Mouse spends the day calling animal shelters and examining the bone, which is stained with red clay. Uncertain of what else to do and in an attempt to control her panic, she continues cleaning out the doll room, loading bins of junk into her truck. Foxy appears while she’s doing so, startling her and prompting her to burst into tears.

Foxy takes her back to her porch to calm down. There, Mouse confesses everything she has experienced. To her surprise, Foxy believes her, referencing local lore about the “holler people,” beings from a parallel reality who animate effigies made from dead animals. She herself encountered one with a hog’s body and a beehive for a head, as well as a raccoon “held together with cords ’n’ junk” (165). Mouse explains Cotgrave encountered “holler people,” whom he called “white people,” in Wales, and Foxy agrees that they could exist worldwide. She explains that hickory wood offers protection from their influence and gives Mouse a hickory rosary and roots to carry.

Feeling more grounded, Mouse searches the woods around the house for Bongo before returning to her grandmother’s house. There, she moves her mattress into the windowless bathroom to sleep. On the now bare box spring, she discovers Cotgrave’s typed manuscript.

Mouse begins reading Cotgrave’s manuscript, a transcription and commentary on a diary known as the Green Book, given to Cotgrave by Ambrose. It was written by a teenage girl, presumably Welsh, who was the daughter of someone Ambrose knew. Mouse tries to estimate the date of the diary’s writing but realizes it could have been any time between the late 18th century and the early 20th, depending on the ages of others involved.

The diary is fragmented and nonlinear due to both narrative style and Ambrose’s incomplete recollections. In it, the girl references possessing secret knowledge—what Ambrose terms the “sin […] of seeking things outside the natural order” (172)—and describes mysterious rituals that Ambrose equates with folk magic. She also recounts meetings with supernatural, ivory-like beings she calls the “white people,” some of whom visited her in her early childhood. There are also several words that neither Cotgrave nor Ambrose understood the meaning of, including “Aklo” and “Alala.”

The diary eventually recounts a journey to a hill of twisted, gray stones carved to look like people and animals—a perfect description of the hill Mouse found. She is shocked to read a phrase from the diarist, “I twisted myself about like the twisted ones” (188), which is identical to the litany Cotgrave repeated in his own journal. In his notes, Cotgrave speculates on the terms “voor” and “voorish,” which appear in connection with this place, wondering if they are similar to a glamor enchantment. Stunned by the parallels, Mouse continues reading.

As Cotgrave continues to describe what he recalls of the girl’s journey, he wonders how his own experiences are shaping his memory of the text, and vice versa: “It may be that [the manuscript] is tainted by my own experience of the stones. Or perhaps, since I read the Green Book long before I climbed the hill myself, my experience of the stones was tainted by reading the book” (190). The girl’s narrative follows her through briars that sting and cut her. She dances and sings throughout her journey, progressing by a magical stream that she drinks from and arriving at a mossy barrier that she believes marks the boundary between ordinary reality and “Voor,” which she describes as “where the light goes when it is put out, and the water goes when the sun takes it away” (192). She climbs this wall and sees a fantastical hilly land beyond it. The girl’s journey culminates with her finding a mysterious forest and encountering a “wonderful sight.”

The diary also describes several stories the girl heard from her nurse: One is about a woman who died on her wedding night, having apparently married a supernatural being when she visited an evil hollow, while another is about a man who drinks from a cup given to him by a fairy queen. Cotgrave speculates that the nurse was in some way associated with the “white people” and that the girl might have been a changeling.

Foxy arrives with dinner and offers to stay the night. Mouse asks her if she will read the manuscript, and she agrees. They continue, Cotgrave describing various stories the girl’s nurse told her, including one about a figure named Lady Cassap, implied to be one of the “white people”; she has many suitors, whom she kills by means of fashioning poppets. The nurse teaches the girl herself to make poppets and to play “odd game[s]” with them. The girl at times doubts whether her experiences are real but finally has one that convinces her of her truth, though she does not describe it. Afterward, she makes a poppet and returns to the hill of stones, where she was later found dead before a statue of “copulating beings.” She was discovered to be pregnant, an apparent result of the statue’s influence. Ambrose himself destroyed the stone following this. In the final section, Cotgrave confirms he saw the white people in both Wales and North Carolina; he also says that he sometimes sees a girl in the woods behind the house and has tried to tell her of the dangers.

Foxy and Mouse intermittently pause while reading to discuss what they learn. Foxy confesses that she once came across the hill behind the grandmother’s house while hunting; she had followed a deer there, and she speculates that animals are more easily able to slip between worlds. They also discuss whether to destroy the carved stone in the yard.

Mouse reflects on the girl’s story, wondering if she simply became pregnant through natural means but struggling to imagine why, in that case, she would have constructed such an elaborate story in her diary. After Foxy finishes reading, she affirms her belief that the story is real, though she doesn’t know much about the “holler people” beyond her own experiences of effigies. Mouse shows her a photo of the bone she tripped on, but Foxy doesn’t know what animal the bone came from.

Unsure what else to do, Mouse and Foxy clear the junk-filled staircase. The upstairs is mostly empty, except for a large, stuffed moose head, which they carry downstairs after Foxy expresses interest in it.

Later that night, Mouse wakes to Foxy telling her there’s something outside. They look out a window and witness the deer effigy in the yard, herding two living deer. Mouse wonders whether destroying the effigy would put a stop to everything that is happening, but Foxy is doubtful. Suddenly, violent banging erupts from the front door. Mouse looks through the peephole and sees the effigy’s grinning, upside-down skull staring back. The effigy slams its body against the door, and when that fails, it taps on a window before wandering off. Unsure if it is gone, Mouse and Foxy wait together in the kitchen for dawn.