A secret chamber.
A mysterious shipwreck.
A murder in the desolate salt marshes.
A seemingly straightforward private case turns out to be much more
complicated-and sinister-than Special Agent A.X.L. Pendergast ever could
have anticipated.
Pendergast, together with his ward Constance Greene, travels to the
quaint seaside village of Exmouth, Massachusetts, to investigate the
theft of a priceless wine collection. But inside the wine cellar, they
find something considerably more disturbing: a bricked-up niche that
once held a crumbling skeleton.
Pendergast and Constance soon learn that Exmouth is a town with a very
dark and troubled history, and this skeleton may be only the first hint
of an ancient transgression, kept secret all these years. But they will
discover that the sins of the past are still very much alive. Local
legend holds that during the 1692 witch trials in Salem, the real
witches escaped, fleeing north to Exmouth and settling deep in the
surrounding salt marshes, where they continued to practice their wicked
arts. Then, a murdered corpse turns up in the marshes. The only clue is
a series of mysterious carvings. Could these demonic symbols bear some
relation to the ancient witches' colony, long believed to be abandoned?
A terrible evil lurks beneath the surface of this sleepy seaside
town-one with deep roots in Exmouth's grim history. And it may be that
Constance, with her own troubled past, is the only one who truly
comprehends the awful danger that she, Pendergast, and the residents of
Exmouth must face . . .
