A few minutes after "The Lighthouse" ended, Gloria Verrano and her assistant Vickie Dutton are outside tending to baby Aaron Harker. Gloria worries that she won't be an adequate mother; after all, by the time he hits puberty, she'll be in her eighties. Aaron starts crying; Vickie gets scared, but Gloria explains that Duke got rid of his "kill people when he cries" Trouble. Gloria tries to soothe Aaron, but he won't stop crying. Vickie gets an idea and draws the area they are in. Gloria protests, but she assures that everything is under control. Vickie gently blows on the drawing, and a gentle breeze flows through the area, making the flower petals dance through the air. Aaron is entranced by the lovely sight and calms down. Suddenly, tremors shake the town. Gloria asks if Vickie caused it, but she says she's holding the drawing perfectly still. They look in the distance and see the lighthouse crumble to pieces and sink into the ocean as a wave of energy emits from it and sweeps through the town. Gloria complains that's the third time it was destroyed.
Duke wakes up on the beach and frantically runs around calling for Jennifer and dripping blood everywhere. He runs into Dwight, who says he can't find the others. He asks if Duke is okay. He wipes himself off and says he'll be fine, finding Jennifer is all that matters to him.
Vince and Dave wake up in the forest. Since Dave is still suffering from his bullet wound, Vince helps him walk. Dave again starts ranting that they should not have opened the door. Vince says to look on the bright side: William has been banished and Dave didn't go like he feared he would.
Nathan wakes up in a park-like area and looks around calling for Audrey. She calls for him and they seemingly happily reunite, but while they are hugging, she suddenly handcuffs him to a metal fence and steals his gun. She is Mara, and pretended to be Audrey to make him drop his guard. She calls him a fool.
She demands to know where Jennifer is. He doesn't know, and she explains that she needs her to bring William back. Once he's back, they will continue to give people new Troubles. He demands to know why she and William do this, and she says because they can. She reveals that she was conscious the entire time the other personalities were in control of her body over the centuries. Every personality was a hero who helped people and solved Troubles, and it made her sick. The ones she hated the most were Sarah Vernon and Audrey Parker, because they loved Nathan, and the only person Mara loves is William. Nathan says he knows Audrey is still in there, and she's stronger than her. Enraged, she pistol-whips him unconscious.
Duke finds and frees him with a lockpick. Duke says Dwight called that the Teagues made it to the hospital, but there is no sign of Jennifer. Nathan explains that Mara is in control of Audrey's body, and that she wants Jennifer. They regroup with Dwight at the beach near the lighthouse's remains, where cops and city workers have gathered. Dwight hands Nathan a spare gun. An official complains that the town is almost bankrupt and they can't afford to repair the lighthouse again. Duke starts asking every officer he can find where Jennifer is, and gets annoyed when they treat it so nonchalantly. He leaves, saying he'll mark on a map where everybody landed because it might form a pattern and show where Jennifer landed. Nathan and Dwight talk. Since the door to the other world is currently at the bottom of the ocean, they figure there might be others. Dwight says they might have no choice but to take Mara down permanently, but Nathan insists there must be a way to bring Audrey back. Suddenly, the city official screams, and they are horrified to find his eyelids are stitched shut.
They take him to the hospital. Dwight says he knows for a fact the man didn't have a Trouble, so Mara must have caused it. Nathan visits Vince and Dave's hospital room. Dave is recovering from his bullet wound and is on a morphine drip. Nathan asks if Vince knows of any other doors, but he doesn't. Vince can't believe Dave kept the fact that he was from the other world a secret from him all these years. Vince figures Sebastian Cabot's journal may hold the answers, and that Dave hid it and lied about it being stolen. He is sure he can find it. Inside Dave's head, he's having a nightmare where he's back in the cave under the lighthouse and surrounded by the others, who glare at him malevolently.
Mara goes to a cafe. The owner, who knows Audrey, greats her and asks if she wants the usual. She says she wants to see his stockroom, claiming it's police business. Inside, she looks around, then makes him move a table away from the wall. She stares at the empty wall with glee. He asks what she's looking at, and turns out that there's a glowing portal there that only she can see. She tries to stick her hand in, but it shocks her and she can't budge it. The owner gets really confused, but she says to forget it and give her his car keys. When he demands to know what this is all about, she shoots him in the head and takes the keys.
Dwight reports that the doctors have tried to free the official's eyes, but their tools cannot cut through the stitches. The only way they can save him is to solve this Trouble.
More people start getting affected by the Trouble, including one guy whose eyes and mouth get sewn shut while he was driving, causing him to crash. The guys also hear about the cafe owner who Mara murdered and wonder what is going on. Vince finds Sebastian's Journal and calls them in. He talks about how Sebastian left several messages in both an ancient language and in code and starts marveling about how clever he was. They tell him to get to the point, so he explains that Haven has five spots where travel between worlds is possible. The lighthouse was one and so was the area where the cafe was built. They figure Mara created this new Trouble to distract them while she heads to the portals, trying to find one that works. Nathan, Duke, and Dwight decide to stake out the three remaining spots.
As Nathan drives to one spot, he sadly reminisces about a conversation he and Audrey had back in "Fear & Loathing". He arrives at a beach and finds that it's high tide and the portal is currently underwater. He checks a tide book and sees that it will be several hours before the tide goes out. He sighs and waits.
Dwight goes into the woods and finds Mara, trying to enter a portal and failing. He tries to sneak up on her, but she appears to sense his presence and fires her gun to the side. The bullet turns and nails him in his bulletproof vest, flooring him. She laughs and says she's so happy he has his "attract bullets" Trouble. He tries to get up, but she takes his taser and zaps him with it, making him groan in agony. She taunts him and says that she gave his ancestors their Trouble because she thought it would be funny to see the ultimate cannon fodder. And she means that literally: she describes in graphic detail how his Trouble also attracts cannonballs, and one of his ancestors took one of those to the chest and was killed. She demands to know if he and his friends are the ones who sealed the portals (she refers to them as "Thinnies", a term used in many of Stephen King's works to describe weak spots between worlds). Dwight asks what she can threaten him with; if she gives him the "face stitched up" Trouble, then he won't be able to talk. Confused, she says she hasn't done that, but smiles and says it sounds amusing. He says in the end, she will lose. She mocks him for always helping the town and being so loyal to his friends, when they don't trust him enough to tell him the important stuff. She zaps him with his taser again and knocks him unconscious.
Dwight wakes up and calls the others, explaining what happened to him. Nathan takes the fact that Mara didn't kill him as evidence that Audrey is still in there. Since Dwight's Thinny is unusable, he decides to go back and investigate the Trouble again. He goes to the morgue and finds Gloria slumped over in her chair. At first, he fears that she has been killed, but she was just taking a nap. Vickie scolds them and says to keep their voices down; she just got Aaron to go to sleep. They do some research and find that the last time the stitching Trouble was seen was in 1929.
A nurse who is a member of The Guard asks Vince what is going on and says she and the others are scared. He comments that Dave may be the only one with the answers. They have to wait for him to recover. Dave is still having his nightmare.
Dwight goes to the house of the Barrow family, where he finds Monkey Morality Pose dolls that have stitching identical to the stitching on the victims. Henry Barrow says the dolls are a family heirloom and asks the officer what he can do for him. Dwight explains that according to the records, the facial stitching Trouble came from the Barrow family. Shocked, Henry says his family doesn't have a Trouble. His mother, Collette, explains. Back in 1929, a member of the Crocker family killed one of her ancestors, Constance Barrow, so the Trouble was eliminated for good. Since the family was now normal, they hardly ever talk about it. Dwight comments that this just creates more questions.
Dwight meets Duke (it is unclear if they are at the site of the Thinny Duke decided to stake out). Duke, looking a little fanatic, is sure that Jennifer is the one who sealed the portals so Mara can't use them. Dwight asks then where is she and why hasn't she contacted them? Duke says Mara can easily listen in on communication channels, so Jennifer didn't want to take the risk. Dwight looks skeptical. He then comments that since Mara didn't cause the stitching Trouble and Duke's ancestor destroyed it a long time ago, why is it back? Duke thinks, then becomes horrified and says he must be the cause. He explains William told him that all the Troubles his family absorbed live on in his blood and are reactivating. Since he bled all over the beach, the victims must have accidentally touched it and caught the Trouble. Duke groans and says they can fix it once they catch Mara. Since Mara and William created the Troubles, they must know how to get rid of them for good. Dwight gets really surprised, and Duke says he thought he already knew. A look of doubt spreads over Dwight's face; he seems to realize Mara was telling the truth about everybody leaving him out of the loop.
As Nathan stares at the spot in the ocean where the Thinny will be, Mara gets behind him and points her gun at him, calling him blind for not sensing her approach. He knocks her gun away, but she suddenly beats the crap out of him with advanced martial art moves. She reiterates that she knows everything Audrey and the other personalities knew, so she has a lot of experience. While holding her gun to him and waiting for the tide to go down, she gives a little exposition. She needs William back because she can't find his box of black beads and she needs them to make new Troubles. The beads are made of aether, the essence of the void and the foundation of the universe.
The tide goes down and she checks the portal, but it is sealed as well. Nathan says they should just assume the last Thinny is sealed as well. Mara says it doesn't matter, once she finds Jennifer, William will be back. He swears he will bring Audrey back, but she calls him naive and says Audrey is dead. He doesn't believe her, and claims the love between them is stronger than anything. Annoyed, she shoots him in the shoulder and he collapses. As she aims at his head, he declares his undying love for Audrey Parker, making her gasp and hesitate. She frowns, steels herself, and tries to pull the trigger again, but can't. Upset, she leaves.
To Be Continued...
