61 pages • 2-hour read
Hex
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Part 1, Chapters 13-17Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of animal death, graphic violence, child death, animal cruelty, and cursing.
Part 1: “2DAY? #stoning”
Part 1, Chapter 13 Summary
Fletcher is still missing the following morning. The Grants’ neighbors, Pete and Mary VanderMeer, arrive to offer comfort. Robert Grim also appears, reporting that no cameras captured Fletcher escaping. Steve shows him and Pete that the kennel was likely opened from the outside, not accidentally left open.
Steve, Pete, and Grim search the woods on Mount Misery, where they find a fairy ring of poisonous death cap mushrooms; Pete says that his mother told him fairy rings indicated the presence of witches and that he had to walk past them with his eyes closed. Steven questions when Katherine last “caused trouble” for the town, and Grim recounts the 1887 Eliza Hoffman case that led to the founding of HEX. Eliza, a young girl, disappeared in the woods, and soon afterward, the local creek ran with blood. Because Eliza’s parents were prominent industrialists before their move to Black Spring, news of some of the occurrences in the town leaked to the press, leading to the establishment of HEX. As Grim finishes this story, the men find Fletcher’s body hanging from a tree; Grim remarks that it looks like a suicide. The family holds a small funeral in the backyard.
Later, Grim returns with security footage showing Katherine leading Fletcher into the woods. Upon seeing this, Matt blames his father, arguing that Steve should have made an offering at the festival. Steve asks Tyler whether he knows of anything that could have provoked this. Tyler initially denies knowing about any encounters between Katherine and Fletcher but is on the verge of revealing what happened when one of the family’s horses, Paladin, crashes through the dining room window while their other horse flees. As they search for the cause of the horses’ behavior, townsfolk discover blood in Philosopher’s Creek.
Part 1, Chapter 14 Summary
On Sunday, townspeople gather at Griselda’s Butchery to discuss the bloody creek and Fletcher’s death. Griselda listens as John Blanchard speaks to a crowd outside, warning them of “damnation” and cautioning that Steve is not the only one to blame for the recent omens. Reflecting on events that evening, Griselda believes something significant must be made to appease Katherine, concluding that Katherine’s kidnapping of Fletcher signals that the witch wants a “live offering.” Her son, Jaydon, returns home with a black eye that he claims he provoked by making a “stupid” comment.
Jaydon’s fear steels Griselda’s resolve. She drives to a petting zoo in Monroe, breaks in, and steals a peacock. Later, Griselda finds Katherine in the woods. She sees and discards another offering, a pig’s heart. Asking Katherine to “make everything the way it was before” (175), Griselda then ties a bag containing the live peacock to Katherine’s chains. Before leaving, she arranges the bird’s tail feathers, believing that the bird will go up in sacrificial flames when Katherine disappears.
Part 1, Chapter 15 Summary
On Monday morning, Marty Keller calls Grim, telling him that he has to see something. As Grim and Warren Castillo go to meet Marty in the woods, Grim reflects on a conversation with Colton Mathers in which the Town Council head vehemently rejected Grim’s proposal to report the latest disturbances to West Point. When Warren and Grim arrive, Marty leads them to Katherine: A shopping bag containing a live peacock is tied to her chains, and there are other offerings nearby. As Grim tries to cut the bag free, Katherine grabs the peacock’s feathers. The bird dies instantly; its feathers turn gray, some crumbling to dust as smoke rises from the bag.
Katherine deviates from her pattern, roaming the town but not disappearing and reappearing elsewhere. Warren suggests that she wants to keep the peacock, which would vanish if she jumped from one place to another. By evening, the blood in Philosopher’s Creek is more obvious. Katherine eventually goes to the Town Hall, still holding the dead peacock.
Part 1, Chapter 16 Summary
Late on Monday night, Tyler drafts—but does not post—a blog entry reflecting on the guilt he feels and the danger Jaydon poses. He declares OYE over, now sure that the town’s beliefs about Katherine were right. As he writes, Tyler hears Matt moving around and goes to investigate; Matt says that he heard and saw Fletcher scratching to be let in. They then hear a dog that sounds like Fletcher barking. They are soon joined by their parents, and Steve and Tyler go outside to investigate; they find nothing, and Steve insists that the barking couldn’t be Fletcher.
The following day, the creek has stopped bleeding. However, Lawrence texts Tyler saying that he heard the dog, too, so that night, the two boys sneak into the woods to investigate. They leave a trail of dog kibble and film their search, including the sounds made by an unseen animal that Tyler is convinced is a dog. As he’s reminding Lawrence that Katherine can supposedly raise the dead, an owl spooks them, and they race back to their homes.
Two days later, Tyler watches the GoPro footage and notices “something terrifying.” Just then, however, Lawrence alerts Tyler to trouble in the woods. Tyler begins filming as they discover Jaydon, Justin, and Burak abusing Katherine with sticks: “Her sewn-up mouth is a crooked grimace of horror and she’s desperately clutching the charred peacock feathers” (202). They force Katherine into an empty culvert and stone her until she vanishes. Lawrence is injured when he tries to intervene.
Following the assault, Jaydon spots Tyler filming. He gives chase, but Tyler and the injured Lawrence escape with the footage.
Part 1, Chapter 17 Summary
That same afternoon, Steve and Jocelyn argue about the situation in Black Spring; Jocelyn accuses Steve of ignoring the full import of what is happening and their children’s “natural” fear, eventually implying that Steve is to blame for their living in the town in the first place. Afterward, Steve reassures himself that phenomena like the barking have a rational explanation; however, he is surprised and dismayed by the resentments the argument surfaced.
The next afternoon, Jocelyn yells for Steve, saying that Tyler isn’t speaking or moving. Steve concludes that he is in shock and comforts him; as Tyler begins to regain awareness, Steve proposes that Jocelyn and Matt leave so that he and Tyler can speak privately. After they leave, Tyler confesses his involvement in the OYE project, showing his father the video of Katherine’s stoning.
Fearing the town’s punishments, like Doodletown, Steve acts to protect his son. He drives Tyler to Newburgh to escape HEX surveillance. There, Steve has Tyler erase all digital evidence of the project. He feels some qualms about devising a cover story for Tyler and Lawrence but suppresses them out of love for Tyler: “Despite the fact that Steve loved Matt and Jocelyn with all his heart […] Tyler would always be number one” (219).
Steve and Tyler return home. Steve reconciles with Jocelyn but tells her only a partial truth to protect Tyler.
Part 1, Chapters 13-17 Analysis
These chapters mark the novel’s pivotal turn from controlled supernatural containment to an uncontrolled descent into primal fear, demonstrating how ancient superstition can pierce the fragile artifice of modern order. The community’s response to Fletcher’s death and the subsequent omens illustrates the core theme of The Inescapable Past in a Modern, Technological Age, where sophisticated surveillance and rational thought prove impotent against a history that refuses to stay buried—quite literally, in Fletcher’s case. That Tyler is implied to have caught footage of Fletcher on his GoPro underscores the role his own experiments have played in this outcome. Indeed, his blog entry reveals a dawning, horrified awareness of his project’s failure, as he asks himself, “[why] did I call our project Open Your Eyes? It’s weird how things make so much sense at first and seem so fucked up later on” (188). His GoPro camera, intended to be a tool of enlightenment and rebellion, ultimately becomes a passive recorder of irrational forces bubbling up despite modernity’s efforts to suppress them. Similarly, while HEX cameras track Katherine’s movements, they fail to prevent or explain her deviation from established patterns, rendering the town’s primary defense mechanism obsolete. For instance, the footage of Katherine leading Fletcher into the woods confirms the family’s fears without providing any means to act, thus amplifying their panic, as evidenced by Matt’s response. The novel thus depicts the town’s technology as feeding the very primal impulses it is supposed to keep in check. Griselda Holst’s decision to make a live offering is the most significant manifestation of this, while the presence of the pig’s heart confirms that Griselda’s actions are part of a broader resurgence of superstitious violence.
The erosion of rationality is most acutely traced through the character of Steve Grant, whose scientific worldview is systematically broken down by the unfolding horror. Though pragmatic about Katherine’s reality and the potential threat she poses, Steve represents modern skepticism when contrasted with much of Black Spring. For instance, he physically kicks apart a “fairy ring” of mushrooms, a small but significant act of defiance against the folklore that governs his town. However, the inexplicable nature of Fletcher’s death begins his unwilling conversion. The phantom barking he and his family hear further chips away at his rationalist foundation, forcing him to confront a reality for which science cannot account.
This internal conflict coincides with another: a growing selfish impulse. The interrelationship between the two is evident in his argument with Jocelyn, in which Steve’s failing attempts to suppress “irrational” tendencies coincide with implicit divisions within the family: Jocelyn and Matt versus Steve and Tyler. Steve reflects, for example, “He didn’t know how to deal with Matt’s mood swings, especially when he got downright mean. Jocelyn was better at it” (206). Steve’s alignment of himself with Tyler culminates in his response to the latter’s psychological crisis. Faced with his son’s catatonic state, Steve abandons his principles by choosing to orchestrate a cover-up. His final justification, “[of] course you saved your own child. That’s what love was” (218), signifies a complete surrender to an insular logic concerned only with protecting one’s own and foreshadows his eventual “sacrifice” of even Jocelyn and Matt. His journey illustrates how The Tyranny of Fear and the Erosion of Humanity dismantle not just social order but the very foundations of individual identity and ethics.
These events decisively reframe the novel’s central conflict, shifting focus from a supernatural threat to human depravity. Likewise, through Jaydon’s escalating sadism, Katherine is transformed from a spectral entity of terror into a passive object of persecution. His violent attacks, culminating in a ritualistic stoning, again mirror the historical intolerance that created the curse in the first place. This dynamic explores The Slippery Nature of Victimhood and Villainy, suggesting that the true horror lies in the cycle of human violence. Jaydon’s actions represent the darkness within the community itself, which Katherine’s presence merely reflects—not creates. The stoning scene proves that the greatest danger to Black Spring is not the witch it fears but the monstrous potential lurking within its own citizens.
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