It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling
lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last
owner went missing. For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster,
the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric
and Marci, it's the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring.
Which is how Eric and his teenage friends discover the curious cache of
discarded objects stowed in a hidden room of Pinecrest's carriage house.
The bladeless hacksaws, shadeless lamps, tables with missing legs,
headless axe handle, and other unremarkable items add up to a pile of
junk. Yet someone took the trouble to inventory each worthless relic in
a cryptic ledger. The more the boys devote themselves to restoring the
forgotten possessions and piecing together the puzzle behind them, the
more their fascination deepens into obsession. When a horrifying
discovery surfaces, so does the chilling truth about the terrifying
events that rocked the town seven years before, the mysterious
disappearance of Pinecrest's last resident, and a twisted legacy with a
malevolent life of its own...and a bottomless hunger for new victims.
