That afternoon, Steve isolates himself at home in his grief while Jocelyn leaves to be with Matt at the hospital. As he recalls the suicidal ideation he experienced immediately after the viewing, he visits Fletcher’s grave and tries to avoid thinking about the possibility that Katherine brought the dog back to life. Lawrence finds Steve there and confesses his suspicion: Jaydon may have used their recording of Katherine’s whispers to drive Tyler to suicide. Steve realizes that if Lawrence is right, he contributed to Tyler’s death by ensuring that Jaydon, Justin, and Burak took all the blame.

The revelation causes him to throw up. Using Tyler’s laptop, Steve then finds the video of Tyler and Lawrence searching for Fletcher; as the boys run away, the video captures what appears to be the dog. The video convinces Steve that Katherine can raise the dead.

As Steve watches, owls gather outside, and one crashes through a window. Both the owls’ presence and a choking sensation cause Steve to panic and run; after partially falling downstairs, he vomits what looks like an owl pellet made of Tyler’s hair. Desperate for his son’s return, Steve begs Katherine to bring Tyler back. In response, she materializes in his house.

Steve follows Katherine to the stables. There, she directs him to a pair of bolt cutters. Steve recalls Tyler’s question about whether he would save his son’s life over the lives of everyone else in town and suppresses the last of his misgivings: He cuts the chains from Katherine’s body, causing an immediate disturbance felt throughout Black Spring.

Katherine then leads Steve back inside the house, where he retrieves scissors and tweezers. Before cutting the stitches on Katherine’s mouth and eyes, Steve attempts to get her to promise to resurrect Tyler, but she merely points to the thread. Two more psychic shockwaves ripple through Black Spring and beyond as Katherine opens first her mouth and then her eyes, causing a failure of all power and communications. The final shockwave also inflicts overwhelming despair and suicidal impulses on any resident outside the town’s borders. Once her eyes are open, Katherine gestures for him to move away. Horrified, Steve flees into the woods.

In Newburgh, Jocelyn feels the shockwaves and is overcome with a suicidal urge. After calling Steve and receiving no answer, she experiences the same vision she had in Thailand, including images of dead children—Matt among them. A phone call from her father, Milford, jolts her back to reality, and she tells him that she needs to return to Black Spring. She prevents Matt from harming himself before fleeing the hospital with him and Milford. As they drive toward Black Spring, their despair intensifies; to Milford’s confusion, both Jocelyn and Matt begin hitting their heads against the car doors. At the town line, the curse’s power repels Milford, an outsider, forcing him to abandon them. Jocelyn carries the catatonic Matt into a town plunged into supernatural darkness.

Meanwhile, the HEX team discovers all utilities and communications are down. Townsfolk attempting to leave are driven back by suicidal compulsions, realizing they are trapped. Panic is already brewing even before someone announces that Katherine has been seen with her eyes open. Though there are no signs of Katherine taking revenge—in fact, her whereabouts are unknown—riots break out, people barricade themselves in their homes, and a wave of suicides begins. Councilman Colton Mathers jumps to his death from his balcony.

Late that night, Katherine appears in the Hoffman home and gives their children, Joey and Naomi, ancient vegetables before leading them away. They are later seen with her, dressed in old-fashioned clothing. Near dawn, Katherine appears to Griselda in a dream, delivering a cryptic message about sacrifice and love. Griselda misinterprets the vision, believing that she must sacrifice Jaydon to appease the witch and save the town.

The HEX team debates what to do now that Katherine’s eyes are open; Marty Keller advocates for shooting her, but the others feel that the situation is likely hopeless. They’re discussing who could have cut her stitches—Grim wonders if it was Steve—when a rat that looks diseased bites Marty.

Grim decides to drive to West Point with Claire and Warren. However, they barely make it outside of town before being hit by intense despair and having to turn around. Standing near the town limits, they make noise and shoot off flares and fireworks in the hopes of attracting outside help.

By the next morning, an armed mob has gathered in the square near the church. Marty, who looks visibly sick, forces his way over to Grim and reports that riots are breaking out everywhere and that Mathers has died by suicide. Grim tries to calm the gathered residents, but people continue to shout and jostle one another. John Blanchard incites the crowd, demanding that they sacrifice whoever opened Katherine’s eyes. When the mob turns on Jaydon, Griselda locks her son out of their home, abandoning him to the mob. The crowd attacks and lynches Jaydon. Marty Keller fires his gun into the air to stop the violence.

At that moment, Katherine appears with the two Hoffman children, looking peaceful: “There was no trace of malice: just a mother and her children” (356). However, when she sees Jaydon’s body, her expression turns sorrowful. As people begin to beg her for mercy, a panicked Marty shoots at her but misses, killing both children. Katherine curses Marty, who dies instantly of supernatural smallpox. She then pounds her fists on the ground, causing the earth to crack open as the townspeople flee. Grim realizes that the town has “created the evil that was Katherine” and that they are now doomed (359).

Three days later, on Christmas Eve, Steve awakens in the woods after being delirious. Dreading the results of freeing Katherine and still unsure whether Tyler is alive, he begins to head back toward town. As he does, images from the last few days come back to him: people scourging themselves, dying from the plague, and lighting the church on fire. Katherine stood by throughout, at one point seeming to gather all the children into a domed structure, “On top of [which] was Katherine […] pouring warm milk from a silver jug. It trickled down on all sides like a perfectly symmetrical fountain and was licked up by hundreds of eager children’s tongues” (384). However, this image then changed into a grotesque vision of Griselda giving birth to pâté that stuck to the children in “globs.” As Steven realizes that the town sees what it wants to see, he recalls the end of the vision: the townsfolk hurling rocks at Katherine, toppling her from her perch and causing the whole structure to collapse, the children “crashing down […] in a rain of broken bones and clattering limbs” (365).

When Steve reaches Black Spring, he finds that it has descended into fire and mob violence. Katherine appears on Temple Hill: He begs her to put an end to the chaos but then realizes that she is not causing it. She directs his attention to the burning church, and Steve realizes Jocelyn and Matt are trapped inside. When he asks where Tyler is, she continues to point. As Steve makes his way through the crowd, the mob recognizes Steve, whom Bammy Delarosa accuses of opening Katherine’s eyes. The crowd beats him and throws him into the burning building, shouting “Witch!”

Inside, Steve’s anger mounts: He feels everyone in the town is guilty but Tyler. As he finds a hidden cellar door, he hears Matt calling to him and turns to see Jocelyn trying to protect their son from the flames. As Matt runs toward him, Steve reflects on Katherine’s decision to kill one child to save the other. He then escapes through a hidden cellar passage, locking the door and leaving his family to die. He falls down a set of stairs into darkness, thinking about Tyler before he passes out.

On Temple Hill, Katherine, weeping, performs a final incantation. The remaining townspeople become entranced, walk to the Hudson River, and drown themselves in a mass suicide.

On Christmas morning, Steve awakens alone on his dining room floor with a broken jaw. He looks out at a silent town and discovers a gray stitch from Katherine’s eye on the table. He realizes his selfish actions have repeated the centuries-old cycle of cruelty and breaks down: “Sacrificing one child to save the other hadn’t been Katherine’s choice, it had been the decision made by the judges […] Did he really believe that he deserved to welcome Tyler with hands that were filthy with the blood of his wife and second son” (379). He hears a knock and sees the silhouette of a boy he believes is the resurrected Tyler. Terrified of facing the consequences, Steve finds a suturing kit and, as the knocking continues, begins to sew his own eyes shut.