Heuvelt, Thomas Olde

After a terrible accident high in the Alps, travel journalist Nick Grevers wakes from a coma to find that his climbing buddy, Augustin, is missing and presumed dead. But Nick claims to not remember anything; even whatever horrible event that led to his maimed face and the plastic surgery that leaves him still in bandages and feeling like a B-movie monster. Sam, Nick's long-suffering boyfriend, wants to be glad that Nick is alive and coming home. But the accident has stirred up terrible memories; and it's beginning to seem that Sam isn't just being haunted by his own mistakes or Nick's own trauma. Because it turns out that, though Nick was the only body airlifted off that mysterious peak, he didn't come home alone, after all. And now, their uninvited guest is awake.

"Welcome to Black Spring, the seemingly picturesque Hudson Valley town haunted by the Black Rock Witch, a seventeenth-century woman whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut. Muzzled, she walks the streets and enters homes at will. She stands next to children's beds for nights on end. Everybody knows that her eyes may never be opened or the consequences will be too terrible to bear"--Jacket flap.