the wind whistling through the pines. “My brother is dead, Mr.
Blackwood. I just want to understand how.”
He studied her face for a long time.
Then he sighed and gestured for them to sit.
“There are places in these mountains,” he said slowly,
“where even the animals won’t go.
My granddaddy called them the dead lowlands. No undergrowth.
Ground covered in old needles, thick as a mattress. Not a squirrel.
Not a deer. Nothing.” Frank raised an eyebrow. “And you’ve been to one?”
“Hunted near one, back in 2013. Two years before your brother.”
Silas rubbed his weathered jaw. “I found tracks at the edge.
Long. Narrow. Three toes forward, one opposing, like a hand, but huge.
And every toe ended in a claw mark.” “Did you tell anyone?”
A bitter smile. “They’d have laughed me out of the county.”
He had taken a few photos with an old phone.
