The Elementals

Beldame is a strip of land on the Gulf coast, cut off from the mainland and slowly losing ground to sand. Three Victorian summer houses stand there. Two are lived in each season. The third is half buried and empty, apart from whatever is giving shape to nightmares in its damp, foul air.

The McCray and Savage families of Mobile, joined by marriage, have gone to Beldame for years. This summer they arrive after a bad funeral, and a messy divorce is on the way. Even Luker McCray and little India, who have come down from New York, expect the isolation to be a relief.

It is a Southern Gothic haunted house horror. The setting is a small, sealed-off place where the families have no one else around, and the threat belongs to the land and the buried house as much as to any person. The presence has been thinking about the family and about ways to kill them.

Expect dread that builds around one location and one extended family, with grief and family strain already present before anything supernatural begins. The mood is oppressive and airless, heavy with heat, damp and sand.