The Grainger family have a weird kid....no other way to say it! On his birthday, he insists he wants to take his birthday money to the nearby magic shop to spend it...but his parents insist there is no magic shop where he says there's one. Nevertheless, the father (Leslie Nielsen) humors him...and there turns out to be a magic shop exactly where the kid said! But it gets much weirder. The man inside (David Opatashu) dotes on the boy and says how special he is...and the man is seriously creepy! The father is also creeped out by the guy and insists they leave...and the child just disappears! Soon, the man running the place vanishes...and the father finds himself lying in the middle of the road!! When he awakens, he blathers about losing his son in the magic shop....but everyone tells him it's a travel agency...there is no magic shop!! Clearly, a creepy supernatural thing has happened.
What about the boy? Well, he comes back a day later and insists he was gone for a week...but won't tell the parents anything more. So, they take him to a psychologist...and the man thinks SOMETHING weird is going on here! But what??? Soon, the boy begins showing signs of being evil...sort of in the Antichrist sort of way!
In so many ways, this episode plays like an installment of "The Twilight Zone"* or "The Outer Limits"...not an Alfred Hitchcock show. Both "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "The Alfred Hitchcock Hour" are normally firmly grounded in reality....and mostly crime. But this one is supernatural and weird throughout. Now I am not complaining...but it clearly is atypical for the series. However, it IS good...extremely creepy and frightening...and with an ending that might leave you ill at ease! In fact, it made we wish the show did MORE supernatural shows like this one.
*The closest I've seen to this episode is "The Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life"...where the little boy has amazing powers and has all the adults around him in abject fear of the little monster.