Strange and troubled boy David is peering into his crystal ball.* David’s cousin Carolyn tells him it is time to go to dinner. He tells her he is looking for his friend, mysterious little girl Sarah. Sarah has been driving the story of Dark Shadows for weeks now, and the ratings keep going up. Not only does she get viewers to tune into their television sets, she even gets Carolyn to start watching the crystal ball.
Hardworking young fisherman Joe comes to the house. Joe is also looking for Sarah, and asks if David can help find her. He explains that Sarah might know who abducted Maggie Evans, The Nicest Girl in Town. David says that he knows where Sarah is, but that it is a place he promised he would keep secret. He offers to go himself and bring her back. Joe is all for it, but Carolyn points out that it is after dark, David’s dinner is getting cold, and that his source of information is something he saw in his crystal ball. Joe backs down.
David recognizes the urgency of the situation. He sneaks out of the house and goes to the secret place, the Tomb of the Collinses in the old cemetery north of town. Sarah is indeed there. When David asks if she knows who abducted Maggie Evans, she replies that all she knows is that she has a friend named Maggie.
David takes that at face value. Regular viewers cannot be so sure. We know that Sarah is a ghost, and that she returned to the Earth after her brother, vampire Barnabas Collins, was loosed to prey upon the living. We do not know whether Sarah knows that she is a ghost or that Barnabas is a vampire. Nor do we know what she remembers from one apparition to the next. Clearly she remembers the people she has spent time with, but we can’t be sure if she remembers that Maggie told her that her father’s name was Evans and where she could find him. She might be telling the truth when she denies knowing anything more than Maggie’s first name, or she might be lying to protect Barnabas from exposure.
My wife, Mrs Acilius, compares Sarah to a superhero. Like a superhero, Sarah shows up, does what needs to be done to meet the immediate need, and disappears. You could almost say that she “lives in the moment,” if that were not the opposite of what ghosts do. Maggie needs a friend, Sarah shows up and befriends her. Maggie needs to escape from Barnabas, Sarah arranges her escape. Maggie needs to escape from mad scientist Julia Hoffman, Sarah breaks her out and leads her home. Barnabas needs to be stopped from killing Maggie, Sarah stops him.
Playing catch with David, Sarah throws the ball wide, and he ducks to look for it. When he looks up to complain that she threw it where he can’t find it, she has disappeared. Evidently all that needed to happen was that David had to go to the tomb- she has accomplished that, so she goes back to her rest.
David looks for her in the tomb and in the secret room. As he is about to leave, he hears voices approaching. He must honor Sarah’s secret, so he looks for a hiding place. The only place he can find is the tomb, so he stays inside.
The voices are those of Barnabas and his sorely bedraggled blood thrall Willie. Willie had seen Sarah through the window of their house** in the opening scene, and Barnabas has decided to come to the tomb where Sarah was buried in hopes that she will appear to him.
David realizes that Barnabas and Willie are coming into the tomb. He hides in the secret room. Little does he know that Barnabas is an expert on this room- he was trapped in a coffin there for a century or two, until Willie accidentally released him in April. That old coffin is still there, and when David hears Barnabas order Willie to open the panel he hides inside it.
We don’t know an in-universe reason why this was what needed to happen. We do know that Barnabas has been so harmless lately that the vampire story is running out of juice, so we can see why the writers would want to create a situation where Barnabas decides he has to kill David. But it is so mysterious what Sarah’s motives are or whether she is the kind of being who has what we could recognize as motives that the episode leaves us in suspense, not only as to how David will get out of danger, but what we will learn about her as a result of the incident.
*The crystal ball was a big deal for a while after dashing action hero Burke Devlin gave it to David in #48. He hasn’t really used it since #82, and Burke has since lost his connection to the plot, been recast with a less interesting actor, and turned into a hopeless schlub. It’s hard to see any way back into the story for Burke, but maybe there is hope that the crystal ball will again be a focus of interest.
**Willie was polishing the chandelier when he turned to the window and saw Sarah. Evidently he had seen her reflection in the crystal. So Sarah is twice detected today through scrying.
Dark Shadows Commentary 