Parker Buckman’s not worried about invisible things that go bump in the night. He’s not a guy who believes in ghosts.
But Parker’s no idiot either. He knows that there are things that hide in the night that can hurt people. His heavily scarred arm—once chomped on by a hidden 10-foot-long alligator—is sure evidence of that truth.
Parker also knows that people’s imaginations can sometimes run away with them at night, taking them in bad directions. And that’s exactly what he tells his friend Devin when the nerdy teen calls him one foggy evening near midnight.
Devin, it seems, saw a ghost. Well, Parker’s sure it wasn’t a ghost, but Devin thought it was. He saw a faceless figure, holding some kind of green, glowing (radioactive?) thing, float out of a neighbor’s empty rental property. And he decided to jump out his own window and follow it.
No matter how Parker tried to coax Devin to give up on the chase and go back home, Devin refused. He just kept going and going. And even when he finally promised to turn around, and the two teen boys signed off from each other, Devin must have kept going. For the next morning … Devin Catsakis was found dead, down by the old, flooded stone quarry.
To say this horrible event was upsetting for the port town of Rockport, Massachusetts, would be an understatement. There had already been rumors swirling around about that ghostly figure and its property-smashing ways. And now the “ghost” had seemingly contributed to a murder. Online speculations and eerie reports were even negatively impacting rentals in the vacation-focused town.
Parker’s good friend Ella and her grandmother rely totally on the income from their rental home. And if things keep going the way they are, they might lose everything.
Ella and Grams are both pretty superstitious, and they’re both convinced that something dark and ghostly is smashing around in the night and killing young boys. When the “sea-smoke” rolls in (as Grams calls the fog) evil rolls with it. How do you fight that?
Parker, however, is convinced that in the deep, thick fog and behind its green, glowing presence, there’s something flesh-and-blood hiding. There’s a mystery hiding, too. A mystery that must be solved.
Parker’s grandfather reminded him of the message of Ecclesiastes 12:14— “For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.”
And that’s exactly what Parker is counting on.