From back cover...He was born monstrously deformed. a freak of nature. Possessed of supernatural strength, he committed his first murder at the age of five and escaped from the institution to which his mother had abandoned him. Terror swept through the town of Silveleaf, as the ciizens scoured the countryside in a desperate search for the missing child, hoping to capture him before he killed again. But he had retreated to the swamp, the place of his birth, where amid the mire and the reeds lay a secret so horrifying, so astonishing , that it could well change the ultimate destiny of the human race.