Macy takes an Uber back to Brooksview Heights, a trip she finds much easier than her first journey by bus. She listens to deathcore music on her new Sylvo headphones to block out the world. Despite Jemma’s vehement protests, Macy is committed to seeing the job through, though she promised to leave at the first sign of danger.

Macy hesitates at the driveway to the Carnswel property. White ropes on either side stretch into the woods, marking the boundary. She remembers David’s warning: Once she crosses onto the property as caretaker, she can’t simply quit. She imagines that Jemma is watching her experiences as a horror movie and is commenting on her actions. The imagined Jemma predicts that Macy will cross anyway. Cursing, Macy steps onto the gravel drive.

In daylight, the house appears rougher but less intimidating. Grace emerges from a wooded trail and attempts to hug Macy, who tenses. Realizing that Macy isn’t comfortable with physical contact, Grace offers a handshake instead. Macy notices a security camera above the garage. Grace invites her inside for the tour.

Grace opens the garage and jokes that she was worried Macy would take the advance and disappear. Inside, Macy spots a mower mid-repair on a workbench and quickly identifies its mechanical problems before pushing away the memories she associates with it. They enter through the foyer, where Macy again sees the ominous photo of Windfall Inlet and a rotary phone beneath it. Grace smells smoke on Macy’s jacket. Macy lies about having quit smoking, but Grace simply tells her to smoke outside.

In the kitchen, Grace instructs Macy to help herself to the fridge and provides a food budget. Grace begins the tour upstairs. At the top of the stairs, a hallway light flickers on by itself. Grace, irritated rather than alarmed, explains that the house has faulty electrical wiring because her late husband refused to hire a professional. After struggling with the switch, she finally turns the light off. She adds that the lights are probably the only ritual that Macy will need to worry about and that she herself sets an alarm for 2:50 am every night to patrol the house.

Grace shows Macy the bathroom and the guest bedroom where she will sleep. Macy feels uneasy about the closet doors being slightly open and notices another rotary phone on the nightstand. When she asks Grace if anyone ever calls, Grace explains that David experienced auditory hallucinations and would pretend to speak with someone on the phone, though Grace sometimes listened in on the calls and confirms that no one was ever on the other end of the line. This reminds Macy of her grandmother, who experienced something similar.

Grace leads Macy downstairs and points out various rooms, including a den, home theater, and study. At the end of the hall, the basement door stands open. Grace closes it, explaining that the latch is broken, and advises Macy to avoid the basement due to mold. Back in the kitchen, Grace points out the contingency envelopes on top of the fridge and says that she will send the login for the Ring security app. A cat zips past and runs upstairs. Grace introduces her as Brownie, her late husband’s prickly pet, and provides care instructions.

As Grace lifts her heavy suitcase, it falls and knocks a picture frame off the wall. The photo shows a younger David with a small boy on his shoulders and a woman who isn’t Grace, judging by the difference in their eye color. Grace murmurs “David” and “Caleb” before carefully rehanging the frame. Macy declines to ask any questions before Grace leaves.

Macy watches Grace drive away. The car brakes hard for a small rabbit hopping across the road. Once alone, Macy notices a Ring camera in the kitchen and feels surveilled. The quiet makes her anxious. She recalls her father’s advice to sit with her thoughts and treat them as passing clouds, but her inner monologue grows harsh and cruel.

A foyer light turns on by itself. Though Macy tells herself it’s faulty wiring, a compulsive urge forces her to turn it off. She experiences immediate relief. Upstairs, she hears two soft thumps and a creak from the master bedroom. She experiences paranoia, but she forces herself upward and finds that the scraping sound is only a tree branch against the window. She spots Brownie on the dresser. The cat has tortoiseshell coloring, one blue eye, and one brown eye. Brownie jumps down with two thumps, revealing the source of the earlier sound, and then hides under the bed.

As Macy leaves, the bedroom light turns on by itself. The compulsive urge returns. After repeatedly flicking the switch, the light turns off, and she feels a flash of euphoric relief that quickly fades. In the bathroom, she notices that the shower curtain is closed. She smells rot and yanks it open to find the tub empty and the smell gone. Back downstairs, her negative thoughts become unbearable. She puts on her jacket and headphones and goes outside.

Macy walks across the overgrown lawn, suppressing the urge to mow it because the task reminds her of her father. She follows a trail into the woods toward the ocean lookout. On the path, she trips over the white rope marking the property boundary. Nearby, she notices a strange symbol carved into a mossy boulder: a circular design with internal lines and smaller circles. It feels ancient, though Macy can’t say why.

Continuing on, she smells a foul odor and finds a dead white rabbit just outside the property line. It has no visible injuries. As she inspects it, she sees a mass of maggots writhing beneath its skin. She has a recurring intrusive thought about the carcass being food for worms. Disturbed, she continues down the trail until she reaches a cliffside lookout. Fog obscures most of the view, but the roar of the ocean below drowns out her thoughts. She thinks she sees a dark shape move in the trees but dismisses it. A branch snaps, and a red-haired woman in a neon-blue jacket emerges. Macy wonders if she’s the same passenger she noticed on the bus the day before. As the woman approaches, Macy instinctively steps back from the cliff’s edge.

The red-haired woman joins Macy and comments on the foggy view. She asks if Macy is okay, explaining that the Windfall Bluff is a known as a place where several people have died by suicide.

The woman introduces herself as Lucy. Lucy mentions the bluff’s other name, the “Weeping Hag’s Cliff,” and recounts a local legend of an old woman whose cries foretold storms. She explains that she often hikes there to check on people, hoping to prevent their deaths.

Lucy correctly guesses that Macy isn’t a local. When Macy mentions that she’s house-sitting for the Carnswels, Lucy is shocked. She used to be their house cleaner and was fired by David for sleeping through the witching hour and failing to turn off the lights. When Macy asks if Lucy ever saw anything strange, Lucy says no, though she’s reluctant to discuss it further.

Lucy begins to overshare about a childhood best friend with a beautiful singing voice named Brienna, or “Zee.” Lucy becomes emotional and nearly cries. Macy feels awkward, and Lucy apologizes for oversharing. Noticing the time, Macy checks that Lucy is okay before leaving. Lucy reassures her that she’s safe. Looking back from the trail, Macy sees Lucy sitting far from the cliff’s edge against the darkening sky.

Returning through the trail, Macy finds that the dead rabbit has vanished without a trace. She rationalizes that a bird of prey must have carried it off. She arrives back at the house at dusk and accepts a video call from Jemma, who is walking home via a familiar shortcut that turns out to be blocked by a new development.

Jemma asks about the house, teasing that it’s haunted. Macy lies and says everything is fine. Jemma makes Macy promise to leave at the first sign of trouble, expressing how much she depends on her. Just before hanging up, Jemma asks to borrow $20 for bus fare. Macy agrees on the condition that Jemma stop criticizing her for paying their rent.

In the guest room, Macy firmly shuts the closet doors and pulls the shower curtains open before getting some rest. While lying in bed, Macy is unable to sleep. The rotary phone on the nightstand keeps her awake, so she covers it with a quilt, which brings relief. Brownie sits in the bedroom doorway and then stares down the hall toward the staircase. She slowly raises her head as if watching a very tall person ascend the stairs. Alarmed, Macy listens intently but hears nothing. She peeks into the hall to find it empty, with Brownie now descending the stairs. She dismisses the cat’s behavior as strange but natural.

At one o’clock in the morning, she gives up on sleeping and goes downstairs. She checks the house and finds everything quiet and locked. With two hours to go before the witching hour, she goes to the home theater, discovers a large collection of VHS tapes, chooses the first Gremlins movie, and falls asleep shortly after it starts.

Macy experiences a vivid nightmare filled with fragmented images of red and blue lights. In the dream, she’s trapped in a windowless concrete room before a locked bone-white door. She hears a memory of a conversation with Jemma from the other side of the door. The memory includes a moment when Macy lied about where she was going. Dream-Jemma insists that what Macy is experiencing is a memory, rather than a dream. Macy hears Looney Tunes playing on the television and Jemma’s forced, robotic laughter.

A grotesque, fleshy sound rises behind Macy. Headlights appear in the darkness. Jemma’s voice shifts to weeping and then begins looping, repeating that she “know[s].” Water seeps from under the door and rises rapidly. Realizing that she’ll drown, Macy screams for Jemma and pounds on the door as the water engulfs her.

Macy wakes to her alarm at 2:50 am for light patrol, groggy from her nightmare. While checking the downstairs rooms, an urge compels her to look out the living-room window. She sees a white pickup parked in the turnaround, identical in make and model to her late father’s.

Macy recalls her father’s death three years ago when his truck crashed through a guardrail and plunged into the Willamette River. She remembers the police arriving at her door, their cruiser’s red and blue lights flashing across the lawn. Since then, she has grappled with persistent grief and suicidal ideation, staying alive primarily for Jemma. She reflects on being fired from her job shortly after her father’s funeral when she threw coffee on a rude customer. This incident precipitated her financial struggles.

The pickup’s headlights turn on, illuminating the driveway. The truck makes a U-turn and drives away. Macy’s phone alarm indicates that the witching hour has begun.

Macy begins her light patrol, repeatedly walking through the house to check for lights. The task is monotonous. Near the end of the hour, she senses she missed something. She discovers a light on in the main-floor storage closet. Inside, she finds household supplies, including spare light bulbs and a collapsible metal cage suitable for a small animal like a rabbit. She finds the switch in the hallway and turns the light off. A powerful, euphoric wave of relief washes over her, stronger than before. The relief fades, replaced by worry that the light was on for more than three minutes. At 4:01 am, she decides to check the Ring camera footage to confirm.

Macy watches the recorded Ring footage. The storage closet light turned on by itself at 3:56:35 am, immediately after she passed by. She feels a sickly dread but tries to rationalize it as an electrical glitch. She watches herself reenter the hallway with only 37 seconds remaining on the three-minute limit. In the footage, she stops to handle a garbage bag before finally turning the light off. The light was on for seven seconds longer than the three-minute mandate.

The seven-second overage horrifies Macy. Beyond its threat to her bonus, she feels a deep, irrational dread, as though she has broken something fundamental, and briefly wonders whether David’s beliefs might be real. She retrieves the wooden tray from atop the fridge and finds the three contingency envelopes and a chrome-plated switchblade engraved with the initials “C.C.”

She uses the blade to open the first envelope, labeled “IN CASE OF LIGHTS” (135), and finds that the paper inside appears blank until she spots a single word in small blue ink: “FOYER.” She proceeds to the foyer, which looks undisturbed. Peering through the glass panel of the front door, she sees a motion light outside suddenly activate. A brown and black rabbit hops into view, stands upright, and stares hard toward the dark woods before bolting. Macy remembers David’s warning that one failed Rite tends to trigger the next. She dismisses it as coincidence but decides to check all the locks before going to sleep.