This is part two of a ten-part series from Garrett, a residential contractor living on a remote forty-seven-acre property in the southern Appalachians of western North Carolina. In Story One, Garrett described his first summer on the property, including months of wood knocking from the ridge, the discovery of seventeen-inch bipedal tracks, and a visual encounter with a massive upright figure at the edge of his meadow on September 27, 2014.

Story Two picks up in the spring of 2015 after a quiet winter during which the knocking went silent. During a visit to the property's previous owner, Earl, at an assisted living facility in Marion, Garrett mentions his plans to put in a garden. Earl's reaction is subdued, noting only that his late wife Reba had tried a garden on the same ground in 1978 and hadn't kept it long because it "wasn't worth the trouble." Garrett breaks a thirty-by-forty-foot plot between the cabin and the workshop and plants tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, squash, sweet corn, and sweet potatoes. 

By early June, the garden is thriving. Then produce begins disappearing overnight. Only ripe fruit and vegetables are taken, cleanly separated from the vine or stalk with no mess, no tracks, and no damage to the surrounding plants. Green and immature produce is left untouched every time.  Garrett's countermeasures fail one by one. Motion-activated floodlights are avoided entirely. A battery-powered radio left playing all night is found turned off in the morning, its power switch deliberately slid to the off position. 

A trail camera repositioned three times produces only one significant image: a close-up infrared photograph of a large, dark-skinned, hair-covered hand pressed against the lens at 3:17 AM.In late June, Garrett observes the visitor directly from a workshop window. He watches a tall, upright figure enter the garden from the eastern tree line, move between the rows without disturbing anything, and harvest tomatoes, corn, and green beans with practiced, selective precision over the course of about seven minutes before retreating into the forest.

The story culminates in mid-August when Garrett is awakened at 3:30 AM by something breathing against the back wall of his cabin. 

He listens as it moves along the wall, stops outside the kitchen window, taps the glass three times at different heights, then scratches four parallel lines into the logs at the northeast corner before departing toward the ridge. In the morning, he photographs fingertip smudges on the window and fresh claw marks scored into the aged hardwood. Garrett decides not to plant a garden the following year, recognizing that the garden collapsed the distance between himself and the creature and brought it directly to his cabin walls. 

The series continues with Story Three, in which something in the woods mimics his brother's voice and calls his name from two directions at once.

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