Recap: Under the blazing desert sun, with ominous snake hissing noises in the background, two men are digging up artifacts in what looks like an archaeological exploration of a Native American burial ground. When the older man (Thomas Bearclaw) finds a black carving of the Night Demon - a scary creature of lore, apparently - the younger man (Lyle Cannon) gets visibly nervous and urges Thomas to put it back where he found it. Thomas declines and points out that he's already touched it...and according to legend, whoever touches it is irreversibly cursed; therefore, reburying it wouldn't do any good. Plus, he's pretty sure that legends of cursed artifacts are nothing more than superstitious hogwash that got perpetuated ever since the Brady kids stumbled upon the ancient Tiki idol that brought nothing but trouble to their Hawaiian vacation. That evening, Thomas is asleep in his bed with the Night Demon artifact on the nightstand beside him. Outside, his horses whinny and get all freaked out when an unseen beast places its large paw atop their enclosure. As the camera work makes it look as though the beast is advancing toward the house, Thomas wakes up and sees a crude white drawing appear on his bedroom wall before it promptly disappears again. He peers out of his window and is startled by a ghostly vision of a scary brown demon with groovy psychedelic rays around him. Thomas panics and throws a spear at the monster, but it just sails through the ghostly vision and hits his truck. Eeeeeek!! The next day, Jaime is on a road trip to hand deliver a parcel that's sitting on her passenger seat. She stops for fuel at a rundown gas station, where she catches the eye of the owner: a disheveled, overalls-wearing yokel named Hawkins. He asks her if she's a Vegas showgirl and creepily remarks that she's definitely purdy enough to be one...and Jaime ignores her skin that all just crawled away and politely replies that she's a schoolteacher. She explains that she's in this neck of the woods to hand deliver a package to the Mount Harding Observation Station and adds that she's also a good friend and former colleague of Thomas Bearclaw, who lives in the area. Hawkins tells her he knows Thomas pretty well, and that he's very interested in going to ridiculous lengths to buy his property. He grumbles about how Thomas refuses to sell 'cause he doesn't want to give up access to the burial ground, but also doesn't seem interested in benefiting financially from any of the artifacts he digs up. Hawkins finishes gassing up Jaime's car and beckons her inside his shop to get her change...and when she enters, she's startled by the sight of a large taxidermied dog head mounted on the wall. Hawkins explains that the dog was his menacing pet before he got run over by a car...and a creeped out Jaime quickly grabs her change, rushes to her car, and peels out of the gas station.
Thomas tells Lyle about the ghostly demon vision he saw last night...and Lyle looks alarmed and says he's considering selling his (neighboring) property to Hawkins, and urges Thomas to do the same. Thomas says he's definitely not interested in moving, then notices Jaime's car pull up. He rushes out to greet her...and after Lyle gets a quick intro, he drives home with an unhappy look on his face. Jaime notices the Night Demon artifact and remarks on how unusual it is, so Thomas gives her a brief lecture on tribal mythology, then hands her a book on the subject for some night time reading later. Jaime tells him she'd love to poke around the burial ground later, but Thomas looks uneasy at the prospect...and every time either of them glances over at the Night Demon artifact, we hear weird tinkly noises in the background. Jaime takes the mythology book to bed with her...and as she's reading, the camera pans over to the freaked out horses outside 'cause it looks as though the demon beast has decided to make another visitation to the Bearclaw ranch. Jaime goes outside to see whassup, and is all WTF?! when she sees the same ghostly demon vision Thomas had the night before. She bionically throws a heavy barrel at it, and is mystified when it sails right through him. When the beast suddenly disappears, Jaime activates her bionic ear and hears the sound of footsteps running away. She runs off to chase whoever it is - just as a bewildered Thomas appears in the doorway and urges Jaime to come back.
Jaime bionically jogs to the nearby desert and runs into Lyle, who tells her his jeep got run off the road just now when a weird looking creature came at him. The two hear a gunshot...and a few seconds later, Hawkins comes running over with his rifle to report that he was shooting at a cougar. He studies the footprints that Jaime is tracking and says they look like the paw prints not of his cougar, but of a mysterious, two-legged Sasquatch type beast. Eeeeeek!! The next morning, Thomas sadly tells Jaime and Lyle that the demon who's been haunting his ranch killed one of his horses. Jaime suggests calling the sheriff, but Lyle squashes that idea and says it's too crazy a story for law enforcement officials to believe. He then says he's so unsettled about the demon sightings that he's planning to sell his property to Hawkins asap, and once again urges Thomas to do the same. Jaime says they're going to need to put a pin in this conversation until after she makes a quick trip the burial site and then delivers her package to the Observation Station. Jaime wanders around the burial ground and takes a series of photos. She's startled when she walks back over to her car and sees the same crude white drawing that Thomas saw on his bedroom wall the other night. When it promptly disappears, she stares perplexedly into space. Jaime arrives at the Observation Station to hand deliver the package, then asks the captain if she could get a roll of film developed in their on-site Fotomat. While waiting for the photos to be developed, Jaime studies a military class photo, notices Lyle Cannon in the photo, and tells Sergeant Woods she had no idea he had joined the service. Sergeant Woods tells her that Lyle abruptly quit a few months ago and cited a sick father as the reason for his departure. When Jaime's photos turn out blotchy and streaked with large white spots, Sergeant Woods tells her they could have been ruined by any number of things - except for uranium damage from hot ore deposits, which he's absolutely sure of 'cause they had some professional satellite photos developed that prove that there's zero, nada, zip uranium in the immediate area. He proudly adds that the facility is a leading developer of holographic research. Mmm hmm.. On her way back to Thomas's ranch, Jaime is startled when the ghostly demon suddenly appears in the middle of the road. She's all, "Ack!" and swerves off the road and smashes into a tree, and the impact knocks her unconscious. Jaime is at Thomas's place when she regains consciousness. She tells Thomas she saw the ghostly demon again, and Thomas wrings his hands about how she was nearly killed. He tells her that the Night Demon curse tends not to follow people who run for the hills...which is why he's now considering selling his land to Hawkins. He adds that Lyle is ready to sell his property, something he was unwilling to do when his father died two years ago. Jaime's all, "Wuh?" and tells Thomas that Sergeant Woods from the Observation Station just told her that Lyle had quit the military a few months ago 'cause he needed to take care of his sick father. She springs out of bed, says she might be onto something, and urges Thomas to hold off on selling his land until she can look into this further. Jaime hops into Thomas's pickup truck and drives over to Lyle's ranch. She enters his garage, pokes around, and finds a geiger counter (that quickly detects the uranium dust on her boots). She also uncovers a map of the area that helpfully details the various uranium deposits on the burial ground on Thomas's property...along with the best places to position projectors in order to screen a holographic image of a demon beast and totally freak Thomas out.
Jaime calls Sergeant Woods to ask him if Lyle Cannon ever worked in the holographic research department, and the sergeant says yep...in fact, he was in charge of it. He adds that Lyle was also responsible for processing the film from the satellites...presumably so he could doctor them so that no one would know about all the uranium deposits in the area. Lyle pretends to sign over his deed to Hawkins and urges Thomas to do the same...and Thomas clutches his pen and stares contemplatively at the document. Jaime returns to the site of the burial ground, looks around, and discovers a small cave. Inside, she finds what looks like a live version of the demon beast that both she and Thomas saw holographically. She inches fearfully toward the thing until she realizes it's nothing more than a costume hanging on the cave wall. She pulls off one of the beast's gloves and sees that it has two buttons: one which transmits a holographic image of the beast, and one which makes the beast growl and look sinister. She then finds the disappearing white stuff that was used to create the disappearing crude white drawings, a supply of hansen weed that made those groovy psychedelic rays appear, and the rifle Hawkins was using the night he claimed he was shooting at the cougar. Jaime heads back to the ranch to tell Thomas that Lyle and Hawkins were conspiring to scare the bejeezus out of him so he'd sell his property so they could reap the benefits of owning land with uranium on it...and that the ghostly vision of the demon was nothing more than a hologram. Thomas moans, "Oh Lord.." and tells Jaime he sold his property to Hawkins an hour ago, even though she had urged him to hold off on making this kind of life decision until she returned to the ranch. Dumbass. Jaime takes Thomas to the cave and shows him all the stuff that Lyle and Hawkins have been using to trick him into selling his land, and Thomas says he now realizes that Lyle planted the Night Demon artifact in his burial ground site so he'd find it and get the ball rolling with this idiotic storyline. He whines about how foolish and degraded he feels - but Jaime suddenly brightens and tells him she knows how he can get his land back...but in order for her to pull it off, it's going to take a convincing acting job on his part. Lyle and Hawkins are driving over to Thomas's place, cackling about how they fooled the dumbfuck into signing over his deed. When they pull into his driveway, Thomas runs out of the house looking faux upset and tells the two he just saw the Night Demon - like, in person - and that it scampered into the desert just now. Lyle advises him to go inside and rest, and assures him that he and Hawkins will look into the demon sighting. The two head into the desert, cackle about how nuts Thomas is getting, then make a beeline over to the cave to clean out all their stuff. They're alarmed when they see crude white drawings appear and then disappear on the cave walls, and cry out in fear when a hologram of the Night Demon lunges at them. They look over at the costume hanging on the cave wall, which suddenly comes alive and raises an arm to point menacingly at them. Hee! Hawkins growls that whoever is playing games with them needs to be taught a lesson, so he picks up his rifle and starts shooting [blanks, 'cause Jaime emptied out the pellets from the shells earlier]. The Night Demon (er...Jaime) advances on Hawkins, bionically shoves him across the cave, and bends his rifle. For good measure she tosses some hansen weed in their direction, and the two men scramble towards the exit and flee the cave in terror. Lyle cries, "Someone is trying to scam us with our own scam!" - heh - as Jaime chases after them, picks up a giant boulder, and throws it in their general direction. The two race down the hill and cry, "Please don't hurt us!" just as Jaime bionically leaps down the hill and lands a few feet away from them. She etches confess to Thomas on one of the rocks, then points in the direction of Thomas's house. Lyle and Hawkins hastily agree to do anything the demon says if it allows them to live, then race back to the Bearclaw ranch to spill the beans about their treachery to Thomas.
Thomas is calmly reading a book when a terrorized Lyle and Hawkins race over to his ranch, admit they played a dirty trick on him to get him to sign over his deed, return the deed, then speed off in Lyle's jeep. Later, Jaime and Thomas look over the Night Demon costume, and pontificate about how its only power was their belief that it was real...and their belief that it had the ability to kill them, or at least scare them into submission. Thomas says he's interested in going back to teaching Indian lore at the university, then offers Jaime the Night Demon artifact as a souvenir. She declines and says she'd prefer never to have to think about this idiotic plot ever again...and the two chortle at the pointlessness of this entire episode and share a friendly embrace. Thanks for reading! If you are enjoying TVofYore's recaps, consider thanking me by buying me a "coffee"!
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