ROBERT He was almost fourteen, small for his age, but otherwise a perfectly normal boy. Then strange things began to happen—violent, obscene, revoltingly perverse things—and people started to die. RUBIN He was suspicious at first, afraid of a hoax, but when he regressed the boy through hypnosis, his skepticism turned to sheer terror. He had discovered... THE ONE An odiously powerful entity, the distilled essence of pure evil, it wanted Robert's body and soul for a purpose too terrible to imagine. Once the boy had been subjected to... THE RITUAL ...its power would be limitless, its dominion over the earth complete—and even those who were slaughtered would know everlasting pain and torture.