Mary

Mary enters the room. Her journal sits on one of the tables. Someone has compared it to Damon’s original and noted discrepancies between the two. The ghost women open up a shelving unit to reveal glass display cases that house their human faces. Another ghost motions for Mary to read Damon’s notes on his victims. She imagines what he would have written about her. As she realizes that she needs to leave, Dr. Burton rushes in and injects her with a giant syringe.

Mary wakes up to the sound of digging. Someone calls her a gendered slur. Dr. Burton screams at her for injuring his hand. He and Barb have taken her out to the desert and have buried her up to her chin in the sand; a glass box sits over her exposed head. Damon used to cure his victims’ skin in the sun after killing them, but the people of Arroyo do it beforehand to make skinning easier. Mary asks if the rest of the flock will be mad at him for killing her since she is Damon Cross reincarnated. Burton answers that many townspeople just enjoy killing, so they will get over it; others, he will deceive. In any case, it was not Damon who was powerful but Burton’s father—that’s who turned Damon’s writings into a religion. Before Burton and Barb leave, Burton tells her that Barb and Nadine were scheduled to be this year’s volunteers.

Mary tries to escape but eventually tires. She feels extremely hot and itchy. She believes that she deserves this fate.

This chapter repeats the phrase “Scratch me” over and over again.

As Mary waits to die in the desert, she sings “More Today Than Yesterday” over and over again, drifting in and out of consciousness. She hallucinates her Loved Ones, imagining them chastising her for not being good. Eventually, a dust storm passes over her, but it doesn’t break the glass container on her face.

Suddenly, an ant crosses the glass. Jane appears, and Mary tells her that she’s proud of her for leaving Nadine’s house. Mary lovingly recites some of Jane’s poetry. As Mary prepares to die, she encourages Jane to go have fun outside of Arroyo. She hopes that Jane will eventually remove the pillowcase from her head.

Jane takes the pillowcase off. While what is underneath is gory, Mary is impressed by how beautiful Jane’s eyes are. She asks if Jane wants to do what she did to Chipotle while Mary watches. Jane begins to dig. It’s difficult, but at the last moment, Mary has a hot flash, which loosens the dirt. After Mary climbs out of the hole, she follows an ant back to the Cross House. Behind her, 20 Furies follow.

Mary and the Furies snake through the crawlspace of the house. Victor sees Mary and tells her that he’s thankful and proud of her for saving Damon. He has a plan for her to return to the community and take on a powerful position. However, Mary realizes that the victims, not Damon, deserve power and a spotlight. If she returns to the community, they will be worshipping Damon, not her. She tries to force Damon to look at her body in the mirror but collapses. Victor screams at her, and Mary realizes that she needs the Furies’ help.

She asks Jane to carve Damon’s eyes out, so the ghost uses her talons to stab through Mary’s eyes. Victor tells Mary that she will not be able to accomplish anything without Damon, but Mary counters that she killed Carole and Wallace. At this, Victor laughs—Mary didn’t kill Carole. The Furies attack him, slashing his face. When they are done, Jane puts her pillowcase on his head. Then, the dead women destroy Damon’s secret room, reclaiming the faces preserved in glass. Mary tells them that they are powerful.

Mary decides to walk through the house instead of using the crawlspace. She finds Dr. Burton in his office with several members of the council. They are fervently discussing how to fix the harvest. Mary stands quietly until someone notices her and says, “He’s come back to us” (362). Suddenly, one of the Furies attacks one of the men. The people in the room cannot see her, so it looks like he is being attacked by an invisible entity. The other council members flee, but Mary tells the Furies to follow them. She warns the men that she sees them wherever they are.

Mary goes upstairs to put clothes on, but first, she looks in the mirror. For the first time, she doesn’t hallucinate her body decomposing. Suddenly, someone comes up behind her and brings a radio down on her head.

As Mary comes to, she smells Nadine’s cigarettes. She believes for a second that one of her Loved Ones is alive and attacking her. She then realizes that it is Eleanor. Mary assumes that Eleanor is afraid that Mary will hurt her, but Eleanor is actually furious that Mary ruined the harvest. Eleanor wants to kill Mary to prove that she is adult enough to be included; she killed Carole as well. As Eleanor strangles Mary, Mary begins to black out, but she finds a Loved One on the ground and slams it against Eleanor’s head. In a rage, Eleanor takes a boxcutter and slits Mary’s throat.

Mary assumes that she’s a ghost now. However, she realizes that she can still feel things, meaning she’s still alive. While Eleanor cut her throat, she missed all the major arteries. Eleanor continues to rant about feeling slighted by townsfolk who doubted her power and then looks down and realizes that Mary is still alive.

Mary smells Nadine’s cigarette smoke again. As Eleanor screams that Mary is an outsider who doesn’t deserve Damon’s power, the ghost of Nadine swings her oxygen tank, hits Eleanor in the head, and disappears into the house in search of more fun. Mary gets on top of Eleanor and takes out the boxcutter.

After killing Eleanor, Mary goes downstairs naked, wondering if Eleanor also killed Wallace. As Mary goes around the mansion, she finds more bodies, including Dr. Burton’s remains. The Furies also didn’t spare Anna-Louise. Mary frees the volunteers, telling them to put pillowcases over their heads in the hopes that the Furies will ignore them. Mary then finds Bonnie crying, upset at the violence. She tells her that Eleanor is dead. A Fury quickly appears and kills Bonnie.

In one of the classrooms, Mary sees all of Nancy’s Easter decorations and hungrily eats some of the candy. She tells Jane and the rest of the Furies to go into town to kill people and destroy every sacred text they find.

Out on the playground, Mary knows that she has done everything she needs to do in Arroyo. She looks at Eleanor’s portrait of herself and considers how life is full of cycles.

This chapter is made up of excerpts from newspaper articles and the FBI agent’s book on the Arroyo Easter Massacre. The agent’s book claims that on Easter, after families showed up at the Cross House for an Easter egg hunt that took too long to get started, a man went inside the Cross House to investigate and found the bodies. The eggs that the children found had pieces of Loved Ones and human body parts inside them. Police now assume that Nancy committed the crimes. When the FBI agent found her in the crawlspace with a large knife and Wallace, she ran toward him for help, but he shot her, thinking that she was about to attack him.

This chapter follows an unnamed middle-aged woman, who is most likely Mary. She goes unnoticed, returning to an empty apartment that smells of cigarettes with the FBI agent’s book on the Arroyo Easter Massacre. The book makes her angry. In the city where she lives, people have been dying mysteriously. The woman asks who wants to go on a trip, indicating that she plans to go visit the author of the book. The Furies will eventually turn on her, but she has accepted this. She knows that people will continue to not see her coming because she is invisible.