“It’s just that sometimes when I look at someone, I can almost see beyond them.”

Daphne Harridge has a big decision to make, and rather than think it over and really wrestle with the pros and cons, she’s decided to turn things over to a subcontractor, namely junior soothsayer Carrie Stokes.

“I’ve heard about your unusual gifts,” Daphne says, fishing for a free trial. “And I was wondering if you might be able to help me.”

Carrie smiles. “What do you want me to do?”

“Well, I’d like you to help me make a decision. You see, Bramwell and I are to be married.”

“Well, that’s wonderful! Congratulations!”

“Thank you, Carrie. But — the decision concerns the future. I know you can see into the future,” Daphne says.

“Well, I can,” admits Carrie, “but I can’t always do it at will.”

“I know that, but — Carrie, could you try now for me? Because it’s very important that I know whether or not Bramwell and I will be happy.”

“Well, I’ll try,” Carrie says, always willing to help out when she can. “But you must understand: whatever I see in the future, I have no control over.”

Once Daphne signs off on that clause in the contract, Carrie obediently takes a few steps forward, opens her eyes as wide as she can, and makes contact with the infinite.

“An image is beginning to form!” she announces, and

I can see it, she says.

The Great Unwinding. Dear god.

Victoria Winters is my name. Beginning is my journey. The days and nights of my tomorrows will soon be filled with shadows in my mind who tonight are still only people…

“But you must understand: whatever I see in the future, I have no control over,” Carrie repeats, as the mirrorball smashes to the ground.

“Yes, you said that,” Daphne answers.

“Well, I’ll try.”

Daphne is confused. “What?”

“Well, I can, but I can’t always do it at will.”

“That’s what you said before,” Daphne says. “You’re… going backwards.”

“Congratulations!”

“No,” Daphne frowns. “No, that’s not what I wanted. That’s not the future. You’re going backwards, into the past!”

“Well, that’s wonderful!”

There is a woman, strong and proud, with blazing electric blue eyes. She is waiting for the moment when she will reveal her secret.

Years ago, on that dark and shadowy night, the widows came, and They took her little girl.

Her name is Victoria, she said, as They snatched the child from her arms. They cackled. Not anymore, They said. This one is coming with us.

Now, the woman sits and waits. She believes that she will find the right girl at the right time, and she will embrace her, and all of their burdens will be lifted.

SHE APPROACHES, she stitches into the needlepoint in her lap. SHE APPROACHES. SHE APPROACHES.

But the little girl is moving in the other direction, now. SHE RETREATS.

It’s 2004, and P.J. Hogan is giving instructions to the lighting director.

More red, says P.J. Hogan. It’s not red enough. Never enough. 

I hunger. I must feed.

It’s 1998. A witch is rewriting her own story.

“It’s Bramwell,” Carrie says. “He has a very sad look on his face!”

“Sad?” Daphne asks.

“Oh… no, this man is different. He looks like Bramwell… and there’s a woman, who looks like Catherine…”

“And… oh, I don’t know what this is at all.”

It’s 1972, and Thomas Collins, the unborn kinsman, threatens to unwrite the world… 

“So then I searched Charles Dawson’s house,” says the woman who looks like Catherine. She has found something important.

“How do you know where she found it?” the fifth kaiju roars. “We only have her word!”

“Yes!” Trask agrees. “She may have placed it there herself!”

“Your honor,” says Angelique, “I am prepared to swear under oath that everything I’ve said is true.”

It’s January 8th, 1971.

Carolyn is trapped in a forgotten tributary of time, haunting the home that she once loved, now alone and abandoned.

“Carrie, listen to me,” Daphne pleads. “Tell me what is happening!”

“Something has started,” Carrie says. “I don’t know how to stop it. A lot of people, a lot of stories. They’re all looking for something. They get written, and rewritten. It’s all happening very fast, and it’s in the wrong order. Something’s wrong…”

When it falls — and it will fall —

You can not piece those shards together again.

You must not.

But They will try…

“That’s me! And there’s you, Daphne!”

“You can see me?” Daphne asks.

“Yes, but it’s not you, not really you… that’s not me, either. It looks like us, but it’s not, it’s someone else.”

“It’s different people, a different world. There are candles… they’re doing some kind of ritual.”

There are 1,245 steps to complete the ritual.
One of the steps is missing.
The ritual has only been completed once.

“Someone is rewriting stories,” Daphne says. “And there’s some kind of ritual.” She’s trying to put these pieces together, in some kind of order. Daphne has known the Collins family since she was a child. You get used to this kind of thing, eventually.

“Yes. But there’s a missing step… They can’t complete the ritual without it.”

“Who can’t?”

“That’s not a good name, Collins…” she says. “They don’t like it.”

Carrie? Carrie, can you hear me?  

“What was that?” asks Daphne.

Carrie trembles. “Did you hear it, too?”

“Yes, it was a man’s voice. It said your name.”

Wow — so you can actually hear me? I’ve made contact!

“Yes,” Daphne says. “We can hear you.”

Okay, wow. I didn’t think that this would actually work. This is good.

“Who are you?”

My name is Claude North. My friends and I, we’ve been trying to figure out what’s causing this… problem.

“What problem?”

It’s… well, in the prophecies, it’s called “the Great Unwinding.”

Carrie gasps. “Yes, that’s what I saw, right at the beginning. The Great Unwinding.”

“There are prophecies about us?” Daphne asks.

They’re… kind of prophecies? They’re written down in a book.

“What book?”

It’s called The Collins Family History. But not the regular one. It’s the other one, the paradox one.

“So what is it?” Daphne asks. “The Great Unwinding?”

It’s everything, our whole story, but backwards — going back into the past. And if it goes too far back, then… it’s bad. We’re not sure what’s waiting for us back there.

“And that’s happening right now?” asks Carrie.

That’s what you’re seeing, yeah.

“Is it — my fault?”

No. Well, not really. You just happened to be right on the edge of the missing step, when you tried to look into the future. And… there wasn’t one.

“Where did you get that?” Angelique snaps.

“Where I got it isn’t important,” says Inspector Hamilton.

Hamilton is reopening the investigation. Something has been lost, and must be found.

Julian did all the calculations, and he thought that you would just look forward, into the reconstruction that he made, but you didn’t. There was something there that we didn’t expect, and it’s like you bounced off of it. Or something. And now you’re going backwards.

Carrie says, “Who is Julian?”

He’s one of my friends. Dr. Julian Hoffman. He’s, like, the leader of our group. He’s been finding the lost children, and bringing us together. We’re caretakers now.

Daphne says, “What’s a reconstruction?”

The reconstruction is — it’s like a bridge that Julian made, to get us across the missing step, and allow us to move forward, into the future. We thought it would work. He’s analyzing it right now, to see if he can figure out what the problem is.

“I can hear something,” Carrie says. “It’s like music, in the distance.”

Um… okay. What does it sound like?

We’re young, but never too young
To set this whole world spinning

Okay, that’s… I don’t know what that is. That’s not great.

“What should I do?”

I’m not sure. Where are you, right now? Have you seen Inspector Hamilton yet?

“Yes, a little while ago. He was looking for something.”

Okay. You’re going faster than I thought you were. Also not great.

“Claude, this doesn’t make any sense!” Carrie’s eyes are filling with tears.

I’m sorry. It’s just — ugh, there’s so much backstory. Listen, I need to go for a minute, and see what I can find out about that music. Let me know if you hear more music like that.

“Where are you going?”

I’ll be back, I promise. Daphne — try and help her out.

Daphne nods. “I will.”

Great. Oh, and if you see a lizard? See if you can figure out where she is; we lost track of her.

Daphne shakes her head. “A lizard?”

Just, if you see one. I’ll be back.

“Judith,” he sputters. “For God’s sake!”

She smiles. “Are you enjoying your retreat, Gregory?”

“Judith — you must let me out!”

“How familiar that sounds!” she trills. “I used to say it every day at the sanitarium… but They wouldn’t listen to me.”

In one quantum state, the cat is Joshua Collins, an angry eighteenth-century shipping merchant.

In the other, Joshua is freed from his borrowed human body, and set loose into the ether, to find its own home.

“What can you see now?” Daphne asks.

“There’s a little boy. He’s in the Old House, and he’s looking for information. He’s just found a mysterious book.”

Aristede is perplexed. “How could a book be published in 1965, when it’s now 1897? How’s that possible?”

“I guess we’ll just have to find that out.”

“But what is it?” Aristede wonders. “Books can’t just fly back through the years.”

Daphne says, “Maybe that’s the book that Claude was talking about, the one that has prophecies in it.”

“Maybe,” Carrie sighs. “It’s all happening backwards… I can’t figure out what they’re talking about.”

“You see, Vicki took that book back to the 18th century when she went there,” Barnabas explains, “and so Eve brought it back to the present.”

“When did she take the book?” the gypsy asks.

“Not too long ago.”

“Oh!” Carrie says. “There’s no color, now. I can’t see any color at all.”

“What can you see?”

“Just black and white… like it’s a shadow. It’s not really there.”

“Magda,” Barnabas says, “I said that it didn’t happen too long ago… but that hasn’t happened yet! There’s still a chance that we might be able to save Quentin, by looking at the book that lies in the old colonial courthouse!”

“But you said that Eve took it!”

“She did — which happened in 1968, which hasn’t happened yet! So if I’m correct, then the book is still in the courthouse right now!”

“You know what?” Carrie says. “I don’t think this would make any sense, even if we were watching it in the right order.”

Even before the slimy thing came crawling across the bedspread she had seized a heavy glass ashtray from the bedside table. With screams of terror she struck out at it wildly and then fumbled for the switch on the bedside lamp.

She found it and turned it on, panting with terror. Her aim had been better than she could have hoped. The battered remains of the lizard made an ugly stain on the bed covering.

Hey, I’m back. Are you okay? I think I know what the music is.

“Oh, Claude! I just saw that lizard that you were asking about. It was in a book called Barnabas, Quentin and the Mummy’s Curse.”

Did you see what chapter?

“Chapter 4, I think.”

Oh, excellent! I’ll tell Phyllis.

“But, I’m sorry — I think it died. A girl crushed it, with an ashtray.”

Ha. Yeah, that’s not a problem. Sue Agatha’s, like, three thousand years old. You can’t kill her with an ashtray.

“The lizard’s name is Sue Agatha?”

And we are never too young
For us, love’s just beginning

“Oh! I could hear that music again,” Carrie says.

Yes, I found out what that is. It’s the theme song for “Never Too Young”.

“What’s Never Too Young?” Daphne asks.

“What’s a theme song?” Carrie asks.

Now it’s 1967, and Phyllis Wick’s boyfriend is running away with someone else.

“Say you will, Jeff —” Vicki promises, “and They will let you stay!”

They do, and he does, for long enough to get married to a girl who isn’t Phyllis. Just one more kick in the stomach for good ol’ Phyllis Wick. God, she hates those widows.

Never Too Young… it’s the story that ended, when we started.

“What does that mean?” Daphne asks.

Argh, so much backstory. How do I explain this?

“I think I understand,” Carrie says. “What I’m seeing… Daphne, the world isn’t what we thought it was. It’s not just one story, one life… one reality. There’s lots of them. Some of them are in books. It’s really complicated.”

Yes! Thank you! It’s crazy that people don’t understand this.

“But once you see outside your own story…” Carrie says.

Right. There’s a lot that we don’t know about this story that we live in — how many branches it splits off into, where it ends, if it ever ends. There’s a lot that hasn’t been explored yet. But we do know when it started.

“When did it start?” Daphne asks.

It started on ABC-TV, on June 27th, 1966 at 4pm.

“And before that…”

There was another story that ended, so that ours could begin.

“And I can see it,” Carrie shudders. “It’s called Never Too Young.”

For us… love’s just beginning…

“That’s what it means, the Great Unwinding. It’s taking us back, to before we existed. I think it’s taking us all apart.”

Meanwhile, in Fort Wayne:

“The screaming was unbelievable. Eleven women fainted, there were 58 lost children, one broken arm, a broken leg, and $1,500 damage to trees and shrubs.”

The problem with going all the way back to the beginning is that there’s this man named Barnabas Collins, and this story is mostly about him.

“Barnabas Collins?” Daphne says. “That’s Bramwell’s father.”

Yeah, that’s one of them. Did you meet him?

“Yes, he died about ten years ago. He was a very sweet man.”

Oh, that’s cool. I haven’t seen him, myself. Most of us have never even gotten near him. He’s a big deal.

“Those clothes!” she cried, rising to her feet. “Where am I? Who are you?” She glared at each of them. “Where’s my reticule? My papers, my references! I only work in respectable houses!”

God. Had she ever been that young, that sure of herself? Such a long time ago, now.

So there’s a lot of math involved here? But Julian calculated that Barnabas entered the show at step two hundred and ten.

“What does that mean?”

There are 209 steps, before it became Barnabas’ story. Unfortunately, we don’t know a lot about those steps, because we’ve been using them as kind of a buffer.

We haven’t wanted to explore that area too much, because we were afraid that we might go too far back.

“And that’s bad?”

Yeah, we thought that if we looked too far into the past, it could trigger the Great Unwinding.

“Oh.”

Right. So now it’s happening anyway.

So walk hand in hand with me
There are love songs to be sung

“Claude…” Carrie gulps. “I just heard more of that music.”

Yeah. Me too.

Can you tell me what you see right now?

“We’ve lost the color again. It’s just black and white now. I can see three widows, on a hill.”

Oh! That’s interesting. I didn’t realize They went back this far.

“I’ve made slides from the sample of Maggie’s blood,” the doctor says, but it’s a different doctor. “And I’m gonna get Hoffman, one of the best men in the field, to come and examine them.” That turned out to be a different doctor, too.

“And now I see a man opening up a box, and… there’s someone inside it! There’s a hand that reaches up, and grabs the man’s throat. It’s got a big ring on it.”

Oh, cool, that’s iconic. And… super dangerous, actually. That means you’re crossing the line into the buffer zone.

Sheriff:  Now… Can you identify this pen?

Vicki:  Yes.

Sheriff:  When, uh, have you known it before?

Vicki:  I found it on the beach at Lookout Point.

“Oh, it’s starting to slow down,” Carrie says. “I can hear more of what they’re saying.”

Sheriff:  All right, you found the pen. Then what happened?

Vicki:  I took it back to Collinwood with me.

Sheriff:  Did you find any special significance in the pen?

Vicki:  No, I just thought it was pretty, and it did look valuable.

You can? What are they talking about?

Burke:  Is this the pen you’re talking about?

Roger:  Where did you get it?

Burke:  I don’t think that matters.

“They’re talking about a pen. There’s something special about it.”

Liz:  Roger… is that the pen you lost?

Roger:  It couldn’t be.

Burke:  Why couldn’t it be?

And it’s slowed down the Unwinding?

Roger:  Well, I mean, it certainly resembles it, but… no, I don’t think it could be the same pen. Well, I didn’t look at it that closely, I can’t be expected to remember every little detail of a pen.

Burke:  Why not?

“Yes, definitely. When they started talking about the pen, it all slowed to a crawl.”

Vicki:  Do you know why Roger wanted to see me?

Carolyn:  Let me think… yes. it had something to do with that fountain pen that Burke gave me.

Okay, that’s good. Probably. That might give us some more time.

Vicki:  You told him I knew that he’d lost it?

Carolyn:  Sure, why not?

Say you’ll be my girl, and we’ll show the world

“We’re still going backwards, though,” Carrie frowns. “I can still hear the music…”

Vicki:  Has he searched for it?

Carolyn:  He’s turned the house upside down looking for it, but hasn’t found it. It just seems to have vanished.

“The pen,” Daphne says. “Have you seen anyone use it, to write anything down?”

“No, not at all. They’re just talking about losing it, and trying to find it.”

Can you see where it is?

Vicki:  Why did you bring me up here?

David:  To get the pen. Isn’t that what I said? To get the pen I stole.

“I can’t tell. It seems like it went from one person, to another. It’s definitely important.”

Vicki:  I don’t think that pen is up here. I don’t think it ever was here.

This is good. I’m going to tell Julian about this.

“About the pen, slowing things down?”

Roger:  Kitten, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.

Carolyn:  Burke Devlin gave me a fountain pen, the day we had lunch together in Bangor. Don’t you remember?

Roger:  Vaguely, yes.

Yeah. We’d never heard of this before, but if it’s slowing down the Unwinding, then it must be important. Maybe we can find it.

Carolyn:  Well, you certainly weren’t very vague about it, when I came home that night and told you I’d accepted a gift from Burke.

Roger:  Oh, yes, of course! The pen! It was kind of silver, wasn’t it?

Carrie, do you think you can hold it here? Maybe, I don’t know, concentrate on the pen, and see if that slows things even more?

Carolyn:  Yes, filigreed silver, and quite expensive, too.

Roger:  Yes, I recall. Very, very intricate work. And I was quite, too, insisting that you give it to me, to give back to Burke.

Carolyn:  Then why didn’t you?

“I can try,” Carrie says.

Okay. I’m going to go and tell Julian, and we’ll check the reconstruction again. We’ll see if we can find any clues, about what happened to the pen.

Carolyn:  It was the night you were going to the meeting, at the office. The night Mr. Malloy died. We were in here. It was about nine o’clock, I guess.

“Yes, I think this could go on for a while,” Carrie says.

Carolyn:  I showed you the pen, and you took it from me, and put it in your pocket.

Thank you, Carrie. You’ve been so helpful. I’m really glad that I got a chance to meet you. Goodbye.

“Goodbye, Claude.”

Carolyn:  He said that when you came to the office, you were going to give it back to him, but when you reached in your pocket, you found you didn’t have it with you.

“I suppose he’s gone, now,” Daphne says. “I hope they figure out the problem, whatever it is.”

Roger:  Do you know, I believe he’s telling you the truth? I remember something like that.

“Yes,” Carrie said. “I hope so, too.”

Carolyn:  Oh, Uncle Roger. I do hope you haven’t lost it. It was so valuable!

That we’re never… too young

My name is Victoria Winters
My journey is beginning

We’re young but never too young
To set this whole world spinning….

Tomorrow: The Missing Step.

---

Dark Shadows bloopers to watch out for:

It appears that no one in today’s episode is particularly worried about an insane Gabriel, wandering around in the woods with a knife.

There’s a brief audio fault in act 1, with some hissing on the audio track.

When Daphne tells Carrie, “I suppose then I would look a little more forward to the future,” someone in the studio clears his throat.

After Josette leaves, Bramwell asks Daphne, “Well, Catherine, do you want to postpone it?”

When Catherine opens the front doors in act 4, the previous music cue comes in again for a moment, then the music stops suddenly.

Josette tells Catherine, “When Daphne told her your plans, she should — you should never have reacted as you did!”

Daphne tells Carrie, “I’ve heard about your unusual gifts,” which implies that she heard about them from someone else. Carrie displayed her gifts to Daphne earlier in the episode.

While Daphne is asking Carrie for help making the decision, she looks at the teleprompter a couple of times.

Tomorrow: The Missing Step.

Dark Shadows episode guide

— Danny Horn’