Lonely Spirit
by Marcy Robin
A sequel to the 1970 feature film “House of Dark Shadows,” originally published in Dale Clark’s fanzine “Inside the Old House” #18-#19 – July 1982. Special thanks now to Joe Escobar and Kathy Resch.
Maggie/Jeff
Dawn was slipping through the drawn curtains, the pearly infusion of light beginning to limn objects in the room with a faint glow. Maggie knew the light would steadily brighten until it was full day.
She sighed restlessly and flopped on her side, rubbing fiercely at the nervous spasm of a muscle in the side of her neck. The twitch was annoying, yet frightening too. For it was another symptom of the state of her nerves, her emotions, her mind
Would all these tics and headaches and nightmares finally drive her totally insane? Surely it was inevitable. She could not escape the memories of what had happened, even when she fought to ignore them. They always flared up to remind her, especially in those dreaded dreams at night.
Maggie sat up, suddenly fearful that she would doze off into one of those nightmares if she stayed in bed. She realized her heart was thumping, her breath pattering rapidly in anticipation of the horror. The insistent twinge in her neck beat on, twisting and fluttering in erratic pulses.
Swinging her legs, she slid out of bed, careful not to disturb Jeff. Glancing back, she saw him stir slightly, his lips moving in silent words, his arm flung up beside his head, the shining bare skin of his chest illuminated by the growing daylight. She paused, watching him, until his body stilled and he again slept in peace.
Peace.
The fulfillment of that word had escaped her for so long. She and Jeff had hoped their physical flight from Collinsport would bring them peace. To place an entire continent between them and the terror surely must help them be free of it.
They had been wrong.
She carefully lifted her long robe from the foot of the bed, where she’d placed it the night before. After pulling it on, she found herself wrapping it tightly around her body, almost as if the soft cloth was a magical protective armor.
Moving out of the bedroom, she scarcely noticed dawn’s deepening grey-gold gleam on the furniture. She passed down the short hall to the living room, cut through that chamber, and stopped at the patio door. Without looking, her fingers went to the sliding door lock with the confidence of experience. The glass panel slid aside with a bumpy grumble and the cool, moist air poured through to wash over her.
She stood absorbing the tangy air for a long moment, dully realizing it was drying nervous sweat on her face and throat she had not even noticed was there. Finally, she stepped onto the roughened planks of the patio deck, her bare feet moving along the boards to the edge. She briefly leaned against the railing, then pulled herself onto it. She lifted her legs free, pressing the soles of her feet upon the top rail. She folded her arms across her raised knees and laid her cheek along them. During her entire time on the deck, she had never taken her eyes off the ocean before her.
Here, facing west as dawn widened behind her, the sea was still cool and dark. Maggie could catch the occasional furl of white foam as a wave bent toward the beach before her. But the overall color was steel-grey, the sky above the water slightly brighter as it reflected the sunrise across the horizon to the east behind her. The pale sand of the small scoop of beach ahead of her also had just a faintly warmer gleam than the dark ocean.
Keeping her cheek against her knees in the crook of her arm, Maggie turned her head and glanced back at the rear of the house where it faced the open water. It was small, solid, familiar. The front of the building looked over a curved drive down from the highway, so the house was hidden from the main road above in a pocket of the hill. Rolling hills, fuzzy with yellow-green sea grass, climbed away from the ridge above the house. All was silent around her except the steady rattle of the waves on the shore. This early in the morning, few cars would be driving above the house along Pacific Coast Highway toward Los Angeles.
We soon will be....
Maggie looked back at the ocean, her thoughts wandering. So many mornings she had been afraid to sleep. She had come out here to let the brush of sea wind soothe her and the steady rhythm of the waves calm her fear-pounding pulse. She could not remember when she last had had a full night's sleep, unbroken and peaceful.
Yes, she could.
It had been the night before Dr. Julia Hoffman was strangled. The attacks around Collinsport had ceased, and the fear everyone had gone to bed with up until that time was almost forgotten. The curfew on the town had been lifted and life was settling back to normal. The ghastly tales of Carolyn's vampiric existence were already fading in the town, dying into the whispers of myth and legend.
That last peaceful night had been beautiful. Jeff was in Boston for a few days, but she had had a long leisurely walk that afternoon with Barnabas. He had delighted, like a child, in the simple shimmer of daylight through the trees. He had softly told her of his own sense of rebirth when he was with her. The warmth and affection had been full in his eyes.
Then they had enjoyed a quiet, special dinner together. He had seemed anxious to please her, anticipating something, hinting at hopes soon to be realized...
By the next night, any such hopes had been dashed for all time.
The choked cry of Julia in the next room—her own feet, running in alarm to the sound—a fleeting glimpse of the doctor splayed on the floor, head wrenched at an odd angle—the withered, ancient man with maniacal desperation in his eyes, lunging at her with frightening speed—her own screams echoing in her ears as he grabbed her with crooked, clawed fingers, jerking her toward him—the next scream gagging in her throat as he plunged bared fangs into her neck—the racing inferno tearing through her—blood-red fire in her throat, in her veins, in her brain and heart and very soul…
The end of peace.
The various psychiatrists and doctors Jeff had taken her to since their escape from Collinsport had all tried their best. Hypnosis, pills, various therapies and more. But she knew the ultimate escape rested in her own mind. She alone had to free her soul from that hellfire fury that had consumed it with his first bite. The same frenzied terror that gave her the nervous twitches, the burning stomach cramps, the hammering headaches, the sudden paralyzing panic attacks, the sweat-drenched nightmares.
When she and Jeff first had come to California, the change in scenery had made Collinsport seem a distant, vague dream. Here the ocean was on the wrong side of the land, and it was a comfortably warmer temperature that invited one to plunge into its foam-speckled surf. The air above Los Angeles had a heavy, smudged thickness to it that rarely let the pale blue sky shine through. The temperatures that first fall had never dropped to any semblance of autumn, and winter had been different for them as well, rainy and cloudy at times, yet more warm than cold. No blinding snowstorms or bitter icy frost, only damp, clinging fog that crept around their tiny rented house along the beach at Malibu, north of LA.
They had lived here for 18 months now. Jeff maintained them with sales of his paintings and odd jobs while she struggled to come to terms with the past. He had always been supportive, knowing all too well what she—they—had been through.
Helping her cling to her sanity in the crazed nights as she thrashed in horrifying dreams. Listening intently to the experts and therapists who patiently sought to bring her free of the dead madman's smothering grasp. Walking endless beach miles with her, or taking her to all the tourist sites--amusement parks, museums, historic buildings--to try and keep her mind off her agony.
Jeff. Always there, always caring, always loving her. As she loved him.
The sun was about to tip the hills on the other side of the house. The sky over the ocean had lightened as the encroaching rays poured across it. Now Maggie clearly could see the curve of each wave as it pushed ashore. The sand also was a pale glow in the little cove, the grains glimmering in the dawn. Looking up the coast, she could see the rounded humps of the hills against the shoreline that swung north toward Ventura and Santa Barbara. The bluff at the southern edge of their private cove blocked her view of the wide sweep of bay to the Santa Monica beachfront and Los Angeles itself. The air around her was warming. Out to sea, a padded wall of fog hovered, receding into the distance.
She sighed and burrowed her cheek into the bend of her elbow. She closed her eyes, wishing peace and release could come at last. But it did not. All that ever came were the vivid memories; whenever she let her thoughts slip free, the terror returned and she could see and feel it all again. It never eased, never diminished.
She remembered her extra agony last autumn on the anniversary of Barnabas' death in the monastery and her own release from his power. The headache had thundered in her brain all day; her eyes had been rimmed with raw red from lack of sleep and tension; the nightmare images that seemed to haunt even her waking hours had been especially vivid and real.
In her agony, she had believed it was happening again: the trance-like surrender of her will and life, his demon eyes, the fire pulsing at her throat, the sudden shattering of this unreal world as Jeff plunged the arrow through Barnabas' chest in a shower of crimson. Even now, she shuddered in memory.
It was always with her. Over the past few weeks, as spring came to the rest of the country but showed no obvious different signs here, she had sensed a certain fact in her situation.
The horror lingered on the edge of her mind because He still was with her, somehow.
She had been his only victim to survive except Daphne Budd, whose family had placed her comatose body in a special home somewhere in the Midwest.
And in some way, Maggie knew the matter of her own survival was a key factor:
I lived, yet I was the one most caught up in his desperate, wild, starving need for the past, for his lost Josette. And I was Josette. He pulled her into me and I became her and she became me—
Somehow.
Perhaps that ghostly existence remains deep within me, constantly reminding me of what was, what may have been. I cannot be free until I release that lonely sprit within me.
So she had come to a decision. She admitted to herself that it was frightening when she looked at it logically and rationally. But it was based on her emotions, on that sorrowing being Barnabas had planted within her.
Let that being go free—and I will be too.
Take it home—and I shall find peace in my home as well.
Thus, today they were returning to Collinsport. Jeff had exhausted his arguments and pleas, fears of relapse. She could not relapse into something she had not yet escaped.
She had to go, again walk up to Collinwood and the Old House, see the monastery once more.
If being in the actual place tormented her and drove her over the brink of insanity—where she had teetered these 18 months—then so be it.
At least then it would be done and she would no longer care about the past—or anything.
The leading rim of the sun cleared the hills behind Maggie as she gazed out to sea. Along the front of the distant, milky fogbank she could see the sharp-cut silhouette of a tanker ship steaming south to the ports of San Pedro or Long Beach. A gull reeled across her view, its pale tipped wings tilted as it glided effortlessly on the whim of an air current. It seemed to glare at her with one direct, beady eye. Then it thrust once with its wings and beat down the coast. She watched it fade into a speck and vanish. The sun laid a warm tickle along her neck and shoulders.
“Maggie.”
She turned slowly, relishing the thick, husky sound of his voice. Jeff stood in the patio doorway, his chest bare above his jeans, his feet also uncovered, his fair hair tousled with sleep. He was looking at her intently, trying to read her as best as he could. He had been able to do so only partially these months, for there was forever a part of her no one could fathom, for they had not experienced what she had. All he could do was feel for that hidden, buried part and try to comfort and support it in any way he could.
“Did you have another nightmare?” he asked, walking across the deck to her side. He placed a gentle hand on her warm shoulder. She shook her head, rubbing her cheek against her elbow that rested atop her knee.
She stared up at him with a faintly apologetic smile.
“No. I just couldn't sleep, so I came out.”
His fingers trailed up her shoulder to curl in the loose lushness of her hair. He caught a lock and let his fingers idly play with it.
“Are you afraid to go back?” It was not another argument; he had resigned himself that he could not talk her out of the trip to Maine. Only she could say no to it.
She hesitated, her gaze flicking away from him to the ocean horizon. Finally, she looked back at him thoughtfully.
“Yes, I am,” she admitted quietly. “But I still know I must do it. I can't hide here from it like we hoped, Jeff. I have to go back and confront where I was and what happened to me. Sort of face it down. All the psychiatrists and therapists can't do that for me. I have to.” There was soft pleading in her words.
He smiled reassuringly and brought his hand up to cup the side of her face.
“I know,” he said, and bent to kiss her.
She returned the kiss, straightening to wrap her arms around his smooth, firm torso. It was comforting to be near him, touch him, cling to him. She closed her eyes as she savored the taste of his lips, the strength of her love.
A flash in her mind—
Barnabas' arms catching her in the sun-splashed woods that last peaceful day—the slender banked trees with mottled white bark all around them—the crunching carpet of dead autumn leaves of every warm color under their feet—the reassuring security of his embrace...
Before he transformed into a madman.
Oh, Jeff. Let us find peace there.
She recognized every curve of the road as their rented car cruised on the approach to Collinwood. Sensing the tension in Jeff as he drove, Maggie knew it was painfully familiar to him as well. Didn't we just flee down this road but yesterday?
The trees were beginning to prickle with pale green buds; the grass was struggling up through the slushy, thawing earth. The sky overhead was as slate-grey and gloomy as it had always seemed. Unlike California, the sun had never shone very willingly over Collinsport. Spring here meant plants pushed free of the melting snow and grew again, but not in a hot, burnished, obliging sun as they did in California.
Maggie remembered the surprised recognition on Thomas' face as she and Jeff checked in at the Collinsport Inn after their long drive from the Bangor Airport. He had studied them with frank, curious eyes, as if trying to read in their faces why they had returned. They had been noncommittal in their answers, simply polite and casual but telling nothing.
Thomas had been disappointed not to learn any details, of course. But he also had told them briefly that David had been sent away shortly after they themselves had left Collinsport. Mrs. Stoddard had rallied for a time from her depression, enough to move around the house under the care of a housekeeper. But she had never welcomed anyone to visit or gone outside the main building. The news that she had died on the anniversary of Carolyn's death last fall somehow had not been surprising to either Maggie or Jeff.
At least Elizabeth had found that elusive peace.
....18 months....
Now the tower of Collinwood loomed through the tall budding trees as the driveway took its final curve. Maggie felt Jeff stiffen against the car seat as they drew close. She herself felt strangely light, almost numb. No fear—no rush of panic—no ominous dread.
Nothing.
The car pulled to a halt and Jeff shut off the engine. He turned to her, his eyes almost accusing, as if he expected her to have a hysterical fit right in front of him.
“I don't like this,” he stated flatly. There was anger in his voice—and fear.
She tested her feelings again. Still a vague, floating sensation, unafraid, unthreatened. Her voice was distant when she replied.
“He is not here,” she said quietly. “This house will not harm us.”
Annoyed, Jeff twisted and opened his door with a vicious shove.
“This whole damn thing will harm us. Harm you,” he fumed. “I still don't want you here, Maggie.”
He was half out of the car when he softened. He didn't want to alienate her or suddenly throw away the support he'd always given her throughout all this.
He turned back toward her, his posture relaxing. “But you said you needed to come, and I respect that,” he added in a calmer voice. “I don't like it, but I believe you know best what will help you.” He reached across the seat to caress her cheek. “I love you.”
She smiled and kissed his palm. Then, with a deep breath, she turned, opened her door, stepped out of the car, and gently shut the door. Seeing her move, Jeff immediately exited his side, slammed that door, and went to stay tight beside her.
With sure strides, she walked up to Collinwood's familiar front entrance, the entryway lined with tall glass windows around the impressive door.
She halted and pressed a slender finger to the doorbell. Jeff brushed his hand against hers as her arm fell to her side. They could hear the faint echo of the buzzer through the glass.
“Mrs. Johnson will be surprised to see us,” Jeff commented. “I wonder what it is like for her, living in this empty place, waiting for a Collins to come claim it again.”
“Maybe it isn't Mrs. Johnson,” Maggie mused. “Thomas just said Mrs. Stoddard had a housekeeper before she died. Mrs. Johnson may have…”
She was cut off as a figure approached them through the glass panels. Both immediately saw that it was not the woman they had known as the housekeeper of Collinwood. This woman was slender, almost angular, with sharp, crisp lines in her face. She opened the door with a look just short of a glare.
“Yes?” she asked briskly.
“I'm sorry—” Maggie recovered first. “We were looking for Mrs. Johnson or David Collins.”
The woman eyed them, measuring the couple carefully. She reached up to idly finger a golden locket at her throat before answering.
“I am Carlotta Drake,” she finally said. “Mrs. Johnson no longer works here, hasn't for more than a year. I have been housekeeper here since before Mrs. Stoddard's death.”
It was an almost-possessive statement. “And David Collins is somewhere—” She hesitated as if weighing how much to tell. “And will not live here again; he wants nothing to do with this house. The new owner will arrive shortly.”
“New owner?” Jeff interrupted with bald curiosity.
“Yes, another Collins. He will take possession.” The woman's tone remained curt, hostile. “And who are you?”
Maggie replied before Jeff could speak.
“We knew the Collins family well,” she said quickly. “But we've been gone a long time and only came back to visit. Since they are gone...” She waved her hand vaguely. “Things change.” She smiled slightly. “I am sorry we bothered you.”
The woman softened a little, nodded.
“I wish the new owner luck here,” Maggie went on gently. “This house—” her voice held honest pity and regret “—knew much sadness.”
The woman looked surprised; her entire impression of these visitors obviously altered. She wanted to know more: who they really were, what had happened to them to bring out such sincere insight, why they had returned now.
Could they be survivors of the chaos of one and a half years ago, before she had come back to this house and the precious ghost had slipped free to again walk the halls of Collinwood and love as it had 150 years before?
​
But the couple was already moving back, down the walk to their car, the man's “thank you” hanging in the cold air. The woman opened her mouth to call them back, then caught herself. Something told her to let them go.
Leave the ashes of the recent past lie so as not to clutter the existence of the house now. Time and fate and Angelique already had established what was to happen; these two, no matter how intriguing they were, must not change that.
She watched them climb into their car, shut the doors. The pretty young woman with the haunted eyes smiled at her once as the engine roared to life. The car did a U-turn in the wide driveway and headed away from the house, its tail-lights two glowing red eyes in the overcast day.
Maggie and Jeff were silent as the driveway curved and the house vanished in the trees behind them. Jeff glanced at her, but waited for her to speak.
“I want to go to the Old House,” Maggie said suddenly, her voice loud in the quiet. “I want to see what I feel there.”
Jeff did not argue, though concern creased his brow and tightened his lips. He guided the car down the driveway until the rutted, overgrown dirt road cut in on the left. He twisted the wheel and concentrated on where the potholes and rocks were as the car jounced along the rough path.
“Someone new will live in Collinwood,” Maggie remarked thoughtfully. “I really do hope they find happiness there.” She hesitated for an instant. “And peace.”
“So do I,” Jeff agreed honestly, and desperately wished the same for themselves.
The road bent at sharp angles and ran through the thick forest. Yet the soft greenness on the branches was not dense enough to block out the columns of the Old House as they drew near. It seemed aged and beaten and forgotten once again, as it had been for so many years before.
Maggie examined her feelings.
She remembered the frenzied search for David here, the numbing panic from his devilish trick to lock her in the upstairs bedroom, the anxious wait among the cobwebs, grit and looming deep shadows with a dead flashlight in her hand...waiting for a release she now knew might have been at the hands of Barnabas if Jeff had not come hunting for her first.
She also recalled the rosy, comfortable flickering of firelight reflected in Barnabas' eyes as they ate peacefully before the hearth in the main room downstairs, with poor, doomed Willie as he served the meal, all the while agonizing over the future and unable to warn her. Then there was the old portrait glowing in the candlelight, the face that looked so much like herself that it hurt—that was here too—the basis for Barnabas' obsessive fatal dream.
This house had meant everything to Barnabas. Would it affect her at all?
Again her feelings told her nothing. If she was to escape from her torment, it would not be here; she knew that. She also realized with slight surprise that being here at Collinwood was not tearing her apart. She was not reliving any of the horror. Rather, that something within her seemed to be content just to be here.
“Maggie?” Jeff had braked the car on the edge of the open area at the side of the house. The engine throbbed as if it also was awaiting her decision.
“Not here.” She sounded as if she was speaking to herself, then her voice lifted. “We can go on. There is nothing here. I-I want to go down to the beach, Jeff, where I can see St. Eustace Island.”
He scowled, the frown sharp across his forehead, as if she was asking too much.
“No, Maggie.” He shook his head firmly. “Don't go near there. You'll only bring it all back, invite it all over again.”
“Jeff, please.” She turned to him and he was startled to see tears in her eyes. “It's never left me, so how can I bring it all back?” Her voice was emphatic.
He understood she was right.
Then her tone dropped, eased. “So far I have not been afraid while we've been here. I'm not denying it all happened, but for some reason, it isn't terrifying me right now. I felt no wild panic at Collinwood and I don’t feel any here. I think if I see the island again, be where it all happened, it will tell me once and for all if I can live with it.”
He hesitated, debating, worrying. Yet he realized, as he had all along, that he could advise and help her only so much. The final coping, be it acceptance or helpless surrender, had to come from her, on her terms.
“No headache?” he pressed, wanting to be sure. “No sudden visions of fangs and blood and wanting to give yourself to that monster?” He was twisted in his seat, looking directly at her, and he found his hands were gripping her shoulders desperately.
She closed her eyes, the remains of the tears dampening her lashes.
“I've felt different while we've been here,” she repeated, searching for words. “I have always felt that Barnabas' dream for me to be his dead Josette stirred something inside me.” Her eyes opened and met his. “Some kindred spirit, some yearning for a magical, simpler past. I don’t know. Whatever it was, it has not let me go. I know Barnabas is dead. I have nothing to fear from him. But this—this spirit. It has stayed hidden inside me, and it wanted me to bring it back here, bring it home.”
Jeff was silent, seeing the slight furrow between her eyes in her earnest appeal for understanding. He slowly released her shoulders, letting his hands drop heavily.
“Considering the very existence of Barnabas Collins—a vampire,” he said at last, “I can't question a secret spirit or being within you. Barnabas can't harm you any more. But maybe there is something else that has driven you so much, driven you here.”
She nodded and smiled, relief in her shining eyes. Jeff abruptly turned to the steering wheel again. He concentrated on backing up, then directing the car around the side of the Old House to the path toward the beach. The house, ignored, abandoned, falling into ruin, soon disappeared behind the curtain of overgrown trees, toppled shattered branches, piled dead leaves and debris. It vanished behind them.
They could hear the pound of the surf as Jeff stopped in the clearing at the dead end of the rutted path and turned off the engine. They clasped hands as they walked onto the littered trail through the woods to the shoreline. Boughs still stark from winter bent to scratch at them and twigs and tiny towers of crumpled old leaves stumbled against their feet. But they continued on, and soon the trees thinned. Now they faced the open expanse of water and the rock-strewn beach was at their feet.
Maggie's immediate thought was how different this beach was from the one at home in California.
Home. Odd.
After all her life had been spent near here, a year and a half in California was more a home to her. The torture that had driven her away from here had blasted any sense of comfortable security she may have had about Collinsport.
The ocean stretched to the horizon, colder, greyer, and heavier than in California. It matched the sky, slick with damp overcast. The beach before them was pockmarked with stones, rugged, stretching up and down the coast in a jumble of rock and sand.
At a point approximately a half a mile offshore, a darker grey silhouette, streaked with thick green foliage, marked St. Eustace Island. It looked as dead and deserted as the Old House.
Maggie felt a surge inside as her gaze touched the island. It was almost a physical leap within her chest, as if something was thrashing in a frenzy. She stiffened, terrified, as the images rocketed into her mind's eye, sharper and more real than they had ever been in her nightmares:
An awareness of the monastery's damp chill slithering over her as she pulled on the crisp, brittle gown—
A mirror in which she saw herself through an ethereal fog, yet Barnabas' intense eyes also burned in its surface and in her soul—
Gliding down staircases her feet did not feel—
The cold slab of the altar stone grating against her skin, which did not feel—
His touch—
His need—
Her need—
The blazing eyes—
Drawing her in and down—
Even now—
The sensation in her chest abruptly pushed outward, like the flat palm of a hand shoving hard against a solid barrier, seeking release. She flung her head back, throwing her arms out wide to embrace the island before her. Her breath caught in her throat, her heart stilled in her chest.
She did not care—she did not fear—she did not worry.
She only let it happen.
She was soaring, floating, sailing in a sea of air, coasting in nothingness that supported her and let her go free...
Let it be free.
The pulsing weight in her chest suddenly bloomed outward, full, soft, and rich like a blossoming rose—
And was gone.
She poised motionless, caught in the vast emptiness for an instant, as if testing how safe it was to continue.
Then slowly she dropped, secure and relaxed and at peace.
She had not even known her eyes were closed until she felt her lids open and vision registered. The island was still there, as phantom-grey as it had been a moment—a lifetime—eternity—before.
She turned slowly, feeling sensations return to her.
And Jeff was there.
His face was tight with anxiety, as though he didn't really want to frighten her but could not mask his terror. That helpless fright gleamed brittle, sharp, bright in his eyes. He did not know if he had just lost her or not.
He reached out tentatively to brush her fingers with his own. Did he think her a ghost now, expecting his hand to slide right through her opaque, shimmering form?
The solid warmth of his touch, the quivering in his fingers, assured them both.
“I'm all right now,” Maggie said softly before he could ask. “Completely.”
He waited, uncertain, but her smile told him:
It was gone.
Peace was theirs.
At last.
Impulsively, he crumpled her to his chest in a desperate, relieved clench. She burrowed her face into the cup between his neck and his shoulder, nuzzling the softness there.
Looking across the top of his shoulder, her gaze was directed out toward the island. But she closed her eyes to it, reveling in the lightness of freedom in her heart—and in her soul.
She did not see the floating form of a snowy white owl seem to appear out of the cloudbank above the island monastery and hover, suspended, in the air.
Slowly the owl beat with its wings, once, twice, and began to spiral gracefully upward. As it climbed, another form swung up from below to join it: the stark contrast of an ebony bat.
Yet the bat was not flying in pursuit, thirsting for prey. It glided up alongside the owl, hung beside it for a second, then thrust its wings in tandem. The two forms continued to circle upward, then leveled out and rode the air current shoreward.
They soared above the heads of the couple embracing on the thin edge of beach, and vanished over the trees and the Old House.
Marcy Robin came to Dark Shadows in its original broadcast. She had no interest in soap operas, but DS proved to be the only one—daytime or primetime—she ever watched and got involved in its fandom. Since she was young, Marcy wrote, told, and shared her own stories and poetry about various interests and fandoms. In her fan fiction, she likes “to go farther,” exploring a wide range of characters, alternate tales, and intriguing possibilities.
At a 1976 science fiction convention, she met Kathy Resch and Jean Graham and learned about the DS fan publications that began in the late 1960s (and continued into the early 2000s). Soon she was writing stories, poems, articles, commentary, reports, filksongs, LOCs, and more for Kathy’s various fanzines and many others. In 1977 Jean, Kathy, and Marcy presented the first-ever DS convention and held one annually over the next few years.
In 1978, Maria Barbosa and Marcy launched “ShadowGram,” the Official DS Print Newsletter to announce, report, and update confirmed DS-related news for the cast/crew, events, publications, merchandise, publicity, locations, fans, and more. Marcy continues with the newsletter and also provides key confirmed DS news through the free ShadowGram Official DS News Online Updates. In 1983 Marcy, Kathy, Maria, and Dale Clark began the DS Festival events that continue today.
Under the name Darcey O’Brien at fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org, Marcy has posted some of her DS stories and plans to add more soon. She can be contacted at ShadowGram@aol.com