his face. He could tell from her expression that she was intently considering something. He knew she’d heard about the missing David and thought she was coming to ask him about it, and that she was probably distressed.

 “The sheriff will find David,” Harry offered. “He’ll be okay. He’s a smart kid, and he can look out for himself.” He approached with the wastebasket but Maggie didn’t get out of his way. She continued to stare at him intently, and Harry felt a stab of worry. Was she angry with him? He set the wastebasket down.

“What is it? Something wrong upstairs?” he asked, perplexed. “Is there a mouse in your room?”

Suddenly, she ran to him and pressed her body against his, crossing her wrists behind his head.

“Be with me,” she whispered. “I need somebody to be with.” She opened her mouth and kissed him.

Harry stood electrified, eyes wide open. He slowly put his hands on Maggie’s waist as she broke the kiss. Though his brain circuits were jammed, his fingers registered the astounding heat that emanated through Maggie’s clothes, and his memory recorded it.

“Maggie,” he whispered, “Maggie, Miss Evans, what’s wrong with you?” Maggie took a step away from him and began to unbutton her blouse. She was panting. Large drops of clear sweat stood out on her forehead.

“Oh, Jesus,” Harry muttered. Four or five courses of action smote him together. He could let this happen—but they were in the middle of the drawing room with the doors open—but something must be terrifically wrong with Maggie—but what about his girlfriend—for Harry had been spending time with Tish Lemon—but anybody could walk by the room and catch them—but this was the chance of a lifetime—but—

Dimly, not realizing, he heard the front door of Collinwood open, then shut.

Maggie’s cheeks glowed red. She left the unbuttoning of her blouse half-done and stumbled close to him, and began to tug the shirt up out of his pants.

Beneath all that Harry was seeing, feeling and wanting was the overpowering sense that something was terrifically wrong. This notion cleared his senses like a zap of ice water. He tried to step past Maggie, but she reacted by savagely gripping his shirt in both fists. He took her by the shoulders as she fell against him, and as he did so, he realized that the fabric of her blouse under his fingers was soaking wet.

“Harry!” she barked. “No! Harry!”

There was a fleeting movement behind Maggie’s head, and Harry was thrown backwards as something detonated against his face. He collapsed helplessly against the couch, literally seeing stars. The air exploded, he thought disjointedly. I never knew that air could just explode.

“I’ll kill you!” screamed Willie Loomis, standing over him, apoplectic. Willie drew his leg back wildly and delivered a frightful kick to Harry’s right thigh. Harry shouted in rage and pain, and peripherally saw his wastebasket slowly tip over, fanning its ashes across the floor.

“I’ll kill you! You touch her, I’ll kill you!” Willie yelled, spit flying everywhere. Then, as Harry watched, Willie ducked and tried to protect himself as Maggie began to vigorously slap and pummel him, her teeth bared, eyes livid.

“Get out of here!” she yelled hoarsely at Willie, hauling and slapping him. “Nobody wants you here! I want to be with Harry! You get out, Willie!”

Harry tried to get his legs beneath him, but his thigh was pulsing in agony and his head swam. “Holy Jesus,” he remarked from the floor, but the fighting couple above him didn't react.

Willie made half-gestures of reaching out for Maggie amid the rain of slaps and punches descending on him. Harry watched uncomprehendingly as Maggie then changed tactics and began throttling Willie. “Maggie,” the hapless Willie gagged, “Maggie, what’s the maddah?”

Then Mrs. Johnson rushed into the room, and Harry heard what was probably Roger Collins racing down the stairs.

Julia accompanied the ambulance that took a still-raving Maggie off to the hospital. Barnabas immediately went to Harry Johnson, who was seated on a kitchen stool with a dishrag full of ice cubes pressed to his cheek.

He sat opposite Harry, whose right eye was discolored and puffed from the punch Willie Loomis had landed. Harry glared back.

“Harry,” Barnabas said gently, “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Where's Loomis?” Harry grunted.

“Roger's keeping a watch on him. We had to give Willie a sedative! Now, come, tell me what went on.”

“Barnabas,” Harry responded, “Mr. Collins—look. I've done some bad things in my time and I'm the first one to admit it, but I have never, I would never attack a girl. Willie's got the whole thing backwards, he didn't see what happened, and nobody's going to believe me, because even I don't believe it.”

“Please tell me, regardless,” Barnabas encouraged. “Just go ahead and tell me and I promise you that I'll listen.”

Harry fetched a deep sigh and explained what had taken place: how Maggie had been completely normal upon returning to Collinwood, and then peculiar when she came back down the stairs; she'd put her arms around him and kissed him, astounding him. He described the way she'd been sweating and how the heat had simply rolled off of her. “She definitely wasn't herself,” Harry averred, touching his squinting black eye with the icy cloth. “She unbuttoned her blouse. She tried to grab my shirt off—oh, who's going to believe me? I didn't do a damn thing, but I'm going to jail, aren't I?”

“When was Maggie upstairs in the dumbwaiter room?”

“Where?”

“She must have gone up there and touched the dumbwaiter or looked inside it. Did you see her go into the east wing? … Maybe Hallie saw her go there, if you didn't. Maybe Elizabeth saw her.”

Harry groaned. “Does Mrs. Stoddard have to know about this? I like Mrs. Stoddard and I think she likes me. Oh, my God.”

“Harry, something is going on around here. Just this morning Roger Collins came down with the same symptoms you just saw in Maggie: sweating, hot to the touch, unusual behavior, yelling and so forth. He had to be treated at the hospital. Now it's happened to Maggie. We're trying to locate the one thing they both touched or breathed in that caused this. As far as we can figure out, it's something in the dumbwaiter room. When did you and Maggie go upstairs with her luggage?”

“As soon as she got here,” Harry answered. “She came through the front door and I happened to be in the hall, and I told her I'd take her bags up. I pulled off my gloves and threw them on the table, and brought her luggage to her room. We didn't go to the east wing.”

“Why were you wearing gloves?”

“The kitchen dumbwaiter,” Harry answered. “My mother is supposed to scrub it out and she asked me to help, and we thought it was going to be dirty. But Maggie never went into the kitchen.”

“Those dumbwaiters again,” Barnabas growled. “Did Maggie touch your gloves? Did the gloves perhaps fall to the floor after you removed them, and Maggie picked them up?”

“No, no. I hadn't even touched the dumbwaiter yet with those gloves. The thing Maggie touched,” Harry realized, “was that black afghan with the different colored squares. My mother found it crammed into the kitchen dumbwaiter, so she pulled it out and told me to put it on the hall table, since she didn't know whether it belonged in the drawing room, or whether the kids had taken it from Maggie's room, or something. Because Maggie has a black afghan, too. So Maggie picked it up, looked at it, decided it wasn't hers because of a cigarette burn.”

“She touched the afghan and you never did, because you were wearing rubber gloves in preparation for helping your mother scrub out the dumbwaiter?”

“Yes. Maggie looked over the afghan and felt along the edges for the hole. Do you think there's something on the afghan that made her sick?”

Barnabas crinkled his brow. “I'm confused. Who put the afghan into the kitchen dumbwaiter? For what reason? And I don't know whether Roger's case involved an afghan. If that one isn't Maggie's, then it has to belong to the drawing room, yes? Stay here, let me go see if the drawing room afghan is still there.”

“I'm not going anyplace,” observed Harry unhappily. “Don't think I can get up, anyway.”

Barnabas hurried from the kitchen, through the foyer and into the drawing room. He stopped in the doorway. The black-and-multicolored afghan was there as always, casually draped over the back of the sofa. It had accompanied Roger home from the hospital. Barnabas withdrew, retracing his steps to the kitchen.

Mrs. Johnson was standing over her son, weeping into a hankie and sobbing breathy words. Harry protested, “I didn't, ma!” at which Mrs. Johnson swung her wet, red eyes on Barnabas. “Don't let them take him back to prison, please, Mr. Collins. Oh, my God—”

“MA!” Harry exclaimed, then clenched his eyes shut. Fantastic! Now Barnabas knew he’d been to prison!

“—I’ll never see him again! I can't believe the things that happen in this house! That nice Miss Evans! I thought you were interested in that other one, the one that's going to get me thrown out of my own kitchen, that Tish Lemon—”

“Look, Ma, could you for once—”

“—and now you go and do this, Harold Glen Johnson, heaven help you when my heart explodes and I'm dead!”

“Try to be calm, Mrs. Johnson,” Barnabas encouraged. “I don't think Harry did anything wrong. We think Maggie must have got close to the same source of contamination, whatever it is, that took down Roger Collins this morning. Maggie couldn't help what she was doing, and Harry just happened to be in the way.”

“Is she going to be all right?” Mrs. Johnson asked tearfully.

“I'm sure she will be. Julia Hoffman's on the case, as is Dr. Liska. They're going to isolate the problem. I'm going to do some research around here myself. We'll get to the bottom of it.”

Barnabas stalked out of the kitchen and went immediately to the den, where Roger sat with Willie Loomis. Willie was slumped on the small sofa, his face buried in his hands. Roger wearily put aside a book when he saw Barnabas at the door.

“Roger,” Barnabas asked, “did you—well—did you happen to find an afghan in the dumbwaiter room, east wing, by chance?”

Roger blinked. “Why yes, I did. Last night. It was lying inside the dumbwaiter of the east wing, which was papered over, you remember. I thought it odd, someone playing a joke on me with the afghan from the drawing room. But I checked, and the other afghan—our regular afghan was over the couch where it always is. I left the other upstairs on the floor of the east wing room where I found it.”

“Where do you think that afghan came from? Do you believe that it had been inside the dumbwaiter, papered over, for years?”

Roger frowned. “Yes. I assumed it had, because Elizabeth and I were the only ones who knew about the dumbwaiter at that point. Though I told David and Hallie about it at dinner.” His features contracted, melting into grief and confusion, and his eyes swam with sudden tears. “Barnabas, where is my son? I was outside scanning the roofs of Collinwood earlier, with Elliot, after he told me of his idea of David being trapped up there somehow. We looked, shouted, saw nothing.”

“Roger,” Barnabas told him firmly, “as soon as I can make contact with Julia, either by phone or when she gets home, and tell her of this suspicious afghan—then I promise you that I am going to re-create David's ride in the dumbwaiter. Before I say another word, however, I want your solemn promise that you will stay out of that room! You've already been exposed once to whatever it is, and your symptoms were life-threatening. Now. It is my theory that there is a ledge or small room, an outlet of some kind off the dumbwaiter shaft, and that David crawled onto it to investigate and either got caught there, or hurt. I am going to ride the dumbwaiter myself, and find him.”

Shaking his head in disbelief, Roger nevertheless gave Barnabas his grateful thanks.

On his way out, Barnabas grasped Willie's shoulder and told him not to worry about Maggie, and that they'd talk a bit later. Willie didn't respond. Barnabas left the den.

But when he reached the foyer, the afghan that had been on the table was gone.

He phoned the hospital and asked for Dr. Hoffman.

“Maggie's fine,” Julia reported. “I'm keeping her overnight for observation, but her vitals were already stabilizing before we'd even got her out of triage. She's coherent and not sweating, and wants to know why she's in the hospital, if you please! Barnabas, she doesn't remember anything that happened to her, but it was the same damned thing that got Roger. Blood pressure so low as to be undetectable, terrible heat, rapid heartbeat, prodigious sweating, altered disposition –”

Barnabas quickly told her of Harry's testimony, that Maggie had had in her hands the same afghan, presumably infected, that Roger had encountered.

“Don't touch it, of course,” she urged, “but pick it up using a stick or pole, or coat-hanger, and bag it or box it up, and tape the box shut and set it outside somewhere! Write the contents on the box. We want to test—”

“Julia,” Barnabas broke in, “it’s gone, my sweet. Vanished.”

“Find it!” Julia cried on the other end of the line. “Please! Before it poisons somebody else.”

The household, except for Willie Loomis, who was now dozing in the den, had been gathered into the foyer and questioned. No one admitted having collected the afghan from the foyer table. Barnabas then updated everyone on Maggie's fledgling recovery and informed them all to be on the lookout for black-and-multicolored afghans that might appear in odd places—and not to touch them with bare hands. He shared with them Julia's directions about boxing them up. Then he himself, wearing a fresh pair of Mrs. Johnson's rubber kitchen gloves just in case, went to Maggie's room and found her afghan with the cigarette burn in it and brought it downstairs. He removed the drawing room afghan from its place over the back of the couch, folded it, and was placing both afghans into a bag when Elizabeth Stoddard stopped him.

“I can tell whether that one is ours,” she murmured, stretching forth one hand.

“Don't touch,” Barnabas cautioned.

She drew back. “Maggie's has a cigarette burn. Ours has a signature sewn over one of the corners.” She watched while Barnabas flopped the afghan about in his gloved hands, looking for the sewn name. “There, see? Lena Collins put that there in pink thread, much faded but still readable.” She gazed up at him. “Now, if we actually locate a third afghan, we can tell them all apart.”

“Thank you, Elizabeth,” Barnabas said, smiling at her.

As she watched, he placed the two folded afghans one atop the other, stuffed them into a large nylon lingerie bag, and then wrapped them in a blanket, making a parcel of them. Then he walked out of the drawing room and found a first-floor linen closet, and stowed the blanketed package away on its empty top shelf.

While a rubber-gloved Mrs. Johnson scrubbed the foyer table with disinfectant, and Elizabeth and Roger worried together in the drawing room over Roger’s missing son, Hallie met her Mystery Date.

She had been sitting tearfully in her room, pondering David's disappearance. Finally, she could stand it no more, and walked to the east wing.

She opened the door of the room where the dumbwaiter was and stepped inside, slowly picking her way over to a forlorn corner. There she seated herself and brought her knees to her chin. Tucked into a comfortable ball, she wept.

A slow ticking sound eventually penetrated her consciousness. Then it grew faster. Then another sound frightened her—it was like the groan of machinery. Hallie lifted her tear-streaked face in surprise, feeling the faintest vibration in the floor beneath her. The dumbwaiter! Was it the dumbwaiter, with David in it?

Panting, astonished, Hallie scrambled to her feet and stood agog in her nightgown, staring at the dumbwaiter door. She heard the hiss of the working cables, the grumble of the carriage as it swept along behind the door. The noise increased. It was approaching! David had found his way back!

Not realizing what she did, she began to hop lightly from foot to foot in her excitement. Happiness soared within her. What would everyone say when she ran downstairs to them with David?

Behind the wall, the dumbwaiter whumphed to a stop. Its door was thrust open by the occupant.

“David!” Hallie shrieked. There was no response to her joyous cry, but she heard someone breathing and scrabbling inside the dumbwaiter carriage.

Her skin went abruptly ice-cold.

Boots came into view, black ones studded with silver divots, and close-fitting dark slacks. The legs moved as the person tried to push forward to exit the dumbwaiter. Two pale hands, long and unfamiliar, grasped the sides of the dumbwaiter frame and pulled the body forward.

It was a man she had never seen before, of slim build, wearing dark glasses. He ducked his head as he left the dumbwaiter carriage, and then straightened to his full height in front of it, shaking out his limbs. He had a wild, ugly bush of upstanding dark hair and a week’s worth of stubble on his face. He wore a leather jacket, with a red kerchief fitted about his neck. A gleaming silver chain was slung over one shoulder and down the front of his leather jacket diagonally, like a sash. He saw her, grinned, and then spoke in a loud, raucous voice.

“You been in this dumbwaiter, kid? What a trip—acid all the way!” whooped Buzz Hackett.

Barnabas waited only until Julia got back to Collinwood, then both of them immediately mounted the stairs to the east wing.

“I don't want you to do this!” Julia argued. “The firemen would have seen such a ledge or alcove and seen David on it, if it existed! You're taking a terrible risk, Barnabas. What am I going to do if you disappear, too?”

“Julia, we're getting nowhere like this. Someone has to reprise this sojourn in the dumbwaiter. Perhaps there is some supernatural Bermuda Triangle force in there. Well, if David is trapped in it and I can reach him, maybe he and I can work our way back together. He's been gone nearly 24 hours and none of us can take much more.”

Julia's eyes were wet. “Yes, of course. All right. Oh, Barnabas.”

“If I vanish, get Elliot. Oh, shit!” Barnabas blurted.

“What?”

“Angelique! Possibly she knows something about the dumbwaiters? She certainly spent enough time in this house in the past. Why didn't I think of her until now? Oh, well. If I don't get back, get Elliot and Angelique, and know that I'm trying to return to you.” He grabbed her quickly and gave her a fierce hug. She clung to him, and they kissed, long and deep.

“I'll be back, my love. With David. Or we'll get some kind of signal back to you.” Barnabas gave her his beautiful smile. He was holding back tears. Julia, one hand lingering on Barnabas' face, her eyes worried, nodded in acceptance.

As it happened, there was no need for worry, for Barnabas soon returned, and someone was with him.

But it was the wrong someone.

Chapter Text

“So, what's the word, man?” Buzz asked in a stage whisper when they had reached Hallie's bedroom. “Like, where's the chitlins?”

Hallie blinked dewy lids at him. “The children?”

Buzz reared backwards and clapped his hands. “The grub, baby! Too crazy! Carolyn asleep? Where's her room again? Look, you seen my cycle outside anywheres?”

“Cycle,” repeated Hallie, cluelessly. “Your—cycle.”

“My wheels, infant. Motorcycle. I’m pretty sure I left it here. What the hell is it with this place, it sits on my head like twelve tons of Establishment.” He turned and regarded the slim, straight blonde girl in her mint-green nightgown. “So, like, what did you bring me here for? Want to have a crazy time, or what? You might be a little young for me,” Buzz judged grimly, hitching up his pants by his silver divot-studded belt, “but I can probably manage. So, why you want me to crash this scene, baby?”

“Crash –” Hallie whispered, then, realizing, straightened and frowned at Buzz Hackett. “Do you think I called for you to come here? I didn't! Nobody summoned you, are you crazy?” She strode forward, deeply distressed, her nightgown lashing at her calves. “Have you seen David Collins? Thirteen years old, brown eyes, light brown hair, a freckle beside his nose. I think he wore a green shirt with a dark-green sweater vest and blue slacks.”

Buzz thrust himself backward from the hips and bayed at the ceiling. “Whoooooo!” he yelled. Hallie frantically waved her hands to shush him. “So, like she's looking for her little caveman, David Caveman Collins! Nooooo, I have not encountered his like.”

He straightened and stood silent. Hallie trembled, unable to read the eyes behind the detestable dark glasses. She groped for some sort of meaning, some relation to this ugly apparition.

“You know C-Carolyn Stoddard,” she fumbled, “are the two of you friends?”

“Hey, we mix it up all the time, like the monkey to the chimp, man,” Buzz agreed. “You know it. Booze here, booze there, but mostly we ride. What time did you say it was? If it's like eight or nine in the morning, get her up and tell her daddy's here.”

“I told you it’s bedtime. And Carolyn's away with her boyfriend on vacation,” Hallie told him crossly.

Buzz planted a booted foot on Hallie's bed and leaned his arms on his knee. “No fibs, doll,” he warned her kindly. “Carolyn isn't dating nobody but the Buzz. We have a crazy time all over the joint, man. So, when did you show up? I just don't remember no little sister.”

“I am not her little sister!” Hallie flared. “I'm no relation. I'm a—friend of the family. I came to live here after my parents died in 'sixty-nine.”

“Huh,” Buzz grunted. “Sixty-nine what? Sixty-nine minutes? Sixty-nine pieces?” He glanced carelessly about the bedroom. He was patting his pockets, and from his gestures, Hallie guessed he was looking for cigarettes. If anyone smelled cigarettes up here at this hour, they'd come looking! She began to perspire.

“In the year nineteen sixty-nine,” answered Hallie unhappily. “September, nineteen sixty-nine.”

Buzz stopped moving and regarded her. After a moment she realized that he was actually astonished.

“Nineteen sixty-nine?” he asked with an uneasy snort. “Right. It's ‘sixty-seven, kid. You planning to kill your parents two years from now?”

“You’re wrong,” Hallie shot back. “This is June of nineteen seventy-one. Don't you know what year it is? My parents died twenty-one months ago.”

“Okay,” Buzz agreed, turning away and staring at her wall posters. “Whatever totes your goat, baby. But I am hungry and want some breakfast. Where do you keep the eats in this sewer? And I could use some hooch.” 

Barnabas sat slowly revolving the prickly wheel in the floor of the dumbwaiter, keeping his eyes on everything he passed. The dumbwaiter door was open so that he could see any alcove or ledge where David might have gone; but it was dark, so he extended his hand and ran it along the rough expanse of brick wall that passed as he went. He was surprised when the dumbwaiter revealed nothing but wall, for he had expected to eventually find himself at another station opening, on a lower floor. Perhaps this one fetched up in the basement; very well. He would see. 

He suddenly felt a cold draft of air. Fresh air. As though he were outdoors, he could hear the soughing of wind through trees as boughs tossed and shushed. And before he could process any of it, he was outside. The brick wall before him ended, rising like a curtain as the wheel turned, and as he continued to lower the carriage, he saw that he was indeed going to set down outdoors. He was outside Collinwood.

What in God's name! he asked himself. Could this be a receiving door for outside deliveries? Coal deliveries? But how have we not come across this before, in going around the outside of the house? Elizabeth and Roger never mentioned such a thing, and I remember no such feature being built … 

 Barnabas stopped the wheel, and the dumbwaiter carriage hesitated perhaps forty inches from the ground. Looking about in amazement, he slid his legs to the edge of the compartment and, ducking his head, clambered out.

It was dark, but there was moonlight, and he could see very well. He straightened his clothes and gazed about in frank surprise, mingled with defeat. He wasn't going to find David here, for there had already been multiple searches for the boy all over the grounds. He should get back into the dumbwaiter and take it upwards; perhaps that was the right direction for the alcove or ledge he sought. 

But he hesitated, looking about him before climbing back into the dumbwaiter. He hadn't realized that the hour had been quite so late as this; there was velvet blackness everywhere; perhaps it was already well past midnight. 

He turned and observed the frame of a small dwelling nearby, perhaps only seventy-five yards from him. He stood silently and stared at it. This was all wrong. That wasn't supposed to be there, there was no such dwelling at just this location on the grounds, and he knew it. Barnabas shook his head. Something was certainly off. 

He gazed upon it. It was familiar. His mind began to race, but totted up only a confusion of vague ideas. 

Frowning, he quietly approached the door of the—cottage?—and carefully laid his hand on the doorknob. The door wasn't locked, and swung open easily under his hand.

It was certainly not an outbuilding. Barnabas stepped into a room deep in darkness, but moonlight spilled in like a spotlight along the floor as he paused in the doorway. It was a small home. 

Memory roiled, and yet—he couldn't figure this out. He had been here before, surely, but with whom? Elliot, Julia? What had they been doing here?

He stepped inside. At first, he didn't notice the faint glow of light coming from a crack beneath a closed door across the room, because of the moonlight he had brought in with him. He closed the door behind him and looked about. 

A small dining table and chairs … a kitchen hutch … beaded curtains … surely there was another door just on the far side of this table?

His heart began a fast, sickening beat. His temples felt tight. Dread, indefinable, clutched at him. Why couldn't he identify the place, remember when he'd been here before?

Barnabas crossed the kitchen area and found the other door, carefully turned the knob and entered, blinking into the gloom.

She lay perfectly still on the examination table, a sheet pooled at her waist. A sky-blue sleeveless nightgown was the only thing she wore and she slept deeply, incapable of escaping the awful hold that kept her from consciousness. She was being forcibly kept asleep. That was because she was being used as fuel. This girl kept Angelique alive in parallel time—in past parallel time—and all of this this had happened to Barnabas before. He had rescued this girl once before. 

Hot tears blinded him, and low groan of anguish wrenched from his throat as he gazed upon the dear head with its bright, choppy cut. The angelic eyes, now closed, the long sweep of lashes over the exquisite curve of cheek. The rise and fall of her breasts, so very slow. Perfect stillness; perfect subjugation. A perfect sacrifice, a living death. She was a captive.

She was Roxanne. 

Distantly, he heard a voice outside. Barnabas dragged his eyes away from the luminous sleeping young woman on the table and stared about the dark, tiny room in distraction. There were people approaching the cottage from outside. There was nowhere to hide in here. He gasped, his respiration trying to keep pace with his frenzied heartbeat. Roxanne. Oh, my love. Oh, dear God. 

His cheeks wet, he viciously wiped his eyes with his arm, and quickly sidled into a shadowy corner of Roxanne's chamber, trying to become part of its darkness. 

Sounds of approach, of complaint. A quarrel. Two men?

“But I will,” announced a very deep, very low voice outside, nearing the door. Barnabas held still and turned his face into the darkness, resisting the sobs that shook his chest, trying to control himself. The voice came yet closer. The men were going to enter the cottage.

“Then do so,” came a higher, grittier voice. “If he's seen something, he has to be caught. I can deal with him. Or I should say, I know someone who can.”

“When I bring you the boy, you won't have to do that,” the low voice said. It was a young man speaking. Hiding in the dark, Barnabas' facial features clenched in a painful attempt to remember. Yes, yes, that was young Claude North speaking, wasn't it? He had always sounded as though he were speaking underwater. A syrupy, subterranean voice. This was the young man who had given over the trusting Roxanne to bondage. 

North's voice continued.

“The boy can take her place,” he coaxed. “Just don't use him for one of her emergency kills.” The men were through the front door and inside the kitchen portion of the cottage now, their shuffling feet rasping on the wooden floorboards. 

“You don't seem to understand,” observed the imperious higher voice, which Barnabas, fisting his hands tightly in the dark, recognized as Timothy Stokes, the vile father of Angelique and Alexis Stokes of parallel time. “I don't just waken your girlfriend and lay the boy down in her place. There is infinitely more to it than that. His being the indistinguishable double of David Collins is going to cause a rather ugly problem, have you realized? What if someone gets in here and sees?”

“Nobody has ever found their way into this place, and they won't,” North cajoled. “Give me the money you owe us—and I want more, too, since I've not only given you Roxanne to use for so long, but now I am also supplying her substitute. Come, Stokes! Who has more energy than a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy?  He'll last your daughter forever!”

“You paint a rosy picture. But I do not yet have the boy, do I? How is it that you haven't caught him?”

“I will! Look, we're just talking in circles. He has nowhere to go. He won't go into Collinwood because the real David Collins is already there. I couldn't believe it when I saw this kid skulking in the woods, watching David Collins arguing with Carolyn Loomis. He was watching himself argue with Carolyn Loomis! He was stunned, terrified, I could see it. I don't know where he came from, but he doesn't belong here, probably nobody knows that he is here, and nobody will miss him. All he has is the woods, and he has to sleep sometime. And I will find him.” The bass voice lowered and became gentle. “And you will give us more money, and we'll leave this place, Roxanne and I, and you'll forget we ever existed. And that kid will keep your precious daughter alive for the next eighty years.”

 Barnabas listened in horror. So, David was here, smack in the middle of parallel time. The boy had taken the dumbwaiter ride and wound up just where Barnabas had—outdoors—and encountered the people of the other Collinwood—the one from which he, Barnabas, and Julia, when trapped there not very long ago, had barely escaped. 

Barnabas thought to himself, My David has seen the David of this place—the boy who truly belongs in parallel time—and realizes that he dare not venture into Collinwood, nor speak to any of its inmates. He's hiding in these woods, fearful. Does he know that Claude North is stalking him?

“I want to see her now,” Claude North demanded, and Barnabas froze and dragged his thoughts back to the men's conversation. 

“No!” Timothy Stokes spat. “I don't have time for your mooning visits. I'd like to know where that child came from.”

“Who cares? Why not ask your daughter, perhaps she's responsible somehow.” 

“Oh, I doubt it,” Stokes said restlessly. “I'll ask her aunt Hannah, my sister-in-law. She's acquainted with the occult, possibly she can shed some light.”

There was a shrieking sound, and Barnabas leapt, heart pounding. Probably the sound of the table in the next room being pushed slightly away from the wall. Then came a sighing grunt as one of the men sat. Stokes, it sounded like. Were they settling in to stay for the rest of the night?

“I want more money,” North insisted softly, “and I want it soon. By Thursday.”

“Or what?” Timothy Stokes gave an ugly laugh.

“Or I’ll remove Roxanne.”

“Say something like that to me again,” Stokes threatened, “and I'll remove her. You will never see her again. Take my word.”

Barnabas listened, feeling rage and terror boil together in his gut. They would move Roxanne, continue to eke her life away in order to support Angelique's preposterous hold on re-animation, though Angelique had been long dead. If not that, they had designs now on David's life! But where was David? In hiding. How long could he last with no food, no sleep, no friends, and these two murderous men sweeping the woods for him day and night?

Barnabas wiped his eyes on his sleeve. He couldn't stop his noiseless weeping. Roxanne, Roxanne! Seeing her again, alone, helpless, in mute torment like this, not allowed to waken and direct her own young life, had poleaxed him. He felt disemboweled. He had never expected such devastating pain, such fierce love to strike him upon seeing her again! He had never expected to see her again ever, period! His Roxanne, so radiant—trapped—precious—lost—

He knew that if he managed to waken her once more, she would love him, exactly as she had before.

But, as in the past, he would need Julia's help to waken her. 

Julia.

In his stew of upset emotions Barnabas allowed the guilt associated with Julia to enter his thoughts. He was about to marry Julia, wanted her, loved her. He let the guilt lance through him like a shooting star and pass by without pain—he couldn't wrestle with it now. He had other matters to grapple with. He needed to find David, fast. He needed to rescue Roxanne. 

He heard a chair scrape back, and the two men shuffling once more for the door, exchanging what sounded like insults—Barnabas could no longer catch their words, which were now directed away from him and outside of the house. 

He tried to slow his heart. He wiped his eyes with his sleeve again, and fumbled for his handkerchief. He let out an uneven sob and turned his eyes once more to the moveless Roxanne. He would take her with him now. With the help of God, perhaps he would find David instantly, or be spotted by David wherever he was hiding and have the boy come rushing up to him.

Barnabas hadn't had a body-double in this parallel time, but how was David to know that? Barnabas could hardly go through the grounds of Collinwood shouting David's name, not with Stokes and North around. Perhaps if he went about shouting for David in a whisper? Something like, “David, come home!”, or better yet, something about the dumbwaiter? Would that penetrate, make David realize that it was safe to approach?

Yes. Perhaps if he went about whisper-shouting “Come to the dumbwaiter!” in the dark, David would be emboldened to approach. 

Barnabas stepped close to Roxanne and, appalled at himself, began weeping afresh. He hadn't realized that he had so many tears in him. He loved her. He wanted to take care of her, protect her always!

Roxanne! His heart cried. Roxanne!

Cradling her against his breast, Barnabas left the cottage, glaring about wildly to make certain he encountered nobody. He moved carefully, quietly, with the soft, warm girl pressed against him. He felt absolutely savage. If he encountered someone who tried to stop his escape with Roxanne, he was reasonably sure that he would tear that person to shreds with his fingers. 

Barnabas approached the place where he’d left the dumbwaiter, half expecting it not to be there. But it was. He staggered to it with his limp burden, leaned over, and gently placed her inside. Then he stepped back to catch his breath. 

Something arrested his glance, information stamped on the copper edge of the dumbwaiter frame. 

WT CAP 300 LB

What if he had found David after all? If Roxanne were perhaps 110 pounds, and Barnabas himself close to approximately 170 pounds, that left a margin of twenty pounds for David’s transport. 

Would he have asked David to remain behind? Or would he have taken the boy with him, and left Roxanne? 

Slow, dazed tears streamed steadily down his face. The answer, of course, was that he would have sent David up with Roxanne and stayed behind himself. And yet, for just one moment, his heart broke at the idea that he could have … might have asked David to wait …  

He would take Roxanne now, this minute, and return instantly to hunt for David.

Barnabas precariously placed himself inside the dumbwaiter beside the unmoving girl.

Morning found Roger Collins making his own acquaintance with Hallie's guest.

Passing briskly through the foyer bright and early, Roger turned at the sound of chains jingling down the staircase and then did a double-take as Buzz Hackett clumped into sight, thudding down the steps of Collinwood in his motorcycle boots. A pale, defeated-looking Hallie Stokes was beside him.

“Hey, man,” Buzz rasped abruptly on seeing Roger, “You heard the plan?”

“I beg your pardon?” Roger asked icily, taking in Buzz Hackett and then narrowing his eyes at Hallie, who looked likely to drop right where she stood. “May I ask who the devil you are, and what you are doing here at this abnormal hour?” Roger said very loudly, bristling like a peacock. The tendons and veins in his neck began to swell, and his face darkened.

Buzz stopped where he was on the staircase and dropped his buttocks on a step, his legs sprawling before him as he sat.

“If it isn't daddy!” Buzz called. “How-de-do, dad! I'm looking for Carolyn but I'll be frigged if I can find her. She around? Where's her cot?”

“Her cot? You—how did you get into this house?”

Buzz jerked a thumb at Hallie. “Baby doll here let me in and look, man, she won't feed me, and it's the longest damned night I ever spent, right? So, where's the food?”

Astonished, Roger stared at Buzz. Everything about Roger was expanding—eyes, pupils, nostrils, chest, cords in his neck. Finally, his mouth.

“Hallie let you in?! What have you been doing—do you mean to say you've been here in Collinwood all NIGHT?”

“Well, yeah, and it's the pits, man, you know what I mean? I don't want this jellybean, she's too young to make the scene. It's Carolyn that I'm dating. I'm her old man,” Buzz wavered to a halt, a little unsettled at the sight of the irate man before him. “So, can you like get Carolyn and tell her I'm here?” he finished lamely.

Roger marched toward Buzz and Hallie with a stern, set mouth. The girl was white to the lips and had brown circles beneath her eyes.

“I don't understand this, but you will leave now, right this moment! We don't feed sundry strangers and hangers-on!”

Buzz carelessly stretched out one leg, drawing the other up so that he could lay a lazy arm on the knee. “No can do, Magoo,” Buzz replied. “And I ain't one of your sundry-bundries. I'm like Buzz Hackett and Carolyn's my o'l lady, and if she ain't here, dig up the old dame of the house, she'll remember me. And she'll probably cook me breakfast just to spite you.”

Gasping, Roger mounted the steps quickly and grabbed the front of Buzz's jacket in both fists. “You will leave this house now, or I'll call the sheriff!”

“Call two sheriffs. Call LBJ! Here I'm stuck and here I stay. Shit, that rhymes.”

Roger bodily lifted the younger man and hustled him down the steps. He wrestled Buzz to the door and wrenched it open, giving him a hard push. Buzz staggered out of the house, casting a rueful look over his shoulder.

“You keep clear of this house or you'll get much worse!” Roger cried, stepping back inside and slamming the door on his ejected guest.

He re-entered the foyer, taking a deep breath and angrily brushing off his clothes. Turning to give Hallie Stokes a healthy dressing-down, he found himself looking up once more into the face of Buzz Hackett, who was standing on the stairs beside the voiceless girl.

“Hejibip!” Roger snorted in shock. Buzz once again lowered his buttocks to sit on the step.

“Now, look,” sighed Buzz, “no can do, daddy-o! I'm stuck here and that's that. Throw me out eleven more times, call the pigs! I can only go out the way I got in, and I don't wanna go out, see? So, you might as well toss the grub on the grill and start fryin', because the longer I wait, the hungrier I get, and pretty soon this whole show’s gonna get nasty!”

“He won't go,” moaned Hallie in a subdued voice. “I can't get rid of him.”

Soon Elizabeth Stoddard entered the foyer, and was startled and resentful when she recognized who it was that Roger was haranguing. She turned away to call the police, but her brother stopped her.

“Liz,” Roger called unsteadily, “watch this.” Roger once more took hold of Buzz—not so roughly this time—took him to the door, pushed him outside, and closed the door. Then he looked up to the stairs.

Following his eyes, Elizabeth cried out to see Buzz yet again, sighing and stooping yet a third time to seat himself on the steps.

“It's a cosmic boomerang sort of thing, I don't know,” confessed Buzz, resuming his seat. “I just can't get out of the house, so I'm stuck. I'm not that bad a guy, though you people have got me elected as the guru of doo-doo here. Who needs it? I mean, don't call the fuzz on Buzz, or it'll be a wild scene, you dig? And for just the umpty-somethingth time, do you or do you not have a kitchen in this house?”

Chapter Text

Julia had dragged a chair to the Sweetgrass Room to sit and monitor the dumbwaiter and watch for Barnabas. She was reclining in her chair, trying to doze, starting awake now and then, when the cables began to slither and slip. Thinking it was a dream, Julia studied the moving cables dumbly for at least twelve seconds; but the tick of the ascending carriage and the slight tremor in the floor told her that the dumbwaiter was actually approaching. She shook her head, placing one hand against her aching neck. Barnabas was returning!

She glanced at the watch on her wrist. Seven hours had passed.

The carriage thumped to a stop. Julia was already on her feet, weak with relief and fatigue.

“Barnabas!” she cried joyfully.

She was surprised when the dumbwaiter door was tugged open and she saw him reclining lengthwise across the doorway of the compartment. His worried eyes locked on hers. There was a huddled figure beside him. Julia's heart sank at the pain and alarm in her lover's wet eyes.

“Julia,” he whispered, “please come help—” he began to unfurl himself from the chamber, putting out one leg, ducking forward after it.

She was beside him in a second, reaching into the darkness. “David! What's happened to David?” she cried, but Barnabas caught her hands and pressed them to his chest.

“Julia, I found her again. It was exactly like last time, do you recall?” Barnabas straightened, stood upright.

“Are you hurt?” she asked, trying to free her hands.

“No, no, love, but—” Barnabas gasped, and she saw with a shock that tears were rolling down his face. “Julia, David is out there but I couldn't find him, so I have to go right back—right now—but I found—”

“Roxanne,” Julia said in a voice of ashes. She saw the limp figure and its colors, blue, red. “Oh, my God. Barnabas—where does that dumbwaiter lead to, where did you go?”

“It was parallel time, Julia, the whole thing all over again! With Angelique, Roxanne, and Claude North and Timothy Stokes. Those two nearly caught me. And they mentioned Carolyn Loomis and Angelique's aunt Hannah, and it's happening over there right now, and you and I aren't there this time—” Barnabas caught his breath. He seized Julia. “Help me to wake her up. We have to waken her and free her of Angelique! We have to keep her here, safe! I beg you, save her life!”

At first Julia was able to respond.

She was a doctor, after all.

Between the two of them, Roxanne was ferried to another room and laid upon a sofa. Julia got out her stethoscope. She took the girl's pulse. She looked at her critically and took her blood pressure. She ticked off the hopeful signs in her patient along with the bad signs. But as she worked and thought, her heart was growing smaller, fading under the force of a terrible truth.

Barnabas stood back and watched Roxanne as though his eyes were actually attached to her body. He repeatedly wiped his tears. He wrung his hands. Every now and then, his eyes would seemingly start from his head as he considered this action, that course.

Julia told herself that she could imagine his thoughts.

He might be thinking: Where can we keep her? The basement of the Old House? Julia's equipment—the generator—Julia can try a course of light electroshock treatments the way we did last time—Roxanne will come round—we'll have Willie to help us—mustn't let anyone at Collinwood know this is going on—

She stepped away from her patient, thoughtful. Barnabas cleared his throat and pinioned her with a grave stare.

“She's all right,” Julia reported. “We merely have to retrieve her from this deep sleep. You did well to get her out of there, hopefully Stokes and North won't find their way here. Shall I … shall I go into the dumbwaiter and look for David, so that you can remain here with her?”

Barnabas didn't answer her for a moment, then blinked and stared at her afresh.

“No. No. Of course not! I'm going right back there and get David. Julia, they're hunting him! They want to put him—Claude North wants to take Roxanne away, and substitute David in her place!”

“What? What happened over there?  You were gone such a long time—”

“Surely not? I stepped out of the dumbwaiter, saw a cottage, entered, found Roxanne. Hid while those two talked briefly. Then we fled. That wasn't all of forty-five minutes.”

“Barnabas! You were gone seven hours. At least, by our time. By parallel time, less than an hour was used? Well, that's to our advantage; if you return now for David, you might only have lost, oh, seconds.”

“Then I must go, now!”

“Well,” Julia asked, “how am I to get her to the Old House by myself? I presume that that is what you want? Or do you want me to put her up in my bedroom at Collinwood? I suppose there's room for the both of us. Two to a bed. But you're thinking that we will need the generator and the laboratory equipment, yes? Willie is over there, and in the time it takes for one of us to trot over to get him, we could have brought Roxanne there ourselves. If I go to get Willie, you have to watch Roxanne. We can't waken Quentin or Roger or Harry Johnson to help, because it's got to be a great big secret.” Julia took her stethoscope from around her neck and threw it at a chair.

“Therefore, you're going to have to help me carry her over there, and I'll put her to bed. And I'll cover her with something,” Julia added wryly.

If she had thought that her irony would be unheard by Barnabas in his present state, she was wrong. He looked at her in surprise, his eyes still wet, and she sensed the shattered feelings that must be crashing inside him. And felt a devastation in her heart. 

“After all,” Julia added, “Roxanne is mostly nude. Once again.” Why can’t I stop talking? she thought to herself miserably.

“Julia,” Barnabas ventured, coming close to her in one stride, his eyebrows wrenching upwards in his confusion, “Julia, do you—resent my having rescued Roxanne?”

Trying to govern her feelings and push down a dangerous flood that was rising within her, Julia snorted. “Resent my patient? Of course not. We'll have to watch her carefully and as soon as you return with David, we will have to, oh, hammer the dumbwaiter door shut, or solder it closed, or something, so that Stokes and North don't get over here.” She whirled on her heel and thrust her hands into the deep pockets of her smock. She strode across the room, then turned and paced back to him.

“Well, you'll go and retrieve David, yes? Yes. Shall I go and get Willie, or shall you? Or will you accompany me? It's just after four a.m., so presumably we won't be seen spiriting an unconscious body over to the Old House. But if it's all the same to you, I'd rather go and get Willie up and bring him over here while you, ah, watch her.”

“What? Why? Julia, I don't understand your tone of voice.”

“My tone of voice is letting you know that you have presented me with an awful problem tonight, and that I'll probably leave for Windcliff as soon as the sun is up.”

Barnabas looked flabbergasted. Clenching her jaw, Julia continued with a shrug, “The rotation, remember? I take it that you do recall my mentioning it to you? Well, why not just get it over with now? That will give you all the time you need, though I'll be sorry to miss Roger and Veronika's wedding. Perhaps I will return just to witness it.”

“Miss their wedding? Julia—” Barnabas stopped looking confused and began to look stern. “Julia, what are you saying? You're making me feel like I'm—under attack, being punished for something I don't know about.”

“Then I'll let you in on it,” Julia said, stepping into his arms. But she would not look into his face. She kept her eyes on his collar.

“You have hurt me, my dear, hurt me to my soul. Disrupted me. It's evident that you want Roxanne and that our wedding can now never come to pass.”

Barnabas gasped and seized her shoulders, about to expostulate something—a denial, an excuse—but Julia turned her face away from him.

“I'll hide her, Barnabas, and care for her. None of this is her fault. Dr. Liska can take over in the morning when I'm gone, and you must let me go. I had honestly thought that you and I … I did actually believe that you loved me now, authentically loved me and saw me as enough, as even someone you wanted, and that we could be married. But it's not possible.” Julia shifted her pained green eyes to her lover.

“I see the way you look at her. Perhaps after you've had some time to realize and admit to yourself that that woman, Roxanne, is the only—”

She was interrupted as Barnabas shook her ferociously. She drew in her breath, and her teeth chattered together.

“Julia!” he shouted, unmindful of the sleeping house, “Julia! Stop! You do not understand me! You—are wrong, Julia,” he insisted desperately, lowering his voice. “Roxanne shall not come between us, does not come between us. My love, listen to me—”

Julia whirled her face back to him, and now she grasped his shoulders. “But she has come between us,” Julia muttered. “She does. Your eyes, your tears, your face. I have not seen your face look like this for a long time! More than any of the others, you mourn the loss of Roxanne. It is she whom you love. What kind of marriage do you think I can stand, if the moment you see this woman you behave in such a manner? You have wiped out my existence, my dear. I am no longer here. It is as though I have been erased, and it's quite interesting, for I feel nothing. Nothing.

“I lost my pride with you long ago, Barnabas. But I tell you this now: it's not so long a time ago that I can't reclaim it.

“I am no one's second or third choice. That is not fair to either of us.”

She stepped back, out of his grip, and he let her. He actually took a step backwards himself.

“The more I say,” he said in quiet horror, “the less you hear. Why can’t you hear me? … I don't know how to proceed, but Julia, you are wrong, so wrong. You are just feeling—jealousy, or panic, at seeing this girl again. But it is not as you think. I … I need … how can I explain my reaction to her?” he cried, his voice rising. “My reaction to Roxanne, in fact, ought to prove what I am telling you.” His voice sank again. “My darling, don't leave in the morning. This problem has cropped up now—and—if you simply leave without—” he trailed off. 

Julia replied, “I'm leaving this morning for Windcliff. Certainly it looks as though I'm marching off in a snit—but let's just be goddamned glad that my rotation has come up, now, to give us this breathing space. My dear love—I shall love you always, Barnabas, always. Nobody else. And I shall always be here for you.”

“Then stay!” Barnabas erupted. “Don’t leave me!”

“But this one time—no. No. It is too much to bear. I am a woman, and I can't—not again!”

She turned from him once more, looked about, strode over to where her stethoscope hung half off a pretty armchair with a whimsical striped fabric. She picked it up and shoved it into her pocket. “Just let me give you this time, and you give me this time. To straighten out my head, as the kids say.”

Barnabas turned his face to the wall.

Julia stepped to the doorway, hesitated a moment, straightened her jacket. “I’ll be back with Willie,” she told him.

She left. 

“You mean to tell me,” Buzz Hackett cried, “that there's no eatable food in this joint at all? With all your bread?”

Roger grimly shook his head. The two were seated in the small alcove off the kitchen where Mrs. Johnson generally worked and had her own meals.

“Is there at least food here?” Buzz asked. “You got eggs, bread? Butter, coffee? You got spices and condiments? Like, you got bacon or maybe sausage?”

“Young man,” Roger said with elegant weariness, “Collinwood has everything and anything that even the most demanding chef could desire. … What are you doing?”

For Buzz had leapt to his feet, slapping and rubbing his hands together, chuckling.

“Lead me to it, daddy!” Buzz yelled. “Hell, I'll make us up a platter of bacon and some serious eggs. Where's the toaster? Oh, I see. What's with all these pots over here, looks like the three witches from Macbeth have been camping out. Bubble, bubble, boiling truffles! Okay. Can I see what's in these cupboards? Open the fridge for me while I get this stuff. Do you have tomatoes, peppers? Oh, crap, look at this egg-slicer! It's mystic!”

Roger asked, “You … can cook? Can you really?”

“Can Donnie Hackett's firstborn son cook? Oh, man, can the Collinses count coins? I cooked for all the kids growing up, and I cooked for my brother-in-law and their kids while my sister had her surgeries. You give me about twelve minutes and I'll have a sizzling feast ready for us.” Buzz bent, straightened, stooped, grabbed, slammed cupboard doors, stuck his nose into this and squinted his eye at that. He twisted an oven burner to life with a satisfied grunt.

Roger sat back. In a voice timid with hope, he asked, “Truly? … You can cook?”

“I was only looking for Carolyn's room, right? And I found that dumbwaiter, and it was a crazy trip, like a bad trip, you know what I'm saying? And then there's a note taped to it that says, 'hop on in, take a spin'. So, I got in, you know—” Buzz paused to sip orange juice that was five minutes out of the orange—”feeling a little stupid, okay, but what's life without takin' risks? And here's this psychedelic steering wheel inside the dumbwaiter, man, and I got in and steered around, and whoosh, out I climb and there's this blonde jellybean in nutty pajamas staring at me like I’m The Blob or something.”

Roger was eating as fast as he could, cheeks working. He nodded hurriedly at Buzz, chewed and swallowed, and reached for his mug of rich, dark coffee. He slurped it as his other hand once more took up his fork. 

“Then when you were chuckin' me out the door, I got this bad feelin', like, no, man, I can't go out that way or I'll just disintegrate. So, like I knew what was going to happen. When you threw me off the royal stoop I started feeling all fuzzy, like I was made out of, oh, construction paper or something—and then I was right back on the stairwell with the jellybean. So, I knew I was right. It didn’t hurt,” Buzz said bravely.

“When you saw me on the stairway again you said something like, 'Aw, burp!' or close to it. What a gas. You should have seen your face!

“And if you need a cook, well, I’m yer man. I mean, I can do it for a day or so, but after that I’ll have to split. You people watch that show, Where The Action Is, in the afternoons?” Buzz leaned back dramatically and sucked down his orange juice. 

“I don’t believe that that program is aired any longer,” Roger murmured, making a neat pile of his peppers and eggs in the middle of his plate before digging in again. 

“Why the hell not? What’s the matter with ABC? The damned show didn’t even run a full year, two years? Jesus,” exclaimed Buzz. “Next you’ll be telling me that, what—Family Affair is gone, too.”

“Family Affair is still on the air, as far as I know, but is probably having a difficult time contending against the likes of Archie Bunker,” Roger drawled. 

“Who’s Archie Bunker, a TV critic? Well, why don’t they just leave the show alone? Nothing wrong with Buffy and Jody, and Uncle Bill, and that mad Mr. French cat, and that little looker, Cissy. I’d like to meet her in a dark alley,” Buzz guffawed. 

“Little redheads, you know? Little copper-haired redheads,” Buzz offered, lifting a coffee cup and saluting Roger. And for reasons of his own, Roger saluted back.

Chapter Text

Elizabeth, exasperated, came around the corner and saw Buzz Hackett sitting stricken in the drawing room, Roger standing over him, looking guilty.

“What on earth are these loud noises, Roger?” she demanded.

“I don’t believe it,” Buzz wailed, clutching a small, thin book to his chest. 

“We’ve just been glancing over the TV Guide for this week,” Roger explained, his eyes wide, “and Mr. Hackett has realized that he is, indeed, here with us in 1971, rather than in 1967, as he had at first understood.”

Elizabeth blinked, nonplussed. 

“What? Of course it is 1971. I don’t know what the two of you are getting up to around here,” Elizabeth tossed fiery eyes at Roger, “but if you are quite finished consulting the afternoon programming of Star Trek reruns, I’d like to talk with you about your son.”

“Reruns!” cried Buzz, violently twisting around to stare at Elizabeth. “Oh, no! You don’t get reruns unless you’ve been cancelled! You’re kidding me, Star Trek? Oh, what kind of world am I in?”

Roger told his sister indignantly, “I’m trying to find out about my son right this minute, but we could hardly proceed without knowing where we are—I mean, what year we are in.” Roger quickly sat near Buzz and looked him in the face.

“Buzz, think. Did you see my son on the other side, where you come from? His name is David, and he went missing, supposedly after playing with that damnable dumbwaiter. He’s a little boy. That is—well, he’s thirteen now. Can you go back there and get him? Can I?”

Buzz looked at Roger tiredly. “I’m really sorry, man, but I don’t know any David Collins. I didn’t see anybody. I wish I’d never gone near that frigging dumbwaiter.”

“Buzz,” Roger blurted suddenly, “what month is this?”

“Month?” Buzz asked. “It’s March. It’s March—fourteenth, I think. Yeah, that’s right, because this is Tuesday and Elly’s birthday is Thursday. That’s my niece. So, today’s the fourteenth.” He looked up at his interlocutor with some urgency. “Right?”

“Roger,” Elizabeth muttered worriedly. Roger looked from Elizabeth to Buzz.

“Well, now, Buzz,” Roger told him heartily, “It’s summer over here on our side. Today is the twenty-third, I think—of June. It’s Wednesday, June twenty-third, nineteen seventy-one.”

“It is? Christ! Who’s president? No, don’t tell me, I don’t wanna know! We still in Vietnam?”

“Ah, we are,” Roger affirmed unhappily. “Look. Would you be willing to go into the dumbwaiter and see if you can find my son? Perhaps he is lost over there in your time, or—caught. Stuck.” Roger’s eyes began to fill. “He’s been gone at least a day and a half now, and nobody knows what’s going on. I am praying that perhaps if you venture back over there, he can return to us. … I don’t know how all of this otherworldly mischief is supposed to work.” Roger stood, and stepped away from Buzz. He closed his eyes for a moment, pinching the bridge of his nose. His sister came to him and put a gentle hand on his back.

“I suppose I’d better find Barnabas,” Roger whispered, trying to swallow his tears. “He had mentioned that he was going to get into the dumbwaiter and see what came of it—”

“Don’t you go into that room,” Elizabeth warned.

“No, no. We haven’t heard anything from upstairs, so I gather that David’s not been located. Oh, Liz. Liz! I don’t know what to do.”

At that moment they heard the front door open, and Maggie entered with Dr. Veronika Liska.

“Maggie!” exclaimed Elizabeth. “You look much better! How are you feeling?”

Maggie smiled helplessly at Elizabeth and Roger. “I’m fine, much better, thank you. But I still don’t understand what happened to me. Julia and Dr. Liska say that I was struck with a fever nearly the minute I got home? I don’t remember a moment of it. I must have caught something on the plane! Mrs. Stoddard, I’m terribly sorry that this happened.”

“Good heavens, think nothing of it, Maggie! I’m only glad you’re restored to us once again.”

“And David,” Maggie exclaimed worriedly. “Is he still missing? Julia helped me remember that when I was in the hospital. Still no sign of him?”

“I’m afraid not,” Roger confirmed.

Buzz Hackett came shambling out of the drawing room behind Roger, and Maggie noticed him.

“I beg your pardon—you have a guest,” Maggie observed. “Dr. Liska and I didn’t mean to interrupt!” Roger and Veronika smiled at one another across the foyer.

“Nonsense. This is Mr. Buzz Hackett, and he’s been spending a little time with us. Anyway, we are all headed upstairs now to see whether we can find David.”

“You believe, then, that he is somewhere in the house?” Maggie asked as she, Roger, Elizabeth, Buzz and Dr. Liska all mounted the stairs together.

“After a fashion. Well, I’m afraid it’s a long story,” Roger finished. Without further talk, the party took its way to the east wing room where the dumbwaiter was. Elizabeth tried to prevent Roger from entering, but he would not be deterred.

“Coming into this room isn’t going to make me sick, Liz. I think Barnabas has practically isolated the problem to one of these dratted afghans. Anyway, we can test his theory now by my coming in here. And anyway, there is a doctor present.” He smiled tiredly at his fiancée. The group had just filed into the room when they found themselves joined by Hallie and Elliot Stokes.

“I heard him at the front door,” Hallie explained. “My uncle wants to help.”

“I do, indeed,” Elliot affirmed, stepping into the dumbwaiter room. “And who is this young man?” he asked, scrutinizing Buzz.

Roger introduced the two men and tried to explain Buzz’s presence.

“I guess you could say I came out of the dumbwaiter,” Buzz told them, “straight from Dumbwaitersville. But there’s something really screwed up about it all, man, because on my side it’s like 1967 and you are all trying to tell me that it’s 1971 over here.”

“Where are Barnabas and Julia, I wonder?” fretted Elizabeth as Elliot stared at Buzz. “I thought that we would find them working here.”

The group milled about the room. Elizabeth took her brother aside and urged him to look around the east wing, to see whether Julia and Barnabas were somewhere near.

“Meanwhile,” stated Dr. Liska firmly as Roger stalked off, “come away, Maggie. You’ve barely recovered and I don’t want to chance your being exposed again to whatever this thing is—until the dumbwaiter itself has been ruled out as the source of contagion, let’s err on the side of safety.” Maggie looked apologetically about the room and started to leave with the doctor. But Roger's return stopped them.

“Veronika,” he groaned, taking her by the arm. He put out his other hand to Maggie. Both women focused on him with concern. He looked incredulous and very pale.

“Oh, no! Sick again?” Veronika cried, putting one hand up to Roger's brow.

All the blood had drained from Roger's face, but he shook his head.

“There's a—” he stopped and swallowed. Then he looked into Veronika's eyes.

Elizabeth had hurried forward. “Oh, Roger, what is it!?” she cried.

Her brother turned to her.

“Liz,” he murmured. “There's a—a young woman asleep in the next room. I've never seen her before.”

Chapter Text

“Hold up,” Buzz ordered Hallie, clasping her upper arm as the others filed out of the room, alarmed and curious as to who Roger had found in the other room. Hallie looked up at Buzz.

“What is it?”

“C'mere,” said Buzz, tugging Hallie back into the dumbwaiter room.

“But Mr. Collins says that there's a woman up here and that he doesn't know who sh—”

“Yeah, yeah,” Buzz overrode, steadily pulling Hallie back into the now empty room until her back touched the wall. Uncomprehendingly, she watched as he put his arms out and braced the wall around her head with his hands, essentially trapping her. He bowed his head and stared at the floor between their feet.

“What do you want?” Hallie asked impatiently. “I want to see who that is in the other room.”

“Jellybean, listen,” murmured Buzz, his head still bowed so that she was looking into the stiff bush of his wild hair. “I been thinkin'. I'm running out of time on this end, you know? Don't ask me how I know, but I do. So, I was wondering if you would wanna—come back with me? When it's time for me to go?”

He raised his eyes to hers, reached up and took off his dark glasses and poked them into his hair, and stared into her face. Hallie stared back. This guy was asking her to go with him? She felt two things at once—a thrill of joy that an actual grown man was paying romantic attention to her, and a shock of surprise at the invitation.

Buzz lowered one arm, and caressed her cheek and chin with his thumb. “I been thinking about you, I dunno,” he continued. “You're still 'way too young for me and all, but you'll grow out of that. And you told me you're not a member of the family here, right?”

“I—” Hallie began, then froze as Buzz's face suddenly took on a strangely somber cast. He slowly brought his face nearer hers. She could smell the leather of his jacket. His lips looked soft.

Buzz closed his eyes and nudged her nose with his. And then his lips—

“HEY, YOU!” a voice erupted from the doorway, followed by a clattering crash as Harry Johnson dropped the dustpan and broom he was carrying. They bounced on the hardwood floor. Hallie leapt at the noise and Buzz twitched and turned his face to Harry.

Harry fixed Buzz with terrible eyes.

“Who the hell are you? What are you doing? How did you get in here?” Harry demanded, quickly entering the room. Hallie pushed out of the trap of Buzz's arms around her head and faced Harry. 

Harry held himself with dangerous stillness, and Hallie realized with a start that he was enraged.

Buzz fetched his dark glasses from atop his head and put them back on his face. “Look, man, this is nothing,” he began.

Harry leapt across the room and seized Buzz by the collar.

“What do you think you're doing to her?” Harry yelled. “What do you think you're doing?”

They scuffled. “Lemme go, you idiot!” Buzz hollered.

Hallie shrank away along the wall, clapping her hands to her ears. Then she gasped as something in the doorway caught her attention.

A giggling, heavily-perspiring Willie Loomis entered the room tipsily and observed the struggling men. As Hallie watched in horror, the black-and-multicolored afghan Willie had been clutching about his shoulders slipped to the floor, and—it seemed to her—a freshet of sweat fell from his face with a splash, and began to be absorbed into his shirt. He looked as though he had just emerged from a locker room shower.

Willie passed his arm across his forehead and stood swaying in the doorway. Then he fetched breath and gave a shriek that made Hallie nearly jump out of her skin.

“JOHNSON!” Willie screamed. “I'm gonna kill you!” He launched himself at the two men.

Harry gave Buzz a vicious push which sent Buzz sprawling into a corner, then swiftly turned to defend himself against Willie's attack. But Willie, out of his mind with the afghan's contagion, was more than a match for him. He grabbed Harry by his shirt collar and tried to bodily lift him from the floor, and practically succeeded. He threw Harry against the dumbwaiter and waded in.

“Loomis, you jackass,” Harry cried, then ducked and grabbed Willie about the waist, trying to knock him over. But whatever else the afghan had done to Willie, it had also given him a devilish strength. Staggering back against the wall as Harry drove into him in a football tackle, Willie reached forward, grasped Harry by the hips and yanked, flipping the other man in a sloppy throw partway over his shoulder. Harry gasped, then grunted as he crashed onto the floor.

In a flash Willie was at the dumbwaiter door, wrenching it open.

He seized Harry by the shoulders and hauled him to his feet. Both men were disheveled, their clothes split, their breath harsh. Hallie screamed.

“You get in there!” Willie roared and hurled Harry into the dumbwaiter. With a yell, Harry tumbled into the compartment. Willie launched himself halfway into the dumbwaiter bay after him, bellowing at his prisoner, tendons standing out in his neck.

“What do you think about that, hah? That's for Maggie!” He punched and pushed the man struggling inside the dumbwaiter, and Hallie got a confused picture of Harry with a bloody mouth. Then Willie reared back and slammed the door, trapping Harry inside. Harry began to shout and kick on the other side of the door.

“You don't be touchin' Maggie,” Willie blathered fiercely, spying the cables above the dumbwaiter and seizing one with alacrity.  He jerked the cable with gusto, and the compartment with Harry in it raced downwards, out of sight. 

“Willie, no!” Hallie moaned.

“There you go!” Willie screamed, beginning to dance in front of the dumbwaiter as he worked the cable hand-under-hand. Drops of sweat shot from his hair and face and tapped onto the floor around him. “You don't go around tryna touch Maggie!”

Buzz Hackett stayed sprawled in the corner, shocked at the scene.

Hallie let out a sob and rushed from the room, colliding with Elizabeth Stoddard, who was just entering it. Both of them tripped over the broom that lay across the threshold.

“What in the world! Hallie—Willie, what are you doing!?” Elizabeth cried.

Willie immediately turned. His shirt was drenched and his pants showed patterns of sweat here and there. He fixed his eye upon Elizabeth and lurched toward her, gently pushing Hallie out of his way.

“Mrs. Stoddid!” he caroled, beginning to giggle, and put his burning hands onto Elizabeth's cheeks. She stared at him, startled, as he chuckled and brought his face close to hers.

“My God,” he slurred, “You are—so—beautiful! Has anyone told you what a beautiful face you have? Oh, my God!” he gasped, laughing, crying, caressing Elizabeth's cheeks. Elizabeth tenderly put both hands on Willie's wrists and then gave a cry at the bizarre heat she felt there.

“Oh, no!” Elizabeth cried. “Veronika! Dr. Liska, help!”

“It's okay,” Willie assured her, his eyes pleading and laughing into hers. Then they welled with tears. “I got that guy, did you see me get that guy? I can't get over how beautiful you are! I can't believe it!” He cupped her face and woozily kissed her nose.

“It's the afghan again!” Hallie sobbed in horror. She stumbled from the room and, seeing Roger Collins hurrying toward her, put out her hands to him. Roger snatched Hallie protectively into his arms, confused as to what was going on.

“Willie's sick from the afghan,” Hallie wept on the front of Roger's suit jacket. “And he's k-kissing Mrs. Stoddard, and he threw H-Harry into the dumbwaiter and sent it away to the other side!”

Barnabas sat on the fallen log in the woods between Collinwood and the Old House.

After Julia had departed the room earlier this morning, leaving him with Roxanne, he had finally stumbled away also and gone down the staircase of Collinwood, trying to hold in his distress in case he met a member of the family. He even covered his face with one hand. But he saw no one. Feeling as though he had been struck by a train, he staggered from Collinwood, intent upon reaching the Old House, but then he had collapsed. He had sat down abruptly on the fallen log and tried to catch his breath.

He lifted shaking hands to his head; his face was flaming, his hands deadly cold.

Roxanne and David were very firmly in his mind. Yes, he must see to them. But first he had to somehow absorb this sickening blow, this horrible development of losing Julia.

He was still bewildered and shocked, but he thought he understood the situation. He could follow Julia's thinking—just. Of course he could. But she was wrong!

Wasn't she?

Barnabas wound his arms tightly about his midsection. With tears on his cheeks, he pressed his eyes shut and examined his conscience.

Did he want Roxanne? Oh, yes, yes! But not the way Julia thought he did; it was as simple as that.

Did he want Julia? Yes! He could no longer imagine living without her. She was vital to his survival. At one time, that phrase had meant his survival as a creature of the dark—he needed her to guard his sleep, to try her cures on him, to inform him in the evening what had happened during the daylight hours he was forced to shun. But now! Now it was her love he craved. He had thought very carefully before giving his engagement ring to Julia, for she had loved him unswervingly, unstintingly, for a long time. He had recognized in himself a burgeoning desire to share his life with her. He had let the feelings grow on their own until he was certain. 

It was not as though he had forgotten the other women he had loved. That would never happen. But Roxanne—that affair had been the worst. To begin with, he had loved her from the first second he saw her trapped in forced sleep in Stokes' cottage. And the moment she'd opened her eyes, she had loved him in return.

He had lost her violently. First, they had been swept apart by a fire that decimated the secret room which had been his accessway into parallel time. Later, when he'd found her yet again in a different setting, in a different age, in 1840, she had been a different person—but still Roxanne. And she had, once again, looked upon him and loved him.

And he hadn't been able to stand it. At the time himself a vampire, Barnabas had led her into that dark life, purposely led her into death—killed her—saw her rise from the grave, only to have her destroyed by her mourning brother. Randall had forced her away from her sanctuary grave as the sun rose, by holding up the holy cross that Roxanne could no longer endure to look upon.

Barnabas had found her again and again, and lost her repeatedly, just as he had Josette.

But if a man's first love could be called unforgettably powerful, there was also something primal, devastating, about his last.

He held himself tightly and rocked in the cool air of the woods. He tried to think back and analyze exactly how he'd felt about Roxanne then, before he had fallen in love with Julia, and how his feelings differed now. How could he make it clear to Julia that her interpretation of all she had witnessed this morning was wrong? His urgency, his weeping, his begging Julia to bring Roxanne to life again—what woman wouldn't have translated his behavior as backsliding, a willing return to a love affair that he had never really relinquished? Of course Julia would think that the evidence of his passion for this girl blotted herself out. Yet, still he felt a little injured that Julia had refused to hear him.

Well, whether he caught Julia at the Old House or had to follow her all the way to Windcliff, he was going to articulate everything for her and explain all of it.

Barnabas bowed his head and prayed as he had done in childhood.

“God,” he whispered, “You know how I feel, and I know, but Julia doesn't understand. Please give me the words to tell her, to clearly illustrate that no matter how she saw me behaving earlier, my feelings for Roxanne are now vitally changed from what they were before. Help me illuminate this for Julia. Help me to speak the truth to her so that she will understand it and come back to me, for it is she whom I love! Please, God. … Thank You. In Christ's holy name. Amen.”

At Collinwood, in the room where they'd discovered her, as Elliot watched, Roxanne Drew slowly opened her eyes.

Chapter Text

**********************************************************
Now, rend her cloth and smash her treadle
And cut that throat she used to wheedle.
DAMN the day she drew her needle,
And sewed the lunatic yarn!
**********************************************************

“Good morning, young woman,” Elliot said blandly as the red-haired girl blinked dreamily at the ceiling. “Do you care to tell me how you got into this house?”

Roger hurried into the room, still clasping Hallie to him. “Elliot, we need you in the other room. Willie Loomis has apparently come under the madness of the poisonous afghan—we know now, definitively, that that blasted afghan is the source of the contagion—and I'm afraid he's done some violence.”

“What?” Elliot asked in a harsh voice. He quickly rose from the chair he had brought alongside Roxanne's couch. His eyes fell upon Hallie.

“No, no,” Roger answered quickly, reading his friend's thoughts. “Willie hasn't hurt Hallie, but I'm afraid he's a bit too much for Veronika to handle. She's trying to corral him down the stairs and it's not working. Buzz is also helping, but I believe it will take the four of us. Veronika's medical bag is downstairs, otherwise she would have—”

“Tranquilizer dart, yes, I see!” observed Elliot, straightening his pants as he stood. “Well! Let's take him. What violence has he done?”

Roger's voice lowered with unease. “I'm afraid he's—well, he tossed Harry Johnson into the dumbwaiter and used the cables to send it off somewhere. So now that's two of them missing! Oh, God, what are we going to do? Where is my son?”

“Wait,” Hallie gasped.

“Roger, get yourself firmly in hand. Let us take care of Mr. Loomis and then—then—” Elliot glanced in perplexity at the beautiful young woman who continued to study the ceiling.

Roger started. “Yes, you're right, I must help Veronika!” he whirled and left the room.

“Uncle Elliot! Listen, I think—” Hallie began. Elliot drew her to his side.

“Not now, child,” he said. “We've got to get Willie Loomis to the hospital. Steer clear, understand? Hang back with Mrs. Stoddard until the ambulance comes and we get him inside.”

“But Uncle Elliot,” Hallie persisted. But he wasn't listening.

For the third time in two days, an ambulance stood before the doors of Collinwood. A combative but laughing Willie Loomis was persuaded onto a stretcher. A grim-looking Veronika Liska climbed into the ambulance after him. As they drove off, Roger stalked back into Collinwood, his fists clenching his hair on both sides of his head. “Elliot,” he gritted, “We deduce that my son took that dumbwaiter ride—and Hallie saw Johnson get thrown into it—but what about Barnabas and Julia? Could they possibly have, oh, ridden the damned thing to wherever it goes, and be trapped out there as well?” Roger wiped his eyes. “Listen. I'm going up there and getting into that bedeviled dumbwaiter carriage and see where I end up! I must find David. I can't bear it any longer, not knowing what has happened to him.”

Elliot held out his hand, anguished for his friend.

“Roger, I can imagine how you are feeling. If Hallie were lost somewhere, I'd be panicked. But please don't go into the dumbwaiter. Come with me to the Old House and see whether Barnabas and Julia are there; perhaps some new theory or some lead caused them to dash off and leave us. I doubt that they would have gone off in the dumbwaiter together, or one after the other, without telling anyone or leaving a note. They must be pursuing an idea.”

“Well,” Roger exclaimed, covering his eyes with his hand, “I know how each of them feels about David, but let me tell you, Elliot, I am going to want an explanation for their absence.”

Elliot looked down at the floor. “I don't think anyone should mention to Mrs. Johnson what was done to her son,” he advised. Roger threw up his hands.

“Another tragedy in the making! Where is Johnson? I'm going to ask Buzz Hackett to please help us by getting into that dumbwaiter and going in search of David—and Harry! I don't care what he says! That's all there is to it.”

The men were silent a moment. Roger went to the tall brandy cabinet against the wall and clinked glassware as he poured. Then, both of them looked up at the same time, sensing a third person near.

The woman they had left blinking at the ceiling in the east wing now stood in her flowing blue sleeveless nightdress, looking from one to the other of them.

“Good God,” muttered Roger, quickly turning pink, “ah, miss, would you like to come in and sit down? … Great astounding God,” Roger wavered, trying not to notice the firm, jutting breasts of his scantily-clad guest. He put his brandy glass down again with a clatter. “Elliot, help me.”

Elliot strode toward the straight, silent figure. “Come in; welcome. You're safe here. Can you tell us who you are and how you got into this house?”

“Would you like a brandy?” Roger blurted, approaching with a glass.

The woman calmly studied him, then stared down into the glass. She slowly, slowly took it in both hands and seemed to study its depths. Then she thoughtfully turned her face away from it. Stepping cautiously into the room, she approached Elliot and handed him the glass with care. She then walked to the couch and sat, elaborately languid.

“Good heavens,” Roger muttered. “Veronika's not here but where on earth is Julia when one needs her? Elliot, is this girl damaged in some way?”

“I doubt it,” Elliot uttered, smiling at Roxanne, who met his eyes pensively.

“Well, why won't she speak? Why is she—dressed like that? If–” Roger suddenly jerked—”If Buzz Hackett is at the bottom of this, why, I'll—I'll tear him limb from limb! Master chef or no!”

Hallie came around the corner into the drawing room and started when she saw Roxanne.

“Come in, child,” her uncle told her. “Now that Mr. Loomis has been packed off to the Emergency Room, why don't you tell me what it was you were trying to say earlier?”

Hallie pressed her hands together. “Well—you won't understand me, but I was thinking of—games.”

“Games,” repeated Elliot, as Roger lifted his head and stared at her in surprise.

Hallie looked at him and gulped. “Yes. Well. You see—you see, Buzz is here, and now this lady,” she said, gesturing toward Roxanne. “And we are missing David and—and Harry. So now I think—it's our turn. I think we can go over now.”

There was a moment of silence.

Roger shook his head at the floor.

Elliot motioned kindly to his niece. “Go on, child. I don't quite understand yet.”

“You see,” resumed Hallie, “It's like—maybe it is like Red Rover. Do you know that game? Where you send people back and forth. And—well, David went first, then Buzz came. Then Harry and this lady seemed to almost cross at the same time. Maybe. … I don't know. But it seems to me,” Hallie stressed, ready to sink into the carpet with embarrassment and the urgency she felt to get her point across, “that now it's our turn to go. We went first; we started it. One of us can go into the dumbwaiter now and try to get David back. Because we're two for two. We have two of theirs, they have two of ours—do you—understand what I mean?” she finished tremulously. 

The men were quiet. Then Elliot grunted.

“You might have something there,” he admitted. “She’s talking about the balance of the universe, in a way. Or these two universes—ours, and the one on the other side of the dumbwaiter.” He smiled at Hallie, and she felt a great gust of pride that her uncle had heard her and understood her.

“Hallie, do you think that if we sent someone over now, that someone could successfully retrieve David?”

“Well, I think this,” Hallie mused. “Buzz Hackett is here only for a while. He can’t go back into the dumbwaiter until it’s the right time for him to go. He can’t just decide to leave. He told me that time is running out here for him and that soon he will leave.”

Roger stirred. “That’s right,” he affirmed. “Buzz mentioned the same thing to me—that he has got to leave the way he came, and that he is here only for a proscribed period of time. Does that mean that, on the other side, David can’t return to us until his time over there is served, as well? Oh, my God. I won’t accept that. Let’s get up there right now and see if anything else has happened.”

Roger hurried to the doorway, but was met by Buzz Hackett himself. Buzz held in his hands a long board game, which he rattled at Hallie.

“My game!” Hallie cried. It was the Mystery Date boxed board game. She took it from Buzz and grasped it joyfully.

“Yeah, I was just up there, and damn if the thing wasn’t sitting in the middle of the dumbwaiter, you know?” Buzz removed his dark glasses and poked them on top of his head, surveying the group. “It’s been a mad scene and all that, but it’s time for me to blow.”

“What?” Roger blurted. He put a hand on Buzz’s arm. “Buzz, how do you know this? Do you think it’s the same for—my son? Can he come home?” Roger looked from Buzz to Elliot with a hopeful expression.

Buzz told him, “I don’t know your kid, daddy-o, but if I was you, I’d get right upstairs again and keep my eye on the dumbwaiter. Because I don’t know how to put it, but something’s gonna happen.”

Roger rushed out of the room, making for the stairs. Elliot blinked at Buzz and then followed Roger.

Feeling refreshed and peaceful since he had prayed, Barnabas shifted on the fallen log and looked about him. It was a pretty place. The sloughing of the boughs overhead in the faint breeze relieved him both with its sound and the gentle touch of cool air on his cheeks. He studied the sky; an expanse of lightest blue was being pushed out of sight as darkening clouds gathered. Going to rain again, he thought. He allowed his eyes to travel over the fresh, grassy reach of his surroundings. He was quite alone, though he thought he had seen something moving. Ah, yes! Through those trees over there—

He realized that it was Julia. Julia, slowly walking in the woods, coming towards him. He was sure that she could see him seated here. The wind ruffled her hair. It’s getting long, Barnabas thought. She looks romantic when she grows her hair long and lets it curl.

Julia approached, her hands in the pockets of her smock. She smiled at him and shrugged as she got closer. When they were near enough to speak, she looked about her, then directed her eyes to him.

“Barnabas,” Julia began, “I owe you an apology. The simple fact of the matter is that I saw what I saw, but I never let you try to explain. I know you wanted to.

“I’ve loved you such a long time and wanted you so much, my darling, that I was angry to think everything was going away—the happiness I’ve had, the way I’ve felt in the two months since we’ve been engaged. I don’t know whether I can make you feel what it was like. I thought I’d die. I’m an independent mature woman, a doctor. But I thought I’d die.”

She came to sit with him on the fallen log, smoothing out her skirt. Barnabas settled his arm about her.

“But enough of that,” she continued.  “You know my feelings without my having to list them. Go ahead and say anything you want to say—whatever you wanted to explain. If you still want to.”

“Julia, I do,” Barnabas murmured thoughtfully. “When I went through the dumbwaiter and saw Roxanne there, I couldn’t help it. I had to. You would have, Elliot would have, oh, any of us would have taken her. Knowing her history at least from parallel time and what was being done to her, I guess anyone would have intervened. I would have tried to intervene no matter who it was lying trapped on the exam table while Angelique squeezed out their life force.

“I think it became slightly mixed up with David—with the threat to him, and to hear those two men planning to capture him and use him. The moment I saw Roxanne, I knew I’d give my life to save her. Gladly. The urge was overpowering—it knocked me right over. I knew that I’d fight to the death to save her. And David—I’d fight to the death to save him. Well, we knew that already.

“The thing we didn’t know, or I didn’t know, was the force of what I was feeling now for Roxanne. It’s the strongest force I’ve ever encountered in my life.”

Julia was silent, looking down at her hands. Barnabas paused.

“Try to hear me, love. It is all clear to me now, but it wasn't so very clear when it was actually taking place. The emotions that took me over had nothing to do with romance or sex. They concerned instead—oh, righteousness, horror, outrage and pity. It was Roxanne there, but it could have been David; it could have been David—but it was Roxanne.

“Carrying her in my arms I felt—rather like God, I imagine. I was righting a wrong. I was rescuing an innocent from hell.

“Maybe it is because I never had a child,” Barnabas mused. “Why these feelings should suddenly strike now, I don’t know. How can I explain this to you? I wasn’t overwhelmed by Roxanne as a rediscovered love-interest, but—as—someone to nurture. To preserve. Like David, like Hallie. Like Amy. Every romantic and sexual yearning was stripped right out of it and I don’t know why. What I was feeling, sexual passion wouldn't come close to.

“Have you never felt it, Julia, with a niece or nephew, or a young patient—or any of the children here at Collinwood—when they come to you with full confidence that you will fix what’s wrong? Perhaps that's what it was. Since I have known David, I suppose that I have yearned for a child without even realizing it.

“In time, if you feel as I do, maybe we can find a young person to help raise. Or get involved with local at-risk youth, somehow. Or maybe we could adopt a child.

 “Perhaps it is because I’m a middle-aged man now that my feeling for Roxanne is altered. What I feel for her, I think I recognize as the passion one would bear for one’s child. I looked on her body, but it didn’t arouse me. I wept and finally stole her—because the thing was just an abomination. Or perhaps I don’t want Roxanne as a lover, because there is another woman who already has my heart.

 “Another thing. When I first saw Roxanne, I thought she would open her eyes and love me instantly, just as happened last time. But she won’t, because everything is different. I haven’t stood over her adoring her while she was unconscious, talking to her despite her sleep, as I did in parallel time. This time I just took her as far from Angelique Stokes as I could. And now, this time, when Roxanne wakes, and finally speaks, even if it is only one word, we can let her go on her way. The Angelique of parallel time will be vanquished, dead, and Roxanne will no longer be under threat.”

Barnabas shifted and studied Julia with sober eyes. “Does some of this make sense? I love Roxanne, but not like that. No longer like that. I don't want her to take your place. Julia, you are part of me; I've shared your bed and your love, and it is you that I want. Roxanne is a part of me no longer.”

He turned to her fully and took her into his embrace. Julia stroked his cheek.

“I think I understand, Barnabas,” she assured him. “I believe you. Let's go back to Collinwood and finish this. Let's find David, and see if Roxanne is able to speak yet. The others must need us and don't know where we are.”

He agreed. But first he held her against him for a long, long time.

Buzz Hackett and Elliot Stokes reached the east wing dumbwaiter room together and found Roger there ahead of them. Hallie followed.

Roger whirled to Buzz. “You think something is going to happen? When? What?”

Buzz looked pale and sick. “Just about any time now. I don't feel so well. Time's just about up and I'm gonna have to be leaving, too. Soon as the dumbwaiter gets up here.”

“What?” Roger cried. “Buzz, is my son coming back?”

In reply, Buzz merely pointed to the dumbwaiter.

The floor trembled slightly beneath them. There was a fast ticking sound coming from the dumbwaiter shaft as the compartment sailed along the shaft toward them. The cables jangled and danced.

“Oh, my God,” said Roger, pacing about, clutching his hair. Then he went to the dumbwaiter door and bent his head with attention. The compartment was coming at a fast pace. The speeded-up ticking was accompanied by a hissing sound from within the shaft.

The compartment crashed into place behind the heavy door.

Roger was at it in an instant.

“David!” he cried, wrenching open the hatch.

The light in the room was sufficient for them to get a confused view into the dumbwaiter carriage.

Two forms crouched within, one gripping the other. The whites of their eyes were in strange, stark relief to their faces, which, impossibly, were streaked red. Both figures lifted their eyes to Roger. Both pairs of eyes were brown.

“Father!” screamed the smaller figure. David Collins thrashed and scrambled his way out of the dumbwaiter compartment and fell into his father's arms.

“Father! I got him, I got him! They're after us!” David cried.

Roger gripped his son's head and strongly pulled it back so that he could gaze into David's face, which was streaked with tears and gore, his shirt spattered with bloodstains.

“What, David, oh God! Are you hurt? What happened?” Roger shouted, not knowing whether to examine David for wounds or lift him entirely into his arms.

“It's okay, David, you got him,” Harry Johnson called shakily from the compartment. Elliot Stokes rushed forward to help Harry out of the chamber. Harry, too, was splashed with blood. Harry wiped his mouth with his sleeve as Elliot helped him to stand upright.

“Got who? What happened, Johnson?” Elliot asked.

David, his hair all on end, turned to Elliot.

“Please do something to stop the dumbwaiter so that they can't use it to come after us,” he panted. “Those men—there are two men and they wanted—they wanted to kidnap me, or something.”

“That's right,” Harry confirmed. “When I got there, there were these two guys roughing up David, and David was shouting. I didn't know what was going on.”

“Let's get out of here,” Roger gasped. “Let's get to the bathroom or the kitchen at least so that we can wash off this blood and see if you're cut! Did they have a knife, a gun? What is that in your hand, David?”

David's fingers were clutched relentlessly around a long, slim object.

“I protected us with this,” he gasped. “I hit him and hit him but he wouldn't let go, wouldn't take his hand away so we could close the door—”

“What? Slow down.”

“Roger,” Elliot hastily interjected, “I suggest that we disable the dumbwaiter for the present, by sticking a big piece of furniture half in and half out, so that it can't be used without our knowledge. This loveseat, or davenport, what have you. The dumbwaiter won't be able to go up or down with that wedged into it. Help me get this in there. Then we'll take these young men downstairs and get them fed and treated, and hear the story.”

Roger and Elliot hefted the loveseat and approached the compartment.

“Wait,” Harry told them, turning back to the dumbwaiter. He leaned in, looked about, and stiffened. Then he reached inside and brought something out in his hand.

It was small, oblong, and spilling blood.

“You really fixed him, David,” Harry declared, his face now stark white under the streaks of blood.

David groaned, then turned away and retched.

In Harry's trembling hand was the severed joint of someone's finger.

Chapter Text

Barnabas and Julia had taken their way back to Collinwood, determined now to rescue David, only to find him already home.

For a while, the drawing room was bedlam. Hallie wept, Elliot shouted advice, Roger was torn between leaping for joy and raving for vengeance. Their nightgowned guest was silent and, one might hope, entertained. Maggie rushed to David and held him. Elizabeth, in a moment of disorientation, flew past Julia Hoffman to place a call to Dr. Fleischmann, a doctor who hadn't attended Collinwood since the 1940s.

Finally, David and Harry were sent upstairs to wash up and get changed. Julia told them sternly to return to the drawing room immediately so that she could examine them. Mrs. Johnson was alerted to bestir herself and make some hard-boiled eggs and her famous boiled toast for the returned travelers.

Though both insisted that they were unhurt, Julia carefully examined David while the others questioned Harry. Then, when David was declared sound, except for a bruised cheek and bruises on his shoulders and arms, he changed places with Harry, who was deemed fit save for some bruised ribs. Harry couldn't remember how that had happened.

“I remember what happened to me, though,” David told them. “I got in the dumbwaiter that night to take a ride. I figured it would take me to the kitchen, but I ended up outside, right in the middle of the night, and I was at Collinwood but everything was wrong. There was a cottage where there shouldn't be one. I was stupid and went to investigate and I saw two men arguing. I snuck around behind them and followed them around. They had a big fight and were acting like they hated each other. I thought I was hidden pretty well, but the younger one must have seen me. He grabbed me but I got away from him. I climbed a tree and spent most of a day there, not coming down til nighttime. I was so hungry! All I had with me was my flashlight and the—screwdriver.” David went pale again.

He told of being cat-called, taunted, and stalked through the woods. At one point, the elder of the men had decided to try to lure David with food, leaving a dish of baked chicken by the front door of the cottage and then skulking half out of sight in the doorway to catch him if he came forward, but David had resisted.

“I didn't dare go near the dumbwaiter,” David explained. “One time it got really quiet. It was the middle of the night again. I threw a rock at the dumbwaiter as an experiment and—the minute the rock hit, both men came out of nowhere, trying to find me, thinking that I was right there. That scared me to death.

“Finally, I came down out of the tree. I was trying to get my courage up to approach the dumbwaiter and try to get in, but I didn't feel brave enough. I just couldn't make myself do it. Then I heard the noise of the dumbwaiter descending, and that decided me. I saw the carriage come down into view, and I just ran for it. It bumped to a stop and the door opened, and I didn't know who was in there; then I saw that it was Harry. He was shocked to see me. Before I could yell at him to let me in, those guys grabbed me. They meant business.”

“They were going to carry him off,” Harry supplied, taking up the story. “Those guys were dead serious, and furious. I yelled and tried to grab David, and one of them socked me. They pulled David right off the ground, but I fell halfway out of the dumbwaiter and grabbed his ankles, and I wouldn't let go, and they wouldn't let go, and we were like this big human chain that was struggling around and going nowhere.

“We finally managed to fall back into the dumbwaiter. I was in the back and had David around the waist, and David was hitting at one of the men who wouldn't let us close the dumbwaiter door and get it going—he kept blocking it with his hand. We couldn't leave, and I tell you, those guys were wild. I kicked the younger one right in the face and that stunned him. He just sat on the ground like he couldn't get his senses back. But the first guy, the big old guy, just wouldn't let up blocking the door and trying to grab David. Then David took out the screwdriver and started to hit the guy's hands. We screamed and yelled, but the guy wouldn't back off.

“David,” Harry interrupted himself, turning to the teen, “I don't think it was your fault that he lost part of his finger. It must have happened when we were slamming the dumbwaiter door over and over again. That was his fault, not yours.”

Holding tight to his father, David still looked sick. “I'm sorry,” he whispered. “I never meant to do that. And now I'm really scared, because if we thought those guys were mad at us before, now they're going to be even angrier, and—” He swallowed, turning his eyes to Roger. “Father, can we do something to shut down the dumbwaiter forever?”

“I still don't understand this,” Roger cried. “We have to call the sheriff at once and tell him that there is a pair of murderous hooligans marauding around the grounds of Collinwood! We'll protect you, David. We'll have those two jailed and tried as kidnappers and attempted murderers!”

At this point, Barnabas and Julia intervened. Recommending that David go off to eat dinner with Hallie and Maggie and spend time in the comfort of their company, and that Harry go and rest, they took Roger aside. Elliot joined the discussion. Roger found it pretty hard to believe that there was a time warp within his very own walls like some personal Bermuda Triangle, but there it was. If Roger could comprehend Buzz Hackett and his visit from a Collinsport of 1967, he was going to have to accept the idea of thugs from parallel time as well.

“Good Lord—before we forget—we’ve got to get a pair of rubber gloves,” Julia gasped, “and grab that godforsaken afghan before it disappears again!”

“Hey, listen,” called Buzz Hackett from behind them. “Can you come up and let me use the dumbwaiter to go back where I came from? Time for me to blow, man. I'm sure of it.”

Elliot looked at him. “We can do that, yes,” he affirmed. “Roger, go take dinner with young David and reassure him that all will be well. Barnabas and Julia and I can go and oversee Mr. Hackett's departure and then place the davenport back into the dumbwaiter again so that it can't be used. First a quick stop in the kitchen for a pair of rubber gloves.”

“Yeah, okay,” Buzz Hackett agreed, turning to leave. Then he came back and held out a hand to Roger. Roger clasped Buzz's hand in both his own, and shook it.

“Thank you,” Roger whispered, “for a phenomenal breakfast. I wish you well, Buzz.”

Buzz grinned tiredly. “Yeah. Thanks, daddy-o! It hasn't been too bad. Keep at cruising altitude and all that, you know? And I really hope you find a babe, right? Babes can do wonders for a guy's life.”

Roger turned red. “I believe I've found one,” he said, “and you're right. They can do wonders.”

“If that's the way out,” someone else observed in a low voice, “I'd like to go as well.”

Julia turned and then gasped, her hands flying to her cheeks. Barnabas' jaw dropped.

“Barnabas!” Julia cried. She rushed forward and clasped Roxanne Drew by the upper arms. “She spoke! Oh, Barnabas, she's free! The Angelique of parallel time is dead! Roxanne's free!”

Chapter Text

“Harry,” commented Roger Collins, clasping Harry's hand, “I want to thank you for helping David. Is there any way I can reward you, anything I can give you to illustrate my thanks?”

Harry Johnson hesitated. “Well,” he said, “you know, Cary Olivo offered me sort of the same thing. You see—I'm going to be training in culinary arts with Coterie, and I'll need a kitchen to work in. And I was thinking of asking Mrs. Stoddard if I could work here—cook here on the new stove. My mother,” Harry pointed out, grimacing, “my mother knows hospital corners on bedsheets and she can clean a room, but God help us—she can't cook. That's why I had to have my bowel resection. The doctors told me that I nearly died from my mother’s cooking. So, I'm bound and determined to learn how to cook, and cook really well, you know? Like—become a professional chef.” Harry blushed with pride. “So, I wonder, may I cook here at Collinwood as I learn? Uh, you might know that I'm dating Tish Lemon, whose uncle owns Coterie. I've told Tish and her family that I'm really interested in—”

“You can cook?” Roger blurted. “You can? Can you, truly?”

“Oh, hey, I’m a pretty fair chef so far. I've had to learn a little in self-defense,” Harry explained. “My mother's cooking, well, it nearly wiped me out. Mrs. Stoddard knows, but don't tell my mother; she has no idea. Ma never studied to be a domestic, anyway. That was never her idea of what she wanted to do with her life.”

“What did your mother want to be?” Roger asked, intrigued.

“Oh, ma always spoke about wanting to be an accountant,” Harry confided.

“An accountant!” echoed Roger.

“Yes,” confirmed Harry. “But I believe that, deep down, she has always wanted to be—a taxidermist,” Harry smiled. “Of course, I don't think that that calling has helped her cooking any.”

Roger blanched.

“Sure you won't come along? There's room for two in there.” Buzz Hackett touched Hallie Stokes on the cheek as they stood in the dumbwaiter room.

Hallie smiled. “I can't,” she said. “Not now. You take care of yourself over there and have a good trip, and—don't forget me.”

“Jellybean,” Buzz vowed with a grin, “I sure won't.”

He hesitated, then quickly kissed her cheek.

“Have a happy life,” he faltered.

Then Hallie found the courage to step forward and give him a hug.

“You are certain that it will be safe?” Barnabas asked.

Roxanne Drew nodded.

“I'm not entirely sure that I grasp all of what has happened,” she murmured to Barnabas and Julia, “but I know I was asleep and that I couldn't waken. I was trapped. I don't know how much time passed. I'm just glad that it's over and that I can return to Claude again.”

Roxanne bent her head and made to slip into the dumbwaiter; then she stopped short. She slowly turned back to Barnabas and Julia.

“Why can't I just say what I feel?” she mused aloud, looking from one to the other of them. “I feel like you took care of me,” she told Julia, “and that you—” she nodded to Barnabas, “rescued me. And that you did more. That you wept over me.” Roxanne colored in embarrassment and the pink flush of her cheeks heightened the beauty of her face and the glimmer of her eyes. “I feel that I owe the two of you so much.

“And—” she stepped close to Barnabas. There was a faint puckering of her brow. They faced one another for a moment, silently.

“You have such a romantic face,” Roxanne murmured. “It is as though you are some strange Galahad, from another time and another place, and that you and I have met before. Only, we haven't. I would have remembered you.”

Coloring deeply, Roxanne took a demure step backwards.

“Well. Thank you both for helping me. I wish I could convey my feelings a little better, but perhaps I've said enough.”

She bent her head once more to the dumbwaiter, then again came away from it. Smiling, she reached for Barnabas' hand. He gave it.

She pressed it softly to her cheek.

“Dr. Hoffman,” Roxanne whispered, “take care of this one. He's something extraordinary.”

After both Buzz and Roxanne had departed for their separate worlds in the dumbwaiter, Hallie noted a curled piece of paper on the floor. She went and picked it up. She read it, and gasped, then chortled.

“Oh, I don't believe it,” she cried, showing the note to Barnabas, Julia and Elliot. The two men were just then in the act of lifting the davenport into the dumbwaiter where it would sit, half in and half out of the carriage, so that it could not be pressed into service by anyone, in this timeline or any other. She waited until the men had staggered back from their task.

“It's the other half of the note David and I had, I think! Where's the first half? Oh, here it is—if—yes, look, they do fit together. Oh, good grief. Here is what the note read in its entirety.”

Cross this threshold, which is a passage to a world unknown but long deserved, though
it appear only a dumbwaiter fashioned by the fallible hands of man. It is, under
heaven, the gateway to all that you desire. Deposit your dreams and hopes behind
this little door and you will be afforded that for which your soul has clamored. God
speed your journey, Sarai. You know how and where to reach us if you need. Our
prayers go with you, that you will long celebrate your freedom from cursed slavery in
the new land of Canada, among new friends. Write to us when you have that new life!
     --- Quentin and Lena Collins, your friends, 16 September 1863

“David was right!” Hallie cried. “Oh my gosh. Collinwood was helping slaves escape during the Civil War!”

Chapter Text

In the dreamy sunshine, the sun falling sweetly upon her shoulders, Angelique saw the small, ludicrous procession approaching. 

She sat on the fallen log in the sunlit clearing. She tried to make out who was in the group approaching her. Three figures, toting something aloft. 

Angelique gathered her thin gauze wrap about her shoulders and shifted, frowning at the people as they neared. She was languid and bored. She couldn't imagine why Barnabas would allow himself to look so ridiculous, because it was surely Barnabas in procession with—it looked like Elliot Stokes—and possibly Julia Hoffman—how boring. Were they carrying a snow-shovel? But what a preposterous way to proceed, toting a shovel upright before them like a banner. 

She stood up, weary and sick, and faced them. And she waited until they were near enough to her before she spoke. 

“What on earth,” she asked in an exasperation of curiosity, “are you all doing?”

The three gave her somber looks, but did not pause in their march. 

“Over here,” Elliot directed. “A bit further. We can burn it and bury it.”

“Careful,” Julia breathed.

Utterly intrigued, Angelique drew her light wrap more closely about her and trailed after them. 

“What are you doing,” she insisted from behind them, “going shoveling? Or is this some sort of monstrous wedding procession? Or are you going to charge at a windmill? Do you know just how comical you look?

“Elliot Stokes,” she demanded angrily as nobody answered her, “do me the courtesy to acknowledge my presence and tell me what in the world you people are doing.”

The group paused. Then Elliot, in the forefront, with the light shovel uplifted, turned to her. 

She nearly laughed. He was gripping the shovel by its handle and pole, and holding it before him, slightly lifted, the scoop of the shovel standing up like a flag. Within the scoop of the shovel rested a bundle. Did he think he was a Crusader, marching with the pennant of his king?

“Angelique, stay back,” he blared. “Don't come near. It's dangerous.”

This unenlightening information only angered her, and she strode up to them. 

As she came close, Barnabas protectively took the shovel away from Elliot. Angelique laughed. 

“You all look so stupid,” she informed the group. She noticed Julia Hoffman's eyes going cold as they regarded her, and realized anew just how much she detested the underfed, stunted doctor. “Tell me at once what you are doing,” she demanded, “before I expire from boredom.”

“Angelique,” Barnabas said. But he didn't say anything else.

“Angelique,” called Elliot, “my dear. Stay away, this is dangerous. This afghan is infected with some sort of poison. It has made more than one person at Collinwood very, very sick. Nobody can touch it without falling ill. We are going to burn it to ashes.”

“That's insane,” retorted Angelique, but his words had struck a chord deep within her. She stood unmoving, not daring to come any closer to them. Elliot noticed that the faint blush she had had on her cheeks was fading. She looked so very pale and fragile, and very, very white about the face. 

Then, surprising them all, her voice lowered an octave.

“That afghan,” she choked. “Where did you find that? Where did you get—that afghan?”

She took a step backwards.

Elliot opened his lips to explain but Barnabas was quicker. 

“Oh, do you happen to know what it is?” he asked harshly, stepping toward her with the shovel brandished, the black and multicolored afghan hanging over the shovel’s blade. “Do you recognize it, Angelique? Is it possible that you are responsible for this afghan? Did you create this horror?”

Angelique stumbled away from him, covering her lips with her gauze wrap. She halfheartedly waved one hand at him in dismissal and turned away. But Barnabas came closer with the shovel.

“Angelique!” he shouted, for the first time certain that he saw the answer to the riddle. “Angelique! Did you do this? Are you the author of this horror? Why is it that you retreat so quickly before this afghan?”

“Barnabas, stop!” Elliot roared.

Angelique continued helplessly backing away from Barnabas, more and more quickly, and then her heels slipped in the grass and she fell over onto her back. 

Sprawled in the grass, Angelique let out a long, electrifying scream.

“Elliot Stokes!” she shrieked. “Keep him away! Take it away! Don't TOUCH me with that!”

As the group watched in astonishment, Angelique threw herself on her stomach and began vigorously crawling away from them as fast as she could, panting and gasping.

“So, you ARE to blame for this!” Barnabas yelled, bringing the shovel with the infected afghan in it closer to her. “You fear it! How would you like it to touch you and make YOU sick? Oh, I should have guessed from the very start that you were the one causing all this mayhem!”

“Barnabas!” Elliot bellowed, rushing up to grab Barnabas by the shoulder. “Stop! Leave her be!”

Angelique reached the fallen log and frantically grabbed it, hauling at it and scrambling to her feet. She turned on them like an animal at bay in a last, mad attempt to fend off attack from bigger creatures. The look in her eyes made Julia gasp in fear.

“Take that away!” Angelique screamed, her hands coming up in claws to her cheeks, her eyes enormous. “Get that thing AWAY from me, oh Elliot, make them take it AWAY, get it away, oh I beg you!”

She burst into tears.

“Barnabas!” Julia cried. “Barnabas, don't! Please take the shovel away! Oh, you're making her crazy!”

“Why?” Barnabas yelled, tears of rage starting in his eyes as he stalked toward Angelique. “What is it, what did you do? Why did you make this poisonous afghan?”

"You were supposed to—oh!" Angelique shrieked. She covered her face with one arm, and threw out the other arm in a desperate move to fend him off. "Oh! I forgot all about that afghan, I cursed it ages and ages ago! I cast a spell on it! The afghan was for you, you were to receive it from me! When your hands touched it, you would ..." she trailed off. 

“Make him take it away, or you will be sorry!” she shouted.

“Angelique,” Elliot soothed, “there is no need to fear. I won't let—”

“I'm pregnant,” Angelique snarled. “I'm carrying your child, Elliot. That's why I've been so unrelentingly ill, vomiting every day! Two months pregnant. That's why—oh, keep that thing away from me or else the child—it will make the child—it will destroy the child!” She collapsed into weeping, covering her face. 

Barnabas and Julia stood as if made of stone. 

Elliot Stokes put one hand to his chest. 

“My child?” he muttered, incredulous, transported. “You—are carrying our child?”

“What!?” Julia cried, her hands to her cheeks. “Angelique, oh my God, Elliot!”

The four remained in the clearing, regarding one another in the June sunshine.