The Collinsport Weather Report: Episode 90: Games of Mourning

Friday, October 28, 1966

My name is Victoria Winters. As an orphan in a foundling home, I became accustomed to making decisions without guidance. I have now been forced to decide whether or not I should leave Collinwood, and part of the answer lies in the mind of a small boy.

David comes to Vicki’s room to find her packing.

He says it looks like she’s going away. She says that’s what he wanted, isn’t it? “That’s what I said I wanted.”

Vicki notes that he said he hated her, and if she died, he wouldn’t come to her funeral, that he hoped she’d stay in that locked room for the rest of her life.

He says he didn’t mean it, not all of it.

Vicki asks which part he didn’t mean.

He says if she died, he’d come to her funeral.

She says she supposes that’s something.

Why would he come to her funeral?

“Because I like funerals.”

He used to play a game about funerals.

Sometimes he would be a mourner, and sometimes the preacher, and sometimes the dead person.

Vicki asks who the dead person was supposed to be.

“My father.”

“That certainly is a morbid game.”

“Is it any worse than going around shooting people---bangbangbangbang—you’re dead.”

“Oh, so you don’t approve of shooting people?”

“Not particularly. I think there’s a better way.”

Like frightening them to death? Like he tried to do with her?

David says he didn’t know she was still in that room. He says he yelled out “I hope you stay in there until you die” to the ghosts, not to her. There are two ghosts, he says.

No, Vicki tells him. There are three. She saw the ghost of Bill Malloy.

Now David doesn’t want her to leave, now that she’s seen a ghost. They must like her and want her to stay.

No, Vicki says, he warned her to leave before she was killed like he was.

That means he was murdered! David knew it all the time!

Maybe she knows something she doesn’t know she knows. He begs Vicki not to leave.

Carolyn overhears this. David tells her he’ll do anything if she’ll get Miss Winters to stay.

She asks David to leave her and Vicki alone.

Carolyn asks Vicki if she still believes she saw a ghost. She does.

David listens.

She didn’t dream that seaweed on the floor.

She wrote it all down.

Vicki takes a book out of her drawer and shows it to Carolyn.

Carolyn goes over to the window to read it. (Does she perhaps have vision problems?)

“ ‘The first thing I was aware of,’ ” Carolyn reads, “ ‘was a harsh voice singing an old sea shanty—“What Will You Do with a Drunken Sailor.” ’ ” Carolyn’s voice breaks. That was Bill Malloy’s favorite song. Vicki says that proves something, doesn’t it?

“I guess so,” Carolyn says, “but I’m not sure what.”

David has apparently heard enough, because he wanders off and finds Matthew changing the lock to the door to the other wing.

He tells David it’s too keep nosy people out. David asks who would want to go in there. Matthew says apparently Miss Winters did. Mrs. Stoddard told him Miss Winters got lost back there and locked herself in one of the rooms by mistake. David says that must be what happened if that’s what she told him.

He leaves and Carolyn comes out.

Matthew tells her there were too many loose keys to the old lock. She goes back into Vicki’s room.

“Vicki, you did say you’d leave it up to David.”

“I know. It was very silly of me.” She had hoped he’d want her to stay—and not because of a ghost.

Then what about her search, trying to find out who her parents were?

Vicki says she’ll never give that up, but she’ll have to try looking somewhere else. She hasn’t learned on thing there that she didn’t already know.

“But you might.”

“Carolyn, I like you. I really do. You’re a very nice person.”

“No, I’m not. I’m selfish and thoughtless and scatterbrained and selfish—and if I weren’t all those things I’d be urging you to leave Collinwood too. So I guess I’m more selfish than anything else.”

David tells Matthew that there's a loose step in the stairs. He says he’d better have a look at it.

Vicki reads from her book, “‘The ghost said distinctly that he had been murdered, and that the murderer was someone who lived in Collinsport. Then it said that the same thing might happen to me.’ Now, you wouldn’t like to see that happen, would you?”

“Of course not. I just can’t believe it.”

Vicki says if they could get back into the room, she could show Carolyn. Carolyn says they can. Matthew has the lock off of the door. (You can see where this is going, can’t you?)

Carolyn isn’t wild about going back there.

“Well, you said you didn’t believe, so if you don’t, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?”

“No . . .”

David observes them go into the other wing.

He goes to Vicki’s room and reads her book. “ ‘I knew immediately that it was Mr. Malloy, or the ghost of Mr. Malloy. He was wearing the same clothes in which I had last seen him. He was soaking wet, as though he just dredged up from his watery grave. There was seaweed hanging from his shoulder. It was the most horrible sight I have ever seen in my life.’ ”

He goes out and sees Matthew working on the lock. He asks what would happen if someone was inside there. Matthew says, “There isn’t.”

David asks if they could get out after he puts the new lock on. (Using locks that would open from the inside would have been a better safety precaution, really.) Matthew says David asks too many questions. David asks if he believes in ghosts. Matthew says he doesn’t believe or disbelieve. David tells him he’s putting the lock on the door not just to keep people from getting in but also to keep ghosts from getting out. Matthew asks what ghosts. David tells him Vicki saw the ghost of Bill Malloy.

This upsets Matthew. When David says it doesn’t matter and tries to walk away, Matthew grabs him, demanding to know what Miss Winters said. David says he’s hurting his arm.

Matthew lets go. David gives him the details, including Bill’s ghost saying he was murdered.

David wants to take Matthew into the other wing before he finishes putting the lock on. Maybe the ghost is still in that room. Wouldn’t he like to talk to Mr. Malloy again? Maybe he’d tell who killed him.

Matthew says he just tripped and fell. David says he thinks someone’s in there right now. Matthew says that’s impossible. “In this house,” David says, “nothing is impossible.”

Matthew goes away with his tools. (Did he finish changing the lock?)

Roger kindly left the key in the door to the room for Vicki and Carolyn.

Vicki says she’ll keep it with her, and they go in.

Carolyn thinks the room is horrible. She would have died.

“I almost did.” She finally fell asleep from exhaustion.

The storm woke her up.

She remembers being awake—the lightning, the thunder, and Mr. Malloy, dripping with seaweed.

Carolyn says she doesn’t see any seaweed.

“I don’t understand,” Vicki says. “I—I’m sure there was some here when I left.”

(As if ghostly seaweed couldn’t disappear.)

Carolyn says maybe it was part of a dream she had.

Maybe . . . but the part where the key wouldn’t come under the door was no dream.

She shows Carolyn how she took a piece of paper and knocked the key out of the lock onto it.

When she pulls it through, the key comes under the door this time.

Vicki doesn’t understand why it came through this time. She could have unlocked the door last night if it had worked. “Maybe you weren’t supposed to,” Carolyn says.

“Why?”

Carolyn says she doesn’t know, but they should get out of there.

Vicki notices a name on the paper she used. It’s a ledger sheet from Garner & Garner.

Carolyn says they’re her mother’s lawyers in Bangor. The name B. Hanscomb is on it. Like the woman Sam painted who looked like Vicki. This could be the clue she’s waited for.