Dark Shadows: Wolf Moon Rising

by Lara Parker

  “Oh, David, go away!” Her eyes blazed.

  He grabbed her hand and felt relief at having hold of her rather than chasing her shadow. His heart seemed about to burst. There was a sharp pain in his chest when he tried to breathe, but he held on to her, and he looked for the green automobile parked in front of the entrance in the long line of elegant cars that all together resembled an exotic museum of outdated vehicles.

  At that moment, the girl in the silver dress appeared under the portico with a tall man, someone he knew.

  “Look! It’s Quentin!” David cried with enormous relief. Maybe it had all been some kind of crazy pageant.

  “Who?”

  “It’s my cousin, Quentin. Come on!” Running over the lawn with Jackie’s hand in his, David shouted, “Quentin, wait!”

  They headed for the car but stopped because Quentin was already unfastening the convertible top and pressing it back. The girl sang out, “Oh, marvelous, Jordon’s brought the Doozie round!” Flushed with excitement, she sprang behind the wheel and started the engine as Quentin leapt over the passenger door and slid in beside her. He caught her up in an embrace and kissed her deeply, his arm about her slim waist and her willowy body arched against him.

  “How can it be Quentin?” cried Jackie. “He looks the same—” But she gasped as she grabbed David’s arm and caught his eye. “David! It’s the portrait. He never aged!”

  “I know, but … he’ll help us, won’t he?” David said, and called, “Quentin…?”

  Jackie said, “Shhhh,” and pulled him back into the shadows where they could watch but not be seen.

  Quentin and the girl were embracing in the front seat of the car, and it seemed rude to interrupt them. Quentin slipped his hand beneath the strap down the girl’s naked back while he kissed her neck and her breast beneath the thin fabric. Breathlessly, the girl said, “Have you ever kissed anyone the way you kiss me?” and Quentin murmured something into her curly crop of yellow hair while her white hands clawed his shoulders.

  “You are like me,” he said huskily, “thoroughly wicked. When I saw you in there entertaining a whole roomful of men, I was driven mad with jealousy.” She laughed and pressed her body into his.

  David looked over at Jackie. She was captivated. He started to speak again, “Quentin—,” but Jackie quickly placed a hand over his mouth, still watching the lovers with intense fascination.

  “We can’t make love here,” Quentin whispered, “let’s go for a drive,” and she nodded with a devilish smile. David and Jackie watched in amazement as the girl threw the car in gear, backed up in a quick reverse, and sped off down the road with a roar and a screech of gravel, like outlaws chased by a posse.

  “They stole the car,” said David, dumbfounded.

  Jackie giggled. “I think it must belong to her.” She grinned at him, her eyes wild. “So, there’s nothing you can do now. We have to stay!”

  “Jackie, please talk to me. What do you think is going on? It’s like we’re walking around in a movie or something.”

  Jackie laughed. “Silly. Haven’t you figured it out? We went back in time. It’s the twenties!”

  “But how did we do that?”

  Jackie shrugged. “In that old-fashioned car.”

  David shook his head. It was too hard to believe. “But why?”

  “Because we were searching for Quentin’s portrait.”

  David thought a moment. “That man Blair said something about going back in time through a séance. To the year 1929…”

  “That must be where we are.”

  “Do you think the painting is here?”

  “I don’t know … maybe…” She looked around her. “There are spirits wandering around Collinwood, and we have disturbed them. And there’s something we need to find out! Something about these buildings, or your family, or…”

  David turned to look at the facade of the Great House, the house where he had lived his whole life and was to inherit: Collinwood. The tower room where he had spent his childhood rose above him, the gray stones smooth and gleaming, and he could see the window from where he used to look out at the sea.

  “But what if we’re stuck here?”

  She laughed. “Oh, David, don’t worry. We just have to follow the clues.”

  “And if Quentin brings the car back, I guess we should stay close to it.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure the car will take us home.”

  “Let’s go back inside,” he said. “Maybe we can find something familiar, a secret door or something.”

  But Jackie had already disappeared through the front entrance.

  When he found her, she was in the library—a room the family rarely used—sitting at a desk with a woman who, from her colorful dress, appeared to be a gypsy. Strange, he thought, until he realized she might be part of the entertainment at the party. When Jackie saw him, her face lit up with an impish smile. “Come see,” she said. “I’m having my fortune told.”

  The gypsy looked up at him, her gaze so intense it gave him a chill. He hesitated and a shudder of foreboding passed through him. “She can read the future,” whispered Jackie. “We should ask her about the portrait.”

  The gypsy was bathed in the amber light of a desk lamp, and her many beads and amulets glittered like metal rainbows. She was swarthy and handsome, with sharp features and copper eyes set very deep under arched brows. In the lamp’s glow the angular planes of her face formed and reformed themselves as though she were made of liquid bronze. Some of her dark hair was gathered into a turban of indigo silk shot through with gold threads, but black curls fell about her face. She wore gold bangles on her wrists, and gold hoops hung from her ears.

  “Sit down, young man,” she said in a husky voice that almost seemed familiar and he wondered whether he had met her somewhere before. “My name is Magda.”

  Looking around the library, David was conscious of the massive walls of books that seemed to be falling in on him, their red and brown leather bindings oppressive. He realized that he had spent very little time in that room. It was his father’s retreat, and he wondered at the luster on the leather spines, the gold embossing so bright. The books he remembered were faded and dusty.

  He had a vague memory of a secret door Roger had shown to him when he was a boy behind Dante’s Inferno beside a large family edition of the Holy Bible. Impulsively, he walked over and, finding the slender red book beside the Bible, he pressed on it, hard, feeling a faint click. The wall shifted with a creaking sound and, to his astonishment, slid open slowly, releasing a blast of cold air and revealing a hidden corridor. The gypsy was watching him with an amused smile on her face.

  “I see you know this place,” she said.

  He nodded. “I think I used to live here,” he said, and then laughed. But leaning inside the passageway, he could see it was lined with dozens and dozens of bottles of whiskey in rows that stretched as far as he could see in the dim light. However did those end up there? Shaking his head in confusion, he pressed the book and closed the portal again, admiring the clever way the wall folded up and hid the opening behind the silent volumes.

  The room grew darker as if a candle had been extinguished and the fragrance of vanilla and cloves rose to his nostrils. Magda’s eyes were shadowed but eager as she motioned to him to sit down beside Jackie.

  “You are together, no?” she asked, and she nodded at Jackie, all the time keeping her piercing gaze focused on David as if drawing him into her circle of light. He could hear voices outside the door of others waiting for her services, and he felt uncomfortable under her gaze, but he could tell Jackie was intrigued.

  “We want to know,” Jackie said breathlessly, “about the meaning of— of a lost painting.”

  There was a spark in the gypsy’s eyes and she shifted in her chair. “What kind of painting can this be?” she asked. Her voice was throaty and her accent thick. Hungarian, perhaps.

  “It’s of a man wearing a uniform.”

  She frowned. “How
is it lost?”

  David chimed in. “It was left in the basement when a house was being restored and then—and then, we think it ended up in a graveyard.”

  “I see.” Magda turned her gaze to Jackie. “And whose portrait is it painted there?”

  “His name is Quentin,” said David, answering for her. “Quentin Collins. He’s a member of my family.”

  The gypsy woman caught her breath. “Quen-tin Col-lins?” She drew the name out slowly as if savoring each syllable. “Your family?” Her black eyes gleamed. Then she drew her hand across her forehead and lowered her head. The bangles on her wrist tinkled softly, and a musky odor rose off her. “And this painting is missing, you say? Hopelessly lost, or only misplaced?”

  “We don’t know,” said David, covering. “It may only be damaged.”

  Magda’s eyes darted from Jackie’s face to David’s and back again. “I will look for you,” she said, and then she was all business.

  Her crystal ball, which was large and opaque, rested on the table in front of her. She lifted her hands above the globe, and her body began to tremble. Her lips moved silently, and she peered deeply into the sphere cupping her hands around it, her breath misting the glass. Even though Jackie was mesmerized, David found the performance bizarre.

  The woman closed her eyes and fell into a trance. Her breath grew shallow and whistled between her lips, and her shoulders hunched as she hummed what David thought must be an incantation. He began to feel warm, and embarrassed for the gypsy whose methods were so obviously a sham.

  He leaned over to Jackie. “Let’s go.”

  “Wait.” She put a hand on his arm. “Do you see it?” Jackie asked softly.

  But the woman merely droned on, her lips fluttering in her dark face, and finally David was able to make out the words. “A curse,” she muttered, “a beastly curse. A curse that is revealed when the moon is full.” David and Jackie exchanged glances.

  “We were right,” Jackie whispered.

  Then the trembling abated, and the gypsy’s trance seemed to come to an end. With some rocking and touching her fingers to her forehead, she slowly regained her composure. David looked at her in amazement. What had she seen?

  “What did you mean by a curse?” he asked. But the gypsy turned indifferent and pushed the crystal ball to the side.

  “Never mind, children,” she said in a dismissive tone, dusting off the top of the desk with her hand. She leaned into them both in a conspiratorial manner and David could see the dark yellow on her teeth from smoking strong tobacco. “You are only beginning your life’s journey. And you must forgive me because I cannot waste my time looking for lost paintings.”

  Magda rose abruptly from her chair and turned to a colorful sack on the settee. She wore a long full skirt of many panels of various colors and textures. A deep flounce at the bottom was trimmed with a final border of dust. “Let us turn to the tarot,” she said with a hint of weariness. “These symbols will guide you from this point on.” And she took out a deck of brightly colored cards and returned to the desk.

  “Oh, my mother does the tarot,” said Jackie.

  The gypsy eyed her with disdain. “Does she really?”

  With a practiced flick of one hand, she spread the cards facedown on the scarlet cloth, forming a fan. “Choose,” she said. “Concentrate and choose. But first, a few coins?” And she held out an open palm. David realized she was asking for money and he had none, even though, in pretense, he dug into his pocket for change.

  “Please, David,” said Jackie. “Don’t you have anything?”

  Luckily he found a folded dollar bill in his shirt, and he handed it to the gypsy whose face dissolved into a greedy grin. But she frowned as if it were unfamiliar. “Now you may each choose two cards and turn them over.”

  Jackie reached her hand out over the deck and then withdrew it self-consciously. She looked over at David and said, “You go first.”

  David felt restless again. The couple might have returned from their drive, and he and Jackie were wasting a chance to find the car by staying with this crazy fortune-teller. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Jackie.

  But Magda reached out and took his arm. “Choose,” she said.

  The cards were old, their edges frayed, and they seemed to emanate a subtle power, a whisper of secrets, as he ruffled them, selected a couple, and turned them over. The pictures meant nothing to him but Magda’s face lit up. She smiled and pointed to a card with a young man in a flowered jerkin. “Perfect,” she said in a slightly nasal voice that for one absurd moment reminded him of Dr. Hoffman. Her bracelets tinkled as she picked up the card. “This is a good card for you.”

  “Why is he wearing a dress?”

  “This is the Jester,” she said, “sometimes called the Fool, in colorful motley clothes, a pack tied to a staff, a small dog, and … a precipice!”

  “Yeah, I see the cliff.” David shrugged and grinned at Jackie. “I guess I am a fool,” he said. “I’m the one who got us lost.”

  “Pay attention, young man, and you might learn something,” the gypsy said sharply, and David felt he had been chastised. “With all his worldly goods in his pack, the Fool travels he knows not where. So filled with visions and questions, he does not see he is about to fall from the precipice high above the water. Do you think he is afraid?”

  “I don’t know,” said David, staring hard at the image.

  “Aha, the Chariot,” the gypsy said, taking up another of David’s cards. “It is a powerful prince, riding beneath a starry canopy. He sits in a swift carriage, and it is pulled by Sphinxes, one black and one white, defining the two sides of his nature, the conscious and the unconscious.”

  “Are Sphinxes like Phoenixes?” David said sarcastically.

  “The card suggests a trip of some nature, usually by car, over land and water, leaving his kingdom behind to perhaps drive through the gates of hell where Inanna descended. As you can see it is a lonely card and evokes the myth of Phaëthon, who stole his father’s chariot of the sun—”

  “Hey, wait a minute!’” cried David, jerking up out of his chair. “Where did all that come from?”

  “I told you, she sees things,” whispered Jackie.

  “It’s some kind of trick.” David became more restless as he watched the gypsy shuffle the cards again.

  She turned to Jackie. “And now, young lady, what have you here?” Jackie’s hands were shaking, and David could tell she was beginning to question her choice because she pulled out two cards and put them back. Then at last she laid out her two, sat back, and bit her thumbnail.

  “It’s only a game,” said David. But Jackie’s face was clouded, and her lips were pressed together.

  “Ah, the Lovers,” said the gypsy, glancing at the two of them. “An angel with scarlet wings and hair aflame hovers over a boy and a girl standing—naked and vulnerable.” And she traced the image with the yellowed nail of her index finger, as Jackie studied the card with David looking over her shoulder, his hand on her arm. “This card goes with the Fool,” said the gypsy, smiling at David. “Do you see how the trees bear fruit and flowers? Do you think this is their exile from the Garden?”

  Jackie nodded, her eyes wide. “I— I think so.”

  “A temptation of the heart. Listen carefully, young lady. One partner is chosen and another rejected.”

  “How can I choose between two if there is only one?” Jackie said, and David studied her face even though she did not look at him.

  “Whatever the choice,” said Magda, tapping the card, “it must not be made lightly.”

  It was all too solemn, and again David felt the walls of the library were closing in, as if the leather volumes were nearer than before. The gypsy’s fawning manner annoyed him. He knew a fortune-teller preyed on gullibility and superstition, and that whatever she said could be said to anyone who would take it to heart.

  But Magda was already holding Jackie’s second card in her hand and shaking her head, mumbling
, “Great difficulty. A hard road ahead for the Lovers.”

  “Why? What is it?” said Jackie, a stricken look in her eyes, for she had already seen the image of the furry-legged and bearded satyr who had goat horns and the wings of a bat. “The Devil!” she whispered.

  “Yes,” breathed the gypsy, “it is the Devil. A challenging card meaning many things when paired with the Lovers, because you see they are matching.”

  David and Jackie both stared in dismay at the two cards side by side as Magda spoke in a cautionary tone. “Both the Angel and the Devil fly above the innocent couple. Both spirits are winged. But, whereas in the Lovers we see innocence and hope, in the Devil’s card the two Lovers are transformed into creatures of the underworld.”

  Jackie became agitated. “They have chains around their necks, and they have sprouted horns! What does it mean?” she asked.

  Magda sighed and her dark eyes were glittering when she spoke in a harsh tone that was almost reproachful.

  “Why do you ask me? In your heart you must already know.” She tapped the Devil’s picture with her yellow fingernail. “What do bat’s wings mean to you?”

  Jackie’s eyes filled with tears. “Bat’s wings? I— I don’t know. His face … his face is evil, his ears pointed like a wolf’s.” She sucked in her breath. “He’s so ugly.”

  The gypsy leaned in, eager to connect with Jackie, who was shivering now. Again David tugged at her to leave, but she was so caught up in the reading that she simply shook her head and remained transfixed, her face a mixture of fascination and fear.

  “But do you see the chains are loose?” Magda said gently. “Escape is possible.” And she patted Jackie’s hand.

  David had stopped listening because he sensed Jackie’s distress. Now he was feeling dizzy, the incense was overpowering, and the gypsy’s face was composed of cubist shapes that glowed in the lamplight.

  When he looked up from the card, Jackie had vanished.

  Thanking the gypsy, he stood quickly and turned to go, hoping to catch Jackie in the hallway.

  “Young man?” Magda was calling him back. “One more word…”