Coward Creek

Keith Woolfe hasn't told his brother the real reason he wants to hike the Coward Creek corridor — a fifty-mile stretch of Appalachian backcountry closed for decades after hikers vanished without a trace. Recently reopened and barely mapped, the trail hides hunting blinds filled with Polaroid photographs of the missing, and at night, a tuneless voice sings from the hollows. Keith knows more than he's letting on. He walked this trail once before, in 1989, and came back alone. Now the mountain is waiting for him to return what he owes.