At the end of Dead to the World Sookie agrees not to reveal to the police that Felton had been holding Jason hostage in exchange for Calvin’s assurance that he would receive Hot Shot style justice. Felton is never heard from again, and Sookie has no doubt and no regret about what happened to him. Supes have to police their own. The human justice system wasn’t designed to accommodate full moon shifting, blood drinking (pre-Great Revelation), or spell casting, for that matter.

Sookie and Jason had to come up with a story to explain Jason’s disappearance to Andy and Alcee Beck. They decided the less information Jason gave, the better. As a result, both Eric and Jason returned home on the same day claiming they couldn’t remember where they had been or what had been done to them. To counter Jason’s innate desire to spin a good yarn, Sookie remained present in the police interview and sent silent warnings to him whenever he strayed from the rehearsed story.

The story Pam and Chow told Sookie about how Eric ended up without his memory was just as carefully edited and rehearsed.  She says, ”Several nights ago, we heard–at Fangtasia that a group of witches had arrived in Shreveport.” When Sookie asks why they came to town, Pam responds, “They wanted–they want– to take over Eric’s businesses. Witches want money as well as anyone, and they figure they can either take over the business, or make Eric pay to leave them alone.”

Chow took up the story to explain  the terms Hallow offered. At first she demanded half of the business but after meeting Eric, she decided to settle for a fifth, if  Eric would “entertain” her for seven nights. Sookie has enough sense to realize Chow’s story doesn’t add up and presses him to admit that Hallow’s curse only kicked in when he attacked her messenger.

Over the course of the novel, three times Sookie  wonders if she’s getting the whole story. She eventually, and erroneously, decides that Hallow must also intend to sell Eric’s blood, which would fetch another $40,o00. Neither Pam’s story nor Sookie’s reasoning fully explain Hallow’s motivation. If it was money she wanted, she’d be praying on wealthy humans or at the very least, weaker targets than the vampire sheriff of Area 5. Selling Eric’s blood cannot be the cherry on the cake Sookie thinks it is since Eric’s cash value is minuscule compared to a fifth of his profits, which require him to be alive and productive. Hallow’s reduced offer to take a fifth instead of half indicates that, despite what Pam said, she is not motivated by money.

Hallow  wants to get her hands on Eric, and it’s not just for sex. Sookie discovered her real motivation without realizing it when she was on reconnaissance counting brain patterns before the Witch War began. One of the thoughts she read was, “I want him dead.” Sookie was inside Hallow’s head, reading her thoughts. Hallow doesn’t want money, blood, or sex. She wants Eric dead. This is the only thing that fully explains why Hallow came to Shreveport and her single minded pursuit that  even Sookie recognized as excessive.

The first clue about what is really going on between the Stonebrooks and the vampires is when Pam leaves the address of the nest she shares with Chow and Clancy on Sookie’s answering machine, 714  Parchman Avenue. There is no such street  in Shreveport, but there is a  Parchman Road in Sunflower County, Mississsippi. In fact, there are numerous Parchman Roads in Sunflower County. (Have I mentioned that sunflowers are a bad omen in True Blood?)

Apparently every road on the  18,000 acre Parchman Farm uses that name followed by a number. And what would Pam’s nest have to a farm in Mississippi? Well, Parchman Farm is no more just a farm than Pam’s house is an ordinary suburban ranch. It is the oldest prison in Mississippi. Originally built at the turn of the century to operate as a plantation penitentiary for young black men, over the decades it became the main prison in the state and the hub of the Mississippi prison system.

The Warden's Residence

Referred to by William Faulker as ‘destination doom,’ Parchman is synonymous with brutality and looms large in the artistic imagination of southern musicians and writers. In O Brother, Where Art Thou? Parchman is the prison Everett Ulysses McGill and his companions escape from. Many Freedom Riders were housed at Parchman Farm, and Elvis’s father spent time there for check forgery in association with the sale of a pig.

Parchman Work Crew

Since the residents of Sunflower County didn’t want their home to be thought of as the death county of Mississipppi, executions were carried out in the county of conviction until the 1950s when a gas chamber was installed at Parchman. It was eventually replaced with an electric chair, which gave way as the means of execution in the 1980s to lethal injection. Edward Earl Johnson was executed at Parchman for the rape of an elderly woman and the murder of the police officer who answered her distress call. There are serious questions about his guilt and the investigation and prosecution of his case. It is curious that three True Blood characters share his names, especially since they were all created to be killed, without being killers themselves. Eddie was staked by Amy in season 1. Johnson was killed because Eric lost control of his temper, and Earl will be killed to save someone’s life.

In Dead to the World, after the Witch War when Sookie asks Pam why Hallow picked Shreveport, her answer is an enigmatic, “I’m going to find out.” Of course she is also going to ‘persuade’ Hallow to remove the curse on Eric and restore his memory. Pam set fire to Hallow’s bakery and flower shop immediately after the battle, so where exactly was Hallow ‘worked on’  til near dawn? The answer is that Pam took Hallow home to Parchman. The allusion to the nightmarish Mississippi prison reveals the location of Book Eric’s Dungeon of Doom. Pam, Chow, and Clancy are not just nest mates. They are the Area 5 prison guards…and more.

Book Eric is famous for telling Sookie that he may not reveal everything, but he always tells her the truth. Listen to what he has to say about Hallow’s motivation when he pays a final visit to Sookie at the end of the novel.

Her parents were jailed in Shreveport. They were witches, too, but they also ran confidence games of some kind, using their craft to make their victims more convinced of their sincerity. In Shreveport their luck ran out. The supernatural community refused to make any effort to get the older Stonebrooks out of jail. The woman ran afoul of a voodoo priestess while she was incarcerated, and the man ran afoul of a knife in some bathroom brawl.

Eric is not speaking about the human prison. Despite the supernatural community’s aversion to the Stonebrooks, they would have been obligated to keep them out of the human system and punish them some other way, like the werepanthers in Hot Shot. Hallow targeted Eric and wanted him dead because of what happened to her parents in the Dungeon of Doom, a.k.a. Pam’s Place. The elder Stonebrooks were incarcerated there by the sheriff of Area 5, and that’s where they died. Hallow was after vengeance, not money or sex.