Mary

Forty-nine-year-old Mary Mudgett goes to the doctor. She doesn’t fully describe what’s wrong, but the doctor immediately assumes that she’s going through perimenopause and dismisses her concerns. Mary tries to convince him that something feels off, but he assures her that her symptoms are textbook. Mary smiles and leaves, unwilling to upset the doctor.

Mary returns to her apartment and tells her Loved Ones—tiny porcelain human figurines—about her trip to the doctor. She imagines her Loved Ones talking back to her as she explains how difficult it is to be a woman. A voice in her head tells her that life is almost over since she will soon be 50. She has always heard this voice, but recently it has seemed to be getting louder.

Mary goes to the bathroom, intent on confirming that her doctor was wrong to ignore what she was saying. She looks in the mirror and watches her reflection rot until she feels faint and looks away.

Mary has been hallucinating that the faces of women her age are rotting for a while. She knows that she should have been more assertive with the doctor, but the voice in her head tells her that it would have been a waste of time. Mary feels better in the basement of her workplace, an independent bookstore. The basement is where they keep the more obscure titles, which means that few people come downstairs to disturb her. After she finishes shelving books, she notices an expensive leather notebook from the stationary section. Annoyed that someone misplaced the item, she wonders if she should start journaling to get control of her feelings.

In the employee lounge, her manager mistakes her for a customer and tells her to leave before realizing his mistake. He’s been meaning to talk to Mary, so he takes her into the employee bathroom for privacy. Mary at first imagines that she’s going to get a raise, but it soon becomes clear that he’s firing her.

Mary returns home to a letter from her landlord. She tells her Loved Ones that her manager fired her because of her age and that he meant to fire her weeks earlier and forgot, but she is embarrassed to be ranting to the figurines, which makes her feel mentally unwell. Still, she also tells them about another time she felt invisible and forgotten—when she got left behind on a school field trip to a museum. That was the day her parents died in a house fire; when she was rescued from the museum, she had to go live with her mean aunt Nadine.

Mary pulls out the expensive leather notebook from work, which she decided to take with her as a going-away present. The phone rings—it’s Nadine. Frightened, Mary answers, but then she hangs up.

Nadine leaves a voicemail asking for help, and Mary calls back. Nadine’s daughter Brenda, who lives with Nadine and cares for her, is on vacation; Nadine is alone and frightened. She wants Mary to come to stay with her. Mary lies, saying that she has a lot going on. As Nadine continues to talk, Mary opens the letter from her landlord and reads that the rent will soon almost double. Nadine offers to pay Mary to come.

As Mary packs her suitcase to go to Arizona, she feels like she’s going home. Helping Nadine will make her feel useful. She packs her Loved Ones and then briefly goes into a trance as she looks around her apartment. She comes to right when it’s time to leave. As she walks out of the building, she hears screaming from her neighbors because something happened to their dog.

On the plane, Mary begins to write in her journal but cannot get past two words: “I am.” She closes her eyes and has a recurring dream. In her dream, she is running in the dark through crawlspaces in a place that feels familiar. In a spotlight, she sees three women, naked and wearing hoods. They invite her to put a hood on as well. She doesn’t want the hood because it’s wet with blood, but one of the women tells her that she should wear it because “he” is in the crawlspace too and is coming for them. Mary feels pain similar to a gunshot and then wakes up. She is startled by the man next to her, bumping his Bloody Mary, which spills all over her crotch. As she cleans herself up, the man next to her continues inching over the armrest, leading Mary to imagine killing him with her pen.

In a taxi in Arizona, Mary gets a bloody nose. She is immediately in awe of her surroundings and the vastness of the desert. Her taxi driver tells her that she’s fortunate to have found him since few people know where Arroyo, her hometown, is. She tells him that she’s visiting for her work as a writer, and he tells her that he moved to Arroyo from Minnesota for religious reasons. As they drive into town, Mary gasps because she sees the mansion from her recurring dream. The driver identifies the building as the Cross House. It now serves as the town’s hospital, town hall, and private school, but Mary remembers that it used to be the mayor’s house.

When they arrive at Nadine’s, Mary asks the driver to wait so that she can go inside and ask Nadine for money to pay him. She walks into the house and finds Nadine sleeping on the floor. Mary shakes Nadine, who is annoyed to be woken. Nadine refuses to give Mary money, and Mary doesn’t quite have enough to cover her ride, so she apologizes to the driver. Before he drives off, she notices that he has an eyeball tattoo on the back of his neck.

When Mary goes back into the house, she is shocked at how dark and dirty it is. She suggests opening the curtains, but Nadine refuses, chastising Mary for bringing a stranger to her house. The two make awkward small talk. Nadine eventually turns on a light, which allows Mary to see how messy the house is. Startled by Nadine’s dog, Chipotle, and annoyed with Nadine, Mary decides to go put her belongings in Brenda’s old room. She is surprised to see that the room is very clean. As she unpacks her Loved Ones, Mary catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Scared to see her reflection begin to rot yet again, she drops and breaks one of her Loved Ones. She decides to take a shower.

Mary is disgusted by how dirty the bathroom is. As she gets undressed, she remembers her childhood bully Anna-Louise Connerton. In middle school, Anna-Louise and her friends stole Mary’s clothes from the locker room, which led to Mary having to walk around school naked to find them. As she showers, Mary reflects on how much her younger self suffered for being weird.

Suddenly, Mary notices in horror that standing in the bathtub with her is a naked woman with a bloody hood on her head. Mary tries to get out of the tub but slips and passes out.

Nadine takes Mary to the hospital to get her head checked out. Nadine is very nervous since she doesn’t like leaving the house. Mary feels like she’s been to the Cross House hospital before, but she couldn’t have been—the hospital wasn’t built until after she left Arroyo.

As a nurse named Nancy Ruiz examines Mary, Dr. William Burton bursts into the room. He tells Mary that fainting isn’t uncommon for menopausal women; she corrects him—she’s perimenopausal and hasn’t actually entered menopause. Upset that he’s dismissing her so quickly, Mary tells him about all of her symptoms, including her hallucinations. He writes her a prescription for a medication that Nancy says helped her during perimenopause.

After Dr. Burton leaves, Nancy comforts Mary. When Mary confides about her money and health problems, Nancy offers Mary a job in the hospital’s File Room. Nancy is trying to make Arroyo a nicer place; she shows Mary a flyer for an Easter egg hunt that she’s organizing. Nancy lives one town over but wants to bring the community together. She encourages Mary to attend since it will be the day after Mary’s birthday. Mary most likely won’t attend because Nadine’s daughter Brenda will be home by then. Nancy is surprised to hear this—everyone in town knows that Brenda left town for good to be with her girlfriend.

At home, Nadine makes chicken cacciatore, Mary’s childhood favorite meal, out of pity. Mary asks why Nadine stays in Arroyo. Nadine explains that while the town is creepy, at least she understands it. Mary asks Nadine to pay her for coming to stay, but Nadine admits that she doesn’t have money right now; however, Nadine vehemently tells Mary that she shouldn’t take the job that Nancy offered either. Nadine doesn’t trust the people at the Cross House. Mary asks about Brenda’s return and whether Nadine really is dying. In response, Nadine slaps her across the face.

To get back in Nadine’s good graces, Mary cleans the house. She needs to use the bathroom but is afraid to go back into it after what happened earlier. In the bathroom, the shower curtain is closed. Mary pulls it back, sees the dead woman again, and realizes that this must be a ghost. As she tries to communicate with the ghost, Nadine bursts in.