The newly visible text informs Macy that she has failed the first Rite. It warns anyone who reads the letter without having failed to stop immediately and reseal the envelope. The letter predicts that Macy will experience a moderate setback in her personal life within 24 hours and states that the appearance of rabbits and incidence of phone calls will become more frequent. It provides no further instructions unless delivered through another letter or phone call. The message includes an abstract diagram and ends with a benediction invoking the “Last Enduring God” (141).

Macy finishes reading the letter feeling more annoyed than frightened. She dismisses the threat of a moderate setback and searches online for the “Last Enduring God,” finding no results. She imagines Jemma once again, urging her to leave as she points to the mysterious ink, strange symbols, the light switching on, the compulsive lock-checking, and the cat’s unusual behavior as proof something is wrong. Macy tries to book an Uber but finds that none are available and that the next scheduled bus is five hours away. Exhausted and unwilling to forfeit her payment, she decides to stay. At 4:23 am, she heads upstairs but can’t resist one final check of all the locks.

After a final round of lock-checking, Macy gets into bed. Various noises keep her awake, though they’re drowned out by Macy’s loud intrusive thoughts. To cope with these thoughts, Macy turns to a personal method she has developed: She convinces herself that tonight’s version of her will cease to exist when she sleeps, handing all her problems to a new version of herself tomorrow. Each morning, she wakes up thinking that this method really worked and that she no longer lives with her old problems, having left them in a bad dream. Reality quickly subverts her, and she remembers once again that her father is dead, causing her to feel like she’s reliving it. She calculates that she has relived her father’s death every morning since the actual event, totaling 1,127 times. However, it’s the only way she can fall asleep, though sometimes she uses unprescribed zopiclone as a sleeping aid.

Macy experiences a vivid dream beginning with fragmented images, including red and blue lights, a lawn mower, a chlorine smell, and bluish-green carpet. The dream then shifts to a childhood memory. Young Macy and Jemma wake their father at 2:57 am because of a spider in their room. Their father gently captures the spider, names her “Rosey,” and releases her outside. As they stand in the yard, unexplained red and blue lights flash around them. Macy’s father’s clothes suddenly change, and then he and Jemma vanish, leaving Macy standing still on the front stoop.

An ancient, skeletal woman with a plastic bag taped over her head appears in the yard, maggots moving beneath her skin. She emits a rising shriek before collapsing, her remains reforming into a multi-limbed creature. The front door of Macy’s house opens to reveal a hallway she recognizes from the Hawthorne Hotel. She runs toward a white door with red light bleeding beneath it, hearing a past conversation between herself and Jemma from the other side. As a creature pursues her and her lips seal shut, it stops and whispers that it knows Macy by name.

Macy jolts awake at 5:56 pm, having slept over 13 hours. A phone reminder about her father’s birthday appears on her phone, though she thought she had deleted it. When her phone rings with an unknown number, she answers to find Greg, her father’s insurance broker. He informs her that the insurance company is moving to deny the life-insurance payout, claiming that new evidence suggests her father died by suicide. Greg reveals that her father experienced depression and once attempted suicide before Macy was born. Macy never knew this. As she struggles to process the information, Macy looks down the hallway and spots a brown rabbit with pale blue eyes sitting at the top of the staircase.

Per the house rules, Macy has 10 minutes to catch and release rabbit outside the house. Macy ends the call, nicknames the rabbit “Doc,” and tries to coax it closer. The rotary phone rings loudly and sends the rabbit fleeing downstairs. Macy answers. The voice of a woman on the other end insists that she must not let it get away, and then the line goes dead. Macy races downstairs, sets a 10-minute timer, and sweeps the main floor without finding the rabbit. A sound from the back hallway draws her to the basement door, which stands wide open, with Doc sitting in the frame before leaping into the dark below. Macy follows into a clean, well-lit space. The rabbit retreats into an unlit hallway at the far end and disappears. With two minutes left, it suddenly bolts back out, bypasses Macy, and escapes upstairs as the timer sounds.

Looking into the unlit basement hallway, she sees a TV set she recognizes from a video by David. She returns upstairs and finds Doc sitting calmly in the kitchen. She slams the basement door and opens the second contingency envelope, marked “IN CASE OF RABBITS” (157). The letter inside contains a single visible word: “FIREPLACE.” Recognizing another invisible-ink trick, she holds the letter toward the light and waits for the full text to develop.

The revealed letter states that a price must be paid for Macy’s failure: She must burn the rabbit alive in the fireplace. It asserts that the rabbit isn’t a real animal; it’s a creation of the property’s evil entity, though the letter warns that the creature’s dying sounds will be disturbingly human-like. Three consequences are listed for refusal: Macy will experience a devastating personal setback, there will be a tenfold increase in the chance of a “Visitor” arriving, and Macy will have to burn all future rabbits appearing inside the house within five minutes of sighting. Macy has until the start of the next hour to act.

Macy refuses to burn the rabbit. She imagines Jemma’s voice challenging her, forcing her to wonder how much worse the devastating setback can be compared to the loss of her insurance payout. With four minutes left for Macy to burn the rabbit, Doc paws frantically at the patio door. Macy unlocks it and lets the rabbit go, watching it disappear into the darkening woods. Relief immediately gives way to crushing dread. She convinces herself that she has just made a catastrophic error. She decides to leave the house, rushes upstairs for her backpack, and finds it missing. As she backs out of the empty guest room, she hears three hollow knocks coming from the front door below.

Macy hides in the guest room and checks the Ring camera app. She recognizes Lucy, the woman she met at the lookout, wearing a yellow rain poncho. Lucy calls out sadly, saying that someone was at the lookout the previous night and that she couldn’t save him from dying. Macy watches through the garage camera as Lucy sits on the gravel driveway for an extended period, staring into the woods. After sunset, Lucy stands and walks into the forest. Though she worries that Lucy was a Visitor, Macy decides she must leave at once. She opens the Uber app.

Unable to locate her backpack, Macy takes her father’s jacket from the coatrack, locks the front door, and leaves the key under the mat. The rotary phone rings insistently behind her as she walks down the driveway; she forces herself not to turn back. At the road’s end, she leaves Grace a voicemail, claiming that she has a family emergency as her reason for quitting. While walking the dark road, she imagines threats in every sound from the surrounding trees. Headlights approach slowly toward her; her phone has no service, and she can’t confirm the car. As it pulls alongside her, she hears a podcast playing inside. It’s her Uber.

Macy gets into the Uber and asks the driver to leave quickly. As they drive away, Macy experiences a series of horrific visions: blood-red light over cliffs, city streets flooded with blood, screaming masses in a chasm, and finally Jemma lying dead on concrete. Interpreting this as the foretold devastating setback, Macy becomes physically ill. The driver pulls over, and Macy vomits on the roadside. Once back in the car, she tells him that she needs to return to the house. As they drive back, her dread diminishes, and the visions fade. Despite her reluctance, Macy becomes convinced that the Rites are real and that humanity’s survival depends on her completing them.

The driver drops Macy off at the streetlamp and gives her a cigarette and a lighter before leaving. Now nearly certain that the Rites are real and that they’re necessary to prevent catastrophic harm, she walks toward the house. Jemma calls; Macy keeps her voice steady, tells her that everything is fine, and deflects Jemma’s offer to visit the next day so that they can spend their father’s birthday together. As she nears the front door, she hears the rotary phone still ringing and suspects that it has been ringing the entire time she was gone. She retrieves the key from under the mat and steps back inside.