Deadroot

A year after Caleb Raines was buried, he knocks on his mother's door. He is cold, barefoot, and caked in cemetery mud. He calls Nora by a name only Caleb knew. He remembers the last morning she saw him alive. Grief tells her to let him in. At McGlendin Gap Cemetery, caretaker Elaine Carver has troubles of her own. Grass is dying in branching lines. Fresh earth shifts over sealed graves. Roots move where no living tree could reach. The Confession Tree is gone, but the evil beneath it has found a new place to feed and a new way to use the dead. Then Caleb begins remembering other lives. As borrowed voices spread through the cemetery and the thing inside Nora's home grows more possessive, Elaine uncovers a horror fed by every name spoken over a grave. To stop it, both women must face the truth grief has taught them to fear: Remembering the dead is an act of love. Needing them to come back can open the door to something else. Not every root feeds the living.