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a ball inside his own sleeping bag, snoring. Naomi poked her head out from her own bag. She fumbled with her phone to check the time.
    â€œWe gotta get, Cordy. Church starts in a few hours. Daddy’ll kill me.”
    â€œParty’s not over,” Cordy said.
    Hays rolled over and rubbed his back, looking up at the brightening sky. “Wasn’t no party to begin with.”
    He struggled out of his bag as Naomi worked out what kinks the night had left in her muscles. Cordelia freed herself from her bed and stood, trying to stretch. She froze with her arms high over her head.
    â€œWhere’s Scarlett?”
    Naomi and Hays stopped what they were doing and looked to the far edge of the campsite. Scarlett’s sleeping bag lay empty, her skirt and sweater from the night before strewn to either side. Naomi called out, then Hays and Cordelia. No answer came.
    Hays took the knife and told them to stay there, he was going to look. That’s as far as his courage carried him, though. He hollered for Scarlett again and then said to Cordelia, “This was so stupid, coming up here.”
    A branch snapped close. Cordy flinched and ran to where Hays stood, the knife now shaking in his hand. Naomi’s mouth hung open as though she’d forgotten how to breathe as something came walking down the path.
    It was only when Scarlett stumbled into the clearing that Naomi seemed to remember again. Scarlett’s clothes were a rumpled mess and her blond hair had been pulled back into something close to a ponytail, but that only made what makeup she hadn’t cried off look worse.
    â€œSomething’s happened,” she said. “Y’all need to come.”
    â€œWhat happened?” Cordy asked.
    Scarlett’s voice cracked. “I woke up this morning and it was gone. Must’ve lost it last night. When I run off.”
    â€œWhat’s gone?”
    â€œYour momma’s bracelet.”
    â€œWhat?” Cordy left Hays where he stood. “You lost Momma’s bracelet ?”
    Scarlett fell into a full-on cry then, saying she’d spent since daybreak looking up at the mines and she couldn’t find it anywhere and that wasn’t even the problem, the bracelet going missing, the problem was something had taken it.
    â€œStop,” Hays said. “What do you mean something took it?”
    â€œSomething,” Scarlett told him. “Took it.”
    Naomi grew still. “How do you know that, Scarlett?”
    â€œI’ll show you,” she said, then turned and disappeared into the trees.
    They all went, picking their way through the trees and shadows until they reached the Number Four, which looks just as run-down and possessed in the early day as it does in the late of night. Scarlett led them to a bare spot midway between the mine and the clump of shrubs. She pointed at the ground.
    â€œWhat is that?” Naomi asked.
    No one answered. No one knew.
    At their feet lay dozens of tracks shaped in a horseshoe, near the shape of a circle, leading in a straight line from the bushes to the forest beyond. Spaced as wide as Hays was tall, meaning what had left them carried a stride of near six feet. But there’s more, friend. It was late April then, but the soil on that mountain was still hard as stone from the long winter. Hadn’t been any rain in the Holler for weeks. But whatever had passed through there was heavy enough to press those tracks near an inch into the path. An inch.
    Hays bent and brushed the hair from his eyes, tracing a finger along the length of one of the prints. He stood again and set his shoe against it. Naomi let out a gasp and covered her mouth, apologizing through her fingers for letting shock get the better of her.
    â€œI’m a twelve,” Hays said. “There’s what? Another two inches left?” He turned his shoe sideways, gauging the length.
    â€œEighteen,” Cordy guessed. “A foot and a half long and near that