Marshall Miller would’ve remembered her face even if he hadn’t seen it on a MISSING poster. When a young woman goes missing in his small town, the investigation hinges on Marshall’s haunted sighting of her, crying in the back seat of a police car driven by a cop named Maddox. There’s only one problem: no local cop named Maddox exists. But the speeding ticket he handed to Marshall certainly does. Dealing with police and media is heady stuff for a teenager, the son of a single mother, but Marshall is sure he can handle it, until the shocking day when his reliability as a witness implodes. Now scorned and shamed, he finds unlikely allies as he confronts the ancient secrets behind his small town’s peaceful façade --- and learns the truth about his own family.

Recently laid-off from his newspaper and desperate for work, war correspondent Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity. It’s easy money, and a chance to return to his hometown for his first visit in years. The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas, but then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing --- it’s disturbing, more of a warning than a relaxation --- but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows. So do nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance. Or are they threats? And soon her voice follows him long after the song is done.

Far upstate, in New York’s ancient forests, a drowned village lays beneath the dark, still waters of the Chilewaukee reservoir. Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but they didn’t move far…and some didn’t move at all. Now, a century later, an inspector assigned to oversee the dam witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. The townspeople didn’t evacuate without a fight. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled.