Episode 25: The Siege of Pleasant Evenings

Blurb
The light dies and the darkness comes to the big parlor house out in the gap. There will be blood. There will be death. The conclusion of the The Railroad Man and the Local Magistrate storyline.

Content Warnings

 * discussion of agency and consent
 * gunfire
 * body horror
 * decay
 * aging
 * death by magic
 * death of human appearing monsters
 * familial stress and conflict

Plot Synopsis
Marcie Walker bolts the door behind her as she turns from her encounter with the Railroad Man. She goes to check on Tish, the woman in the yellow dress.

Marcie tries to calm a crying Tish, who tells Marcie she wants nothing to do with “the Devil’s business.” Marcie performs a successful charm on her to relax her and restore her bravery, and the women go to prepare for the men’s return at dark.

When the sun goes down, they return, with a small army of bewitched men gathered from among the unemployed and the poor. The Railroad Man attempts a flowery rebuke in the words of the Old Compact, but before he can finish, Tish shoots him with a shotgun. He picks the pellets from his body, and the wounds close. He conjures a pool of blood at his feet, and it follows him as he rallies the men.

They begin to change into monstrous, distorted shapes, and at his gesture, they throw themselves through the wards around Pleasant Evenings. They all fall dead, and a second wave of unchanged men follows them, meeting the same end. Again and again, waves of innocent men throw themselves through the wards and die. The Railroad Man explains that their blood will eventually enable him to cross onto the land, and do what he likes. He summons a weeping Gerry to him, ripping out his throat.

As Marcie watches, the Railroad Man changes his shape multiple times, revealing himself to be the railroad itself and all its exploitation and death. Then, he tells Marcie that Erskine has found Vera. Marcie runs back into the house, and Ellie slips out past her.

While the carnage raged outside, Erskine had slipped into the unwarded chimney of the house. Fascinated with fire, he was an arsonist before he became a Hollow Man, and after the change he became a creature of smoke and shadow. Inside, he went to Vera’s room and found her writing a note.

Before he can act, Vera is holding the watch out to him, begging him to take it. Her fingers begin to blacken, and he begs her to put it down before it destroys her in a way beyond any he ever could. Unheeding, she continues to hold it out, until she drops it. It flips open and she dissolves into bone and wet flesh.

Erskine reaches for the watch, only to discover he cannot move. He realizes the rug on the floor is woven with a binding spell. Behind him, Marcie begins to speak the words of a binding herself. It closes in on him, leaving nothing but a pile of ashes that Marcie sweeps into a shoebox.

Outside, the carnage continues, and the RailRoad man directs Mr. White to break down the door. Before he can finish his sentence, however, Melvin Blevins shotguns him in the back, flinging him to the ground. Mr. White attacks Melvin, and he, too, is shot. Melvin watches as the Railroad Man gets back to his feet, his wounds healing once again. He turns on Melvin to kill him, but is interrupted by Marcie’s voice. She holds the watch out with her walking stick, telling him to take it. She flings it to him, and he catches it, stepping outside of his circle of blood.

Ellie rushes from the darkness, and the Railroad Man falls to the ground as she severs the tendons of his ankles with her knife, Moonbone. She etches a circle in the dirt surrounding him, binding him and severing him from the power of the blood. She tells him he has what he came for and, cutting his throat, tells him to be on his way. With the roar of a passing train, he disappears, taking with him the blood and the corpses of the men he sent against the wards.

Pleasant Evenings continues to operate as a parlor house for a while, its reputation never the same. Tish is among the several women who leave, upset at the business with the Railroad Man and with the fact that Marcie had performed a working on her without asking.

Marcie feels responsible for Vera’s death and offers to pay for her funeral, but Melvin declines. To her surprise, he and his wife are grateful to her for all she tried to do. The incident forges a deep, lasting friendship between them, with Melvin becoming a bouncer at the house for a time.

Eventually, the Sheriff reluctantly advises Marcie that there will be trouble involving Gerry Brotherton’s death that would require looking into her affairs if she doesn’t shut down. Melvin supports her as she finds a new path.

In the quiet of the house in 1927, Marcie prepares to bring Melvin supper.