Book excerpt: In the seventeenth century, Salem Massachusetts had a terrible secret. Now, over three hundred years later in upstate New York, BRAD BANNING, a new and inexperienced filmmaker unwittingly discovers that secret. It had escaped the tyranny of the witch hunters and made its home in Spook Rock, a tiny backwoods commune, its throat held in a death grip by an evil force more powerful than time itself. When Banning intrudes too far into the lives of the witches, power-mad Lorianna casts him and his crew into the Abyss populated with ancient monsters, as well as incongruous beacons of purity. Along the way, Banning and his companions, whom he dubs his crew, discover truths about themselves and others, which are deeper and as real as the Hell they find themselves in, and the Heaven with whose help they hope to escape.