Chapter 3 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

The chapter opens with Andrew waking on the floor of his bedroom in the afternoon, still shaken from the previous night's encounter with his revenant visitor. The scabbed nail marks on his chest serve as a physical reminder of the haunting. He hears voices downstairs and reluctantly goes to investigate, finding Riley in conversation with Sam Halse, Riley's cousin and a member of the group Eddie had fallen in with during his final months.

Sam is immediately pushy and familiar, greeting Andrew with a handshake that turns into a chest-clasping gesture and pressing him for his phone number. Andrew, exhausted and guarded, resists but eventually hands over his dead phone. Riley plugs it in to charge, and the device immediately floods with notifications: thirty-seven unread messages, eight missed calls, and six voicemails. Sam and Riley both notice the volume of missed contact, and Riley questions why Andrew has been ignoring his phone. Sam hustles Riley out of the house before the conversation can go further.

Alone, Andrew clears the missed calls without listening to the voicemails. He texts his mother a brief reassurance, then scrolls through Del's messages, which escalate from pleading to angry. When Del calls, she is furious and hurt, revealing she thought he was dead—that she feared she would receive a second call about a suicide. Andrew apologizes but insists he is fine. Their conversation becomes a tense argument about Eddie's death. Del believes Eddie was self-centered and that Andrew is refusing to accept the truth. Andrew counters that Eddie would never have killed himself without telling him, and he declares he will find out what really happened. He hangs up on Del mid-sentence.

Riley returns with his girlfriend, Luca, who is warm and friendly. Riley apologizes for Sam's behavior, and Andrew brushes it off. He retreats upstairs to Eddie's room, where he gathers the research papers spread across the desk—including a printout about the Bell Witch legend, notes on old state families with a conspicuous blank under the name Fulton, and a purple-inked short story about a haunted house. He stacks the papers on a shelf and covers them with a book, hiding the evidence of Eddie's secret research.

Riley knocks to ask about Andrew's course registration, noting that classes begin the next day at Vanderbilt. Andrew admits he hasn't checked. Riley mentions that Eddie bought the textbooks and that they should be in Andrew's room. He invites Andrew to come out with him and his friends that night, but Andrew declines, exhausted and raw.

Around midnight, Riley staggers home drunk, having been dropped off by Sam. Andrew helps him upstairs, pulling off his boots and guiding him to the bathroom. As Riley is about to go to bed, he makes a confession: he believes in the supernatural, in