Haven Ford arrives in the small village of Mortimer West on the back of a troubled voicemail asking for his help. But the baggage he carries is far more than the rucksack slung over his shoulder. Rafferty Henderson has lived his whole life in the gatehouse cottage at the edge of the woods. It’s a safe space for a boy with strange eating habits, until his brother’s death sends his whole world spiralling into a twisted nest of persecution and unanswered questions. Meredith Evans is a woman returning to her roots, but this is no cosy revisit. This is a return to lay the nightmare of her childhood to rest. Or, at least, to gain a better understanding of it. When graves start to collapse in the cemetery and the whispers from the villagers become accusations against Rafferty, Haven finds himself in the midst of an unfolding horror with its seeds firmly planted in the past—a past that will take him down with it, a past that wants to drown him. For beneath this village lies a terrible secret. A secret that refuses to die. A secret discarded over a hundred years ago by the sole survivor of a doomed Arctic voyage, a man whose blood flows in Rafferty Henderson’s veins.