"Julia should be here by now." Quentin Collins glanced at his watch and for the nth time, looked out at the empty street. The headlights of Dr. Hoffman's station wagon were nowhere in sight.

Barnabas and Hadrian Collins sat facing one another in the comfortable den of Hadrian's Boston home. The hunted look in the blond man's eyes was one familiar to Barnabas. He knew that Hadrian distrusted these newfound cousins, and he knew why.

"She'll be here," he said, as much to reassure Quentin as the nervous Hadrian. "Julia can help. Believe me, I know."

"How do you know?" Pale eyes fixed themselves on Barnabas, all distrust, all suspicion. "How did you find me in the first place?"

"Quite by accident, as it happens. Quentin and I were searching public records here in Boston for a 'missing' family member. A brother of Quentin and Gabriel Collins who apparently was lost at sea in 1839. His name was Hadrian Cornelius Collins. Your name."

Hadrian laughed uneasily. "You can't think that I--"

"Please," Barnabas interrupted him. "Spare me the denials. I already know them all. Suffice it to say, others in this family have suffered from your same affliction. I know the symptoms. I also know there is a cure."

"You're insane. Both of you. My 'affliction,' as you call it, is hardly something you can treat, like a common cold."

From the window, Quentin said, "I think you should let Julia be the judge of that."

"Julia," the blond man scoffed. "A woman doctor? A woman is going to accomplish this miraculous feat? I don't believe it."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what a woman can accomplish these days," Quentin remarked.

Ignoring Quentin's acid tone, Barnabas said, "In point of fact, she already has accomplished it, more than once."

"With whom?"

Barnabas exchanged glances with Quentin. "Never mind."

Annoyed, Hadrian rose and paced across the oriental carpet. "You don't understand," he worried. "There's more to this than simply--"

The sound of a car door slamming interrupted him. Quentin headed for the door, and Hadrian froze in front of the study's ornate fireplace. The look on his face, Barnabas thought, went beyond mere apprehension. It was more akin to sheer terror.

The door admitted a brusque Julia. "I was delayed in town," she said, and leaving the explanation at that, she turned her gaze on Hadrian. "Are you the one?"

The object of her scrutiny turned his back on her and stared into the unlit fireplace. "You're wasting your time."

Barnabas, who had risen at Julia's entrance, made an awkward introduction. "Julia, this is Hadrian Collins."

"You should leave here," Hadrian said. "All of you. Get out. You can't help me, don't you understand? No one can."

"You're wrong," Julia affirmed. "I'm something of an authority on your particular affliction, Mr. Collins. And it can be cured."

The rumble of something vaguely like thunder rattled the walls of the room. A startled Quentin gazed upward. "What was that? There's no storm outside."

"I warned you." Hadrian's voice was a near whisper. He had turned from the fireplace to stare around the room warily. "I tried to tell you. Now it's too late. They're coming."

Barnabas' brows knit together in bewilderment. "Who's coming? What are you talking about?"

The thunderous sound came again. Hadrian yanked a coat and walking stick from his coatrack and stalked out the front door, pushing Quentin aside as he went. Out of nowhere, an icy wind swept through the room and seemed to follow him out. His three visitors did the same, but they found themselves standing on the darkened street with no one to pursue. Hadrian was gone. Quentin turned a sardonic gaze on his two companions. "Well. Now what?"

"I should have known," Barnabas said quietly. "Of course there would be more to lifting his curse than simply affecting a cure. I should have remembered."

The thunderous noise rumbled far over their heads now, and the cold wind blew toward the sea.

"That wind," Julia said, shivering. "What is it?"

"I think I know. Julia, you and Quentin stay here. Watch the house."

"But where are you going?"

"If my hunch is correct, to find Hadrian. But I must do it alone."

"Barnabas--"

"We'll stay," Quentin said abruptly, and took Julia by one shoulder. "Come on. There are a few books in Cousin Hadrian's library I'd like to take a closer look at."

Back inside the dimly lit study, Julia scowled at Quentin's search of the dusty shelves "Just exactly what are you looking for?"

"For one thing..." he handed her a volume with a red leather cover. "...that."

Julia shuddered and carefully placed the book back on the reading ledge. The red cover, embossed with gold leaf designs, bore the title "Black Magic and the Voodoo Arts."

"I suppose," she said, watching him search again, "a man under a curse would search for a way to lift it. _Any_ way."

"Maybe the curse wasn't the only thing he was trying to lift."

"Now you're sounding like Barnabas. Will you please tell me what it is you're both being so mysterious about?"

"Here." Quentin pulled out a book, an ancient yellowed volume that she recognized as a ship's log. The faded, quill-pen script identified it as the log of the Amber Dragon, commanded by Cpt. Hadrian Cornelius Collins in April of 1841. Quentin opened it and began turning age-worn pages. In a few minutes, he lay it down and pointed to a half-filled page.

"Here, in the final entry. Hadrian wrote about the Amber Dragon's shipwreck right here in Boston harbor during a violent storm. He wrote this afterward. He was the only survivor."

"Because of his curse?"

"Possibly." Quentin hefted the red volume. "Better sit down, Julia. We're going to go hunting -- for a magic spell."

Barnabas Collins had known precisely where to look. Not very long ago, he'd suffered under the same dark curse, and he, too, had found the sea an ever-present lure. The rocky beach on which he walked appeared deserted, but he knew Hadrian was nearby. Some part of him still sensed the presence of the vampire. He'd walked beside the roiling ocean for more than an hour, the angry thunderclaps continuing overhead, when at last he sensed the solitary figure on the beach beyond him. He approached with caution until he came alongside the silent blond man. Thunder rumbled above them from a cloudless, starlit sky.

"They won't allow you to help me," Hadrian said after a long time. "No one can. I told you."

Barnabas followed his gaze over the moonlit water, and asked quietly, "Who are they?"

The walking stick, its head the golden figure of a dragon, pointed out over the black waves. "There. Near the rocks on the jetty. Do you see?"

Barnabas squinted into the gloom, and saw the hazy silhouette of something huge and angular on the rocks: the ghostly remains of a ship.

"It's your crew, isn't it? The men from that ship. They're the reason you're afraid to try lifting the curse."

"Not afraid," Hadrian said into the wind. "It's only that I know they would prevent it. I survived, you see. I lived on, in a manner of speaking, and they are doomed to haunt that relic of the sea for the rest of eternity."

Confused, Barnabas stared at the hulk of the ship. "You mean it wasn't your crew that placed the curse over you?"

Rasping laughter escaped Hadrian's lips. "My crew! The crew of the Amber Dragon couldn't have cursed a scurvied rat." Turning, he began walking toward the phantom wreck. "Come. Let me show you my jail keepers."

Not long after Barnabas had followed Hadrian down the fog-shrouded beach, the headlights of a station wagon intersected the night from the street above. Quentin and Julia slowly made their way down to the rocky shore, each carrying a cloth sack full of certain items on unapproved loan from Hadrian Collins' home.

"I still think this is insane," Julia complained. "You can't be certain this is where the Amber Dragon was wrecked."

"According to the log it is," Quentin said, pointing. "Right over there."

Julia looked, and saw nothing but waves spraying foam over jutting rocks. "That's where we're going?"

"I'm going," he corrected."I'd rather you stayed here What I have in mind could be more than a little dangerous."

Julia's glare warned him that the comment had been out of line. But before she could speak, he lifted a placating hand. "Sorry," he said. "I may never get used to modern women no matter how long I live. All right. Come on."

* * *

The skeletal sides of the Amber Dragon's wreck had begun to change as Barnabas and Hadrian drew nearer. The rotted timbers of its hull grew solid once again. Its broken masts stood tall. Phantom sails snapped and billowed in the wind. Barnabas stopped to stare in wonder at the apparition: a 19th century schooner run aground but intact on the rocks.

"How is it possible?" he marvelled. "How did it change?"

Hadrian looked surprised at the question. "You are more than you admit to being, Cousin Barnabas. The Dragon usually shows her true form only to those who lived in her time."

When the pointed statement evoked no more than an inscrutable glance from his companion, Hadrian smiled grimly and headed for the Dragon's starboard side, where a now-solid gangplank stretched down to the rocks from the polished rails of the deck. He went up the wooden gangway, apparently never doubting that Barnabas would follow, and arrived aboard to the ominous sound of thunder rumbling in the foresail above their heads. The sound grew louder, seeming almost to descend on top of them, and with the howl of an icy gale to accompany it, seemed to settle on the deck in front of them. Figures began to materialize amid the wind and thunder -- the figures of sailors in 19th century garb. When they had become as solid as the ship around them, Barnabas counted seventeen.

"The members of my erstwhile crew," Hadrian said. "And this," he nodded to the man foremost in the group, "is their spokesman. The spirit of the Dragon's first mate. Bill Herst."

An ugly grin split the big man's face. "Who do you bring aboard the Dragon, Cap'n? One who can see her, and us? A night creature, like yourself?"

"I can assure you I am quite human," Barnabas said. "And Hadrian can be human as well."

"That is not to be permitted."

"Why?" Barnabas ignored the warning look Hadrian shot him. "What has he done to you?"

The ghosts began moving, slowly forming a circle around them. Only Bill Herst remained in place. "Ours are not the only spirits condemned to walk this ship," he said. "The Captain knows what others are here."

Hadrian flared. "And how long must I atone for that age-old sin? Has this curse not been punishment enough? I came here to plead with you to release me. What more can I do to persuade you? What?"

Herst's cruel laughter was echoed by the Dragon's crew. ''We are not your judges, Cap'n,"

he said, and the circle of ghostly figures parted at his words to form a pathway to the gaping hatch of the cargo hold. From that dark opening, more figures were emerging. But these were not the spirits of sailors. These were black men, naked to the waist, who still wore the chains that had once bound them in the hold below.

'Twas the black shaman on the Ivory Coast that cursed you," Bill Herst said coldly, "and it is his people who will not have you free. They've waited a long time for you to come, Cap'n. They say their gods have told them how they may keep you here to share their fate."

The spirits, both black and white, began slowly to close in around them.

* * *

On the rocky point outside the Dragon's phantom hull, Quentin Collins and Julia Hoffman had stopped to unload their cloth sacks on a circle of flat-topped boulders. "Look again," Quentin admonished her. "Do you see anything?"

Julia stared. "I see the rocks and the sea. What am I supposed to see? What do _you_ see?"

"Curious," Quentin said, lighting the lantern he'd pulled from his sack. "The wreck is there, Julia. Or rather its ghost is. I can see the timbers, the skeleton of a ship's hull, broken masts. And all of it changing, shifting every time the moon goes back behind a cloud."

Julia looked dubious, and lay the two books from Hadrian's library down beside the lantern. "What makes you think that Barnabas and Hadrian are out here anywhere? Surely we'd be able to see them, or hear them. No one's here."

Candles in colored glass containers took up strategic positions around the lantern. Quentin lit them with a fireplace match, protecting each one against the wind with a cupped hand. "They're here," he said. "I'm not sure how I know, but I do. And that isn't all. The ship's crew is here too."

"And this thing you have in mind," Julia said, eyeing the red book. "A rite of exorcism?"

"I think I prefer the word 'release.'"

"Are you sure you should--"

"I told you it could be dangerous," he said, picking up the leather-bound book. "Now I want you to stand outside the rock circle. No arguments. And no matter what happens, don't interfere. Don't interfere, Julia. I want your word on that."

Reluctantly, she nodded. "All right. My word. But please..."

He smiled thinly as she backed away out of the circle. "I'll be careful," he said. Over the crashing of the wind and sun, he began to read words from a page in the red volume.

* * *

As the press of bodies had closed in on them, Barnabas Collins had found himself separated from his cousin. Vicelike fingers grasped and bound his hands behind him. Nearby, he heard Hadrian cry out. A moment later, when his captors had pushed him forward once again, he saw Hadrian kneeling on the deck, head down, surrounded by five of the slaves from the cargo hold. Each of them held a shining silver cross. Bill Herst stood nearby, a satisfied smirk on his beard-stubbled face. "Take him below," he told the slaves. "You must find a box. A pine box, suitable for a coffin. Affix your crosses to its lid, and seal him inside. He will be yours then. Forever."

"No--" Barnabas' protest was cut off when more hands grapsed him, pulling him away. Hadrian, struggling in vain to avoid sight of the silver crosses, was herded toward the open hold and soon disappeared below.

Bill Herst came back to Barnabas' side, still wearing his toothy grin. "As for you, Barnahas Collins, I think we will give our African friends a very special task. We will let them restore a thing you 'lost' some time ago. A curse."

The cheers from the Dragon's crew were suddenly cut short when something appeared in the air above their heads. Lights, like flickering candles, floated there, and a voice began to echo, seeming to come from the center of the lights. It spoke strange words; rhythmic, gutteral sounds that puzzled Barnabas. But the slaves who had remained above deck were shrinking from the sounds in terror, making signs in the air to ward away evil.

Bill Herst snarled at them. "You quailing cowards! Get out. Find the sorceror, wherever he is, and kill him!"

* * *

Julia Hoffman saw the figures begin to materialize on the beach. Two at first, then four, then eight, all of them black, all wearing the manacles and chains of 19th century slaves. But there were also weapons in their hands: a knife, a halyard, a harpoon... Julia promptly forgot her promise not to interfere.

"Quentin!"

The object of her concern seemed oblivious to the approaching danger. He continued to read aloud from the red book, though a howling wind had risen to smother the candle flames and snatch the words away. The slaves moved slowly in on him.

Julia stepped foolishly into their path, only to find herself knocked aside by a blow from a very real hand. Surprised, she tried to get up, shouting Quentin's name over the wind. But something hit her again much harder this time, and she fell among the sand-crusted rocks. Feet marched over and around her. The wind screamed. For a moment, she heard Quentin's voice coming louder and stronger than before over the gale, still reciting the alien words of the book. Then there were other voices; clipped angry words that were spoken in the same tongue. Julia forced her hands to push her upward, to grasp at the rocks until she could see.

"NO!" she screamed the word into an unhearing wind. The slaves had moved into Quentin's circle, scattering candles, books and lantern. Quentin had continued to recite the incantation as he fought to ward off their attack, and had knocked several of them to the ground -- until the one with the knife had come near while still another held Quentin's hands behind him. With one cruel, swift movement, the first man plunged the blade of the knife deep into Quentin's chest.

Julia's cry had been lost to the wind. The slaves, assured that their would-be exorcist was dead, prepared to return to the Dragon's phantom wreck.

Half way back to the rocky point, something stopped them. The wind, a swirling funnel cloud of sounds and voices, descended on them and with an angry shriek, took their own cries into itself as it engulfed and swallowed them. It rose then, and disappeared into the night, leaving the peaceful roar of the ocean behind. And something more...

On the promontory nearest the point, Julia saw two familiar figures silhouetted in the moonlight. Her joy at the sight of them short-lived, she scrambled to her feet and rushed to the circle of rocks where the overturned lantern still guttered feebly amid the shadows. Quentin lay unmoving on the ground, his hands still clutching at the hilt of the slave's knife.

Julia was still on her knees beside him when she heard Barnabas and Hadrian approach.

"Quentin," Barnabas murmured. "My God, Quentin..." He knelt alongside Julia to carefully turn his cousin over. When he did, Julia drew in a startled breath.

"Barnabas... Barnabas look. The knife. There isn't any blood!"

Frowning, Barnabas grasped the knife hilt firmly and drew it swiftly outward. It came away clean, glinting in the moonlight. In almost the same moment, Quentin Collins groaned and stirred.

"It's impossible," Hadrian Collins breathed. "He can't be alive!"

"But he is," Barnabas assured him. "And because of him, so are you and I."

"The portrait," Julia realized, almost laughing aloud with her relief. "In all the excitement, somehow I'd forgotten. Of course. The portrait!"

"What on Earth is she mumbling about?" Hadrian wanted to know. "What portrait?"

"Never mind," Barnabas said. "Let us simply say that Quentin will recover -- and he has seen to it that your ghosts will allow you to do the same. Look."

Hadrian followed his cousin's gaze back out to the point, where the Amber Dragon had long ago met her fate.

Where once had stood the ghostly outlines of her hull, at times the ship as he had known her and at other times the barest remnant of a decaying hulk: where once the spirits of Bill Herst, his crew and the slaves he had transported had sought to imprison him forever, he now saw only the rocks, the starlight, and the comforting glitter of the sea.
 

-- The End --