Yesterday’s episode ended with a séance in the long-abandoned Old House on the estate of Collinwood. Strange and troubled boy David Collins was possessed by the spirit of David Radcliffe, a boy who died in 1867. David Radcliffe and his mother, Laura Murdoch Radcliffe, stood in flames, refusing to be rescued, and burned happily to death. Through David Collins, David Radcliffe told well-meaning governess Vicki and drunken artist Sam that he wanted to be with his mother forever, but that he was separated from her when they died. He also tells them there will be another deadly fire very soon, in a small house by the sea.
Vicki, Sam, and others suspect that David Collins’ mother, Laura Murdoch Collins, is a reincarnation of Laura Murdoch Radcliffe. A humanoid Phoenix, she will burn herself and somehow rise from the ashes. The voice of David Radcliffe, someone of whom David has never heard, confirms their fear that Laura will take David with her into the flames of her latest pyre, and that he will burn to death there.
During the séance, dashing action hero Burke Devlin and hardworking young fisherman Joe Haskell had waited outside the Old House. When today’s episode opens, Joe has apparently taken Sam home. Burke carries David into the great house on the estate, with Vicki walking beside them. David is awake and keeps protesting that he can walk, but Burke insists on carrying him to his room. Burke has never seen David’s room before, and David enjoys telling him how to get there.
Vicki is very serious. She tells Carolyn that their friend, parapsychologist Dr Guthrie, was killed in a car crash on his way to the séance. They both believe that Laura somehow caused this crash, and lament their apparent helplessness before her. Vicki also recaps the events of the séance, leaving Carolyn terrified that Laura will take David soon.
Burke comes down and says that David wants Vicki. Vicki goes up to David’s room with some extra blankets; he is already in bed. He asks her what happened to him at the séance. Vicki lies to him, claiming that he just fell asleep and started dreaming. We know that Vicki is a deeply honest person, largely because she is such an inept liar. When she is about to say something that is not true, she looks down, stiffens, and starts talking fast. Most of the time, Vicki’s attempts to lie precipitate an immediate disaster, and this is no exception. David blows up at her and declares that he is going to go to his mother in the morning and tell her he wants to live with her from now on. It would be hard enough for Vicki to respond to this under any circumstances, but having just told David an obvious lie she can barely find words suitable for mumbling.
Downstairs, David’s father, high-born ne’er-do-well Roger, comes home looking miserable. Carolyn tells her Uncle Roger that she has bad news for him. She means Guthrie’s death, which Roger says everyone in town already knows about. He expresses regret that he behaved so churlishly to Guthrie when Guthrie was only trying to help.
Roger proceeds into the drawing room and sees Burke. Roger and Burke are bitter enemies, and when Carolyn said that she had bad news she may well have been thinking of the fact that Burke was in the house. But Roger knows about that, too. He crossed paths with Joe, who brought him up to date. Roger and Burke agree to set their differences aside for the duration of the crisis.
Vicki comes down and tells Burke, Roger, and Carolyn about David’s decision. The four of them collaborate on a plan to keep David away from Laura. Burke will take David on a fishing trip in the morning. Once they are well away, Roger will go to the cottage on the estate where Laura is staying and throw her out.
Roger and Burke go together to David’s room and tell him that Burke wants to take him fishing. David says that he has to see his mother in the morning. Burke keeps pushing the idea, describing a fishing lodge at a lake in northern Maine that can be reached only by seaplane, where he might catch a record-setting muskie. David can’t resist that. Roger says he will tell Laura about David’s decision while he and Burke go away.
Roger and Burke do a good job of co-parenting David. There was some talk early in the Phoenix storyline about which of the two of them was David’s biological father; this scene shows that that was always the wrong question. If they were truer to themselves, Roger and Burke would forget their differences permanently, set up housekeeping together, and David would have two dads. Burke and the Collinses are rich enough and powerful enough to ignore convention, and people in town gossip about them constantly anyway, so why not.
Back in the drawing room, Roger and Burke are confident they have matters under control. Vicki isn’t listening to them. She looks at a contemporary newspaper clipping about the deaths of David and Laura Murdoch Radcliffe and notices something she had overlooked before. The fire took place “Exactly one hundred years ago!” The others dismiss this as a coincidence, but Vicki declares that the fire in which Laura will lure David to his death will happen within 24 hours.
Once you start telling stories about the supernatural, you cut yourself off from the usual laws that we see operating in our daily lives. You need some other system of cause and effect to maintain suspense. Dark Shadows settles on anniversaries as forces that can make things happen. Vicki had noticed hundred year intervals between the fiery deaths of women named Laura Murdoch, but this is the first time an anniversary is explicitly presented as the cause of an event.
Acilius on Dark Shadows 