When last week's AHS season premiere ended, we were left with a ton to think about and perhaps a ton to have nightmares about. Tonight we get some history behind the farmhouse, its previous owners, and its previous...we'll call it decor. While we spend most of the evening keeping our fingers crossed that the Millers will finally get a clue, we also spend a fair amount of time seeing some seriously spooky shit. Here's where we are after Chapter 2.
At The Gates Of Hell
We pick up right where we left off in Re-enactment Land as Shelby stands lost in the woods face to face with a dude who is missing his scalp. Behind him is a crazy ass looking woman with Joker-type grin on her face holding his scalp. Shelby runs through the forest as we hear the words of Kathy Bates (yay!) as "The Butcher," and this lady is getting ready to dole out some punishment. A "thief" with a pig head (mask?) is brought in tied to a wooden pole. She orders his ass into the fire and Shelby watches as he burns alive....or maybe not alive....who the hell are these people? The Butcher sees Shelby and yells to her followers: "Seize her!" Shelby somehow runs back to her car and passes out just in front of the headlights. Matt and Lee are there at that point and see her fall.
The "real" Matt states in the interview that he and his sister took Shelby to the hospital where she told everyone about the human sacrifice in the woods. The police, of course, found nothing and Shelby was tested for drugs. She was clean but scared stupid. She was scared SO stupid, in fact, that she suddenly believed the scene in the woods was the hillbillies trying to scare them after all. Facepalm. Matt tells us they decided to stay in the house and the opening credits roll. I'll Stand My Ground
We shift gears to Lee getting visitation rights to spend time with her daughter. She arrives in the re-enactment scenes and looks leery of the house. Flora hops out of the car with her adorable backpack and joins her mom in this creepy haunted house that she has no business being in. At one point Lee finds Flora talking to "Priscilla," who by the way, Lee (and we the viewers) cannot see. Flora explains to her mom that Priscilla is tired of all the blood and mid-conversation, a vase breaks in the other room. A bonnet is next to it. Lee still shakes this off as Flora "acting out" as children of divorce often do. Facepalm 2.
That night the pig in distress sound is heard again (thought that guy was burned alive?) and Shelby isn't going to take it anymore, so she grabs a flashlight and heads outside. Matt follows her and they arrive at the scene of the human sacrifice. The pig head is posted on a burning massive wooden doll and the rest of the body is still in flames on the burning pole. They call the police and this time the evidence is still there. The cops say they will provide 24 hour protection until the culprits are found.
With this new found relationship between the Millers and the local police, Shelby and Matt think they should be able to rest easy now. Heh. Matt wakes in the middle of the night to the phone ringing. A woman's voice is on the other end, but the strange thing is - the phone isn't actually plugged in. Matt turns and sees an old woman lying in a bed with a nurse standing over her. "Margaret" looks like she's dying but she doesn't want to take her medicine. She tells bitchy nurse #1 that the medicine makes her sick as bitchy nurse #2 walks in past Matt. Bitchy nurse #2 notes that Margaret is back-talking and promptly shoots her in the head. WTF?!?!? Matt, I'd like to point out that none of these women resemble the hillbillies you SWEAR are trying to scare you away. And even if they were? This would be one elaborate prank for them to pull off. I'm pretty sure I've never heard "You might be a redneck" followed by "if you stage a gruesome murder in someone's dining room."
Somehow Flora missed the commotion (sound sleeper?) and her visit with her mom is soon over. When Lee's ex, Mason, comes to pick her up, however, Lee tells him that Flora must be playing hide and seek. Oh jeez. Both of Flora's parents wind up on the top floor and hear Flora's voice coming from inside a small door in what I assume is a storage area. Flora tells them she was in the process of offering Priscilla her doll as a trade..."so she wouldn't kill us." That's all Mason needs to hear. He's the one damn person on this show in his right mind and he swiftly picks up his daughter and gets the hell out of there. He tells Lee that he will never bring her back to the house. Lee goes back inside and gets wasted.
I Won't Back Down
Matt puts his drunken sister to bed and hears Shelby's voice calling him downstairs. She is standing near the window and asks "do you see her?" Yup, there is definitely someone outside in the woods in broad daylight. They naturally go to investigate and find doors in the ground where she had been standing. There's a cellar there which had been someone's home at one time but has long been abandoned. Shelby and Matt find a video camera and watch the contents on the massive TV in their living room. I'm pretty sure they put more thought into the money they spent on that TV than they did when they bought the house. Anywho, the guy from the "I found you!" video is talking to us in this one and it's Denis O'Hare! He says there are forces in the house that do not let him sleep and so he lives in the cellar. His name is Dr. Elias Cunningham, he is an author, and he is speaking to us from October 1997.
Elias initially chose the house because he was writing a book on two sisters - nurses named Miranda and Bridget Jane. They had worked in an assisted living facility in Rochester and were suspects in the deaths of two residents. They fled in 1988 and opened an assisted living facility of their own in NC in, you guessed it, the $40,000 farm house. Miranda and Bridget Jane sought out elderly residents whose families were tired of them...who just needed somewhere to dump them until they died. Their other criteria? The first names of the residents they took in began with the letters M, U, R, D, and E. As they killed each person, they wrote the letters on the wall. For whatever reason though the ladies were not able to finish that last R. When the residents' families called the police because no one was answering the phone at the facility (too much to check on their family members themselves?), the sisters were long gone. The bodies of the victims were found and "MURDE" was written on the wall.Matt pauses the tape. He remembers (from his neurological damage) that bitchy nurse #1 said "M is for Margaret" after Margaret was shot. He runs into the dining room, rips the wall paper and finds MURDE. Back to the tape...Elias believes the nurses were stopped by something more evil than they were. Something in the house. We then see him take his video camera with him in the house...and we see an unclear face in his camera before it shuts off. Just as the video fades, a meat cleaver lands in the door right behind Matt and Shelby.
There Ain't No Easy Way Out
Matt and Shelby finally decide they need to be rid of the house. They try to negotiate with the bank because obviously the bank did not disclose the history of the house at the auction. YOU GUYS DIDN'T DEMANDED TO KNOW ABOUT IT EITHER. The bank guy rightfully tells the Millers they agreed to buy the house "as is" and they are not getting their money back.
They watch the bank guy drive away...and see Lee driving up with Flora. This visit was not approved by Mason or the courts, so Lee is committing a felony here. "I just wanted to see her." Lee. Baby. Honey. Sweetheart. The last time your daughter was in this house she talked about someone murdering all of you. If you were going to kidnap her, couldn't you have taken her to a hotel or something? Flora heads off to do her homework while Matt, Shelby and Lee discuss the situation in another room. Mason calls and Shelby calms him down and convinces him not to go to the police. Well thank goodness for that.
Lee decides she needs to go say goodbye to Flora before Mason picks her up because she knows damn well it will be a loooooooong time before Mason lets her see her daughter again. There's one problem though - Flora is no longer in the living room doing her homework. They search every inch of the house and cannot find her so they begin searching the woods. They do not find Flora there either....but they do find her hoodie caught at the top of a tree.The episode ends there and good God - it was creepier than the first. We now know bits of the most recent history of the house at least for the past 30 years or so. We don't know a damn thing about the sacrifice in the woods, who Kathy Bates is, why the dude who is not a hillbilly was walking around without a scalp, and what the deal is with the pig head. We also don't know who Priscilla is and why she's all chatty with Flora. Was that kid really taken or is she hiding somewhere? If the nurses were stopped by some evil in the house, why are they presenting themselves to the Millers now? How does all of this tie in to the colonial folks with the pitchforks and torches? And most importantly, where the hell is Lady Gaga? Here's hoping we get answers to some of these questions when we reach Chapter 3 next week, and here's hoping Chapter 3 won't give me the nightmares I expect after viewing Chapter 2!
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