At the end of March 1070, Dark Shadows left the universe in which the action had been set up to that point. It spent sixteen weeks in another continuity, which the show insists on calling “Parallel Time.”
The Parallel Time segment has so much good stuff in it that I can’t wish it had been different in any way. But if we could have access both to these eighty episodes as they are and to a version of Dark Shadows streamed from an alternate universe in which the show had a bigger writing staff and a more forgiving production schedule, there are some differences I’d like to see.
After the first two weeks of “Parallel Time,” principal photography began on the feature film House of Dark Shadows. For six weeks after that, most of the actors familiar to longtime viewers were away in Tarrytown, New York while the show kept taping in Manhattan. That had its advantages. Several of those actors had contracts that required them to be cast in a certain number of episodes every month, so that the writing staff had to plan the show out like a jigsaw puzzle. Without them, they were free to feature newer cast members like Elizabeth Eis and Michael Stroka as often as they pleased.
That might have led to a new infusion of life into the show. But in fact, the first two weeks concentrated heavily on the established players, and the less familiar faces were parachuted in abruptly when the old favorites became unavailable. They would disappear as abruptly when the regulars returned to NYC. Worse yet, several characters reappeared for an episode or two after weeks or months unseen and unmentioned. That made the stories so choppy that it was hard to trust that anything would come together in a satisfying resolution.
What is more, they never give us any reason to root for the central relationship between Quentin (David Selby) and Maggie Collins. Quentin is a foul-tempered sourpuss, an unstable man-child whose tantrums are as predictable as they are pointless. Maggie, after initially showing some signs of self-respect, winds up taking his abuse with a dismal meekness. When arch-villainess Angelique tried to break the two of them up, we couldn’t help but notice that she was in fact doing Maggie the biggest possible favor.
Writing my posts about the sixteen weeks of the Parallel Time segment, I found that I kept slipping in bits about how the story might have been shaped differently. Those bits got to be long and distracting. I finally decided that the only way to present them coherently was to write them up in the form of a story bible. I don’t make any great claims for what follows, but I can say that I have found writing it to be a useful exercise for me. Getting all of this out of my system removed an obstacle that was making it hard for me to write my episode commentaries, and I have a much easier time imagining what the writers had to do when they drew up the “flimsies” for the thirteen week cycles on which the show was planned.
Prologue
In the lead-up to Parallel Time, the characters in the original continuity kept going to a room in the long-disused east wing of the great house of Collinwood and finding that there was an invisible barrier in the doorway. They could not pass through the barrier, but they could see and hear what was happening on the other side. It was the room in the other universe where their counterparts were exchanging information about the story that was going on over there. The portrait of the first Mrs Quentin Collins dominated the room, and several of the characters were in the habit of carrying on one-sided conversations with it.
I’d keep that basic format, with a couple of changes. There would be no portrait, because we would be in suspense for the first week of the Parallel Time segment as to who the first Mrs QC was. I’d add a scene where Professor Timothy Eliot Stokes (Thayer David) is investigating the phenomenon and sees his own counterpart, a wizard known as Tim (Thayer David.) This other Stokes has come to the room with his sister Hannah (Paula Laurence) to claim some things that belonged to Stokes’ late daughter, the first Mrs Quentin Collins. They talk about Quentin’s remarriage, and make some obscure remarks about the deceased.
Week One
In the actually existing show, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) crosses over to the other continuity and takes the audience with him. To his disappointment, his curse has followed him and he is still a vampire there. The first people he meets are Carolyn Loomis (Nancy Barrett,) counterpart of his distant cousin and one-time victim Carolyn Collins Stoddard, and her husband, alcoholic novelist Will (John Karlen,) counterpart of his other-times victim Willie Loomis. The Loomises live in the Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Barnabas bites Carolyn, but Will finds out about him, traps him in his coffin, and tries to use him as a source of material for a new book.
The only change I would make to this part would come after Will has trapped Barnabas. In the actually existing show, Carolyn is still in the house, still under Barnabas’ influence, the whole time Will is forcing him to give an oral history. I would have Will send Carolyn off to a sanitarium a hundred miles north of town. After the “Parallel Time” segment ends, the show mentions a psychiatric facility called Stonecrest; I’ll use that name for it.
The changes begin in earnest when we meet the residents of the great house on the estate. The governess at Collinwood is Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott.) In the first two weeks, she has multiple tutoring scenes with her charges, Daniel Collins (David Henesy) and his cousin, Carolyn’s little sister Amy Stoddard (Denise Nickerson.) We learn a great deal about what has been going on around the great house in these scenes. Daniel is angry that his father has been so distant since his mother died six months ago, is even angrier that he remarried while away in Europe to a woman Daniel has never met, and is angriest of all that he is expected to greet this unknown woman as his stepmother. Daniel needles Maggie, accusing her of having disliked his mother. Maggie says in reply that they were friends when they were growing up together in Collinsport, and that his mother insisted she be hired as the governess. Daniel says that neither of those facts contradicts what he saw with his own eyes, that she feared his mother and tried to avoid her whenever possible. She just changes the subject.
Amy is in a friendlier mood, but is worried about her brother Chris (Don Briscoe,) who has just gotten his life back together after a long period of mental illness, only to contract a serious disease. Chris is an artist and lives in the cottage in Collinsport where Maggie grew up. When Amy brings up the fact that she used to live in that cottage, Maggie again changes the subject. Maggie talks about the children’s troubles with Amy and Chris’ mother, Quentin’s sister Elizabeth Collins Stoddard (Joan Bennett.) She is no more interested in talking with Liz about her childhood or her relationship with the first Mrs QC than she is in talking about them with the children. Liz didn’t much like that lady herself, and doesn’t want to talk about Maggie’s childhood, so these topics are easy to avoid with her.
Liz lives in the house as Quentin’s guest, as does their brother Roger (Louis Edmonds.) Liz and Roger still nominally share ownership of the house with Quentin, and large percentages of the stock of Collinsport Enterprises are in their names, but when they last exercised the rights this status theoretically gave them Roger screwed up so badly that they found themselves hopelessly in debt. Quentin was a minor when the crucial decisions were made, so his share of the inheritance was still in trust then. Once he came of age, he had sufficient business acumen to save the family business and keep the house. With the help of an executive staff most of whom worked their way up from blue collar jobs with the business, he has reduced the debts Roger ran up to a manageable level. Now they give the business a shelter against the corporate income tax and a defense against leveraged buyouts, and the paper ownerships Liz and Roger retain give Quentin tax-free channels through which to pay their allowances.
Liz and Roger have many things to quarrel about beyond his past mismanagement of their financial assets. He had some kind of unwholesome attachment to Quentin’s late first wife, and is still hung up on her. He is a magnet to the younger generation, and Liz thinks he is a bad influence on all of them. In particular, Daniel often wonders if his Uncle Roger is his biological father, and Roger does nothing at all to discourage this idea. Quentin loves Daniel, but always had trouble reaching him. Since Daniel’s mother died, the barriers have become almost insurmountable. Liz reproves Roger for making this situation worse than it needs to be. Roger points out that Quentin’s trip to Europe didn’t help, and Liz says that he might have thought it would, since Daniel was so furious every time he saw him in the months between his mother’s death and Quentin’s departure that it seemed plausible he might cool down after some time apart.
Liz’ lawyer, Frank Garner (Conard Fowkes,) meets with her to talk about Chris’ situation. She winds up venting to him about the first Mrs Quentin Collins. We see that Frank shared her aversion to him, in part as an extension of his abhorrence of her father, Stokes. They express a mutual hope that Quentin’s new wife will clear the estate of her predecessor’s memory.
Roger is unhappy with his current position and wants to regain control of the business and the house. To that end, he is scheming with the company’s vice president and chief legal counsel, Tony Peterson (Jerry Lacy.) Quentin trusts Peterson implicitly, seeing him as a faithful Collins family retainer and overlooking his ties to Roger. Peterson tells Roger that their plans will be coming to a head before long, and urges him to spend as much time as possible out of town to keep Quentin from suspecting him. Peterson’s plans involve a shadowy figure named Otis Greene (Abe Vigoda.) Roger is hesitant about doing business with Greene, but Peterson assures him that Greene will stay on his side of the line.
Amy and Chris’ sister Carolyn was close to Roger when she was younger, but Roger can’t stand Will. Carolyn can’t stand him either, but she doesn’t want to be reminded that she has company in her disapprobation of her husband. Liz has decided to pretend that the Loomises are a model couple and forbids anyone to refer to their troubles in her presence. This keeps her from ever having a serious conversation with Carolyn, which suits Carolyn fine.
Unknown to anyone in the great house, kindly doctor Cyrus Longworth (Christopher Pennock) and his assistant and fiancée Sabrina Stuart (Lisa Blake Richards) developed a treatment that put Chris’ mental illness into remission, and his new disease is a side effect of that treatment. Liz absolutely forbids any discussion of Chris’ mental health problems; she is deep in denial about them.
Cyrus and Sabrina are working feverishly to adjust the treatment and save Chris’ life. Chris’ girlfriend, the long-suffering Buffie Harrington (Elizabeth Eis,) is grateful for their efforts, but desperately hopes they will find something new. Under the pressure of circumstances, they have started cutting some ethical corners. Frank is Cyrus’ lawyer, too. He does not know what his client was up to, but does know that he was friendly with the first Mrs Quentin Collins. He advises him to remember the troubles Stokes has had with the law over the years because of his deviations from scientific orthodoxy. Cyrus is offended at the comparison to Stokes. He stiffly replies that unlike Stokes, he is a licensed physician and is without a criminal record. Frank dryly responds that both of those statuses are subject to change at any time.
Quentin’s new wife is the former Angelique Forbes (Lara Parker.) Angelique’s parents were from old Collinsport families, but left the area before she was born. She heard legends about Collinwood in her childhood, and can’t quite believe the place is real. She met Quentin in Paris and married him after a whirlwind romance. She is sweet-tempered but strong willed, naive but quick to learn.
Daniel is quite frosty in his first encounter with his stepmother. Quentin goes up to Daniel’s room to try to warm him up:
QUENTIN: Hey, buddy, why so cold? Give the lady a chance!
DANIEL: What kind of chance?
Q: A chance to let you know how fine she truly is! Look, I want you to understand that. Your opinion matters to me, you know.
D: Why are you so interested in my opinion all of a sudden? The first thing I heard about Angelique was that you had married her.
Q: Well, you’re old enough to understand that- the first I hear about any girlfriend of yours is that it’s all over between you.
D: A couple of afternoons I spent with some girl isn’t the same thing in your life as a new stepmother is in mine.
Q: Well, no, I suppose not. But you know how it is- you see the girl, and you can’t very well take the time to phone home.
D: You wouldn’t have had to phone if you hadn’t gone away so long without me.
(PAUSE)
Q: I wanted you to come with me. You wouldn’t go.
D: I wanted you to be with me. You wouldn’t stay.
Q: Oh, buddy, I wish I could have. But after your mother died, I couldn’t be in this house.
D: After my mother died, I couldn’t leave this house.
(PAUSE)
Q: Come on, let me make it up to you. Let’s go fishing tomorrow morning, just the two of us.
D: I hate fishing.
Q: That’s new. You always loved fishing.
D: I loved the fishing shack. That was my house, my castle. No one could see me there unless I wanted to play with them.
Q (brightening): I used to go there with you! You let me play with you.
D: How many times?
Q: Maybe more times than you remember.
D: Maybe fewer times than you remember.
Q: Well… let’s see… there were… (his voice falls off)… three times.
D: Yes. In all those years.
Q: I couldn’t very well go there if I didn’t know you wanted me. After all, it’s your castle.
D: How would you have known what I wanted from you?
Q: All right, I was hard to reach. I was wrong, a real dummy. So let’s make up for lost time! Let’s go to the fishing shack tomorrow and play the games we played there before!
D: I outgrew those games years ago.
Q: OK, let’s do something else to start over.
D: You’re good at starting over. You can start the same thing over a thousand times, and it will always end the same way.
Q: Come on, buddy! I’m back at Collinwood to stay.
D: I can’t very well stop you. After all, it’s your castle.
Q: Daniel… what do you want?
D: Nothing you can give me.
Angelique soon catches on that Quentin’s first wife was involved in black magic and built a cult around herself. She finds out that the most devoted members of that cult, including sleazy musician Bruno Hess (Michael Stroka,) believe that she will somehow transcend death. For his part, Bruno alternates strangely between a smug assurance that the first Mrs QC’s return from the grave will prove him right and a panicky fear that she will wreak vengeance on him for something he did to her. When we meet other members of the first Mrs QC’s cult, we see that he is deeply out of favor with them. In his tenderest moments, Bruno prays to the first Mrs QC for forgiveness. He promises that if she does forgive him, he will smite her enemies for her.
Angelique is worried about Daniel, who has accepted this belief and expects his mother to return to him. She suspects that he has begun studying black magic, but cannot confirm her suspicions. Quentin’s determination to repair his relationship with his son disposes him to dismiss Angelique’s concerns on this point. He is also very reluctant to talk about his first wife at all, and becomes agitated when Angelique insists on doing so. We do not hear her name, only the title “the first Mrs Collins.”
The first Mrs Collins’ identity is revealed to us at the end of the first week, when we meet her identical twin sister Veronica* Stokes (Alexandra Moltke Isles.) Her late sister’s name was Victoria. Quentin invites Veronica to stay at Collinwood. Housekeeper Mrs Drew (Grayson Hall) has a strange reaction to Veronica which reveals to Angelique and to us that she is one of those who believes Victoria will rise from the dead.
Week Two
Veronica’s presence in the house elicits mixed emotions in Angelique, who wonders why Quentin is so comfortable with Victoria’s identical twin when any other reminder of Victoria upsets him so.
But the person who finds it most upsetting to be around Veronica is Maggie. She pales at the sight of Veronica, and spends the second week in a steadily mounting panic about a secret of hers that Veronica may or may not have come back to expose. Veronica is as uncomfortable around Maggie as Maggie is around her, and Maggie isn’t sure she wants to put any questions to her anyway. She thinks the wisest course of action may just be to give Veronica as much space as possible.
Liz notices that Maggie is nervous around Veronica and is trying to get information about her. She asks if she is going to start asking questions about Dameon Edwards, also. Maggie is shocked to hear that name. Liz says that it is strange, after all, that two people as young and apparently healthy as Victoria and Dameon should have died the way they did. Dameon had a stroke and died a couple months later; shortly after his death, Victoria had a heart attack. Maggie denies knowing anything about that.
Veronica gets along much better with Angelique. Both Angelique and Veronica are bewildered and unhappy that so many people are fleeing just as they arrive. They become friends. After a few days, each is the only person the other feels she can confide in. Angelique and Quentin have some very sweet love scenes and appear to be quite happy together, but there are topics that are off limits with him. In particular, he won’t discuss anything to do with Victoria, and that turns out to make it difficult to talk about the running of the house or the proper approach to raising Daniel or the reason why so many people are avoiding the house these days.
For her part, Veronica keeps thinking she should go, but she and Angelique both see her presence in the house as the only way either of them can get answers to questions they have about Victoria. Veronica explains to Angelique that she and her sister rarely saw each other after they were fourteen, when their parents split up. Victoria stayed in Collinsport with Stokes, while she and their mother moved to New York. The divorce did not become official until a couple of years after that, at which point their mother was running a successful business and wound up paying alimony to Stokes for the rest of her life. Even when they were small, Stokes ignored her and cultivated Victoria, and they shared some kind of secret pastime that was deeply forbidden to Veronica. Angelique asks about the people who expect Victoria to rise from the dead. Veronica nods vigorously and says that her father and sister always claimed to be doing experiments in science, but that from what she could gather their science seemed to be one that overlapped pretty heavily with black magic.
Veronica can’t answer any of Angelique’s questions about Mrs Drew. She became a friend of Stokes’ after Veronica and her mother moved to New York, and never worked for their family. She was employed by some people called Richardson before Victoria brought her to Collinwood.
Frank is a frequent visitor to the house, since Chris’ condition means that Liz has to move money around and she can do that only with documents bearing Quentin’s signature. He gets to know Veronica. At first her resemblance to Victoria repels him, but he gets over that soon enough and they become quite friendly.
Veronica and her father cannot tolerate each other. Maggie notices Stokes nosing around his daughter despite their mutual antipathy, and wonders if he knows something. He takes advantage of her interest to lead her to believe that her only hope is to work with him. He convinces her to give the Collinses her notice, and to follow it up with a letter saying she is leaving town immediately. He then lures her into the back room of his apartment, where he straps her to a table, hooks her up to some mad science equipment, and provokes some kind of reaction in the figure under the blanket on the table next to her.
Week Three
We see that the reanimated figure is Victoria. Stokes explains that Maggie, who is now under a blanket, will have to remain in precisely her current state of debility for Victoria to stay among the living. If she gets either stronger or weaker, Victoria will have to find a person to embrace and thereby drain of their body heat. He promises that he will keep trying to improve the contrivance. She muses about the irony that Maggie should be the one to serve as her “life force.”
Stokes tells Victoria that Veronica is at Collinwood. She muses that it would have been perfect to use her as the “life force.” Then she could simply take her place, and no one would miss her. Stokes is uncomfortable with the idea of doing such a thing to his daughter, even if she is the daughter he never loved. Victoria dismisses his unease as silly sentimentality.
Victoria mentions to Stokes that she suspects she was murdered. She would like to find out who killed her and take revenge on him. Stokes asks if she thinks Quentin may have done it. Puzzled, she asks why he thought of Quentin. “After all, my dear, it is hardly unknown for men to do away with wives who are unfaithful to them.” Victoria laughs out loud at this. If Quentin were the sort of man who killed his wife for taking lovers, she merrily explains, she wouldn’t have survived her wedding night. Well then, says Stokes, perhaps one of the others was frustrated he couldn’t have her all to himself. Still chuckling, she grants the possibility. They change the subject.
People keep telling Veronica they saw her in places where she wasn’t. She doesn’t know how to take that, but it makes her uncomfortable. The experience of discomfort while in the Collinsport area brings her father to mind, and since he won’t leave her alone she wants to do whatever she can to emphasize that she has nothing to do with him. She asks Frank to draw up some papers clarifying that Stokes is under no circumstances to make any decisions on her behalf or to be regarded as her representative or beneficiary in any matter. He says that a will should cover all that, and she hires him to draw one up.
Mrs Drew’s daughter Roxanne (Donna Wandrey,) an aspiring fashion designer, comes to the house to accept Quentin’s commission to design a dress for Angelique. She notices he is distracted. He notices that she notices, and explains that Maggie has been called away, quit her job, and left the children without a governess. Victoria hired Maggie without consulting him in any way, and he is at a loss as to how to start searching for a replacement. He gets a bright idea and offers the job to Roxanne. She says no. She admits she needs a steady job, and then confesses that she has a degree in secondary education. Quentin assures her that she will have plenty of time to continue her work as a designer.
Roxanne tells him that isn’t really the problem. She reminds him that she and Victoria were not friends, and confides that she is leery of working with her mother. Quentin says that he knows all about that, but that the housekeeper and the governess don’t really have to come into all that much contact with one another. She will be reporting to him and to Liz, and they both have a high regard for her. Roxanne says that Liz was a great comfort to her family when her father died, and that they became close in those days. She agrees to take the job.
Cyrus and Sabrina see that Chris’ time is growing short. Cyrus knows of a powerful synthesis that might soup up the medication sufficiently to save Chris, but it has not been approved for use in humans and no ethical chemist will sell it to him. A plea from Buffie prompts Cyrus to ignore Sabrina’s objections and contact an unethical chemist. This shady character is someone he met through Victoria, Horace Gladstone (John Harkins.) Gladstone agrees to sell Cyrus the synthesis, but won’t stop asking questions.
Quentin is busy at the office, where he relies on Peterson and two subordinates who worked their way up from the bottom of the business- his executive secretary, Mrs Malloy (Clarice Blackburn) and cannery manager Jacques-Marie “Jim” Bilodeau (Humbert Allen Astredo.) Other figures in the company, such as the head of the fishing fleet and the chief financial officer, are mentioned but not seen.
Eventually, Victoria and Veronica run into each other. While Victoria interrogates her sister about the prevailing conditions at Collinwood, we cut to Stokes’ back room. We see the figure under the blanket going into convulsions while a pair of arms wearing Stokes’ jacket frantically manipulate the mad science equipment. Victoria grows faint, and Veronica reflexively reaches for her sister. Before either woman knows what is happening, Veronica is an icy corpse and Victoria is fine.
Week Four
While Roxanne is fitting Angelique for her new dress, Angelique asks Roxanne about her mother. Roxanne confirms that they’ve always had an uneasy relationship and that she suspects her mother was involved in some kind of weird doings with Stokes and Victoria. She mentions Bruno and the late Dameon Edwards as others who seem to have been involved in whatever it was they were up to.
Cyrus and Sabrina have a medication that they think may help Chris. They have good results with animal subjects, but can’t be sure it will work on humans. Chris’ condition is deteriorating so rapidly they don’t have time for the usual forms of experimentation. They have been taking blood samples from Bruno; Cyrus overrules Sabrina’s objections, and offers Bruno a lot of money if he will serve as a test subject. He agrees. Sabrina administers the dose, and the results seem to be encouraging.
A tutoring scene with both Daniel and Amy, taped before David Henesy left to play his part in House of Dark Shadows, causes Roxanne to suspect that there is something off about Maggie’s departure.
Mrs Malloy and Bilodeau, who have never forgotten their blue-collar roots, hate the supercilious Roger and suspect he is up to something, but they trust Peterson as much as Quentin does. Unable to imagine that he is involved in the plot, they can’t get a handle on what’s going on.
If the “Parallel Time” segment is a hit, the business story can function as a universal joint allowing them to pivot in whatever direction will do the most to keep it going. You can easily explain why characters become enemies (They’re fighting about money!) or why they become allies (They’re trying to get the money!) You can introduce new characters and give them instant motivations to team up with some people against other people. And you are constantly reminded that the action affects a whole town full of people, of various social classes. Even if you only see the residents of the estate and a handful of people from the office, that reminder can cut way down on the claustrophobia. And if the segment is not a hit, the same thing that makes the business story infinitely expandable makes it instantly collapsible. Even if we saw the cannery and the fishing fleet, the financial instruments and the process of deal-making that are the real sinews of the enterprise are as invisible to us as are the magical elements in any of the supernatural stories. Anything off-screen that the audience does not care about can be hand-waved out of existence with at most a line of dialogue.
Victoria settles in at the great house, masquerading as Veronica. Veronica had helped Angelique battle her feelings of inadequacy in her new position as the second Mrs Quentin Collins. Victoria rapidly undoes all that work.
Frank brings Veronica’s new will to the great house. Impersonating her sister, Victoria bluffs her way through the meeting. She says she has decided the document will no longer be necessary, since she and her father have come to an understanding. Frank says that she seems somehow different than they did when they met previously. She says that shouldn’t surprise him. Her estrangement from her father was such a big part of her personality for so long that it is only natural that the prospect that they might be reconciled will change her. He accepts that this is so and can hardly tell a woman that she shouldn’t be on friendly terms with her father. Still, he is reluctant to accept the idea that someone whom he likes as much as he liked Veronica when they first got to know each other could want to have any connection with a creep like Stokes, a fact he mentions in a telephone conversation with his own father, the senior partner in the form of Garner and Garner.
In an episode taped before Grayson Hall left, Victoria reveals her true identity to Mrs Drew. The news that Victoria killed Veronica shocks her briefly, but within moments they are celebrating her return.
Victoria asks Mrs Drew if Daniel has shown any aptitude for black magic. Mrs Drew doesn’t expect the question. She hems and haws for a moment, then starts talking about Daniel’s other qualities. Victoria could not be less interested. When Mrs Drew mentions that Roger encourages Daniel to suspect that he is his biological father, Victoria laughs incredulously. She says that while Roger did like to let himself into her room on nights when she was alone there, it spoiled it for him when he realized she was awake.
Neither Victoria nor Mrs Drew is at all pleased Roxanne is in the house. Victoria says that Roxanne knows her mother well enough that the two of them will have to keep their distance for a while, and Mrs Drew will have to stick to her official duties. Mrs Drew is crushed to hear this, and tries to come up with some way to get rid of Roxanne. She says that she will never let her connection to Roxanne distract her from her loyalty to Victoria and her great mission. Victoria impatiently says that she knows that. She is not worried Mrs Drew will become sentimental about a mere accident of birth. Rather, she is not ready to do anything that will raise suspicion. She will turn to Hannah for help for the next several weeks. There will be time for Mrs Drew to play her part later. Mrs Drew says that Hannah won’t be able to arrange experiments as efficiently as she could; Victoria says that there won’t be any need for experiments for some time.
Mrs Drew asks if Victoria will be punishing Bruno for his role in the disaster that followed the experiment that killed Dameon Edwards. Victoria says that Bruno will suffer, all right, but that he has his uses between now and his ultimate demise.
Later, Victoria reveals her identity to her Aunt Hannah and enlists her aid in helping to investigate her murder. Hannah mentions Quentin as a possible suspect. Victoria starts laughing, as she had when her father brought up the same idea. When Hannah says that Quentin may have killed her because he thought she was a bad influence on Daniel, she stops laughing and becomes quite testy.
At Chris’ cottage, Amy and Buffie are keeping vigil. Amy asks why Liz always finds reasons to be out of the cottage when Buffie is there and vice versa. It comes out that when Chris and Buffie first got together, she was a chambermaid at Collinwood and he was a mental patient. Buffie tries to explain the situation from Liz’ point of view, that perhaps she thought he wasn’t in a proper condition to choose a girlfriend at all, and she allows that it was awkward for everyone that a servant was dating a member of the family. Amy points out that she and Chris are poor relations, but Buffie says she doesn’t think that makes much difference. She says that she left service at Collinwood and took her job at the Eagle Tavern to relieve the tensions, but that at just that time Chris took a turn for the worse, and Liz just didn’t want to see her. Amy nods, and says that her mother doesn’t like to be reminded of what’s really wrong with Chris.
Cyrus explains to Amy and Buffie that he and Sabrina are about to administer a new kind of medication. They say that they have already explained the procedure to Liz, who is at the grocery store. She asked Cyrus to explain it to them. Amy asks questions about Chris’ mental health problems; Cyrus blurts out that her mother never wanted to talk about those, and Buffie grimaces.
Cyrus and Sabrina give the medication to Chris. It is not effective. They decide they need to reformulate it, with a heavier infusion of the special synthesis.
Week Five
Gladstone comes back with more of the synthesis and more questions. Not only does he want to know what Cyrus and Sabrina are doing with the synthesis, he has seen “Veronica” and has questions about her. He also mentions that he might call on his old friend Stokes while he is in town. When Sabrina tells Cyrus she doesn’t think they ought to be in business with someone like Gladstone, Cyrus feels obligated to pretend he isn’t afraid of him.
Roxanne and Amy are alone in the breakfast room. Roxanne is teaching Amy how to sew and saying that she looks forward to introducing her to the basics of fashion design. Amy brings the conversation around to Maggie. She mentions that she and Daniel were just talking about Maggie, and that nothing they’ve heard since her departure fits with anything she said or did while she was in the house. Roxanne quickly changes the subject back to fashion design, but she takes what Amy said on board.
Roxanne and Mrs Drew appear together in a scene taped before Grayson Hall left for House of Dark Shadows. Roxanne asks her mother questions about Maggie. The answers she gets contradict the facts as Amy reported them and remind Roxanne of her mother’s disturbing relationship with Victoria. Roxanne thinks about the strange reactions her mother has every time Maggie’s name comes up, and is convinced it is urgent she find out just what is going on with her predecessor.
Peterson talks Quentin into putting the deed to Collinwood into the name of the business. This paper sale will allow him to liquidate the less useful of Roger and Liz’ debts, and will leave him with fewer vulnerabilities to a hostile takeover.
Later, Frank brings Quentin Liz’ signed agreement to this transfer. He tells Quentin that he warned Liz that it means that a buyout of Collins Enterprises would mean the loss of their family home, but that she trusts Peterson too much to listen. Quentin says he trusts Peterson just as much, points out that Garner and Garner doesn’t represent him or the business, and reminds Frank that he does not know anything about the company’s financial position. Quentin puts some venom in this response that makes it clear he and Frank have disliked each other for quite some time.
Victoria practices witchcraft. Her first spell is a doozy. She causes Angelique to mistake Bruno for Quentin. Bruno has been openly hostile to Angelique, but when she throws her arms around him and starts kissing him passionately he rises to the occasion. Quentin walks in on them and is furious. Angelique is powerless to explain what came over her, and Bruno sneers at Quentin that it’s just like old times.
Victoria then turns to lesser spells, some meant to make Angelique look ridiculous, others to make Quentin suspect Angelique is practicing black magic. Hannah asks why Victoria has scaled down her spellcasting. She explains that she isn’t ready to break Quentin and Angelique up. If they split now, he will probably wind up looking for someone new. She needs time to get so close to him that he will turn to her when he gives up on the marriage.
Week Six
We see Carolyn at Stonecrest. She is having a session with her psychiatrist, Dr Nakamura (Sho Onodera.) She asks if he thinks she is ready to go home. He says that there is no reason for her to stay at the sanitarium, but he does urge her to continue therapy with another practitioner after she is released.
Nakamura brings up the wounds Carolyn exhibited when she first came to Stonecrest. She had puncture wounds on her neck and she was severely anemic. He asks her if she remembers how she got to be in that condition. She is nervous, and claims that she cannot. He reminds her that she at one time said that she had been attacked by a vampire. Carolyn gives a tinny little laugh and says that she can’t believe he takes that seriously. He says that he takes everything his patients say seriously. He may never have heard of evidence for the existence of vampires, but he certainly hasn’t heard of evidence for anything else that could account for her symptoms, so he’s keeping an open mind. Carolyn can’t tell if Nakamura means what he is saying or if he just has a gift for deadpan comedy.
Nakamura tells her that whatever caused her affliction, she’d better make sure it doesn’t get another bite at her, since she was in very bad shape when she first came to the sanitarium. She sounds absolutely sincere when she says that she is confident that it won’t happen again- whatever it was. Nakamura wonders how she can be so sure.
Will is waiting in Nakamura’s outer office when the session ends. He tells Carolyn that her bill is settled and her things are already in the car. He smiles and Nakamura and shakes his hand.
In the car, Carolyn and Will quarrel. She wants to destroy Barnabas immediately; he wants to keep interrogating him. Will says that he’s already written 60 pages of the most exciting material he’s ever produced, and that he’s starting to think by the time he gets Barnabas’ whole story he will be able to write a whole series of bestsellers, packaged as horror fiction. Confined to the front seat of the car, Will and Carolyn’s anger expresses itself more intensely than it does when they are at liberty to range around their parlor.
The episode ends with Carolyn in the basement. The lid of Barnabas’ coffin is open, and she is holding a stake and mallet. The next day opens in the same situation. Will stops her in the nick of time. He forcibly disarms her and threatens to do far worse unless she leaves the vampire alone.
Angelique tells Cyrus, the family doctor, what happened between her and Bruno. She asks him if he thinks she needs a psychiatrist. He says that he usually recommends a Dr Blum, who is most discreet. She is reluctant to admit she needs that kind of help. He recommends she stay away from Bruno and prescribes a sedative for her to take if she has to be around him for any reason, and says that Dr Blum isn’t anyone to be afraid of.
Victoria arranges for Daniel to find a grimoire in his stepmother’s room. She casts a spell over him that in its turn inclines him to cast spells from the book. They are meant to test his ability to become a sorcerer. If they are successful it will be hard for anyone to deny that there is a witch at Collinwood, and suspicion will fall on Angelique.
Daniel is first driven to attempt a spell when Quentin forbids him to join his Uncle Roger on a trip to Florida (in an episode taped before David Henesy and Louis Edmonds left for House of Dark Shadows.) The spell is supposed to cause Quentin inexplicably to start bleeding. It misfires. Rather than causing Quentin to bleed because of his attitude towards travels with Roger, it causes the bleeder valve in the brakes of Roger’s car to fail. Roger has a wreck. He is not seriously hurt, and no one suspects witchcraft. Victoria is disappointed in Daniel, but she is amused at Roger’s discomfort. His suffering inclines her to laugh almost as much as do his airy assurances to her as “Veronica” that he knew Victoria more intimately than anyone.
Roger spends a lot of time looking for someone to sue. He asks Frank to take his case against whoever might lose a case about the crash. Frank reminds him he severed his ties with Garner and Garner years ago, and asks why he doesn’t stick with his own lawyer. Roger has to admit that his lawyer didn’t think anyone could be shown liable. Frank says he will be guided by that opinion. Roger grumbles that it was only because Frank was so unreasonable about Victoria that he stopped consulting his firm, and that now that she is dead he should stop holding a grudge. Frank assures him that has nothing to do with it, and that he simply will not take Roger’s money to file a hopeless case.
Roxanne is picking up clues that Maggie never left town. She begins to suspect that Maggie is being held prisoner someplace. Because of her mother’s strange attitude, her suspicions center on Stokes and his unholy experiments. Victoria takes note of Roxanne’s investigations, and tries to put a stop to them. She orders Aunt Hannah to help her throw Roxanne off the trail. Hannah manages to sow distrust between Angelique and Roxanne, which slows things down a little.
Gladstone starts to squeeze Cyrus for more money. Chris continues to decline, so he pays. Frank notices the drain on Cyrus’ finances, and asks questions Cyrus doesn’t want to answer. Frank warns him that if he is involved in anything illegal, even if his intentions are of the noblest, he won’t be able to represent him.
Week Seven
Despite Hannah’s efforts, Roxanne makes some progress in her investigation. Victoria compels Daniel to cast his second spell. He is supposed to cause Roxanne to lock herself in a storage space in the long-disused west wing where she will be found sometime after she dies of thirst, Angelique’s locket in her hand. In fact, the spell causes Victoria herself to get stuck in her bedroom for a couple of hours. She is quite displeased, and considers giving up on Daniel.
Mrs Drew tries to discourage Roxanne from looking into what happened to Maggie. In a scene taped before Grayson Hall left for House of Dark Shadows, mother and daughter have a confrontation which reveals much about the difficulties in their relationship. Afterward, Roxanne is more convinced than ever that Maggie has fallen into the clutches of Stokes. Mrs Drew tries to conceal this failure from Victoria, whose wrath she fears.
Victoria casts a spell that makes Angelique keep blurting out Bruno’s name during tender moments with Quentin. Angelique can’t explain this, and tells Quentin she is thinking of seeing a psychiatrist. Exasperated, he says that anyone who thinks of Bruno in connection with anything more pleasant than a bad case of the measles certainly needs to see a psychiatrist. He mentions Dr Blum, and Angelique tells him that’s the name Cyrus mentioned when she told him she thought she might need mental health treatment. Quentin and Cyrus are officially friends, but it irritates him that Cyrus is also friendly with Bruno. He says he’s glad she is taking steps, but he thinks it might be time to get a different family doctor.
Quentin tells Peterson to meet with his personal lawyers and figure out a way to get Bruno thrown out of the cottage on the estate that Victoria deeded to him. Peterson reminds him that they’ve tried that several times, and they keep reporting that the papers are ironclad. Quentin gets angry and demands that they try again, and this time don’t be so gentlemanly about it. He tells Peterson that he isn’t afraid to play rough when he’s representing the company, so he should teach the personal lawyers to take the same attitude with their side of his affairs.
Peterson takes this as an opportunity to involve Greene in Quentin’s life. He hires a firm of lawyers Greene uses to intimidate Bruno. When Quentin’s personal lawyers complain that their proper work is being given to out-of-towners with mob ties, he tells them it’s their own fault for being such a bunch of wimps.
Quentin had offered Bruno $25,000 for the cottage; he had refused, laughing. Greene’s lawyers offered him $15,000 for it; he refused, hesitantly. Greene’s lawyers give way to other associates, led by Greene’s assistant Van (Henry Judd Baker, a.k.a. Judd Henry Baker) and including a barely sane enforcer known as Speedball (James Hall.) These men offer Bruno $500. He accepts, selling the cottage to Greene for that amount. Greene makes a gift of the cottage to Quentin.
Van complains to Greene that Speedball is more trouble than he’s worth. Greene tells Van that when he’s been with the organization longer, he can ask for a higher class of subordinate, but he’s still the new guy and so he’s going to have to make do with the dregs.
Bruno goes to Will and asks him to put him up in the Old House. Will laughs in Bruno’s face and reminds him that they’ve never been friends. Bruno says that they had a friend in common in Victoria. Will says that’s one of the reasons they weren’t on good terms. Bruno says that however Will may feel about him, he can’t afford to have someone who knows as much about him as he does wandering around desperate and homeless. He demands money. Will laughs again and says that Bruno has a lot more to hide than he does. Carolyn enters. She orders Bruno out of the house. Once he is gone, she and Will snipe at each other about Victoria’s role in their past and about Barnabas’ role in their present. Bruno is crouching outside the window of their front parlor, eavesdropping and taking an interest every time they refer to Barnabas.
Bruno goes to his friend Cyrus and asks him to put him up in his apartment. Since Cyrus spends all of his waking hours in his lab anyway, this shouldn’t be much of an inconvenience. Cyrus refuses repeatedly and urges Bruno to leave Collinsport and return to his, admittedly never very promising, career as a musician. Bruno says he has a plan to get a lot of money, but he has to hang around Collinsport to make it work. Cyrus is about to throw Bruno out of his lab when Gladstone lets himself in the door Bruno left unlocked. Desperate to keep the two apart, he gives Bruno a key to his place. Later, we learn that Gladstone and Bruno have known each other for some time.
Cyrus and Sabrina have formulated a new, stronger medication. It has had strange effects on the rabbits, so much so that they cannot interpret them. Chris is approaching his final crisis, and Cyrus thinks they will have to give it a try. He thinks of trying it on Bruno, but Sabrina points out that even it were ethically acceptable to test such a powerful drug on a human subject they couldn’t involve Bruno in anything that is so clearly illegal when it is Bruno’s highest ambition in life to blackmail someone.
Cyrus insists Sabrina give him the trial dose. When she refuses, he says that he will just drink the potion himself. She gives in and administers an injection. To her horror, it transforms him into a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde-like duality.
Week Eight
Amy and Buffie are at Chris’ cottage. She tells Buffie that Roxanne is a more demanding teacher than Maggie was, and that Daniel is getting fed up with her. Neither Quentin nor Liz are impressed by Daniel’s complaints; on the contrary, they are both delighted with the improvement in Amy’s schoolwork and are sure that Daniel will soon shape up and rise to meet Roxanne’s standards. Amy mentions that Daniel won’t read the books Roxanne assigns. Buffie asks if he just doesn’t like to read like he used to. Amy says no, there is an old book he keeps hidden somewhere in his room that she’s caught him reading a few times. He sure likes to study that. Buffie stifles a laugh. Amy is puzzled. Buffie says that Daniel is a teenager now, and sometimes teenage boys like to be by themselves and read things their governesses wouldn’t pick out for them. Amy catches on, and she and Buffie have a good laugh together.
Buffie asks if Daniel still likes Chris. She says sure, he likes him fine. He doesn’t come to the cottage much because he just doesn’t know how to act around someone who is that sick. She says that Chris painted a little picture a while ago that he meant to give to Roxanne as a joke. But he got sick before he could finish it. It is called “Rocks and Rue,” and depicts a rue shrub growing in soil next to some stones. Each of the stones is topped with a little bit of red sunlight in the shape of Roxanne’s hairdo and shaped like her face as seen from one angle or another. The colors of the shrub, together with the stone behind it, suggest Roxanne wearing a green and yellow dress of her own design, one she sold to a stylish lady for a tidy sum. Buffie asks Amy if she thinks seeing that painting and being reminded that Roxanne is a friend of theirs would improve Daniel’s attitude. She says it might. Buffie finds the painting, and sees that a block of ice has fallen through it, apparently from nowhere, destroying it.
We cut back to Daniel’s room at Collinwood, where Victoria looks at the grimoire and sees it open to a page with a spell about causing an enemy’s eyes to fall out of her head. Roxanne enters the room just as Victoria stashes the book in the drawer of Daniel’s desk. Victoria asks if Roxanne has had trouble with her eyes lately. When she says that she hasn’t, Victoria is not entirely able to conceal her displeasure.
Carolyn and Liz have a scene in Chris’ cottage, in which the strains in their relationship become visible. Will has a scene at Collinwood with “Veronica.”
Victoria finds out Angelique has made an appointment with Dr Blum. She does not want her getting help of any kind. At the breakfast table, Angelique is making conversation about an old friend of Carolyn’s who dropped by the estate the evening before, the pretentious Donna Friedlander. She asks “Veronica” if she knows anything about Donna. “Veronica” says that indeed she does. She heard some juicy gossip about Donna and a local motorcycle enthusiast known only as Buzz. With her excellent comic timing, she gets Angelique to giggle pretty heavily at this rather distasteful account. When Angelique asks how she knows the details, “Veronica” blithely says that she heard it from Dr Blum, who as everyone knows blabs everything his patients tell him in their sessions. Angelique rushes to the nearest telephone and cancels her appointment.
Peterson and Greene confer on the details of their scheme. Greene wonders if they should ditch Roger and just put the arm on Quentin, now that he is in their debt for getting rid of Bruno. Peterson tells him Roger will be more pliable. They can use their previous contact with Quentin to keep him from asking any inconvenient questions.
Bilodeau and Mrs Malloy start to get real evidence that something is afoot. Quentin won’t take them seriously at first. They bring up evidence that Greene has been buying up Collinsport Enterprises call notes. He laughs and tells them Greene isn’t as bad as people make him out to be.
In the last episode of week eight, Bilodeau has come up with the evidence he needs to persuade Quentin and stop Roger and Peterson. He is at Collinwood, sitting in the drawing room with “Veronica” while he waits for Quentin and Mrs Malloy to return from a business trip to Boston. “Veronica” mentions that she herself was supposed to be away on an overnight trip, and that she came back early after a last-minute cancellation. Only she and Mrs Drew are in the house.
Roxanne has closed in on Maggie. While Bilodeau is chatting with “Veronica,” Roxanne makes her way to Stokes’ back room. She figures out enough about the equipment to bring Maggie back to life. At Collinwood, Victoria collapses. Bilodeau rushes to her, takes her in his arms, and freezes to death. Before Maggie’s figure emerges from the blanket, Stokes comes home and grabs Roxanne.
Week Nine
We begin with Victoria and Stokes talking in his back room. Roxanne is under the blanket, Maggie is in a daze in the corner; we don’t see her face. We learn that Maggie can no longer be used as the “life force,” but that Roxanne has taken her place. Victoria got out of the house before anyone saw her with Bilodeau. Aside from her fanatical devotee Mrs Drew, no one knows Victoria was at Collinwood that night, and no one will connect her with the mystery of Bilodeau’s icy corpse.
They are confident they will be able to keep Maggie quiet about what happened to her, for reasons which are pointedly left unclear. Roxanne’s absence presents a thornier problem. Victoria shocks her father when she nonchalantly announces she will bring Mrs Drew to the room to view her daughter.
Mrs Drew has no idea what Victoria is going to show her. She is dazzled by the equipment and curious about the body under the blanket. When Victoria reveals Roxanne, she reels in horror. Victoria calmly explains the situation. Forced to decide between her daughter and her mistress, Mrs Drew chooses to support Victoria. She agrees to tell Quentin that Roxanne was called away suddenly, and that Maggie has returned and will soon be available to resume her duties as governess.
Victoria and Mrs Drew hide in Stokes’ back room when they hear a knock at the front door. Stokes answers. It is Detective Desrochers of the Collinsport Sheriff’s office (Philip R. Allen.) Desrochers has questions about Bilodeau’s death. The coroner has ruled that Bilodeau was the victim of a homicide committed by some exotic process. Stokes is known for devising exotic processes, and Desrochers wants to know where he was the evening Bilodeau died. Stokes has an alibi and Desrochers does not know how the crime could have been committed. Desrochers appears to be relaxed when he leaves the apartment, but Stokes, Victoria, and Mrs Drew are all quite uneasy.
Bruno looks over some things that he thought he might be able to present as evidence Quentin murdered Victoria. He’d hoped to blackmail Quentin with it. Among them is a letter Victoria wrote him shortly before she died. He reads it over, and realizes that he had been misreading a key word the whole time. Instead of saying that she had heard Quentin planning to kill her, it says she heard him planning to kiss her. At that, the rest of the stuff becomes meaningless. So he decides to go straight to the police and tell them about Quentin’s use of Greene’s men to scare him into selling the cottage.
Cyrus, in his Hyde form, is off wreaking havoc in the village. In this form, he calls himself “John Yeager.”** Will meets “Yeager” at the Eagle Tavern, where he is a regular and Buffie works as the barmaid. Neither of them recognizes “Yeager” as Cyrus. “Yeager” starts a bar fight; Will exchanges blows with him, and gets much the worse of it.
Sabrina goes to Chris’ cottage and informs Liz, Amy, and Carolyn that Dr Longworth is ill. She advises them to take Chris to the hospital for conventional treatment.
Week Ten
At the hospital, Dr LaFreniere (Ray Stewart) asks Sabrina pointed questions about what exactly she and Cyrus have been giving Chris. She does her best to fabricate answers that will help Chris without getting her and Cyrus arrested.
Cyrus himself is still in the form of Yeager. He returns to the Eagle and gives Buffie a check to cover the damages from the brawl. She notices that it is drawn on Cyrus’ bank account.
Re-Jekyllized, Cyrus agrees with Sabrina that they cannot give the potion to Chris as it is. But neither can they destroy it, as she urges. A modified version of it is the only hope left for saving Chris’ life.
Frank shows up at Cyrus’ place to ask about the check “Yeager” gave Buffie. Cyrus contradicts himself five times in twelve seconds. Frank tells Cyrus that Will has heard that “Yeager” paid for the damage to the Eagle and wants to know who is going to cover his medical expenses. Cyrus says he will be glad to pay them. Frank asks why he should, and Cyrus says that it is just because Will is his friend. Frank warns Cyrus that he is really starting to wonder whether he can keep him as a client.
LaFreniere is as stern with Cyrus as he had been with Sabrina, but Cyrus is able to answer his questions sufficiently to keep his hospital privileges. He is listed as Chris’ attending physician.
Desrochers questions Quentin about Bruno’s story. Quentin has a hard time staying rational when Bruno is mentioned, and he initially denies everything. Desrochers confronts him with the fact that Bruno sold the cottage to Greene for $500 when it was a matter of public record that Bruno had earlier refused an offer from Quentin for $25,000 and that he then made a free gift of the cottage to Quentin. Quentin suggests that Bruno wouldn’t sell to him at any price, that maybe he needed some money in a hurry, and that perhaps Greene was just in a generous mood. Unimpressed, Desrochers points out that Quentin hired Greene’s lawyers, a mobbed-up bunch of lowlifes from Bridgeport, bypassing his own respected attorneys. All he can say to that is that the gentlemen in Collinsport weren’t getting the results he wanted, so he took Peterson’s recommendation and brought in some men who took a more aggressive approach. Later Peterson denies knowing that the firm in Connecticut had the reputation Desrochers describes and says that in any case they have never been convicted of anything. All he knows is that they are members of the bar in good standing, and neither they nor he can help what people say.
Angelique’s insecurities are catching up with her, and Victoria and Mrs Drew decide to take a page from Rebecca and exacerbate them. This proceeds a bit more slowly and subtly than in either Daphne DuMaurier’s novel or Hitchcock’s film adaptation of it, because Quentin is less unreasonable than Maxim de Winter. Still, he is very touchy about the subject of Victoria, and the only time Angelique hears him say anything about her is when he agrees with Daniel’s praises of his mother. And Angelique is struggling to get a handle on the great estate, which does undermine her rather shaky self-confidence. So they have enough to work with.
LaFreniere saw some strange results when he ran tests on Chris. He does not like the answers Cyrus and Sabrina gave to his questions, and he is not letting up. Cyrus asks Frank to warn LaFreniere that if his inquiries become public, Cyrus is prepared to sue for defamation. Frank is reluctant, but does so. LaFreniere is not intimidated. Frank reports on this conversation to Cyrus, and it is clear that he too has doubts about Cyrus.
Meanwhile, some of the more excitable people around the estate, such as Bruno and Daniel, are beginning to suspect Angelique is a witch. This rather increases Daniel’s respect for her, since his efforts to follow in his mother’s footsteps have not, so far as he can see, borne any fruit. Even so, he doesn’t like her very much, and would be glad to expose her and drive her out. He tries to cast a spell that will reveal that his stepmother is a witch; it misfires, and everyone gets the impression that “Veronica” has a twitch.
Quentin has found out that someone is trying to stage a takeover of the business and install Roger as the new boss, but since he still trusts Peterson he keeps running in circles. He is much too worried about this problem to pay much attention to Angelique’s troubles, though he does sit up when finds evidence Victoria planted suggesting Angelique is friendly with Roger and that she had something to do with Bilodeau’s death.
We learn, though Quentin does not, that Amy has been spying on him for Roger.
Quentin has always wholeheartedly despised Hannah. That has been the one point on which he and Roger could always agree. Victoria tricks Quentin into believing that Hannah is just the person he needs to keep Roger in check. Quentin invites Hannah to move into Collinwood. He still doesn’t like her, so he gives her a room in the otherwise unoccupied east wing of the house.
On her first night in her new room, Hannah hears voices coming from a vacant bedroom across the hall. She opens the door and sees a bare, undecorated space, not the finished bedroom she knows. A woman who appears to be Mrs Drew is telling a girl who appears to be Amy that it is dangerous to be in there. They cannot see or hear Hannah, nor can she pass through the doorway. They come to the doorway and vanish. The room then resumes its normal appearance.
Week Eleven
Hannah reports to Victoria on what she saw in the east wing. Victoria tells her to drop everything and monitor the room for as much time as she can. She is to make notes of whatever she sees and hears.
Frank visits Will and Carolyn. He tells them that a friend of Yeager’s has offered to cover Will’s medical bills on condition he remain anonymous. Will is furious, and refuses the money. After Frank leaves, Will and Carolyn quarrel.
Van and Speedball pay a visit to Bruno. Greene is none too pleased that Bruno has been telling the police about him. Bruno has an opportunity to recant his story. Bruno takes this opportunity, which only deepens Desrochers’ suspicions of Quentin. After Bruno leaves Desrochers’ office, we see him pick up the phone and ask to speak to an FBI agent.
Angelique has begun to suspect that “Veronica” and Mrs Drew are in league against her, and has been telling Quentin they are her enemies. He listens carefully, but she can’t point to anything specific. He still loves her and wants to trust her, but there is a lot she doesn’t understand about the way the house operates and they can easily explain away anything she might notice. Besides, with what is going on around Roger, Quentin feels that can’t afford to make any enemies.
Chris dies. Liz, Amy, and Carolyn are at his bedside when this happens; Cyrus is in attendance. Liz and Amy resolve to face the future together. Carolyn is more distant. Liz doesn’t want to deal with Carolyn. Amy has a confrontation with her big sister about the tensions in the family. Cyrus informs Buffie of Chris’ death.
Liz calls on Buffie. The two women have a heart-to-heart talk. Liz says that she was wrong to refuse to acknowledge the true nature of Chris’ illness and asks Buffie’s forgiveness for the effects that refusal had on her. Buffie does forgive her. Liz says that she will be going away for a few weeks as soon as the funeral is over and invites Buffie to accompany her. Buffie declines- she is grateful for the offer, but she has already missed too much work at the Eagle Tavern. Liz tells her she could find a better job somewhere else if she left the Eagle. Buffie doesn’t disagree, but she likes it there well enough, and right now she wants to hold on to something familiar for a little while.
Cyrus becomes fixated on Buffie. His Dr Jekyll half consoles her in her feelings of guilt about Chris’ illness and death, feelings he shares. His Mr Hyde half uses these same feelings to belittle her and exploits the masochistic side of her personality for his own cruel amusement.
Week Twelve
Cyrus breaks into the basement of the Loomis House. He finds the chained coffin there. He is taking the chains off the coffin when Will and Carolyn catch him. Will is drunk, Carolyn is not exactly sober, and Cyrus escapes. The Loomises try to figure out what to do now that someone has found the coffin, a discussion that produces great confusion. In their stupor, they open the coffin. Each thinks the other is holding a cross to keep its occupant, Barnabas, at bay. Neither is, and Barnabas is freed to prey upon the living.
Barnabas comes to the great house and introduces himself as a distant cousin from abroad. He is thunderstruck at the sight of Angelique and even more so at the sight of Victoria. He soon gathers that Victoria and Mrs Drew are hostile to Angelique, and he takes their side completely. He is tremendously indiscreet in his conversations with Victoria. Sometimes she tells him she doesn’t understand what he is saying; other times she doesn’t seem to be listening at all. But in fact she takes in every word as he tells her far more than he realizes he is revealing about his native universe, her counterpart within it, and the means of getting from one universe to another.
Victoria realizes that the room Aunt Hannah found in the east wing is the aperture between the universes. Using the data Hannah has collected, she and Stokes calculate both the interval between the openings and the number of occasions remaining when the openings will occur.
“Yeager” takes a room in the boarding house where Buffie lives. He impresses her landlady Mrs Duval (Camila Ashland,) who looks down on Buffie as an ex-servant who tried to marry into the Collinses by hooking a poor relation of theirs while he was out of his mind and then wound up getting fired from Collinwood, alienating all the respectable people, and taking a job bringing drinks to sailors. Mrs Duval cheerfully assists “Yeager” as he establishes his dominance over Buffie.
Barnabas is openly hostile to Angelique. She complains of this to Quentin, who insists he apologize. He does so, but can’t stop himself. Quentin forbids him to visit the great house, and asks Will and Carolyn to throw him out of their house. They refuse.
Week Thirteen
Gladstone blackmails Cyrus. Cyrus tries to stop taking the potion, but finds he has become addicted.
Maggie is back. She keeps coming to forks in the road where she can either reveal what she knows about Victoria and Stokes and fight them or do their bidding and become complicit in their evil. At first, she is too afraid to consider the former alternative. When she starts thinking about it, Victoria alludes to the shameful secret of her past to blackmail her into submission. Eventually, she is about to decide that she is willing to risk exposure in order to get back on the strait and narrow. On her way to the sheriff’s office, she runs into Barnabas. He can see that she is upset, and assumes that she needs help to fight Angelique. He tells Victoria and Mrs Drew that Maggie is on her way to town and urges them to catch up with her before she does something rash. They do catch up with her, and coerce her back into their operation. Eventually, she gives in and becomes a thoroughgoing villain.
We finally learn Maggie’s secret, some time after it is no longer the darkest thing in her past. When she was a girl, her father Sam died in mysterious circumstances while he was alone with Jamison Collins, father of Quentin, Liz, and Roger’s father. Suspecting Jamison of complicity in Sam’s death, she and her friend Victoria slipped into his yacht. Maggie was holding Jamison’s revolver and inspecting it when he surprised them there. He grabbed her, and the gun went off, killing him. Victoria talked her into putting the gun in Jamison’s hand and positioning his body so that it looked like he killed himself. As they were leaving the boat, the girls saw Veronica on the dock, watching them. Shortly after the authorities ruled Jamison’s death a suicide, Veronica left town to live with her mother in New York, while Victoria stayed in Collinsport with her father.
Maggie also left town around that time, when the relatives who took her in when Sam died moved to Minnesota. She only came back and took the job as governess at Collinwood because Victoria blackmailed her into taking it. Victoria forced Maggie to help her as she worked to develop any talents Daniel might have for the black arts. The boy never showed any particular aptitude in that area, and indeed Maggie herself never had more than a rudimentary understanding of what Victoria was trying to accomplish. It was always perfectly clear to Maggie that the only interest Victoria had in Daniel was limited to that project, but Daniel couldn’t see that. He was devoted to his mother and impatient with Maggie, with his father, and with everyone else who really loved him.
Now, Maggie is still not up to par after her experience as Victoria’s “life force.” Hannah turns up to lend a hand in Daniel and Amy’s instruction. Quentin and Liz are not happy about having her around. Maggie defends Hannah, and they grudgingly allow her to participate so long as either Maggie or “Veronica” is with her at all times.
Barnabas’ blood lust is too strong for Will and Carolyn to satisfy. He goes to his usual feeding ground, the docks. He tells himself that it won’t be so bad this time. He’ll only be in this universe for a little while; when he goes back to his own, his victims here will be released from his baleful influence, and maybe his best friend, chief accomplice, and personal physician Julia Hoffman, MD, will have come up with a treatment during his absence that will keep him from needing new victims once he gets home.
He meets a sex worker who gives her name as Tabitha (Gail Strickland.) He invites her to come with him; she says no, she meets her parties in a room at the Greenfield Inn next door. She’ll go up there, and he can follow. The bellboy will settle all the business with him first, so they can just have fun when they are together. He hesitates, she thinks he’s getting shy and moves a little closer. He bites her. He surprises himself by killing her. He snaps her neck to keep her from rising as a vampire and is about to throw her in the water when he hears someone coming. He vanishes.
We cut to Desrochers’ office. He is grilling the bellboy, who is still in his uniform. His name is Claude North (Brian Sturdivant.) Desrochers tells Claude the only reason he has stayed out of jail this long is that Tabitha could always come up with a story for him and that she and the other girls would take his rap. But now she is dead and the others are talking their heads off. He’s going down for a long time, and if he doesn’t tell him who killed Tabitha he won’t ever get out.
Claude swears Tabitha was fine the last time he saw her. Desrochers jeers at him. “Are you asking me to believe she was standing out there on the docks while some freak pumped the blood out of her body and broke her neck?” Claude says he doesn’t know where that happened. “The only place it could have happened was in her room, and the only way her body could have gotten out on the docks was that you carried it there after you found her.” Claude denies it, and Desrochers tells him he’s under arrest as an accessory after the fact to murder.
Week Fourteen
Cyrus’ Mr Hyde side begins to escape all control. He transforms spontaneously, without taking the potion. His abuse of Buffie escalates. He commits a series of crimes, culminating in the murder of Gladstone. Desrochers questions Cyrus in connection with the murder. He also asks some questions about Bilodeau’s death.
Hannah finds the grimoire in Daniel’s room. Victoria had forbidden her to help him in any way, saying that he has reached a point where he must develop his talents by himself or not at all. But taking pity on her great-nephew, Hannah decides to give him lessons. When he sees her with the book, he is frantic at first. But when she tells him she can help him master its secrets, he quickly agrees.
Daniel consults the grimoire for a spell to cause Maggie to perk up. The piece of clothing he stole from Maggie’s room to cast the spell was actually something of Carolyn’s that she had borrowed, so the spell lands on Carolyn instead. She perks up, all right, but for some reason thinks she is a nineteenth century Cockney showgirl for a couple of days. Liz is shocked at her daughter’s mental aberration, and most others are mystified. Barnabas startles Will with his response of absolute terror. Victoria can tell it is the result of another of Daniel’s botched attempts to enter the family business, and she shakes her head at her son’s ineptitude.
Week Fifteen
Sabrina is slow to believe Cyrus is guilty of his crimes, and even after she is convinced keeps trying to develop a new drug that will counteract the effects of the de-Jekyllizing potion and relieve Cyrus of his fast-growing dependence on it.
Cyrus plans to live as Yeager full-time. He directs Frank to draw up papers he needs to make the transition. Frank won’t do it unless Cyrus is a lot more forthcoming about his relationship with Yeager than he has been so far. Frank conducts his own inquiries into Yeager.
Angelique goes into town for an innocent reason. “Veronica” tags along. The women are sitting at a table in the diner at the inn, having a cup of tea. Angelique wants to visit a new antique shop; “Veronica” begs off, saying she will meet her after she walks down to the beach for a breath of fresh air. She leaves, and Quentin stops in for some coffee after a meeting at the bank. “Veronica” tells him Angelique was just there, and left for the antique shop. Quentin brightens at the mention of his wife’s name, and says he’d like to meet her as she gets to the shop. He wants to pick out something nice that she wouldn’t buy for herself. “Veronica” puts on a smile and urges him to go at once if that’s his plan.
We see Quentin in front of a backdrop that might represent a street in the business district of a small town and see his eyes light up again. In an interior monologue we hear him exclaim “There’s Angelique!” His look of joy gives way to puzzlement, and he wonders why she is leaving the business district for a residential area. We jump to him in front of another backdrop, representing that district. We hear him thinking “That’s Cyrus’ doorbell she’s ringing. Why is she calling on him in the middle of the day? Is she sick?” We cut to her ringing the doorbell. The door opens. There is Bruno, a look of astonishment giving way to one of triumph. He ushers her in and closes the door. We cut back to Quentin, who is shocked and outraged. We cut back to Victoria, still at her table in the diner. She has a handkerchief Angelique dropped in the previous scene. The waitress who is pouring her another cup of tea, an unspeaking extra (Carol Crist,) glances at Victoria’s hands as she twists the handkerchief, assuming it is just an idle habit.
The next day, we see what happened in the apartment. Angelique emerged from a trance shortly after Bruno let her in to Cyrus’ place. She asked him where she was and how he got her there. He thinks she is joking, and laughs. When it becomes clear she is serious, he tells her she showed up of her own accord, much to his surprise. She doesn’t believe him. He still thinks it is some kind of put-on, and blocks her exit, thinking she’s playing a game. At length she convinces him she means it. He wonders if she is mentally ill. He doesn’t need a crazy girlfriend in his life right now, so he is glad to see her go.
Quentin is still waiting at the door when Angelique exits. He asks her if she needs a ride home. His voice suggests she might not be riding inside the car.
Back at Collinwood, Quentin and Angelique have it out. All she can do is tell the truth. Eventually, he has to accept it, 70% because of his love of her and 30% because of his loathing for Bruno. He asks, in a gentle voice, if there is anything he can do to help her avoid similar problems in the future. She smiles wanly and says that maybe he can come with her on her first appointment at a psychiatrist’s office. He smiles wanly, chokes back a tear, and says he will be glad to do that. We see that Amy was eavesdropping on their conversation and realize Roger will soon know all about it.
Barnabas still needs a third regular victim, and he has figured out that Buffie is connected with Yeager. He decides he can solve two problems at once by using her both as a blood bank and a spy. He goes to the Eagle shortly before closing and engages Buffie in conversation. She asks if he is staying at Collinwood. He says that he decided he wanted independent accomodations for a little while, and that he has taken an apartment on the North Road. He mentions the address, and she says that they are neighbors- Mrs Duval’s is right across the street. He says he knew the neighborhood was lovely, but had no idea how lovely. She giggles at the compliment.
She asks where he is from, and he says he has never stayed in one place for long. His father was in the shipping business, he was an antique dealer, and in both of those occupations you keep moving to go where the business is. She asks if there is a lot of antique business in Collinsport, and he says he’s retired from the trade, at least for the moment. She says that moving around appeals to her now. Collinsport is a small town where everyone already knows so much about everyone else that no one has anything new to say to anyone else. He says that at least small towns don’t have the crime he had to worry about in New York or London or Buenos Aires. She narrows her eyes and says that he shouldn’t count on that- there have been some nasty cases recently. At that, he reminds her that they are neighbors and the bar will be closing in a few minutes. She agrees to let him walk her home.
Will enters. Buffie enthusiastically greets her most faithful customer. She tells him he’s just in time for last call. He sees Barnabas and freezes. Buffie is baffled that Will won’t have a drink before closing. Barnabas encourages him to stay, but the friendlier Barnabas gets the more anxious Will is to flee.
Buffie lets Barnabas into her apartment. They flirt and start kissing. Things are getting pretty serious when Barnabas bites Buffie. He tells her that he will call her every night. When they are not together, he wants her to keep tabs on Yeager.
“Yeager” has been losing interest in Buffie. He wants her hurt, confused, and frightened, and lately she has just been accepting his abuse with silent resignation. Her newly inquisitive attitude does even less for him, suggesting as it does that her mind is still functioning and she is not entirely his possession. He starts eyeing other women as potential victims.
Frank realizes there is a connection between Cyrus and Buffie and is worried about it. Cyrus won’t answer any questions beyond confirming that “Yeager” told him something about Buffie, and as Cyrus’ lawyer he can’t talk to Buffie.
Roger meets Greene and Van, who make him very uncomfortable. Roger visits Frank again, but can’t bring himself to tell him what he is worried about. Again Frank says he has no case, and this time he says he doesn’t think he could represent him even if he did. Later, Roger considers using Amy as an intermediary to deal with Greene.
LaFreniere confronts Cyrus about the test results he’s been analyzing all this time. He points out that there were traces of a chemical in Chris’ blood that only Horace Gladstone was known to supply. He gives Cyrus a chance to explain how he knew Gladstone before he goes to the police. Before his eyes, Cyrus spontaneously transforms into Yeager. LaFreniere is too stunned to move. As Yeager, Cyrus kills him.
Sabrina decides she can no longer be complicit in Cyrus’ crimes. Cyrus finds out she is about to go to the police. He is on his way to kill Sabrina when Amy sees him in his Mr Hyde form. He is about to do Amy in when he transforms in front of her. She gets away.
Week Sixteen
Amy tells Liz that she saw a strange man who turned out to be Cyrus. Liz doesn’t get the point of the story- she thinks Amy just saw Cyrus in shadow, mistook him for someone else, and was frightened until she recognized him. Amy tries to explain that is not what she meant, but it doesn’t click with her mother.
Cyrus, as Yeager, chases Sabrina away from the police station. She drives away from him down the only available road, the one that leads to Collinwood. She bursts in the foyer calling for someone to help her; Cyrus follows her. Liz arrives in time to see Cyrus kill Sabrina in the drawing room. He is about to kill her when Quentin enters. He flees. Amy hears the description of the man her mother saw kill Sabrina, and she is struck dumb with terror.
Barnabas has a run-in with Angelique. Quentin again demands the Loomises evict him from the property; they again refuse.
Cyrus decides to attack Victoria, whom he believes to be Veronica. He meets with a man named Aldon Wicks (Ray Carlson,) who is trying to sell a farmhouse with a deep basement. When he finds out that no one knows the man is in the Collinsport area or will miss him if he doesn’t turn up for a while, he murders him, securing a dungeon to which he has no traceable connection. We see him leaving the farmhouse after burying Wicks in the root cellar. He has a self-satisfied grin on his face, and does not notice Buffie watching him from behind a tree.
Victoria sees through Cyrus’ intentions, and decides to turn them to her advantage. She plays along with him, pretending to be his prisoner. While she is playing that role, she hypnotizes him and asks about the postmortem exam he conducted on her. She begins to suspect that Quentin actually may have killed her, but is not convinced.
Angelique, delighted to be rid of “Veronica,” keeps telling Quentin that she is sure their houseguest just left of her own will. Quentin wonders how she can be so sure, and she just doubles down on her insistence that he forget all about his one-time sister-in-law. He is still doubtful, but they have a beautiful weekend together nonetheless, a perfectly happy time.
Week Seventeen
Victoria’s plan is that Quentin will rescue her; she is disappointed when the clues she planted bring, not her widower, but Barnabas. When Barnabas “saves” “Veronica” and kills Cyrus, Quentin accepts him as a friend. That’s helpful for Victoria in its own way, since it encourages Quentin to adopt Barnabas’ high opinion of her and to stop defending Angelique against him. Quentin can tell that someone in the house helped Cyrus abduct “Veronica,” and since he does not know that the culprit is the lady herself, he can only remember how insistent Angelique was that there was nothing to worry about. He is particularly guilt-stricken that he and Angelique had such a lovely romantic idyll while “Veronica” was in Cyrus’ dungeon.
Frank is horrified that he did not put two and two together about Cyrus in time to prevent his rampage. He calls on “Veronica” and expresses his sympathies. His words conform to legal ethics, but his affect shows the depth of his sense of guilt. She encourages him to return whenever he likes.
Desrochers goes to search Cyrus’ apartment and finds that Bruno is living there. He has already been through Cyrus’ papers, and knows Bruno was involved in Cyrus’ experiment. He questions Bruno aggressively and tells him not to leave town.
Buffie quits her job at the Eagle and gives up her apartment at Mrs Duval’s. Everyone thinks she is leaving town. In fact, she is moving to an old shack in the woods which she shares with Barnabas’ coffin.
Quentin surprises himself with feelings of jealousy when he sees Frank and “Veronica” together. Angelique is happy about the same image, and encourages Frank to ask “Veronica” on a date. Quentin decides to be sensible about it.
Week Eighteen
Daniel tries to cast another spell, the one his mother set as the ultimate test of his abilities as a magus. He is supposed to raise Mrs Malloy’s late husband Bill from the dead as a zombie. Victoria wants Bill to lumber up to the front door of Collinwood and say that he is ready to resume his place as head of the fishing fleet, and that “Miss Angelique” will vouch for him. In fact, Mrs Malloy’s son Harry (Edward Marshall,) who is alive and well, if a bit saturnine, comes around and asks for a job on the grounds crew. This doesn’t bring any great happiness, but no one sees anything uncanny about it. Victoria is just disgusted with Daniel’s fecklessness.
Daniel grows frustrated with “Aunt Veronica.” He can tell she doesn’t really like him, and compares him unfavorably with his late mother, who was always devoted to him. The two have a confrontation. “Veronica” talks Daniel into believing that she does like him. He hugs her, joyously. We see her eyes; we can see that she is disgusted, but don’t know whether she is more bothered by his failure to recognize her or his delusion that she ever cared about him.
Stokes is still working on improvements to his system for keeping Victoria alive. A failed attempt drives Victoria to freeze several minor characters to death. Desrochers returns to Stokes’ place with questions about these deaths; he finds “Veronica” visiting her father, to his surprise. Like everyone else in Collinsport, Desrochers knew that Stokes and Veronica couldn’t stand each other.
Barnabas is certain Angelique is to blame, and he confronts her about it. Quentin scolds Barnabas and tells him to leave the house. Once he is gone, Angelique cries and embraces Quentin. After a moment, she realizes he isn’t hugging her back, or saying anything, or relaxing. He is just standing there stiffly and staring at her. She realizes he isn’t sure Barnabas is wrong.
Relations between Quentin and Angelique are severely strained, but they still love each other and neither will do anything definitive. He is highly solicitous of “Veronica,” a fact which distresses Angelique but to which she cannot object. “Veronica” simultaneously plays on his feelings of guilt, flatters his ego, and encourages him to confide in her. She plays the innocent; whenever Quentin alludes to the sorts of issues that made his first marriage such a trial and that seem to be emerging again in his current marriage, she says with great gusto “I don’t understand!” He smiles at this, and says sweetly, “Of course you don’t.”
Daniel is convinced that he understands exactly what is going on between his father and stepmother. He takes all of the evidence Victoria has planted against Angelique at face value. He goes to his father and demands to know why he is putting up with her horrible behavior. Quentin tries to reason with him, but since he doesn’t really have any grounds for disbelieving what Daniel is saying he winds up taking an authoritarian tone and ordering him to accept that his stepmother is a fine lady, very fine. Daniel makes some favorable remarks about “Aunt Veronica”; Quentin hastens to assure him that she, too, is very fine.
Week Nineteen
Victoria decides the time has come to play her trump card. Missing the relative simplicity of his early childhood, Daniel has gone to his former “castle,” the old fishing shack. “Aunt Veronica” meets him there and pretends never to have noticed it before. He shows her around, and she gives him something to drink. It knocks him out. When he comes to, the shack is in flames. He can see her standing outside, watching. He calls to “Aunt Veronica”; she does not respond. His eyes widen and he cries “Mother!” Still, no response. She watches the shack burn and listens to Daniel scream. When she is sure he is dead, she nods and mouths some words we cannot quite make out. She turns and walks away, her face still blank.
Quentin reels with horror at the news of Daniel’s death. He cannot imagine how such an accident could have occurred. Desrochers comes and tells him it was no accident. Daniel had been drugged and the fire set deliberately. The evidence the state police arson squad found proves that he came to and tried to escape shortly before the flames engulfed him. Embers from the shack scattered in all directions. Some of them settled in footprints outside the shack, preserving them even after the tide went out. They were footprints a woman left as she watched Daniel burn to death. Quentin can barely absorb Desrochers’ words. Angelique tries to comfort him; he does not respond to her at all.
Victoria has planted evidence implicating Angelique in Daniel’s murder. When Desrochers arrests Angelique, Quentin finally turns against her. He invites Barnabas to dinner at the great house.
Week Twenty
Angelique tells her defense attorney Janet Fisher (Beverly Hope Atkinson) everything she knows and suspects about “Veronica.” Her story is far less bizarre than the truth, but is close enough to it that Janet can respond only by preparing a diminished capacity defense.
Quentin turns to “Veronica.” He blubbers to her that Victoria was involved in black magic and he was afraid she would kill Daniel. He did what he could to protect his son, but he ended up bringing another, even worse witch into the house, and she actually killed him. With that, Victoria realizes that Quentin really is her murderer. He had learned that she planned to reenact the rite which killed Dameon Edwards with Daniel in Dameon’s place, though she hadn’t thought the chance it would kill Daniel was more than 30%, 40% tops. She still wants to remarry Quentin, but just to get the house. She will dispose of him shortly after.
Bruno turns up dead and icy in Collinsport while Angelique is in custody a hundred miles away. It dawns on Barnabas that she cannot be the heat vampire. At length his suspicions turn to Victoria. She knows him well enough that she catches on to this instantly and orders Mrs Drew to keep an eye on him. Victoria collapses as Roxanne’s condition continues to fluctuate.
Mrs Drew is peeking through the window of the Old House when Barnabas bites the Loomises. Carolyn is watching Barnabas feed on Will; she partly obstructs our view of the process. We see Will collapse into an armchair. Barnabas then turns to Carolyn, who offers her neck. He feeds on her, and he assists her to the couch. Mrs Drew can see bite marks on both of their necks.
Mrs Drew wants to tell Victoria what she has seen, but Stokes has put her in hibernation while he stabilizes Roxanne. She follows Barnabas to his hiding place shortly before dawn. She comes back with a hammer and a stake. She is about to drive the stake through his heart when she is herself struck dead. The blow comes from behind, dealt by her Doppelgänger, Barnabas’ best friend Julia Hoffman.
Week Twenty-One
Julia has infiltrated this universe to take her place at Barnabas’ side. She spotted Mrs Drew a moment after she arrived in the great house, and spied on her. When she saw her leaving with a hammer and stake, she realized what was happening and followed her. In the hiding place, she saw Buffie sleeping off a particularly heavy loss of blood, then caught up with Mrs Drew in the nick of time.
From this point, Julia poses as Mrs Drew and acts as a double agent, pretending to spy on Barnabas for Victoria while actually spying on Victoria for Barnabas. Maggie now knows everything about Victoria’s operations and Stokes’, and she unwittingly acts as Julia’s chief informant. Julia is particularly interested to learn how much Victoria has figured out about the aperture between the universes.
Janet spends a day at Collinwood taking depositions to use in her petition to have Angelique declared incompetent. Quentin is enraged with Angelique, and even more deeply enraged with himself for still loving Angelique. He is no use. Liz is even more violently angry, but she gives some helpful information in spite of herself. “Veronica” is courteous, but too enigmatic to be very helpful. Liz and “Veronica” are both represented by Frank, who attends their depositions. Between them, Janet and Frank chat. She was an associate at Garner & Garner before she set up her own firm, and they are friendly. They talk about their personal lives while they are waiting for “Veronica”:
JANET (teasingly): So, have you decided to give up on black girls?
FRANK (earnestly): Janet, you know I wasn’t attracted to you just because you’re black. You’re beautiful through and through!
J (chuckles): Thank you. (Her eyes dart around Collinwood.) Though I wouldn’t blame you if you did just want a black girl. This place is no advertisement for white people.
F (more earnestly than before): Now that isn’t fair! Whatever may have happened here, you can’t say it has anything to do with anyone’s color.
J (a twinkle in her eye): Don’t worry Frank, I’m not prejudiced. Some of my best friends are white.
F (even more earnestly, if such a thing is possible): Janet, that isn’t the sort of thing we should be joking about these days.
J (trying not to laugh): Oh Frank, you are so adorable. Never change, my darling. (She surprises him with a peck on the cheek)
Barnabas attends a dinner at Collinwood. Julia waits the table and conceals the fact that he is not eating.
Stokes tells Victoria he has stopped trying to improve the current system and is devoting all his energies to developing an entirely different way of keeping her alive. This has something to do with harnessing the energy of the warp that creates the aperture. She tells him that if that is the case, he had better work fast, because the aperture will open only once more and then disappear forever.
Roger and Peterson find a way to topple Quentin. It is not exactly legal- in fact, they could go to prison for a long time if it falls apart. And it means working closely with Greene. But if it works, they will take control of both the business and the great house.
Barnabas and Julia decide they should get hold of Roxanne and use her to control and then destroy Victoria. Barnabas and Will make their way to the room where Stokes has been keeping her, only to find that she has been moved. Julia hypnotizes Maggie, and finds that not even she knows where Roxanne is now.
Roger, Peterson, and Greene pull off their coup. Quentin, Liz, and Amy find themselves living at Collinwood as Roger’s poor relations. Amy finds to her consternation that Roger does not have as much time for her now as he did when he was using her to spy on Quentin.
Week Twenty Two
Roger wants to evict Hannah from the east wing. “Veronica” tricks him so that he not only lets her stay, but he also gives Stokes unlimited access to that part of the house. He conducts some mysterious experiment there, with Hannah’s assistance.
Frank agrees to represent Quentin and Liz in their efforts to get their patrimony back. “Veronica” starts dating him.
Angelique is a patient at Stonecrest. Janet goes there and confers with Nakamura. Nakamura is not at all convinced either that Angelique is delusional or that she killed Daniel. He agrees that her theories about what is happening at Collinwood are very strange, but says that she might simply have unusual ideas about how the world works. He cannot endorse Angelique’s ideas, but points out that the conventional explanations don’t seem to be working much better. Janet finds this attitude singularly unpromising for her purposes and starts looking for another psychiatrist. In a therapy session, we see that Angelique is overjoyed that Nakamura is taking her seriously.
Amy realizes that Roger and Peterson are going to be leaving her mother, and therefore her, out in the cold. She starts looking for another way to secure a future for herself.
Mrs Malloy is on her way to the federal authorities to report on Peterson and Roger’s wrongdoing when she is herself arrested and charged with their misdeeds.
Greene starts leaning on Peterson and Roger, making it clear that they are now junior members of his organization. Greene is unhappy about all the unexplained deaths at Collinwood and in Collinsport, and the heavy police presence that comes with it. Roger and Peterson don’t seem to be able to do anything about that. He suspects Stokes and Barnabas of some involvement in the deaths, and tells Van to watch Stokes and have Speedball watch Barnabas.
Amy starts spying on Roger for Greene. Amy has a meeting with Greene and Van. After she leaves, Van says he is impressed by Amy’s perceptiveness, but that he wonders how useful a child as young as her can really be to their organization. Greene laughs wickedly and says that he can tell Van is new to their sort of business. There is no limit to what Amy can do for them. She is young enough that they can shape her in any way they like, and if she is caught, the police can’t threaten her with a long person sentence unless she testifies against him- they will have to hand her over to the juvenile justice system. Van is disturbed, and quickly changes the subject.
Aunt Hannah has grown uneasy with the ever-mounting death toll Victoria is taking. She confronts her brother and demands that he put a stop to the ongoing slaughter. Shortly after, she turns up dead. The circumstances lead the police to suspect Quentin.
Barnabas is so dependent on Julia that she allows herself to think her love for him is no longer unrequited.
Speedball follows Will to Barnabas’ hiding place late one afternoon. Will spots him. They fight, and Speedball knocks Will out. Speedball finds Barnabas’ coffin and opens it. A hand darts out, and Speedball goes down.
Van meets up with Speedball the next morning. He is irritated that Speedball has no information to offer, but is not surprised he is in a daze; he assumes Speedball has been slacking off his duties and engaging in substance abuse instead. He says Greene won’t be happy to hear about that; Speedball just mumbles in response.
For his part, Van has been making good use of the time. He followed Stokes, and found that he is keeping Roxanne in an apparently vacant house on the edge of town. The place is too exposed to do anything in the daytime, but at 10 PM Speedball is to meet him there. They will grab the girl and see what she can tell them.
Speedball takes this information straight to Will and Carolyn. When he and Van go to the house that night, Roxanne is long gone.
Week Twenty Three
Victoria casts a spell meant to compel Will to tell her what he knows about Barnabas. He doesn’t come to her. She confronts him in the tower room at Collinwood. Caught between her power and Barnabas’, he flings himself out the window. Julia enters just in time to see him jump. Victoria orders her to accompany her to see if Will is still alive. Julia reflexively examines Will’s body, gives a diagnosis in clinical terms, and pronounces him dead. Victoria responds with, “Why Julia, have you a medical degree?” Julia gives a cockamamie explanation for her choice of words, but Victoria remembers that the Doppelgänger of Mrs Drew whom Hannah saw in the Parallel Time room answered to “Dr Hoffman,” and she realizes that she is dealing, not with Mrs Julia Hoffman Drew, but with Dr Julia Hoffman, MD. She then understands why Julia has not brought her more information about Barnabas.
Victoria confers with Stokes about her discovery of Julia’s true identity and the obvious inference that she is in league with Barnabas. Stokes points out that they cannot move against them, since they probably have Roxanne. Victoria agrees with this, and instructs Hannah to follow Julia and Maggie to follow Barnabas.
Victoria tells Barnabas about Will’s death; they have a hostile showdown. It falls to Barnabas to break the news to Carolyn. She is enraged with him. Carolyn goes on a big alcoholic bender. Liz tries to comfort her, going into her usual fantasy world where Carolyn and Will were happy together. This only makes it harder for Carolyn to deal with what has happened.
Greene and Van interrogate Speedball. He collapses, and they find the bite marks on his neck. They look at him, then look at each other; look at him, then look at each other. They stare at each other in silence for a long time. Van is the first to speak:
VAN: Boss… you sent us to look for something weird… do you think Speedball found…
GREENE: Found what?
V: Found that Barnabas Collins is… is a … well, you know what.
G: I don’t know anything.
(Pause)
V: But do you believe- I mean- do you believe in- could Barnabas Collins really be- a vampire? A real life vampire?
G: You want me to say it?
V: Yes.
G: You first.
V: It would explain a lot.
G: If that’s true, we can’t keep this guy around. We have to kill him.
V: They say that if the vampire’s victim dies, he rises as a vampire himself.
G: They SAY that… I guess they do. Wait a minute, don’t they also say vampires can’t cross running water?
V: Oh yeah, I’ve heard that.
G: OK. You and Speedball go out on a boat today, while the sun is still up. And you come back to shore alone.
V: Boss, I can’t-
G (flaring): What can’t you!?
V: Nothing, boss. I’ll take care of it.
(Greene nods.)
Julia has delegated the care and feeding of Roxanne to Barnabas and Buffie. They keep Roxanne in the old shack in the woods with Barnabas’ coffin. His ability to vanish makes it impossible for anyone to follow him when he comes and goes. Buffie takes the day shift. She never leaves and no one knows she is still in the area, so she represents no vulnerability at all. Barnabas spends a great deal of time observing the immobile, unresponsive Roxanne. He falls in love with her. Julia is shocked. Buffie is zoned out with her chronic shortage of blood and her addiction to Barnabas’ bites, so she just sort of rolls with it.
Week Twenty Four
Julia finds that Buffie is near death from chronic blood loss. She contrives a treatment that obscures the true nature of her illness, gets her some identification papers in a false name, and drops her off at a hospital across the state line in New Hampshire.
Barnabas, at the Old House, has fed on Carolyn. Carolyn regains consciousness, and he throws a fit. Buffie is away, Will and Speedball are dead, there are no more girls at the docks, and he needs more blood than he can get from Carolyn alone. He very dramatically declares that he must not bite any more of the women who live at Collinwood, and in a less elevated tone says that the women in Collinsport seem to be unavailable.
Carolyn asks why the next victim has to be female. Barnabas does not understand the question. She repeats it, and he still does not understand. She points out that he fed on Will and Speedball, so clearly men’s blood is as nourishing to him as women’s. A large muscular man should have more blood to offer than a short slender woman like herself, so why doesn’t he seek out one of those. He says it is harder to explain why you want to be alone with them, and she tells him he didn’t explain anything to her or Will.
Carolyn goes to the Eagle and meets a drifter named Fred Block (Edmund Hashim.) Carolyn explains to Fred that she needs some work done at her house before dark. Fred agrees. At dusk, he is in the parlor where Carolyn is writing his check. Barnabas appears and bites Fred.
The police are looking closely at Stokes in connection with the heat vampire deaths. Desrochers calls on “Veronica”; she doesn’t tell him anything, but it is clear to her that she is also a suspect. She tells Frank how unhappy this makes her, and starts to cry. He embraces her and speaks kind words. He notices that she is terribly cold. She squeezes him tighter. He collapses, an icy corpse.
Maggie reports to Victoria that Barnabas seems to have the ability to vanish into thin air. She also says that he goes off towards the woods every morning shortly before dawn, and that no one has ever seen him during the day. Victoria visits Carolyn; she notices that she is very fastidious about keeping her neckwear on at all times, and that she starts to get agitated around nightfall.
Victoria figures out that Barnabas is a vampire. She is about to expose him when Roxanne regains her power of speech. That is supposed to destroy Victoria. She does indeed go missing, and there are no further heat vampire deaths. But no one has found her body.
Roxanne goes to the police and tells them about Stokes. She is able to produce enough evidence to convince Desrochers of her story, but he is unsure exactly what charge to bring against Stokes until Claude North comes forward and tells him Stokes had earlier worked with him to procure another girl. Claude delivered that girl to Stokes’ apartment and never saw her again. Desrochers finds the body of the girl Claude brought buried in a shallow grave behind the apartment house where Stokes lives, but Stokes himself is missing. “Veronica” is also wanted and also missing.
Desrochers gets another visitor. It is Maggie, reporting that Barnabas is a vampire. Desrochers goes to the Old House and finds an empty coffin in the basement. He also rereads the medical report on Tabitha’s death. Carolyn goes into hiding. A warrant is issued for Barnabas’ arrest on unrelated charges, but the word gets out that he is a vampire and the hunt is on.
Roxanne is strangely drawn to Barnabas, and has a complex relationship with her mother’s Doppelgänger, so she helps them while they are hunted. Fred, Buffie, and Carolyn all turn up dead, completely exsanguinated. Julia and Roxanne believe Barnabas when he claims to be innocent of their killings. All of his victims are dead, and in this universe Julia does not have a prescription pad to acquire materials to use in keeping him going without human blood. He bites Roxanne.
Amy is terribly lonely since so many of her loved ones are dead or in hiding. She makes a new friend, a stray cat. Her mother is happy about this.
Week Twenty Five
Maggie, Liz, and Roger have made an alliance against Barnabas and Julia. Maggie tells Liz and Roger what “Veronica” deduced about the relationship between the universes, not only explaining that Julia and Barnabas came from the other continuity but also that the aperture between this world and that opens only at certain times, so that they can be sure they have not escaped back to where they came from. Maggie also mentions that the aperture will open only one more time before it disappears completely.
Amy has a conversation with her cat. We can only hear her side of it, but she seems to be getting some information from the cat.
Maggie catches Julia. Thinking fast, Julia takes out her medallion and sets about hypnotizing Maggie. She is sure Victoria is still in existence, still a menace, and she hopes that Maggie will be able to show her something she can use to destroy her once and for all. Maggie gives encouraging answers to Julia’s questions and leads her into the deepest, most obscure part of Collinwood, a part of the basement that has been shut off and disused for years. Maggie shows Julia into a chamber there and tells her to peer into it. She is peering her most intense peer when she hears the door slam shut behind her. Maggie was faking the trance, and has trapped her in a dungeon.
Maggie and Liz discover Barnabas’ hiding place. They lead the police there. They are about to stake him when Roxanne shows up with a gun. She kills Maggie and wounds Desrochers a few seconds before sunset. Another policeman, Desrochers’ brother Gordie (Paul Jenkins,) disarms Roxanne. Barnabas rises and strangles Gordie to death in front of Liz, who is paralyzed with terror. Barnabas and Roxanne get away. They do not know where Julia is.
Liz tells Quentin everything, including what “Veronica” figured out about the aperture between the universes. He decides that Angelique is innocent, and suspects that “Veronica” is really Victoria returned from the grave.
Quentin visits Angelique at Stonecrest and they reconcile. Nakamura tells him that he is about to be arrested for Hannah’s murder. Knowing that even if he is cleared of that charge the truth is likely to come out about what he did to Victoria, Quentin decides his only hope and Angelique’s is to escape into the other universe. They flee.
Week Twenty Six
Mrs Malloy manages to prove her innocence. Greene sees which way the wind is blowing, and makes a deal with the federal authorities to testify against Peterson and Roger. Warrants are issued for their arrests. Since Quentin and Angelique are fugitives, still wanted for murder, Liz takes charge of the business and the house.
Liz thinks of taking Amy and moving out of the house, closing up Collinwood. Amy is upset by this idea, and there’s too much going on to have a big fight right now, so she holds off. Mrs Malloy starts hanging around the house, and notices that there is something weird about that cat. Liz dismisses her concern.
As a vampire, Barnabas can enter only where he has been invited. There are not really all that many places in this universe into which he has been invited, and the only person currently disposed to extend new invitations to him is Roxanne, who is quite homeless. So the only place the two of them can shelter is Collinwood, and the only structure on the estate large enough and complex enough to allow hope of evading the police in the great house. They work their way down to the deepest, most obscure part of the building, a part of the basement that has been shut off and disused for years. There, they discover a hair ribbon Roxanne made for her mother that Julia wore when she was impersonating her. It is lying on top of a layer of dust that has not been disturbed for years, but it is clean enough. They realize Julia must have been that way recently. They find her and set her free.
In another hiding place, far from Collinwood, Quentin admits to Angelique that he killed Victoria. He had resigned himself to her constant infidelities, and had even gotten in the habit of turning a blind eye to her increasingly disturbing experiments in black magic. But he could not overlook her terrible influence on Daniel.
Angelique asks why Quentin didn’t just divorce Victoria. He said that when he went to Garner and Garner, who were still his personal lawyers at that time even though they had strained their relationship with him by their reservations about Victoria and her father when he was still trying to make the marriage work, they told him his only chance for full custody of Daniel was to bring out all her extramarital affairs in court, and that even that might backfire if it brought Daniel’s paternity into question. He didn’t want to risk that, so he told them about the black magic. When he told them that he had done nothing to stop Victoria from engaging in rites that destroyed property, including animals, and that endangered people, but that he had in fact paid to hush those activities up, they told him his only choices were to remain silent about the matter or to go to the police, turn himself in, and hope for leniency.
Faced with those dismal alternatives, Quentin released Garner and Garner from their retainer and hired the country club layabouts who have been handling his personal affairs ever since. Useless as they are, at least they don’t ask questions that make him feel uncomfortable.
Quentin resigned himself to living with Victoria, suffering her taunts and infidelities, abetting her irresponsible experiments in the occult, and watching Daniel slip deeper and deeper into her web of evil. But then something happened that prompted him to take a desperate action. We flash back to a night a year ago. Quentin goes to Bruno’s cottage. He finds Victoria, Stokes, and Bruno in a panic. He discovers that they have run one of their “experiments” on Dameon Edwards, and that Dameon is gravely injured. They insist he help them cover it up; when he refuses, Victoria reminds him of how deeply he is already complicit in their previous “experiments.” If they are exposed now, Quentin will go down with them. He knuckles under, and helps them conceal the nature of Dameon’s injury and get him to the hospital.
We cut to Victoria and Quentin coming home to Collinwood. In voiceover, Quentin says they were returning from Dameon’s funeral, two months after the “experiment.” They quarrel, and Victoria leaves the house. She goes to Bruno’s cottage. Quentin follows her there, and eavesdrops on their conversation. He hears Victoria tell Bruno that the time has come to reenact the “experiment,” with Daniel in Dameon’s place. Bruno is shocked that Victoria would use her own son as the subject of such a dangerous procedure, but she dismisses his concerns impatiently. They learned enough from their trial with Dameon that the risk Daniel will die is well under 50%, maybe not more than than 30%. And if he lives, he will gain far more than they ever could have hoped Dameon would.
Unlike Dameon, who was never going to be more than a stage conjurer, Daniel has an inborn talent for magic. If the experiment works, he will emerge from it as a magus capable of changing the world. If he dies, that just means that his talents were never going to be developed, and he will have been no great loss. Victoria tells Bruno that they will need Quentin’s help to get the equipment for the experiment, and that they will be lying to Quentin to get that help. Quentin listens intently, expecting to hear Victoria instruct Bruno in the lies they will be telling, but they fall silent. He sees Victoria take Bruno in a passionate embrace, and reels away in shock.
We cut to Quentin in his study in the great house. In voiceover Quentin says it is the next afternoon. Bruno enters. After an exchange of sour words, Bruno says that Daniel has asked to resume piano lessons with him, and that he would like to conduct them at the cottage starting this evening. Quentin says that will not be convenient. Bruno insists; Quentin brings up a delivery Stokes received from Gladstone this morning. Bruno is startled, and stammers for a moment before he remembers to pretend he doesn’t know what Quentin is talking about. Quentin asks if Gladstone’s delivery to Stokes had anything to do with a bundle of cash Bruno carried to him from Victoria a few days before. Bruno again denies knowing what he is talking about. Quentin says that Bruno has been quite busy lately, building something in the back room of the cottage. Whatever it is, it looks quite a lot like the thing Quentin saw there the night of Dameon’s “accident.” Bruno gets more and more flustered, and Quentin keeps pressing him with questions. In a near panic, Bruno gives some answers that include actual information. As Bruno leaves, we see that Mrs Drew is outside the door. In voiceover, Quentin says he wondered if she had been there listening to the whole conversation, ready to report it back to Victoria.
We cut to the kitchen. In voiceover, Quentin says that he asked Victoria to stay there alone with him after dinner. He confronts her about her plans for Daniel. She knows all about his conversation with Bruno, and taunts him with his helplessness to prevent her doing what she has decided to do. He finally flops in a chair, choking back tears. She stands on his left and bends over him, towards whispering into his right ear that she won’t do anything to harm Daniel. Quite the contrary, a glorious destiny awaits Daniel and she will help him fulfill it. She asks Quentin if he believes her. He nods. She smiles, and kisses him sensuously. She asks him why he always makes it so difficult when he knows he will just acquiesce to her in the end. She gives him another kiss and says that if he stops resisting, she can make him very happy. In a trembling voice, he says he needs a drink. He asks her if she wants to join him. She agrees. He gives her a glass. She takes a drink and collapses. In voiceover, Quentin explains that he poisoned Victoria with a toxin standard postmortems don’t test for. Her death was recorded as a spontaneous heart attack.
We cut back to Quentin and Angelique in their hiding place. Hearing himself tell the story, Quentin is struck dumb with the reality of his own cowardice. He falls silent, and tells Angelique that if she wants to leave him for his spinelessness, she is free to do so. He will go to the police, admit to his actual crimes, claim also that he killed Daniel and framed her, and instruct his lawyers not to miss any tee times to contest her petition for divorce. She smiles and says that she would sooner die herself and leave a note claiming responsibility for all the crimes he has mentioned than let him do such a thing. She does not want to live without him.
Quentin says that Angelique has to let him take the rap, since there is no way out for him and no other way out for her. She says there is. He has already told her about the aperture in the east wing. The grounds of Collinwood are huge and mostly unfenced, and the house has many entrances, some of which Quentin may be the only person to know about. Even if the entire police department is patrolling the place, they are still likely to be able to sneak in and make their way to the aperture in time for its final opening. In the other universe, they may be penniless and nameless, but they won’t have any enemies. Quentin agrees to give it a try.
On the last day of the story, Stokes, Peterson, Roger, Roxanne, Barnabas, Julia, Quentin, and Angelique are all in Collinwood, trying to make their way to the room where the aperture between the universes is due to open for the last time. Stokes does battle with the others, who are scattered throughout the house and unable to join forces against him. He has some kind of weapon that belches fire at its targets. He doesn’t hit anyone with it, but creates a lot of confusion and sets the house on fire. The corridors fill with smoke. We see Amy’s cat enter the room. Suddenly, the smoke clears. We see the room as it is in the original continuity. Quentin’s counterpart in that continuity walks in, looks puzzled, and asks “Who are you?” We hear a familiar voice reply “My name is Victoria Winters.”
*My wife, Mrs Acilius, doesn’t like “Veronica” as a name for this character. Among other things, when the real Veronica is befriending Angelique, they’re probably going to start calling each other “Angie” and “Ronnie,” which are her mother and stepfather’s names. Moreover, when Victoria is impersonating her sister you’ll have a wicked witch who answers to the name “Ronnie,” which is just too deflating. So she prefers “Vanessa” or “Vivian.”
**In the actually existing show, Cyrus spells his alias “Yaeger,” no doubt to show that he is no slave to conventional spelling. But I think this version of the character can afford to be a little more nuanced.
Dark Shadows Commentary 
Bravo! Well done. I enjoyed this much better than the original.
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Thanks!
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Who knows? Maybe Alexandra might have come back for this role. Would have been interesting.
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She did tell Dan Curtis she would have come back to play a villain. They don’t get much more villainous than this version of Victoria, so maybe she would have.
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