Wow. If you have been following this highly inconsistent show, Saturday was your payoff. It was so good, I was reaching for imaginary popcorn.

Bride-to-be Trish Wellington and sister Shea Allen are on a lookout at Candlewick Inn, hoping someone finds Shea’s missing daughter, Madison. Instead, best man Sully and bridesmaid Beth return in a walk of shame. Sorry we gave up on your 9-year-old daughter, Shea, they don’t quite say, which doesn’t stop Shea from ripping into them pretty heavily. Meanwhile, they explain groom-to-be Henry Dunn found his brother, J.D., dead at the marina, and took him to the med clinic. Trish realizes if J.D. is dead, he probably didn’t kill her father, Tom Wellington, which means she can still marry Henry.

At the clinic, Brit Cal is treating Sheriff Mills for his puncture wound with assistance from girlfriend/bridesmaid Chloe as well as the sheriff’s daughter and show’s heroine, Abby. Henry and Abby’s ex/townie Jimmy bring in J.D.’s corpse. Henry is so believably distraught that I doubt he’s the killer for just a minute. They did a great job with Trish when her father died, like they rubbed ragweed under her eyes during filming, but the actor who plays Henry? Now that’s some good acting.

Sheriff Mills tells Abby to look at the journal believed to belong to Harper’s Island’s past serial killer, John Wakefield. Once she retrieves some missing pages from Henry that had been in J.D.’s pocket, she realizes her mother and John Wakefield had a child together. Is she a killer’s daughter? My bet is their child was Henry, and he’s Abby’s half-brother. And homicidal.

Back at the inn, Sully and groomsman Danny step outside to investigate a truck with blaring music, just a ruse by townie Shane, who has a gun and wants to find rival J.D. They tell him he’s dead. Shane bosses them into the inn with the rifle, which Trish tells him to put down. Shane taunts her that she forgot the magic word. “Please,” Henry says, putting a rifle to Shane’s head from behind. Killer or not, he’s smooth, that Henry. And left the clinic rather quickly, I guess. He reassures Shea that the state police will arrive in the morning and surely find Madison, but that’s not good enough for her.

Shane complains he might be locked in the inn with a killer. Henry offers him the option to be locked outside, instead, on his own. Shane wisely decides to stay put. However, he eavesdrops on Abby’s revelation that she could be Wakefield’s daughter and quickly spreads the word to the others. Henry tells Shane to shut up. Shane: “Hey, it’s not like I’m Rosemary’s baby.” Hehe! The fickle bridal party, who was blaming the Wellingtons for this mess the day before, now turn on Abby. She stomps off. Trish and Henry really need some new friends.

In the underrated scene of this episode, Trish asks Henry where all his blood and cuts came from. Well, he was out killing people, is my guess, but Henry says he doesn’t know.

Tom Wellington’s widow, Katherine, goes off to find a grieving Shea and tries to comfort her. Shea is having none of it from the woman who slept with her slain husband, Richard. Katherine says she’s worried and that she loves Madison. Shea: “You don’t get to love Madison.”

Jimmy heads outside to comfort his ex, Abby, and she tells him about the strange “Ave Maria” phone calls she’s been receiving. He talks her into heading back inside with the others, but Shane has locked a screen door and tells Abby to stay outside. Henry intervenes and beats the crap out of Shane, which pleases me immensely. Amid the fighting, then, and everybody trying to break it up, is the best moment of the show. Sully looks around the room: “Where’s Beth?”

Meanwhile, at the clinic, Chloe is turned on by Cal’s medical handiwork. He opines that nueroanatomy usually isn’t an aphrodisiac. No, Cal, but it might be your accent. They wander off to have sex, always a bad idea in a horror script.

Back at the inn, the search for Beth leads to the discovery of puddles of blood and, bonus, secret passages! Secret passages are to horror movies what chimps are to comedy: cinematic gold. Sully, Danny, Abby, Jimmy and Henry search for Beth. The passages split, and Sully helpfully opines that bad-luck charm Abby can go with Jimmy and Henry. Subtlety is not Sully’s specialty. Danny, great line about the blood: “There’s no version of this that ends well.” No, indeed.

Shane tells Trish he’s sorry about her dad and offers her a drink from the bottle he’s working through. Katherine interrupts to say Shea is missing. They go to the room Katherine left Shea in and find The Tower tarot card from Trish’s bachelorette party. Trish realizes Shea, desperate to find her daughter, has left the inn to find the party psychic. Shane and Katherine reason with Trish to stay put, but instead, she steals Shane’s truck and tears off to find her sister. Yes! I like Trish.

Shane puts the moves on Katherine next and accurately assesses that she was Tom Wellington’s trophy wife. “So did he leave you, like, a zillion dollars?” he asks. Funny, I was wondering the same thing. Katherine wanders off in disgust. Shane proceeds to carve up the bar with a knife, and innkeeper Maggie tells him to cut it out. “What, do you think anyone is ever going to stay here again?” Hehe. Shane has a lot of good lines this episode, which doesn’t bode well for his longevity.

Trish finds Shea walking alone through the woods. (Bad idea, Shea.) Shea says she has to keep looking for Madison. Trish talks her into the truck.

The secret passages turn into tiny tunnels. Danny heads down one of them and finds Beth, who’s dead. I have this whole theory about Elizabeths, Lizes and Beths that there’s no space for at the moment, but I could have told you a Beth never rates a death onscreen. Sorry. In the other tunnel, Abby takes the tight crawlspace, but a gate closes behind her, blocking her from Henry and Jimmy. Abby keeps crawling forward. This is killing me; haven’t you seen “The Descent”? Tight spaces bad! Jimmy good! Someone or something grabs Abby’s leg, giving me a small heart attack. She escapes into a larger tunnel, then finds a room with …. Madison! Oh, good. I like the little mad scientist. Those two head out to escape and find some sort of sewer hole leading to the woods.

Shea and Trish drive by and seem to miss Abby and Madison, but Shea sees Madison’s hand waving through the drain in the side mirror. Awwww. Abby and Madison are rescued.

Cal leaves a presumably contented Chloe on a clinic table and goes to check on Sheriff Mills. He has disappeared.

Henry and the others greet Trish, Shea, Abby and Madison outside the inn, where it’s finally daylight. Shane watches from inside the inn, then turns to Katherine to tell her that her stepgrandaughter is safe. Katherine doesn’t respond. She looks like she’s sleeping, but somebody has stuck some hedgeclippers through the back of the sofa where she was sitting. She’s dead. Does this count as one death, or does her way-too-prominent cleavage count as a separate character?

Last scene: Madison turns to Abby to ask her if she liked the game. What game, Abby asks.

“The man who took me?” Madison says. “Your dad, Abby. You know. The sheriff.”