The Appalachian mountains hold rich history filled with culture, stories and darkness. Living in this region takes a toll on the people who live there, bringing out the dark in humanity. Due to the harsh landscape, most towns remain small and isolated from urban areas. Less doctors and mental health specialist populate the area, making it difficult for people to find the help they need, leading them to turn to self-medication.
“The crested out on the bluff in the late afternoon sun with their shadows long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge, moving single file and slowly high above the river and with something of its own implacability, pausing and grouping for a moment and going on again strung out in silhouette against the sun and then dropping under the crest of the hill into a fold of blue shadow with light touching them about the head in spurious sanctity until they had gone on for such a time as saw the sun down altogether and they moved in shadow altogether which suited them very well.” (1)
“They came leisurely and with grim confidence.” (89)
“Can I be cured? The prophet looked down as if surprised.” (5)
“He followed it down, in full flight now, the trees beginning to close him in, malign and baleful shapes that reared like enormous androids provoked at the alien insubstantiality of this flesh colliding among them.” (17)
“Night fell long and cool through the woods about him and a spectral quietude set in.” (16)
“Don’t flang him off the bluff, boys, the preacher said. I believe ye’d be better to hang him as that.” (223)
“Wind stirred the ashes and the tinker in his tree turned slowly but no one returned.” (237)
“Set down, the bearded one said, motioning with his hand.”
“The two hounds rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled eyes and descended into the outer dark.” (129)
“He knelt forward in the damp earth and covered it again and then rose to his feet and lumbered away through the brush without looking back.” (16)
“One was holding a rifle loosely in one hand and picking his teeth.” (169)
“Then he was ashore, staving off brush with his arms and making his way through the woods toward the light.” (169)
“The road made a switchback at the top of the hiss and then ran along the ridge so that following it he had a long time to watch the river below him, slow and flat, a noon light.” (157)
“The other stood with long arms dangling at his sides, slightly stooped, his jaw hanging and his mouth agape in a slavering smile.” (169)
“Later he slept in a field, trampling a nest out of the fescue and lying there with his hands between his knees, watching the random motes of birds passing across the moon’s face in the night.” (131)
“I don’t live nowhere no more, she said.” (156)
“What did ye give? She said. I’ll make it up to ye. Whatever ye give. And that nurse fee.”(192)
“Sickness. He’s got a sickness.” (193)
“The floor was buckled and the walls seemed tottering and he could see nothing plane or plumb anywhere.” (195)
“His assassin smiled upon him with bright teeth, the faces of the other two peering from either shoulder in consubstantial monstrosity, a grim triune that watched wordless, affable.” (129)
“When the tinker came rattling his cart in drunken charivari through the clearing he was there with wild arms like one fending back a curse.” (6)
“On the bed of the wagon behind him in a row were three wooden coffins.” (86)
“Holme looked about, stepped past the preacher and the drover next him and jumped.” (226)
“The town looked not only uninhabited but deserted, as if plague had swept and decimated it.” (131)
“Help yourself to some meat there if you’re hungry, the man said.” (171)
“Holme saw the blade wink in the light like a long cat’s eye slant and malevolent and a dark smile erupted on the child’s throat and went all broken down the front of it.” (236)
“He wondered why a road should come to such a place.” (242)
“Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that way.” (242)
All captions are excerpts from the novel Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. Also, No illegal drugs were used in the creation of these photos.
