(airdate: 31 Jan 96) Dr. Death Takes a Holiday sound files

Matt arrives at the sheriff's station with the coroner's X-rays of Merlyn. He starts telling Ben that there is something very suspicious about they real cause of her death when Lucas comes in. Matt informs Lucas that he found out that Merlyn had died of a broken neck, not a shovel to her head. In the course of the conversation, he finds out that Ben was there the night Merlyn died and is surprised.

After Matt leaves, Lucas tells Ben to call Judge Streeter to schedule a competence hearing. When Lucas leaves the station, he bumps into some friends outside and starts chatting with them. Unbeknownst to him, across the street there is a woman who is aiming her gun at him with intentions to shoot. Matt, who is standing nearby, sees this and wrestles the gun from her. She faints and is taken to the hospital.

Matt is in his office still looking through Merlyn's autopsy reports when a nurse named Sarah comes in to give him an update on the woman. She then asks Matt if he's going to report the woman, who has given the name of Mrs. Smith, to the police for trying to kill Lucas. Matt doesn't want to and instead asks to see her file. He is surprised by the information in there which says that she has a very large tumor in her head. When Matt checks in on Mrs. Smith, he asks her why she tried to kill Lucas. She simply replies that he deserves to die because he is not human.

Billy is in Selena's classroom giving a little lecture on what influenza is and the importance of getting a vaccine for it. Selena then volunteers to be the first one to get the shot since no one else wants it and their attraction to each other is very apparent, even to the children in her class.

Judge Streeter is asking his wife, Charlotte, why she hasn't paid their son's tuition. She tells him shamefully that she has spent all the money. Just then, Lucas appears as he wants to talk to the Judge about Matt. After Charlotte departs, Lucas tells the Judge that he wants papers drawn up for Matt to be institutionalized permanently because he believes he is a threat to the community. The judge is on to his real motives--trying to get rid of the opposition-- so he refuses to go along with him almost contemptuously. Before Lucas leaves, he drops hints about doing something that will involve Charlotte.

When Matt visits Mrs. Smith again, she starts making comparisons of Lucas to Hitler and Charles Manson to stress how evil he is. She claims that she knows for a fact that Lucas is pure evil because she is his mother.

When Matt returns to the boarding house that night. he happens upon Loris and starts asking her about evil and possession. He spots a bookshelf with some occult books and wants to look up those concepts in them. Loris is reluctant to lend the books to him for she warns him that the occult is an almost dangerous subject to explore. She tells him never to underestimate evil but she finally relents and lends him a book on the occult.

Charlotte is having some bad luck at poker when Lucas appears and offers some assistance so that she can win. She is wary of him but when she begans to win, she forgets her worries. When she decides to put down a wager of $5000 on one of the games, Lucas encourages her instead to "go for the glory" so she ends up wagering $50,000, which is the amount she and Streeter had saved for their son's college tuition. Not surprisingly, she loses everything.

It is the next morning, and Matt is back in his office reading the book on the occult. Sarah comes in to tell him that Mrs. Smith is freezing because Room 105 is unnaturally cold. He tells her to turn on the heat for Mrs. Smith but Sarah tells his that it's no use as there is a belief that the room is cursed. He learns that that was the room where Caleb's mother had stayed in before she jumped out of that window to her death. Sarah also informs him that Judith Temple had a very difficult pregnancy and after she had Caleb, she was filled with this unexplicable fear that someone wanted to take her son away from her.

When Matt brings a blanket to Mrs. Smith, she asks him why wouldn't he believe her. Lucas has to be killed. Matt tells her that killing Lucas would be an act of evil; that would be sinking down to Lucas' level. But she tells him that he needs to stop Lucas for the sake of Caleb and all those that he was harmed in the past. Matt is beginning to actually contemplate her words seriously.

As Billy is leaving the hospital since his shift is over, Selena meets him outside and offers to give him a ride. He tells her that he doesn't want to play games even though he is attracted to her. He wants to take it slow so he leaves on his own. When she returns to her car, Lucas is there and he starts taunting her about Billy. She believe Billy is going to be a real challenge to Lucas which he scoffs at. He then lies and says that Billy told him that he has had lots of woman and he thinks teachers like her are easy catches. She tells him to get out of the car as she is truly upset by what he has said.

Judge Streeter returns home that night to find his wife in the bathtub with her wrists slit.

Matt is having nightmares about demons, Lucas, and Merlyn. He jerks awake just as there's a knock at the door. It's Gail and she wants to invite him to take a walk with Caleb and her since she's worried about him. He declines and continues to look through the book. He comes upon a picture of a demon wrenching an angel's neck just like how Lucas had done to Merlyn. He starts thinking about what Mrs. Smith has said again.

The judge is in Lucas' office. He has no choice but to relent to Lucas' wishes and sign the papers for Matt's committal in return for Lucas' promise that Charlotte will be in the clear with him for now.

Matt goes to see Mrs. Smith again that night to tell her that he still thinks killing Lucas is wrong. But his convictions are not as strong anymore as she is able to make him doubt by telling him that that's the only right thing to do.

After Matt leaves, she finds that Lucas is already in the room waiting for her. It appears that they actually have a different sort of history together from that of being mother and son. They were actually lovers in the past---they had a sort of May-December romance when Lucas was only sixteen--and her name is actually Angela. She now wants to kill Lucas for leaving her, even though she is still very much in love with him. Lucas asks her why she is saying all those things to Matt and she tells him that she wants to use his hand to kill Lucas. He starts consoling her and then tells her she should know what she should do now. He leads her to the window and as if mesmerized, she jumps out and lands in front of Matt just as he exited the hospital. Shocked, he looks up and sees Lucas standing in the window that she had jumped out of.

Ben arrives at the boarding house the next day with the summons for Matt. Gail and Caleb are there and asks Ben what's the matter. He doesn't tell them but head for Matt's room. All three of them go in and are alarmed to see that he has covered all the walls in his room with pictures and pages from books on the occult. When Ben sees a picture of Lucas with a target on his face, he immediately understands what Matt intends to do so they rush off to the sheriff's station.

Billy is at the station administering vaccines to Trinity's children. When he sees Lucas, he tells him that he doesn't appreciate lies being said about him. They start talking about Selena, not knowing that she is eavesdropping around the corner. Lucas tells Billy that he controls Selena and she thinks what he tells her to think. Selena then comes out from the corner and kisses Billy in front of Lucas in defiance.

Matt arrives at the station. He goes straight to Lucas' office and aims the gun at him. Lucas is not perturbed in the least and even taunts him. Gail arrives and tries to persuade Matt to put down the gun but he doesn't listen. Ben rushes in then and wrestles the gun from Matt. Lucas then tells Ben to take care of Matt and not in a good way.

Ben drives Matt to the edge of town. Matt thinks that Ben intends to shoot him out there in the forest but instead, Ben tells him to leave town immediately and never return. However, Matt refuses to go because he says he came here to make a difference and since he failed, he doesn't want to return to where he came from. Ben has no choice but to take him to Juniper House Sanitarium.

After he is locked up, Lucas pays Matt a visit. He tells Matt that he shouldn't have been so nosey and should've just gone along with him. Matt tells him that there will be others who will eventually stop him and continues shouting those predictions as Lucas walks away, unfazed.

1. August 2002