The woman considers herself an amateur folklorist who spends a lot of her time learning about and getting to the bottom of folktales and urban legends. For example, she recalls a story about a missing boy whose body was later found hollowed out to use as a container for drug mules. Another story, she recalls, concerns the relationship between the adult film industry and human trafficking. She wonders if she should just switch over the more reasonable realm of true crime, but she insists that folklore is what’s really in her heart. One story that captures her attention in particular is that of the hook-handed killer.

The hook-handed killer is first documented in an advice column in 1960, though the woman suggests that the story has been circulating for a few years before that. She doesn’t know where it began, only that it concern two lovers in a car, soon after which one of the lovers is mutilated and hung above it. The woman acknowledges that it may have something to do with the Texarkana Moonlight Murders or the Zodiac Killer, but that veers too much into true crime—something which the woman isn’t interested in.

Given that possible survivors of the hook-handed killer are elderly now, the woman posts a listing in her mother’s elderly home asking for leads in return for a complimentary meal. All the way in Oklahoma, she meets with an elderly woman, originally from the Texas Panhandle, who somewhat remembers the hook-handed killer’s incidents. The elderly woman talks about his deceased husband, as well as her five children. Back in the day, the elderly woman recalls, she and her husband were at a lover’s lane and allegedly survived an encounter with the hook-handed killer. They hear a noise outside of their car and check it out. It looks like more of a creature than a person, with yellow eyes, and something dripping from the exposed bone where its hand should be.

About a year after the woman and elderly woman talk, the latter passes away. The former visits the part of Texas where the elderly woman and her husband must have been. At a gas station in town, the woman asks a clerk about where high schoolers go to be alone, after which she is directed to Black Man’s Bluff, the town’s lover’s lane. There, a spray-painted Black Man on a sandstone ridge with the same yellow eyes as the elderly woman described. The woman sits in her car for a little while.

The woman contacts the elderly woman’s youngest son’s wife while in California. She wants to find information on the elderly woman’s husband’s graduating class. They eventually talk about Black Man’s Bluff, to which the wife says that she and her husband went there to see the thing, the same thing which the elderly woman saw. The woman learns that the whole family must have known about it.

The woman’s partner confronts her about the credit card bill from the last month, when she went to Texas. She makes up a story about having to see her mother. The nearby phone then rings, and there’s only deep breathing through the receiver. She fears that it may be the thing she has been chasing all along. For four days, the same calls persist. The elderly woman’s youngest son’s wife then passes away in a tragic incident, which the woman learns about on the television. She then gets the mail from the mailbox outside and contemplates the nature of what she’s doing and what she’s chasing. After getting the mail, the woman sees a figure on the roof of her house. She screams, and her neighbors rush outside. The figure disappears, and everyone thinks the woman has gone crazy. Because she isn’t believed, the woman relays everything that has happened to her through an online forum. Her partner sends her to Salt Lake City in Utah so that her son can talk some sense into her. She recalls that the elderly woman’s sons have enormous power in the country: one is a politician, another is a novelist, a third is the president of the largest folklore society in America. The woman is convinced that they are all conspiring together on behalf of the thing at Black Man’s Bluff.

On the night drive to Salt Lake City, the woman spots five forms along the road. She asks her partner to stop driving. She then tries to get intimate with her partner—she believes that it’s part of the ritual concerning the thing—but her partner rejects her advance and then steps outside. Something then approaches her car, which she thinks is the thing, but it’s in fact a police officer. The police officer then sees something past the car and reaches for his gun. The woman’s partner is covered in a white sheet on the road. Still, after everything happened, some people still talk about seeing the thing with yellow eyes.