Creature

To the Tanner family, Silverdale beckons as a marvelous opportunity. For here, in this serene picture-postcard-pretty town nestled high in the majestic Rockies, a job promotion awaits Blake; new friends and activities beckon Sharon. And in the windswept mountain air, their shy, nature-loving son, Mark, will have the ideal opportunity to overcome the physical frailty an illness has caused.

Silverdale. It is the perfect town. Even Silverdale High School seems perfect — a model school where well-behaved students make their parents and teachers proud. And the football team never — ever — loses.

But soon, too soon, Sharon Tanner will come to doubt the sanctuary of her family's perfect new surroundings. Too soon she will begin to suspect the things she cannot yet know:

The secret rituals masked as science to which Silverdale's innocent children are unwittingly subjected...

The hidden places in deep cellars where steel gleams coldly against the dark — the steel of cages built to contain an unimaginable evil...

The sudden violence that turns a loving child murderous...

Soon — perhaps too late — Sharon Tanner will realize that beneath Silverdale's perfect facade a terrible presence watches... and waits. Through sleepless, fear-racked nights she will listen to an eerie cry of unfathomable rage and pain. A wail so horrifyingly unearthly it could belong to no living thing, animal or human, she has ever known.

And then, with crushing suddenness, Sharon will know — know that within Silverdale, perhaps within her own home, a monstrous evil is harbored, and evil so unspeakable it has no name except... Creature.