13 Months Haunted

On October 12, 2000, library clerk Piper Lowery visits Glen Fisher's eighth-grade classroom to collect entries for a scary-story contest. A technician interrupts to discuss a school laptop that has been malfunctioning and appears to have unusual viruses, but Fisher returns his attention to the students. Piper notices Avery Wallace, a withdrawn new student, sitting near her mother Susan, who remains in class as an informal aide and accompanies Avery even to the bathroom. Shane Brockway and another boy torment Avery, and the child's watchfulness concerns Piper. Fisher explains that Avery's sister Charlotte and father Richard died in the preceding year and that students are spreading rumors about the Wallace family's former home in Grangeville. Piper remembers being bullied herself and worries that publishing Avery's contest entry or mishandling the situation could increase the harassment.

In her October 12 webjournal entry, Piper describes moving to the Northwoods to work as a library clerk and spend time outdoors with her dog Ripley. She reproduces Avery Wallace's contest story, The Thing in the Closet, because it has disturbed her. In the story, a fictional first-person narrator describes an unseen threat connected to a closet, a sister named Rose, and a mother whose behavior appears to conceal something. Rose's disappearance and the story's family dynamics belong to Avery's fiction; they are not established facts about Avery's dead sister Charlotte or Susan Wallace. Piper wonders how much of the story reflects the difficult experiences or fears of its young author. By posting the entire entry online, she makes the child's story available to strangers, although she has not yet considered what the growing audience could do.

After posting Avery's story, Piper remains unsettled despite hoping that writing about it would relieve her anxiety. She thinks about the strange mother in the fictional account and Susan's unusually constant presence beside Avery at school. Piper recognizes that the entry might aggravate the rumors and bullying around the real child. She searches the Internet for information about Avery Wallace and her family, but finds nothing useful. Her journal is accessible to other people, something that will matter as readers start following her account. Although Piper tries to return to her normal routine and outdoor interests, she goes to bed still thinking about Avery's story. She even checks her own closet before sleeping. Nothing in this chapter establishes that Piper herself is being haunted.

Avery's diary entry dated December 14, 1999 records another attempt to explain her condition to a therapist after her sister Charlotte's death. The therapist asks whether the child's fascination with scary movies and stories could shape what she thinks she experiences. Avery talks about The Blair Witch Project, whose purportedly authentic online backstory impressed both sisters, and about the horror books and films she likes. The discussions do not persuade her that the invisible presence she senses is imaginary. Avery has withdrawn from the computer-centered hobbies she previously enjoyed, although the therapist does not obtain an explanation for that change. Later, writing at home, she still senses something nearby and fears being left alone. The diary establishes her perspective and distress, not an independently verified cause of Charlotte's death.

Piper meets Fisher at Thompson's Pizza and Pub and shows him Avery's story. He admires the girl's writing and suggests that horror fiction may be a way of processing the deaths in her family. Piper remains concerned that the contest and classroom rumors could expose Avery to further bullying. Walking home afterward, Piper passes the Brockway residence and sees Shane and another boy mishandling a rifle near an explosive container. Shane's father Dennis catches them and responds with a violent beating, dragging Shane toward the garage. Piper is frightened by what she witnesses and notices that Dennis has seen her watching. Her mixture of pity for Shane and unease about his behavior complicates her earlier impression of him as only a bully. The incident does not establish that Dennis's conduct caused Shane's cruelty, although Piper considers the connection.

The Clover Creek library opens eleven shared dial-up computer stations, attracting excited local children. Susan Wallace uses one while Avery sits with her back to the screen, refusing to use the new equipment. Piper strikes up a conversation with Avery about a printed Matrix webcomic, a Blair Witch book, music, and the town. Avery's humor and intelligence emerge, and Piper gives her replacement batteries for her Walkman. The interaction offers Avery an interval of ordinary conversation, but she suddenly becomes frightened again and persuades Susan to leave. Piper glimpses the word haunted in Susan's web search, then checks the terminal afterward; Susan has cleared the history. Back at her webjournal, Piper finds comments from candlecatnip and mooncorpse and posts more observations about Avery and her mother. These updates widen the disclosure of the girl's private difficulties to unknown readers.

In a diary entry dated February 19, 2000, Avery describes a visit from Olivia, a friend from Grangeville's computer club. Olivia is cautious around Avery and appears aware of the rumors about her house. The girls discuss school, classmates, and the club's plans for a We Miss Avery website. Olivia asks about the animated bunny wearing dark glasses that Avery once used as a signature image and about usernames and passwords for remote computer servers. Avery cannot remember the credentials or why her friend needs them, underscoring gaps in her memory of her earlier online activities. Olivia also recounts a ghost-hunting excursion that attracted police attention. Susan, Avery's mother, reassures them about keeping the girls' confidence. Although the visit briefly resembles Avery's old social life, Olivia's continuing nervousness reminds Avery of the distance between them.

Shane and other students separate Avery from Susan in the school hallway and lock her inside a custodian's closet. Piper hears Avery's screams, intervenes, and frees her as Avery insists that something is coming for her. The principal hears Piper's account and plans an indefinite suspension for Shane. Later, at the pub, Dennis Brockway angrily confronts Fisher and Piper about the punishment, repeating rumors from his brother in Grangeville that Susan practices witchcraft. Piper defends the girl. That evening she hears screams from the Brockway house. Inside, she finds Shane dead at the foot of the stairs, with a dark, human-shaped mist appearing to hover over him. The mist turns toward Piper and disappears. Piper cannot yet explain what she has seen or how Shane died, but the sight changes the direction of her inquiry.

In her October 20 webjournal entry, Piper recounts finding Shane Brockway dead and seeing what appeared to be a black mist above his body. She cannot readily reconcile the sight with her previous skepticism and asks whether the entity could be linked to the deaths in Avery's family. Her account is a first-person report and speculation rather than proof of the cause of Shane's death. Alarmed by the events and uncertain what to do, Piper contemplates taking a camping trip with Ripley to escape the situation for a while. She continues publishing the details to an audience of strangers, increasing interest in the Wallace rumors.

Piper calls her brother Sam, who works with computers, and recounts Shane's death, the black mist, and the rumors about the Wallaces. Sam initially offers ordinary explanations and challenges her interpretation. He then proposes, purely as a hypothesis, that Susan might be using some kind of spirit to protect Avery. Piper does not have evidence for this idea, but it gives her a way to consider the events. Sam agrees to search online forums for reports of similar phenomena. Piper reads comments on her webjournal encouraging her to visit the family's former house in Grangeville and decides to contact the local newspaper. Her brother's willingness to investigate does not mean that the proposed explanation has been verified.

The chapter consists of automated website-scraping output from Sam's search for reports about a dark mist or related paranormal events. The logs show account creation, forum queries, and searches tied to Clover Creek and Grangeville. Both searches return zero relevant results. No conversation with Piper occurs in this source unit, and the log offers no evidence that the absence of online matches proves or disproves the reported apparition.

Piper's October 21 webjournal entry reports that Sam's attempts to find references to a dark mist online have failed. She telephones a newspaper in Grangeville, where a reporter supplies details about the Wallaces. The reporter says Charlotte died after a rapidly developing illness described as a virus and that the family subsequently left town. Months later Richard died in a single-car crash, with investigators considering distraction by his BlackBerry or falling asleep. The reporter does not corroborate a haunting at the house. At this stage Piper does not know Charlotte's specific medical diagnosis or whether Richard's phone had a role beyond police speculation. Wanting a direct impression of the place, Piper decides to drive to Grangeville and visit the former Wallace home.

In her April 12, 2000 diary entry, Avery writes about feeling responsible for her father's death. She remembers asking to leave Grangeville after Charlotte died and the family became the subject of rumors. Richard later returned to the old house to retrieve belongings; he was killed on the journey back. Avery reasons that if she had not requested the move he would not have made that trip, despite Susan's attempts to reassure her. She also describes an indistinct impression that something important remains at the Grangeville home, without being able to recover the memory or explain what it might be. The entry records the child's guilt and incomplete recollection, not a demonstrated cause of Richard's death.

Piper visits the former Wallace house in Grangeville and meets its current resident, Bill Oakley. Bill has recently moved in and is curious about the haunting rumors, so he lets her inspect the ordinary-looking property. Piper looks around the bedrooms and closets but detects no supernatural activity. In the den, she notices that a wall has been repaired. Bill explains that the wall contained numerous large holes when he bought the house. The damage is the only unusual physical clue Piper finds, and she cannot yet account for it. She leaves without learning the origin of the reported entity or confirming that the old home was haunted.

Piper posts a brief October 22 webjournal update about her visit to the Wallaces' former house. She reports finding no obvious signs of a haunting and singles out an old, badly damaged wall that has since been repaired. She compares the damage to problems in a house where she lived during college and has no explanation for its cause. The entry does not resolve the events involving Avery or Shane.

Dennis Brockway visits Piper's apartment after Shane's death. Devastated and suspicious, he explains that the autopsy attributed his son's death to a brain aneurysm but says Shane's computer was found with damaged, apparently burned components. He asks Piper whether she saw anything more than she told police. She remembers the black mist but conceals it, fearing Dennis's violent temper and that he could target the Wallace family. His grief and the unexplained computer damage leave her struggling with the decision. After he leaves, Piper cries and wonders whether withholding her account will have consequences. Neither the medical finding nor the damaged computer by itself establishes what caused Shane's death.

Susan and Avery come to the library to thank Piper for helping during the school bullying incident and ask her to tutor Avery. Piper agrees and notices that Susan's presence has become even more restrictive as the family tries to function after Shane's death. During their session, Avery whispers or counts quietly and struggles to concentrate. When discussion turns toward computers and whether she uses them, Avery becomes unusually agitated and insists she no longer touches them. Susan intervenes, and the session ends abruptly, although she insists on paying Piper. Piper now has firsthand evidence of the girl's profound avoidance of computers in addition to her fear of being separated from her mother, but still lacks an explanation for either behavior.

Piper's webjournal entries on October 23 collect several small disturbances while she tries to maintain her routine. She notices a stack of mail has changed position while she was away, although she is unsure whether she moved it herself. She describes her landlady's habit of reading beside a lamp each evening and her own anxiety about the landlady's forthcoming absence. In another moment she mistakes a jacket reflected in a mirror for a figure behind her. Piper also forwards a chain email and exchanges messages with family, showing how suggestible she has become after Shane's death. Nothing in these entries establishes a supernatural intruder, and the chapter does not include the Felicity television viewing that occurs in the next chapter.

Piper watches old Felicity episodes and receives another story from Susan Wallace. Avery's fictional piece, The Wall, describes a threatening entity emerging from a wall, a detail that reminds Piper of the repairs she saw in Grangeville. At the library, boys discuss rumors that Avery emailed Shane a computer file before his death. Piper shares the rumors on her webjournal, where commenters speculate about cursed writing, seizures, and other explanations without substantiation. At Shane's wake, Fisher tells Piper that Dennis has said, "I know what she did," without explaining whom Dennis means or what he thinks occurred. Fisher also mentions Susan's restriction on Avery using computers. Piper emails Sam to ask whether a computer virus could kill a person. No physical transmission mechanism has yet been verified.

In an October 28 webjournal update, Piper tells readers she is alive and trying to resume ordinary activities outdoors with Ripley. She has been tutoring Avery frequently and has seen the child's intelligence and creativity alongside continued withdrawal and troubling behavior. Piper has not warned the Wallaces about Dennis Brockway's ambiguous comments at the wake. She notices the father's home is dark and is still worried about the hostility around Shane's death. Although Piper wants to distance herself from the story, the update keeps her online audience informed about Avery and the continuing mystery.

Piper camps alone with Ripley in the Northwoods, hoping to put the events of Clover Creek aside. At night she hears unexplained movement outside her tent, but Ripley does not react as she expects a dog to respond to an animal or stranger. Fearing danger, Piper leaves the site and paddles her canoe onto the lake. She considers a bear, a human stalker, the black mist, and her own heightened nerves without determining the cause. She reflects that posting speculation about Avery may have helped fuel the same rumor cycle that made the girl's life difficult. The incident is unresolved in this chapter; Piper has not yet learned who, if anyone, approached her campsite.

In a diary entry, Avery recalls dreaming that she was playing hide-and-seek with friends in a cornfield near Grangeville. The game requires her to locate another person within thirty seconds, but she finds herself lost among the stalks and becomes increasingly desperate as the count approaches zero. She wakes in distress, coughing and frightened. Susan comforts her and asks which friends were in the dream. Avery has difficulty identifying them, including Olivia, and struggles to remember people and experiences from before Charlotte's death. The dream is not yet established as a literal account of a supernatural event. Its precise countdown, however, becomes important when the rules of the infection emerge later. Avery's failure to remember her friends shows how seriously her memory has deteriorated.

After trying to distract herself with music and routine work, Piper visits Fisher's eighth-grade classroom to announce the winner of the library's scary-story contest. Avery has won, but the celebratory visit is interrupted when the child begins muttering unfamiliar words and becomes increasingly unresponsive. Classmates notice the change, and Fisher and Susan struggle to manage the situation. Avery repeats a phrase about filth, disease, and death with growing intensity. Fisher recognizes something about the words but cannot immediately place them. Avery suddenly throws a book, and the students panic. Piper, frightened by the girl's unnatural behavior and the sense that something is terribly wrong, runs from the room rather than intervening. The episode marks a new and overtly dangerous stage in Avery's condition. Neither the meaning of the phrase nor the mechanism behind her behavior is explained in this chapter.

Shaken by the classroom incident, Piper takes Ripley on a long walk and decides she may need to abandon Clover Creek altogether. At home she finds an urgent message from Carol Fisher asking her to come to the Fishers' house. Glen Fisher has become confused and terrified after using a computer at the library to investigate the phrase Avery chanted in class. Carol explains that Glen was found in severe distress and has trouble recalling what happened on the machine. He says he can sense an unseen presence and cannot be left alone. Piper recognizes parallels with Avery's behavior and with the apparition she witnessed over Shane's body. Her plan to leave town gives way to concern for Fisher. The chapter establishes that Glen's symptoms followed his computer use, but neither Piper nor Carol knows how the infection, if that is what it is, was transmitted.

The chapter is a log of a further automated search by Sam for evidence of a dangerous computer virus associated with death or unexplained symptoms. The program systematically visits technology forums and related websites, submits multiple search combinations, and records its results. The logs document fifty-seven attempts, one hundred twelve sites, and thirty-eight parameter combinations, but zero relevant matches. The negative result shows only that Sam's chosen searches did not locate corroboration. Piper does not appear in this source unit, and she does not remove equipment from a library computer until the following chapter.

Piper returns to the library after hearing about Fisher's symptoms and finds the computer he used in the basement stacks. Afraid someone else may be harmed by the machine, she switches it off, marks it out of order, and removes what she believes is its hard drive. She puts the component in her purse without knowing how to identify the hardware correctly. She then visits the Wallaces' remote cabin to confront Susan about what happened to Avery and Glen. The interior has been radically altered: walls separating the living spaces have been torn out so Avery will remain visible, and Susan burns sage candles in the hope of warding off whatever stalks her daughter. Avery is asleep, and Susan is clearly exhausted. Piper explains what she saw with Shane and what has now happened to Fisher. Susan acknowledges that there is a story Piper needs to hear and begins describing the family's history. The removed device is not confirmed to be a hard drive; Sam will later identify it as RAM.

Susan recounts the events beginning on September 25, 1999, when she and Richard left Charlotte and Avery at home during a date night. On returning, they found Avery terrified and Charlotte dead in her bedroom. Doctors identified bacterial meningitis, but Avery reported that an unseen, hateful presence was pursuing her and insisted that she could not be left alone. Susan and Richard initially sought medical and psychological help. Avery's memory weakened, she stopped using computers, and ordinary family life became impossible because someone had to remain in her potential line of sight. Richard searched their family computer for a cause and eventually destroyed it with a sledgehammer, damaging the den wall as well. Pastors also visited, but their intervention frightened Avery, and Susan ended it. When Avery asked to leave Grangeville and its rumors, the family moved temporarily into Richard's brother's home farther north. She improved somewhat until Susan found her inexplicably using a concealed laptop in the borrowed house and sending Richard an email with COOLGAME.exe attached. Avery recognized the attachment as the file she and Charlotte had opened on the night Charlotte died, although she could not explain how she retrieved it from remote servers. Richard opened the attachment on his BlackBerry while driving back from Grangeville. During a call to Susan he reported another presence in his car, said he could finally see it, and crashed. Susan found him dead and the file displayed on his damaged phone. Her story connects the file with both deaths but does not establish why the file has these effects.

Back in the cabin, Piper questions Susan about the file COOLGAME.exe and what it seems to do. Susan believes Avery and Charlotte opened it together and that viewing it triggers a supernatural infection after approximately twenty minutes. She estimates that an infected person may die after roughly thirty seconds without another person in potential view, as she infers from Richard's final telephone call and Avery's experiences. The infected also develop an urge to send the file to others, while Avery has suffered increasing forgetfulness and episodes of unexplained speech. Susan admits that these mechanisms are her best explanations, not experimentally proven rules, and she cannot account for every symptom or the deaths of Shane and Richard with certainty. Piper privately connects Shane's death and her fleeting sighting of black mist to the proposed countdown. Susan tells her the deadly attachment remains in Avery's old sent email and possibly a remote server, although she destroyed the laptop used at Richard's brother's house. Piper shows Susan the component taken from Fisher's library computer, mistakenly assuming it is a hard drive containing the file. Susan refuses to investigate or connect it. Piper realizes that an infected Fisher might now feel compelled to transmit the file, too. Their conversation ends when Avery wakes and emits an unsettling groan.

Avery awakens in the cabin in an altered state, moaning and murmuring words that neither woman initially understands. Piper recognizes some Spanish, including a phrase referring to a beautiful head, and begins memorizing the longer sentence in hopes of investigating it later. Susan tries to soothe her daughter, who rises from bed with an empty stare and walks into the exposed bathroom. As Susan washes Avery's face, Avery loudly repeats the Spanish sentence and then begins thrashing. Susan grabs her arms to calm her, but Avery's movement throws her mother off balance. Susan falls neck-first onto the sharp, exposed edge of a wooden wall stud and begins bleeding heavily. Piper witnesses the injury at close range. The chapter does not reveal the origin of the Spanish words, which will later be tied to a violent video within the file.

In a webjournal entry posted just after midnight on October 31, Piper reports that Susan has survived emergency surgery but remains in intensive care with serious injuries. Avery has no memory of the episode in which her mother was hurt and is deeply distressed by what Piper has explained. With no relatives nearby who can immediately care for the child, Piper has brought her back to her apartment. She now understands that Avery must not be left alone and positions herself so she can keep the girl within sight, even when writing at her computer. Fisher is also ill and experiencing something similar, compounding Piper's fear and responsibility. Piper's brother Sam is driving to Clover Creek to help. The entry ends before their later conversation about music, sleeping arrangements, or the wrist-binding precaution.

At her apartment, Piper tries to keep Avery comfortable, and their conversation about mixtapes briefly resembles normal life. Avery finds a BlackBerry in her bag but cannot remember taking or using it. Piper recalls Principal Christian's phone on his desk and suspects that Avery stole it and emailed the file to Shane and Fisher while Susan slept. Piper does not yet have proof; she secretly puts the phone in her freezer in an attempt to disable it. As bedtime approaches, Avery explains that she must remain within another person's potential line of sight, although the other person may sleep or face away from her. Piper lets Avery share her bed with Ripley nearby. She researches Avery's Spanish phrase without finding an explanation, then identifies the earlier classroom words as part of Geraldo Rivera's 1972 report on the abusive Willowbrook institution. Afraid that Avery might wander off, Piper ties their wrists together with a handkerchief. In the night Avery sleepwalks, retrieves a pair of shears, and holds them near Piper's throat and Ripley's face. Piper nearly persuades her to put the weapon down, but Avery then repeats a threat about someone not belonging there and lunges for the shears. Piper wrestles them away, restrains her, and eventually settles her back in bed.

Sam arrives at Piper's apartment near dawn as Susan's condition is reported stable but still critical. Piper explains the events surrounding the Wallaces, Shane, Fisher, and Avery. Sam remains skeptical of an impossible computer infection and suggests ordinary explanations, including illness and the possibility of testing Avery by leaving her alone. Piper refuses any experiment that could kill the child. Sam shows that fifty-seven scraping sessions found no public accounts of a killer file. Piper proposes that Avery, who belonged to a computer club and liked supernatural stories, might have produced the file herself, but this remains conjecture. When Piper presents the hardware she removed from the library machine, Sam identifies it as a RAM module, which does not retain the downloaded file she hopes to inspect. The actual hard drive is still at the library. Sam suggests accessing Avery's email to examine the attachment's code without executing it, but Piper is reluctant to wake the unresponsive child or risk exposure. His passing mention of a paranormal club inspires Piper to ask her online readers for help.

Piper posts a detailed account of Avery's crisis to her webjournal while Sam watches the child sleep. She describes the reported twenty-minute onset and thirty-second isolation rule, the violent episodes, and the possibility that Avery passed the file to Shane and Fisher. Anonymous readers quickly offer suggestions ranging from a Catholic exorcism or research into Willowbrook to the dangerous proposal that they leave Avery alone and attack whatever appears. Piper rejects suggestions involving fire or exposing the girl to certain danger. A commenter named Jackflash72 proposes treating the child's condition like a computer infection, prompting the idea of a human equivalent of antivirus software, dubbed a tech-orcism. Piper overlooks a threatening comment reading "im coming for you." Bill Oakley also comments, identifying himself as the owner of the former Wallace house; Piper is unsettled that her purportedly anonymous reporting can be tied to real people. Sam and Piper continue discussing a technological remedy as Avery starts waking.

Piper and Sam struggle to decide how to help Avery as she wakes with vacant eyes and begins muttering another ominous phrase. Remembering Susan's hope that writing scary stories could help the girl process her suffering, Piper brings her paper and asks her to write. Avery instead speaks about the Revelator and monsters in the dark, then begins repeating the words with growing intensity. Sam has seen enough to abandon his easy skepticism, although he cannot explain what is happening. Piper suggests an imagined antivirus procedure: Sam talks Avery through picturing corrupt files inside her body and clicking a quarantine command. Her hands stop trembling and she briefly appears responsive, but she suddenly strikes at Sam's face, narrowly missing him. The experiment has not cured her. Piper asks about a computer's recovery disk, leading Sam to describe a complete system reset. She decides their remaining possibility may be to use Avery's email account, despite the danger of involving the infected child with a computer.

Piper locks her apartment and Sam moves the incoherent Avery to the computer, hoping her old email messages may restore memories from before the infection. Avery responds to the sounds of the dial-up connection but cannot coherently type or recognize the email services Sam displays. Her eyelids droop and her breathing seems shallow; Sam now urges taking her to a hospital. Piper tries one last idea, playing popular songs through Napster because Avery once loved music and made mixtapes. Avery briefly appears attentive before glaring at Piper and whispering the same threat she made during the night. The intervention has failed, and her condition appears to be worsening. As Piper and Sam prepare to take her for medical care, heavy blows strike the apartment door. An ax blade breaks through the wood, signaling the arrival of Dennis Brockway.

Dennis Brockway forces his way into Piper's apartment, drunk and armed with an ax, rifle, and gasoline. He intends to kill Avery as the person he holds responsible for Shane's death, and to punish Piper for concealing what she knew. Dennis explains that Bill Oakley's account of Piper's visit to the old Wallace house helped him discover her blog; its detailed recent posts confirmed his suspicions. He also admits he entered Piper's apartment while she was absent and moved her mail, and that he followed her on the camping trip, approaching her tent with a knife. Those previously mysterious incidents were the work of a human stalker rather than the black mist. Piper and Sam stall him by explaining their theory that each person infected by the file may have a separate unseen attacker. While Dennis is distracted, Avery unexpectedly recovers enough to navigate Piper's computer, reach her sent email, and launch COOLGAME.exe. Dennis stares at the flashing screen, entranced. Sam closes his eyes and knocks the monitor off the desk to interrupt the display; Piper catches only a momentary peripheral glimpse. Dennis has seen the file, and Piper cannot be sure whether that brief glimpse infected her as well.

Fifteen minutes after Dennis sees COOLGAME.exe, he holds Piper, Sam, and Avery at gunpoint while waiting for the effects. Avery, meanwhile, has become progressively lucid and no longer senses the creature that had followed her for more than a year. After approximately twenty minutes, Dennis reports feeling an invisible presence. Piper also feels something sinister nearby, establishing that her momentary glimpse of the file had consequences. When Dennis becomes distracted, Piper, Sam, and Avery retreat to the bathroom and shut the door, leaving him alone. Dennis pours gasoline across the apartment and sets a fire in an attempt to destroy the creature. As the thirty-second interval runs out, he screams and fires through the bathroom door, shooting Sam in the shoulder. Dennis is then found dead, his rifle beside him, while the fire spreads. Piper and Avery help the injured Sam escape, but Piper returns to the burning apartment to rescue Ripley. While alone with her dog she senses the entity close to her, then reaches the others before the countdown can expire. Avery is free of the haunting, but Piper is now infected.

At the hospital, Sam recovers from a treatable shoulder wound and Susan remains stable in intensive care. Avery is lucid and discovers that she can again be alone without sensing anything hostile; she cannot remember deliberately opening the file in Dennis's presence. Piper, however, feels an invisible being following her and keeps her infection secret to preserve Avery's relief. An officer retrieves Avery's bag from the ruined apartment, including the RAM module that Piper had mistakenly removed from the library machine. Piper realizes the actual hard drive is still in the library. When Carol Fisher calls to report Glen's accelerating deterioration, Piper persuades her to take her and Avery to the library. They find a broken window and Glen dead at a workstation, his terrified expression recalling Shane's and Dennis's deaths. As Piper and Avery move toward the basement, Avery recognizes that an invisible presence is now attached to Piper; Piper confirms her infection, and Avery expresses guilt about spreading the file. Below the main floor they find Frank dead and encounter Bill Oakley, who admits that online interest in Piper's blog brought him and other enthusiasts to town. Bill and Frank persuaded Glen, already infected, to leave a doctor's house and show them the file at the library. They dismantled the computer and attached the actual hard drive to Frank's laptop; Glen wandered upstairs alone and died. Frank opened the file and was later killed while Bill hid instead of helping him. With the dangerous video still running, Avery approaches without watching it, destroys the laptop and smashes the drive into pieces, then proposes burning the remains.

Piper and Avery return to the hospital, where Susan is conscious in intensive care after her serious neck injury. Mother and daughter reunite, and Piper sees Susan's relief despite the bandages and medical equipment. Police remain skeptical of the purported supernatural computer virus, and Piper expects the deaths of Fisher and Frank to receive ordinary medical explanations. An officer tells her that the monitor and computer tower in her burned apartment were badly scorched, reducing the risk that another copy there can be opened. Enthusiasts drawn by the online story have begun appearing around town and at the hospital. Avery gives Piper the login credentials for her email and asks her to delete the remaining file, determined to abandon the haunting. Piper apologizes for the public journal and its consequences. Still unable to be alone because of her own infection, she plans to stay near hospital staff until she rejoins Sam, collect Ripley from the police station, and leave Clover Creek.

The next evening Piper and Sam are at his apartment in Des Moines, having left Clover Creek. Piper drove because Sam's wounded shoulder is immobilized. Before departure, she destroyed the remains of her own computer and the BlackBerry she had placed in the freezer; Sam's laptop was water-damaged and likely unusable. Piper has now told Sam about the invisible entity following her. Although she can sense it, she has not experienced the urge to use a computer and spread the file that Avery and Fisher exhibited. Sam is working at his own desktop workstation. Using the credentials Avery supplied, he downloaded COOLGAME.exe and is inspecting its code without executing it, arguing that the distinction should keep him safe. He finds extraordinarily complicated sections that he does not believe are entirely the work of an ordinary programmer, along with a simple section that appears to explain the thirty-second isolation rule and the command to pass the file onward. He tells Piper he has identified who started the program and why its rules resemble their experiences. The exact explanation follows in the next chapters.

In a return to September 25, 1999, Avery works alone on a school laptop while her parents are out and Charlotte watches a movie. She is trying to write COOLGAME.exe as a practical joke for friends. Her planned program uses an image of a black-mist ghost, a thirty-second instruction to find another person, a three-second appearance by the ghost, and a message telling users to forward the file. A final message promises that a lingering curse will end on Halloween, but only after at least a year of fear. She includes her familiar cartoon bunny in dark glasses as a signature. Avery cannot make the code run correctly. Searching for unsettling material to paste into her program, she revisits an anonymous occult website that she and Charlotte had discovered while researching The Blair Witch Project. She copies unfamiliar spells from sections about summoning shadows, mind decay, and malevolent propagation. She also copies portions of the site's source code and scripts, not understanding their purpose. The code editor suddenly begins producing enormous amounts of code by itself. Avery is frightened, but it stops before she switches off the computer, leaving a completed COOLGAME.exe file on the desktop. She backs the file up to a private remote server and goes to fetch Charlotte to show her. The scene establishes the program's original human-made rules and its inexplicable transformation, without identifying who created the occult website or exactly how its copied content became effective.

In Des Moines, Sam explains what he learned from inspecting COOLGAME.exe. The simple original code and Avery's cartoon bunny signature support the conclusion that she began writing the program as a prank. The thirty-second isolation rule, the demand to forward the file, the black-mist image, and the promised ending after a year of fear all match the surviving code. Sam's theory is that occult text and scripts Avery copied from an anonymous site transformed the prank into a supernatural infection, but he cannot establish the precise mechanism. Other embedded scripts scrape disturbing videos, producing a flickering mosaic of enormous numbers of images. Clips within it account for words Avery spoke during her violent episodes: Geraldo Rivera's Willowbrook exposé, a man's declaration about the Revelator, a missing woman's recorded phone call, and a Spanish-language execution video. The code also limits the appearance of the lethal mist to roughly three seconds, consistent with Piper's glimpse over Shane. Sam and Piper infer that Avery recovered on Halloween because the original prank promised release after at least a year of suffering. Piper, infected by only a momentary peripheral glimpse, senses an attacker but has not experienced the memory decay or compulsion to share the program. She fears that she may also have missed the portion of the file granting eventual release, so her infection may never end. Sam agrees to keep investigating. They delete the three sent emails from Avery's account, addressed to Richard, Shane, and Fisher, and empty the trash. Neither this action nor their analysis proves that copies elsewhere have been eliminated.