A dark and unsettling queer adult horror from the award-winning author of The City Beautiful. Perfect for fans of Eric LaRocca and Stephen Graham Jones.
Ten years ago, the quiet mining town of Coalfield, Pennsylvania was thrust into the national spotlight when a boy at a local foster home was found brutally murdered. After the foster mother was arrested on suspicion of murder, the four remaining children were dragged in front of a court to explain what truly happened. There, Elliot Wolff—just eight years-old—testified.
What emerged were disturbing tales of child abuse, the sacrifice of animals and infants, and strange rituals performed in the woods and mines of the town. And the Dragon, always the Dragon, a specter who lurked in the shadows of the home.
Now on the cusp of adulthood, Elliot is still struggling to move on from the trial. He still finds his thoughts circling Coalfield, thoughts that he pours into writing music or drowns out with various substances.
Then, he is approached by Dean Corvin, a washed-up grindhouse director filming a documentary on the Satanic Ritual Abuse allegations at Coalfield. While sitting in front of a camera and rehashing his trauma is the last thing Elliot wants to do, Dean makes him an offer he can't refuse, an offer that might finally allow Eliot to escape his aunt's stifling house and start over somewhere far away.
But Elliot isn't the only survivor joining the documentary: the other survivors are there, too, and each one has different memories of what happened.
The first few days of filming are strange, with bizarre dreams and memories resurfacing that he had long thought lost to time. As Elliot begins to reenact his final days at Coalfield Children's Home, he begins to wonder if there may be a grain of truth to the lies he told on the stand. If something sinister and otherworldly really did happen to them.
If the Dragon is still out there, and intends to keep the past buried.
