Sergeant Calloway discovers Fairchild and Myers torn apart, with bloody prints leading into the night.
Crooked Run keeps its old-country fears close. Talk of a bloodthirsty beast moves through the Virginia woods, especially under a full moon near livestock and lonely roads. Daniel Calloway says he has no taste for superstition, but he writes the account down because age is starting to blur what happened near the end of the American Civil War. The war has hollowed out the house. A father is away in Vicksburg, a husband may have died after Powder Ridge, and the cornfield sits unharvested like cover for whatever might come through it. Safety already feels like a thin promise. William Myers arrives to find women carrying grief, exhaustion, and the terror of a birth no one can delay. Abigail delivers a healthy baby girl, and the relief is real, if fragile. Her first question reaches for Ned, who cannot be there. Then the room changes. A second child is coming, and the quiet after that discovery does plenty of damage on its own. Calloway tries to sleep upstairs. He drops off fast, worn down, but the sounds from Abigail's room have already told him the house is wrong. Fever follows the birth. Blankets, breath, and newborn skin stop feeling domestic and start feeling like a border. Barnes wakes Calloway from a short sleep, a hand in the dark with worse news behind it. The horror tightens the room until war, folklore, childbirth, and animal hunger all feel like the same thing waiting outside the door.
