Mary

Barb and Eleanor speak to the council first. Then, Dr. Burton emerges holding Mary’s journal and asks her if it is a joke.

The council discusses Mary in front of her, trying to decide how she created the journal. Some wonder if reincarnation is real; if so, is Mary really Damon Cross? When Mary tells them the day of her birth, which is the same as Damon’s death, the council members gasp. Anna-Louise then tells the council about somatic echo, which is when past lives appear as physical manifestations in the new life. Anna-Louise and Barb next suggest that they unclothe Mary to see if her birthmarks are in the places where Damon was shot. As the councilmen undress her, Mary resists them. However, she hears a voice in her head that assures her everything is going to be fine. Soon everyone can see her birthmarks, which she realizes do look like a bullet’s spray.

Burton is still skeptical, so Barb suggests that they hypnotize Mary. Barb leaves and returns with a mirror.

As Mary sees the mirror, she tries desperately to get away. Barb hypnotizes her, and Mary hears a voice in her head telling her to look just beyond herself in the reflection. She does so; a second face emerges behind hers—it and the voice belong to Damon Cross. He tells her that Victor is his brother and asks her to go to their favorite place: the crawlspace.

Mary dives deep into her unconsciousness, seeing herself at different ages. Damon tells her that she was never alone during those moments because he was with her. She sees herself being drugged to be more compliant at Clearview. Damon tells her that she no longer needs to worry about the past because it is time to plan their future together. Mary can tell that some people in the room still don’t believe that she is Damon, so Damon encourages her to show them. As she does so, she hears screaming.

When Mary comes out of her hypnotized state, she is overwhelmed by the amount of blood in the room. She offers to help one injured woman. Eleanor eventually gets Mary out of the room.

As Eleanor helps clean Mary up, she describes what happened. While Mary was hypnotized, she answered questions that only Damon would know the answers to. She then laughed, smashed the mirror, and slashed people. Anna-Louise was injured the most severely. Mary asks Eleanor whether the people in Arroyo worship Damon. Eleanor explains that they view him as their prophet but actually worship the desert. Bonnie interrupts them, chastising Eleanor for telling Mary too much.

Bonnie, Eleanor, and Mary return to the council room. Mary can see that Anna-Louise’s face has been badly slashed. As the council decides what they should do, some murmur in awe that Damon has returned to them, but Dr. Burton is skeptical. Mary realizes that everyone is looking at her, and she revels in the attention. She makes a request to the men.

Mary wakes up to the sound of knocking. She is in the Cross House: Her request the previous night was to live there. The top floor has been kept exactly the same as when the Cross family lived there.

The taxi driver has a package—Jane Mayhew’s poetry collection. Mary asks the taxi driver about Dr. Burton’s role in the community, and he confirms that Burton is their leader. The taxi driver leaves, saying that he’ll see Mary the next day, which is her birthday and the anniversary of Damon’s death. Mary looks around, in awe of all the ornate furnishings and surprised to see a collection of porcelain figures extremely similar to her Loved Ones. She feels at home.

Downstairs, Dr. Burton tells her that their community is wary of outsiders but that there may be a place for her. She tells him that he can trust her and that she has no one to tell about what happens in this community because Nadine is dead.

Dr. Burton gives her a blue book and instructs her to read it before tomorrow, the community’s most holy day—harvest day. The book is an interpretation of Damon’s journals, and the community views it as their sacred text. As Mary reads it, she is shocked that the text is the same as that in her journal.

Mary asks why they worship the desert. Dr. Burton answers that only the most useful things in the desert survive because of the harsh environment. He explains that Damon wasn’t just a serial killer—he experienced religious visions. Burton understands why she hurt Carole but asks why she hurt Wallace. Mary doesn’t know. She then asks if Burton is a real doctor, which upsets him, so she leaves.

As Mary sits in the Cross House, she is overcome with how at home she feels. She picks up Jane’s book and considers reading it but decides to focus instead on the book that Dr. Burton gave her. However, the sacred text is annoyingly dense. According to the book, when Damon’s father died, Damon decided to cleanse the world. Mary is overwhelmed at how much information she still needs to consume and is confused about what the harvest is.

Mary decides to read some of Jane’s poetry. She is impressed with how talented Jane was. As she thinks about Jane, she remembers her bloody claws and menacing presence. Frightened, Mary decides to go for a walk.

Mary explores the mansion. As she walks, Damon talks to her about skinning—both literally skinning people alive and more figuratively finding the truth hidden deep within. As he talks, Mary falls into a hypnotic state and enters the house’s crawlspace.

When Mary leaves the crawlspace hours later, she tells Damon that she understands now. He asks her to read the sacred text again and prepare for the harvest; she agrees and goes downstairs to the hospital to tell Anna-Louise what happened.

In the crawlspace, Mary saw Damon’s memories, out of chronological order. Damon’s father, who married an actress, came back from combat in World War II psychologically scarred. Later, he killed Damon’s mother and locked Damon in the bathroom with his mother’s corpse in the bathtub. As Damon pleaded to be let out of the bathroom, his father screamed about how she had gotten too old to get acting jobs. Later, his father demanded that Damon become an actor and often made him participate in depraved sexual acts with women. After Damon’s father died, Damon began killing women who reminded him of his mother. Mary finds Damon’s story boring and predictable. She was relieved when Damon finally showed her his last day. When the sheriff and his task force came to talk to Victor about their investigation into the local serial killer, Damon, who was in the middle of torturing a victim, overheard the conversation from the crawlspace. The victim escaped, running into the crawlspace and screaming, which drew the attention of the sheriff.

Mary tells Anna-Louise that Damon made up all his religious visions as a way to get back at his father. Mary contemplates her role in the attack on Anna-Louise, wondering if she or Damon was truly responsible.

That night, Mary has a dream. She sees herself standing in a spotlight. She opens her mouth, and an eye appears. Eventually, Jane pulls herself out of Mary’s throat. Jane rips her own face off, causing Mary to wake up suddenly. She realizes that it’s her birthday.

Mary returns to Nadine’s home to retrieve a few items. The smell is overwhelming. She contemplates how to get rid of Nadine’s body and the evidence of her involvement in Nadine’s murder but realizes that the community will help her. The bathroom door is open. Mary decides that since it’s her birthday, she will put her old self to rest: Burying Nadine, who heavily influenced her old self, will allow Mary to move on to her new life.

Mary finds a shovel and returns to the backyard but is sickened to find that a hole has already been dug. She sees Jane standing next to the grave. Mary tries to ignore her as she drags Nadine’s body outside and into the hole. Mary pushes dirt over Nadine and says a few words to memorialize her. As she leaves, Mary says a few words to Jane, as well, encouraging her to go see the world and take the pillowcase off her head.

When Mary goes back inside to get her suitcase, she hears Nadine chastising her for not telling her about the ghosts in her house.

Nadine is annoyed: Mary should have known how much Nadine would have loved having ghosts. Mary tries to ignore the new ghost but cannot. Nadine admires Jane and then tells Mary that none of the books has it right about what it’s like to be dead. Nadine asks if Mary remembers writing to her from Clearview, but Mary doesn’t. Mary always promised to be good in her letters. Nadine then reveals that ghosts choose whom to reveal themselves to. They argue over whether Nadine got what she deserved in death and whether Mary really is special. Nadine then tells Mary that she is wrong about Jane being a ghost. She hands her a book on Greek mythology and explains that Jane is one of the Erinyes.

The Erinyes are Furies, vengeful and violent mythological creatures. Mary is surprised that the dead women are Furies because they seem so passive to her, but Nadine argues that it’s because they are used to being invisible. Mary asks about the ants she sees, and Nadine explains that they are “couriers of the dead” (295).

To bother Mary, Nadine taunts that Mary might still be “crazy.” Mary wonders if she has a mental illness, given everything that’s recently happened and her childhood. Nadine gives Mary a mirror and encourages Mary to die by suicide. Damon’s voice screams in Mary’s head as she pushes the mirror away and leaves the room. Nadine yells that Mary will never be able to escape her.

Mary is shaken up when she returns to the Cross House. A sign on the front door announces that the hospital is closed for maintenance, which she finds amusing. Mary runs into Nancy, who still owes her wages for her work in the File Room. Mary notices that Nancy seems unwell, but Nancy says that she is just stressed out with planning the Easter egg hunt. She asks if Mary ever heard odd noises in the basement and admits that she’s been hearing weird things in the walls. She plans to return early the next day to investigate. Before Mary leaves, Nancy asks Mary to attend the Easter egg hunt, and she agrees.

Mary returns upstairs, unpacks her sparse belongings, and reads the sacred text again. Eleanor knocks on the door, excited to see Damon’s private residence. Mary detects a slight touch of jealousy in Eleanor’s amazement at how quickly the community has embraced Mary. Eleanor laments not being able to go to the harvest. Before Mary has a chance to ask Eleanor what happens at the harvest, Eleanor hands her a birthday present: an amazingly detailed and accurate drawing of Mary’s face.

Mary finds Jane’s poetry collection and decides to read some of it. After reading and looking at Eleanor’s picture, she passes out again.

When Bonnie comes to get Mary for the harvest, Mary goes to the bathroom to get ready and is surprised to find a dead body in the bathtub. She considers escaping as she watches people from town gather at the Cross House.

Bonnie and Mary go downstairs, discussing Carole’s death. Bonnie admits that Carole no longer had any use, though she could have been a volunteer, but Mary doesn’t understand what that means. Bonnie has researched Mary’s past: Mary’s father was a part of their community before he died. Bonnie takes Mary into a room with a giant mirror—a rehearsal room that Mary saw in Damon’s childhood memories. There is something behind a curtain, and the room is filled with people looking a little crazed. Wallace’s mother approaches Mary and asks why she took her son, but someone drags her off before Mary can answer. Mary reaches into her pocket for comfort and cuts herself on the broken Loved One she brought with her. Dr. Burton emerges from the curtain and announces that it is time to begin the ceremony.

Dr. Burton sermonizes about Damon Cross’s death and reincarnation. Times have been difficult for the community, given the presence of the FBI. The desert demands a sacrifice. Burton encourages everyone to look at themselves in the mirror, requests that Mary be brought up as the newest member of the flock, and asks the community to thank this year’s volunteers. Everyone murmurs, “Thank you.” Burton ends by saying that it is their job to finish Damon’s work.

When the curtain is pulled back, it looks just like dreams that Mary has had. Behind it are three women. They are all nude and sit on examining tables. Each of the women wears a pillowcase on her head. The floor under them is covered with a plastic tarp. Dr. Burton pushes Mary toward the women. It’s unusual to let a new member go first, but Mary is special. He hands her an oblong tool made out of cactus and tells her to begin. Damon tells Mary in her head that she will be fine. Someone yells that Mary needs to confess her sins to the cactus. As Mary tries to figure out what to do, the crowd chants that the victim has served her use. Mary realizes that she is expected to insert the cactus into the volunteer’s vagina.

Mary realizes that the people in the crowd want to be told what to do. Many of them—men and women—are masturbating. Mary asks why the volunteer is wearing a pillowcase and is sedated. Dr. Burton tries to explain that it makes it easier, but Mary snaps that hurting another person shouldn’t be easy. Damon yells at Mary for disobeying. Mary takes the pillowcase off the woman’s head and asks her name. For a moment, Mary imagines going through with the ritual. However, as she continues to look at her face, it stops decomposing. She realizes that all she ever had to do to make the hallucinations stop was just not look away, which causes her to laugh.

As Dr. Burton rushes her, Mary takes the broken Loved One from her pocket and slashes him. She realizes that she is in control, not Damon. She then takes the cactus wand and beats Burton with it. Then, she’ll run away as fast as she can.