The Wolf Sisters Part Three

Blurb
The Walker Sisters and their man Melvin journey into the darkest night Baker's Gap, TN has known in thirty years in this thrilling finale to The Wolf Sisters series, originally performed live on Discord.

Plot Synopsis
No prison is perfect. The Old Things beneath the mountains have over time been able to push up to the surface, including in Baker’s Gap, where they tainted the very soul. Long ago, a stranger named Bill came to live in the Gap. He tried to stay away from town, but eventually made his way to it. He became a weekend regular at a parlor house, where he falls for a woman named Juanita.

One day, Juanita is nowhere to be found. The parlor house accuses Bill, but he seems genuinely heartbroken. As time passes, he becomes a regular of another girl named Judith, who also disappears. He is accused again and dragged to his home, where the two girls are found dead and tucked into bed together. The men of the town hang Bill on his own property, which becomes known as Lover’s Clutch.

A woman named Esme Jimenez comes to live in the house, where she experiences visions of the ghosts. Her cousin Dolores comes to live with her. Eventually, the ghosts begin to whisper to Esme.

Melvin Blevins has lived a long life in the mountains. He has two daughters with his wife Clara, Irene, who marries sensibly, and Vera, who runs off. When she comes back to Baker’s Gap, she takes up at a house called Pleasant Evenings. One night a messenger comes to tell Melvin Vera has been hurt, and he goes to her, but she doesn’t survive. Melvin comes to learn she was killed for leaving a house in West Virginia, and hadn’t been working at Pleasant Evenings, but hiding. The man responsible for her death is soundly dealt with.

Marcie, owner of Pleasant Evenings, pays for Vera’s funeral and offers to pay Melvin and his wife for their loss, an offer they decline. Marcie feels guilt for Vera’s loss; Melvin feels indebted to her and becomes a doorman at the house and a friend after it adapts and changes after “that business with the Railroad Man.”

His loyalty to Marcie is what brings him outside the Baptist church one evening, waiting for Larry Sizemore, a drunk, to show up for a fight. He arrives covered in blood, his throat torn out.

He finds himself surrounded by a pack of wolves. A woman speaks to him and asks why he’s out trying to start fights. She demands Larry’s body and manages to parse out that he’s bait in a trap. The woman transforms back into a wolf and the pack circles him.

One of the smaller wolves jumps at Melvin, who tackles it and pulls out a bone comb, with which he combs its fur. The wolf goes limp and transforms into a sleeping woman.

Melvin uses the comb on two other small wolves. Two of the other wolves run into the woods, and Melvin holds up a bone mirror. The remaining wolf, Darla, looks into it as a featureless woman climbs out of the mirror. Transforming back into a woman, she cries as the shadow transforms into her and embraces her, passing through Darla and vanishing. Then Darla collapses.

Melvin takes off after the other two wolves.

In The Clutch, the woman in the garden fights the urge to transform into a wolf. The soil tries to latch onto her as she struggles against the change.

The Walker sisters offer to help the woman, who begins to speak with the voices of Juanita and Judith and Esme, and the latter confesses Dolores was her daughter, and who thinks she was killed, the voices from the tainted earth having told her so.

Marcie drives her walking stick into the ground and speaks an incantation to bind and protect Esme. Ellie draws her knife and cuts the tendrils holding Esme to the ground, and the ghosts of Juanita and Judith step from the woman’s body. The ghosts fade into dust, Marcie releases the binding, allowing Esme to crumble as well.

Melvin arrives in The Clutch, with the two wolves he found passed out in the woods.

Marcie considers what to do with The Clutch, ultimately deciding to let The Green cleanse it.