Hekla's Children

Ten years ago, schoolteacher Nathan Brookes watched four of his students climb a hill and disappear. Only one came back. Olivia was starving, terrified and unable to remember where she had been. The police questioned Nathan, then let him go for lack of evidence, and he has spent the years since trying to put it behind him.

Then a body turns up in the same ancient woodland. At first it is taken for one of the missing children, but it proves to be a Bronze Age warrior, an archaeological find and nothing more. Nathan is not convinced the matter is closed. He begins to have horrifying visions of his old students, alive and trapped somewhere.

Olivia reappears with an urgent demand: the warrior's body must go back into the ground. She says it is all that holds a terrible evil back.

This is a horror novel built on folklore and mythology, with an ancient menace lying just under the surface of the everyday world. The pace is quick and the mood frightening. The mystery of the vanished children drives the story, and the dread builds as Nathan is pulled back into what he tried to forget.