Nightmare Fuel / Old Gods of Appalachia

You do not have a name for what they are... But feel free to come up with one, so you may have something to scream when they find you, Family. Feel free. ^note  Art by hannahc1315

Narrator: Marianne was dead. Huge chunks had been torn out of her neck and shoulder, her face with a frozen scream of agony and fear. The space between her ribs and hips was a vacant cavern of gore. The crimson shroud that poured from that wound had covered her nethers in a mockery of modesty. Most of her right leg, bones and foot included, were just gone. Blood painted the walls and the bedclothes and the customer's inhuman face that she could now clearly see. He was pig-like in his appearance—full snout and maw with a boar's tusks, covered in viscera, his blood-spattered, piggy ears twitching in his dreaming.

Here in this twisted Appalachia, no one is safe. Not children, not grannies, not witches, not even the monsters themselves. Hell, even dying won't protect your loved ones from the Things, even if they pose no threat to their grand plans. In this world, the Old Gods of Appalachia reign supreme, and you can only hope you're lucky enough to die in silence, lest you attract the attention of their servants.

Disclaimer: The darkness cares not if our story is spoiled. Beware unmarked spoilers, family.

General

• Just the idea of living in this version of Appalachia in general. The dominant force providing work in this land is Barrow and Locke Mining Combine, who treat their workers so callously that the eldritch powers they serve use seem more incidental than anything. Working for them leaves you borderline in poverty, made fully aware of how expendable you are by your superiors. Tunnel collapse, hardware malfunction, coal mine explosions, and being murdered by your superiors for any reason at all are a possibility at work every single day. The people who don't work for Barrow and Locke aren't much better, as the best you can do in this land is keep your head down and hope the Deep Things don't notice you, or that Barrow and Locke doesn't want something from you, tending to either a humble farm or selling your body for coin. If you're born with a Gift, chances are you were born into a witch clan like the Walkers! Congratulations! You're going to be hunted by Eldritch Horrors until the day you die! Although, at least this way your Sisters and Mothers can teach you how to fight the Dark. If you're born with a Gift but are the first of your family to have it, you'd better hope you can find a witch clan before the servants of Those Who Sleep Beneath notice you, lest they mold you to their plans...
  • And if you reject a Deal with the Devil, having a Gift but KNOWING you're in for a bad time working for the Things? They have the means of turning back the clock until you're young and malleable again...
  Horned Head: We are very good at waiting, Little Witch.
  • In general, Appalachia during the time periods covered in the show is a complete Crapsack World without any of the Cosmic Horror Story aspects. And with the relative fidelity to history the show has shown thus far with its unflinching depiction of the dangers of Coal Mining and the Railroad, this says a lot about the horrors of living in the Appalachian region during this time in Real Life.
• The Narrator's opening speech in the prologue sets the tone for the series pretty well, lamenting the way that the world looks down on Appalachia and how they all take up addiction and solitude to try to survive in the face of the Awful Truth. Overlaps with Tear Jerker.
  Narrator: For generations, the outside world has looked at us and wondered why we never really climbed out of these hollers, wondered why we do reject outsiders, why we bind ourselves to industries that destroy us, why we drown ourselves in pills and the bliss of ignorance. They see us feed ourselves to the earth like martyrs, they see us dig into the mines, watch our fortunes rise and fall, cave in and burn. They don't understand how short the days are here, how these mountains swaddle us in an early darkness. They don't see how little sunlight we actually get, and they don't see the shadows stir, don't hear the lost hymns that haunt these hillsides, don't hear the prayers that rise up in the night, prayers raised to a god on high... and fall back down to feed the old gods of Appalachia that sleep below. Which is fitting. First come, first served.
  • The implication that the horrors of the show are still going on in the present day. Failure Is the Only Option for the Walkers and the Green, as the railroad dominated by B&L in this universe is still thriving and well. However, this can also be a hopeful implication, seeing as how the universe is still intact and Those Who Sleep Beneath haven't won yet.
    • The implication of a Forever War between the forces of the Green and Inner Dark is full of Fridge Horror, though.
• Hell, the outro itself, while a definite case of AwesomeMusic, sounds like a lamentation from the Appalachians themselves, which is very fitting considering the Crapsack World they're stuck in.
  There is a curse upon
  My every waking breath
  And I cannot escape the darkness

Season 1: Barlo, KY & The Witch Queen

• The aftermath of the Old Number 7 disaster manages to set the series tone from the outset without mentioning one single supernatural aspect. What's worse is that this was a real mining disaster, with many of the details coming from real life accounts of the bodies found after.
  • One person's eyes are described as "viscous, gelatinous tears running down from [their] face."
  • What's worse is the apathy that most of the casualties are glossed over, since they're scab workers and African Americans.
• Horned Head. His manipulations of Dooley into making a Deal with the Devil with him after she's been forced into isolation in the Wilderness will remind some listeners of a certain demonic goat from The VVitch.
• The death of Carole Ann Avery. She's just lost her husband and is in no position to defend her daughter from the Swarm, not before he can tie a noose around her neck and hang her. While she manages to get the last laugh on Combs and her daughter ends up surviving to live with her loving sisters, the narration clarifies that her suffering did not end with her hanging.
• The Things That Were Not Pinky and Edgar Avery. Imagine seeing your parental figures, charred and in an indescribable amount of pain, right after your mother committed suicide. The thing using their bodies is trying to get you to come to them, but there's just enough resistance from their bodies that you can tell they're still alive and suffering. And when they fail, the forces controlling them smash them into little piles of charred meat. Pinky's one moment where it seems like it really is him talking makes it much more nightmarish:
  Pinky: They won't... let me go until I get you.
  • From their perspective, it gets even worse. Imagine you run off into a mine to save your fellow miners, regardless of if they're scabs or not. Imagine you're caught in the mine explosion, your teeth melting into your cheeks and your flesh charring off your bones. By any and all rights, you should be dead by this point. But the forces behind the disaster have more use for you. You're kept alive, in constant shuddering pain, trying to hunt down your only daughter for reasons beyond your comprehension. You will not be allowed to simply die, not until they've got your little girl. The idea of being in constant, agonizing pain is bad enough, but knowing that you will NOT be released until you hand your only daughter off to a Fate Worse than Death makes it much worse.
• Cletus Garvin's ultimate fate. Some of his children are caught in the Old Number 7 blast, and he desperately sacrifices animals and invokes the mysterious voices from the mines, hoping to save their lives. He doesn't. Knowing his days are now numbered, he tries to gather his family and flee town, only to come home and discover they've all been brutally murdered and hollowed by the force behind the Old Number 7 Disaster. He finds them gathered at the dinner table, still bleeding and teeth missing, waiting for him. We don't know what happened to him, but we know it hurt.
  • In any other story, we would be told to have very little sympathy for Cletus given he slowly perverted the local Christian worship to worship of the Deep Things, even allowing for the corpses of the African American scabs to be buried in a mass, unmarked grave. However, he is given just enough sympathy to make his fate horrible and sad. He was a mine worker first who caught the black lung, and would leave behind his family with a pathetic excuse for pension. Desperate to save his family and implied to fear his own death, he took a deal with the the Voices in the Mines (implied to be a direct manifestation of Those Who Sleep Beneath themselves), and uses their power to heal for a time. He was misguided, yes, and partially responsible for the death of over 20 people even before the Burnt Things take over the town. He is given just enough sympathetic traits to make his fate, and the fate of his completely in the dark family, absolutely horrifying.
• The Orphanage of Fear Sarah Avery ends up at after managing to escape Barlow. The ladies who run the orphanage are all virtually identical, and they all seem to worship an Eldritch Abomination. One old man, Elder Henry, was disfigured by a mining explosion in his youth and is absolutely a malicious force. Orphans begin to disappear, and Elder Henry begins to hone in on Sarah. This is because he's really a weakened Horned Head, smelling the power of the Green on her. It's a wonder that she manages to survive long enough for her Aunts to come save her.
• Horned Head's plans for Daughter Dooley as revealed in the season finale. He wishes to age her back to a baby, so she can be properly oriented into the Darkness by his masters. And he's willing to sacrifice a baby and an entire town to make this happen.
  • What's worse is the greater, series wide implications about Horned Head's plans and how it may tie into the Burnt Things hunting Sarah Avery. It seems like a recurring theme that the Things require a Witch, someone with a Gift, raised in the ways of the Dark. They tried first with Daughter Dooley, although these attempts most likely go all the way back to the Native people. Sarah Avery, a member of the Walker Witch clan, has her own gift, powerful enough to ward off an entire town of the Burnt Things. Ignatius Combs wasn't sent to kill Carol Anne, he was sent for Sarah, most likely because the Dark sees Sarah as young enough to be molded to their liking. What they could possibly use a corrupted Green witch for is full of Fridge Horror.
  • This deserves extra emphasis: the Things change over time. In early settlement, their foremost agent was Horned Head, an open Animalistic Abomination. In the more modern times, Barrow and Locke seems to have ascended as the most influential and powerful of their agents. And yet, their desire for a Green witch raised in the Dark has never changed. This plan must be very close to the goals of Those Who Sleep Beneath for this plan to have been the same across hundreds of years.

Season 2: In The Pines

• Caleb's encounter with the Dead Queen, a Walking Wasteland who doesn't hesitate to give the boy a very, very cursed kiss. She then goes on to obliterate destroy his entire family, and his entire settlement. What's worse is that at this point in the story, we don't have a single clue as to why she does it.
  • Although we do eventually get context, it does not make anything better.
• The Man From The Railroad. A Free Agent who embodies the bloody cost of the railroad's progress. He manages to intimidate the Hollowed Men into service just by letting them peer into his mind, has ambiguous patronage to the Locke family, and turns the poor folk of an entire town into humanoid abominations of all sorts just to use them as a bloody bridge into Pleasant Evenings. Why does he do any of this? Why CAN he do any of this? We never find out a damn thing.
  • The Hollow Men are no slouch during this arc either. They're introduced slaughtering the staff of the cruel establishment that employed Vera Blevins, and doing so with ease. While their motivation is a lot more clear than the Railroad Man's (get back the watch for their masters at B&L), their reason for this particular act is shrouded in mystery. The possibilities, however, aren't comforting, especially since the establishment was important enough that V.I.Ps felt comfortable letting down their guard. It was either for A) allowing someone capable of stealing from a VIP into the room with him, B) having a VIP die on their watch or C) simply For the Evulz. Knowing the way the haints tend to work, it could be any of the above.
• The death of Vera Blevins. You'd think its the Hollowed Man Mister Erskine that ends up killing her, especially with the way Melvin's flashback from the Wolf Sisters is worded. It isn't. Vera panics and tries to offer the watch to Erskine, begging for her life and the lives of those at Pleasant Evenings. Erskine, for his part, is horrified that she's touching the watch and begs her to put it down, stating that it's going to give her a worse death than he ever could give. He's right. She ages to death in a matter of moments. This is one of the few moments where we see one of the monsters actively horrified by the consequences of dealing with the eldritch powers they serve, and it couldn't be at a more appropriate time.
• The fact that, during this season, it appears Jack (AKA Mr J.T. Fields of Dorchester) has entered a Long Game against the goddamned Locke Family, having the poor indebted youth under him serving Nathaniel Locke himself. Whatever his endgame, it's well known that Jack prefers to steer completely clear of the Inner Dark, so it begs the question: what could be so horrifying that it would inspire Jack to start making open moves against such a powerful force for the Dark? If anything, this seems to indicate more than anything else Vagueness Is Coming.
• The Dead Queen. The younger and more malicious counterpart to the Witch Queen, she haunts the countryside with her shadowy child, bringing death and decay wherever she goes. She's powerful enough to inspire unity between the Green and Inner Dark once every seven years to seal her back away, and is more than capable of fighting back against her sealing while she's rising. Just ask poor Skint Tom.
  • This gets worse after The Reveal, which completely recontextualizes the entirety of Season 2.
  Daughter Dooley: So, old friend, how bad was it this time?

Season 3: As Above, So Below

• The fact that the Inner Dark seems to be getting A Day in the Limelight this season. The prologue has implied two of the three main arcs will be following Polly Barrow and the recently revived and scheming Horned Head. There's also a third, unnamed and unknown protagonist who will be dealing with the Free Agents known as the Rock Men, but given the other protagonists of this season, it's highly likely they'll either be a Villain Protagonist or be doomed to a Downer Ending.
• It's with this season that we get introduced properly to the head of the Barrow Family, Elias Pontius Barrow, or Old E.P. In spite of what many expected, he is not an apostle or servant to a Deep Thing at all but is heavily implied to be a Deep Thing. The man is introduced speaking in tongues that no human could pronounce, damning an entire town to eternal servitude.
  • Immediately after damning the town, the skin of the world breaks open, and E.P. takes residence in a coffin. One might think this is self sacrifice for the promise of greater power, but all this seems to do is give E.P. a seat of power from which to issue commands. His son is then immediately used by the older son as a blood sacrifice, before being revived as a haint enforcer to his father.
  • The implication's of E.P.'s means of reproduction. When he decides he needs a better enforcer than his two sons, he's simply dipped deeper into the Earth. After weeks of hard work and noises that even make his inhuman son shiver, E.P. produces his most most human looking progeny yet, little "pretty" Polly Barrow. What's worse about this is it's noted these three abominations are not E.P.'s only progeny, just the only ones human enough to help him in his ventures.
• The noises Polly makes when E.P. deposits knowledge into her mind. It's enough to make you feel a bit of sympathy for her, in spite of her being a hateful spoiled enforcer to a (literally) inhuman organization. It's enough that even her Hollowed Men are willing to disobey orders to come check on her.
• The Weapon, a green eyed child used by the Barrows to dispose of union supporters. The child is marked by horrible, inhuman symbols and acts like a mewling baby a little over a year old. That is, until an unsuspecting family has taken it in, then fallen asleep with it in the house. What the creature does is not (initially) described, only that not a soul is left alive by the time morning comes. What's more, is that the only way of controlling it is via the aforementioned Mind Rape Polly received from her father. This thing is that dangerous.
  • As it later turns out, this thing is Solomon Locke, cousin of Nathaniel Locke and heir to the Locke fortune. AKA the hero of the season's final arc, Jonah Hellbender. This shows that, while the Lockes have been somewhat Out of Focus thus far, they are not to be taken more lightly than their partners.
• Legion, AKA Milton Kinsman. A Hollowed Man so powerful he was not only capable of destroying entire swaths of the countryside of his own, but capable of surviving without his Barrow handlers and carving out a new name for himself. Except for a certain time of year where he loses control and unleashes his wrath on Appalachia.
  • Hollowing usually gives power roughly appropriate to the crimes committed in one's own life. For example, Churchman's power involves stealing the air from people's lungs when he was a serial killer in his mortal life. So what exactly did our dear Milton do in his life to cause his Hollowing to manifest as a legion of Inner Dark monsters.
• Whatever the Men of the Rock are, they are enough to give two experience Hollow Men, even the aforementioned Legion, pause. Whatever they did killed entire squads of Hollow Men and shook Barrow House so hard they never tried to mine near the Rock again. And, by season's end, they've kidnapped Jack and Rachel.
• The prelude to the Children of Men arc in Season 3 makes clear that in Appalachia, there is a connection between h'aints and human children, either offered up to the Dark by their families or being a result of... coupling... with them.

Build Mama A Coffin

• Glory Ann Boggs' dreams of her upcoming death, and what the Things are going to have them do to her corpse. What's worse, she has visions of her family being perverted, manipulated, and sculpted by the Things in her absence. While all of this may seem distant to the listener, the idea of not being able to protect your family from those who might want to hurt them because of your actions is very familiar indeed.
• What Glory Ann had to do to her horrible drunk of a husband. We don't hear exactly what went down, but we know that he was buried in pieces.
  • His eventual fate is both this and TearJerker, considering what we learn about him in Black Mouthed Dog.
• The Sentinel. One of the older Deep Things, and while it's dismissed as a Dirty Coward by a badass like Glory Ann Boggs, it doesn't help normal folk out much, family. Not much at all. The Sentinel manifests as a twisted, rotting tree. A twisted rotting tree with branches perfect for hanging. Resting in the Deep South. The Klan gets their fair use out of the tree, nourishing it with the blood of the poor black folks killed there. And when Dale Boggs finds it, it begins sending him visions and... carnal sensations that let him know he should carve his Mama's coffin out of its wood. And it only gets worse from there.
  • The thing, once it's been chopped down so Dale could build mama a coffin, reveals its true form. Its an ever shifting maw of disgusting, serrated teeth. Sometimes it shifts so there's an eye within, sometimes the maw turns into a mother birthing a child much too big for her body, but it drives Dale to madness just from looking at it.
  • Dale at this point in the story can hit very close to home from his Sanity Slippage induced bout of Abusive Parents, especially considering that it's heavily implied the Sentinel only amplified what was already there. For all the horror of Daniel being corrupted by Old Copperhead, it's almost satisfying that Dale is killed off by his brainwashed son before he can do anymore harm to the poor boy.
• Old Copperhead, for all that he's just as much a Butt-Monkey here as he is everywhere else, is still pretty damn effective. Sliding into the story without us realizing he was there throughout it all, like the devil in Eden, and seducing the poor mentally handicapped Daniel Boggs with ease, Copperhead actually comes dangerously close to devouring Glory Ann's corpse through relatively simple trickery and promises of power. What's more is that he empowers Daniel, giving him super strength but also causing him to be seduced by a Hate Plague, and causes him to kill Dale. And once he's unlatched, Daniel keels over, weeping to his grandmother for forgiveness.
• Granny White, the good and proper Final Boss of the story. Much more menacing than the other members of the Big Bad Ensemble and probably the most effective Deep Thing we've seen that isn't Horned Head or Barrow and Locke, she prides herself on "planting roots," building her family of fellow Whites. She presents as an albino, blind old woman with small red glasses covering her eyes, but she is much worse. The parts of her family that haven't been fully corrupted by her are forced to offer up the hearts and other assorted viscera during a "harvest," which Granny proceeds to devour with her mouths. Mouths, you ask? Why yes, her normal one and her two additional mouths, hiding where her eyes would be.
  • Her plan is also much more effective than the others' for its simplicity. The Sentinel sends Dale visions of a better self attained from burying Mama beneath it, and Old Copperhead promises love from Daniel's distant family once he's devoured Glory Ann's corpse. Hell, J.T. makes a good sell too with his idea of appealing to Vernard's inflated ego so Glory Ann is buried on land belonging to Ole Horned Head himself. Granny's plan? Pretend to be a friend of Glory Ann's to the estranged Mercy, take her daughter, and threaten the girl unless she is brought Glory Ann's heart to be devoured. And, out of all the convoluted plots the others concoct, she damn near wins too.
    • What's more is that she also nearly one ups Horned Head in a different way. Her colleague has pursued, all across time, a corrupted Witch of the Green, even turning back the hands of time to do so. She, through simple blackmail and kidnapping, nearly has a ripe young Witch of the Green completely under her control.

Independent Specials

The Holiest Days of Bone and Shadow

• The Gray Ladies, full stop. They are relentless in their hunting down of the artifacts, will use blackmail or murder to get what they want, act as one unit and don't leave any bits of you left once they're done. Not to mention these monsters ran a goddamn orphanage in the first season.
  • In the third special, their cruelty takes them to Complete Monster levels. While many of the Things are slaves to their nature or secretly harbor human aspects to their personality, these creatures are devoid of any redemptive qualities or backstory. One goes out of her way to seduce a young man with an antler belt buckle, inviting both of their families to the wedding. At the altar, she punches a hole into his stomach, while the other Grey Ladies block off the entrance. What follows is best not dwelt on.
  Narration: She would have her wedding feast after all.
• The one they do all this killing for, Horned Head. Defeated by Daughter Dooley during their battle in the season 1 finale, he was trapped as a wandering ghoul then as Elder Henry for well over a century. Now that the artifacts, implied to be pieces of his once horribly majestic Amber Crown, have been returned to him, he can fully manifest in the world once again. While he regards Dooley as a Worthy Opponent for besting him and doesn't seem too concerned with direct vengeance, he plans to finish what he started for his masters, even stating "No one is safe."
• Nathaniel Locke III. Heir to the Locke fortune, and fiance to the protagonist of part I of the trilogy. After her father's death, the protagonist puts on a special bone ring that allows her to read thoughts and hears... horrible things in his mind. About forcing her to sire an heir, one way or another. The thoughts are so visceral and carnal, she lashes out at the first person she sees behind her door, not realizing it's Nathan until he's on the ground bleeding out. He still manages to look beautiful and perfectly innocent, not dropping the facade even as he seemingly dies.
  • Scarier still, as the Gray Lady points out, this was not enough to kill Locke, which proves true seeing as he shows up in Season 2. Whatever the Lockes are, they left humanity behind long ago and will be much harder to kill than any normal h'aint.

Springtime In Boggs Holler

• The White Clan. They pretend their van is broken down in an attempt to lure Melvin Blevins to them so they can and kill him, just for kicks. When Cowboy sees through them and warns Melvin, Byron doesn't take it well and attempts to corrupt or execute the boy with his touch.
  • This then leads to the Corrupted Green coming out for the Whites' blood. It pushes their van into a ravine and takes out one of the lesser Whites. Byron sees this, and promptly gets the hell out of dodge.
• Cowboy's curse, and how it manifests in the spirit world. The curse is represented as a massive tree, with many vines threaded together like shackles tying the poor kid to it, covering his eyes and stomach and suspending him from the ground. It's an excellent visual metaphor in an entirely verbal series, and very chilling.
  • While Glory Ann is able to remove some of the brambles, she cannot remove the source of the curse, represented as a vine stabbing through his cheek. While the trilogy ends on a "Ray of Hope" Ending, Cowboy is still technically cursed and will not be able to live a normal life unless he's able to outgrow the remaining curse naturally.

A Once Told Tale Tale: The Wolf Sisters

• The story is kicked off by a young aristocrat impregnating the help, after falling in love with her. His rich family refuses the child, based off of racial and classist values, but also states that the girl will be taken care of, one way or another. The girl flees for her life, and the magic users of the Clutch (a place where the downtrodden and rejected congregate) help her find safety. But the aristocrat's mother dispatches an assassin to get rid of the girl and her mixed race baby discretely, and the magic users of the Clutch find him, and return nothing but some bloodied remains to the mother the next day.
  • The women of the Clutch, having their perceptions skewed by the Dark leaking into their soil, genuinely believe the girl was killed by the aristocrat, and slaughter him as well. They then go on a killing spree against the abusive men of the entire county, turning into wolves and tearing them limb from limb. While they are a very tragic flavor of Well-Intentioned Extremist, it's quite chilling to see their good intentions perverted by the Dark, even leading them to killing the one man that genuinely treated their kin with any respect in her life. Even the Walker Sisters, who dispatch all flavor of Eldritch Abomination, express their sympathies for the girls before their expiration.

Date Night

• Skint Tom is at his absolute worst in this special. While at first he may gather some sympathy for his Dark and Troubled Past, the description of his signature way of killing is quick to remind us of the difference between Affably Evil and Faux Affably Evil. Decades after his seeming death at the Dead Queen's hands, he develops a habit of taking single, lonely young women on dates for Valentines Day, luring her in with sweet talk and maybe even some sweet lovin' (all while in someone else's skin suit), before skinning her. He then goes home in their skin, and makes the entire family into a special winter wardrobe.
  The Narrator: Once he’s finished his work, he will slip into her skin like a pretty new dress, and he will drive carefully down the back roads to the home where he picked her up. Often, Tom is met at the door by an unsuspecting mommy or daddy, eager to hear how their daughter’s much-anticipated Valentine’s night went. And then the real fun begins. He will butcher the whole family and hang them up like fine new suits. He can wear them for at least a week — maybe two, depending on the weather and the family’s storage options and how quickly the local busybodies come nosing around.
• After Tom finishes his work on his latest victim, in 1993 after finally reviving, he comes home to find someone has beaten him to the punch. The walls are smeared with blood, and the house is deathly quiet. But Tom can smell fried chicken, and hear someone eating. He then sees his old compatriot, Miss Lavinia, covered in the family's blood and eating their chicken dinner casually, completely naked all the while.
  • They then proceed to catch up like old work buddies, with Lavinia even complimenting him on the new skin suit.
  Miss Lavinia: Happy Valentine’s Day, Tom!
• Skint Tom's Dark and Troubled Past is nothing to skip over, either. Sure, he becomes much worse in the long run, but one can understand how he might be bitter. Tom starts off as a trickster, sure, and a homewrecker and serial cheater. But when he finally falls head over heels, it's with the local Pastor's wife. The Pastor catches them. And you find out just how Tom got skint in the first place...
  Narrator: The pastor got the jump on Tom, whether he hit him over the head or shot him someplace not immediately fatal, no one recalls. But he was able to restrain the young man, and then he went for his hunting knife. The good reverend loved to hunt, it was said. He’d been hunting with his daddy and grandaddy since he was just a little squirt, and he took particular pride in the quality of his field dressing, a skill he now applied to the man who, in his mind, had violated the sanctity of his home and his marriage. Tom begged and he cried and he screamed as Eleanor’s husband slowly began slicing long strips of skin from his resisting flesh.
  • What's worse is the implication that Skint Tom didn't start off as a servant of the Things, but rather as a Vengeful Ghost who just wanted to pay people back for the disproportionate pain he experienced being punished for a relatively minor sin. Sure, other independent Free Agents exist in this universe, but the idea that anyone at all can become an abomination if they die with enough anger in their heart is absolutely chilling. What's more is becoming a Free Agent would likely leave one completely vulnerable to temptations from the local Eldritch Abomination...

Salt of the Earth

• The Hollowed Men are back, revealed as personal aids and bodyguards to the Barrow Family. They force the protagonist of this story to clean up a smear of blood like substance in the basement as a subtle message about loyalty after they got him to sell out on the previous company so B&L could take over, and act completely domineering over the poor man throughout the story.
• The Toxic Dam. Whatever B&L is doing to the country, its resulting in mutated wildlife and corrosive water. And at the end of the story, the dam is going to burst on the entire town.
• There's talk in the town about unionization between the workers at Barrow and Locke. The Hollowed Men's response to these rumors? Call for Polly Barrow. She makes it very clear who's in charge the moment she enters the story, cowing the Hollowed Men into submission and politely threatening the protagonist, while also offering him the chance to be 'Hollowed' and join the upper echelons of the company should he reveal who is talking of unions. The protagonist refuses, so she decides the town must be taught a lesson. She extends her arm to unholy proportions and hits the Toxic Dam so hard, it's only a matter of time before it breaks and is unleashed on the entire town. She slyly says that the protagonist may be able to warn his parents if he hurries, before driving away and noting to herself that she was "able to give them a White Christmas, after all."

Bumper Crop

• The end of the special. The protagonist's friend goes to check on her after she left the previous night to grab her things from her home so a representative of the Barrow Family could clean out the mutant pumpkins from her property. He finds her house completely scorched to the ground, with no trace of his friend left sans her packed suitcase, placed in the back of her car ready to go. We never find out what happened to her or why the pumpkins were there, but knowing what we know about the Barrows, it's perhaps best left unsaid.

Black Mouthed Dog

• The Black Mouthed Dog itself. It specifically aims for young children, killing them and dragging them back to its nest, where more of its kind feast on their flesh. But it gets better. They don't just feed on the flesh of the kids. They feed on the flesh of the revived spirits of the children. And when they do, they get larger.
  • More chilling still, they seem to be devoid of any sentience whatsoever. Why is this chilling? Because it means they're just the servitors of a Deep Thing, or something worse. Batch Boggs even surmises that they're devouring these poor ghostly children specifically so that they can throw open the doors of death and unleash this greater evil.
• Batch Boggs' backstory. Empathetic but trying to avoid the throes of the Civil War, Batch always held the family gift for speaking to the dead. When a battle right down the road gets particularly bloody, Batch goes and helps patch up the infirmed, only to be rewarded with forced enlistment in the Northern Army. He comes back a Shell-Shocked Veteran through and through, only with the added bonus of being able to see every dead soldier and innocent killed by the war. Batch is essentially rendered catatonic by the constant cacophony of misery. You don't think War Is Hell could find new and worse ways to disturb, but Old Gods found a way.