Episode 7: Afterbirth

Blurb
Before our time in Barlo moves forward towards its inevitable conclusion, we take one last look back to honor a life that might otherwise remain overshadowed and left hanging from the branches of our family tree.

Plot Synopsis
The night of the Old Number 7 mine fire, Carol Anne Avery is waiting on the porch of her home, knowing something terrible is coming. She is alone, as she's sent Sarah Avery away to stay at the Calloways, and both Pinky and Uncle Eddie are dead from the fire. She thinks back to her mother, who worked to get her daughters all better lives, and who had the Gift. (Carol Anne doesn't have much of a Gift to speak of, but knowing that her daughter might, she had her sisters Ellie and Marcie put magical protections in place--warding her home, protecting her and her daughter, and protecting Sarah if Carol Anne died.)

Ignatius Combs visits her, introducing himself as a representative of B&L Mineral Resources. He speaks in a strange, buzzing voice, referring to himself in the plural. He is standing oddly and with difficulty, and wormlike things are crawling beneath his skin. He makes repeated attempts to engage Carol Anne in conversation, and offers a payout for her husband's death or assistance in relocating if she will invite him in. Carol Anne refuses to engage in conversation until, exasperated by his insistence, she snaps at him that her husband is dead and tells him to get off her land.

Combs informs her the land is now his; he purchased it when it was sold in accordance with Eddie’s will. Raising a hand, he parts the water of the creek protecting her homestead, stepping across the wards. Carol Anne screams for Sarah in a panic, and something unseen knocks her unconscious.

When she wakes she finds herself by the tree in the front yard with a noose looped over one of the tree's branches around her neck. Something is ransacking the house, and Combs is standing before her. He taunts her for a moment as the rope is pulled taut, lifting her into the air and slowly strangling her. She watches the things crawl under his skin and catches a glimpse of the two Hounds destroying her home and yard, then she is snatched up by an unseen force and dropped, her neck breaking--and the protective workings that Ellie and Marcie did when Sarah was born are triggered.

Shattering waves of force erupt from Carol Anne's body and from the place where Sarah's afterbirth was buried, converging on Combs and tearing the Thing's body to pieces. The insectile creatures inside--huge scarlet wasps with the heads of eyeless rats and their screaming larvae--are left in the vile mud of the destroyed yard to writhe, wither, and be pulled apart by our world.

The narrator closes with the regretful note that he wishes he could say Carol Anne had watched the Swarm die, but those who die as all the Averys have are... not in a better place. Their fates should not be dwelt on.

Relevant Characters

 * Carol Anne Avery
 * Ignatius Combs