We open this episode with [reality show] Lee talking to the camera about the fear of losing a child. A rescue worker climbs up and up a very long ladder to retrieve Flora’s bright yellow hoodie that was stuck at the top. A search party is formed, and they all fan out. The sun’s going down. Shadows are getting longer.

Aaaand they find Flora’s doll, dismembered, with pig parts making a really creepy tableau. Ick.

They find a dilapidated farm nearby. Vacant.  Animal parts, flies buzzing around. Just watching this made my stomach lurch.  They go to the nearby barn and find two weird feral kids suckling the teats of a huge pig.  Yes, sucking down on some lactating piggy.  These are the Polk kids. Why are they all alone on the farm? Have they been abandoned by their kith and kin?

Back at the police station, Lee’s ex Mason shows up and wants to do his own interrogatin’!  But the boys aren’t speaking, other than some guttural grunts and the word “Croatoan!” every so often. Matt didn’t know it at the time, but now realizes it was a warning.

The hunt for Flora continues into the next night. And the next. It’s been 3 days now.  They are all exhausted, so they go back to the house and rest. As they do so, Mason loses his cool, flinging accusations against Lee of hiding Flora herself. He storms out.

Later that night they get a phone call from the cops. They found…something. A body.  They drive to the location in darkness. And…it’s Mason. He has been bound and tied, lashed to some kind of large wooden wheel, and burned to death.  They are all horrified and shocked.  Matt’s security system recordings, though, show Lee leaving the house a little while after Mason did, and then coming back 4 hours later. Hmmm.

Shelby wonders aloud if Lee could have done it. And Lee hears her and delivers some righteous anger. While they argue, a tiny elf-like man with white hair slowly walks into the front hallway, looking around. This is Cricket Marlowe (Leslie Jordan). “I was called. To help you find your little girl.”  Cricket is a medium (and by his size, more like an extra-small)(sorry) and thinks he might be the only one who can help.  He starts walking around the house making clicking noises with his mouth and occasionally tapping his ornate cane on the floor. This is how he communicates with the dead.

I love this guy.

He suddenly points to a small closet and says “She was here.” He opens the door and there on the floor is an antique sun bonnet. “Flora is not dead,” he assures them. She is with Priscilla, a girl who died hundreds of years ago.  They hold an impromptu seance and end up contacting, not Priscilla, but the spirit of The Butcher, Thomasin White (Kathy Bates), who is not happy people are trespassing on her land. He tries to protect them all and she angrily cleaves the candle clean in half.

Well.

A few threats and some smashed windows later, Cricket [temporarily] banishes the spirit by yelling “CROATOAN!”  There is silence.

When everybody calms down, Cricket says he can take Lee to her daughter. For $25,000. Matt is not going to let him get away with this BS. But it’s Lee that pulls a gun on him. And then just as quickly puts it away. Matt kicks Cricket out of his house. Cricket leaves with, “I will be back. You will invite me.” And then he whispers something to Lee as he walks out.

In the present day, the interviewer asks Lee about Cricket’s whispered message. Was it about Emily, her first daughter? Lee is stunned and asks for a break.

Later, she reveals that she had another daughter, Emily, who disappeared one day while Lee was shopping. They never found her.

Lee shows up at Cricket’s, pays him, and we are treated to Thomasin’s backstory in the village of Roanoke. Her husband, the governor of the town, has gone traveling. Things are going from bad to worse: starvation, unrest, suspicion. The other members of the village want to leave but she’ll have none of that. One night, some men grab her and lock a metal cage around her head and abandon her in the forest as punishment for…being stubborn? Being a strong woman? Both?

While in the forest, Thomasin breaks down and repents. An unseen pig is squealing in anger, tracking her. It gets closer and closer, and then it attacks–and is knocked to the ground and smashed to death by…something. Thomasin’s metal head cage breaks open. There in the clearing is a creepy-looking witch woman (Lady Gaga) holding out the pig’s still-beating heart. “Serve,” the witch says. “Eat. Surrender your soul.”

Back at the colony, the men are all in a tent, in deep discussion as to the future of the colony. A shadow passes over, and then one of them suddenly gets a cleaver in his head. Boom. And there stands Thomasin. “I’ve been purified by my time in the wilderness,” she wryly intones One of the men protests and she slashes his throat. Now that that’s out of the way, she makes the decision: they’ll move inland.

Back in the present, Lee asks, “They moved here?”  Cricket laments, “That’s how your paths crossed. She claims dominion over this land.”

Later, Cricket, Lee, Shelby and Matt are all out in the forest again, trying to get Priscilla to give up Flora. And The Butcher decides to join the party. They try to bargain with her (they should have discussed terms with each other first, hehehe, since Lee promises to burn Matt and Shelby’s house down). Suddenly, Matt is gone. Wandered off. Where did he go?

After a brief walk through the woods, Shelby finds him. Naked. Having rough animal sex with creepy woods witch lady (and a couple redneck guys watching and…enjoying themselves? Nice touch, as it were). Shelby runs away, horrified.  When Matt meets up with her back at the house (amidst a red-blue sea of police lights), he doesn’t know what she’s angry about. Did it really happen? Is Shelby cracking? While they’re arguing, Lee gets arrested by the police, thrown in the car, and driven away. Matt looks horrified. Shelby has the trace of a wicked smile on her face.

I am so impressed with this season. The new format seems to be both limiting and liberating for the creators, and they have blossomed under its restrictions (like a strict sixty-minute time limit for episodes, the use of talking head interviews, etc.). We’ll see where this thing goes soon enough. See you next time!