In a room in the basement of the Old House, Barnabas Collins pushed open the lid of his coffin.
To his surprise, he found, cleverly tied to the side of the lid with twine, a tarot card.
He removed it from its cradle of twine, and took a look at its face side: “The Tower!” he said. Could this be the work of… Angelique?! he wondered.
He looked around. Where the blazes is Julia Hoffman? She’s supposed to be watching over my coffin, yet someone managed to come downstairs and place this card here…
Angrily, Barnabas stormed into the makeshift lab in one of the other basement rooms of the Old House. He looked at the dead body lying on a lab table… He looked at the equipment… Everything seemed to be as it should be, the way it had been when last he’d seen it, just before dawn… Everything, save for Dr. Hoffman herself.
Has Julia been… abducted…?
He tried not to panic at the thought.
Perhaps she’s over at Collinwood, having supper with Elizabeth and Roger…?
He went upstairs, grabbed his cane, put on his cape, put the tarot card into the inner pocket of his suit, and then he went to Collinwood.
When he got there, to his surprise, the lights in the house were off. Surely, someone must be home…?
He entered the front door of Collinwood, and then he turned on the lights.
All was as it should be, everything was in its place—the grandfather clock, the statuette on the table… and, of course, the portrait of the “first” Barnabas Collins which hung in the foyer… “The resemblance is remarkable…” he chuckled. There was, of course, an extremely good reason that the resemblance was remarkable: there had been no “first” Barnabas Collins. There was only the same Barnabas Collins, still, a two-hundred-year-old vampire.
“…Victoria, are you at home?” Barnabas called out.
No answer came, from Victoria Winters nor anyone else.
Barnabas frowned. He was disappointed that Miss Winters wasn’t around. He did so enjoy talking to her about “the past…” He wondered if Victoria was still listening to Josette’s music box, or if her seeming obsession with the late Dr. Lang’s assistant kept her from doing so. May that young man go to blazes! thought Barnabas. He’s interfering with my scheme to make Miss Winters into my long-lost love… Oh, Josette…! If only I’d been successful with young Maggie Evans… But after that failure, I realized that I must let Victoria take on the spirit of my Josette of her own free will…
Then he heard a ghostly cry.
It was the spirit of Josette, sobbing her eyes out.
“Josette!” Barnabas cried.
He followed Josette’s cries up to the doors of the tower room. The card depicting The Tower must have been an invitation from Josette to come to the tower room of Collinwood, he thought as he hurried up the stairs. But why…?
He came to the door of the tower room, and opened it.
When he entered it, he was shocked to find that Josette was not there.
Instead, he found before him a ghostly figure of a woman, wearing a burgundy dress and a matching hat—a huge hat, with an extra-big feather in it. She was sitting at a small table, studying a spread of tarot cards… “You!” Barnabas exclaimed in great surprise.
“Yes, me, mon ami,” said the familiar voice, and only then did she look up from the cards on the table. “Bon nuit, Barnabas Collins. Je t’attends depuis très, très long temps.”
“…Countess, we are no longer in Martinique,” said Barnabas. “Please, let us speak English.”
“Oh, poo. English is such an ugly language compared to French,” said the Countess Natalie du Prés, whom Barnabas had last seen when she was alive in the year 1795. “Even my niece Josette thought so… Say, did you bring my tarot card? I need it back.”
Barnabas took the card from his pocket, and placed it on the table.
“Merci beaucoup,” she said, “or, in English…”
“—I am perfectly aware of what each phrase means in its respective language, Countess. The important thing is… er, why are you here, Countess…?”
“Please, sit down,” said the Countess.
Barnabas hadn’t noticed that there’d been a second chair, but he saw it now, and seated himself. “I repeat—why are you here?” he asked.
The Countess sighed. “Ah, Americans are in such a rush about every little thing. In Martinique, we took the time to enjoy life. If only my Josette had stayed in Martinque instead of coming to die here…”
“Not to be rude, madam, but I repeat a third time: why are you here?”
“The unhappy dead would like me to read your fortune. Having nothing better to do, I agreed to do so,” said the Countess.
“Would these be the same unhappy dead that sent Miss Winters into the past…?”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, that strange and frightening journey to 1795. They wanted Miss Winters to discover the secret of the coffin you were chained up in. They wanted her to discover that you were a vampire. Instead, la fille idiote got herself hanged as a witch…”
“Did the unhappy dead want Victoria Winters to destroy me because I became a vampire?”
“Perhaps. The cards will say more…” She shuffled the Tower card back into the deck.
Barnabas sighed. There was no talking to the Countess when she was in one of her moods.
“The first card is your past,” the Countess said, laying down… the three of swords. “Appropriate,” she added.
“Yes, it is. The witch, Angelique, killed my mother, my sister, and my Josette– three swords in my heart.”
“No, Barnabas, the three swords represent the people you hurt the most, the people you know in your heart you have caused the most pain. The first sword is Angelique herself.”
“The witch! She cursed me to become a vampire!”
“Because you seduced and abandoned her, sir. A decent man would have stayed with his love and not tried to take my Josette for his wife. Josette is the second person you hurt.”
“Angelique killed Josette, on Widow’s Hill…”
“No, Barnabas, you did. You were going to inflict your curse on my niece. She jumped from Widow’s Hill to save herself from the pain and misery that you suffer every night of your afterlife… which leads to the third sword. The third sword is yourself. By not being an honorable man and staying with Angelique instead of having thoughts above your station, you hurt yourself the most,” said the Countess.
“I loved Josette—and still do!”
“You loved her not wisely, but too well, as the Bard once said. Let’s put down another card.” She put down the five of cups. “Another appropriate card. It represents your present. You are the man in the cape, mourning the three spilled cups. You do not even notice that you still have two cups of happiness left.”
“Happiness? Everyone who loved me has been dead for centuries…”
“You still have members of the Collins family… They treat you as a member of their family… And you have friends. Maggie Evans and Sam Evans consider you to be a friend, for instance. Thankfully, Maggie was enchanted into forgetting that foolish abduction attempt where you tried to force her to become Josette. And young Victoria Winters, having returned from the past, considers you to be a friend…”
“I do not want her to be simply a friend!”
The Countess frowned— “—Mon Dieu! Vous devez tous les deux abandonner le passé!”
“The past is all that I have, Countess…”
“You have two cups worth of existence left, yet you mourn what you cannot change…!”
“Did you come to read my cards, or did you come to lecture me?”
“…I will do a ‘two paths’ spread. One will be what happens if you refuse to let go of the past. One will be what will happen if you do…” In rapid succession, the Countess put down the cards of the Devil, the Moon, and the ten of swords.
She put her fingers to her lips and shook her head. “Non, non, please, non…”
“—Why do you react in this way?” Barnabas demanded.
“If you do not let go of the past, the demons of hell will torment your dreams and curse you in the worst possible way…”
“Madam… I am already cursed in the worst possible way.”
“Yes, but you and your Dr. Hoffman have been trying to cure you by making another being to take on your curse…”
“She is not my Dr. Hoffman…” Barnabas protested.
“Is she not? The cards might have something to say about that,” said the Countess, and she put down the next cards. “…This is what will happen to you if you let go of the past…” The cards were the eight of cups, Judgment, and the Queen of Swords. “Et voyez! Just as I thought. The eight of cups represents you walking away from the past… and Judgment, with the bodies on the cards rising from their graves, represents the curse being lifted from you…” She glanced up at Barnabas, to observe his reaction…
“…And the Queen of Swords?” Barnabas asked.
“…She is a woman of the world. She even already accepts everything that you are, including the curse. The Queen of Swords is one who can share your sorrows. She would be a much better fit for you than the foolish young girls you chase after. Barnabas, you are two hundred years old. Isn’t it about time you stop trying to date women in their twenties? You need a love that develops over time, not an instant infatuation. Your Dr. Hoffman is so much better suited for you… She is smart, funny, loyal, brave, and is on your side no matter what…”
Barnabas had a sudden, unpleasant thought. The Countess Natalie du Prés looked very much like Julia Hoffman. What if Julia, who after all knew something about his life in 1795, had dressed up as the Countess, and was trying to trick him…?
Impulsively, Barnabas jumped up from his chair, reached across the small table, and grabbed the Countess by the throat. She merely gave him a sort of disappointed sneer: “On ne peut pas étrangler un fantôme, mon ami…”
And then, to Barnabas’s shock, Natalie disappeared.
He looked around. She was no longer anywhere to be seen. Neither was the table, nor the chairs. The only thing that remained, on the ground at his feet, was the card of the Queen of Swords.
Then, from behind him, he heard Dr. Julia Hoffman say: “…Barnabas? What are you doing in the tower room?”
Barnabas turned around to see Julia standing there. “Julia! Where have you been?!”
“Roger decided to treat the family—as well as the Evans family, and myself—to supper at the Collinsport Inn. I left you a note in the lab. Didn’t you see it…?”
“…No… I must have overlooked it,” he replied.
“Now… I repeat, what have you been doing up here?”
“…I was trying to decide which path to take.”
Julia pursed her lips. “…I… I’m sorry, what are you saying…?”
“…It’s a long story, and I don’t feel like getting into it right now. Are you ready to return to work on… the experiment?”
“For you, Barnabas, anything,” said Julia. “Anything at all…”
She slipped her arm through his, and led him out of the tower room…
The pressure of her arm felt reassuring to Barnabas. No, it didn’t feel the way that Josette’s arm through his had felt. It certainly didn’t feel like Angelique’s passionate arms around him, either. But it was a friendly, companionable arm, and at that moment, it was what he had to help get him through another weary, despondent night of being one of the living dead.
And for that, he was truly grateful.