“I see a room, with a coffin and a woman!”
“Something’s happening!” says Carrie.
“I can see it!” says Pansy.
“The vibrations — very strong vibrations!” says Carrie.
“Where the music’s coming from, I can see it!” says Pansy.
“An image is beginning to form!” says Carrie.
“There ain’t no doors in my mind, honey!” says Wanda.
“All she did was tell me what you had planned — to betray me — and you killed her for it, just as you killed me, and you killed your wife Amanda, because she tried to help me too.”
The late James Forsythe, shipping magnate and finder of lost boats, has unearthed the skeleton of his sister Sarah in the basement of the gatehouse on the great estate at Collinwood, buried under what appears to be zero inches of dirt in the floor. It’s kind of a wonder that nobody ran across it before; it looks like a century and a half of normal wear and tear on the linoleum would probably have uncovered a couple of suspicious bumps in the floor over the years. I guess some people are naturally curious and some aren’t, and that’s all there is to it.
James’ spirit is currently occupying the body of Morgan Collins in order to right some of the pertinent wrongs of the past, and digging up Sarah is step one. But as he gazes at his aged relative, an interior squall kicks up and starts making itself known, which is not ordinarily part of a basement’s weather system. If you were under the impression, as I was, that ghost-related wind came in through the windows, then now we know better. It seems to just happen on its own.
“Well, blow me down!” James says, as it tries to. “I have found her, Brutus! I know you are in this room, and I am ready for you!” He whirls around, looking for his opponent. “Show yourself to me, Brutus!” he says, putting up his fists. “Let me fight you again! I’ve had all I can stands, ‘cuz I can’t stands no more!”
And Brutus appears, snarling and snapping, ready to battle over Sarah’s shallow grave. So I guess nothing changes; after a hundred and sixty years, these two sailor men are still fighting over a skinny girl.
“It must be what’s been happening.”
Okay, so you know how once in every generation somebody in the Collins family needs to spend a night locked up in the spooky old room behind the magic door, and in the morning they’re either dead or they’ve gone irretrievably insane? Well, it turns out there’s a third option.
Eldest son Morgan Collins has undergone the ordeal, and during that surprisingly uneventful evening, he located a secret locked door that was hidden behind basically nothing, so why nobody had ever noticed it before I don’t know. Behind that door — easily accessed by banging on the cheap seventeenth-century padlock with something heavy, like one of the excess vases cluttering up the place — was a whole other part of the house, a secret passage with a set of stairs leading to who knows where.
Morgan apparently explored this secret-behind-the-secret area, and experienced I’m not sure what, which by morning had him sitting quietly in a chair, unharmed but in an odd mood. Now he’s walking around telling everyone he’s not Morgan, and making insulting remarks.
I feel like we were more or less promised some kind of supernatural upheaval after spending a couple episodes just waiting around until they opened the door again, and this doesn’t quite live up to their side of the bargain. But at least we don’t have a white-haired Morgan cringing and babbling about the Woman in White, so let’s go ahead and consider this a win.
“Of course, you all think that I’m mad, but I’m going to use that to my advantage.”
February the 17th.
I got the strangest feeling today, just before Father left the gatehouse on his early morning rounds. Father kissed me on the top of my head and told me to be a good girl, as he does every morning, and then suddenly I became aware that there was some kind of presence in the room. I could see a great, winged bird, sitting by the fireplace, and it was humming a tune.
The music was sweet and gentle, and it seemed familiar, like it was a song that I’d heard many times, a long time ago. The bird was very beautiful; it seemed to shine with the brightest light I’d ever seen, in a thousand shades of yellow and orange, tinged with red.
The feeling only lasted for a few moments, and then it was gone. They rarely stay for very long, and most of them are nice, like the bird. I didn’t say anything to Father about it, because I know that he worries, sometimes.
“The fact remains that every time there is a crisis involving Bramwell, you seem to have the most extraordinary emotional feeling!”
So here’s where we are: if you read yesterday’s post and it made any goddamn sense to you, then you’re aware that you and I are currently perched just outside the event horizon of the Great Unwinding, a long-prophesied series finale extinction event that threatens to erase Dark Shadows, and send us all tumbling back into the 4pm timeslot’s previous occupant, a dreary and unremembered soap opera called Never Too Young.
Never Too Young was a nine-month-long daytime soap flop about a group of rambunctious teenagers in Malibu Beach, aired every afternoon as a kind of eternal Beach Blanket Bingo. The show was told from the point of view of Alfy, who owned the local teen hangout, the High Dive. It included a lot of swinging music, both on the soundtrack and with frequent guest performers at the High Dive, including the Castaways and Paul Revere & the Raiders. The star of the show was Tony Dow (Wally from Leave It to Beaver), and his costar was the original kid from Lassie. Just thinking about Never Too Young is fairly grim, especially when you consider that this sun-and-fun beachside adventure was broadcast from September 1965 to June 1966, pretty much missing summer altogether.
And now we are threatened with the almost-certain obliteration of Dark Shadows from history, and an eternal plunge backwards into a timeline where there’s no such thing as a vampire soap opera. This will be a safer, sunnier, more predictable world, where late 1960s television was uniformly up-tempo and unsurprising, and it will be a hell on earth. The stakes could not be higher, and you know how vampires feel about stakes.
And this imminent, reality-crushing catastrophe has something to do with episode 1219, which does not, in fact, exist. So that’s a bit of a puzzle.
“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
“The spirits don’t care. They don’t care, they just want a sacrifice!”
The portal is open; the dark work is complete.
There is a haunted chamber in this mansion, made of hurt feelings and eternity, and it demands to be fed. At least once in each generation, the Collins family chooses the relative that they like the least — they say it’s a random lottery, but guess who gets chosen every time, go figure — and they throw that irritating uncle to whatever happens in this room after dark. Nobody knows what ordeal these luckless loners undergo, while they inhabit this solitary torture cell.
“Look at his eyes, filled with fear,” says Flora Collins, shuddering. “Yet now, this room is like any other room!” Sure, except that it sucks.
Dark Shadows Every Day 