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 child―when 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.

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

This was exactly the fast paced, edge of your seat horror I needed after slogging through a string of mediocre books and heavier dramas in a row. This one grabs you from the very first chapter and does not let go.

The whole Wise family has grown up under a strange cloud, since local kids used to chant that Maggie–the mercurial matriarch of the family– was a witch. Malcolm and his siblings mostly learned to ignore it, but now Maggie is dying, and her other kids have left Malcolm and his sister in law Violet to sit vigil at her bedside while everyone else stays away. What none of them realize is that they’re not nearly as alone as they think. A dark figure is watching the house from beneath a willow tree across the street, and across the country, something ancient is stirring underground, waking up in anticipation of Maggie’s death. Before she dies, Maggie makes Malcolm promise that once she’s gone, he and Violet will bring her body back to her birthplace in Maine. That promise turns out to be a lot harder to keep than it sounds, because they only have two days to do it and the second Maggie takes her last breath, something starts trying to stop them from ever completing that journey.

The moment that creepy raven looking figure showed up in the yard under the willow tree, just watching the house and waiting for Maggie to die, I knew I was in for something good. That unsettling atmosphere never lets up for a single page. Once Maggie makes her request and the buried, deadly things start making themselves known, this book becomes almost impossible to put down. It’s one of those books where you keep telling yourself just one more chapter, and then suddenly three hours have gone by. I white-knuckled most of this one and actually caught myself skimming a few sections just to read faster and find out what happened next.

This book is incredibly cinematic. I could picture it playing out on screen while I was reading, and I think it would translate beautifully to film. Setting it in the 1970s was a smart choice too. Without cell phones or modern technology to fall back on, the characters are genuinely isolated and vulnerable, which cranks up the tension considerably. There’s nowhere to hide behind a screen or call for backup. Everyone has to face what’s coming with nothing but their own wits, and that raises the stakes across the entire book.

If I have one real complaint, it’s that some of the dialogue felt a little unnatural in places. Also, some of the quieter, slower sections got a bit repetitive at times. I understand a book can’t stay at full throttle from start to finish, and there has to be room to breathe between the scares, but I wanted a little more variation in those slower stretches instead of them all hitting the same emotional beats and plot points (like the Malcolm and Violet connection).

Even with those small issues, this book is a hell of a lot of fun. If you’re craving a fast, creepy, genuinely tense horror thriller with a fantastic sense of atmosphere and a setting that actually enhances the dread instead of getting in the way of it, this one delivers exactly what you’re looking for.