Mary

At work, Mary sees a flyer about Nancy’s egg hunt. In the basement, Eleanor is in a great mood. She thanks Mary for telling her to show people that she has “use” and apologizes for how the night ended. As she looks at Eleanor, Mary sees flashes of Carole’s mangled face, but she brushes away the connection—Mary knows that Eleanor is innocent.

Mary asks Eleanor to decipher the journal, but they are quickly interrupted by Dr. Burton. He asks Mary to help with recess duty because Carole didn’t show up for work. Mary agrees. She is surprised by how docile and subdued the children are during recess. Looking at the building’s foundation to see if Carole was telling the truth about them writing on it, Mary finds her own name set off far from the other children’s.

When Mary returns to the basement, Eleanor is gone. As she gets ready to leave, she sees a massive ant walking backward. It leads her to the File Pile, where multiple other ants appear. Mary grabs the top files and stuffs them into her purse, feeling a sense of dread and foreboding.

Chipotle has pooped in Mary’s room again. He growls at her as she cleans it up. She is filled with rage, so she decides to conduct an experiment. She picks Chipotle up and brings him into the bathroom. When they enter the bathroom, Chipotle immediately begins to panic and scratches at the door to be let out. Mary tries to make the ghost touch the dog, but the ghost keeps dodging. Chipotle bites down on Mary’s hand, leading her to throw him at Jane, assuming that he will pass through the ghost. Instead, Jane catches him and rips him apart with razor fingers. Blood covers the bathroom. Mary rushes out, tells Nadine to stay out of the bathroom, and then drugs her aunt again.

As Mary makes her way to the Cross House for work, she keeps hearing the sound of Jane tearing Chipotle apart. When she is needed again at recess because Carole is still missing, Mary can’t stop imagining the children’s bodies being ripped apart like Chipotle’s. Later in the basement, Mary is again distracted by an ant. She doesn’t want to follow it, so she steps on it. Soon afterward, a massive swarm of ants begins moving toward the Beast. Fiddling with the Beast in an attempt to crush the ants, Mary finds a hidden door. A woman with a bloody pillowcase on her head crawls out of it. Mary tries to get away from the ghost, but it follows her as more and more women come out of the hidden door. Trying to get away, Mary stumbles into the Beast, which traps her ankle. She tries to bargain with the women, telling them that she’s also one of Damon Cross’s victims.

Suddenly, the Cross House’s gardener, Victor, runs into the room and tells Mary to close her eyes. He yells terrible insults at the ghost women, which eventually compels them to leave. Victor refuses to help Mary unstick her ankle, telling her that this is her fault. The dead women need attention to be seen, so Mary needs to stop asking questions and ignore them. He then leaves Mary alone in the basement.

Nancy comes into the basement and helps Mary get out of the shelving unit. The room is a huge mess, and there are now files all over the place. Mary is worried that Eleanor will be upset with her for ruining all of her hard work, but Nancy reassures her and takes her upstairs to get ice for her ankle.

Nancy asks why Mary won’t look at her. Mary lies and says that she’s just going through a difficult time, so Nancy tells her about a shop nearby that sells homeopathic teas and crystals. She encourages her to go visit and to talk to people about her problems. Everyone in town is stressed out due to Carole’s murder—and the fact that Carole was found with her face partially removed.

Mary goes to Nadine’s bathroom and is shocked again by how much blood and guts cover the walls. She cleans, thinks about Carole’s murder, and begins to wonder if she will be next. After cleaning the bathroom, Mary opens the shower curtain and berates Jane, telling her to go away in an imitation of Victor. Jane drifts into a corner.

Mary returns to the Cross House for a community meeting about the Easter egg hunt. Mary wants to speak to Victor and sees him outside. As she thanks him for his help earlier and says that she needs to ask him some questions, he runs quickly away from her. She chases him, following him to her handprints and name on the foundation. There, he pushes the “A” of her name and disappears into the building. When she presses the same spot, a door is revealed: an opening to a crawlspace that she’s been in before. Mary quickly slips inside to follow Victor.

As she crawls on the ground, getting dirty, Mary immediately feels like she’s made a bad decision. She can hear Victor walking, and she realizes that she can stand up. She follows the sound of his footsteps through the labyrinthine crawlspace. When Mary screams after feeling a spider on her chest, Victor grabs her and guides her. They overhear the town hall meeting, where multiple people are upset that the FBI is coming in to investigate Carole’s murder. Dr. Burton instructs them not to answer the FBI’s questions. They eventually exit the crawlspace, ending up in one of the hallways leading to the hospital.

Victor tells Mary to leave him alone. Mary argues with him, demanding that he tell her how he can see the ghost women. Was he also a victim in a previous life, like she was? This makes him laugh—she wasn’t a victim, he tells her.

Suddenly, they hear two voices; Mary ducks down to hide. Dr. Burton and Bonnie’s husband enter. Burton reveals that the FBI is coming to town because Carole was killed in a manner similar to how Damon Cross killed his victims. Bonnie’s husband asks if someone from the town killed Carole; Burton assumes so. Burton asks Bonnie’s husband to help him find who killed Carole so that they can kill that person.

After the two men leave, Mary sees that Victor never hid. She realizes that he must be a ghost, but he tells her that she doesn’t “know a fucking thing” before disappearing (181).

Eleanor wakes Mary up. Mary slept in the basement after her encounter with the gardener the night before, but she lies to Eleanor, saying that she came to work early to try to clean up the room. Eleanor is surprised at the disarray and pretends that she’s not upset, but Mary sees through it.

The two clean up the scattered files as they listen to a true crime podcast. Mary notices another ant that leads her to a piece of paper under a shelf—her own medical record. It says that she was referred to an institution called Clearview, but Mary is unsure what that means. Eleanor interrupts—they need to talk about her journal. However, Mary is asked to come help with recess again.

At recess, Mary thinks about what she read in her medical file. A little boy named Wallace interrupts her reflection to talk about bugs. He needs to urinate, so she takes him to the side of the building to do so. She finds his constant talking rage inducing. Mary gets a bloody nose and goes in search of a tissue. When she turns the corner, she sees Nadine coming up the hill to the Cross House with her arms full of the files that Mary’s been taking home. Mary remembers that she forgot to drug Nadine the night before.

Back at home, Nadine asks Mary if she’s seen Chipotle and snaps that Mary “should fucking be thanking” Nadine for getting her fired from the Cross House (190). This enrages Mary, who goes to the bathroom to wash blood off her shirt. Nadine follows, interrogating her about Chipotle’s whereabouts. They argue. When Mary says that she will never forgive Nadine, Nadine apologizes and begins to cry. She says that she never should have invited Mary to stay with her. Mary asks what Clearview is.

Mary was sent to live at Clearview when her issues became too much for Nadine to handle: problems such as bed-wetting, cruelty to animals, and not getting along with other kids at school. Mary counters that she was being bullied, but Nadine reveals that Mary was the bully. As Nadine describes Clearview, Mary remembers her time at the institution—primarily how she tried to be “good.”

Mary refuses to believe that she was a bully and accuses Nadine of abuse. Nadine counters that letting Mary work at the Cross House was a bad idea because she has always been obsessed with the house. Nadine calls Mary “crazy,” which sends Mary into a rage. She screams at Nadine, who reacts by taking a hammer and smashing all the Loved Ones. Mary slaps Nadine, pushes her out of her bedroom, and closes the door. She looks at her broken Loved Ones and weeps.

Mary realizes that she needs to get out of bed and feed Nadine. She has lost track of time. “More Today Than Yesterday” is stuck in her head.

Mary’s Loved Ones encourage her to be good, so Mary goes into the kitchen to make herself breakfast. Seeing Nadine in her chair asleep, Mary decides to go to the tea and crystal shop to get Nadine a gift as an apology.

As Mary heads to the store, she convinces herself that everything Nadine said was a lie intended to hurt her.

Mary enters the store and is overwhelmed by the smells and sights, including lots of colorful crystals. An older woman named Barb comes out, so Mary asks for some tea that will help brighten her and her aunt’s mood. As Barb pours Mary some tea to taste, Mary asks if Barb has anything for insomnia and hot flashes. Barb goes to heat some more water for another sample tea. While Mary looks around the store, she tells Barb about a “friend” who’s experiencing some strange events related to past lives. Barb calls for her daughter, an expert on past lives. Mary is shocked to see her former bully Anna-Louise Connerton come into the store.

When she sees Anna-Louise, Mary faints. She wakes up in the store’s office with Barb examining her head. Mary can’t stop looking at Anna-Louise, remembering her as a child. However, Mary soon realizes that Anna-Louise doesn’t remember her. Additionally, Anna-Louise mispronounces words in an odd way.

Anna-Louise shares her theory about past lives: When someone dies, their soul goes into a big sea and breaks into parts that get scooped up when someone else is born. Sometimes, though, a person’s soul sticks together, so more of their soul ends up inside a new body, which then experiences memories of a past life.

When Anna-Louise goes to box up some tea for Mary, Barb explains that Anna-Louise has a traumatic brain injury: A classmate beat her with a baseball bat after Anna-Louise teased the girl. Afterward, Anna-Louise’s attacker went to a mental institution. Mary asks the attacker’s name, but they are interrupted by a woman who comes into the store with a poster for her missing child. The missing child is Wallace, the boy that Mary met on the playground.

Mary spends the whole walk trying to convince herself that she was not responsible for Anna-Louise’s accident, Carole’s murder, or Wallace’s disappearance. When Mary returns home, she hears Nadine laughing. Mary is overcome with the sudden urge to cry and seek comfort from Nadine, but Nadine continues to laugh. Mary feels like something is wrong.

Mary goes to her bedroom and notices that some of her broken Loved Ones are missing. She returns to the dark living room and demands that Nadine tell her where they are. To coax Nadine into talking, Mary rips pages out of her favorite books, but Nadine still doesn’t respond. Then, Mary notices that the plastic flower that Nadine wears in her hair is now on the floor. She turns on the light and screams.

As Mary walked home from the crystal store, she practiced her speech to Nadine. She was going to admit that she was scared and explain that she doesn’t know who she really is. Now, Mary replays her speech in her head as she stares at Nadine, who is dying because the broken Loved Ones have been forced down her throat. Mary sees a Loved One’s legs poking out of Nadine mouth, and she pulls it out.

Suddenly, someone knocks on the door. Mary intends to stay quiet, but Nadine kicks her oxygen tank; the noise is loud enough that the person outside hears it and asks if anyone is there. Mary goes to the door and is greeted by an FBI agent.

Mary immediately dislikes the agent. He asks Mary a few questions about Carole’s murder. When Nadine makes another noise from inside, the agent asks to speak to Nadine, but Mary refuses. He then asks Mary about Damon Cross. Mary admits that he was a serial killer, which is more information than other people have been volunteering. The FBI agent then explains some local history. Arroyo used to be a mining town; when the mining boom ended, the only people who stayed were hyper-religious or loners. The agent would like to write a book about these kinds of towns someday.

Nadine makes another noise from inside, prompting Mary to wrap up their conversation. Before the FBI agent leaves, he mentions that the 50th anniversary of Damon’s death is this week. It is the same day as Mary’s 50th birthday.

When Mary goes inside, Nadine is dead. Mary realizes that she is not a reincarnation of one of Damon’s victims but a reincarnation of Damon himself. She wonders if she actually killed Carole. She considers practicing carving Nadine’s face but stops when ants emerge from Nadine’s mouth.

Mary sits outside for a long time before she is interrupted by Anna-Louise. Anna-Louise knows who Mary really is and tells her that they need to talk about her journal.