Strange Seed,

A new husband and a new home, what more could a newlywed want? Unfortunately, home is an isolated neglected farm house near an encroaching woods. And each day Rachel's husband grows quieter and more introspective. Worse, she cannot ignore the menacing woods she sees from the porch windows. They are the hiding place for abandoned children. But are they truly children and, if not, what are they? Paul Griffin always felt very uncomfortable with New York City's noise and harsh urban atmosphere. He needed the old pattern, the one he had known as a boy with the father he loved. The small farm house in upstate New York wasn't much of a birthright. But, it would be home for Rachel and Paul at least until their plans to renovate and sell the house are realized. At first, Rachel feels uncomfortable with the silence and isolation. She is determined to make it work. But, slowly, inexorably, it becomes clear that more than nostalgia brought Paul home. It was something more subtle and more powerful. It was a pattern within himself, one which had been interrupted over two decades before, one which had to be played out. It was as sacred, immutable, and frightening as the inevitable transition of the seasons. It is visible on the faces of the dark and beautiful children that now come into their lives, leaving a legacy of terror. A pattern that can destroy anyone who would interfere with it.

Fifteen years is a long time. Memories fade away, but the horror remains. Fifteen years ago, two newlyweds perished at the edge of the woods. Now a development of one-family homes stands where their farm once was. For Janice McIntyre and her husband, this new community by the quiet, lovely woods is a perfect place to raise their expected child. Except for the ghosts...

Homecoming. Now once again, after so many centuries, they stood upon the island. Manhattan Island. The place which, before the buildings had been put up to cut the sky apart and before the subways sliced through the earth, had been the place of their birth. The place where they had first sprung up. The place that had nourished them, and given them pleasure, before men had found them and driven them away. But they had survived. Survived to this moment. And now they had returned to reclaim the island that had given them the strength of life and the power of death...and soon every man, woman and child on the island would know it.

It's a nice house on a country road. Jack and Erika Harris expect to be happy there. It doesn't matter that they're living in a deserted suburb where, years ago, murders and mutilations destroyed the residents. It doesn't matter...until those that caused the deaths come back — those that sprang from the earth. Those that need. Those that are not human. The Harris's nice house stands between them and what they must have. Nothing has ever mattered more.

Jack Erthmun does not believe that the dead actually speak to him. But in their own way they tell him so much. Jack is a New York City police detective with his own very peculiar ways of solving homicides, and those ways are beginning to frighten his colleagues. He gets results, but at what cost? What's happening to Jack Erthmun? This may be Jack's last case — he's assigned to a series of unspeakable killings, gruesome murders with details that make even seasoned detectives queasy. But as he goes deeper into the facts of the case, facts that make it seem no human killer can be involved, Jack begins to get more and more erratic. Is it the case that's affecting Jack? Or is it something else, something no one even dares to consider?