Tapeesa is an Inuit woman who resents the intrusion and exploitation of local land by outsiders. She works at Hank Ferryman's lodge at her mother's urging but harbors deep anger over his theft of culturally significant objects.

Hank is a wealthy man overseeing mining operations on Indigenous land. He collects culturally significant objects that he displays as artifacts and pursues Tapeesa despite her clear disinterest.

Marissa is a young woman who escaped impoverished beginnings in Chillicothe, Texas, to build a wealthy life in White Hills. She hides both her pregnancy and her Indigenous heritage from her husband, fearing his reaction.

Elayne is Andrew's mother and a wealthy woman who holds deeply racist views. She uses her privilege and manipulative tactics to control her son's marriage and prevent Marissa from having an Indigenous child.

Joe is an Indigenous man who enters a relationship with a charming but intense white man. He values his family heritage, particularly a crockpot passed down through generations, and struggles to set boundaries when his new partner moves in uninvited.

Cam is a white man who moves into Joe's home quickly after they meet. He is possessive, effortlessly charming, and harbors a strange obsession with his collection of animal and human teeth.

The unnamed protagonist is a young child living in an abusive foster home. They sleep in the attic, clean the house, and look up to another foster child for protection and guidance.

Punk is a twelve-year-old boy living in a hostile foster home. He frequently acts out against their foster mother, taking beatings to protect the younger protagonist and showing defiance through small acts of rebellion.

Amber is a mother who becomes obsessed with the blood quantum of her children. Because her sons have different fathers, they qualify differently for tribal rolls, leading her to treat them drastically differently based on their genetic percentages.

The Wehtigo is a starving, traditional spirit struggling to hunt in a modernized world. Used to preying on disconnected people, it possesses a young man at a party and targets a young Indigenous woman.

Summer is an Indigenous woman who retains traditional cultural knowledge. She carries protective medicines and remains fearless when encountering spiritual dangers in modern settings.

Son is a man who avoids hunting with his father despite constant invitations. After his father passes away, he travels to the family cabin alone, where he encounters an unnatural threat without the guidance he once ignored.

The narrator represents the collective voices of murdered Cherokee men from Tenkiller. They wander the spiritual plane searching for the men who killed them and the women they lost.

Peter is a man of Indigenous Alaskan descent who deeply respects ancient cultural sites. When his companions mock and vandalize local petroglyphs, he takes protective actions that blur the line between traditional medicine and revenge.

Adam is Maddie's boyfriend, a man who acts with colonialist entitlement toward ancient sites. He disregards warnings and purposefully scrapes petroglyphs with his car keys, triggering supernatural consequences.

Keira is a grieving woman struggling to reconcile the beauty of the natural setting with the tragedy that occurred there. Her inability to move on leads her to seek out answers in the wilderness.

The Night Mother is a nine-foot-tall, unearthly figure who presides over endings and death. She offers to soothe those struggling with grief, viewing death as a transition rather than an end.

Cece is a Mi'kmaw woman seeking a fresh start after personal hardships. Hoping her new rural home will provide a connection to traditional living, she instead faces a terrifying haunting by spirits tied to colonial history.

Colin is a ten-year-old Ute boy eagerly anticipating a hunting trip. He communicates with a strange whistle in the dark, leading to a terrifying encounter in the winter woods that threatens his autonomy.

Joseph is a man carrying the emotional scars of childhood separation from his mother and brother. He works at his mother's convenience store in Tennessee, struggling to connect with his family until a robbery drastically alters his life.

The narrator is a storyteller who records tales from local elders to use in writing contests. He is ambitious but faces criticism for hoarding these cultural stories for personal profit rather than returning them to the community.

Uncle Mike is an elder preparing to raise his grandchild alone. He possesses deep ancestral knowledge and challenges the narrator to change his approach to storytelling, emphasizing cultural preservation over commercial gain.

The narrator is an elder born with the sight, allowing her to see the spiritual world. She passes down traditional stories about monsters to her grandchildren, hoping to protect them from entities that prey on those who forget their culture.

Johnny Lee Junior is a man helping run a family business who feels his life lacks significant exterior accomplishment. After surviving a violent assault by local teenagers, he receives unexpected supernatural assistance.

Louis is a large, fur-covered figure with mismatched eyes who helps the community in Chicago. He is summoned by the hidden needs and beliefs of those around him, delivering brutal justice to wrongdoers.

Amy is a Dakota girl who travels from Chicago each summer to stay with her aunt. While staying in dorms built on a former internment camp site, she experiences frightening visions tied to the area's layered historical traumas.

Aunt Phyllis is a kind school nurse working at United Tribes Technical College. She carries quiet guilt over her past inability to fully support her first love, a Japanese American man interned on the grounds where she now lives.

Nelly is a man whose severe health anxiety morphed into a dangerous obsession with a zombie apocalypse. Disconnected from reality, he hoarded supplies and alienated his family, misinterpreting his grandfather's traditional stories as survival warnings.

Robert is a young Chickasaw man whose life is cut short mysteriously after a party. In the afterlife, he becomes a larger-than-life figure, riding a motorcycle and scouring spiritual bars for the man responsible for his death.

Gregory is Robert's nephew and best friend, a kind man who struggles profoundly after Robert's death. In the afterlife, he spends his time patiently searching for Robert while guiding other lost souls.

Thomas is a widower whose grief reawakens deeply buried trauma from his childhood at a residential school. He embarks on a journey to confront his former abuser, struggling with anger and the desire for peace.

Father Raubvogel is an elderly former priest who abused children at the Holy Reward Mission. He remains unrepentant, clinging to the racist belief that his actions were a necessary part of saving Indigenous students.

Della is a woman devastated by the sudden, violent loss of her closest sibling. Desperate for a different outcome, she turns to her estranged aunt to learn traditional medicine and perform a costly resurrection ritual.

Callum is Della's murdered brother. In life, he was the only family member who maintained a relationship with Auntie Ina, respecting her traditional knowledge before his untimely death.

Walt is an Indigenous soldier stationed in Germany who volunteered for service to avoid the Vietnam War. He faces both the casual racism of his peers and a terrifying supernatural threat while walking through the woods at night.

Tom is an author suffering from a painful, growing lump on his back. As he discovers that his novel's French translation has deeply altered his work, his stress mounts, causing his physical and psychological symptoms to worsen.

Bets is a researcher frustrated by the systemic dismissal of marginalized communities. After a grant to help a coastal Indigenous tribe is denied, she likens the experience to the helplessness of watching a bad horror movie.

Megis is a sophomore English student struggling financially and academically. Desperate for a recommendation, she attends a faculty party where she must survive a horrifying discovery and a predatory mentorship offer.

Professor Smith is a faculty member who collects the heads of her successful mentees. She targets marginalized students, offering them fame and institutional power in exchange for their literal and symbolic sacrifice.

Makwa is an Anishinaabe local guide assisting a white surveyor. He lives in harmony with the land and faces brutal violence when he pushes back against the surveyor's plans for environmental exploitation.

Carter is a nineteenth-century surveyor representing colonial expansion and capitalist greed. He acts violently toward Makwa and views the land solely as a resource to be dominated and extracted.