| The Tale of the Dream Machine | |
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| Season 2 , Episode 5 | |
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| Air date | July 17, 1993 |
| Written by | Darren Kotania |
| Directed by | David Winning |
| Episode guide | |
| Previous The Tale of the Thirteenth Floor |
Next The Tale of the Dark Dragon |
The Tale of the Dream Machine, is the Fifth episode of the Second Season of Are You Afraid of the Dark? as well as the Eighteenth episode in total.
Intro
That night, Betty Ann is pacing around. Frank standing impatiently turns then sees Kiki coming in and impatiently tells her it's time. Kristen ask her where she was? Kiki says with her voice weak and raspy she was writing her story. When hearing her sound this way, Betty Ann with concern asks her if she is sick? Kiki very weakly says she has laryngitis. Frank tells her to back off because he doesn't want her germs. Kiki sits down on the storyteller's chair and opens an old box.
The old box reveals to hold an old typewriter inside of it, she found in her attic and she has used it to type out her story. Her one request is for Gary to read it for her, because her throat is too sore and her voice is to weak to read it out herself. Gary is a little reluctant to doing this at first because it's never been done before. Frank tries to encourage him to be crazy and break the rules for a change. David laughs when Frank says this. Gary agrees to read Kiki's story outloud for her this night.
The intro says "Writing a story down on paper, is very different than telling it out loud. When a story is on paper, you can feel it, you can see it, and others can read it as well. But beware, for once a story is written, it no longer belongs to the author. Because it has a life of its own. For some stories, that can be a very dangerous life indeed". Kiki decided to quickly throw in the campfire dust, and in her very weak and raspy voice she submits her approval for The Midnight's Society, calling her story "The Tale of the Dream Machine" and lets Gary begin reading her story out loud.
Story
Gary reads Kiki's story for her. The story begins inside a high school classroom. A teacher named Mrs. Dodds is scarfing down donuts while reading out loud a book to the class. The story is about a young man named Sean Hackett who's passion in life was story writing. Sean's other passion in life was Jennifer Johnson, just about every story he wrote in his notebook was about her. However Jennifer only thought about him as a friend which was too bad for him.
The just as class is ending when the bells rings Sean's slacker friend Billy wakes up, pretending that the story Mrs. Dodds read to them made him feel moved, Mrs. Dodds doesn't dismiss them just yet, she gives the class a homework assignment. The assignment is to write a two page story on any topic of their choice. When the class is finally dismissed, first Sean and Jennifer accidentally bump into each other dropping something. Then the both bend down to pick it up and they accidentally clunk their head together.
His friend Billy teases him about accidentally clunking heads together with Jennifer telling him "You really swept her off her feet, Romeo. What next will you run her over with your bike?" Then when Sean goes to home, to the cheap but very old and run down house his parents bought for him. He tells Billy that he think Jennifer likes him and he teasing him again saying "Oh sure she does, just wait till you get your license so you can run her over with a car" Sean laughs it off.
Sean explains to Billy that his parents bought the home for him at cheap and reasonable price. Then on the way upstairs they find the staircase closed off with a danger sign. Sean is annoyed thinking he won't be able to get up his room now. Billy tries to prove to him it can't be as dangerous as they think it is and pulls down the sign and start walking up the stairs. Then just as Sean warns him the old stairs might not be so strong, Billy falls through some of the stairs and down to the floor below.
We see that Billy didn't fall down to hard because he gets back out unharmed. Billy thenclaims there is some stuff down there. Sean is curious gets a flashlight and they inspect the underneath crawlspace of the staircase. The crawlspace reveals itself to be tight little office. The office has a Lamp and some furniture in it, also a couple of old fashioned black and white pictures and newspaper articles on the wall one of them saying "Mystery Author Missing!".
Then Sean and Billy find out from reading the newspaper clippings, that the house and the typewriter once belonged to a successful masterpiece,mystery author and inventor named James Ellington. James Ellington went missing in 1931 and then was found murdered in 1932. Sean find the author's vintage old typewriter, Billy claims it's a piece of junk but Sean is excited to use it because it's a classic machine that they don't make anymore. Billy goes home for the night and Sean begins to use the typewriter to type out one his secret stories from his notebook.
The story Sean begins to write is called "The Halloween Dance" As Sean is shown typing out his story, Jennifer is shown sleeping in her bed. The story Sean writes is about a Halloween dance. Everyone was shown at the danced all dressed up in various Halloween costumes. Jennifer was dressed as Gypsy princess. Sean came to the dance as a vampire and even spoke with an vampire accent. He addressed her as princess and asked her to dance with him. They danced for hours. Then we see Jennifer is relaxing nicely in her sleep dreaming. Then as story ends The princess and The Vampire go off to secluded corner to say good and have a good night kiss. The princess eagerly waits for her kiss then screams in shock and horror, when it turns out that the vampire is real! and he bites her on the neck claiming that one bite she'll be mine forever! Then as the story ends Jennifer wakes up from her sleep terrified.
Then next day at school Jennifer tells Sean that believe it or not she had a nightmare the other night about being at a school dance. Then she met and danced with a vampire and the vampire for some reason was him. Sean is stunned when he hears this and immediately suspects it has something to do with the typewriter. Billy at first thinks it might be a coincidence because Jennifer might have seen a vampire movie and thought about Sean before going to sleep and ended up having that nightmare. Sean then tells Billy he's going to work on his english story assignment and begins working on another story while Billy takes a nap on Sean's bed.
The second story Sean writes is called "Trapped", the story tells that one cold and foggy night, Billy snuck into the graveyard on a dare searching for the grave of Blind Paul. Billy didn't believe the stories about the graveyard being haunted but he should have. Billy is shown walking through the dark foggy graveyard as the howling of wild animals is heard in the bacground. Finally Billy finds the grave of Blind Paul, Billy can't believe he found it. Then suddenly he heard crunching footsteps and breathing and gets frightened believing someone else is there too.
He nervously backs away, then bumps into a black hooded figure. Billy screams in horror, as the black hooded figure pushes him to fall down, right into the freshly redug and reopened grave of Blind Paul. The wooden coffin closes on him. Then dirt and soil begins to be shoveled on top of him. Then as Billy is getting buried alive. He is constantly screaming at the top of his lungs for help and pounding on the inside of the top of the wooden coffin. Apparently Billy never found his way out of the graveyard, and nobody ever discovered what happened to him. As far as anyone knew it was Blind Paul resting below.
Suddenly as Sean finished typing the story Billy wakes up in a nightmare, scared out of his skin still yelling and pounding for help. Sean is now more certain than before the typewriter makes the dreams happen. Sean asks Billy if anything on the story he just wrote is familiar to his dream and Billy says it is. So Sean realizes whenever he writes a story on that typewriter the people the story is involved with dream about it. Billy at first thinks it's wonderful and thinks they can have all sorts of fun terrorizing everybody with it. Sean convinces him no to because he doesn't want to go to prison and also because the typewriter was hidden for a reason.
The Next night, Sean write a story to Jennifer, once again this happens as Jennifer is sleeping. The story takes place in the most private part on earth; which is here dream. Jennifer finds herself standing in the clouds in the sky. Sean in a fancy suit meets with her. He explains to her that the vampire nightmare she dreamt about was from a story he wrote just like what's going on at the time being he's making it up as it's happening. He shows her the typewriter and tells her it's the Dream Machine.
He explains that anything he writes about people will dream about. Sean convinces her by making himself vanish then appear as the vampire, telling her that with the typewriter anything he imagines can happen. Then he makes a dove appear in her hand and she is astounded. He wants to know if this dream really happens and asks her to call him when she wakes up and she agrees. Without thinking he kisses her on the cheek and says he's sorry, but suddenly she smiles and they have a real kiss but it's just a dream.
Then a little Sean eagerly waits for Jennifer to phone and he thinks it's not going to happen. Finally she does phone him and let's him know that she did have the dream and nows everything that is going on. The next day at school They hand in their story assignments, Sean handed in the story he wrote about Billy, called "Trapped" and they leave class together. Then Sean, Billy and Jennifer all meet together in Sean's room to discuss the typewriter.
Billy read out loud "The Halloween Dance" as he reads Jennifer worryingly points out to Sean that the typewriter is glowing and it glows green and they instantly vanish then appear in the story it's just like the way it was when it was first written as Jennifer dreamt it. However they both are aware what is going on. The story is really happening now and they have no control of what they're doing and forcibly act out the story. Then as the story is ending, Sean realizes that this is happening because Billy is reading the story.
Then suddenly Sean is prepared to bite Jennifer on the neck for real. Billy takes a slight break realizing that part is kind of gruesome and notices that Sean and Jennifer are gone. When he stops reading Sean and Jennifer instantly appear back in the nick of time. Jennifer backs away nervous and Sean says that it wasn't a dream it was real, and it Billy hadn't stopped reading Sean would have bit Jennifer on the neck for real. Sean realizes that the Dream Machine has two features. The first one is that the stories are first dreams when they're written and the second feature is that they come true when someone reads them. Then suddenly Sean remembers he handed in his second story, "Trapped" that he wrote on it to Mrs. Dodds as his assignment.
The three of them race back to school to get the story back in time, if not Billy would really be buried alive, Just as they make it back to school, Mrs. Dodds begins to read and grade Sean's story. However Mrs. Dodds notices she is all out of donuts and goes to the cafe to finds some more. The three of them look through the handed in papers and can't seem to find Sean's story. Sean realizes that Mrs. Dodds must have it with her, then suddenly the typewriter glows green again, with Billy reacting in a panic.
Mrs. Dodds begins reading the story "Trapped" and Billy is sent into the story. Sean and Jennifer look everywhere and can't seem to find Mrs. Dodds anywhere. When Billy arrives in the graveyard he tries not to move from where he is standing. Then without his control he bumps into the Black Robed figure and falls into the wooden coffin in the dug open grave, screaming now as he falls in, constantly scream help! let me out!. Finally Sean has an idea he sets the typewriter down onto the table and writes a little paragraph.
Jennifer read it out loud and it says "The typewriter stopped glowing, and all the stories ever written on it never came true" The typewriter glows green one last time then a puff of smoke blows past it. Billy suddenly reappears and he is saved because Sean wrote his best story yet which was stopping the power of the dream machine. Mrs. Dodds sees them all late after school and ask them if they want anything. Sean says they're fine and they all smile leave.
Ending
As Gary finishes ready Kiki's story. David says it was great. Betty Ann asks what happened to something but notices suddenlty that Kiki is gone. Frank finds a paper written on her typerwriter and it reads "The headless warrior, chased down each one of the Midnight Society one by one. Until they were too tired to run" Frank just laughs and says yeah right. Gary just laughs, and so does Betty Ann and Kristen. Then they all get up one by one and leave as Gary puts out the campfire leaving Kiki's typwriter behind.
- Joel Gordon who portrayed Billy would later reappeared in the series again as Josh in the episode "The Tale of the Long Ago Locket"
- Tim Post who portrayed the Black Robed Figure, would later reappear in the series as The Fire Ghost in the episode "The Tale of the Fire Ghost".
- Four years after this aired, Ross Hull co-starred with Nicole Lyn as friends Chris Sheppard and Emily Roberts in the T.V. show "Student Bodies"
- Micheal Hong as Sean Hackett
- Nicole Lyn as Jennifer Johnson
- Joel Gordon as Billy
- Rikee Madoff as Mrs. Dodds
- Tim Post as the Black Robed Figure