A reporter and her stowaway daughter go to a remote Maine island at the winter solstice to investigate mysterious body parts that wash up on the mainland from time to time, and discover horrible secrets of the past and present.
This is my favorite story so far from “When Things Get Dark”, though it feels a bit more like Lovecraft or “The Wicker Man” or (insert favorite story of an isolated community with terrible occult practices) than a Shirley Jackson story – while there are certainly moments of subtle uneasiness and ambiguous threat, there are more traditional horror elements than the preceding stories in this collection have presented. And while it’s certainly not unpredictable, like a classic horror movie it’s enjoyable for what it does with some well-worn tropes.