Demon flees the truck stop and catches a ride with a long-haul trucker, only to fall asleep and wake up in Nashville—farther from Unicoi County than ever. With no money and little food, Demon tries to hitch back east, hides in a foul one-person bathroom to avoid a roadside drifter who snatches Demon’s apple, and spends hours getting ignored on the interstate shoulder while his supplies disappear.

Realizing Nashville is a city where he cannot survive broke, Demon makes a colorful cardboard sign that reads “UNICOI.” A talkative young woman in a yellow VW immediately picks him up, but she misreads the sign as “unicorns” and chats nonstop about her interests while driving toward Knoxville. When she drops Demon at an exit called Love Creek, Demon is stranded again, exhausted and hungry.

As rain moves in, Demon crawls behind a mini-mart and sleeps between the building and a dumpster, eating his last stolen Slim Jim. Lying there, Demon thinks about Mr. Golly’s obsession with feeding people—rooted in stories of “untouchable” dump children—and doubts how “nice” people really are to one another when someone is poor and unwanted.

Over the next day, Demon catches several rides east: a trucker, a crude young man who keeps pressing Demon about women, and finally a preacher driving an old Caddy. The preacher listens without judging as Demon unloads his whole history—his mother’s death, foster placements, fights, and the recent theft that left him broke—then warns Demon that Unicoi holds deep, dangerous hurt and gives Demon a dollar and directions toward Murder Valley.

Demon walks for hours toward Murder Valley, improvising repairs to his falling-apart shoes, sleeps in a barn, and reaches the valley on Sunday amid church traffic. Demon searches cemeteries and asks locals about Betsy Woodall; men at a feed-store dock mock Betsy as a witch or monster but finally give directions to a yellow two-story house. Demon races there, finds a tall, hard-looking elderly woman in a flowered yard who tries to drive him off, and then tells her, “I’m your grandson,” shocking her into sitting down in disbelief.