Episode 23: A Bad Night for Hollow Men

Blurb
In 1913, a girl escaped the company-owned parlor house where she'd been kept against her will in possession of company property. She headed south via rail to her family's home in Baker's Gap, TN. She was followed.

Content Warnings

 * references to historical racism


 * references to consensual sex work
 * descriptions of human trafficking
 * mention of excrement
 * non-specific mention of the deaths of children;
 * descriptions of sex work-related (but non-sexual) violence, injuries and death
 * description of monster-inflicted dismemberment and death
 * consumption of a human corpse by a monster
 * gore
 * sounds of a pig-themed monster in distress
 * mention of death of a parent by illness
 * body horror

All pig-related sounds are taken from samples of pigs being fed and pigs just being pigs. No pigs were harmed in any media related to or sampled by this podcast.

Plot Synopsis
In 1913, in Switchbend, West Virginia, a parlor house operates out of a place called McQueen’s Grocery and Sundry Goods. Their establishment is solely for the rich and white, unlike those in nearby Ash Bottom. Jimmy McQueen finds himself one day to be the subject of scrutiny from B&L company men, his throat in the grip of a large Pennsylvania Dutch man named Mr. White.

White is upbraiding McQueen for failing to entertain a guest of the parlor house properly, and something about the visit has gone terribly wrong. McQueen pleads with White that he has no idea what happened. White nearly punches McQueen, but a man named Mr. Erskine stops him.

They discuss the parlor house guest, a thing capable of eating three strong men, whose physical form has now been reduced to a puddle of sulfur and disgusting matter. His wallet and something else are gone, taken by a young woman. The thing she has taken is company property, and the two men are tasked with retrieving it. Before leaving, they kill McQueen and burn the grocery.

The next day in Flat Top, Virginia, Vera Blevins flees for her life. A runaway from Baker’s Gap, she came to Ash Bottom because she heard girls in the houses there were treated well, and had landed at a saloon called Milton’s that was rumored to be owned by B&L. The women there were company property, and were not allowed to leave. Vera begged to be let go, and Bruce Milton sent her to McQueen’s instead. All the girls knew rumors of the things that went on there, with the men from the B&L home office.

The night before, Vera had been chosen for a warehouse job with a VIP who “asked for seconds.” The customer is a large man with an inhuman, piglike face who lies in bed with the half-consumed remains of Mary Anne, the other girl who had been chosen for him that night. Vera nearly screams, but instead goes to the dresser and steals the man’s wallet and pocket watch. The beast wakes, panicked at the idea of someone taking the watch, but he can’t move fast enough in his sluggish state, and Vera escapes.

Vera flees for a farm in Hazel County, Virginia, where her friend Aggie, with whom she has corresponded over the years, settled down with her husband Kevin Norris.

Arriving at the Norris farm, she is greeted by Kevin, who informs Vera his wife died the previous spring. He lives on the farm with their daughter Junie. He knows who she is, having read her letters to Aggie following the woman’s death. He attempts to get Vera to go on her way, but Junie insists he let her stay the night. They eat supper together awkwardly.

Outside in the darkness, Mr. White and Mr. Erskine have been waiting for Vera’s arrival. The two men are Hollow Men, men transformed by the Barrow family into monstrous henchmen who are only able to travel so far from their home office before they become erratic and cause collateral damage on their missions. They change into their true forms, Erskine a tall, black emaciated thing and White a thick-skinned, hard, rocklike creature.

They cross the property line and find themselves confused, as there are no livestock in the dark and the buildings look abandoned. They enter the house and find it void of life as well, a single, stinking, narrow room. They begin to ransack it angrily.

Kevin, Junie, and Vera, meanwhile, watch from the window of the farmhouse itself while the two creatures tear up the outhouse. Junie explains that the wards placed on their property by her Mamaw confuse anything that manages to get past them. Vera manages to get some sleep, and the next morning Kevin takes her to the Hazel train station.

Erskine and White arrive at the station as her train leaves, and White insists they need a Barrow with them who can ground them, since they’re too far from the home office to do their work unsupervised. They are then approached by a bearded man in a fine charcoal suit, who knows what they are and what they’re after. Erskine nearly attacks him, but the man commands him to look at him, to see him.

The two Hollow Men look, and see the railroad and all it stands for. The man from the railroad then offers to assist them in their efforts to kill Vera, and retrieve the watch.