Tucker, garbed in a theatrical cape, bounds onto the scene, and attempts to play a magic flute, said to summon rain. Frank demands silence. While magic can be used for good, says Kiki, uncertain use can bring untold disaster. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls this story "The Tale of the Quicksilver."
On her bedroom wall, Laura Turner draws a chalk outline of a door, and, by ritual incantation, summons a "creature of darkness." Within the outline appears the sourceless shadow of a cloaked, hooded figure. It bulges instantaneously into a towering, black-cloaked man, whose corpse-like face peers at Laura.
She proffers a metal spoon tied to a branch, and commands the being to halt. As he advances, Laura puts down the wand, knocks over a candle, and reaches for a crystal amulet.
As she backs away, the fallen candle ignites a curtain. As she makes to retreat, the door slams immovably shut. As the flames spread, and the spectre looms, she screams...
Having bought the vacated house, the Johnston family arrive one afternoon. On the upstairs landing, younger sibling Doug feels unseasonably cold. Older brother Aaron, impressed with the size of the place, goes to get his stuff.
That night, in the darkness of their shared bedroom, each boy's bed, independently of any visible cause, starts, at each end, to violently jerk up and down. Shaken in more ways than one, the boys stand by their now-still beds. Doug compares the disturbance to an earthquake. Their eyes fall on a corner of the room, where, atop the desk, three chairs, stacked in succession, hold a precious pile of each boy's belongings. They then notice, on one wall, a painted letter "Q". They exchange good-humoured disdain.
To the class, Miss Berg introduces Aaron, and directs him to the empty seat by Connie Turner. As he passes each desk, the papers on each blow successively to the floor. He apologises, stoops to pick up Connie’s, and accidentally bumps her head with his.
As he opens his geometry book as directed, the desk before him starts to waver, and lifts several inches off the floor. It hovers for a few seconds, and topples sideways.
In the corridor, Connie appraises Aaron's necklace, fashioned in the form of a winged shield.
That night, Aaron rises from bed, his vision distorted by a hazy blur. He looks down at the two beds, and sees, in his own bed, his own sleeping body. Amused, he puts it down to a dream. His phantom body turns to see a girl, who closely resembles Connie, lay candles and read aloud some kind of exorcism ritual. Aaron reaches, and his hand passes seamlessly through her.
In phantom echo, Laura's ritual repeats before Aaron. As the hooded spectre advances, the girl suddenly turns to Aaron shouting "I was wrong! I did it wrong!".
Back in his earthly body, Aaron wakes with a scream of horror, and tells Doug of the strange nightmare. Doug coughs, and admits to feeling unwell. Just then, Aaron's necklace medal slides across the bedside draws. Dragged by an unknown force down the side of the draws, it then slides across the floor, and through a crack beneath the skirting board.
Aaron reaches for it, knocks away a tile of the skirting board, and reveals a secret compartment, from which he retrieves his medal, and a partly singed book. As he lays the book on the floor, an unknown force flicks the pages, until they reveal, amidst numerous student photos, encircled by a green "Q", a girl named Laura Turner, who closely resembles Connie.
With a heavy rushing sound, they see, looming over him, the hooded, corpse-faced spectre of Aaron's nightmare. As they pound on the immovable bedroom door, the spectre grins.
Just then, their father opens the door. While their parents put down talk of ghosts to more nightly stories, their mother is distracted by a feel of Doug's feverish brow. As their parents return to bed, Aaron grabs his baseball bat...
Next day, Aaron brings the mysterious book to school. At mention of Laura Turner, Connie suspects some kind of distasteful joke. Aaron shows her the singed book...
At home in bed, Doug reads a book. The entry for "Quicksilver" describes a teenage girl poltergeist, whose hauntings are marked by the letter Q. On the wall, he glances at the green "Q".
On moving into Aaron's current house, Laura learned of it having been built on an old cemetery or something, and deduced an evil creature to lurk within the walls. She fell ill with a fever which baffled the doctors. With a book on magic, she lit some candles. The room to have caught fire, and that her sister somehow became trapped...
A hoarsely coughing Doug sees his water glass to be empty. Just then, a mysterious breeze blows across the bed. At the bottom of the glass, from an unseen source, water starts to build into a generous glassful.
The door opens, to admit Aaron, followed by Connie. On the wall, Aaron draws a chalk door outline. With incense, herbs and candles, Connie recites the ritual. The room darkens, except for the wall within the chalk, on which appears the sourceless shadow of the spectre. The ritual then specifies proffer of a wand of oak tied with silver. With further incantation, the shadow bulges instantaneously into the full form of the spectre.
At Laura's command to enter the crystal amulet, the spectre advances falls on Doug. As Aaron leaps after it, the spectre and Doug fade seamlessly from view. Aaron and Connie frantically wonder what they, and Laura before them, got wrong. In the chalk outline, the spectre returns. As Aaron re-reads the ritual, he realises the oak twig to be tied with a spoon not of silver, but of steel.
He pulls off his grandfather's medal, ties it to the oak twig, and commands the spectre to halt. With a strained expression, it obeys.
Aaron then commands him to enter the amulet, which starts to glow. The spectre rises from the floor, fades, stretches, and is dragged into the crystal prison.
Just then, from no visible source, Doug falls back onto his bed.
In the chalk outline, Connie sees another sourceless shadow. It solidifies into the full form of her twin sister Laura, who reaches out a hand for the crystal amulet.
Because Connie finished Laura's purpose, Kiki closes, Doug regained health, and neither ghost was seen again. As Gary douses the flames, Tucker makes a final attempt with the flute. With a clap of thunder, the heavens open, and the Midnight Society run for somewhere dry.
This episode provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Human: It's implied that the fiend within the walls may either be a malign discarnate spirit, or some spectral creature of inhuman origin.
- Astral Projection: One night, a sleeping Aaron finds himself stood outside his sleeping earthly body, and sees a phantom echo of Laura's ill-fated ritual.
- Banishing Ritual: Attempted by Laura to banish the insidious wall spectre.
- Dark Is Evil: The wall spectre wears a hooded black cloak.
- Dramatic Necklace Removal: Aaron does this when he realizes his silver necklace can stop the ghost.
- Evil Gloating: While it doesn't say anything, the spectre, on seeing a second incorrectly attempted exorcism, conveys this through facial expression.
- Fantastic Aesop: The moral is literally, ver batim, "So if you're gonna use magic, make sure you do it right."
- Friendly Ghost: Laura's spirit manifests, manifest in mild poltergeist activity, seeks to help Aaron and Doug, and kindly refills an ill Doug's glass of water.
- Ghostly Chill: Doug's first comment on their new room is, "Man, it's cold in here."
- Matter Replicator: Laura psychokinetically replenishes Doug's water.
- Poltergeist: Laura's spirit manifests with minor manipulation of objects.
- Silver Has Mystic Powers: But, sadly, silver-ish looking steel doesn't count.
- Slasher Smile: A very memorable example from the wall spectre.
- Would Hurt a Child: The wall spectre seems to prey on the young: having instilled a fever in Laura, it traps her in the room set alight by her failed ritual. It then infects Doug, and briefly abducts him to the astral realm.
