623

To Peregrine & Sons, Boston:

Please cease the printing of the current draft of An Historical Narrative of the Collins Family of Greater Maine.  Destroy any present drafts.

The draft that rolls from your presses is full of the ripest brand of steaming humbuggery!  In its place, accept these corrections from the hand of noted historian, Mr. Benjamin Stokes.  He will accompany the new draft, however please do not engage him in conversation, for he lacks the capacity to speak.

The accompanying aroma is the understandable result of medicinal tinctures.

Regards,

Mr. Joshua I. Collins,

Collinwood

 

460

Barnabas,

You have my sincere apologies.  That statement is one as alien to me as the events that inspired it.

It was I who instructed Mr. Ben Stokes to seal you within your coffin with a silver cross and then chain you shut.  If you are seized by fury, then I shall be its target.  Please do not think of this as an act of malice.  If you will, my son, see it only as my cowardice.  You are my sweetest boy, my only son, and the source of my greatest pride.  I wish only that these words could have been spoken to you rather than written, but that is now beyond my power.  I cannot condemn you to die.  I posit that the future will have found a solution to your condition, and that you will one day walk anew in the light of the sun.  It is my responsibility to carry you there.  Look to the future, my boy.  As we often discussed with Jeremiah on our various journeys, this is an age of the miraculous.  Miss Winters is proof that.

It is true that I am a dour, humorless, distant man.  In tandem with this, I am a man of curious optimism.

One day, you shall be found.  I know not the circumstances, but I do know that your condition, as loathsome as it is, is also an instrument of great power.  In your time, you suffered, my boy.  Simultaneously, you ended suffering.  You did what others could not do.  I fear that curses the likes of which afflict you will continue to plague us.  There will be enemies in the future just as men such as Judah Zachary were the enemies of our past.  If this is the case, then future generations will need your experience and wisdom and abilities if they are to survive.

I have released Ben Stokes per your request.  In doing so, I was struck by your wisdom.

What is a Collins?

It is not a name, I have come to realize.  It is a spirit.  It lives in the men who soldier on through impossible battles when men of logic storm away.  It lives in the men who dare to show passion when others simply shrug with indifference.  It lives when men see that the potential for goodness can always eclipse the traditions of evil.

By those measures, I am not a Collins, my dearest son.  But you have the capacity to be the greatest of them all.  Find the rest.  Nurture them.  Protect them.  Guide them.

In doing so, your curse will be lifted.

In doing so, Angelique will have lost.

In doing so, Collinwood will never fall.

Proudly and with love,

Joshua I. Collins

459

Joshua…

May I call you that?  Your answer is irrelevant.  You were a fool to leave me with a crossbow of all things.  When I have the body of the Collinsport Strangler — no less than a Collins — you will be quite aware of your error.

Forbes

458

Dearest Joshua,

These will be the final words of mine that you shall read.  By the time these words reach you, the poison will have claimed me.  I will always love you and I will always love the man Barnabas was.  Tonight, you showed me a capacity for care I thought was a distant memory.  For that, I thank you.

Our son is a murderer, and for that, someone must atone.  There was little meaning to our lives.  Now, there is none.  Tragedy is now the constant rule rather than a passing exception.  In such a world, I cannot continue.  You can, and thus, you are worthy of living, perhaps because of your stalwart inability to love.  I have not the strength for that.

Farewell,

Naomi

457

In an effort to conceal my actions as much as possible, I chose not to venture into the town and instead feed on Millicent.  This might seem callous, but it was not I who invited her into the tower room where she went mad upon the sight of me.  Her life, such as it was, is most likely ruined.  Being in the thrall I seem to have over those I keep between being bitten and being turned?  It might have restored a measure of her sanity.  Unfortunately, mother spied us, or so the scream indicated.  Should she find out, it would be ruinous for her, but it might — in the balance — hasten my destruction by father.

BC

456

Dear Daniel,

In the event of my passing, please have the tower room sealed post-haste.  There is a lice infestation, and we have determined this to be the only solution.  Do not go in!

Yours very truly,

Aunt Naomi

455

Dear Diary,

I have taken one life and saved another.  I just don’t understand.  If I can get back to 1967, what changes will I see?  The order of events has changed a lot.  And about Nathan Forbes?  I want to keep Daniel away, but what if he only becomes strong because of Nathan?

I just don’t understand.

xo,

Vicky

 

454

Ho, Kegly,

My lad, if a man owes you coin and asks you to kidnap a boy, think twice.

Love,

“Da”

453

Note to me:

Vicky, you’ll forget, and you can’t.  We’re writing this for “both of us.”  Tuck this away so that you can find it.  The dreams are starting again.  If they have not stopped when/if you get back, go see Dr. Bowers.

Remember!

 

452

What is Collinsport but the seat of lies?  Generations of Collinses have grown up believing that we were paragons of honor, and that we should lead the denizens by benevolent example.  I have found all of that undone by an island strumpet of the most vacant mask. There is no decision made by me that has been correct, leading me to question my own firmness of mind.  Chaos and falsehoods have become such the rule that I must ask if this has always been the case, and was I merely unaware?

Collinsport, have you been the greatest lie of all?  Have the voices of my ancestors, dating back to Good Issac Collins and beyond, all spoken nothing but that born from caprice and convenience and cowardice?

I know this because I dare not speak the truth of what has transpired, and I now realize this makes me no better than Angelique, herself.  Upon a proper accounting, have I spoken any full truths in my life?

The truth is not, in essence, a virtue.  It is only virtuous when it is used to combat evil.  In my stiff-necked adoration for expedience, I have failed my family and the future, if there ever is to be one from the seed of Daniel.

The greatest evil of all is not the lie.  The greatest evil is the ignorance of when to suspend those lies… and to thwart those whose sole advantage is our fear to do so.  If there is a curse at Collinwood, it is our refusal to look past that fear.  I cannot do so.  If Collinwood is to survive, it will be in thanks to the man brave enough to gaze beyond fear and pain.

Were I that man, how many would still be alive?  Were I that man, how many future deaths would have been averted?

I am not that man.

— Joshua Collins, 1796