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Synopsis
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- From the Holt, Rinehart, & Winston hardcover dust jacket:
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THE BEAST THAT FEEDS ON CONFUSION AND FEAR
Two boys with extraordinary powers...to use for good or evil.
Restless spirits roaming the dark Alabama woods, infesting a Chicago
hotel, haunting an amusement park ride.
A lustful girl who drowns, then reappears.
A ghastly family massacre....
Wherever human fears hide, there in the shadows lurks the Shape
Changer.
They were known as the healer and the demon-boy. They faced each
other for the first time at a tent revival meeting. The inexplicable
energy that passed between them frightened the two boys. Each began
dreaming the same dream: an eagle made of smoke locked in combat with
a snake made of fire. And seeing things: a bestial shape with glowing
red eyes.
Billy Creekmore and Wayne Falconer would feel that same eerie charge
every time their paths crossed over the next decade, as each undertook
his Mystery Walk through life.
Billy used his powers to set the dead to rest in the traditional way
his Choctaw grandmother had tutored him.
Wayne used his healing gifts to raise money for his minister father's
evangelical crusade.
One of them wanted the other dead.
The Shape Changer wanted both dead.
Not since Stephen King began terrorizing readers has a novel of such
masterly horror as Mystery Walk appeared. Set in a deceptively
sleepy Southern town, and reaching to the bleak deserts of Mexico, it
is the story of two unforgettable characters on a collision course,
thrust into a nightmare world in which good and evil---and reality
itself---become toys in the hands of an ancient, unstoppable force.
Its graphic description, driving narrative, and indelible images prove
Mystery Walk the best new horror fiction in many a year.
- From the British Pan paperback edition:
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"WITH A HIGH, ANGERED SHRIEK
THE SMOKE-EAGLE DROPPED THROUGH
THE AIR TOWARD THE FLAME-RATTLER,
WHICH REARED BACK AND SPAT SPARKS
FROM BETWEEN ITS BURNING FANGS.
THE TWO ENEMIES FOUGHT..."
They first met as boys at a hellfire-and-salvation evangelist meeting
in the heart of the southland. An inexplicable energy passed between
them and from that night on they both dreamed the same dream...an
eagle of grey smoke locked in interminable combat with a rattlesnake
of crimson fire.
Billy Creekmore, the poor farmer's son, with the Choctaw blood that
empowered him to ease the souls of the sudden dead from their
earthbound torment.
Wayne Falconer, the son of a crusading preacher, with the power of
healing through fingers alive with a blue fire.
Through their young years and into manhood, wherever their paths
crossed, a fearsome enmity flared. One of them wanted the other dead.
Out in the night roamed the Shape-Changer, the evil one of Choctaw
legend.
And the Shape-Changer wanted them both dead...
"An impressive major-league debut in the occult genre. Robert
McCammon does it with class" ---Kirkus Reviews
"Gloriously scary, with one of the creepiest monsters in the
literature of horror" ---Publishers Weekly
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