Beauty and the Beast (49 page)

Vincent then explained what her condition was. “Catherine, you are trapped in a state of unconsciousness. None of what you see here, except me, is real. When our baby was born, Gabriel’s doctor shot you full of morphine. Do you remember that?”

Catherine looked up into Vincent’s eyes and nodded her head. “I do remember, Vincent! The doctor told me that I wouldn’t suffer, and I knew then that he had given me a shot of morphine to kill me. Then, they took our baby away, and I found you just before I died.”

Vincent smiled at her. “You didn’t die, Catherine. You have been bravely hanging on in this nightmare world.

I’m here to bring you home now. I found my family, Catherine, or rather they found me. My people are called the Tandins, and we are in their world right now under the north end of The Bronx. They are telepaths,

Catherine, and they are using their mental abilities together with the empathic connection we have with our own people in Father’s world to help me wake you up.” Catherine finally seemed to comprehend what Vincent was telling her. “If I wake up, will I get to see our baby boy?”

Vincent hugged her. “Yes, Catherine, he is waiting out there in the waking world for us now.”

A look of remembrance came over Catherine’s face.

“You named our baby Jacob! You told me that you named our baby Jacob for Father didn’t you?”

Vincent smiled and nodded. “Yes, Catherine.” Catherine smiled softly. “You made the most wonderful love to me. That was all in this dream world?” Vincent hugged her tightly. “Yes, Catherine, and it is time to wake up now.”

Vincent stood up and gently put Catherine down on the floor in front of him. He took both of her hands and entwined his fingers with hers. However, before he could do anything else, a thick wall of thorns sprang up between them and around Vincent’s arms. Vincent tried to hang onto Catherine in spite of the pain of the thorns digging into his flesh, but just then, Tom Gunther returned with a vicious expression on his face. He rushed to Catherine, snatched her off her feet from behind, and pulled her away from Vincent.

Catherine screamed, and Vincent roared as their hands were pulled apart. “Vincent! Vincent! Put me down, Tom! I don’t belong to you! Vincent! Vincent!”

She kicked and struggled as he continued to drag her away.

Tom Gunther’s angry voice yelled, “So, you’re talking to your imaginary friend again, are you? I guess I’m just going to have to have you committed and lock you away in the insane asylum!”

As Tom Gunther dragged Catherine out the door, Vincent roared again with furious frustration, and then he gave a mighty yell, as his precious wife disappeared from view, “Catherine! CATHERINE! CATHERINE!”

Despair and anguish welled up in an overwhelming flood of misery as Vincent’s hope of quickly recovering Catherine vanished. The pain he was feeling was unbearable, and then he realized with a twinge of genuine fear, that his pain was not just emotional. He felt a severe crushing pain in his chest which quickly radiated down his left arm. As Vincent clutched his chest, he cried out, “No! Not yet! Not before I save Catherine!” Vincent called out in desperation telepathically to his sister. “Elisia, I’m dying! You must save Catherine for me!” Vincent then crumpled unconscious on the floor of the bedroom.

When Vincent woke up, the pain in his chest was gone, but he was no longer on the floor of Catherine’s bedroom. Now, he was on the floor of the Great Hall back

in Father’s world. It was dimly lit by only two wall torches. The great double doors on the lower level were open, and there was a brilliant light shining through them from beyond. Vincent recognized that light from when Catherine had pulled him back from the brink of death in the small lower cave. There was a couple standing just beyond the door watching him, a large Tandin man and a small human woman. Vincent stood up and took a few steps toward them, but they held up their hands indicating that he should stop. He recognized his parents, Gaylin and Loren, from his dream of the attack on his family in the solarium after Diana had found Dr. Vlas’ secret office in Gabriel’s mansion.

His mother, Loren, spoke softly to him. “Vincent, you must go back. It is not time for you to come with us now. Your Catherine needs you, and you are the only one who can save her. Little Jacob needs both of you.”

Vincent answered his mother. “I want to go back, Mother. I must save Catherine. I am so happy to see both of you, though!”

His father, Gaylin, then spoke. “Vincent, we are very proud of you. We have watched over you and your sister ever since you were separated. You have both become everything we prayed you would be. Please tell your dear little Catherine that we love her too.”

Vincent smiled at his parents. “I will tell her.” He then watched as his parents turned around and went back into the light as the doors slowly closed behind them.

When Vincent turned around, he saw Elisia standing in front of the entire group of his family and friends at the foot of the staircase. He then realized that they had all entered the dream to save him when his vital signs indicated that he was in serious trouble. Elisia spoke to him. “Vincent, you had an heart attack. Your heart was compromised as a teenager when you were ill, and it took another beating when you became ill again after Paracelsus’ attack. Your people are amazing! With the power of their faith and love added to ours, we were able to repair the damage to your heart. You are now completely healthy again. We are leaving Catherine’s dream world now. Go find your wife and wake her up!”

Vincent nodded as joy and hope filled his entire being again. “I will, Elisia, thank you—all of you!” The happy group turned around and went up the stairs and out of the upper doors.

Vincent just stood still and thought for a few minutes about where he might find Catherine next. If her nightmares were taking her on a tour of past failed relationships, then he had a pretty good idea where she would be now. Vincent closed his eyes.

When Vincent opened his eyes again, he found that he had been right. He was standing on the massive stone porch of the mansion where her former fiance, Steven Bass, had imprisoned her. He looked through the glass doors and saw Catherine seated on a large wooden chair

with both of her arms tied to the chair.

A very tall man with wavy brown hair was standing over her. He would have been handsome were it not for the frightening look of crazed obsession on his face.

Steven Bass was yelling at her, very much as Tom Gunther had been. “This is your home! This is everything you ever wanted! You belong to me! I am the only one who knows what you need! No one will ever love you the way I love you!”

At that point, Vincent broke the door off its hinges and rushed inside. His warning growl turned into a furious roar, and Steven Bass shrank back cowering to a corner with a terrified expression on his face. Vincent looked at him and said, as he was untying Catherine, “You’re right, thank goodness. No one will ever love Catherine the way you do ever again. She deserves much better than that!” Vincent picked Catherine up in his arms, and he carried her out of the mansion, through the woods, and back into the tunnels.

Once he was in safe and familiar territory, he set Catherine gently on her feet and asked her, “Are you ready to wake up now, little Sweetheart?”

Catherine looked up at him with a soft expression of complete trust. “Oh, yes, Vincent, this is a terrifying place. Please help me wake up and leave here! How will you do that?”

Before Vincent could answer her, Catherine vanished

from his sight. Vincent’s roar of devastation reverberated throughout the tunnels, and he sank to his knees and put his head in his hands. He thought in despair, “Where have her nightmares taken her now?” Then he remembered that there was only one other failed relationship that he was aware of that would have caused Catherine enough pain to play a part in her nightmares.

He jumped to his feet. He knew where she was!

Vincent closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there was chaos all around him. He was standing in Elizabeth’s Painted Tunnels, and they had collapsed from the drilling for the foundation of Elliott’s Burch Tower. Elizabeth’s wall murals were completely destroyed, and there was an ominous groaning of the remaining tunnel walls and ceilings threatening more imminent collapses. His heartbroken Catherine was kneeling beside Elizabeth’s broken body where she had been crushed to death by the falling cement ceiling of the tunnel.

Catherine was sobbing and cried out, “Elizabeth, I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry that I couldn’t stop Elliott!”

Before Vincent could climb over the debris and reach Catherine, Elliott Burch appeared and grabbed her arm. Vincent almost didn’t recognize him. This tall man with the expensive collar-length haircut and carefully trimmed beard and mustache had an haughty self-absorbed countenance that made him appear almost evil. Elliott pulled her to her feet and was dragging her out of the tunnels. He said triumphantly, “She’s just a little person, just an obstacle to be removed! Stop your crying! You are going to be happy now living with me in my great tower with the six-story waterfall!”

Vincent wasn’t about to see the woman he loved dragged off into another hopeless nightmare. This time, with a mighty leap, he cleared the obstacles in his path.

He ran down the tunnel after them and then planted himself directly in front of Catherine. He glared and snarled with fangs bared at the apparition of her imagination, and the heartless Elliott Burch disappeared. Catherine stared at Vincent in confusion, and then she shook her head as the nightmare fog in her mind began to dissipate.

Catherine finally said, “I’m still not awake, am I?”

Vincent smiled at her as he took her in his arms, “No, not yet. Elliott is dead, Catherine. In the end, he became the man you encouraged him to be. He sacrificed his life to save mine. This is a nightmare, an illusion that your mind has created. It isn’t real! Elizabeth is well and happily painting in her tunnels back home right now.” Vincent picked Catherine up in his arms. “I need to take you where your nightmares began, so I can help you to wake up.”

Vincent carried Catherine through the darkened and empty back streets of the city. He was taking her back to the very place where he thought that he had lost

Catherine forever in this life. Finally, they were on the roof of the old Battery Arms building, where she had climbed the stairs to come to Vincent as Gabriel was taking their son away in his helicopter. Catherine said, “This is the last place that we were together, before I lost consciousness, and my nightmares began.”

Vincent smiled softly and nodded, “Yes, Catherine. Do you remember the terrible nightmare I had after we decided that it was too dangerous for me to try to travel to visit your special place with you?” Catherine nodded as that memory returned to her. Vincent continued, “My nightmare was about what the tunnels would have been like if I had died as a baby after I was found. In that nightmare, Paracelsus had prevailed, and Father had died on the streets homeless. Everyone in Paracelsus’world was living in fear and hopeless misery, and he was a ruthless dictator. In that terrifying dream, you were the angel that was taking me on a tour of what might have been if I had not had the courage to live. In that nightmare, I thought that I had lost you altogether, because it was another life in which I had no part. You told me in the dream, and then you told me again when I awakened from that nightmare, that I could never lose you if I only remembered something, something important, one word. Do you remember what that word was?”

Catherine smiled as she said, “I told you to always remember love!”

Vincent hugged her tightly and said, “Yes, Catherine,

remember love. Our journey has been one filled with tender love, and it is time now for you to awaken and be reunited with your family and friends who love you and with your baby who needs his mother.” Vincent looked deeply into Catherine’s eyes and quoted the line from Dylan Thomas’ poem, “Though lovers be lost.”

Catherine finished the line, “Love shall not.”

Vincent spoke softly. “Catherine, close your eyes.” Catherine closed them. “Now, open your eyes, Catherine.”

When Catherine opened her eyes again, she was in the bed with Vincent in the healing chamber fully awake. Vincent then quoted the last line of the poem, “And death shall have no dominion!”

Catherine’s voice was filled with pure rapture as she exclaimed, “I’m awake—really awake?”

Vincent chuckled, “Yes, my sweet Catherine, you are really awake!”

All thirty-two of their family and friends came into the room from the outer corridor and gathered around the bed with smiling faces. Catherine looked around in amazement at both the familiar and the new faces, and she smiled at their obvious joy. Vincent gathered Catherine into his arms and closed his eyes in ecstatic relief that he was now reunited with his beloved wife in the waking world.

Chapter XI

New Beginnings

When Vincent was finally able to bring himself to loosen his grip on Catherine, he settled her back comfortably on the pillows of the partially raised bed, so the others could get a good look at her now that she was finally awake. They had all been happily satisfied to just silently watch this miraculous reunion. Now, Joe was the first to speak. “Well, Radcliffe, waking you up has sure been a lot more fun than attending your funeral was!” The entire group giggled happily.

Catherine hadn’t caught sight of Joe until he spoke, and now she looked at him in wide-eyed surprise as she reached toward him. “Joe! Oh my goodness! You’re here!” Then the realization of what Joe had said dawned on her, “My funeral? I had a funeral?”

Joe took her hand, kissed it, and then laughed, “That you did! It was an humdinger too! I didn’t find out until nearly four months later that it was a sack-of-sand and not you that we buried. It is a really long story. Suffice it to say that I am very relieved that you are finally awake!” Catherine giggled and looked at Vincent. “I am so thrilled that Joe knows about you! I told Joe once that he had an heart like yours.”