This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design. Claiborne Coe returns to the decaying mountain town of Creston after seven years abroad, hoping to marry Valyne Kirk and leave its misery behind. Instead, he finds her missing, the townspeople hostile, and his foster-father, Doctor Kyle, warning of a terrible stain in his blood. Beneath the house, strange cries, blood, and a sealed cellar hint at a horror long kept hidden, while Clay's own violent outbursts suggest that the evil is not merely around him, but within him. As Kyle finally reveals the truth, Clay learns that his mother came from a bloodline of sorcery and demon-worship, and that he and his twin were born from a blasphemous ritual. The twin, a ghastly half-human creature, has been imprisoned for years, fed and guarded in secret, while Clay has lived as the apparently human brother—though Kyle fears passion, marriage, or awakening may trigger a monstrous reversion in him. Haunted by childhood memories of a forbidden stone altar on Blue Squaw Mountain and terrified of the "fiend" inside himself, Clay sinks toward despair as the creature escapes, Valyne is carried off into the dark forest, and the family's ancient curse closes in.
