Ghost dance

Outdoorsman and documentary filmmaker Patrick Gallagher had torpedoed a promising career through self-destructive self-pity and procrastination. Now he seeks redemption in tiny, isolated Lawton, Vermont, embarking upon a new project and, perhaps, a last chance. But there is no salvation to be found in Lawton--not for Gallagher, or for Andie Nightingale, the beautiful but haunted local policewoman who befriends him...or for anyone living within the borders of the sleepy New England hamlet. For a local history that no one dares to speak about has enflamed a maniac's bloodlust, and his desire for vengeance.

It is Gallagher who discovers the first corpse while out fishing--the body of a large man, tortured, ravaged, and hideously mutilated; a horror despoiling the pristine natural landscape. Nearby is a crudely drawn picture, chilling in its implications, accompanied by a grim, cryptic threat--and a name: Charon, boatman on the river to Hell.

And there are more murders to come--each more grisly than the last--awakening the personal ghosts that haunt Gallagher and Nightingale, while drawing them deeper into the horrors of a past century...and closer to shocking revelations of brutal, shared guilt contained in the lost writing of a long-dead Lakota woman. For evil once rolled into Lawton in the wagon of a traveling show. And here it has remained for one hundred years, taking human form once more as an elusive and terrifying killer who ruthlessly stalks those who guard the terrible legacy of their great-grandparents. And the secrets to Charon's power, obsession and defeat lie in the spiritual place that Patrick Gallagher and Andie Nightingale most fear must enter: the forbidden realm of the Ghost Dance.