Dark Shadows: Angelique’s Descent

He remembered well his first trip to the islands. He had gone with Jeremiah when he was a young boy—Jeremiah whom he adored, and who had betrayed him in the end. He recalled, in a jumble of images and colors, the creaking merchant ship, the lush green islands, the fragrant, caressing air. He could still picture the Carnival in Martinique, seeing magic performed for the first time and—it seemed incredible—could it possibly be? The pagan creature hidden in her chariot—the “living goddess,” whom he had found so fascinating, and so poignant—was Angelique? He remembered now that the whole journey home he had imagined himself to be in love with her.

But his sharpest memory was his discovery on his return to America. The decks of his father’s ships were crowded with their contracted cargo, barrels of rum. One night on the voyage back to Boston, he and his classmates had decided to peg one barrel and drink like real sailors, tasting the golden elixir that poured fortunes into his father’s pockets. That was the night when, after the others had fallen asleep, and his head reeled with rum, he had crept beneath the decks. Down in the wet and shuddering darkness, he had seen dozens of slaves crammed together and moaning, their black bodies chained together.

A soft tap on the door broke his reverie. It was Julia. Quickly, he hid the journal beneath the other books on his desk and rose to greet her as she opened the door.

“Let us be off to Collinsport,” she said briskly. “I’ve brought the car around.”

“Of course I am. What do you think?” He was uncharacteristically gruff, which surprised them both.

“But we must go back by the Old House. Check on the wreckers. They must be fairly far along by now,” Barnabas insisted.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t be so solicitous, Julia. I’m really rather tired of being pampered. And seeing that anxious look on your face. It’s most unbecoming.”

“I’m sorry . . .” She sucked in her breath, but held her tongue. Barnabas reached for his jacket and, in doing so, knocked the books onto the floor. The diary fell among them, and Julia frowned.

“Barnabas, for the love of God, give it to me. It has already soured your mood and made you irritable—”

“Not in the least, my dear. Don’t be absurd. I’m not at all irritable, as you say. And I must insist you leave off this nattering. It’s getting on my nerves. As for the diary, I intend to burn it as soon as I return.”

Julia hesitated a moment, staring into Barnabas’s eyes, before she turned away. “Forgive me. I don’t know what possessed me to say such a thing. Shall we go?”

Roger droned on and on. Barnabas realized he was a captive audience of one at a lecture, and that Roger was in sore need of a partner and an admirer. He was a man of spiteful opinions and fierce energy, philosophizing, moralizing, content to pursue his topic without response. Barnabas stared at the aristocratic face of his cousin with its finely chiseled features, and he listened to his mellifluous tones, but in truth he felt terribly weary as Roger contemplated business ventures, capital, and investments.

Barnabas knew he should value any opportunities Roger presented. Why did his passions remain unstirred? Was it a symptom of his cure?

His eyes drifted to the window, where even in the manicured landscaping outside Roger’s waterfront office, spring had strewn her lavish bounty. Beside the water, a magnificent cherry tree stood heavy with blossoms, its black branches sleeved in tissues of pink. The two opposing textures, one like jagged coal, and the other as delicate as the dawn, caused him a peculiar spasm of depression.

Bees had found the flowers, and they were mad with buzzing, thousands of them, drunken with nectar, and their humming filled his brain with a dull roar. He suddenly felt terribly lonely, and with a start, he recognized an old yearning: He wished he were in love.

“Now that you have recovered, Barnabas, I must tell you how anxious I am for you to come on board. We have several, what would you say, ‘irons in the fire,’ and a few broad-reaching involvements to be made more secure. Who is to do it, if not you? Carolyn would be a first-rate executive, if she so chose. However, unfortunately, she still shows no interest. She is bored with trading and feels, I’m sorry to say, that the textile mills are . . . ahem . . . unsanitary and ‘unfair to the workers.’ Of all the absurd positions to take. Collins Enterprises! David shows some promise, and one hopes that will be his field when he matures, if he ever matures. At any rate, you would do well to investigate all the Collins’s ventures and not take things for granted. Times change. Carolyn and David must be provided for; investments don’t just happen, they require planning and risk. So, what did you have in mind?”

“Why, to do, Barnabas, to do? Surely you don’t intend to live off your fortune, or the Collins family fortune . . . such as it is.”

“I—well, I thought, naturally, to become a member of the board, make some contribution on the executive level—”

“What unique talents do you feel you possess? You have traveled a great deal, I know. What was your profession, actually, in London? The law?”

“I—well—business, I suppose. As a matter of fact, I have not needed to toil on a daily basis. There is a substantial amount of property,” Barnabas explained.

“Have you any notion of how quickly such objects, however precious, lose value? Have you made investments?”

“Uh . . . yes, of course.” Suddenly Barnabas felt annoyed. “Roger, I resent the implication that I would not carry my weight. I have a large fortune which rests in England, and have no intention of living off of you, as you say.”

“Well, now, my boy, calm down. I don’t mean to pressure you, but nothing like a new involvement to get the blood flowing, if you get my meaning. What do you say?”

“Sorry, Roger. My mind was wandering. Perhaps I should return to the Old House and see whether the wreckers have come. They had still not arrived at noon—”

“Oh, hang the wreckers. Now listen, Barnabas. Here’s a word for you. Tourism! Great profits to be made in tourism, you know, they come in hordes—from Germany, the Orient . . . everyone wants to see the world!”

Barnabas began to wonder if the interview was ever going to end, for Roger showed no sign of slowing down.

“Travel is now the great middle-class occupation. Overweight Midwesterners in Bermuda shorts, or Japanese businessmen with expensive cameras—no sensitivity for the culture, without a clue about history, collecting countries as they would bottle caps or baseball cards! Nevertheless, it’s a well to be tapped. What would you say to a four-star hotel! A first-class resort!”

Roger paused. Barnabas felt his head swimming from the onslaught of words. Roger lowered his voice and spoke conspiratorially. “We still, as you may or may not know, have property in the Caribbean. A sugar plantation fallen to wrack and ruin, but up on a cliff with a spectacular view, I’m told, of the sea.”

Barnabas was jolted by the word: Caribbean. “Really?” he asked. “Where?”

“Why, in Martinique, of course, French West Indies. We once traded sugar there. We had ships, lost them all after the revolution. The estate came into the Collins family in the late eighteenth century and nothing has ever been done with it. It was purchased, I believe, by one of our illustrious ancestors for his bride-to-be. The marriage never took place, I’m sorry to say. She died mysteriously. But, we still have title to the land. All the way back to the king of France!”

“And nothing has ever been done with it? Why is that?” Barnabas asked, his attention fully on Roger now.

“Politics, my dear man, politics. And lack of workers. But, I’ve just received carte blanche from the French government. They welcome such an endeavor. So, we need someone to go there, arrange for an architect, a contractor, find laborers, and . . . naturally, I thought of you!”

“Come now, Barnabas! Mustn’t be a slacker, my boy! I can see you have a sense of these things! A love of fine furnishings, as you say—antiques! Imagine it! A grand hotel! You could travel to Europe, purchase the decorative arts—rebuild it from the ground up—breathe new life—apparently there are statues, parapets—”

There was a knock at the door, and Julia burst in breathlessly. Her face was grave with concern. “Roger! Barnabas! There’s been a dreadful accident. On the road to Collinwood. Two men have been killed!”

Julia gripped the steering wheel as they drove down the road toward the Old House, searching for some sign of the accident. The sun was low in the sky, and they were driving into its glare.

“It shouldn’t be much farther,” she said, her voice shaking. “The police said it was before the crossroads, just past the covered bridge. In the stretch up ahead, don’t you think?”

Barnabas squinted, then raised his hand to his forehead, shielding his eyes from the glare. “I can’t help but feel that this is somehow my fault,” he muttered.

“Goodness! I can’t see a thing!” she cried as she braked the car almost to a stop. The dust on the windshield flared in the setting sun, obscuring the road. It was as if they were enveloped in a cloud of fire, golden haze gilding the glass. They inched forward, and, once the glare faded, they saw the wreck.

There were two police cars with their red lights twirling, along with an ambulance. Several policemen were huddled beside the embankment of the river. Julia stopped the car, and she and Barnabas got out.

The flatbed truck which had been carrying the bulldozer was upside down in the river, its wheels in the air, looking like a dead elephant. The cab was a blackened hulk, smashed flat; only the river had prevented the fire from spreading when the gas tank exploded. The tractor was lying on its side in the bushes, its wheels twisted and its bucket completely separated, tossed beyond the trees, as if it had been a boy’s toy discarded in a sandbox.

“Early this morning,” said Julia. “The police didn’t discover anything until an hour ago, but the burned metal was already cold to the touch.”

“How could we have seen it? The bridge is in the way. They were in the riverbed.” She paused. “We couldn’t have saved them, Barnabas.”

“How do you know? We could have tried to do something.” He looked down at the truck. “Poor bastards. What a waste!”

He stared dully at the two dead men. They had never made it to the Old House. Something had stopped them along the road, something he should have known would be there. One body was being loaded on a stretcher, but it was difficult for the paramedics in the rocky riverbed, and they stumbled with the weight. The other victim was still in the upside-down cab, his blackened face just visible, his mouth hanging open in a silent scream.

Barnabas had begged leave to retire early. Dinner had been a wretched affair, and he had felt only irritation with his family, their hypocritical concern for the men who had been killed in the accident. Elizabeth had called it a “tragedy,” surely a misconception, for the drivers had been innocents, hired to perform a service, and they had carried no hubris. Any guilt was his own guilt.

The pall that hung over the family was the same unspoken sense of destiny and inevitability that Barnabas had experienced in other generations. Little was discussed, no sense of outrage or search for rational explanations heated the conversation. What was said was a set of lukewarm euphemisms about death; all were painfully conscious of what was not said: The family carried a curse. Misfortune came, and had always come, relentlessly and predictably. The Collins family kept itself apart from the community, kept its secrets buried away, and never knew release from Fate’s avenging hand.

Out of sheer boredom he had withdrawn from the superficial discussion at the table, distracted with thoughts of his upcoming marriage.

Several days earlier, before this latest set of events, Julia had accepted his proposal with delight. They would set a date soon and planned a honeymoon in Singapore, where Julia knew of rare blood elixirs which she felt might preserve Barnabas’s cure. Still, he was troubled by thoughts of sexual consummation. He had embraced Julia affectionately many times, held her hand as they talked, even kissed her lightly on the lips in greeting or parting. But he had never really kissed her—with passion. Sometimes he could feel her restlessness when they were alone together, an urgency to her response when he hugged her good night, an unspoken signal in her gaze. Soon, he must make love to her.

He did not feel precisely reluctant, although his performance as a lover gave him some concern. As a vampire, arousal had been a response to quite different cues, and he felt out of practice. Still, Julia was so clever, and so supportive, she was certain to ease that transition as well. He was, he told himself, still a young man, vigorous and hungry for life. He liked her lithe body, with its jaunty step and quick movements. Energy—passion—would return, he felt certain. He was more like an addict recovering from the insidious drugs which had shaped his personality for so long; now he would have to rediscover what he once had been without them.

He closed the door to his room, relieved to be alone at last. The books lay on the floor where they had fallen earlier. He lit the lamp and reached for the journal. Only when he opened the pages to search for his place did he relax. He realized that he had been longing to return to the diary ever since he had set it down.

He found himself reading a list of magical spells, charms, and notes for what seemed to be African ceremonies.

Cult des Morts of a papaloi priest

To call up the spirits

a crossroad at midnight

a candle made from honey wax and a swallow’s liver

a loaded gun with earth placed upon the shot

The spell is:

“Upon the thunder’s rumbling may all the Kings of the Earth kneel down.”

To put a woman to sleep that you may know her secrets

a toad killed on a Friday

place the head the heart and the liver upon her left breast

Whisper:

“Oh, my love, my love, my very love, hover near me, whisper to me.”

To call up the Dead—Prise du Mort

a bag of wild acacia

a wooden cross and two stones

four white candles—Signaler at four points

A gun fully loaded

Go to the grave at midnight and make this appeal:

“Out from Pelée’s fires must thou come because I need thee sorely.”

When the dead appears do not run away but take three steps backward and sprinkle perfume on the ground between you.

Erzulie’s needs:

An enamel basin, soap in its wrapper, an embroidered towel.

Sugared sweets, perfumes, and a white handkerchief.

Three wedding bands and necklaces of gold and pearls.

The sky sound and thunder. Rain.

Things needed for a spell:

the tongue of a bird

the heart of a toad

honey wax or tallow

a mortar and pestle

a gun with shells

Needed to cast a spell over another:

clothing worn close to the skin

any growing hair

nail clippings or teeth

excrement, semen, blood

Which, when eaten, instills desirable qualities:

The heart—courage

The liver—cunning and immunity to knives

The brain—accuracy in aim

The eyes—foreknowledge

Flesh of a child—immortality