Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

by Lara Parker

  Barnabas heard Antoinette draw in her breath and he tried to prepare himself for the worst, what must be a confrontation if she were to betray him. Stifling groans of pain, he drew himself up two of the stairs, but he was too weak to move further. How, if need be, could he summon the power to extinguish the life of this nosy interloper?

  But what she said was rather innocent. “Where would you perform this experiment, as you call it?”

  “Oh, I have established a laboratory at Collinwood. Elizabeth Stoddard had granted me use of the old laundry, called Rose Cottage, I believe. It is a small room that is both efficient and private. I have set up tables with my instruments and lights and I am prepared to restrain the vampire, when I have captured him, with metal cuffs attached to a gurney. Then I will conduct some tests.”

  Barnabas was aghast. This was a fiend of a different sort, someone to be reckoned with—and removed. And yet he did not even know who he was or what he looked like. He summoned Antoinette again, but she ignored him.

  “What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

  “Why, you and your daughter are enticing victims. If the vampire were to discover you here, alone, with no one to protect you, you might be vulnerable, don’t you think? What I propose is that I remain here, in some upstairs room—I believe there are several—”

  She blurted out, “You want to move in? In order to defend me from an attack?”

  “Oh, you would not be in danger during the day, and that is when I would be searching the woods for his lair. On the other hand, during the night, my presence would certainly discourage his coming around.”

  This was too much. Barnabas could not imagine a worse idea. Having this horrid man in the same house? He tried climbing farther up the stairs, but he was too weak. Nothing to do but alter his form. Humiliating, but necessary. He would be small and vulnerable, but at least he would get a good look at his opponent. Thinking he might even attack if he got the chance, he shrank his body into a small furry animal and spread his cape into wings. Then he soared into the room.

  But his transformation did not cure him. He was no more agile as a bat than he had been as a wounded vampire. Crashing into the wall, he clutched the door to the hallway and hung upside down on the frame. Fluttering helplessly, he managed to fly toward the light.

  “What was that?” Blair suddenly cried out. “Did you hear that strange flapping? I think something flew into this room!”

  Antoinette looked around. “It sounded like a bird, but that would be weird this time of night—”

  “There it is! Blair cried, “It’s hanging from the chandelier. It’s— I think it’s a bat!” Blair ran to the window and threw open the casement, then grabbed the poker from beside the fire and began to wave it about.

  Barnabas could have sworn it was Nicholas Blair. The resemblance was startling—the flat face, the widow’s peak, the same cold nasal voice when Blair snarled, “Get away, you filthy creature!” He managed to land a clumsy blow that knocked Barnabas to the floor. Hunching over, his face contorted, Blair raised a booted foot to stomp the life out of what he thought was little more than an oversized mole.

  Panicked, Barnabas flapped onto Blair’s leg. Then, while the foolish man hollered in disgust, he dove for Blair’s eyes, brushing his face with his wings, before he flung himself out the window into the dark.

  Sweating and shaking from his efforts, Blair closed the casement, replaced the poker, and tried to resume his conversation with Antoinette. However, Barnabas had seen enough. Fluttering back through the basement window, he flew to the stairs and hovered there, waiting. Then, growing impatient, he reached for Antoinette with his mind, calling to her, demanding that she break away and come to him. When she finally spoke, her voice was faltering.

  “This has all been fascinating,” she said. “However, I am not feeling well. Perhaps you could come back another time.” The weakness in her tone was obvious, but she seemed to maintain her poise as she led him to the door. Thankfully, it closed with a resounding shudder, and he heard her going up the stairs to her bedroom.

  She did not return to him that night. Perhaps she was embarrassed by her angry outburst, or she might be considering Blair’s offer. He wondered whether she thought the conversation had been overheard and did not want to discuss it. Whatever her intentions, he now had a new determination. As soon as he had recovered, he must track down this Blair and destroy him.

  Dragging his feet, he made his way back to the table where Antoinette had been reading the tarot. The cards littered the floor, all but one, left faceup where she had been sitting. It was the last card she had drawn. Had it been meant for her or for him, he wondered?

  It was a picture of a grinning skeleton in a full suit of armor, riding a white horse and carrying a banner. At the top of the card was written XIII, and at the bottom—DEATH.

  No wonder she had begged again for her freedom.

  With great effort, he returned to his casket and managed to pull himself inside. His mind was a blur of conflicting conjecture. The outer walls of his sanctuary had been breached. He was in grave danger. And what must he do to save himself from his true adversary whose ire would be unleashed again the next full moon?

  That night Barnabas recognized the power of a curse very much like his own. Until Quentin had become his rival for Antoinette’s affection, they had been friends, and now, as he fell into a stupor and fought a loss of consciousness, Barnabas knew he must track him down once he had recovered, reassure him that the painting was safe. He told himself that even though Quentin had meant to destroy him, it had not been Quentin but a monster that had attacked him. And that same monster would come for him again. Quentin in his beastly form was capable of killing anyone in the family, and every full moon a werewolf would threaten all of Collinsport. If Quentin’s curse had returned, then he, Barnabas, was responsible. The portrait of the werewolf kept him human. But Barnabas had ripped it in half and left it in the cemetery.

  Suddenly frantic, Barnabas struggled to sit up but immediately he became so dizzy he collapsed back in his casket. There was no way he could make his way to the graveyard, and once again, as had happened hourly since he had been attacked, he thought of Julia. How reckless he had been to chain her in her coffin. She alone possessed the power to cure him, and he needed her now more than ever.

  All through the day as he slept, his brain was in turmoil. What had he done? What would happen when the full moon came again? And what irony—just as he had been prepared to relinquish all human emotions and to embrace his vampire’s nature, he was encumbered by decisions made when he had been human, decisions that now required moral resolve. He must find a way to save Quentin in order to save those he loved, and also to save himself.

  But did he truly wish salvation? Perhaps the werewolf was meant to write the final act of his miserable life. He did not desire goodness, only freedom from guilt. He was sick of the world, and a second werewolf’s attack could be the culmination of his fate, the last scene in the tragedy. He had wandered the stage too long.

  In the dusk before evening, Barnabas received another visitor. A girl stood in the doorway of the cellar, her silhouette against the darkening sky and an eerie reflection in her gray eyes. She had come before, in the twilight just before his awakening, and she had lifted the lid of his coffin and looked down on him. Her hair was long and dark and her eyes were pale blue, huge and questioning. He longed to speak to her but she always vanished before he woke. At times she murmured words he failed to understand, or he was not certain, but he thought she spoke his name before she touched his face where her tears had fallen.

  Slowly he came to realize who she was, and he began to look forward to her visits, if only to sense her presence while he lay in a state of dreaming. She was Antoinette’s young daughter, Jacqueline, the taciturn girl with the mysterious nature. It was she who had found him in the snow. Did she come to see if he were still alive?

  Eleven

  “How would you get an ol
d car started, one that had been sitting for a long time?” David had discovered Willie working on his dilapidated truck back behind the kitchen, and this seemed to present a rare opportunity.

  “What you want to know for?” said Willie, already suspicious.

  “Oh, no reason, I just wish I knew about stuff like that. My father never taught me anything—not even how to change a tire.”

  “Naaah, Mr. Roger ain’t a mechanic, that’s for sure.”

  “But you know a lot about cars, don’t you, Willie?”

  “You’re still too young to be driving a car. Bad enough you tearing around on that old snowmobile.”

  David was determined to win Willie over. “I know, but you seem to keep this truck running.”

  “Piece of junk.”

  “I’ve always thought you were so smart in that way, Willie.”

  Willie stretched his back to relieve the ache. “It’s a lot of work.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “Pullin’ out the spark plugs and regappin’ ’em.”

  “Hmmm … What does that do?” David thought he knew, but he pretended to be ignorant.

  “Makes the engine fire right up!”

  “Is that the carburetor?”

  “Naaaah, that’s the battery. This here’s the carburetor.”

  “Say you found a truck like yours sitting out in a field and it had been left there for a long time—”

  “All the gas in the tank, that would be evaporated. You’d also be lucky if the water left in the radiator, or the rain, didn’t rust out the engine.”

  “But could you start it up?”

  He had been stung by Jackie’s words “Too bad you can’t get it running,” as if he were incapable of such a thing, a boy with no skills. She had tied her favor to his wrist. All he could do now was daydream of taking her riding in the Duesenberg, their own private chariot, down the road in the dark, the powerful engine humming like the lowest pipes on a church organ.

  Willie was under the hood tinkering with the carburetor, an odorous mist rising off his thick jacket. “I dunno about nothing like that,” he said.

  David was cold, standing with his hands in his pockets, watching Willie work. He wondered whether Willie even knew about the old car in the stables, and just in case, he was afraid to say too much. Willie stopped to take a breath and, rising up, wiped his hands on an oily rag, which reeked of gasoline, before he muttered, “You ain’t seen Mr. Barnabas around, have you?”

  David was caught off guard, and he didn’t know how to answer. Willie had always been Barnabas’s only servant. He had often seen Willie running errands for Barnabas and Julia, but he had never stopped to think about it.

  “No, I guess I haven’t,” he said, hoping it didn’t sound like a lie. “Why?”

  “Well, it just seems like I seen him and Miss Julia most every day and lately they seem to be gone off somewhere.”

  “Maybe they went on a vacation.”

  Willie shook his head. “I don’t think Mr. Barnabas would leave without telling me. There’s certain things I take care of for him.”

  “Really? Such as what?”

  “Well, I can’t really say. Private matters you wouldn’t be interested in.”

  David hesitated, then said, “I have always thought that Barnabas was an enigma.”

  “Was a what?”

  “You know, a mystery. Strange. Different. Don’t you agree?”

  Willie selected a wrench from a cluttered toolbox and descended beneath the hood once more. His voice was muffled. “I wouldn’t know nothin’ about that.”

  “Especially lately. We never seem to see him during the day, and his car, for instance. He never seems to drive it anymore.”

  “Now you stay away from that car, Mr. David. It ain’t your business—”

  “Oh, come on, Willie. I just mean— Okay, tell me the truth. Do you really think Barnabas is like the rest of us in this family? As you just said, you do special things for him. You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?”

  Willie grunted from the effort of removing something. “I guess about as long as he’s been here at Collinwood.”

  “So what do you really think of him?”

  “Well, if you want my opinion, the whole family is different, as you say. You, fer instance, askin’ about lost paintings and old cars.”

  “But Barnabas most of all, right?”

  Willie came out from under the hood again, and he stood up and looked David in the eye.

  “It seems to me, that you and I both know something is up and neither of us wants to say what it is.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, for instance, I know that Dr. Blair is planning on having one of them séances with Mr. Quentin.”

  “Really? When?”

  “I think tonight. I heard them talkin’ about using the library.”

  “And you’re saying you’re like me—you don’t trust him?”

  “I just think it doesn’t look good for Mr. Barnabas. I think he needs to come back and take care of things.”

  “Okay. If I see him, I’ll be sure to tell him.”

  “Yeah, and you know what, Master David. Maybe you’re the one to get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Willie went back under the hood and began to tinker again. David was silent for a moment, thinking about what Willie had just said. He was the one to unearth the Collins secrets. No one else was going to do it.

  “So, give me an answer, Willie. What if you found a truck, left out there for years, what would you do first?”

  Willie’s voice was garbled beneath the hood. “Not much chance of startin’ a car left to rot,” he said, breathing hard. “Everything would be frozen.”

  “Frozen?”

  “With, you know, rust and grime.”

  “But if it wasn’t.”

  Willie lifted back out, a spark plug in his hand. “For sure you’d have a dead battery.”

  “And … how would you replace it?”

  “You’d take off the negative and positive wires with a wrench and be sure you get them back in the right place.”

  David felt a rush of excitement. He reached under the hood. “Those things, right?”

  “Yeah. Then, the cylinders might be frozen ’cause the rings rust and stick to the walls.”

  “Oh, then you couldn’t get it running, right?”

  “Naaah, you could pour some kerosene and oil in there—that’ll break through the rust.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “That should do it.”

  * * *

  Gathering his courage, David stood in the shadowy stable in awe of the beautiful roadster. Its shiny green enamel seemed to vibrate in the sun motes, egging him on. The whitewall tires gleamed. He wondered what the hood ornament represented—a long Art Deco arrow shaped like a modernistic bird, or maybe an angel—as he turned the cap slowly, lifted it, and peered inside with his flashlight, hoping to find the radiator dry. No water at all. He guessed that was good. He brought the hose over and turned on the spigot. Going in, the water made a gurgling sound that changed in timbre as the tank filled. When he screwed the cap back on, he saw the golden eagle emblem underneath that read Duesenberg. He had missed that the first time.

  He had found the red metal gas can next to the snowmobile with at least a gallon of gas inside. The car’s gas cap was pretty obvious, round and chromed and sticking out of the back fender. It popped off as if it were brand-new. The nozzle slipped in, and he poured the gas. As he stood over the car inhaling the fumes, he felt light-headed, but he thought it must be from anticipation. Another guzzling sound as the liquid hit the bottom of the aluminum tank.

  And now the battery. By wheedling and cajoling and complimenting Willie, he had managed to get him to offer a few more instructions concerning this hypothetical abandoned truck. “If it’s older than 1950 or so, you’d need a 6 volt battery,” he said, and “Before you try to start it, you co
uld prime it. Take off the air filter and splash a teaspoon of gas in the carburetor.” At least he did know what a carburetor was. But when he opened the hood cover and took a look at the engine, enameled in shiny emerald green just like the car, with all chrome fittings, he wasn’t sure. As for earlier than 1950, he knew the Bentley was built in 1948. Close enough in age.

  It took him an hour to find the right wrench, rummaging around in the tool shed behind Rose Cottage and turning up nothing until he remembered the Bentley had its own set of tools stored in the middle of the spare. There was a fine wrench just the right size.

  He loosened the clamps on the battery posts and pulled the wires off the terminals. Then he lifted the battery out of its bracket. It was heavier than he had imagined, and, trembling with excitement, he carried it over to the Duesenberg. He stood beside the car with the weight until he realized he had no idea where it went, so he set it down on the floor. And there was another problem. Next to the steering wheel there was a keyhole. He needed the owner’s manual and the key. Where was he going to find either one? It was impossible, and he was done for.

  Until he noticed two fat wires protruding from underneath the front seat. He got down on his knees to look and saw that there was a large empty space beneath. The battery had been removed, but here were the terminals. It took a few tries but he was finally able to slide the new battery under the seat and connect the top bolts.

  He opened the door of the car and eased into the tan leather interior. Trying not to be dazzled by the dials and gauges, he closed his eyes and imagined the key, the battery, the manual drifting through space, swirling in a slow-moving circle, and coming to rest—but where? Manuals were always kept in the glove compartment, but it, too, had a lock, and there was only a small drawer that pulled out and must have been … an ashtray! Sure enough, the drawer was filled with cigarette stubs, hardened to a tobacco mash, the paper browned and crumbling, and he dug around on the off chance that … nothing. He remembered that Jackie had found a dress in the suitcase strapped to the boot, and he climbed back out. The case contained several pieces of clothing, the pleated dress, silk underwear, and shoes, but no key. Then he caught a glimpse of something black on the floor of the backseat. A jacket, perhaps for the driver. Could it be?