Episode 84: The Secret Place

Thursday, October 20, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. The last rays of sunlight are fading behind the great house on Widow’s Hill, and one can almost feel the ghosts of the dead past stirring to life—once again making the legends that surround the hidden corners of this odd mansion seem much too real.

 

David takes Vicki in circles through the abandoned wing of the house. “Well, you don’t think I’d want you to be able to find it by yourself, do you?”

He takes her to his secret room. 

He’s down to his last candle. Vicki says she thought his secret place was the old house.

“This is special. Nobody ever comes here, not even Matthew. It’s so secret, I could sit here for ten hundred years and nobody could ever find me.”

Vicki thinks that sounds horrible.

“I have everything I need—a desk, a bed, and drawing paper.” He crumples it up. “I can be as messy as I want—cuz nobody tells me to clean it up.”

“It’s very nice, but I’d just like to get my pen and leave.”

David wonders why she came if she doesn’t want to stay very long.

“Because you insisted—you said I couldn’t get my pen back unless I did come. Now I’m sorry I did.”

“I thought you were gonna be my friend.”

“Well, I am.”

“Then sit down. You’re the only person I ever showed this to.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re very proud of it, but, David, I’d rather come back and see it by daylight. To be quite honest with you, it makes me nervous.”

“What does? The mice? Don’t worry; they won’t hurt you. Sometimes I even feed them. I have all sorts of cans, can openers, paper plates, and even some forks.”

“Well, you’re very well equipped.”

“You bet I am. When my friends come here to visit, I sit down, and I have something to eat. It’s just great.”

“Friends? I thought you said nobody ever came here?”

“Oh, I don’t mean people. I mean my friends. The ones that live in this part of the house. The ones that never really died.”

Carolyn arrives home. 

She and Liz talk. 

Carolyn says she couldn’t care less about where David is. 

Then she notes that she doesn’t like herself at all after what she said to Liz and Joe earlier. Liz says there are times when she’s not very proud of Carolyn. 

Not regarding what Carolyn said to her earlier—there’s probably a lot of truth in that. She was offering Joe the promotion so that Joe and Carolyn could marry, so when Carolyn said she wasn’t something to be bought and sold, Liz deserved it. Liz’s thinking of Carolyn was also unfair to Joe, since he wants to make his own way.

Carolyn says she thinks she was mad at Joe, not for not accepting the promotion, but because she was afraid he would. (She seems to have amnesia about being mad that he danced with Maggie.)

Carolyn tells Liz she loves Joe—or thinksshe does. Liz says she should call and tell him.

Liz goes up to ask Vicki where David is while Carolyn makes her call. She comes down to report that Vicki isn’t upstairs either.

Carolyn says she and Joe are going to the fanciest place in town and dance and have a great dinner, and maybe some champagne. Liz says that might interfere with Joe’s saving for his boat. Carolyn says it’s a special night. She might even tell Joe she’ll marry him.

“Just because you said you would never speak to him again?”

“Don’t be so logical. That’s the trouble with this place. Everybody is logical and gloomy and full of premonitions of doom. I wonder what it would be like if we ever had a party in this place, I mean, a real party.”

“We used to have parties—many of them. I remember when I was a little girl sitting on those stairs out there, watching all the guests in their beautiful clothes. And one time we had a treasure hunt, all through the house. That was before so many rooms were closed off.”

“I wish we someday we could open up those rooms and—fill them with flowers.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Carolyn. There’s nothing left in those rooms anymore. Nothing but memories of a past that won’t come back.”

David yells for help. Vicki says someone will think he’s been hurt. He tells her they won’t. “You could yell as loud as you want, and nobody could hear you.”

Vicki says she has no intention of yelling.

“I didn’t exactly mean you. I meant anybody.”

Vicki says she wants to leave.

David says he has more to tell her. Sometimes dead people come to visit him. “They stand in that corner and they look at me and talk.” 

Once they told him abou a girl who was trapped in a room and when they found her, she was just dead bones.

Vicki doesn’t like David’s stories.

Joe arrives in a nice suit. He isn’t very responsive to Carolyn’s kisses. Liz comes out to say hi. Carolyn brushes off concerns about David and Vicki. Her concerns are more important.

David says he can’t find the pen. Maybe one of his friends took it. They’re always doing that.

“You know what I think? I think we’re gonna have a storm.”

“I think I’m gonna leave.”

She finds David has locked the door.

“It doesn’t matter. My friends don’t need doors. They can just come in anyway. Especially tonight.”

Vicki tells him to stop trying to scare her.

Why would he want to scare her—just because she called him a liar and a thief? His friends will come in, and yell and scream at her, and make her wish she’d never said that he stole her pen.

“David, unlock that door!”

“Say ‘please.’”

“Please, David.”

David unlocks the door.

He asks Vicki to blow out the candle. They don’t want to cause a fire. Surprisingly, she goes back to do it.

He locks her in. 

She screams for him to let her out. He says she’ll have to stay in there the rest of her life. And she can scream and scream, but nobody will ever hear her.

Carolyn apologizes for being mad at Joe for wanting to be independent (even though that wasn’t what she was mad at him about). 

Joe cuts her short. Then he tells her he has other plans for the night. When she finds out it’s with another girl, she gets mad again. (She should have a pretty good guess who it is.) She says she never wants to see him again—again.

David comes downstairs. He tells Liz he was outside. He doesn’t know where Miss Winters is. Maybe she took a walk.

Vicki continues to beg David to open the door. A ghostly voice seems to call hello.

                              Cast, In Order of Appearance

Victoria Winters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Alexandra Moltke

David Collins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  David Henesy

Elizabeth Collins Stoddard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joan Bennett

Carolyn Stoddard. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Nancy Barrett

Joe Haskell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  Joel Crothers

Fashion by Ohrbach’s

Directed by John Sedwick

Story created and written by Art Wallace