In the Dawn (Bonus Episode)

Jade – Abbey Konzen
Eric – Lou Sutcliffe

Dead. They’re both dead. More are dead around me but Aunt Beattie and Mom are the two I can’t bring myself to look at. Not yet. I’m not ready to face those feelings. Thankfully, there is plenty around me to keep me busy.

Once we swallowed the buried bitch down, her followers came to their senses. Confused murmurs spread across the clearing and through the woods. Some are even asking for her. Where is she? Did they free her? God, what did she do to these people for them to think she is their savior?

Silas comes into my view, with Eric in tow. Eric is pale, eyes wide, his whole body trembling. He needs Silas to support him as he walks, but for what he just went through, he looks physically unscathed. I wonder how much of the damage is just mental, but I won’t ask right now. I’m sure they’re ready to get as far away from this place as possible.

But Eric makes him stop and looks at me.

“She said, make them see the truth, and to wait until dawn to bury her.”

“Who told you that?”

He looks down at Aunt Beattie, and for a moment I think she’s somehow still alive, that maybe the power of the circle revived her, but I know I swallowed her down. And she’s just as still as she has been. Eric must have heard her from the other side.

“Make them see the truth, and wait until dawn to bury her.”

Eric nods, and Silas leads him away. Uncle Dale limps out of the woods towards us. I meet him halfway to help him. He has a huge gash on his side from where the howler clamped its massive jaws down on him to drag him away. I grab a healing crystal and use it on his wound. It’s enough to stop the bleeding, but the puncture marks are still visible. At least the old man will live.

He pushes away from me and drops down in front of Aunt Beattie. I turn away; I can’t let myself fall into that grief yet. I’m not ready. We have to deal with the living first.

As the crowd of followers continue to ask what happened, a handful look upon us as if we are the evildoers, and it hits me. I swallowed Aunt Beattie down, all of her, and the circle let us share energy and power with the members that charged it. I think about her power, her energy, and it answers the call. It feels similar to my ability of throwing out and taking in energy, like another arm I would flex and stretch to use, but it carries its own heat, its own life. That makes sense considering the illusions need to feel real to fool the intended target. At first I think I have no clue how to use the power, but I find that’s not true. I do know. It hums in the back of my mind, letting me know it is indeed there, ready to be used. I don’t know if it will always be this easy to call upon it, or if it’s the power of the circle linking us all together, but for tonight, I can use it just as I use my energy power.

“Roz, Maureen, we have Aunt Beattie’s illusion magic, if only for tonight, we all have it. You can feel it inside you if you think about it. Let’s use it to show them the truth.”

They do as I ask. Roz’s eyes dart back and forth as if she’s not seeing what’s in front of her, but inside her. She nods. Maureen closes her eyes to search for the power. Once she finds it, she opens her eyes and nods as well.

We stand in a line facing the followers and release the illusion magic. It spreads quietly, unnoticed throughout the area, touching the minds of each of them. We make them see her for what she truly was. For the most part they accept it, except for the handful that had been looking at us as enemies. I don’t know if it’s Aunt Beattie’s power or someone else’s, but I’m able to read their minds. The Buried Mother did indeed help these people, at least in their eyes. But once I see in their memories how she helped, that the help came through her so-called champion, I knew what they didn’t.

“Her champion that healed the loved ones in your lives was the Endless Man. He stole years from you or others in order to give that time back to your sick loved ones–took life from others. The Buried Mother lied to you. She’s gone. You can be thankful to her for what good she did in your life, but do not mourn her when her plan the whole time was just to use you. She was no goddess, just a parasite.”

They consider this, and for a moment I don’t think they’ll let it go, but then they ask for help to get back home. That has to be good enough for now.

Once the followers have left the clearing, I check on Domino and Mr. Giggles. They are bleeding but nothing looks life-threatening. I use a healing crystal on them each, just in case. Domino goes to check on his fallen brothers or sisters. Sasha and the surviving members join him. They howl, the sound becoming a song of grief and loss.

A breeze runs through the woods, and I smell honey. Shit. The Endless Man is still here? I raise my hand in alarm but Gale stops the words in my mouth. Gale explains that the Endless Man never intended to attack us. He was through doing the Buried Mother’s bidding and had come to move against her. A wave of relief crashes over me, and I let myself sink to the ground.

The followers are gone. The howlers take their dead and shift through the veil between time and space until they are all gone as well. I remember Mom told me a long time ago they take their dead to a special resting place outside of our realm. I wanted her to take me there, so I could honor their dead too, but she said she couldn’t.

Mom. The reality I’m still left with hits me like a ton of bricks. She and Aunt Beattie are still here. I don’t know if I’m strong enough to face them.

Maureen and Roz find Laura. There are no tears, but reverence for her sacrifice. Even if she was a terrible teacher and spiritual guide, she still sacrificed herself for her coven. She’s earned her name and place in the coven’s history books.

The Santerian drags his dead companion behind him, but hasn’t left yet. Neither has Nadette or Betty. I realize they’re looking to me on next steps. We did just eat the Buried bitch together, I’m sure they’d like to know what that means.

“I suggest we do not convene again unless somehow the part of the Buried Mother in you starts trouble or escapes. Even then, just pick up the phone and call. The further away all her pieces are from each other, the better secured they are. Everyone has a phone, right?”

Betty and Gale are the only ones without. That tracks, since they are the non-humans of the group. Betty said she would just check in with me periodically. I do not look forward to those meetings.

One by one the group begins to disperse, returning to their homes, wherever that may be. I almost stop NaDette before she leaves, but I let her go without a word. I may find my way to her later, but right now I just let her be.

Maureen and Roz say they will take care of Laura. Which means it’s finally time for me to take care of Aunt Beattie and my Mom. Uncle Dale lifts Beattie into his arms. Once he has her cradled against him, he looks at my Mom. For the first time in my life, I wondered just how much he knew about what happened. If Aunt Beattie hid the truth from him as well. Sometimes I forget I wasn’t the only one to lose a loved one when she sacrificed herself; I was just the only one who lost their Mom.

Uncle Dale told me he would take Aunt Beattie back to her house and lay her in her bed. The plan would be for her nurse to find her in the morning. There will be no traces of foul play, they’ll just find a sick woman who finally succumbed to her illness.

But I know that she was a sick woman who offered the last of her strength to ensure the safety of the world. Only a handful get to know the truth. I don’t even know what to tell Cora, her daughter. But one thing at a time.

There are still a couple hours until Dawn, but I’ll heed that last command from my Aunt Beattie. It may take me that long to dig the hole to bury her. But as I finally make myself look at her, I decide she deserves to be cleaned up before laying her to rest.

With Gale and Marcus’s help, I find a nearby stream to wash her in, removing the last traces of the Buried Bitch’s tar, and the dirt and grime from the earthen tomb. There’s a calmness in me, not quite a numbness of shock, but more like the firm hand of duty keeping my grief in check as I tend to her.

Gale conjures up a warm breeze to help me dry her off. The warm air comforts me as I hold her in my arms. Though she is pale, skin and muscles sunken and stiff with death, she’s still as beautiful as the last time I saw her. That night she kissed me goodbye and walked out of the apartment. I sit there a long time, even after the warm breeze is gone, rocking her in my arms and running my hand through her hair.

And that’s when it comes, all at once. I scream. I scream and cry my grief out. I was given my mother back, but not the way I always dreamed. I always knew this was the more likely outcome, but it doesn’t make it any easier to accept. I’m losing her a second time.

Gale lifts us both in the air, and I’m too far gone to care. He’s taking us somewhere, but all I can do is hold her as tightly as I can. She becomes cold against me, but I don’t care. I don’t want to let her go.

Gale finally puts us down, and I look around. He’s brought us to my family plot. Several headstones of my distant and not so distant family members loom stoic in front of me, standing against the erosion of time. The names of my family are clear and crisp as the day the headstones were placed. I never got a straight answer from Mom or Aunt Beattie if it was a spell or if someone physically tended to the headstones to keep them looking pristine, but I guess it’s on me and Uncle Dale now to see that they stay that way.

The sky is turning from black to grey with the coming light. I see Marcus dart out of the woods with something large in tow. It’s a white coffin, just as clean and pristine as the headstones. I ask him if he stole it from the funeral home, trying to make my first joke since all this began. But he told me it came from his home, that he was saving it for someone, but that I needed it more than them right now. I’ll have to ask him about that later, but right now, I start crying again at his kindness.

Marcus helps me lay her down in the coffin. I’m a little taken aback when I see the brilliant red in a bright contrast to the white exterior, but my mother was bold in life, and the red seems fitting. The bedding is soft and silky against my arms as we place her inside. I leave her arms at her sides, I don’t want to feel how stiff rigor mortis has made her body.

“I love you. I’m glad you can finally be free of her.”

Marcus digs the hole for me with his bare hands. His strength and speed aren’t surprising, but his grace is. He doesn’t simply dig and throw the dirt. He makes a proper plot and keeps the fresh dirt in a pile instead of scattering it to the wind. It’s almost like watching a sculptor in a timelapse as they create their next statue.

Gale conjures up his warm breeze, I think this time as more of a hug for me than to dry anything. He says nothing, I’m sure he senses there is nothing to say in this situation, but he hovers beside me and lets his warm air blanket me.

The orange rays of the coming sun kiss the sky, but I will wait until that sun breaks over the mountain before I close the coffin lid and lay her to rest. Marcus apologizes for needing to avoid the light, and disappears, but Gale stays with me as long as I need him to.

Aunt Beattie said my mother is in my past, not my future. I only half agree with that. When she made the sacrifice when I was sixteen, and I lost her for the first time, my anger and hatred consumed me, and took me down a path that has forever stained my soul. I’m not sure I can ever truly redeem myself for that. But this time losing her, there is no hate or anger. Only grief and the hope that I can better hold onto her memory now that we can both have peace.

The sun finally breaks over the mountain top, the coming day’s rays slowly descending on us, an extra layer of warmth spreading over my body as it lowers. I watch as that bright veil shines upon my mother, and something happens.

[SFX: soft crackles of charred bits leaving Emma’s body]

A darkness I didn’t know was still there makes its way to the surface. Remnants of the black tar, that physical manifestation of the Buried Bitch, burn away in the morning sun. Black charred bits float up into the breeze and disappear into nothingness. My mother’s lifeless body, still dead, but not as death-kissed as before.

Aunt Beattie must have known the morning had to kill the last of the Buried Mother. I look up at the sky, imagining the heavens above, surely where Aunt Beattie has gone to be with her Lord, and I say a prayer of thanks to her.

We survived the night. We succeeded in swallowing the Buried Mother and ending the terrible cycle of the sealing ceremony. But is she gone for good? She’s no longer able to hurt anyone, but with the transformation I underwent when I swallowed the last of her, I have a feeling she’s right, that a piece of her will live in all of us. But I think we can live with it.

I guess we will find out, one way or another.

This episode was written by Ashley McAnelly

Featuring the voice talents of Abbey Konzen and Lou Sutcliffe

Produced by Scott Thomas