The Overnight Guest

Sheriff’s Deputy Levi Robbins struggles with boredom at 1 o’clock in the morning, having had an uneventful patrol. He speeds his cruiser down back country roads and almost hits a pickup truck that pulls out in front of him without lights on. He pulls the silver truck over and approaches the vehicle, surveying the blond teenage boy inside. The teen apologizes, clearly anxious; he is late returning from a movie. When Levi looks at the boy’s license, he recognizes the last name Cutter.

Levi briefly reminisces about his old friendship with Brett Cutter, the teen’s cousin. His nostalgia and the fact that he was the one speeding makes him give the teenager a break. He does not run the young man’s license and instead tells him to be careful; because of this decision, he does not learn that the teen is driving on a suspended license and has failed to appear in court to face harassment charges.

Back at the house, Wylie realizes that the boy and her dog, Tas, are not behind the couch anymore. She searches upstairs and finds the boy in her bedroom, holding her gun. She startles him into dropping it and yells at him for his carelessness, sending him crawling under the bed to cry. Guilty, Wylie lies down on the floor beside him and apologizes. Although the boy does not speak, Wylie coaxes him out from under the bed by talking about her fears.

She tells the boy about finding the truck but omits the details about the woman. She gives him the baby blanket she found, which he cradles to his face. They return to the living room, and the boy falls asleep on the sofa next to Tas. Wylie spends some time staring out the window into the storm, looking in vain for signs of the woman, eventually bringing her manuscript and crime scene files downstairs.

Her work is interrupted by thoughts of her son, Seth. Wylie wants to talk to him and apologize but is unsure of how to mend their relationship. She falls asleep, waking up when she hears something creaking. She sees the boy with her files, looking at her crime scene photos. He flees into the bathroom, vomiting as Wylie tries to apologize and explain why she has the pictures. He runs away from her, and she fears that all hopes of him trusting her are likely lost.

Josie remains crouching in the cornfield, stifling her fear and struggling to overcome the intense pain in her arm. By sunrise, blackbirds fly into the field to eat corn off the stalks. She retraces her steps from the night before, walking barefoot through the field until she emerges in her yard. Made uneasy by the quiet, she enters the house and calls to her parents but receives no response. She searches the house. Josie finds her mother shot through the chest in her parents’ bedroom and her father shot in the face in her bedroom. She flees the house.

Matthew Ellis, Josie’s grandfather, is driving to the local feed store when he spots a bloodied Josie stumbling down the road. He tries to ask her questions, but she is so deeply in shock that she cannot answer him clearly. He drives her home and enters the house himself, finding the same tragedy she did. He screams in distress so loud that Deb Cutter, nearly a mile away, hears him while doing chores and mistakes the cry for that of an injured animal. Matthew runs out, then steps back into the house to call the police. He waits with Josie for them to arrive, standing protectively between her and the officers.

The mother braids the little girl’s hair and talks a bit about her own mother before she rushes to the bathroom, bleeding heavily between her legs. The mother locks the little girl out of the bathroom, and the little girl must listen to her mother miscarry. The girl wrestles with anxiety as the day passes and darkness falls; she reflects on the three different types of darkness and what they each make her feel. The morning darkness means that her father is going to work, so she can relax, even though she also worries that he will never come back and they will be trapped without food. The after-dinner dark is pleasant because she can pretend to be a normal girl while she gets ready for bed, though it is also when she must interact with her father and his volatile, sometimes violent, emotions. The blackest dark in the middle of the night is the girl’s favorite, letting her feel truly at peace.

Wylie gives the boy time to calm himself before opening the bathroom door and explaining her job as a writer. She guides him into the kitchen with the promise of pancakes. She tries to get him to speak by playing a question-asking game, but the boy remains silent. Wylie puzzles over the situation, trying to understand what kinds of secrets the boy is keeping.

Matthew explains the situation to Sheriff Butler and Levi, who assure him an ambulance is on the way. Matthew takes Josie to the shade of a tree while the officers enter the house to make sure the perpetrator is not hiding inside. The ambulance arrives, and paramedics begin tending to Josie. Inside the house, the officers find blood in the sink and note that the heat of the house has been turned up, likely to disguise evidence and speed up bodily decomposition. They speculate about the crime and begin the search for Ethan and Becky. The paramedics try to distract Josie while activity around the house grows increasingly hectic. Josie asks them about Becky and Ethan, but they avoid her questions. Matthew brings the police over to question Josie.

In town, Margo Allen starts her shift at the grocery store. A customer gossips about the police presence on Meadow Rue, wondering why the police are out there and what house they are at. Margo recognizes the street and calls the Doyle house; receiving no answer, she asks a coworker to cover for her while she drives out to the Doyle home. Back at the Doyle farm, Butler commands officers to seal the property and calls in help from Des Moines.

Wylie and the boy sit in front of the fire. Wylie studies a rash on the boy’s mouth and realizes his mouth has recently been duct taped shut. Outside, tree branches begin to crack under the weight of the falling ice. Wylie runs through the house, collecting flashlights. As she is grabbing batteries from her office, she sees an orange explosion outside and realizes that the truck wreckage has lit on fire. She heads back downstairs, but at the top of the stairs, the house plunges into darkness, and she freezes, overcome by fear. She hears the boy make a noise in terror and calls to him, forcing herself to be brave. Wylie explains that she is afraid of the dark as she returns to the living room.

Seeing that their wood supply is significantly depleted, Wylie prepares to collect more and tasks the boy with opening the door for her. She exits the house and is met by Randy Cutter walking down the drive. He asks about the wreck, and Wylie explains she found a boy and a woman, but the woman has disappeared. Randy promises to ride around on his snowmobile and search for her before the storm gets too bad. She gets a headlamp from her car and takes her toboggan to the barn where the wood is stored. She hears a noise from the hayloft and climbs the ladder to check if the woman is hiding there; instead, she startles a raccoon.

However, when Wylie looks out of the barn, she sees a figure shuffling through the snow. Recognizing the woman, Wylie tries to cross the yard to her, but her journey is slowed by the storm. The woman enters the house before Wylie reaches her. When Wylie arrives at the front door, she looks in the window in time to see the woman grab the boy and disappear into the house, hatchet in hand.

Back in the basement, the little girl’s mother emerges from the bathroom, where a pile of bloody towels now sits on the floor. The basement grows hot as the temperature outside rises. The girl, realizing her father will be angry when he returns and finds the bathroom messy, cleans it and disposes of the towels in a black garbage bag. Her father arrives and seems impressed that the girl managed such a feat.

Sheriff Butler approaches Josie to question her about the night before. Josie relays that the person who committed the crime was male and that she noticed a strange, white truck on the road the afternoon before. She relays all the people she saw the day before, including Brock Cutter and the Henleys. As the paramedics prepare to take Josie to the hospital, Matthew realizes that Ethan’s truck is missing from the property. Margo Allen arrives on the scene and becomes hysterical when people don’t answer her questions.

Josie is driven to the hospital and repeatedly asks questions about her parents, Ethan, and Becky. Josie has buckshot removed from her arm and falls asleep until her grandmother, Caroline, arrives. Caroline breaks the news that Lynne and William are dead and Ethan and Becky are still missing. Josie confesses that part of her suspects Ethan is guilty, but she quickly rescinds this suspicion when she sees her grandmother’s shock.