The trucks are placed just so, arranged like sigils, forming a portal through which Llewelyn Moss falls. The underworld is less a place and more a point of view, available only to the initiated who have eyes to see: an office building downtown with a missing floor; men speaking in hushed tones two booths down at the greasy spoon; a party of non-locals checking into a single-bedroom suite at the motel advertising “FREE HBO”. And Moss, as soon as he crosses that threshold in that bright Texas dark, is initiated. He is also cursed. The tragedy of his story is that no matter where he goes, as long as he draws breath, the people around him–loved ones, acquaintances, accomplices, bystanders–will die. “… fastened to a dying animal / It knows not what it is; and gather me / Into the artifice of eternity…”