Dark the Dead Keep

In the late sixteenth century, the fires of the Inquisition raged through Spain, while Europe continued its reckoning with the New World. Against this backdrop, a young marquis named Raymond takes refuge with his entourage at an estate in the wilds of Germany to dodge an unpaid debt and the manhunter who is pursuing him for it. A quick layover turns to prolonged horror when the group find themselves snowed in for winter, while a malevolent presence stalks the grounds from the forest. Although he finds reprieve through his growing affection for Agnes, a noblewoman pledged to the convent, Raymond knows the manhunter is closing in. His hunter, however, is drawn north by a darker pursuit of his own. Come spring, Raymond flees the estate, and Agnes the church, relying on an unwitting ally against the evil now trailing them to Madrid.

In his gothic horror debut, Hixson Pyke reimagines the tale of the Lindenberg haunting through a stark, modern lens, fleshed out with a cast of characters who are connected to an ancient evil from half a world away. Agnes, an artist at heart, trying to claw her autonomy back from the church; the child pickpocket, Edelinne, traveling with an infamous bounty hunter and searching for a place in the world after the death of her parents; Cualli, the Mayan son of a shaman, kidnapped by Conquistadors and brought back to Spain as a curiosity, now a freeman, facing demons he believed were forever buried back in the Yucatan.

Part travelogue, part chiller, this is the story you haven’t yet heard from a centuries-old classic—an exploration of the dark places the dead keep.