Jimmy watched the blaze burn brighter, a smile spreading across his scarred and bristly face. He had a pretty good idea what came next. The only thing he wasn't sure of was if it would start right here in Barrows Bay or further on down the trail.

The End Times're nigh on indeed, he thought, flames flickering in his eyes.

Sitting in the backseat of Mavis's Cadillac, cane between her knees, sunglasses in her lap, Ethel Kelly's wrinkled eyelids fluttered against her milky white eyes.

Mavis looked at her sister in the rearview mirror. The woman had been born sightless. When she passed away during the birth of her first child in 1946, just after the Second Great War, she'd acquired a new sight, one that didn't require eyes. She liked to joke, once the phrase came into fashion, that it was her "women's intuition."

Whatever it was, however it originated, her second sight was powerful. Mavis realized now how wise it was to turn Ethel toward her side, away from Mother. The two sexless beings in women's bodies conspired together in Mavis's usual spot, while the suds and foam brushes splashed over her car windows.

Ruby Savage had a plan for Martin and his whore, a plan Helen and Geraldine seemed comfortable with. But that night at the car wash, the same night they had fed on the child, Ethel looked into the future. And like the times before, she saw nothing but darkness.

"What does it mean?" Mavis asked.

"It means the End of Everything," Ethel told her.

While Helen and Geraldine sabotaged the ferry, Ethel joined with Mavis to get rid of the meddlesome doctor. The pigs had been Ethel's idea, the rifle Mavis's. With their combined wisdom and glammers, the old fool hadn't stood a chance.

After the ferry crash, Ethel had lost sight of Martin for some time. The old woman's magic had shown them the way to the stones. It was her penance. An offering of peace to her daughters. One child's life for the other.

Mavis doubted the old witch could convince Martin's whore to stay in Barrows Bay while she carried the child to term, let alone give it up to the slaughter when the time came to feed. She and Ethel came up with a plan of their own. One that didn't rely on the whims and caprices of people from Away, who weren't steeped in the traditions and rituals of the Bay.

An hour or so after the crash, Ethel picked up their trail on the other end of the island with the sensation of a damp twenty-dollar bill pressed against her left breast. Martin had held it for a short period. He'd received it as change for a fifty from a gas station attendant in Upstate New York.

Ethel left her body then, projecting her fetch into the dockmaster Clarabelle Leigh. The smell of wet dog, stale sweat and secondhand smoke permeated the body she inhabited. In the backseat of the Cadillac, she coughed a lungful of acrid smoke, much to Mavis's amusement. Mavis had once seen the woman spit out a cherry that hadn't been in her mouth moments prior. It was like a carnival sideshow, something new every time.