Episode 840: A man who has betrayed a friend

Artist Charles Delaware Tate goes to the great house of Collinwood, where he interrupts a passionate kiss between handsome rake Quentin Collins and mystery woman Amanda Harris. Quentin is getting pretty serious about Amanda. That is to say, one of his two fiancées tried to kill him the other day, so that engagement is off, leaving him with some free time.

Tate has been commissioned to paint a portrait of Amanda, and he leverages that fact to bully Quentin into leaving him alone with her. Tate goes on a lunatic rant, claiming that he caused Amanda to exist by painting a picture of her two and a half years before, in the spring of 1895. As returning viewers know, this happens to be true, but it sounds preposterous and Tate has no way of getting past Amanda’s instant rejection of it. He doesn’t help his cause when he keeps pawing at her and shouting in her face.

Amanda runs out of the room. She passes Quentin on the staircase. He asks what Tate did to her; she refuses to talk about it and keeps running. Quentin confronts Tate, who tells him that he will know all about it soon enough, since he, like Tate, is now under the thumb of sorcerer Count Petofi.

Petofi is staying in an abandoned mill nearby. This was originally a hiding place, but virtually everyone on the show has visited him there by now. He may as well move someplace more comfortable. We saw in #813 that the Collinsport Inn already houses the restaurant which was often featured in the first year of the show, when it was set in contemporary times; if he stayed there, at least he’d be able to get something to eat.

Tate calls on Petofi at the old mill. He tests him, and finds that even though Petofi gave him his skills as an artist he does not realize that he conjured up Amanda and that he can do the same with inanimate objects. Regular viewers have already heard Petofi admit to his henchman Aristide that he does not fully understand his own magical powers, and we have seen him attempt tricks that have not worked very well. So, while Petofi is mighty indeed, his powers have some very definite limits. Perhaps Tate will draw Petofi helpless before one of his enemies.

The enemies Petofi most fears are the Rroma people, to whom he always refers as “Gypsies.” He narrowly escaped death at the hands of Rroma chieftain/ New England crime boss King Johnny Romana in #827 and #828. King Johnny had caught up to Petofi and was about to use his sacred scimitar on him when Aristide threw a knife and got him in the back. With his dying breath, King Johnny told Petofi that another Rroma would be along soon.

Petofi thinks he has hit upon the perfect means of escaping from the Rroma. He has learned that vampire Barnabas Collins traveled to 1897 from the year 1969, and now Barnabas’ friend, mad scientist Julia Hoffman, has followed him. Petofi is convinced Barnabas must have known what he was doing, and that he must have a means of returning to the future. But regular viewers know that Barnabas never knows what he is doing. He stumbled into the past while trying to do something else, and hasn’t the faintest clue how to get back to the 1960s. He has told Petofi as much, and Petofi flatly refused to believe him.

Petofi has Julia in custody. He forces her to tell him that she and Barnabas both traveled back in time using the I Ching. Barnabas cast a particular hexagram, meditated on it, and found himself in 1897. The wands were still in place some time later, and Julia meditated on them with the same result.

Petofi goes to Collinwood and visits Quentin in his room. He knows that Quentin has a set of I Ching wands, the very set Barnabas and Julia used to make their journeys, and he wants to borrow them on the assumption that while meditating on them he will be able to will himself into the 1960s.

Quentin is unhappy to see Petofi. As Tate said, Quentin is under Petofi’s control. Petofi forced him to reveal Barnabas’ hiding place; that’s how he was able to abduct Julia. Quentin rails against the injustice of all this, and declares that he won’t do any more favors for Petofi. But Petofi tells him that he is his slave now. Petofi gloats that while Quentin hasn’t always been a slave, he himself has always been a master. Quentin winds up telling him where the wands are.

Back in the old mill, Julia gives Petofi some pointers about the I Ching. She reads from the Book of Changes, and when she gets to a part that makes it clear it is not a tool that can be used to gain control of anything, he angrily orders her to stop. He casts the wands, meditates on them, and his “astral body” passes through a door. The door leads to a chamber where he sees a hand raising the scimitar King Johnny had wielded.