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"Always room for kin at the table."
Directed by: Steve Shill
Written by: Dawn Prestwich and Nicole Yorkin
Summary
Still bound, Ben is led by his captors, but the brutal treatment has eased. Only Lee still feels compelled to abuse him. "We shoulda left him in the ground," he snarls, but the others seem terrified that "she" will see.
Reaching a decrepit old house, the men approach a more senior man on the porch and show him the watch fob they have taken from Ben. "She wants to see you first, Lee," he says. As Ben waits, surrounded by filth and the stench of cats, he hears Lee's screams from upstairs. Soon, his tormentor comes down, crying and clutching his mouth.
Next it's Ben's turn, and he is thrown into a room and locked in. Turning in the dark and sordid quarters, he sees ghoulish pictures on the wall, including a photo of a lynched man; an old lady faces away from him. As he approaches, she grabs Ben's arm, overwhelming him with surprising strength. Ben sees that the woman's eyes are scarred and skinned over. "Why'd you make me wait so long," she coos.
The old hag introduces herself. "I'm your grandma," she says. She tells Ben that the men downstairs are his cousins and that they want him dead, but she is clearly entranced by him, petting and embracing her grandson.
At Carnivale, Samson warns Stumpy that there are to be no more tittie shows before sunset, but Rita's husband still seems bent on every moneymaking approach he can come up with, and it is wearing on the family.
The rousties complain bitterly about working with "a split tail," and when Jonesy finally hears enough, he grabs a shovel and tells Sofie to dig the latrine. With Sofie toiling in the sun, the men make bets on how long she'll go before collapsing.
Ruthie continues to see visions-- this time a figure in black-- and, like Sofie, believes she smells smoke when no one else does.
In Mintern, Justin dresses, merrily humming a hymn. Bumping into Iris, he mentions that their new maid Celeste is "not working out," and when Iris enters the young woman's room, she finds her naked, crazy-eyed, scratched and bloody on the floor, crying.
Later, discussing the fire at the Dignity Ministry, Justin is dismissive of Tommy Dolan's concerns about Iris. "I need more than just the word of two women," he says.
Back in Texas, Sofie's digging is taking a toll, and Samson tries to talk her out of it, but the girl seems determined to start a new life. "I'm not here to prove anything," she says. "It beats curlin' up and dying, which is what I'd have to do if I went back to reading those goddamn cards."
Across the camp, Lila gathers a group of men, showing them Lodz' abandoned stake. She thinks Samson did Lodz in, she says, and is looking for help.
The tracker Varlyn Stroud has made his way to the Templar Hall where Ben learned of Father Kerrigan. Gaining entrance using his badge, he is not inside long before he strides out to make a collect call to Justin. "Scudder's got a boy after him," Stroud says, as the Templar Hall explodes behind him. Justin orders him to follow the boy.
Ben's grandmother leads him on a tour of the family graveyard, explaining his history as she goes. His grandfather, she says, was a powerful grand dragon and one of the founders of the Klan. "Died before his time, bless his soul, they all did," she says, and Ben realizes that all of his uncles died on the same day as his grandfather.
Later at the house, the old lady tells Ben she has a surprise for him and roots in a drawer for something. Ben, waiting, comes across a plaster mask. It is, his grandmother explains, Henry's death mask. Ben is outraged that she hadn't told him sooner that Scudder was dead. Looking at the mask, the eyes suddenly blink and Ben drops it in surprise.
"You broke it!" the old lady screeches, laying her hands on the knife she had been looking for. She tells Ben to close his eyes for the surprise as she draws back the blade. Then, she simply hands it to him. "You'll need this where you're going," she says.
As Ben clasps the gift, Brother Justin has a vision a thousand miles away: Ben is plunging the knife into his chest. Collapsing in the middle of his sermon, he murmurs to Iris: "He means to kill me..."
Convalescing later, Justin refuses details to Iris, and she becomes incensed that he is keeping secrets from her. "I will not be sacrificed," she says. Late that night she drives off into the country to burn some clothes, tailed by Tommy Dolan.
Ben asks the men he now knows as cousins why they keep their grandmother locked up. "That woman up there," replies one, "she's crazier than a shithouse rat." The night Ben's father was born, the man explains, she took a boning knife and killed all of Henry's brothers as well as her own husband. When she was done, she clawed her own eyes out.
As Ben leaves his "family," he sees the reason for Lee's earlier screams: his mouth has been sewn shut. Making his way back to the carnival, Ben tells Management that Scudder is dead, but Management dismisses the notion, infuriating Ben.
Nearby, Sofie and Jonesy have a heart-to-heart, and Jonesy learns the reason for her need to start a new life that has nothing to do with her mother. "She tried to kill me, Jonesy, Sofie says. "She set the fire; she was holding me...she wanted me to die. What did I do to make her hate me so much?"
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FATE Game UPDATED!
New upgrades make the game faster and your character even more powerful. Download now.
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Carnival Fact
Known as "The Thomas Edison of Roller Coasters", John A. Miller received over a hundred patents for inventions relating to roller coaster development. His partner, Harry Barker, built the famous Cyclone on Coney Island.
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