"In the sleepy town of Milburn, New York, four old men gather to tell each other stories--some true, some made-up, all of them frightening. A simple pastime to divert themselves from their quiet lives. But one story is coming back to haunt them and their small town. A tale of something they did long ago. A wicked mistake. A horrifying accident. And they are about to learn that no one can bury the past forever..." --

Tim Underhill comes back to his hometown to investigate the murder of a childhood friend's wife.

On a brisk autumn day, a thirteen-year-old boy stands on the shores of the gray Atlantic, near a silent amusement park and a fading ocean resort called the Alhambra. The past has driven Jack Sawyer here: his father is gone, his mother is dying, and the world no longer makes sense. But for Jack everything is about to change. For he has been chosen to make a journey back across America - and into another realm.

Twenty years ago Jack Sawyer traveled to a parallel universe, the Territories, to save his mother. Now Jack is a retired L.A. homicide detective living in Tamarack, Wisconsin. A series of gruesome murders occur in western Wisconsin that are reminiscent of those committed several decades ago by a madman named Albert Fish; are these murders the work of a disurbed indiviual or has a mysterious force been unleashed...What causes Jack' inexplicable waking...