They moved to Hinkston to escape grief. The town had been waiting fifty years for someone exactly like them.
Sue and John Hackett needed somewhere quiet after the murder of their daughter — a wound that never closed and a reason to disappear. Hinkston looked perfect: small, still, the kind of place where nothing happens.
Something happened here fifty years ago. It never really stopped.
As bodies start appearing and Hinkston's carefully maintained silence begins to fracture, the Hacketts realise their arrival wasn't coincidence. The evil that's been dormant beneath the town has a logic to it. A patience. And it's been building toward something that involves them specifically.
Hutson is at his atmospheric best here — the horror creeps in slowly, from the edges, until you realise the walls have been closing the entire time. By the final act, there's nowhere left to run.
If you think small towns are safe, Hutson wrote this to correct you.