The episode begins with Increase Mather fastening a cilice across his chest as he prays and repents.
Dollie Trask, Emily Hopkins and the other girls from Mercy's group dispose of Emily's father's corpse in the Crags. Emily spits on her father’s corpse and says that she misses Mercy but Dollie assures her that Mercy is always watching over them. She spots a spider and suggests that it might be one of Mercy's servants.
Mercy Lewis is hiding under the table in the dining room of the House of the Seven Gables while Mary Sibley searches for her. When Mary finds her, Mercy is upset and confused by her anger, telling her that she accused Tituba of witchcraft in order to protect her, and that had she not done so, Mary would be the one in the House of Pain now. While Mary concedes that this may be true, she tells Mercy that it was not her choice to make. When she reaches under the table to grab Mercy, the girl disappears, leaving a spider behind.
After Anne Hale watches her father leave the house, she returns to the room she had seen him disappear using the mask. She sees the mask on a table. As she looks through it, she sees the forest. The mask forces itself upon her face and Anne is teleported into the forest.
Mary and Magistrate Hale speak of Tituba's situation. Magistrate Hale tries to reassure Mary that Tituba is strong enough to hold out against torture and tells her that she will use the opportunity presented by her arrest to direct attention away from the witches but Mary cannot bear the idea of her friend being tortured and is determined not to allow it. She approaches Increase Mather, who has taken possession of The Divining Rod and turned it into The House of Pain, a place where he can interrogate and torture suspected witches. She attempts to speak to him on Tituba's behalf, telling him that she doesn't believe Tituba to be a witch, that she has known her since they were girls and that Tituba is her friend rather than her servant. Increase suggests that being befriended by her mistress might have led Tituba astray and that it may be that Mary is the one who should be in the House of Pain. Cotton Mather disapproves of his father saying such a thing but Increase makes it clear to Mary that his opinion of her is a low one, and that George will remain under his care and Tituba will remain in his custody.
Tituba is bound to a chair inside the House of Pain, next to a table on which various instruments of torture are laid out. Cotton is appalled and tries to reason with his father, telling him that he pressed an innocent man to death and pointing out that a tortured prisoner will confess to anything to avoid the pain. Increase concedes that this is true but tells his son that he knows better than to accept his victim’s first confessions as true. He also says that whatever act of horror take place that day are due to Cotton’s laxity during his absence. Increase tells Tituba that she cannot hope to be saved and demonstrates some of the instruments to her before beginning, disregarding Cotton’s objections. Cotton leaves, unable to bear to watch.
At the Hale Cottage, Magistrate Hale burns his mask while Mrs. Hale asks him where Anne is. He has been able to work out what happened but is unable to bring her back by magical means as the mask can only be used by one person at a time. He knows that Anne is in the woods and intends to search for her there. Mrs. Hale swears to him that if their daughter is not safely home by that night, she will not rest until he is burned at the stake.
Magistrate Hale approaches John Alden for help in locating Anne. John agrees to help.
Cotton Mather gets drunk and goes into the woods, ranting against his father. He attempts to commit suicide by drowning himself but is unable to bring himself to go through with it, much to his frustration. He continues to wander through the woods, coming across a tree on which the skull of a deer has been set and stares at it, fascinated, as a butterfly emerges from one of the empty eye sockets.
Tituba has named a number of people as witches while being tortured by Increase but he dismisses the allegations as false because she was too eager to offer up the names. He believes that if he continues to torture Tituba, a moment will come when she is unable to lie any longer. He demonstrates the ‘choke pear’. He uses several of his instruments on her and then casts them aside, covered in her blood. Tituba begins to speak. She tells him that she is neither a witch or a Puritan and begins to speak of her origins in the Arawak tribe, of how she was captured by slavers. She tells him that most of the men in the tribe were slaughtered and of how her mother and sisters were raped by their captors. She tells Increase that as she watched the village burn, she saw two red eyes staring back at her and heard a voice tell her “You are mine”. Increase says that Satan speaks to everybody in their native tongue and continues the torture.
As they search for Anne in the woods, John and Magistrate Hale follow a set of tracks and come across Cotton, who is sitting up in a tree, without his trousers or boots on. John tells him to come down but Cotton refuses, insisting that he can see more from his perch. John encourages him to go home but Cotton does not want to leave, claiming that he has much to learn.
At the House of Pain, Increase stokes the fire to heat a brand and demands to know when, exactly, Tituba sold her soul to the Devil. She tells him that her body was sold many times but not her soul, until she came to Salem. She describes how a man, shown to be Magistrate Hale, brought her to Salem as a child and of how she was sold to a succession of owners, including Mr. Walcott, Mary’s father. She tells Increase that at night, she traveled out into the woods, where she met the Kanaima, who gathered those who hurt him and promised them a savior. Increase threatens to put her eyes out with a spiked tool out if she does not reveal the names of the others in the circle of witches. Tituba doesn’t speak and Increase drives the spikes into the table next to her head, expressing admiration for her fortitude but tells her that the witches are not her friends, they are the enemies of all mankind. Tituba asks him who started the war between witches and Puritans, and points out that Increase’s people were once enslaved and cried out for justice to God, who answered with thunder. She tells him that there are no witches, only people like her, who suffer because they are different.
In the woods, John is able to pick up Anne’s trail. As he examines the trail, he hears a noise and warns Magistrate Hale that no matter what happens, he is to stay calm and say nothing. A moment later, one of the Mohawk emerges from behind a tree, swiftly joined by a number of others. John speaks to them in their language and one of them replies before the group leaves. Magistrate Hale expresses his amazement at John’s ability to walk in the woods and to speak to the Native Americans. John tells him that the tribe saw Anne and that they thought that she was crazy, which was fortunate for her as they believe that crazy people are holy, walkers between worlds. He asks Magistrate Hale if this makes any sense to him but he claims that it does not.
Increase Mather answers Tituba’s question about who began the war between witches and Puritans by telling her that it does not matter who began the war, only that it ends. He tells her that she and her kind have no hope, telling her that she will bleed, hurt and die in a hopeless cause. Tituba tells him that love is not a hopeless cause and that she will not betray the one true love of her life. He tells her that he understands and voices sympathy for her but asks her if she really believes that the one she loves her as much as she loves them or if, in her place, they would give up her name to save themselves. He tells her that the one she loves would betray her in an instant to save themselves and will never love Tituba in the same way. He asks her if it is worth the horror and agony she has endured, or the death she can expect. He promises her that the pain will stop when she tells him the name of the leader of the witches in Salem. Sobbing, she whispers a name in his ear.
Night has fallen in the woods and Anne is still lost. She sits down on a fallen log, upset and exhausted, and begins to cry. It immediately begins to rain. She laughs at her predicament and the rain stops. She hears a noise behind her and an unsettling voice speaks to her, telling her that she has found her way home at last. The Devil appears at her side and Anne flees in terror, running into John. She cries in relief as she hugs him and her father. She asks how they found her and Magistrate Hale credits John’s skill as a tracker. John tells her that it was easy to find her, once he found her trail, but that he can’t figure out how she got so far out of Salem without leaving any tracks. Anne and her father look to one another as they try to come up with a plausible explanation and Anne eventually claims that she ran into the woods in a fit of petulance without thinking where she was going. When John presses her about how she didn’t leave any tracks, she tells him that it rained for a while and that it may have washed away her tracks or he may not have seen them. She kisses a skeptical John on the cheek and asks him to forgive her for the trouble she has caused him and her father. Magistrate Hale thanks John, who leads the way back to Salem.
In the dining room of the House of the Seven Gables, Mary is eating supper alone when Increase enters. He tells Mary that he has discovered that the chief witch of Salem is Tituba’s lover, and that Tituba told him everything, including that Mercy is a witch. Mary tells him that Mercy is out but Increase is unconcerned, predicting that he will find her and her girls by the time the sun comes up. He tells Mary that when he first returned to Salem, he was convinced that Satan’s true partner was right in front of him but that he was shocked to learn that John Alden is behind everything. He asks Mary to walk out in the air with him to witness an arrest. She watches in horror from the balcony of her house as John is arrested for witchcraft when he returns from the woods.
Alone in the jail, a badly injured Tituba smiles.
