Previous Next

Summary: Chapter 5

Cal walks Quinn to her hotel, and after she goes inside he sees a figure with red eyes in the street, which then bursts into flames. Cal heads home, telling himself that what he saw was not real. As Quinn drifts off to sleep in her hotel room, she begins to dream. In her dream, she hears the words bestia, beatus, and devoveo. Quinn finds herself in a forest and sees a dead fawn before her. Then she sees a young woman next to a pond putting stones in her pockets, and Quinn tries to stop her from going in the water. Next, Quinn finds herself in a clearing before a stone altar and sees two shapes wrestling in flames. When she wakes up, she understands that she saw Hester’s Pool and the Pagan Stone. Quinn gets out of bed to get some water and screams when she sees the face of a red-eyed boy in her window. She closes the shades and tries to sleep on the floor, where she cannot see the window.

Summary: Chapter 6

Cal and Quinn run into each other at a café called Ma’s Pantry the next morning. Quinn tells Cal about her dream and the boy she saw outside her window. Cal promises to bring Quinn to the Pagan Stone the next day. After Cal leaves, Quinn talks to a waitress named Meg, who points Quinn toward the elderly library director, Estelle Abbott. Before going to the library, Quinn stops by her hotel to get her laptop and notices another young woman in the lobby. Quinn arrives at the library and finds a section with books written by local authors about Hawkins Hollow. As she’s reading, Estelle Abbott comes to see her and tells her about the history of Hawkins Hollow. 

Estelle explains that Lazarus Twisse was the leader of a radical sect that broke off from the Puritans in Massachusetts and moved to Hawkins Hollow, which was named for Richard Hawkins, Ann Hawkins’s father. Twisse took over the settlement and was a cruel leader. Ann’s husband, a man named Giles Dent, had built a cabin in the woods where the Pagan Stone now stands. Estelle says that even before the cabin was built, powers of good and evil battled on the land. She tells Quinn about the rumors of what happened between Twisse and Dent. Estelle adds that Ann Hawkins eventually returned to Hawkins Hollow with her three sons, and that Hester Deale had a daughter before drowning herself. Quinn wonders what happened to the descendants of Ann and Hester and learns that Estelle is Cal’s great-grandmother. After Estelle leaves, Quinn leaves a voicemail for her friend Cybil, saying she needs her to come to Hawkins Hollow.

Analysis Chapters 5–6

In the scenes at Quinn’s hotel, the theme of appearance and reality emerges. First, as Cal sees the boy and witnesses the street burst into flames, he tells himself that what he’s seeing is not real. Though he understands this with his mind, his body also instinctively reacts out of fear, putting up his hands and moving away from the fire. This makes the boy laugh, suggesting that the boy wants Cal to react out of fear, foreshadowing the idea that the evil force feeds off of fear. Though Cal knows what he sees can’t hurt him, he also doesn’t have mastery over his fear yet. Inside the hotel, Quinn dreams and knows she’s dreaming, witnessing Hester drown herself in the pond. Even though she knows she’s dreaming, she still tries to save Hester and experiences real fear when she sees two shapes (one black, one white) burning. When she awakes, Quinn knows she dreamed of real places, of real events from her research but dismisses what happened as just a dream. Knowing what is and isn’t real does nothing to protect Cal or Quinn from their fears or the instinct to protect themselves.

Through her visit with Estelle, Quinn begins to understand how the past lives on in the events of the Seven. Learning that the Pagan Stone was the site of a battle between good and evil and that Hester Deale drowned herself in the pond, it becomes clear that Quinn’s dream has roots in the past. Quinn also learns that Estelle is Cal’s great-grandmother, and thus, in a sense, is in conversation with history. The nearly 100-year old town historian is also a descendant of Ann Hawkins.

Family ties are important throughout the novel. Quinn learns of Cal’s deep roots and that his ancestors founded Hawkins Hollow. Cal wonders if Quinn’s dreams and her ability to see the boy mean she is also related to the ancestors tied to the Seven. Both Quinn and Cal sense that within their ancestry there are some connections to both black and white magic. They also sense that it is through blood that these ancient forces are created and strengthened.

Previous section Chapters 3–4 Next section Chapters 7–9

Take a Study Break