July 26

Jack Hoskins arrives in Texas ahead of Ralph, Holly, Howie, Sablo, Samuels, and Alec. He wakes in his hotel room and realizes the thing from the shower is now under his bed. It tells Jack to go through to the Marysville Hole and to kill any of “meddlers” who turn up there.

Claude Bolton and his mother, Lovey, meet the investigators from Flint at the airfield. They all exchange stories about El Cuco and related creatures. Detective Sablo gets a call from the Dayton police, who are investigating the abandoned buildings near the cemetery where Heath Holmes is buried. Before Sablo can report what the police found, Lovey sends Claude out so they can talk safely; the outsider can read the minds of those it impersonates.

Jack Hoskins is already at the Marysville Hole. He has found a spot where he can lie in wait and watch the parking lot with a sniper rifle.

With Claude out of the way, the conspirators can talk freely. The investigators in Dayton searched the places near the graveyard that Holly had suggested. They found a pile of bloodied clothes, including Heath Holmes’s orderly’s jacket. Now they know that both Holmes’s and Terry’s doubles spent time in the vicinity of graveyards where the outsider’s targets’ families are buried.