Chapter 29 Summary and Analysis

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

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The chapter opens in the employee building, where Margot is recovering from the previous night's attack. Andrew, Kant, Nora, and Ray explain the true nature of the Gallows Hill curse: anyone who stays on the property too long becomes unable to leave it, ever. The curse manifests differently for each person—nausea, exhaustion, shaking limbs, or migraines—and symptoms worsen the longer a person is away from the land. Nora and Ray reveal they can still live in town but must spend daylight hours on the hill, and they expect to need to move into employee accommodation within a year. Kant explains he can visit his sister only a few times a year, and never overnight.

Margot initially believes she can still leave, since she has only been there three days. But Kant and Nora explain that she is different: as a Hull, the land is bound to her bloodline. It became hers when her parents were buried, and it will remain hers until her death. The curse took effect immediately for her because she is the owner.

The employees tell Margot they have already called Witchety for another cleansing, hoping to calm the restless dead. Andrew warns that talking about the curse stirs it up, so the night may be bad regardless. Ray then delivers a message from the funeral home: Margot's parents' graves were vandalized. Tunnels were dug down to the caskets, and the bodies are missing. Margot suspects this is connected to the curse, and Kant admits they suspect so too, though they are not certain.

Overwhelmed, Margot asks for a minute alone. She flees the building, runs through the employee cluster, and sprints down the drive toward the main road. She crosses the property boundary and is nearly hit by a car, which does not stop. She falls to the ground on the far side of the road, relieved to be out. Kant follows but stays inside the fence, watching her silently.

Margot tells him she is not going back. Kant says he will not force her. To fill the silence, she asks about her childhood. Kant recounts that she was always curious, always getting into tunnels and cellars. When the curse woke, her parents locked her window and warned her, but she kept exploring. Once, during a bad patch, she got out of the house at night, and the dead attacked her. Hugh, Maria, and Kant managed to pull them off, but she was bedridden for a week and carries scars across her chest and collarbone. Four months later, she tried again.

Her parents realized they could not keep her safe by locking her in. They decided the only way to save her was to send her away—to Hugh's mother in another state. They removed every trace of her from the house, tore her out of photos, and never spoke her name, hoping the house would forget her. Kant explains that the curse does not impact children the way it does adults, which is why she could leave. But the house remembers blood, and when Margot became unwell after visiting town, Kant knew the land had marked her as its owner.

Kant tells her that two employees in his time tried to leave and died. He describes the pattern: they call, the person says they are fine, then a family member answers, then they learn of a funeral. No one has ever escaped.

Margot sits by the road as a headache begins to creep in—the first symptom of the curse pulling her back. She reflects that she spent most of her life believing her parents sent her away because they did not want her. Kant assures her they cared deeply and missed her more than they could have imagined. Margot realizes that, even though she has ended up back at Gallows Hill, her parents' sacrifice was not for nothing: they gave her years of a normal life—friends, an apartment, a job, freedom. She also wonders if her absence made the curse worse, and whether her parents lost their lives because she was not there.

Finally, as the headache spreads, she says,