By the fire stands what looks like a lone figure, enfolded in a heavy black cloak and tilted black fedora. From behind, Gary greets the others. The solitary figure's hat blows off in a breeze, revealing the clothes to have been mounted on a branch. The ensemble, found in Gary's dad's magic shop, is reputed to have been worn centuries ago by a mystical order of monks, who had the power to control both the human mind and the forces of nature. Tonight, Gary has a tale of such lordship. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, he calls this story "The Tale of the Carved Stone."
Having recently moved house, Alison Denny dejectedly looks around her new bedroom, and finds, carved into the windowsill, the message "TJB was here."
On the street beneath her window, one of four kids around her age accidentally drops something. She hurries outside, but as the four walk on, she accidentally steps on the lost item: a pair of comedy spectacles.
In search of a replacement pair, she visits Sardo’s Magic Mansion. She overhears, from the back room, a heated price negotiation.
Alison calls for assistance. The shopkeeper, Sardo, emerges from behind the curtain. He grandly offers wares of magical exoticism, but Alison just needs another pair of wacky glasses.
As she reaches for her money, Sardo ventures other items - perhaps the house speciality of comedy vomit? He retrieves what he claims to be an Egyptian friendship stone. The smooth black pebble, set with hieroglyphs, responds to recitation of the incantation: "amrak vitulin ra."
Sardo is happy to sell it for seventeen dollars. Outside the shop, as Alison happily sets off with her purchases, she passes a man in a black overcoat, dark glasses and fedora. He suspiciously glances at her, and heads for the Magic Mansion.
Back home, as Alison struggles to remember the incantation, the doorbell rings. In response to her summons, the kids from before are here. To the boy, Don, she hands the replacement glasses. The girl by him scorns the service as a trivial imposition. Dejected, Alison decides to return the so-called friendship stone.
The Magic Mansion is in a bit of a mess, with props toppled and items scattered. Concerned, Alison calls for Sardo. From the back room, Sardo wearily reiterates his correct form of address, and is interrupted by a black-gloved hand across his mouth. The black-clad man from before then calls, in indistinguishable mimicry of Sardo’s voice, a command for Alison to leave.
With Alison gone, the black-clad man, Brother Septimus, resumes interrogation of Sardo, and demands to know the location of the Amulet of Ankara. Brother Septimus removes his shades, pulls the shopkeeper's gaze level with his own, and repeats his demand. Entranced, Sardo confesses having sold it to the new resident of the brown brick house on Maple Street: the girl who just left.
In her bedroom, Alison flings the alleged friendship stone onto her desk. As the Amulet knocks against the full-length mirror, it discharges several forks of blue lightning, which spread to waver across the glass.
As the lightning fades, the mirror reflects not the current bare state of the room, but wood-panelled skirting, brown wallpaper, and a bare floor on which lies a brown rug. At a desk sits a boy a few years younger than Alison.
As Alison retrieves the Amulet, the lightning returns, and the anachronistic reflection fades.
Just then, from outside the window behind her, a cold voice calls her name. Outside, seemingly floating in mid-air, is the black-clad figure of Brother Septimus. He demands the Amulet. Unnerved, Alison, Amulet in hand, falls against the mirror. With a return of the ethereal storm, she falls seamlessly through the glass.
Through a temporal variation of the mirror, Alison seamlessly falls onto the bare floorboards of the Victorian version of the room as seen before. Alarmed, the boy at the desk asks her name. He aims a catapult.
Alison asks how the unknown boy got into her room. Confused, the boy maintains the room to be his. He introduces himself as Thomas Jefferson Bradshaw, and claims the house to belong to his grandmother. Alison notes her family to have just moved into this house; which they both cite as fifteen Maple Lane.
Distracted, Alison peers at the windowsill, into which are carved the boy’s initials - as she saw before.
She confides to Thomas the apparent time travelling properties of the Amulet. Thomas confirms the current year to be 1892. They marvel at their extraordinary situation.
At another full length mirror, Alison readies the Amulet, but then remembers her sinister visitor. Thomas offers the deterrent of his trusty slingshot. Lightning once more flares across the glass, and they step through.
Enraptured, Thomas peers at a modern lamp. The doorbell rings. He opens the front door to reveal Sardo, who hastily explains the genuinely magical Amulet to belong to a rather nasty fellow by the name of Brother Septimus, said to have been hanged in the fifteenth century, but -
From sideways, Brother Septimus leaps into view, seizes the shopkeeper, and demands Sardo retrieve the Amulet, lest he be fed to the plague rats of the abyss. Alison and Thomas run.
From the upstairs landing, Thomas taunts Brother Septimus with the Amulet. As the sinister monk advances, Thomas throws the Amulet downstairs to Alison, who catches it, takes Sardo by the hand, and pulls him to the mirror.
With another flash of ethereal lightning, they step into 1892. Brother Septimus pounds furiously on the glass.
Alison leads Sardo to the mirror in Thomas’s bedroom. In awe, Sardo considers the monetary prospects of the time-travelling stone. He applies it to the mirror, and is suddenly pulled into the temporal storm.
In his place, out steps Brother Septimus. He advances upon Alison.
Behind him, out steps Thomas, the Amulet loaded in his slingshot. Brother Septimus removes his shades, and entrances the boy in place, and pulls off a glove, revealing his right index finger to mount a vicious metal claw.
In desperation, Alison cries the boy’s name. Roused from his trance, Thomas runs out of the way.
Alison leaps onto the monk. They struggle towards the mirror. Thomas aims his slingshot, and launches the Amulet at the glass.
With a dazzling flash, Alison finds herself back in her own time, amidst shards of shattered glass. Sardo helps her up. He frantically asks if she saved the stone.
On the floor, in one of the shards of glass, they see a reflection of Brother Septimus. In a black void, amidst flashes of lightning, an orange fog swallows him.
Another voice then echoes distantly. Reflected in another shard of glass, Thomas waves. Alison urges him to come through, but they both realise it to be too late. While they regret their parting, both are happy to have finally made a friend. Thomas gives a final wave. Alison wishes him a good life.
Alison inspects the windowsill, and grins. The century-old inscription has been replaced by another. Encircled by a heart shape, it reads "Alison and Tom...friends forever."
Gary dons his hat, and closes the meeting. The others laud his story, and Betty Anne asks to try on his hat.
This episode provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Or in Tom's case, "Abusive Grandmother". According to him, if he makes so much as a noise that wakes her up, she will beat him soundly with her cane.
- Badass Boast: Brother Septimus claims invulnerability, and to defy death.
- Badass Longcoat: A heavy, cloak-like overcoat.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Sardo, when entranced by Brother Septimus takes a while to submit a final piece of information.
- Chekhov's Gun: Thomas’s slingshot proves more effective than one might have thought...
- City of Adventure: Sardo alludes to previous episodes centred around his magic shop, thereby possibly uniting them in the same continuity.
- Close-Enough Timeline: Alison’s befriending of a young boy in 1892 rearranges the carved initials in her windowsill to an inscribed tribute to their friendship.
- Evil Gloating: Brother Septimus enjoys sadistic big talk.
- Evil Sorcerer: Brother Septimus, of a mystical order of monks, uses his powers for sadistic thrill.
- Evil Wears Black: Shades, black cloak, gloves and fedora.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: Lonely, newly moved Alison.
- A Little Something We Call "Rock and Roll": Subverted; while Alison and Thomas are keen to savour modern marvels, they never get the chance.
- Lonely Together: Newly moved Alison and sheltered Thomas.
- Mind Control: With his eyes, Brother Septimus can esnare people in a submissive trance.
- Our Time Travel Is Different: Holding the Amulet to a reflective surface summons a reflection, and bridge to, the past.
- Rasputinian Death: Brother Septimus is said to have been hanged in the fifteenth century - it seems not to have worked.
- Shout-Out:
- Alison and Thomas respectively compare their adventure to a work of Jules Verne or Steven Spielberg.
- Alison: If you’re a friendship stone, then I’m Madonna.
- Socially Awkward Hero: Alison seems somewhat nervously keen to impress new acquaintances.
