Annie Leaves Her Old Life Behind

Cackle is told entirely in the first person by Annie Crane, following her chronologically from her thirtieth birthday through roughly the next year before jumping several years ahead in the epilogue.

When Annie turns thirty, she is miserable. Her relationship with Sam, her partner of nearly a decade, has ended, although they are still awkwardly sharing their Manhattan apartment. Annie can’t afford the city without him, so she accepts a teaching position at Aster High School in upstate New York and rents a furnished apartment in nearby Rowan.

Before leaving, Annie celebrates her birthday with her friend and former coworker Nadia. They drunkenly visit a psychic named Atlas, who examines Annie’s palm and declares that she has “dark energy” surrounding her and that her future is obscured by darkness. Annie doesn’t know what to make of the warning.

Rowan initially looks like an idyllic little town, complete with picturesque shops and signs calling it “America’s Best-Kept Secret.” Yet Annie immediately notices unsettling things. Strangers drive slowly past her apartment while staring up at her. Spiders repeatedly appear inside. One night, she hears an unfamiliar voice gently telling her that she’s okay and should go to sleep.

Her new job isn’t much better. Annie feels isolated from the other teachers, and several boys in her English class mock her by making bird noises because her last name is Crane. Fifteen-year-old Madison Thorpe, an outspoken student who dreams of attending college in New York, stands up for Annie. Madison also takes Annie’s ASL class with her hard-of-hearing friend Beth.

Sophie Takes Annie Under Her Wing

Everything begins changing when Annie meets Sophie at the local liquor store. Sophie is stunningly beautiful, unusually confident, and immediately interested in Annie. She gives Annie a bottle of wine and invites her to meet at Rowan’s farmers market.

At the market, Annie begins noticing how strangely everyone behaves around Sophie. Rose, an older woman who sells jam, tells Annie that everyone knows her. Oskar, who runs The Good Mug coffee stand with his teenage son Erik, serves Sophie without question. Even children seem awed by her.

Sophie invites Annie home, leading her through the woods past an old well, graves, and a crude stick hut before revealing her actual residence: an enormous stone mansion. Annie spends the day baking blackberry pie, drinking tea, reading poetry, and enjoying Sophie’s lavish home. When a storm prevents her from leaving, she stays overnight.

The mansion is clearly haunted. Annie hears invisible footsteps charging up the cellar stairs, sees a pale face reflected behind her in a mirror, and experiences sleep paralysis accompanied by someone breathing beside her. Sophie treats all of this as relatively unremarkable.

The following morning, Sophie tells Annie that Sam never appreciated her and casually offers to curse the boys harassing her at school.

Soon afterward, one of those students, Chris Bersten, openly mocks Annie by making chicken noises. He suddenly becomes violently ill and coughs up a disgusting black mass that transforms into a live spider. Chris transfers out of Annie’s class.

Annie begins wondering whether Sophie was responsible. The townspeople’s reactions only deepen her suspicions. When Annie asks Alex, who works at the liquor store, about Sophie, Alex nervously insists that everyone “loves” her.

Sophie finally tells Annie the truth herself. She deliberately drops a glass and walks across the broken pieces without concern, then produces a huge spider that climbs up her arm and turns on a light switch. Sophie admits that she cursed Chris. She has lived in Rowan for centuries and once lived in the crude hut Annie saw in the woods before eventually moving into the mansion.

Rather than being horrified, Annie starts laughing. Sophie laughs with her, and spiders gather around them as Annie accepts that her new best friend is something supernatural.

Annie Is Drawn Deeper Into Sophie’s World

Sophie becomes increasingly protective of Annie. She cleans Annie’s apartment, brings her gifts, feeds her, and discourages contact with Sam. She also gives Annie a silver ring with a pink stone.

While swimming in Sophie’s indoor pool, Annie encounters one of the mansion’s ghosts. A gray male figure grabs her underwater and nearly drowns her, badly injuring her foot. Sophie rescues her and uses an herbal mixture to magically heal the injury.

Annie’s emotional dependence on Sophie deepens after Sam reveals that he has a new girlfriend, Shannon. Annie is devastated that Sam has moved on so quickly. Sophie arrives almost magically when Annie needs her and tries to comfort her with a powerful mushroom tea. Unfortunately, Sophie badly misjudges the dose. Annie experiences a horrifying hallucination in which her body seems to distort and disintegrate before spending the next day violently ill.

Still, Sophie remains the person making Annie feel cared for and valued.

Annie Discovers Her Own Power

Annie’s vice principal, Jill, eventually convinces her to go on a double date with an accountant named Pascal. Sophie sends Annie a gorgeous gold dress for the occasion.

The date is awful. Pascal barely speaks, while Jill’s husband, Dan, spends dinner making rude comments about Annie’s height, eating habits, and appearance. He also boasts about replacing his former wife with Jill as though women were interchangeable products.

Humiliated, Annie hides in the bathroom. Words mysteriously appear on the stall, encouraging her to reclaim the evening and fight back. Annie assumes Sophie is communicating with her.

She returns to the table and starts standing up to Dan. Suddenly, Dan begins choking. He pulls several bloody animal bones from his mouth as Annie erupts into uncontrollable laughter. Horrified diners stare while Jill helps her bleeding husband away.

The next morning, Annie tells Sophie what happened and expects her to admit responsibility.

Sophie doesn’t.

The mysterious bathroom message and the bones came from Annie.

Annie has magic too.

Sophie also introduces Annie to Ralph, an enormous fuzzy spider with a cheerful personality and a fondness for maple syrup. Ralph becomes Annie’s companion, especially during difficult weeks. She even makes him a little bed from a cereal box, and he tries to prevent her from contacting Sam whenever she becomes lonely.

As winter passes, Annie’s abilities grow. Chicken bones float above her dinner. She accidentally fills her apartment with floating bouquets. Objects begin responding to her emotions. At Sophie’s mansion, she becomes increasingly comfortable with the strange supernatural world surrounding her.

Sophie cuts Annie’s hair to her shoulders, and Annie feels as though she is finally shedding pieces of her former life.

Rowan’s Fear of Sophie Comes Into Focus

Not everyone is happy about Annie’s transformation.

Oskar warns her to stay away from Sophie and the woods. Sophie explains that Oskar’s wife, Helen, once came to her because she felt trapped in her marriage. Helen eventually left Rowan, and Oskar blamed Sophie for encouraging her. Sophie threatened him when he confronted her, although Helen later resurfaced and remained in contact with Erik.

Around Valentine’s Day, Annie accidentally reveals her powers in front of Oskar by making a coffee cup float. He furiously calls Sophie a plague on Rowan.

That night, Annie overhears a secret gathering involving Oskar, Rose, Alex, Deirdre, and Tom, the diner owner. Oskar argues that Sophie is corrupting Annie and reminds everyone that people who cross Sophie have a habit of disappearing or suffering bizarre fates. Others defend Sophie because Rowan has prospered under her presence. Tom ominously remarks that there cannot be two.

Enraged by hearing herself discussed this way, Annie accidentally shatters a window with her mind and runs home.

Despite everything Sophie has taught her about moving forward, Annie then texts Sam. Their joking conversation quickly becomes emotional, and when Annie admits she misses him, Sam says he misses her too.

Annie Chooses Sam—and Sophie Turns on Her

Annie begins hiding things from Sophie. When Sam calls and asks to visit Rowan overnight, Annie agrees.

She even hides the plan from Ralph.

On the morning Sam is supposed to arrive, Annie takes Ralph back to Sophie’s mansion. Sophie surprises Annie with an acoustic guitar, but she immediately senses Annie is lying about why she needs to leave.

The confrontation becomes terrifying. Musical instruments begin playing by themselves, the chandelier swings, the fire turns black, and Ralph grows to the size of a dog. Annie flees into the mansion’s cellar, where she encounters Theodore, the ghost of the man who originally built the house.

Sophie admits that Theodore and the other ghosts are trapped there because they tried to harm her. She finally tells Annie more about her past: women like Sophie were burned, hanged, and drowned, while Sophie survived by embracing her powers and retaliating against the people who wanted her dead.

Furious and frightened, Annie calls Sophie a “fucking witch.”

Sophie responds by transforming herself into the grotesque caricature of a storybook witch—green skin, warts, pointed teeth, yellow nails, broken nose, broomstick and all. She chases Annie through the woods before finally stopping near her old hut. Returning to her normal appearance, Sophie tearfully tells Annie to go and never return.

Sam Comes Back—and Annie Finally Sees Him Clearly

Annie returns home just before Sam arrives.

Their reunion immediately feels wrong. Over lunch, Sam talks about their relationship and criticizes the way Annie used to behave, even complaining that she constantly wore pajamas and wasn’t attractive in them. Annie begins recognizing how thoroughly she once organized herself around keeping Sam happy.

Then Sam kisses her.

Annie feels nothing.

She tells him to stop.

In the bathroom, Annie looks at herself and remembers Sophie’s insistence that she has to surrender everything to gain everything. For the first time, Annie stops resisting what she has become.

Then she overhears Sam talking to Shannon and discovers the final insult: he never broke up with his girlfriend before coming to Rowan.

Annie’s attachment to him finally disappears.

Her magic explodes into full strength. She pins Sam’s kneecap to the floor and causes blood to pour from his eyes and mouth as he writhes in terror. Instead of shrinking away from her own power, Annie cackles with delight and asks Sam what he thinks of her new haircut.

Then she throws him out.

For the first time since the breakup, Annie no longer wonders whether she is enough for him. She doesn’t want him anymore.

Annie and Sophie Reconcile

Annie walks through the woods to Sophie’s mansion, now experiencing supernatural physical changes of her own, including additional eyes.

Sophie answers the door with Ralph perched on her shoulder.

Annie apologizes for calling Sophie a witch, but she doesn’t simply submit to her. She tells Sophie that the ultimatum was wrong. Sophie couldn’t force Annie to abandon Sam; Annie had to make that choice herself.

She has now done exactly that.

“I’ve evolved past him,” Annie tells her.

Sophie accepts her apology, and their friendship is restored.

By Annie’s thirty-first birthday in June, her transformation is complete. Her apartment fills with yellow roses, Ralph wears a tiny party hat, and Sophie gives Annie an elaborate gold birthday dress. Even Annie’s shadow helps lace her corset.

When Annie walks through Rowan, the townspeople are waiting for her. Oskar and Erik give her coffee beans, while Rose, Deirdre, Tom, and others bring gifts and sing “Happy Birthday.” Sophie has transformed the gazebo into an enormous floral celebration and prepared a banquet.

Annie and Sophie toast to the future.

Unlike the frightened woman who was told by a psychic that her future was hidden in darkness, Annie no longer needs anyone to tell her what comes next. Her future belongs to her.

Years Later

The epilogue takes place years later on October 1.

Annie is walking through Rowan’s farmers market when she encounters her former student Madison Thorpe, now forty-two. Madison attended Sarah Lawrence, lived in California, and has returned to Aster after separating from her partner.

Madison is stunned when she sees her former teacher.

Annie hasn’t aged a day.

Annie gives Madison an apple, and Madison asks whether she’d like to get coffee. Annie happily accepts but asks whether she can bring a friend.

The friend, of course, is Sophie.

Years after Sophie encountered Annie when she was heartbroken, isolated, and uncertain about her future, Annie is now preparing to introduce another newly single woman at a crossroads in her life to the strange, powerful woman who changed hers.