Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with big ideas and a gift for attracting abuse. It isn't easy to make friends when you're the only inflatable boy in town . . .

Francis is unhappy. Francis was human once, but that was then. Now he's an eight-foot-tall locust and everyone in Calliphora will tremble when they hear him sing . . .

John Finney is locked in a basement that's stained with the blood of half a dozen murdered children. In the cellar with him is an antique telephone, long since disconnected, but which rings at night with calls from the dead . . .

The past isn't dead. It isn't even past . . .