Outer Dark

In an isolated cabin in rural Appalachia, Rinthy Holme shakes her brother Culla Holme awake from a nightmare. Culla dreamed that he was in line to receive a cure for an unspecified ailment from a prophet. But instead of healing an eclipse sent the world into permanent darkness. The siblings live alone and Culla keeps Rinthy hidden in the cabin because she is pregnant with his child. He chases off a tinker who stops by, hoping to make a sale.

A few days later, Rinthy goes into labor. It’s a protracted, painful affair during which she largely suffers alone as Culla looks for chores to keep him occupied outside. He refuses to call a midwife to help her, and he is the one who ultimately delivers the child, a boy. After the exhausted Rinthy falls asleep, Culla carries the infant out into the woods where he leaves it exposed to the wrath of a coming storm. Back at home, he lies to Rinthy, telling her that the baby died. Meanwhile, the tinker finds the child in the clearing and takes him in, locating a wetnurse in a nearby town. When Rinthy has recovered enough to visit the child’s grave, she discovers Culla’s deception. Unwilling to face her recrimination or admit his guilt, Culla, now known only by his last name, “Holme,” flees.

Rinthy gathers her meager belongings and sets out in search of the tinker, to whom she believes Holme gave the child. The mother, father, grandmother, and boy give her shelter one night, then give her a ride to the nearest town, where she fails to find the tinker. After another period of wandering, the turnip farmer (Bud) catches her digging in his garden. Initially irate, he invites her to share a meal with himself and his wife, the butter maker. When they fall into a violent argument, Rinthy flees their house. Soon afterwards, she meets the old woman outside her cabin. The old woman gives Rinthy a meal and some advice about how urgently she needs to find her child if she wants to nurse and keep it. Six months after Rinthy set out in the spring, she seeks help from a doctor for her painfully swollen breasts and bleeding nipples—against all odds, she’s still lactating.

Eventually, Rinthy finds the tinker, who takes her to a remote cabin promising to give her child back to her. But once there, he turns on her, accusing her of abandoning her own son and blaming her for participating in the sexual relationship with Holme, even though she doesn’t seem to have been a willing participant. He swears he will never return the child.

At some point, Rinthy stops wandering for a while and lives with a man, but she’s inevitably drawn back onto the road. Eventually, she wanders into the clearing where the bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon killed the tinker and the child months (or possibly years) earlier, and she lays down to sleep beside their skeletons.

After he left the cabin, Holme began his own long pilgrimage. He first finds work with the squire, who sets him the task of chopping a fallen tree into firewood. Holme sleeps in the squire’s barn and runs off early the next morning in possession of the squire’s expensive leather boots. The squire gives chase but is slain by the bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon. Holme enters another town in the company of the beehiver, where he soon learns that someone has been desecrating graves in the cemetery. Because he’s a stranger, suspicion falls on him, forcing him to quickly flee. He stops at a farm where the owner needs his barn roof painted, but men from the town catch up to him there three days later, and he runs away again.

Passing by on the road one day, Holme stops at the old man’s cabin and asks for a drink. The old man gives Holme some water and invites him to stay and chat for a spell. He tells Holme about his glory days as a fowl and snake hunter and offers to teach Holme the trade for himself, but Holme is driven onward by his guilt. That very night, the bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon kill the old man in his own home.

Passing on through the next town because it is eerily abandoned, Holme eventually comes upon a group of men working a turpentine camp. The foreman doesn’t have work for him but tells him to go into town and ask Clark. In the town, Holme has a strained conversation with Bud, the turnip farmer, before securing a job digging graves for two lynched men suspected of murdering the squire. He completes the work but when he goes to collect his wages, he can find no one at the general store. In the morning, he runs away instinctively, passing by the tree where the bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon have added Clark to the other two lynching victims hanging from Bud’s tree.

Later, Holme comes to a place where the road ends at a flooded river. He waits for the ferryman to take him across, but the ferryman isn’t ready until long after dark. In the middle of the river, a cable snaps, throwing the ferryman and the other passenger overboard and sending the Holme careening down the river in the boat. After a while, he sees a light in the forest and shouts for help. The bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon catch his rope, haul him to the bank, and tie the boat up. They invite him to join them in their camp, where they talk to him and feed him mystery meat that they’ve cooked over the flames. The bearded man likes the boots that Holme stole from the squire, and he makes Holme give them to him. In exchange, the trio gives Holme the nameless man’s battered pair of footwear.

After sleeping in an abandoned cabin one night, Holme is accused of trespassing by John and sentenced to a fine of five dollars or 10 days’ hard labor by the lawman. Although he wants to keep working after that period is up, the lawman sends him on his way.

One spring afternoon, Holme encounters Vernon, Billy, and other men driving a massive herd of hogs to the slaughter. He chats companionably with Vernon for a little while, but then the hogs panic and stampede, carrying Vernon over the cliff with them to his death. Billy wants retribution and demands Holme’s life, but Holme manages to flee first.

Eventually, Holme stumbles on the bearded man, the nameless man, and Harmon in another forest camp. Unbeknownst to him, they’ve just killed the tinker and taken the child—who is now a toddler—hostage. While Holme watches, the bearded man slits the child’s throat and gives it to the nameless man to eat.

Many years later, Holme encounters a blind man on the same road as him. The two talk for a few minutes before each continues on his way. Holme follows the road until it dead ends in a swamp, then turns around to come back the way he came. As he walks, he sees the blind man coming, and while he thinks it was unfair for someone to set the man on a dead-end path, he says nothing and just continues on his way.