The ninth episode of American Horror Stories Season 3 is centered around a girl named Jillian. She dreams about a girl who thinks there’s someone or something under her bed. When this girl tries to convince her father about this “monster,” he simply tells her to be brave and go to sleep. But the monster is apparently real, as it can be seen dragging its gnarly fingers across the girl’s bed. As Jillian wakes up, we learn that she lives with her husband, Mark, and they’ve been trying to have a baby for a long time. However, due to Jillian’s nightmares, they are unable to conceive. The truth of the matter though is that, unbeknownst to Mark, Jillian has been taking birth control pills. Jillian works with her sister, Megan, at some chic garment shop, and although they seem to be pretty close to each other, even she seems to be unaware of the reason behind Jillian’s relationship woes. Talking about the relationship, things take a turn for the worse as, later that night, Mark is dragged into nothingness by an unseen entity while Jillian tries to save her husband and fails. Why did this happen to Jillian? Let’s find out.
Spoiler Alert
Jillian Has A Falling Out With Megan
After the aforementioned incident, Jillian has moved in with her sister, Megan. She can’t live in the house where her husband died because it’s a crime scene. Given how Jillian was the only person in there when Mark supposedly died, she is a suspect. Hence, Detective Watts has been assigned to keep track of Jillian’s movements, and Megan is more annoyed by his presence than Jillian is. Talking about Jillian, she seems to have dedicated her life to finding unsolved cases where people have “disappeared under the bed.” Megan thinks that this is a sign of Jillian’s deteriorating mental health, and she needs to let go of the past in order to prevent herself from losing her mind. Jillian says that everyone from Mark’s family to the police blames her for what happened to Mark. So, it is important for her to prove that Mark was indeed killed by the monster that was under her bed and that she had nothing to do with his death. Hence, she goes to Samantha Blair’s house, i.e., one of the victims of the entity that’s been massacring people by hiding under their bed. Samantha’s mother answers the door, but she refuses to speak to Jillian.
Detective Watts, who has been tailing Jillian, tells her to stop this wild goose chase and instead just admit that she murdered Mark in cold blood. Jillian knows what she saw that night, so she refuses to lie about it just because Detective Watts doesn’t believe in her. She goes back to Megan and tells her how Watts is looking for a motive to pin Mark’s death on her. Megan says that it’s stupid to try and accuse a woman of killing her husband while she was planning to have a baby with him. Finally, Megan blurts out the truth about taking pills to avoid getting pregnant with Mark’s baby. This disturbs Megan quite a bit. That’s why she is compelled to ask Jillian if she has unintentionally killed Mark. She knows that Jillian has a bad habit of acting out her dreams, once even stuffing a pillow full of spaghetti. Hence, Megan theorizes that Jillian’s strong feelings about not wanting to get pregnant might’ve gotten the better of her, and she might’ve killed Mark while acting out one of her nightmares. This causes Jillian to lash out. She goes through her hate mail and finds a person called Niles Taylor, who claims to know what happened to Jillian, and decides to take his help with her case because Megan clearly doesn’t trust her anymore.
Jillian Learns About Mary
Jillian reaches St. Benjamin’s Memorial Hospital to meet Niles Taylor. Initially, Niles is hesitant about talking to Jillian because he thinks that he could lose his job by colluding with an alleged criminal. When he realizes that Jillian is desperate to know the truth, he takes her to a comatose girl called Mary. She has been in this vegetative state for the past 10 years. Now, according to Niles, whenever Mary dreams, “things happen.” The lights begin to flicker, the EEG spikes, and a monstrous entity emerges from under her bed. Niles claims to have seen this creature with his eyes, and that’s why he believed Jillian when she said that something from under the bed had dragged Mark to his death. Niles, much like Jillian, suffers from a chronic case of severe nightmares, and that’s what that vision of the monster was chalked up to. But he shows that he has kept track of every time Mary’s EEG has spiked to make some sense of the phenomenon. Thanks to Jillian’s amateur investigative skills, she has a list of the dates when someone mysteriously disappeared from their bed. The dates of Mary’s convulsions and the disappearances match up, and that’s why Jillian and Niles come to the conclusion that somehow Mary is responsible for unleashing the monster on unsuspecting people. Jillian wants to learn more about Mary. So, she travels to her house, where she used to live with her dad, who found her passed out due to a stroke 10 years ago.
When Jillian enters Mary’s house, she is greeted in a not-so-fun way by Mary’s father, Earl. This is where it becomes clear that the girl from Jillian’s dream isn’t a young version of Jillian; it’s actually Mary. Jillian asks Earl what happened to Mary after he sent her to bed on that fateful night. Earl says that Jacob Holler, a patient from Longview Sanitarium, had broken into their house and was about to kill Mary. Earl heard Mary’s screams and killed Jacob in front of Mary with his bare hands. This severely traumatized Mary, and soon after that incident, she went into a coma. Jillian thinks that there’s more to her story than just that. So, she decides to spend the night in Mary’s bed and see if she gets some answers. Somehow, Jillian enters a liminal space where “special people” like Mary, Jillian, and Niles can interact with each other. Mary (the adult version) says that all of their thoughts and feelings are connected with each other, thereby allowing them to know what the other is thinking about when they’re asleep. Jillian asks Mary if she knew what she was feeling when she was with Mark right before he died. This causes Mary to panic, the liminal space starts to become chaotic, and Jillian wakes up. She finds out that Niles has been calling her to say that Mary is dreaming again.
Jillian Is Killed By Mary
At the end of American Horror Stories episode 9, Jillian learns that one of the kids who were playing in the background of the aforementioned liminal space has been killed. The little girl from the dreamspace apparently threatened to kill the boy because he was hurting her, and Mary evidently saw that as her call to action and did the girl’s bidding. She unleashed the monster that’s been hiding in her subconscious and got a literal child killed. When Jillian reaches the crime scene, she is confronted by Detective Watts about her birth control pills. He says that that proves that Jillian killed Mark because he was forcing her to have a child. Well, that’s only partially true. Yes, Jillian hated Mark for pushing her to have a child, but she didn’t want to kill him. Mary was the one who interpreted Mark’s advances as something life threatening, and she had him killed. Jillian knows that Mary is dangerous, and she wants to dose her with the drugs that were given to her and Niles to stop them from dreaming so that they can put a stop to these killings.
Niles, who empathizes with Mary, says that dreaming is the only thing that the comatose girl has. If she can’t dream, then she is as good as dead. Jillian reiterates the gravity of Mary’s actions, and he agrees to talk to his superior about getting the medicine that’ll stop Mary from dreaming. Mary seemingly eavesdrops on this particular conversation and kills Niles. Jillian goes to Megan to convince her to trust her, but Megan obviously doesn’t believe a word that Jillian is saying. With no other option left, Jillian heads over to St. Benjamin’s to stab Mary to death. Unbeknownst to her, Mary has regained consciousness and has been moved to a separate room with a view upon Earl’s request. Therefore, when Jillian goes into Mary’s old room to kill her, Mary begins to convulse, and she unleashes the entity from under her bed to kill Jillian. Apparently, on the night that Earl killed Jacob, the mental patient’s soul fused with or entered Mary’s body. Since then, the two have been “helping” people who they can access through their subconscious if they sense some trouble in their lives. Mary thought Jillian was trapped in her marriage, and that’s why she killed Mark. Now, she isn’t happy that Jillian, in return, is trying to kill her. So, she allows the spirit of Jacob to drag Jillian underneath the bed, while Megan helplessly watches her sister, whom she didn’t believe all this while, vanish into nothingness. I guess this is the show’s way of saying that when your kid has nightmares and says that there’s something underneath their bed, you better take their word for it.
