Frank and Kiki, on a recent attempt to sneak into a second movie screening, were stopped just in time by Betty Anne, and are none too pleased. Betty Anne stands by her intervention, and ponders the power of silence, resistance to which, in this case, prevented her friends from breaking the rules. Silence can be soothing - or sinister. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls her story "The Tale of the Silent Servant."
Jarred Connor visits the farm of his Uncle Pete Peterson and cousin Anne. As Jarred takes Anne through yet another game of baseball, she fails to catch the ball - which breaks the window of the farmhouse door.
Pete sets the two to work off the price of a new window, and has older sibling Mark confiscate the baseball gloves. For their first task, Pete has Anne and Jarred take some beans to Mr Galloway.
On their bikes, they pass the barn of a neighbouring farm, which Anne explains to have once been used by Old Man Earlstead. In the field before it, they pass several tombstones. One, marked "John Earlstead 1905 - 1974" is engraved with two dragons.
Inside, Jarred is inspired to make a baseball dugout with some wooden boards. As he and Anne prise one from across a cupboard door, the door swings open, and out falls a tall scarecrow. Jarred has the idea of using it instead of building a fence. Anne helps him lift it - and finds, in its shirt, a wooden carving of a bone, set with two dragons - like those on the gravestone outside. She pockets the strange curio.
Back at the farm, the two erect the scarecrow. Beneath its battered fedora, the cloth face, with small holes for eyes and nose, looks eerily skull-like...
Mark arrives, and reaffirms their obligation to help build a fence. Anne admits never to have reached Mr Galloway's. Mark sends them on their way.
In Old Man Earlstead’s barn, they retrieve the beans. Suddenly, the cupboard door swings open, and out stumbles a grey-haired, wild-eyed man. He rants about the power of "the dragons," which only the "true master" can dispel, to drive the Silent Servant, who, to this day, awaits the command: "calor vector solemnus."
Back at the Peterson farm, Anne identifies the man as Crazy George, who used to work as a farmhand for Mr Earlstead. Anne sits down, and remembers the wooden bone in her pocket - set with two dragons...
Jarred finds an end of the bone to be detachable. In its hollow interior, he finds a worn piece of paper. He recites its written command for a "silent one" to heed its master's call. Outside, with a boom of thunder, a flash of lightning illuminates the scarecrow…
As Pete and Jarred take out the trash, they hear a creak from behind them. They turn to see, stood close behind them, the scarecrow. They scream in fright. With Mark, they later find it slumped innocently against a wall. Jarred grumpily kicks the prone scarecrow, and suggests it fixes the window.
Next morning, they approach the window...to find it fixed. Mark prepares to leave for his baseball game, and happily allows Jarred to come.
Later, Jarred commands the scarecrow, now hung on a post, to finish the fence for them.
Next day, as Anne and Jarred prepare the tools, an astonished Mark leads them to the recently completed fence, and congratulates them with the afternoon off.
Jarred commands the Silent Servant to build him a baseball dugout.
Later, as the two return from town, they find a newly erected baseball dugout - built from strangely familiar boards.
Mark then sternly calls them over to the fence, most of which has been dismantled. He has no choice but to ground them. He returns the bag containing the confiscated baseball gloves, and leaves for his game.
Jarred finds the bag to contain only tractor parts. Mark wouldn’t steal the glove, reasons Anne. Jarred angrily says he’d like to kill whoever did. He and Anne instantly realise the potentially dire consequences of this utterance.
On their bikes, they race down the road, to where Mark relaxes with teammates and spectators. Anne and Jarred explain the scarecrow to be after the taker of Jarred’s glove. Mark realises to have given Jarred the wrong bag - and that the gloves must still be in the tractor.
Out in a field, Pete's tractor stalls. He dismounts, and takes a bag - which contains not tools, but a baseball. In the corn lurks a silent figure...
In the car, Mark drives Anne and Jarred to Earlstead's barn. Since only the true master, Mr Earlstead, can break the spell, Anne brings the dragons to his gravestone, across which she snaps the bone which mounts them.
As the dragons separate, a flash of lightning fills the air. Behind Pete, as the Silent Servant approaches, it suddenly fades into thin air.
It then materialises before Jarred and Anne, who gives the command "calor vectus solemnus."
The scarecrow crumples to an empty, smoking heap.
Once Gary douses the fire, Frank and Kiki contritely approach Betty Anne with invitation to another movie - and this time, they’ll buy the tickets, as long as Frank gets to choose the film.
This episode provides examples of:
- Animating Artifact: The twin dragon effigies, via the specified incantation, drive the scarecrow to blind fulfilment of the speaker’s command.
- Country Cousin: Jarred stays on the farm of his uncle Peter and cousins Anne and Mark.
- Evil Sorcerer: Mr Earlstead is said to have practised magic, and to have been of highly dubious character.
- Golem: Being a magically automated effigy of a human which blindly carries out instruction, the Silent Servant recalls traditional depictions.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: George claims Mr Earlstead to have driven him to his traumatised state.
- Laughing Mad: George’s tormented ravings include manic laughter.
- Literal Genie: The Silent Servant, with swift efficiency, carries out Jarred’s instruction to build a baseball dugout - but thinks nothing of ripping up the newly built fence for material.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: On breakage of the window, Pete is quite amicably mild, and sanctions the misdeed by setting his daughter and nephew to work. His older son Mark reflects this even-handedness, and while he doubts the scarecrow to be any threat, readily responds to Anne and Jarred’s fear by driving them to the barn.
- Scary Scarecrows: It's decidedly scary-looking even before it comes to life.
- Scenery Porn: Some lovely shots of the farm and surrounding countryside.
