St. Martin's Press
August 2026
On Sale: July 21, 2026
Featuring: Maggie Wise; Malcolm
336 pages ISBN: 1250404525 EAN: 9781250404527 Kindle: B0FLYNCVFS Hardcover / e-Book Add to Wish List
From New York Times bestselling author Christopher Golden comes a high concept horror novel about a man trying to protect his dead mother's body from the evil that is hunting them.
Maggie Wise will take your eyes.
When Malcolm was growing up, the local kids made up that chant about his mother, claiming she was a witch. He and his siblings did their best to ignore it. Now, Maggie is dying, and those same siblings have left Malcolm and his sister-in-law Violet to hold a vigil at her bedside.
But they’re not as alone as they think they are. A dark figure waits and watches from beneath the willow tree across the street. Hundreds of miles away, an ancient evil stirs in its burrow under a farmer’s cornfield. Across the country, other buried things begin to dream in anticipation of Maggie’s demise. On her deathbed, the old woman elicits a promise from Malcolm, her youngest childโwhen she dies, he and Violet must return her body to her birthplace in Shediak, Maine.
From the moment she takes her last breath, before her remains are even loaded aboard the baggage car of the Imperial Limited, there are forces trying to stop Malcolm from fulfilling that promise. Violence erupts on the train, evil preys on its passengers, and once the sun goes down, those long-buried things are coming to make Maggie Wise pay for her past. God help anyone who stands in their way.
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