Fern watches Hagar lay thick lines of salt across the kitchen doorway, insisting nothing unnatural can step over it. Fern doubts the protection will hold against Miss Parcae, but Hagar and Sister continue salting entrances and warn the girls to sweep it up before Miss Wellwood notices.

That night Fern, already terrified and fixated on the danger closing in on her, is jolted awake by urgent rattling and banging downstairs. Fern, Ginger, and Jasmine gather in the hall as the knocking turns slow and deliberate, then surges into violent shaking at the front door. Nurse Kent comes out, starts toward the door to investigate, then panics and retreats upstairs when the pounding suddenly explodes again.

Nurse Kent returns with a small pistol and orders Fern to come with her so Fern can call the police from the downstairs phone. As the front door receives single, firm knocks that Fern associates with Miss Parcae, the phone appears dead—there is no operator. Nurse Kent explains the only other phone is in the locked office, and as knocking erupts from multiple doors and even windows, Fern breaks under the pressure and opens the front door.

The moment the door opens, the banging stops. Nurse Kent charges onto the porch with the pistol, but no one is there. Back inside, Nurse Kent tries the phone again and it works; she calls Miss Wellwood, and Mrs. Deckle and the police arrive to search the grounds. The police leave a patrol car in the driveway overnight, and Zinnia argues the salt worked because no one entered the house, while Fern remains convinced the attack is focused on Fern and will not stop.

In the morning Hagar is blunt that the intruder could only frighten them if it could not cross the salt. Later, after a quiet night with Nurse Kent keeping guard upstairs, Hagar calls Fern, Zinnia, and Holly to the kitchen and gives each a red felt pouch on a string. Hagar says the pouches will keep “that thing” from seeing or smelling them when they leave the house, warns Miss Wellwood must never find them, and makes clear this is the last protection Hagar will provide.