Catching Teller Crow Summary

The only person who can see 15-year-old ghost Beth Teller is her grieving father Michael Teller, a police detective in Australia. When Michael is sent to investigate a burned corpse found in a burned-down children’s home, Beth—who wants to distract him from his grief—tries to convince him to take the case seriously, though he believes the corpse is just Director Cavanagh or Nurse Flint, the home’s only two employees. When Michael’s phone rings, Beth suspects it’s Aunty Viv, her dead Aboriginal mother’s sister, who was driving Beth to a party when another car hit them, killing Beth. Michael won’t talk to Aunty Viv, though she didn’t cause the accident.

Beth and Michael visit the burned-down children’s home, where Beth sees a crow. Michael shows Beth photos of the home, which include unhappy-looking children, Cavanagh, Flint, and bespectacled Alexander Sholt, the rich man who donated the building for the home. Beth suggests that they should talk to the girl found on drugs near the home the night of the fire. At the hospital, a sharp-featured Aboriginal girl, Isobel Catching, flags Michael down, identifies herself as the witness, and brings him to her hospital room, where she begins telling a story.

In Catching’s story, she and her mother are on a road trip where her mother is teaching her to control her anger by silently reciting the names of the Catching women, from her great-great-grandmother to herself. Her mother has also told her about the Catching women’s strengths, all of which Catching has inherited. During the trip, a flood sweeps Catching from their car. Catching uses the swimming power of her great-grandmother—who swam home after the government forcibly separated her from her Aboriginal family—to survive, but later, she finds her mother’s corpse. She cries herself to sleep. When she wakes, the world has gone gray. Two creatures wearing masks, which call themselves Fetchers, find Catching and abduct her into a series of tunnels.

Catching stops talking, and Michael leaves her alone. In the hospital parking lot, Michael suggests to Beth that Catching’s story represents her feelings about what happened to her, not what literally happened. Beth, angry at Catching for not giving Michael a truer story, phases back into Catching’s room to vent at her—and is shocked to learn that Catching can see her. Catching explains that her mother could see ghosts; since Catching inherited all her female ancestors’ strengths, Catching can see ghosts too. Catching asks Beth questions that reveal Beth was moving on to an afterlife until Michael’s grief pulled her back. When Catching criticizes Michael, Beth gets so angry that a lightbulb explodes. Catching explains that ghosts’ strong emotions can affect the physical world and tells Beth to leave until she’s ready to talk about moving on.

The next morning, a call wakes Michael. It’s a police colleague from the city, telling him that Cavanagh and Flint’s bank accounts suggest they were being “paid off.” At the station, police chief Derek Bell criticizes Michael for interviewing witnesses before talking to the local police. When Michael asks Derek about Alexander Sholt, Derek says that they went to school together. Claiming that Alexander’s house is hard to find, Derek asks his lieutenant Allie Hartley to take Michael there. On the drive, Allie asks Michael to look at the file of her childhood friend Sarah Blue, an Aboriginal girl who disappeared 20 years ago at age 14.

When they reach Alexander’s house, Alexander’s father stonewalls Michael at the door. Meanwhile, Beth searches the house and finds a smashed second-floor window with black hairs stuck to the pane. As Beth and Michael walk back to the car, Allie jumps out and tells Michael that she just got a call: two more bodies have been found. Michael, Allie, and Beth drive to the site where the bodies were dumped, a drain surrounded by a locked fence. After Michael views the bodies with Derek, Allie tells him that a woman who lives nearby claims to have heard a winged creature flying overhead the night before. Beth blurts “Fetchers” and teleports to Catching to make sure she’s okay. Catching assures Beth that no Fetchers are coming for her but thanks her for checking. Beth says, “It’s what fr—” but cuts herself off before saying the word “friends.” Catching affirms that she and Beth are friends, because she told Beth the hard truth about needing to move on, and telling hard truths is what friends do. Later, Michael arrives looking for Beth, and Catching resumes her story.

In Catching’s story, a girl with long gray hair, gray eyes, and gray skin emerges from the shadows of the room where the Fetchers deposited Catching and introduces herself as Crow. Crow explains that the Fetchers work for the Feed, a monster that will eat Catching’s colors. Catching realizes that Crow is gray because the Feed fed on her. The Fetchers bring Catching to another room, where the Feed—a monster with mirrors for eyes—rips open her abdomen, pulls colors out of her, and eats them. After Catching is returned to her room, Crow informs Catching that the Feed has killed many victims. She advises Catching to become dead to avoid the pain. Instead, Catching starts silently reciting the Catching women’s names. When she forgets one, she asks Crow to help her by reciting relationship words, e.g. Granny and Nanna, that will trigger memories.

Back in the hospital, Michael offers to protect Catching from whoever hurt her, but Catching says it’s “too late.” In the parking lot, Aunty Viv calls Michael again, but he doesn’t pick up. When Beth tells him he’ll have to talk to Aunty Viv at Grandpa Jim’s upcoming birthday party, he says he won’t attend—which makes Beth so angry that she runs straight through the hospital and out the other side, where an ominous shadow hovers over her. When Beth runs, the shadow chases her. Beth, realizing she no longer has physical limitations, sprints so fast she feels exhilarated—and then an afterlife of bright colors appears before her, containing a presence she recognizes as her dead mother. Beth infers that, since she has felt this presence throughout her life, she can have relationships with her family members even if she moves on from the physical world. Then, sadly, she turns away from the afterlife, because she doesn’t believe her grief-stricken father can accept that kind of relationship. She weeps until nightfall.

The next morning, she sees Michael pondering a sticky note with Sarah Blue’s name over it. He explains that the police got away with doing a bad job investigating her disappearance because she was Aboriginal—a fact that clearly bothers Michael. Beth, thinking about how much Michael hates to be a bystander to injustice, asks him whether he knows he couldn’t have prevented her death. Miserably, Michael suggests that he should have prevented it and admits that he’s avoiding his beloved in-laws because he doesn’t feel like he deserves to have a relationship with them when Beth is dead. When Beth explains to him that he’s being hurtful to everyone, he promises to “try.”

Michael goes back to the police station, only to discover that Derek called Allie the night before saying he might not come to work the next day. Worried and suspicious, Michael goes to Derek’s house with Allie. When Michael breaks down Derek’s locked door, they discover Derek dead of a stab wound. Abruptly, Michael decides to go to the hospital. On the drive, Michael asks whether Catching can see Beth. Beth admits it and says she didn’t tell Michael because Catching wants Beth to move on. Michael, surprised to learn that Beth can move on, suggests that maybe she should.

At the hospital, Catching tells Michael and Beth the final part of her story: Catching has become almost entirely gray. After a Feed eats one of her last colors, Catching realizes that this Feed didn’t have mirrors for eyes—there are two Feeds. Later, Catching has a dream in which the Feeds’ prior victims instruct her to name the gray and defeat it with its “opposite.” Crow violently wakes Catching, telling Catching she almost died. Suddenly, Catching sees black strands in Crow’s hair and announces that colors can return. Crow, overwhelmed, lashes out at Catching, scratching her—revealing that Catching’s influence is helping Crow interact with the physical world. Catching remembers that she felt “despair” when the Feed first ate her colors; when she counteracts that despair with hope, she sheds some gray on her arm. Catching tells Crow that they will regain their colors and stop the Feeds. Crow and Catching work on shedding their grayness. When the Fetchers arrive to get Catching, the girls smash the Fetchers’ masks, revealing voids underneath. Then they chase the mirror-eyed Feed out of the tunnels. He hides in a locked cage full of birds, but Crow’s hair becomes winglike, blowing the cage door off. The birds fly free. As Catching and Crow advance on the Feed, he transforms into a man with glasses. Then the “world explodes.”

After finishing her story, Catching tells Michael that “it” is 100 steps “west.” Michael and Beth drive to the children’s home; on the way, Michael calls Allie and asks her to meet them there. One hundred steps west of the home, Michael finds the hatch to a bunker. He motions Beth to stay aboveground while he and Allie investigate. Beth sees glasses abandoned on the ground nearby—and realizes that the “tunnels” in Catching’s story were the bunker, the birds were the children in the home, and bespectacled Alexander Sholt was a Feed. Allie and Michael emerge from the bunker and discuss what they’ve found: the bunker held kidnapped girls, and Derek’s jacket was down there. Beth realizes Derek must have been the other Feed. Alexander was paying Cavanagh and Flint to keep quiet and maybe procure victims from the children’s home. Michael tells Allie that he thinks Alexander and Derek have been kidnapping, abusing, and murdering girls since high school—and that her friend Sarah Blue was their first victim.

After Allie leaves, Catching abruptly appears, carrying a crow that Beth now recognizes as Crow, Sarah Blue’s ghost. Catching explains that Crow saw Beth at the children’s home the first day Beth and Michael arrived and that she decided to tell Beth her own story to help Beth move on. When Michael asks Catching not to kill anyone else now that Alexander, Derek, Cavanagh, and Flint are dead, Beth explains that Catching didn’t kill anyone—Crow did. She dragged Cavanagh and Flint out a second-story window, dropped their bodies into a locked area from above, and entered Derek’s locked house through the chimney. Beth realizes that Catching has the power to travel between realities and can help ghosts like Beth and Crow travel as well. When Catching invites Beth to travel with her and Crow to the colorful afterlife, Beth agrees. She says goodbye to her father—who decides to go to Grandpa Jim’s birthday party and calls Aunty Viv—and flies away with Catching and Crow to meet her mother in the afterlife.