The machine in Elias's basement smells like hot copper and Mara's perfume. That's impossible. She's been dead nine months. He keys in the date: three years ago, the morning of the crash on Route 9. He has practiced this a thousand times. Stop the car. Stop the truck. The coil screams and white light swallows the room. When he opens his eyes, he's in the passenger seat of their old sedan, and Mara is alive, humming, hands on the wheel.

Elias grabs the wheel and yanks the car off Route 9 before the bridge. Mara slams the brakes, furious and scared. 'What is wrong with you?' The truck that should have hit them roars past in the rain, horn blaring. They're alive. Both of them. He's laughing and crying at once. She just stares at him like he's a stranger.

Back home, everything seems normal. Almost too normal. Mara cooks dinner and hums the same song. But that night Elias wakes to find her standing over the bed, perfectly still, her eyes open and black as oil. 'Thank you for bringing me back,' she says in a voice that isn't quite hers. The thing wearing his wife smiles.

Elias doesn't run. He grabs the lamp and asks the thing flatly what it wants. The black-eyed Mara tilts her head. 'To stay. You opened the door. I only walked through it.' Then her face softens, just for a second, and the real Mara surfaces underneath, terrified. 'Elias, it's still in here with me,' she gasps, before the black floods back.

Elias holds her by the shoulders and refuses to let go, calling her name over and over while the thing thrashes inside her. Bit by bit, the black drains from her eyes. Mara collapses into him, fully herself, breathing hard. 'It's gone,' she whispers. 'You pulled me back.' Whatever it cost the timeline, for tonight, he kept her.