Bag of Bones

Mike slips in and out of his subconscious trance as he and the legal team regroup. The captured assailant, revealed to be George Footman, begs the men to save the driver from the burning car, but it is already too late. Mike has a vision of the townspeople at the funeral, cautiously waiting for news of Mattie’s death.

Bissonette confirms that Kyra is safe. It is impossible to contact emergency services because of the oncoming storm. While Mike is searching for something to stop Kennedy’s bleeding, Kyra wakes up and instantly understands that her mother has died. Mike tries to hold her back as he becomes aware that others are coming from the chapel. Bill is the only one who stays, fighting off the unseen force that is making him go.

Mike gets a spiritual message to leave at once. When Footman refuses to admit who hired him, Mike hammers him in the head, knocking him out. Before they leave the trailer, Kyra demands that they take her stuffed dog, Stricken, with them. Mike drives away to Sara Laughs with Kyra, narrowly escaping Buddy and the other men.

Mike drives through a storm of lightning and hail. By the time they reach the house, it is raining. Mike carries Kyra out of the car, but she drops Stricken and asks Mike to retrieve it. Stricken gets stuck on three sunflowers. To Mike’s terror, Stricken’s fur has turned black in the rainwater.

Mike tries to comfort Kyra. Kyra registers that they are not alone, however, having seen the ghosts of Black people around the house. Kyra also catches glimpses of Mike’s thoughts, signaling that she is in a trance state too. Mike gives Kyra Benadryl to help her sleep, telling her it is “sadness medicine.” He affirms his promise to take care of her.

While in his trance, Mike starts filling the bathtub with water, preparing to drown Kyra and die by suicide. Jo and Mattie’s voices both tell him to stop. Finally, Mike goes down to the fireplace when he hears Bunter’s bell ringing. He removes the bell, but is struck by a gust of wind and hears the word “nineteen.” This turns his attention to his manuscript, which has come loose in the gust. He checks page 19 of his manuscript and sees an acrostic message that reads: “owls undEr studIO” (459). The same message appears on every page of his manuscript. 

He realizes that Jo had bought the plastic owls to ward off evil spirits, following their function in Indigenous American folklore. He also realizes that Jo’s spirit had helped him to overcome his writer’s block, writing the manuscript just so that she could tell Mike about the owls.

On his way to Jo’s studio, Mike sees Sara and the faces of the vengeful dead urging him to kill Kyra. Mike refuses, acknowledging Kyra as his daughter.

Mike struggles to open the door to Jo’s studio, which he believes is being held back by Sara’s ghost. Mike understands that Sara has been influencing the townspeople all along. Mike asks for Jo’s help and successfully enters the studio. Sara’s ghost throws things around, getting into a fight with Jo’s spirit.

Mike finds a trapdoor under the studio. It leads to a storage space, where Mike sees the ghost of a Black boy trying to ward him away. Mike reminds the boy that he isn’t at peace. He finds the plastic owls and sees one of them has been hollowed out. Inside is a box of Jo’s. The box contains documents of her research, as well as the negative of her swimsuit photograph. Jo had hidden them on her last visit to Sara Laughs.

Mike reads an 1865 newspaper clipping about Jared Devore’s return from the American Civil War and realizes that he would have been much older than Sara Tidwell when she settled in Tidwell’s Meadow. He also reads a 1933 clipping about Bill Dean’s father, Fred, losing his daughter, Carla, while trying to rescue her from the TR-90 wildfire. The article frames her death as accidental. By the time Fred found her, she was already dead.

The last clipping triggers a vision of the past. Mike sees that Carla had located Fred after all, but Fred took her to the lake and drowned her. Mike tries to interfere in his vision, convinced that Carla is his daughter, Kia. He cannot grasp her because he is only a ghost through time. Mike reawakens under Jo’s studio and resolves to end the curse.

Mike goes through Jo’s notes and finds a genealogy for his family. The family tree reveals that Mike is distantly related to Kenny Auster. This explains why Kenny and Bill had elected to stay away from Sara Laughs on the day of the storm. They knew that one of them would have to kill Kyra, leaving Mike behind to fulfill the curse.

Kyra is still asleep when Mike returns to the house. Mike realizes that Jo had kept her pregnancy a secret from him because she had already discovered the truth about the curse and feared for Kia’s life. Mike struggles against the influence of the curse and succeeds in draining his bathtub. Mike resolves to help Sara find peace to end the curse.

Mike packs several tools, including the Stenomask, and brings them to the Green Lady, which he deduces is the site of Sara’s burial. On the way, he encounters the ghosts of Max, who has blended with Jared, and the men from the Fryeburg Fair. Max-Jared explains that TR-90 had been idyllic in his time, but it has since lost its beauty. They want to reclaim the beauty of the world they knew, which they claim was stolen by Sara when she assumed she could “walk there like a white gal” (483). Max-Jared pretends that nobody wanted to engage with Sara, but Mike sees through his lie, indicating that Sara fit well into the life of the town.

One quiet Sunday, while most of the town was at church singing hymns, Sara had been walking around the lake when a group of men led by Jared harassed her. Mike’s granduncle, Harry Auster, was among them. Sara argued that she was walking in a common area, but the men refused to let her pass. While blocking her way, Jared tripped on a rock and split his pants. This caused Sara to laugh. Jared and the men grew even more angry and raped her. On his way home from picking berries, Kito stumbled upon the scene and tried to get the men to stop hurting his mother. The men apprehended Kito.

Mike reaches for his Stenomask during a reprieve from his vision. He digs into the spot where the Green Lady is pointing and hears the voice of Sara urging him to stop. The Green Lady turns into Sara and tells him that she won’t be done with her revenge until Kyra is dead. She wants to take Kyra in exchange for Kito. Sara transforms into the shroud-ghoul that appeared in Mike’s nightmares. Jo’s ghost appears as well and holds Sara back, claiming that Sara brought in an “Outsider.” As they scuffle, Mike digs into the spot, seeing the moment Jared decided Kito must die. Harry Auster drowned Kito. Sara suffocated and died soon after.

Mike excavates the corpses of Sara and Kito, dissolving their bones with lye. Sara’s spirit fades away. Jo remains and, although Mike can no longer hear her voice, he can tell that she is saying her magic words again before she disappears. He soon hears a voice alerting him to check on Kyra. When Mike returns to the house, Kyra is missing.

Mike can no longer feel Kyra or Jo in his mind. He finds a strand of white hair in the house, hinting that Whitmore abducted Kyra. Although Max’s funeral was held in California, Whitmore had remained in TR-90 all along.

Mike follows the lake path down to Warrington’s, which has been greatly damaged by trees that fell during the storm. He hears Kyra trying to get away from Whitmore, so he intercepts them at the collapsing dock. Mike nearly sneaks up on Whitmore but Kyra gives him away, so he runs up to Whitmore and combats her. In the ensuing scuffle, Mike tears off Whitmore’s wig and initially thinks that she is Max in disguise. He soon realizes the truth: Whitmore is Max’s daughter.

Mattie’s ghost takes the form of water and pulls Whitmore off the dock. Whitmore grabs Mike’s hand for safety. Mike tries to shake her off. Whitmore is ultimately impaled by a sharp piece of dock wood.

Kyra tries to embrace her mother through the water, begging her to stay. Mattie tells her something Mike cannot hear, then vanishes into the lake. After Mike ushers Kyra to safety, Kyra tells him that Mattie told her to be good, but not sad. Kyra finds this difficult to do. She whispers another message to Mike, to which he nods.

As Mike and Kyra recuperate from the storm in Sara Laughs, Kyra decides that she no longer wants to wear ribbons in her hair. Mike burns the ribbons in the woodstove and throws in his manuscript for My Childhood Friend as well. He explains that the manuscript was a love letter and that it is bad to keep love letters around because they will haunt him. Mike gifts the box from Jo’s studio to Kyra because she finds it so pretty. She promises to put treasures in it and recalls that Jo is one of her “fridgeafator people.” Mike shows her the photo negative of Jo.

The county sheriff visits Mike to ask if he has Kyra in his custody. Mike presents her while she is sleeping.

Mike and Kyra spend the following Christmas with Frank. Mike is in the process of adopting Kyra, but the legal process is slow because he is applying as a single father.

Mike tells Frank everything about his experiences in Sara Laughs, including the influence that the curse had on him. It is also revealed that Whitmore was lying about Mattie’s inheritance: Kyra will receive none of Max’s wealth. Storrow is traumatized by his experiences and has become a more serious person. He is optimistic, however, that Mike will win custody of Kyra. It is also revealed that Mattie’s final words at the dock entrusted Kyra to Mike’s care.

Frank acknowledges that he believes everything Mike has told him because Jo and Kyra believe in it too. Since the day of the storm, Mike has found total quiet in Sara Laughs. He still lives there, having sold his Derry house. Mike reveals that Footman was incarcerated for his role in Mattie’s death. Osgood was the driver of the car. Whitmore’s relationship to Max is confirmed, though it is also discovered that she had leukemia and was wearing a wig to hide her baldness. Mike intuits that Whitmore wanted to kill Kyra for the same reasons Max set the fire when he left TR-90 in the 1930s: It exemplifies her inheritance of Max’s covetous nature. Max had really planned to keep Kyra for himself, but when he returned to TR-90, Sara’s influence drove a subconscious desire to kill her instead.

Mike feels sorry for Sara, knowing that her revenge was warranted. Having gone through Jo’s research notes, he learns what happened to the crying boy, Reg Tidwell, Jr. Following Sara and Kito’s deaths, the Tidwells remained in the meadow to bring justice to their family. The old-timers set up a trap for Junior, killing him to scare the Tidwells away. 

Mike also discovers that the Green Lady didn’t mark the spot where Sara and Kito were originally buried. The men who were haunted by their roles in the killings moved the bodies to put their spirits to rest. Frank intuits that the transfer was influenced by Sara’s ghost, enabling her to curse the lake residents. Similarly, Jo had influenced Mike’s return to Sara Laughs, hoping that he would save Kyra from Max and Sara. Mike remains cautious about the “Outsider” that used Sara’s ghost to do its bidding and worries that it will come back for him.

Mike has given up writing, though he has yet to tell Harold about his retirement. The decision stems from Mattie’s death, which makes the deaths he often writes about feel in poor taste. He relates his decision to that of English novelist Thomas Hardy, who gave up fiction writing after finishing Jude the Obscure because he felt the exercise had become futile. Recalling Bartleby, the Scrivener, Mike ends by saying he “prefers not to” write.