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Episode 11: Season 2 Prologue
O Appalachia:mother and mawthat births and devours us,roots sunk deep and winding asgnarled hands clasped in prayer,hold us fast and give us foundation.O knotted cage and vine wrought chainsO feast of hills and green,that which feeds our heartsbut often starves our blood:Hear us now.
- There Is Another: Much is made about the reveal of a second Witch Queen, the Dead Queen.
Episode 12: The Other Queen
These yarns were spun to teach you to stay safe and mind common sense, and most importantly, your mama. The stories that get lost though — the ones hardly nobody ever lived to tell — were often just blunt and simple warnings. There is darkness here: fear it. Trust those who can see through it and you might live to see the dawn. Or then again... maybe not.
- Too Dumb to Live: While justified as he is a kid, it is still incredibly stupid that he goes look for the Dead Queen in the woods. Ultimately, he pays for this with his life and the lives of his family members.
- Mind Control: The Dead Queen seems to have some sort of this, as she has no problem compelling young Caleb to follow her into the woods.
Episode 13: The Dark Earth at Night
"Ricky held his pistol at the ready, fully prepared to act as the angel of mercy, but then the thing stepped fully into the moonlight, and all thoughts of heaven fled Ricky Lee Gibson." The Gibson family meets their fate.
- Dark and Troubled Past: The Gibsons are revealed to have been cursed for quite some time, likely by the Dead Queen herself.
Episode 14: On Death Island
Give a group of boys from anywhere a backyard, a stretch of woods, hell, a vacant lot even — and you can watch it rise to a place of hallowed glory. A patch of trees in between houses becomes an ancient battlefield where two sides of some long-remembered, or forgotten, conflict plays out again and again after school hours. An empty, fallow field becomes an arena or tournament ground where rasslin, foot racin and some form of ball-related sport are contested and pushed to the highest form of the game. Friendships and rivalries will rise, fall and be remembered in legend forever and ever. You give a group of boys not yet concerned with matters of what's in their britches just yet a place of their own, and it will outshine Rome in the eyes of its citizens.
- Abusive Parents: The Thing That Is Not Curt's Daddy becomes this, pretending to be Curt's long dead father and tormenting him endlessly.
- Happily Adopted: Cowboy Absher is a young and shy boy who mysteriously showed up on the Absher farm one day and was taken in by them. He fully considers their son, Floyd, his brother and the Absher parents his own and is fully treated like one of the family.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Death Island would usually be an Aversion, seeing as how its an intentionally edgy name given to a lake island by young boys but, true to a good Cosmic Horror Story, there is a monster and misfortune waiting for them on the island.
Episode 15: A Funeral in Pine
The county had taken a narrow little valley and dug themselves a reservoir to provide drinking water for the whole town and then some. As pretty as the lake and the surrounding woods were, it was still something wedged into nature by the hands of men — water stolen from rivers and collected here like a dragon's hoard, grounds that had lain untouched for centuries carved up and reshaped to serve human desires, seals broken and reset — all to meet the needs of the encroaching horde of townsfolk and hillfolk alike. Acts such as these have consequences, family.
Trust that they do.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends on Cowboy apparently dead, as a wolf of the Green rises and begins to tear apart the Thing that killed him.
- Canine Companion: Sam, an old hound dog, accompanies the boys to Death Island and ultimately faces down one of the Low Things.
- Would Hurt a Child: The Thing That Is Not Curt's Daddy has no problem threatening him OR killing Cowboy Absher, although it has little chance to revel in such an act before it receives a Karmic Death.
Episode 16: Between the Unburied and Miss Belle
She recognized the naked fear and rawness in their respective gazes. Something had happened to these boys. She could see their hearts and minds were pink and pricking red at the edges where their innocence had been torn away with such force they'd not even had a chance to bleed yet.
- Back from the Dead: Cowboy apparently does this at will as a result of something to do with the Dead Queen.
- Big Brother Instinct: Floyd's really shines through this episode, offering to fight a bully on Cowboy's behalf and cautioning him on ignoring his curse, telling him to listen to Miss Belle.
- Breaking Speech: As a result of his curse, Cowboy is able to dole these out at will. Of particular note is the one he unleashes on a bully going on about his dead father being a war hero:
Cowboy: "He wasn’t a hero, was he, Josh? he barely made it to France before he deserted. Broke into a woman’s house and hid there till she was able to tell somebody. Then they came and got him. Your daddy died begging for his life in front of a firing squad of his own people. Your mama didn’t even get a check from him dying, did she? She tried to keep you from knowing, but you heard her talking to your granny about it when they thought you was sleeping. I know it’s easier to pretend that’s not true. But it is, ain’t it, Josh?”
- Wham Line: Where we find out just who Miss Belle is and who she's taking Cowboy to go see:
Ellie Walker: “Marce, what’s going on? Did I hear Sarah?”
Marcy Walker: "Now Ellie, you know it's Miss Belle now.
