At the beginning of this episode ofThe Midnight Club, Ilonka (Iman Benson), still trapped in the dark basement, hears the elevator returning. Kevin (Igby Rigney) has come back for her, and she has once again escaped the creepy old lady. They leave and come back with the rest of the Midnight Club to investigate the secret basement; there is safety in numbers, after all.
The walls and ceiling are covered with paintings, and the bed suggests that someone lived down there at some point. Ilonka finds a roster for the original Midnight Club, founded by none other than Julia Jayne, filled with their names and stories. Sandra (Annarah Cymone), on the other hand, finds a box of cult robes and an old dagger. This freaks her out, and she leaves with a few of the others. Ilonka, Kevin, and Anya (Ruth Codd) stay behind to continue looking around. Ilonka flips through the Midnight Club roster again until she reaches a page covered with bloody hand prints and the hourglass symbol drawn with blood.
Group therapy begins the next morning, with Dr. Stanton (Heather Langenkamp) noticing how tired everyone is. Sandra tries to cover for them by talking about how she and the group are still mourning Tristan’s death, but she’s still freaked out from the night before. It isn’t long before she begins trying to convince the group to join her at church to save them from the darkness she felt in the basement. Spence (William Chris Sumpter) becomes angry, given that his mother’s faith and church are the reason he no longer has a relationship with her. He calls out the hypocrisy of organized religion and its prejudiced attitude toward people like him and offends Sandra in the process.
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After group therapy, Ilonka journeys back into the woods looking for carvings on the trees. This time, she finds a crescent moon and the letters G and B carved into a tree trunk. Shasta (Samantha Sloyan) appears once again, offering Ilonka tea from her company Good Humor Wellness and telling her about the powers of alternative and naturopathic medicines. She also tells Ilonka that the trees and blackberry bushes she’s looking for are technically part of her property and that she knew where to find Ilonka because of the security cameras she has posted around her land. Ilonka apologizes, but Shasta assures her that no harm was done. Ilonka asks about the Paragon and the symbols on the trees, but Shasta brushes her off saying she doesn’t really know anything about them (which is kind of suspicious since the carvings are on her property). She does give Ilonka her phone number though, in case she ever wants to chat.
Back at Brightcliffe, Ilonka is doing Kevin’s makeup before he joins his girlfriend Katherine (Emilija Baranac) at her prom. He wants to look more like his old self to try and avoid the pity stares from her classmates. Sandra comes by his room looking for Spence, but when he isn’t there she takes out her frustrations on Ilonka, getting mad at her for taking them down into the creepy basement in the first place.
Meanwhile, Spence is getting his blood drawn by Mark (Zach Gilford), and shows him sores on his arm that indicate his treatment is no longer working. Mark tries to reassure him, telling him about new antivirals that show promise, despite being a couple of years from being ready. When Spence leaves the exam room, he walks right by Tristan’s old recovery room. The intercom crackles, even though no one is there. Spence hears his name come from the intercom, and tries to go inside the room. The door is locked, and the intercom crackles again. Spence hesitantly calls out “hello?” and the voice says “hello” back. It tries to talk to him further saying “Spence, listen,” but Spence has already run down the hall to get Mark. Mark follows him and opens the door without issue to find the room empty, just as they thought it was.
Before the Midnight Club meeting, Ilonka is throwing up. Anya checks on her and offers her an extra morphine pill from her secret stash, but Ilonka declines. Anya takes the pill for herself before they leave for the meeting. In the library, Kevin shares his prom experience. He was crowned king but knows it was a pity vote. Everyone then sees the sores on Spence’s arm, realizing why he’s been so on edge all day. Sandra offers a story to distract everyone and to apologize to Spence.
Sandra’s story is a noir murder mystery about anger, revenge, and ultimately forgiveness – the moral of the story being that everyone is worthy in God’s eyes. Even though everyone does tease her a bit for the religious ending (she had initially assured them that this storywouldn’tinvolve angels), they applaud her story for being uncharacteristically dark. She apologizes to Spence, criticizing those in her religion who would use God’s word to spread hate and prejudice and reassuring him that that is not what she believes. She believes God is loving to all, regardless of their background or sexual orientation. Spence walks over and kisses her on the forehead, showing he forgives her.
After the meeting, Spence helps Anya to the elevator. She insists that she can make it to her room on her own, even though the extra morphine she’s taken has made her loopy. She ends up in front of the recovery room, where she hears menacing whispers from behind the door. Creeped out, she finds her way back to her room, where the shadow figure seems to have followed her. Kevin and Ilonka stay behind in the library to chat and clean up, and Ilonka realizes that the number sequence from Julia’s drawings is a Dewey Decimal code. She locates the number’s location in the library, finding a black leather-bound book with the hourglass symbol on the cover. Excited about their discovery, Kevin and Ilonka go back to her room to look through it. When they arrive, they are dismayed to find Anya unconscious with her wheelchair fallen on top of her.
