Sorrowland

Vern, a 15-year-old Black girl with albinism and nystagmus, an eye condition causing involuntary eye movement and limited vision, gives birth alone in the woods to twins she names Howling and Feral. Two months earlier, she fled the Blessed Acres of Cain, a Black nationalist religious compound where she was married at 13 to its leader, Reverend Sherman. Members call the compound Cainland. It originated as a collective called Coloreds Against White Supremacy (Claws), but Eamon Fields transformed it into a strict religious settlement. His son Sherman inherited the leadership.

Since arriving in the forest, Vern has been stalked by a mysterious white figure she calls "the fiend," who leaves dead animals dressed in baby clothes as threats. On the night of Howling's birth, Vern experiences a terrifying haunting: wolves chase her through the woods, though she knows no wolves live in this region. The fiend confronts her, revealing he was sent by Sherman: "The wolves always flush out the runaways" (12). Vern stabs him and delivers her second twin shortly after. She realizes the hauntings, the night terrors that all compound members experience, cannot result from proximity to Cainland as Sherman preaches, since she is miles away. She concludes someone is deliberately poisoning the community.

Over the next year, Vern raises the twins in the woods, drawing on the survivalist skills Cainland instilled. Flashbacks reveal that her best friend, Lucy Jenkins, was brought to the compound as a child. Lucy's mother fled and tried to rescue Lucy, but a judge returned custody to Lucy's abusive father, suggesting Cainland had corrupted the court. Lucy escaped a second time and vanished. On her last night, she left Vern a copy of Giovanni's Room containing her aunt's phone number and address.

As months pass, Vern discovers her body is changing. She possesses extraordinary strength, tearing branches from trees and putting out a bonfire single-handedly. At a roadside bar, she meets Ollie, a red-haired woman, and they begin a relationship. Vern calls her mother, Ruthanne, who admits the hauntings are likely caused by drugs but defends Cainland. Furious, Vern severs contact. Her body develops a hard, white exoskeletal growth along her spine, and wounds heal overnight.

When Vern discovers baby clothes in Ollie's apartment matching items the fiend placed on dead animals, she realizes Ollie is the fiend. Ollie admits she was assigned to return Vern to Cainland but claims she protected Vern instead. Vern attacks Ollie, throwing her into a tree hard enough to break bones. Soon after, a devastating storm destroys Vern's camp. She walks for 10 consecutive days without sleep, carrying both children north toward Lucy's aunt's address. Her exoskeleton spreads and her joints ache. She resolves to find medical help and, if possible, Lucy.

Navigating the outside world with her children, who have never seen cars or other people, Vern reaches an address in Cold Springs. It is not a house but Auntie's Diner, a soup kitchen run by Bridget, an Oglala Lakota woman and Lucy's mother's foster sister. Bridget recognizes Vern from an old Polaroid and takes the family to her mountain cabin.

Vern's condition rapidly deteriorates. Her temperature reaches 112°F, and she becomes delirious. Gogo, Bridget's 22-year-old niece and a trained paramedic who identifies as winkte, a Lakota identity beyond the Western gender binary, takes charge. After 10 days of prayer and medical care, Vern awakens. Gogo explains that a fungal infection by an undescribed species is fruiting on Vern's back, forming a mushroom-like exoskeleton around her bones. Though the infection should be fatal, Vern's body has adapted; the fungus's enzymes may have triggered dormant genes, granting her extraordinary strength and healing.

At the cabin, Howling and Feral adapt with Bridget's help. Vern and Gogo piece together the truth: Eamon Fields was likely a government infiltrator who turned Cainland into a covert medical experiment. The hauntings, "vitamin" injections, and blood draws were all part of the research. Vern learns to summon hauntings deliberately, discovering they are memories transmitted through mycelium, the underground fungal network in the soil that connects the experiences of anyone who has carried the fungus.

Vern and Gogo grow close romantically. Vern reveals she is intersex, what she calls "in-between." A sentient haunting of Reverend Sherman reveals he has been dead for three months. He warns that a newcomer named Brother Freddy, whom Vern suspects is another government plant, is grooming Carmichael, a 15-year-old compound member, while preaching about "the next plane of existence," language suggesting a planned massacre. Sherman's revelation that hauntings come only from the dead confirms Lucy died.

Files from Ollie's laptop reveal that Vern was specifically targeted for genetic vulnerability to the fungus: her mother was steered to Cainland so the program could access Vern's DNA. When Vern accidentally breaks Howling's ribs with a too-strong embrace, she withdraws from everyone, convinced her transforming body makes her dangerous.

Ollie returns alive, healed by the fungal spores of Barbara "Queen" James, one of Cainland's original founders, who has carried the fungus for 50 years. Queen is controlled by electric shock collars. Ollie uses Queen to project a haunting that flushes Vern from hiding at the cabin. Vern flees to draw them away from the children. During the pursuit, Queen sends Vern a mental image urging her to run, revealing she retains her own will.

Vern takes refuge at a roadside motel, where she reconnects with Gogo by phone and discovers she can release spores from her body. Ollie's forces track Vern to the motel. Queen releases spores compelling the surrounding soldiers to shoot themselves, demonstrating the fungus's capacity for mind control. Despite this, Ollie tranquilizes Vern. Gogo is also captured, and Ollie shoots her in the chest.

Vern wakes cuffed inside a moving van. Ollie reveals that Cainland was designed as a self-sustaining population bred for vulnerability to the fungus, an alternative to military laboratories. With Vern's public exposure, the compound must be destroyed and its members killed, framed as a cult mass suicide. Vern flips the van with her exoskeleton and kills Ollie. Queen, freed from control, shoots herself; as she dies, her memories enter Vern through the mycelium. Vern releases healing spores over Gogo, whose wound closes completely.

A sweeping haunting reveals Ruthanne's history, showing how Ollie, kept ageless by Queen's spores, appeared in Ruthanne's life as a social worker threatening to take Vern unless Ruthanne moved to Cainland. Ruthanne signed a contract believing she had no choice.

Vern and Gogo race to the compound, where news cameras have gathered. Inside, they find every member dead, massacred by a military team. A final haunting reveals Lucy's true death: her father caught her trying to escape and killed her. Lucy never left Cainland.

On live television, Vern declares war against the system that created Cainland. She uses her spores with Gogo's defibrillator to resurrect the dead: The electric jolt provides a spark for the spores to repair wounds and restart hearts. Carmichael and Ruthanne are among those revived. When Ruthanne wakes and calls Vern's name, Vern walks away, unable to forgive her. Vern retrieves Lucy's copy of Giovanni's Room from its hiding place and sits at the forest's edge with Gogo and her children as night falls, screaming into the dark to declare her survival.