Once upon a time...

Far from the concrete and steel of Boston, the town of Northwood nestles beneath the summit of Mount Sugarloaf. The quiet community seems like the perfect place for Steve and Diane Nailer to raise their family of two children with a third on the way. Their new home is perched on the edge of a forest. A trail through the woods leads to an old Victorian mansion that once housed the town mortuary. But the memories of the dearly departed are the least of what lurks there....

Eleanor Grimm is a woman of desperate cunning, possessing unfathomable power. Driven by the dark magic, she has bewitched the parents of Northwood, keeping them spellbound and distracted from her true agenda: claiming the most innocent children to satisfy her hungers.

True evil is no fairy tale.

"Gates writes with such all-stops-out intensity that even Stephen King's faithful followers will begrudgingly admit the presence of an heir to the throne." (Publishers Weekly)