Introduction
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| The Puppet Show | Out of Mind, Out of Sight |
Buffy descends into the Master’s underground lair armed with a stake. She stops at the entrance and looks around. She sees no sign of him, or any other vampires. She cautiously continues deeper into the lair.
The Master is there, hiding behind a pillar. Buffy searches through the ruins of the buried church looking for a sign of him. She senses something behind her and spins around. She sees the Master standing before her, and she is suddenly frozen in terror. She drops her stake.
The Master steps toward Buffy, and she backs away, unable to do anything else to defend herself. She keeps backing up until she reaches the wall and can go no farther. She watches helplessly as the Master reaches out his hand and grabs her by the throat. He bares his fangs and leans forward for the kill. All Buffy can do is scream: “No! No!”
Buffy shakes her head on her pillow. “No!”
“Yes!” says her mother, as she shakes Buffy awake. It’s time for her to get up and get ready for school.
Once fully awake, Buffy immediately gets out of bed, happy to have escaped from her nightmare, and eager to be off.
“You want to go to school?” asks Joyce.
“Sure!” Buffy starts pulling clothes out of her closet. “Why not?”
“Okay,” says Joyce. “Good day to buy that lottery ticket.” She straightens out Buffy’s bed and tells her that she’s talked to Buffy’s father. They’re on for the weekend.
Buffy tells Willow about her plans to spend the weekend with her father. He’s still living in L.A. She doesn’t get to see him much since the divorce a year ago.
“My parents don’t even bicker,” says Willow as they arrive at Buffy’s locker. “Sometimes they glare. Do you know why your folks split up?”
“I didn’t ask,” says Buffy. “They just stopped getting along. I’m sure I was a really big help, though, with all the Slaying and everything. I was in so much trouble. I was a big mess.”
“Well, I’m sure that didn’t have anything to do with him leaving,” says Willow.
“No,” says Buffy, but she doesn’t sound convinced. She closes her locker, and they head off to class together.
Cordelia is checking out her makeup using a compact mirror when a shadow falls across her face. She looks up and sees Wendell standing by the classroom window. “Hello? Doofus! You’re in my light.”
“Wendell, what is wrong with you?” asks Xander. “Don’t you know that she is the center of the universe, and the rest of us merely revolve around her?”
“Why don’t you revolve yourselves out of my light?” asks Cordelia.
Xander and Wendell leave Cordy’s light, and walk across to the other side of the class to meet Buffy and Willow. Xander tells them about Wendell’s transgression.
“I am so ashamed,” says Wendell.
Xander wants to know if there was any homework. Buffy tells him that they were supposed to read chapter five of their textbooks on active listening. Xander hasn’t got a clue what that is.
“Ms. Tischler demonstrated it yesterday,” says Wendell.
“With you!” says Willow. Xander still has no clue.
“She was wearing that tight sweater,” says Buffy.
“Oh!” says Xander. “The midnight blue angora! See, I was listening.”
Ms. Tischler comes in and everyone takes their seats. She’s an attractive young woman, in her mid twenties. Today’s sweater is white.
Buffy starts to fiddle with a pencil as the class begins. She drops it onto the floor. She leans down to pick it up and notices a young boy standing in the doorway.
Ms. Tischler asks Wendell to read a couple of paragraphs from the textbook. Wendell opens his book and starts to scream. Dozens of spiders come crawling out of his book. Everyone seated around him jumps to their feet, and most of them start screaming too.
“Please! Get them off of me!” yells Wendell as the spiders crawl all over him. “Help! Help! Get them off of me! Help me! Oh, please help me! Please!”
“Sorry about that,” says the boy in the doorway.
The Master talks to the Anointed One about fear. “It is the most powerful force in the human world. Not love, not hate…fear!” He steps up to a large cross he has erected in his lair. “We are defined by the things we fear. This symbol, these two planks of wood, it confounds me. Suffuses me with mortal dread. But fear is in the mind.” He reaches out and grabs the cross. His hand begins to smoke. “Like pain. It can be controlled. If I can face my fear, it cannot master me.”
He looks upward. He senses that something is happening up above. He asks the Anointed if he feels it too. He does. He feels a change.
“Change. Yes,” says the Master. “For the worse.”
Joyce delivers Buffy to school. Buffy is pretty quiet this morning. She hadn’t slept well the night before. Joyce is aware of that. Whatever Buffy was dreaming of had her yelling in her sleep. She reminds Buffy that her father will be picking her up after school.
Buffy remembers that she forget to bring the bag that she had packed for her weekend with her father. Joyce tells her that isn’t a problem. She and her father can stop by the house to pick it up that evening.
“Okay,” says Buffy. “Yeah, I just had meant to bring it. He’s picking me up here, right? At 3:30?”
“Honey, are you worried your father isn’t going to show?” asks Joyce.
“No! Not really,” says Buffy. “Should I be?”
“Well, of course, not!” says Joyce. “It’s just… I know it’s a hard situation. You just have to remember that your father adores you. No more than I do, by the way.” Buffy smiles at that, and says goodbye. She gets out of the car, and her mother drives off.
Buffy runs into Willow and Xander in the hallway. Willow is still a little wiggy about the spiders. Xander doesn’t seem nearly as upset about it.
“I don’t like spiders, okay?” says Willow. “Their furry bodies, and their sticky webs, and what do they need all those legs for anyway? I’ll tell you: for crawling across you face in the middle of the night. Eww! How do they not ruffle you?”
Xander is feeling pretty blasé about the whole thing. He’s seen lots worse things than spiders in the past few months. They are living on top of the Hellmouth after all. “I’m not worried,” he tells Buffy. “If there’s something bad out there we’ll find, you’ll slay, we’ll party!”
Buffy is glad for Xander’s vote of confidence. They have reached the library and go inside. There’s no sign of Giles. Buffy calls out for him, and Giles appears out of the stacks, looking lost and confused. He takes a look back into the stacks.
“Hey, Giles! Wakey, wakey!” says Buffy.
“I was, uh, in the stacks,” says Giles. “I got lost.”
“Did you find any theories on spiders coming out of books?” asks Xander. He reaches around behind Willow and crawls his hand along her shoulder. “Big, hairy, crawly…”
Willow flinches away from Xander, and gives him a swat.
“It’s funny if you’re me,” says Xander.
Giles tells them that he couldn’t find anything. He takes another nervous look back into the stacks before suggesting that they go talk to Wendell. See if he can tell them any more about what happened.
They find Wendell sitting alone at one of the picnic tables outside the school and go to join him. They ask him how he’s doing, and if he wants to talk about the spiders.
“I don’t know what to say about that,” says Wendell.
“There’s nothing to say,” says Xander. “You saw two hundred insects, you gonzoed, anybody would have.”
“They’re not insects. They’re arachnids,” says Wendell.
“They’re from the Middle East?” asks Xander.
“Spiders are arachnids,” says Wendell. “They have eight legs. Insects only have six. Why does everyone make that mistake?”
“Don’t know,” says Buffy. “Has anything like this ever happened before?”
Wendell nods his head. He tells them it has happened to him lots of times.
“Ew!” says Willow. “You must hate spiders more than I do.”
Wendell laughs. “I don’t hate spiders. I love them. They hate me.”
Before he can explain what he means by that Cordelia shows up. She’s there to remind Buffy about the history test she is supposed to be taking in her next class, which is just about to start. Buffy had no idea she was supposed to be taking a test. She leaves to follow Cordelia.
Willow and Xander stay with Wendell to get an explanation of what he meant.
Wendell tells them that he used to have the best spider collection in the area, until his parents sent him away to camp for a week. His brother was supposed to take care of the spiders, but he left their heat lamp on for the entire week, killing them all. Ever since then he has had this recurring nightmare. “It’s always the same. I’m sitting in the classroom, teacher asks me to read something, I open up my book and then there they are. They’re coming after me. God, can you blame them after what I did?”
“And that’s how it happens?” asks Xander. “Every time?”
“Yesterday in class I thought I’d just nodded off again,” says Wendell. “But then everyone else started screaming, too.”
Cordelia has to point out the classroom they are taking the test in to Buffy. She isn’t surprised that Buffy doesn’t know where it is. She has skipped every class.
“I haven’t been to class,” says Buffy. “I haven’t read any of the assignments. How am I going to pass this test?”
“Blind luck?” asks Cordelia.
Buffy reads over her test paper. None of the questions make any sense to her. She has no idea how to answer them. She looks up at the clock. The time is 11:20.
Buffy gets out her pencil. “Well, at least I know my name.” She starts to write it in her test booklet. Her pencil breaks. She pulls a pencil sharpener out of her bag and sharpens her pencil. She glances back at the clock. It’s 12:10.
Buffy looks around in confusion and sees the teacher staring at her, tapping his pencil on his desk.
The bell rings and everyone gets up to go. They drop their completed test booklets on the teacher’s desk on their way out. Buffy is left sitting alone in the class with her blank booklet. She sees the young boy again standing in the doorway looking at her.
The boy leaves the doorway and walks down the hallway. He sees a couple of girls coming down the stairs, talking with one another. One of the girls indicates to her friend that she’s going to take a cigarette break. She has a quick look around to make sure no teachers are watching, and ducks through the door leading to the basement boiler room.
“You shouldn’t go in there,” says the boy.
The girl has a quick look around the boiler room to make sure she’s alone before pulling her cigarettes and matches out of her bag. She isn’t alone though. A horribly disfigured man is watching from the shadows.
The man attacks her as she lights her cigarette, beating her with his arm which has been elongated into a club. He hits her repeatedly as she screams.
“Lucky nineteen!”
Buffy and Giles stop by the hospital to visit Laura—the girl who was attacked—and see if they can learn what happened. Buffy tells Giles she doesn’t know Laura that well, just to say “hi” to. She seems like a nice enough girl. Giles has brought a potted plant as a present for her.
They find Laura alone in her room. Her face is bruised and bandaged. Laura is glad to see them, she doesn’t like being left alone.
Buffy asks if Laura can tell them what happened.
Laura isn’t much help. She does say that she had never seen anything like it before.
Giles asks her if she can describe “it” but Laura just shakes her head.
“Hey, that’s okay,” says Buffy. “Don’t worry about it. But if you remember anything? You can tell us. Even if it may seem weird.”
A nurse comes in and asks Buffy and Giles to go. Laura needs her rest. They get up and start to leave.
“Lucky nineteen,” says Laura.
Giles and Buffy stop and look back at her. “I’m sorry?” asks Giles.
“It’s what he said, right before… He said ‘lucky nineteen.’ That’s weird, right?”
“Yes,” says Giles. “Yes, it is.” He and Buffy wish Laura a speedy recovery, and leave her room.
They find Laura’s doctor in the corridor, and ask him how Laura’s doing. He tells them that Laura is going to be okay. “She’s got a couple of shattered bones, a little internal bleeding. She got off pretty easy.”
“Easy?” asks Buffy.
“Have you looked up the word lately?” asks Giles.
“Well, the first one’s still in a coma,” says the doctor.
“First what?” asks Buffy.
“First victim.” The doctor looks through a window into another room. There is a young boy in the bed there, his face is turned away from them. “They found him a week ago. Exact same M.O. as the girl, only he’s in worse shape. If he doesn’t wake up soon… Somebody’s got to stop this guy.”
“Somebody will,” says Buffy.
A guy in a leather jacket tells his friends in a school hallway how he is isn’t going to back down. “I’m not afraid of him. If he wants to fight, then I’m taking him down! This is about honour. I’ll break his neck!”
A middle aged woman appears in the hallway. “Oh, there’s my little baby!”
“Mom, what are you doing here? Mom!” says the guy.
His mother laughs and gives him a kiss. “How’s my little pookie?”
“Mom, please don’t kiss me in front of the guys! It’s embarrassing Mom! Please!”
His mother just laughs some more and hugs him. “You cute little rascal, you!”
“Mom, please, my friends are right here!” the guy continues to protest, but she continues to shower him with maternal affection.
Xander has been watching this with Willow while she collects her books from her nearby locker. He is very amused by it. They head off for class while talking about what happened with Wendell and Laura, trying to figure out if there’s any connection. Willow wants to talk with Buffy when she gets back. Maybe Laura had dreams about getting beat up.
They walk into the classroom. Someone gasps, and a couple of kids start to laugh, causing everyone to look up. Most of them start laughing too. They are all looking at Xander.
Willow turns around and sees that Xander is nearly naked. All he’s wearing are his boxer shorts. “Xander! What happened to your…?”
Xander is trying to cover himself up. “I don’t know! I was dressed a minute ago! It’s a dream. It’s got to be a dream.” He pinches himself. “Ow! Wake up.” He pinches himself again. “Ow! Got to wake up!”
Pinching himself is clearly not working. Xander turns and runs from the classroom. Willow runs after him.
Giles pores over several newspapers spread out on a library table. “This can’t be happening. This can’t be.”
Buffy comes into the library and asks if Giles has found anything.
“I don’t know,” says Giles. “I’m having a problem.”
“What is it?” asks Buffy.
“I can’t read!”
“What do you mean? You can read, like, three languages.”
“Five, actually, on a normal day. The words here don’t make any sense. It’s gibberish!” Giles throws the paper he has been holding down on the table.
Buffy looks at the paper. On the front page is a picture of a boy in a baseball uniform. “That’s him.”
“Who?” asks Giles.
“The kid I’ve been seeing around school.” Buffy starts to read the article out loud to him “‘Twelve year old Billy Palmer was found beaten and unconscious after his kiddie league game Saturday. Doctors describe his condition as critical…’ When was this published?” Buffy checks the date on the paper. “Last week. It says he’s in a coma in intensive care. This is the boy from the hospital!”
“The first victim?” asks Giles. “You’ve seen him around the school?”
“Yeah,” says Buffy. “First when the spiders got Wendell, and then when I didn’t know a thing on the history test. I thought it was weird seeing this kid around, but I forgot about it.”
“The boy’s been in a coma for a week. How can this be possible?” asks Giles.
Buffy points out that explanations are Giles’ territory. He starts trying to come up with one. He thinks that it may be possible that Buffy has been seeing Billy’s astral body, which can sometimes travel through time and space while a person is unconscious. He doesn’t really have a lot to go on though.
Buffy has noticed something else: the number on Billy’s baseball uniform. “Lucky nineteen.”
They are interrupted by a man entering the library. Buffy is surprised to see him. It’s her father, Hank Summers. She introduces him to Giles. Buffy asks why he is there early, if anything is wrong.
Mr. Summers assures Buffy that everything’s fine. He just needs to talk to her about something. Buffy leaves the library with her father, while Giles goes back to trying to read the newspapers.
Buffy and her dad walk outside the school. They sit down together on a bench. He tells her that he thinks that she is old enough to hear the truth about why he and her mother spit up. What they had told her earlier about them having grown apart wasn’t true.
“Then what was it?” asks Buffy.
“It was you,” says her father.
“Me?” asks Buffy.
“Having you. Raising you. Seeing you everyday. I mean, do you have any idea what that’s like?”
Buffy can’t believe what she’s hearing. “What?”
“Gosh, you don’t even see what’s right in front of your face, do you? Well, big surprise there. All you ever think about is yourself. You get in trouble. You embarrass us with all the crazy stunts you pull. Do I have to go on?”
“No,” says Buffy. “Please don’t.”
Hank goes on anyway. “You’re sullen and rude and you’re not nearly as bright as I thought you were going to be. Hey, Buffy, let’s be honest. Could you stand to live in the same house with a daughter like that?”
There are tears in Buffy’s eyes. “Why are you saying all these things?”
“Because they’re true,” says Hank. “I think that’s the least we owe one another.” Buffy begins to cry. “You know, I don’t think it’s very mature, getting blubbery when I’m just trying to be honest. Speaking of which, I don’t really get anything out of these weekends with you. So, what do you say we just don’t do them anymore?” He gives Buffy a pat on her knee as he gets up. “I sure thought you’d turn out differently.”
Buffy watches her father walk away, too heartbroken to say or do anything. He walks right past Billy Palmer.
Willow and Xander come into the library. Xander is pulling on a Sunnydale High T-shirt and is wearing his gym sweat pants. “Red alert! Where’s Buffy?”
Giles tells them that she left to talk with her father. He wonders what happened to Xander’s clothes.
That is something that Xander would very much like to know himself. He and Willow tell Giles about his clothes vanishing in front of the entire class.
“It’s a total nightmare!” says Xander.
Willow realizes that it was a nightmare. Like what happened with Wendell and the spiders. She tells Giles about Wendell’s recurring spider nightmare.
“I dreamt that I got lost in the stacks!” says Giles, “and I couldn’t read. Of course!”
“Our dreams are coming true?” asks Xander.
“Dreams?” asks Giles. “That would be a musical comedy version of this. Nightmares. Our nightmares are coming true.”
“So, why is this happening?” asks Willow.
“Billy!” says Giles.
“Well, that explanation was shorter than usual,” says Xander. He turns to Willow. “It’s Billy!” He turns back to Giles. “Who’s Billy?”
Giles tells them about the boy in the coma in the hospital. He has somehow managed to cross over from the nightmare world he is trapped in.
“And he brought the nightmare world with him,” says Xander. “Thanks a bunch, Billy.”
“How could he do that?” asks Willow.
“Things like that are easy when you live on a Hellmouth,” says Giles.
“We have to stop it,” says Xander.
“And soon,” agrees Giles. “Or else everyone in Sunnydale is going to be facing their own worst nightmares.”
Cordelia checks out her look in the mirror on the inside of her locker door. She is shocked by what she sees. Her hair is a frizzy mess. “I don’t understand! This can’t be happening!” She grabs a comb. “I was just at the salon!” She tries to pull the comb through her hair, but it’s too tangled. The teeth on the comb break. “Oh, my god!”
Buffy walks through the campus, with her arms wrapped around herself. She sees Billy again, walking toward the gym. She follows him. She finds him inside sitting on the bleachers. “Billy? Are you Billy Palmer?”
“I’m Billy.”
“Why are you here?” asks Buffy, “Did something bad happen to you after your game?”
Billy doesn’t remember. Buffy asks him if he remembers playing baseball. Billy does remember that. He plays second base.
“Are you ‘Lucky Nineteen?’” asks Buffy.
“That’s what he calls me,” says Billy.
“Who?”
“The Ugly Man,” says Billy. “He wants to kill me. And he hurt that girl.”
“Why does he want to kill you, Billy?”
“He’s—” Billy stops, looking scared.
“Billy, it’s okay!” says Buffy. “What? Just tell me.”
“He’s here!” yells Billy.
Buffy turns around just as the Ugly Man clubs her in the head.
The Ugly Man’s first blow takes Buffy by surprise and she’s knocked to the floor. He takes another swing at her but she manages to dodge it. Buffy springs back to her feet, and ducks another blow from the Ugly Man. She gives him a couple of kicks in the head, but they don’t seem to do any damage.
Billy runs from the gym. The Ugly man swings at Buffy again, and this time he connects. Buffy is knocked into the bleachers. He hits her again in the legs as she’s getting to her feet, knocking them out from under her. She falls to the floor.
Buffy gets back to her feet, and limps away from the Ugly Man, following after Billy.
Giles realizes that they have to find Buffy and tell her what’s happening right away. Given the sort of things she dreams about it is imperative that they find her.
“Probably faster if we split up to look for her,” says Xander as they leave the library.
“Good idea,” says Giles, and he and Xander depart in separate directions, leaving Willow standing alone outside the library doors.
“Uh, faster,” says Willow, “but not really safer.”
Buffy bars the gym doors with a field hockey stick through the handles. Billy is standing on the steps nearby watching her. She tells him that they have to find her friends, they can help them. Billy doesn’t want to do that. He wants to hide.
“No!” says Buffy. “He’ll find us!”
“Yes, but we have to hide,” says Billy. “That’s how it happens. We hide, and then he comes.”
Willow sees some of the school geeks dragging Cordelia down the hall. Her hair has gotten worse, and she’s wearing a dress so unfashionable even Willow wouldn’t be caught dead in it.
“No! What are you doing!” yells Cordelia, as she struggles. “Let go! You don’t understand! I don’t want to go! I’m not even on the chess team! I swear, I’m not!”
Willow smiles as Cordy is dragged into the chess club’s meeting room. Then she hears someone calling her name. It sounds like Buffy, and it’s coming from behind the door leading down into the basement.
Willow opens the door and cautiously descends the stairs, calling out for Buffy. She doesn’t see anything or anyone as she walks into the boiler room.
“I’m not afraid.” Willow tells herself. “You’d think I’d be afraid, but I’m not.” She does not sound convinced.
Someone grabs her and pulls her through a door.
Xander searches for Buffy in another part of the school. He enters a corridor that looks like it has had a recent visit from a bunch of Nazi rioters. They have left swastikas spray painted on the walls. Broken lighting fixtures dangle from the ceiling. There’s a step ladder in the middle of the corridor, and plastic sheeting is hanging from the walls. Papers are scattered around on the floor.
In the midst of all this carnage Xander spots a chocolate bar lying on the floor. He instantly picks it up. “Someone else’s loss is my chocolatey goodness!” He starts to eat it. He spots another bar a little way down the corridor, and goes to get it too. He takes a bite out of the second bar. “This is my lucky day!”
Buffy goes through a door with Billy and finds herself outside. She’s a little lost. The door didn’t take her to where she thought it would. Billy stops and looks through a chain link fence into a field where a bunch of kids are having a pickup baseball game. He looks disturbed. Buffy asks him what’s bothering him.
“Baseball,” says Billy. “When you lose, it’s bad.”
“Did you lose your game last week?”
Billy nods. “It was my fault. I missed a ball and I should have caught it.”
“You missed one ball and the whole game was your fault?” asks Buffy. “What, you were the only one playing? There wasn’t eight other people on your team?”
“He said it was my fault,” says Billy.
“Who said? Billy, did he hurt you after the game?”
Billy doesn’t want to talk. He asks Buffy if they can go find her friends now.
Buffy starts to lead Billy around the cafeteria toward the library, but she sees the Ugly Man blocking that route. He hits a kid, knocking him out, and advances toward them. Buffy grabs Billy and pulls him through an opening in the hedge beside them. On the other side of the hedge is a cemetery, and it’s night.
“What just happened?” asks Buffy.
Willow is dressed in a kimono, and wearing heavy theatrical makeup. A man drags her through the backstage bustle. “Man, I thought you weren’t going to show! Aldo is beside himself. I hope you’re warmed up. It’s an ugly crowd out there tonight. All the reviewers showed up.”
He drags Willow out onto the stage as an announcer makes the introductions: “Ladies and Gentlemen, we are proud to present two of the world’s greatest singers! All the way from Virenze, Italy, the one and only Aldo Gian Franco! And all the way from Sunnydale, California, the world’s finest soprano, Willow Rosenberg!”
Willow peeks through an opening in the curtain and sees Aldo taking his opening bows on stage. “I…I didn’t learn the words!” The man ignores her and pushes her out onto the stage, where she bumps into Aldo. He does not look amused.
Willow is greeted with a round of applause from the audience. The house lights dim, and a spotlight focuses on Aldo. He starts to sing the opening of a love duet from Madame Butterfly. The light shifts to Willow, and Aldo pauses, waiting for Willow to begin her part. Willow stands frozen in fear. The theater is silent. Aldo picks up the next bit of his part, but soon it is Willow’s turn again. He turns and glares at her.
“My turn?” asks Willow.
“Mm, Hm,” says Aldo.
Willow tries to sing something but only manages to squeak. Aldo turns away in disgust.
Xander follows the trail of chocolate bars down the hall. He is finding all his favourite brands. The latest is a Chocolate Hurricane. “These are the best! I haven’t had one of these since my…” Xander hears the sound of maniacal giggling coming from behind some sheets of plastic draped across the corridor. “…sixth birthday.”
A knife slashes through a sheet of plastic hanging across the corridor, followed by the clown who’s wielding it. Xander screams and runs away.
The good news for Buffy is that they seem to have lost the Ugly Man. The bad news is that they have also lost the sun, and the rest of the world.
Billy has found an open grave. “I guess they’re going to bury somebody. I wonder who died.”
“Nobody died.” The Master is leaning against one of the cemetery monuments. “What’s the fun of burying someone if they’re already dead?” He straightens up, and walks toward Buffy. “So, this is the Slayer. You’re prettier than the last one.”
“This isn’t real,” says Buffy. “You can’t be free!”
“You still don’t understand, do you?” asks the Master. “I am free because you fear it. Because you fear it, the world is crumbling. Your nightmares are made flesh. You have little Billy to thank for that.”
Buffy looks around for Billy, but he ran away as soon as the Master showed up. She turns back to face him. “This is a dream.”
“A dream is a wish your heart makes,” says the Master. He grabs Buffy by the throat. “This is real life. Come on, Slayer! What are you afraid of?” He shoves Buffy into the open grave, and the lid of the rough wooden coffin at the bottom of it slams shut over her. “How about being buried alive?”
Buffy can see the Master through the cracks in the lid of the coffin as he starts to shovel dirt into the grave. She pounds on the lid, and screams for help, but it does no good.
Willow escapes out the door from the basement under a hail of boos, and rotten fruit. She runs into Xander.
“Did you find Buffy?” asks Xander.
Willow is still too traumatised to talk much. “I had to sing! Very bad to sing!”
Xander doesn’t want to hang around for explanations. He starts to hustle Willow down the hall.
“What happened to you?” asks Willow.
“Remember my sixth birthday party?”
“Oh, yeah!” laughs Willow. “When the clown chased you and you got so scared that you had… Oh!”
The clown slices through some sheets of plastic and comes after them. Xander and Willow retreat in the opposite direction, and run into Giles.
“No sign of Buffy?” asks Giles. Then he sees the clown, and the three of them run away down the hall together.
They don’t run very far. Xander is fed up with this clown, and turns to face him. The clown raises his knife, and Xander decks him with one punch. “You were a lousy clown! Your balloon animals were pathetic! Everyone can make a giraffe!” He turns around and follows Willow and Giles outside. “I feel good! I feel liberated!”
Xander is the only one feeling good. Outside things are getting even worse. Several people are running around screaming. Giles thinks that reality will fall completely into the realm of nightmares if they don’t wake Billy soon.
Xander doesn’t want to go until they find Buffy. Giles agrees, but he has no idea of where she might be.
Willow has been looking at something else. “Excuse me, when did they put a cemetery in across the street?”
“And when did they make it night over there?” asks Xander.
Giles, Xander and Willow walk through the cemetery. “Who’s nightmare is this?” asks Xander.
“It’s mine.” Giles is looking at a fresh grave. The headstone reads “Buffy Summers, 1981-1997, Rest in Peace.” He kneels by the grave. “I failed…in my duty to protect you. I should have been more cautious. Taken more time to train you. But you were so gifted. And the evil was so great.” He rests his hand on the fresh soil. “I’m sorry—”
A hand reaches up out of the soil and grabs Giles’ hand. He pulls away as Buffy rises from the grave.
Buffy brushes herself off and looks up at her friends. “I thought I was dead!” She’s a vampire.
“Buffy, your face!” says Willow.
Buffy reaches up and feels her face, her fangs, the ridges on her brow. “Oh god!” She turns away from her friends. “Don’t look at me!”
Giles slowly walks around Buffy. “You never told me you dreamt of becoming a vampire.”
“This isn’t a dream,” says Buffy.
“No. No, it’s not,” says Giles, “But there’s a chance that we can make it go away. This all comes from Billy. Now, if we can only wake him up, I believe that the nightmares will stop and reality will shift back into place, but we must do it now! I need you to hold together long enough to help us. Can you do that?”
Buffy looks up at Giles. “Yeah. I think I can.” She looks around at Xander and Willow. “We better hurry, ’cause I’m getting hungry.” She starts out of the cemetery.
Xander follows Buffy. “That is a joke, right?”
Willow and Giles follow Buffy and Xander. “Are you sure everything will go back once he’s awake?” asks Willow.
“Oh, uh, positive,” says Giles, sounding anything but.
“Well, how do we wake Billy up?” asks Willow. “What if we can’t?”
“Willow, do shut up.”
They arrive at the hospital and find Billy’s doctor in the corridor. Giles tries to ask him if Billy’s still there, but the doctor doesn’t pay any attention to him. He’s too worried about his own disfigured hands.
The hospital corridors are full people running to and fro. A dead looking man is chasing a group of doctors and nurses with a pair of defibrillator paddles in his hands.
Giles leads them all to Billy’s room. Billy is still there, lying in his bed, sunlight streaming in the window. Buffy hangs back by the doorway, avoiding the light.
Giles starts yelling at Billy, trying to get him to wake up.
“That won’t work,” says astral Billy. He’s sitting by the window.
Giles looks back and forth between the two Billies a couple of times. He settles on the astral one. “Billy, you have to wake up.”
“No, I told her,” says Billy. “I have to hide.”
“Why?” asks Giles. “From what?”
“From him!” says Buffy from the doorway. She can see the Ugly Man coming down the hall.
Xander wants to know what they do now. Buffy thinks she knows. She takes off her jacket and steps out to face the Ugly Man.
Willow peeks through the window blinds to see what the buzzing noise she has been hearing from outside is. The air over Sunnydale is full of giant wasps. “Whatever it is, it better be soon!”
The Ugly Man advances down the hall toward Buffy. “Lucky Nineteen!”
Buffy is still standing in the shadows. “Scary! I’ll tell you something, though. There are a lot scarier things than you.” She takes a step forward, bringing her vampire face into the light. “And I’m one of them.” She snarls, and charges down the hall toward the Ugly Man.
Buffy leaps onto the Ugly Man, and knocks him to the floor. Buffy lands on top of him and punches him in the head a couple of times before he can begin to recover. He manages to block her third punch, and kicks her away.
They both jump to their feet, and Buffy attacks again, this time with a kick. The Ugly Man manages to grab her and bounces her off one corridor wall and then the other. He swings his club arm at her, but Buffy ducks under it, and delivers another kick to his back. He catches her with a backhanded swipe, and knocks her into Billy’s room. He follows her in, and raises his club for another blow.
As the Ugly Man’s arm is coming down, Buffy grabs it, and breaks it over her knee. She bounces him off the wall, and he falls to the floor unconscious.
“Is he dead?” ask Billy.
Buffy asks Billy to come over to her. Billy doesn’t want to get any closer to the Ugly Man than he has to.
“You have to do the rest,” says Buffy.
Billy slowly comes around the bed and approaches the Ugly Man. Willow wonders what they are doing, but Giles motions for her to be still.
“I get it,” says Xander quietly.
Buffy reaches out and takes Billy’s hand. “No more hiding.”
Billy lets go of Buffy’s hand and reaches down to the Ugly Man’s face, which is really a rubber mask. He pulls the mask away, and there’s a brilliant flash of light.
When the light fades the Ugly Man is gone. So is astral Billy. Xander and Willow are back in their normal clothes. Buffy reaches up and feels her human face. Normal hospital activity is going on outside the room.
Billy stirs in his bed, and wakes up. He looks around at the strange people in his room. “I had the strangest dream. And you were in it.” He points at Buffy. “And you,” pointing at Giles. “Who are you people?”
Giles and Xander start to leave the room to get Billy’s doctor. They run into a man coming in who is wearing a baseball cap, and has a whistle around his neck.
The man is surprised to see that Billy has visitors. “I’m his kiddie league coach. I come by here every day, just hoping against hope that he’s going to wake up soon. He’s my Lucky Nineteen.”
Giles and Buffy exchange a look, and Giles puts a hand on Xander’s arm to keep him from leaving.
“So, um, how is he?” asks the coach.
Buffy steps aside a bit so that he can see Billy. “He’s awake.”
The coach is stunned. “What?” He steps toward the bed.
Buffy steps back into his way. “You blamed him for losing the game. So you caught up with him afterwards, didn’t you?”
The coach pretends to not understand what Buffy is talking about.
Billy pulls the oxygen hose off his face and sits up in his bed. “You said that it was my fault that we lost.”
The coach tries to run from the room, but Xander grabs him by his jacket and holds him.
“It wasn’t my fault,” says Billy. “There’s eight other players on the team. You know that.” He lies back down in his bed.
Buffy smiles at Billy. “Nice going.”
Buffy, Willow and Xander leave the school at the end of the day. Everything is back to normal there. No one seems to know that anything had gone wrong. Buffy still can’t believe that Billy’s coach could have done something like that. Xander thinks it’s obvious that Buffy never played kiddie league. He’s surprised it wasn’t one of the parents. Willow is just glad that the coach is behind bars where he belongs.
Buffy tells Xander that she thought he was pretty heroic grabbing the coach the way he did. Xander tries for modesty, but quickly gives that up.
Buffy hears a car horn honk, and looks over to see her father getting out of his car, and waving at her. He starts up the school steps toward her. She tells Willow and Xander to have a killer weekend, and goes to meet him. They exchange a big hug.
“Hi sweetheart!” says Hank Summers. “It is so good to see you! How was your day?”
Buffy heads toward her father’s car with him. “You know, the usual.”
Willow and Xander watch them go. Willow still has something on her mind. “Personal question?” she asks Xander. “When Buffy was a vampire, you weren’t still, like, attracted to her, were you?”
“Willow, how can you?” asks Xander. “I mean, that’s really bent! She was…grotesque!”
“Still dug her, huh?” says Willow.
“I’m sick, I need help,” says Xander. They start to walk off together.
“Don’t I know it,” says Willow.