Miners in Koble's Hollow should be extracting coal from the seam below their isolated little Appalachian town. Though they have been digging furiously, no coal has been shipped off their mountain in years. Something else has been drawing them deep underground, something that needs their help to get out, something that has changed the people of Koble's Hollow into beings no longer human.

Professor Lincoln Davis, born and raised in the hills of West Virginia, has found success as an academic and activist in the large cities of the lowlands. But now a voice from his past is calling him back home for the first time in decades. Enough time has passed, or perhaps the voice has made an offer so beguiling, that he can't quite remember why he left in the first place. As he travels the miles toward home, though, his memories begin to return, and he starts to recall fleeing the hills at night and in secret when he was little more than a boy. Before he reaches the end of the road, will he remember why he was running for his life from a place called Koble's Hollow?

Jedediah Smith