Heart-Shaped Box

Jude and Georgia admit to Bammy that they’re dealing with a malevolent ghost, and she urges them to stay the night. Jude insists that they can’t.

While driving, Jude and Georgia pass by a used car lot, and she mentions that it belongs to her assailant, a salesman named George Ruger. Jude stops, finds George, and injures him.

Jude and Georgia finally reach Jessica Price’s house in the middle of the night and park across the street from her. Since the next day is garbage day, they plan to abduct Jessica when she takes out the trash. Georgia has become ill from her infection, which has spread to both hands and mimics Florida’s wounds upon dying by “suicide.” Jude, feeling increasingly tender toward her, calls her by her real name, Marybeth.

Jude wakes in the morning to see Jessica send her 11-year-old daughter, Reese, off to school. He heads to the house with a tire iron and his dogs; Marybeth (Georgia) follows, telling him that she doesn’t want violence. Jude meets an oblivious Jessica at the front door and attacks her, driving her deeper into the house where he notices there’s a radio playing. She says that she’s not afraid of him because she’s looking forward to joining Craddock. Jude has pieced together that Jessica and her stepfather “were pretty close. Least until Anna was old enough and he started fucking her instead of [Jessica]” (260).

Jude pieced together that Anna (Florida) was depressive due to childhood molestation by Craddock. He reasons that when she returned to Craddock, she threatened to expose him, so Craddock and Jessica killed her and made the murder look like suicide. Jessica defends Craddock, saying that Anna became a malevolent person after dating Jude. She then defends his sexual assault of Anna, herself, and even her daughter, Reese, saying that he “deserved anything he asked of us” (264). Jude beats her with his tire iron, demanding to know how to banish Craddock, but she screams for him to move her to her garage. The interrogation is stopped by Reese, who has returned with a revolver.

Jessica attacks Jude with a plate shard, and he retaliates by bludgeoning her with the tire iron. Reese shoots, killing Bon. The radio is taken over by Craddock, who urges Reese to kill Jude. She shoots again, this time taking off one of Jude’s fingers. He and Marybeth try to escape the garage, but Craddock is outside in his ghost truck, which hits Jude’s car. The car then hits Marybeth and Angus. Jude and Marybeth get into the car with the fatally injured Angus. He realizes that with both dogs gone, they lack protection from Craddock. He heads for his childhood home in Louisiana.

Jude bandages his wounds with his non-injured hand and explains that his father’s nurse, Arlene, has pain medication and that Martin himself has two dogs that might protect them.

Jude slips into a trance and sees what happened to Anna when she returned home: She learned that Craddock had been taking inappropriate photographs of Reese, and when she confronted Jessica, Jessica defended Craddock, with the two insisting that Anna had been changed by Jude. When Anna retreated to her room to gather evidence and sleep, Jessica and Craddock schemed. Jessica revealed that she’d been lacing Anna’s alcohol with phenobarbital (used to treat insomnia), and Craddock convinced her to kill her sister and make the murder look like a suicide. Jude wakes up.

Jude and Marybeth arrive at Martin’s house and find that Craddock’s ghost has been driving alongside them. Martin’s nurse, Arlene, greets them but is disturbed by their injuries. She reveals that she sent Martin’s dogs away and tries to call an ambulance for the couple, but all nearby phones have been taken over by Craddock.