Rachel Hedison (dream)

*"There is nothing wrong with this town that couldn't be fixed with a big flood." - Rachel Hedison*

**Rachel Hedison** is a native of Ashford Falls, the daughter of Carter and Monica Hedison and the heiress of Hedison Pharmaceuticals. She has one brother, Blake Hedison, and a step-brother, Ty Hedison. An extreme opportunist, she has resorted to unscrupulous, manipulative and borderline amoral means to acquire power, even to the point she has flaunted her looks and sexuality to attain it.

In 1989, Carter Hedison had a stroke that left him bedridden and hospital bound for several months at the Duffy Medical Center in Albany, New York. By this time, Carter must have at least suspected Rachel's motives and inclinations were not in his favor, and during his coma, he lived in dream-induced reality that must have confirmed at least some of his suspicions. Influenced by current events happening in Ashford Falls relayed into his unconscious mind through Blake's (and possibly Rachel's) visits to him in Albany, his perception only barely resembled what was going on in Ashford Falls beyond his hospitalization.

The origins of Rachel's counterpart remain unclear and obscured by Carter's mental portrayal of her. In the beginning at least, she was treated and identified as his daughter, but she later developed into an unclear relative, reputedly the daughter of his brother since she sexually taunted both Ty and Blake. (In the Early Eighties, Rachel had taunted Ty with sexual favors before she realized he was her long-lost step-brother, previously believed dead. As a result, Ty for years afterward struggled with his attraction toward her.) It is known Rachel owned her own real estate office ("handed to her by her parents") which she developed into Hedison Enterprises.Through the company, she owned the Satterwhite Hotel and other structures and handled real estate issues for the Worshams and Dirty Irene's restaurants. (The Worshams was a restaurant that opened during Carter's convalescence.) She also helped Ashford Falls acquire the Lubbock Mansion as the new courthouse (which had actually occurred in 1946.) Instead of the Hedison Mansion, she presided in the Hathaway Mansion which stayed trapped in perpetual restoration while storing her possessions at Castle Winchester near Winchester. (Rachel's grandfather, Gage Winchester, had started construction of a castle-like structure in Haverstraw Canyon in the Late Forties which was never completed.)

Rachel also seemed to have skills and abilities that were akin to supernatural. It was believed that she could cause or induce potential events on a psychokinetic level; such as inducing engine failures to occur from afar or cause others to experience negative results ("bad luck") but only along certain lines of probability. She could not create events that would result in extreme prosperity to herself, such as affecting the stock market or controlling the whims of others. She also seemed to have incredible endurance and was resistant to injury to a certain degree. (Tricia Caldwell remarked that striking her was like hitting a brick wall.) Her most potent and favored ability was her skill to use her looks and sexuality to force others to follow her bidding, but this skill was only viable on those who had a physical attraction to her. (Carter Hedison could resist her advances and suggestions.) She was also frequently assisted by Patty Mackelmore, who acted as her chauffeur, assistant and bodyguard, and by Melissa Strickland, who acted as her informant.

Despite her vague origins, Rachel started out as a more ruthless version of her real life counterpart. She once lived at the Hedison Mansion as a child until the death of her nanny, Samantha Troy. (Troy had actually left the house to work for Louise DuBois.) She seems to have had a similar schooling to the actual Rachel Hedison, their history deviating with Rachel acquiring legal custody of the LeGros Mansion and using it to develop her own realty company which she parlayed into a business. Despite her success, her main conviction was to seize control of Hedison Pharmeceuticals and to do so, she acquired several stock shares of the company. In order to acquire a controlling interest in the company, she vamped Dr. Lloyd Hall and Robert Whaley into selling their shares to her, but Carter learned of her complicity and sold property he owned in Wyckoff and Kirkeby to James Gratz to acquire his shares, enabling him to retain controlling interest. Rachel also forged a final will for stock holder Marla Hill, who was suffering from cancer to gain her shares after she died, but the phony will proved useless as Hill had sold her shares before her death to take care of her children after her death. (These events might have been based on the events of Hill's sister, Darla, who had passed from cancer and left nothing behind to care for her children.)

In order to gain a foothold on Carter's life and routines, Rachel tried vamping Blake Hedison several times to help her, but he resisted her advances in favor of Tricia Caldwell. She next turned to Ty Hedison, turning him into an ally to gain control of Hedison Pharmaceuticals. When Ty took it upon himself to try killing his father for her (again hearkening back to his attempt on Carter in 1986), Carter had Ty re-committed to Ardmore Sanitarium. This action caused the return of Carter's "deceased" wife, Monica Hedison, who had been killed through one of his unscrupulous deeds some years before. Rather than responding as mother and daughter, Rachel and Monica responded with extreme suspicion toward each other.
In order to ruin or at least destroy Carter Hedison, Rachel seduced and tempted several male accomplices to follow her bidding, such as Len Snedeker, who regularly worked on his car, and his physician, Dr. Paul Kirkwood (who was Rachel's real-life paramour). Her main objective, however, was by covertly financing Geoffrey Overall, a medical researcher at Hedison Pharmaceuticals, who was developing genome research to use biochemical means to create cosmetic results similar to plastic surgery. Rachel knew taking custody of the research would have weakened the company for her to seize it, and she ended up financing Overall's research to take over the company from within. She also suggested that Melissa Strickland volunteer to be a a test subject in an experiment that resulted in her death. Rachel was also connected to the later murders of Len Snedeker, Russell Coleman and Nikki Baldwin.

When her connection to Baldwin started getting suspicious, Rachel tried getting other investors for Overall's research, including Douglas Greer, Daniel Featherstone, Benjamin Waverly and TV actor and entrepreneur Dean Reeves. However, her mental control over Dean caused him to act contrary to his regular behavior. He started drinking and smoking and ignoring his wife and children. As Dean's charities started separating from him, Tricia tried breaking Rachel's control over him, and he started slipping back into his Super-Guy persona. Prowling around at night, he starting battling muggers and vandals, but when he tried saving local youth Jason Pryde from a fire at the Old Trout Mansion, he was killed when the burning roof caved in on him. Rachel also increased her attempt to control Blake and get him to turn over his father's company to her. To do so, she had Tricia killed off to weaken Blake's resolve and completely place him under her bidding.

With Blake's help, Rachel acquired his personal shares in the company and that of Dr. Albert Waverly and Theodore Spalding, gaining complete control of the Hedison estate. Since Carter had placed the house as an asset of the company, she seized that as well, firing the staff and filling it with her old people. When Carter learned the truth, she confessed to killing Blake in the same plane crash that killed Tricia (despite Blake having been seen alive after the crash and even mourning her) as well as many of his share-holders and allies to ruin him. Enraged, Carter took a gun hidden in the study and shot Rachel point blank to the chest, but she inexplicably survived and stood up unharmed, even pulling the bullets from her chest. Her main secret revealed, she seemingly produced poltergeist activity to terrorize Carter and Monica trying to flee from her. Racing from the house through the garden, they looked back to the house and were terrified by the shadow of something rising unseen and eclipsing the grounds. Carter sheltered Monica from the unknown sight... and woke up from his coma at the Duffy Medical Center.

Waking up to Blake and Rachel in his room, Carter realized and learned several things from the dream which made him far more ruthless than before. He set up safeguards to protect his stock-holders from selling their shares under duress, he installed regulations to control the experiments his people worked on at his company, he moved his mansion and estate to his Priority Enterprises conglomeration and he increased on Blake's life insurance to protect his life. Significantly, he realized for the first time that Rachel did not have his best interests at heart.

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