51 pages • 1-hour read
The Bones Beneath My Skin
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Chapter 16-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 16 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains descriptions of imprisonment, mass suicide, and murder.
The next day, Art goes off to see horses while Nate explores the compound. He still feels suspicious of this group and their motivations, as they seem a little unnaturally happy. Nate encounters Dolores, and after discussing Art, she tells him where he can find the laundry room. As Nate makes his way toward it, he spies a door locked with a padlock. He hears Peter speaking from behind another door, and when Peter hears Nate in turn, he opens the door and quizzes him about what he is doing there.
Nate tells Peter that Alex saved Art’s life by freeing her from the Mountain. Peter expresses skepticism, then tells Nate that he considers Art to be more like a god than a friend; he states that Nate has been tricked by the pleasant, curious, little-girl persona that the alien creature inside of her body is using. They begin to argue, with Nate telling Peter that he resembles the infamous cult leader and mass murderer Jim Jones with his tactics and his speechifying. Eventually, they reach an understanding, and Nate apologizes for his comments. He asks Peter what is behind the locked door, and Peter tells him that it’s a basement filled with dangerous and unstable chemicals.
When Art and Alex get back from visiting the horses, Nate tells them what happened with Peter. That night, after Art goes to sleep, Nate and Alex sneak downstairs and have sex. They go to sleep afterward. Suddenly, Nate is awakened by a sharp pain. He sees Peter leaning over him, saying that they’ll all be returning to the stars. Then Nate passes out.
Chapter 17 Summary
Nate becomes aware that he is in the midst of a strange dream in which he is attempting to stop his father from shooting his mother. However, he cannot prevent the murder from occurring, and he watches the scene play out as Art stands next to him, begging for help. She takes him over to a panicking Alex, and he and Nate both realize that they are trapped inside a dream that Art is occupying.
Suddenly, Nate awakens groggily to realize that he is strapped to a chair in front of a metal table, with Alex at the opposite end. Peter is standing next to them, explaining that they have been paralyzed by a poison that he administered to them earlier. Peter explains his beliefs. He asserts that during his time with Art at the Mountain, she had chosen him to spread her holy gospel among the people. Once he had been expelled from the experiment, he started the cult to spread his beliefs. Now, Peter turns Nate’s head to the left and shows him a room full of bunkbeds, with each of the cultists, unmoving, atop the mattresses. They have all died by suicide to achieve salvation, following Peter’s teachings.
Peter brings Art into the room. She is strapped to a cruel device that is continuously electrocuting her, preventing her from using her telekinesis. He asks her to bring him to her ship, but she spits at him that there is no ship. However, Peter refuses to believe her. He places a gun between Nate and Alex and forces them to play Russian roulette; each is forced to point the gun at the other and pull the trigger. They are still under the influence of the drug that Peter previously administered.
In the midst of hallucinating, Nate imagines sitting at a table with Alex and Art. Art explains that she chose the two of them because they had managed to create a home for her out of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.
In the real world, Art tells Peter that she’ll help him get back to her ship, which she’d just claimed doesn’t exist. Peter releases Art from the contraption, which also allows her to give Nate and Alex back their free will. Alex grabs the gun and shoots Peter in the head, killing him. Suddenly, the room begins to shake. Art announces that they have been found once again by the Mountain.
Chapter 18 Summary
Art draws Nate and Alex into her mind, showing them how she subjectively experiences reality and explaining that she will soon be drawn home by her family. Outside the room, the forces from the Mountain are still trying to break in, but they are temporarily stymied by the locked and reinforced door. Alex tries to convince Art to flee Earth right now, leaving them behind to deal with the Mountain, but Art refuses to do so.
Art leads them up the stairs, past the door that the Mountain’s soldiers are trying to break down. She uses her telekinetic powers to blast the door down, then they move through the house as Art throws the soldiers around with her mind like toys. They step out of the house, and Nate prepares himself for a possible death. The soldiers surround them, weapons pointed. Over a megaphone, Randy tells them that they have nowhere to run. In response, Art grabs a walkie-talkie and indicates that she wants to speak to Randy.
Randy tries to tell Alex and Nate that Art has infected their minds and is controlling their behavior, but they refuse to believe him. Randy gives the order to shoot Alex and Nate and leave Art alive. Nate prepares himself, remembering images from his childhood, then realizes that the images are intermixed with scenes from Alex’s childhood, as Art’s powers are merging their three minds together.
Nate opens his eyes and sees “hundreds of bullets, floating in midair” (350); Art has paused them in mid-flight, saving Nate and Alex. The bullets drop safely to the floor. Art starts to head down the steps, and the soldiers panic, continuing to fire, but none of the shots find their mark. Randy pulls his gun to shoot Art at point-blank range, but Nate throws himself toward them and wraps his body around Art. He hears a gunshot, expecting it to impact him, but he looks up to see a hole in Randy’s head; Alex has shot him with the rifle from the porch. Randy collapses to the ground, dead.
The narrative then shifts forward abruptly in time, to show what the world learned about the conflict at the compound. Peter and his cult are blamed for the events by the government, with most media sources comparing it to another Waco. Ricky and Ruth never hear from Nate again, and while Ricky rarely thinks of his little brother, Ruth knows to her core that Nate was involved in the events at the compound, and she hopes that he was able to escape.
Chapter 19 Summary
The narrative shifts back in time to just after the trio survives their conflict with Randy and the soldiers from the Mountain. Art stands shaking in the aftermath of using her powers. She, Nate, and Alex throw their things into the truck they’d arrived in and leave. They spend the night at a cheap motel, watching the news coverage of the events at the farm. Alex excoriates Nate for putting himself in danger to protect Art, but Nate kisses him instead. They awake in the morning when Art tells them that it’s time for her to leave.
Two days later, they pull into West Virginia at a nondescript spot in the road, where Art directs them to stop. A hole opens in the air, and Art explains that this is the way her species travels across the galaxy. Nate feels a multitude of thoughts and voices in his head—Art’s family, reaching out to her across the distance. He feels them puling his memories apart, inspecting the time that he spent with Art and Alex, the bad times as well as the good. Art answers a number of questions that Nate cannot hear, speaking about him and Alex. Art turns to them, a strange expression on her face, and suddenly Nate is knocked to the ground.
Nate and Alex awaken on the ground, alone, and the tear in the air is now gone. Suddenly, they hear a noise from behind them and whirl around.
Epilogue Summary
It’s the middle of winter in Nain, Newfoundland and a man named Nolan leaves town in his truck. He thinks about his husband, Aaron, and the many years they’ve been together in this place. He arrives at the cabin that he and Aaron share, meeting him and their dog on the front porch.
Nolan suddenly realizes, “It’s time, isn’t it?” (373). Aaron agrees, and they both express apprehension about the event that is about to happen. The narrative reveals that Nolan is actually Nate and Aaron is Alex. It is now 18 years after the main events of the novel, and they have both long since changed their names and gotten married.
Nate remembers the moment, years before, when the light faded in West Virginia. He and Alex both expected Art to return home, but she was still standing in front of them. She explained that she had chosen humanity, deciding to stay with Nate and Alex and claim them as her family. Soon afterward, she started to age just like a regular girl. Now, she goes by the name of Ellie and lives with Nate and Alex in the cabin.
At dinner, Art tells Nate and Alex that she knows it is time. After many long years, her family is returning again. However, they want more than to retrieve Art; they want to reveal themselves to the world and hopefully help usher in an era of peace. A few days later, Nate and Alex set up a camera in front of the spot where Art knows the aliens will arrive. They turn the camera on. Art tells the world, “My name is Artemis Darth Vader. And I come in peace” (381).
Chapter 16-Epilogue Analysis
In the final chapters, the narrative inverts, transforming the initially threatening gun-wielding men from the opening chapters into a genuine existential threat that contrasts with the authentic family unit that has formed amongst Alex, Nate, and Art. This structural symmetry provides narrative cohesion while highlighting the fact that the characters’ relationships have fundamentally altered their perception of danger and safety since the story’s beginning.
Peter’s cult employs an ominous form of religious zealotry, serving as a counterpoint to the genuine connection that the three protagonists share. Because Peter interprets Art to be a divine entity rather than a sentient being with her own agency, he deliberately distances her from her chosen family, and this intentional act reveals his jealousy of Nate and Alex’s connection to Art. This dynamic also serves as a critique of the tendency for organized religious systems to distort extraordinary experiences into oppressive dogma. In this context, the mass suicide of Peter’s followers is designed to parallel similar tragedies in real-world cults, such as the suicides of the members of the Peoples Temple in 1978 in Guyana and of the 1997 suicides of members of Heaven’s Gate in San Diego, California. By referencing these historical events, the narrative positions itself within recognizable sociological patterns while emphasizing the idea that genuine sources of wonder become corrupted when filtered through systems of control rather than experienced through authentic relationships.
Throughout this section, Nate and Alex are frequently plagued with intense, prophetic dreams. This technique of dream consciousness generates a liminal space in which memory, reality, and telepathic connection blend. The dream sequences serve multiple narrative functions. They help Nate deal with The Impact of Loss and Grief caused by his parents’ deaths, and they also demonstrate Art’s deepening psychic bond with her human companions, emphasizing The Healing Influence of Found Family. Finally, the dreams establish a transitional state that prepares for the trio’s climactic confrontation with Peter.
Along with the evolving motif of dreams and dream logic, the meaning of Alex’s gun changes significantly since the associations that were introduced earlier in the narrative. Although the gun began as Alex’s defensive weapon, it becomes an instrument of psychological torture when it falls into Peter’s hands and becomes a centerpiece of the deadly game of Russian roulette that Alex and Nate are forced to play. Finally, it becomes a means of liberation and protection when Alex uses it to kill Peter and Randy. This symbolic evolution traces the moral complexity of violence within the narrative. Here, the ethical valence of an individual action depends not on abstract principles but on the specific context of relationship and intention.
When the narrative shifts to a broader perspective, it briefly pans away from the immediate action to focus instead on the broader social consequences of the scene. This technique contextualizes the protagonists’ personal struggle within larger societal frameworks, showing how extraordinary events become assimilated into familiar narratives regardless of their true nature. This section also reveals Art’s ultimate choice to remain on Earth rather than returning to the stars with her family. Art’s decision represents the culmination of The Healing Influence of Found Family: a theme that has advanced throughout the text; Art’s choice clearly privileges emotional bonds over biological or species identity.
The long-term effects of found family are further delineated when the epilogue jumps forward 18 years in time to show the consequences of the trio’s actions, as well as their future plans. The family bonds that Nate, Alex, and Art have forced are clearly long-lasting and tough enough to survive considerable trials. Additionally, the characters’ name changes represent both practical necessity and symbolic transformation, marking their evolution from isolated individuals to an integrated family unit. Additionally, the remote cabin in Newfoundland mirrors the original setting of Nate’s inherited Oregon cabin, which creates geographic symmetry with the novel’s beginning.
Notably, the topic of identity transformation remains central throughout these final chapters, for the characters have undergone multiple forms of change: physical relocation, legal identity shifts, relationship formalization through marriage, and psychological integration of extraordinary experiences into daily life. With this multifaceted depiction, the narrative suggests that authentic identity emerges not from fixed characteristics but through adaptive responses to changing circumstances and deepening relationships. These adaptive responses lead to dramatic irony in the revelation that Art’s family is returning not to retrieve their lost daughter but to disclose their existence to humanity. This twist recontextualizes the entire story as the mere prologue to a much larger cosmic revelation, allowing for the closure of the immediate story and the implicit expansion toward profound future developments for all of humanity.
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