Those We Bury Back

Braden’s parents should have been imprisoned for the abuses they perpetrated on him as a child. But that’s the past, and Braden’s moved on. Wife, kid, nominal success as a novelist—and no contact with his parents for years. The two of them have moved out of state, and Braden is secure with his own family in a new home. Several years of therapy have helped, too. Pushing forty, life is at last treating Braden well. Then a box of his books is accidentally—and mysteriously—delivered to his childhood home. Ignoring his own best judgment, Braden swings by the old place with his three-year-old, Josiah, to pick up the box. In and out, super fast, no big deal. The house has other ideas. Apparently infected somehow by the traumas his parents put him through, the house traps Braden and Josiah with its lone occupant. It begins turning Braden’s long buried memories into corporeal horrors that threaten not only his fragile, still-recovering psyche, but the childhood of his only son. As Josiah begins to age before his father’s eyes and inanimate objects take on lives of their own, Braden struggles to uncover what exactly the house wants from him. Or if it is, in fact, the house that’s haunted.