If it had another name, I never knew, but the locals called it the Loney - that strange nowhere between the Wyre and the Lune where Hanny and I went every Easter time with Mummer, Farther, Mr and Mrs Belderboss and Father Wilfred, the parish priest. It was impossible to truly know the place. It changed with each influx and retreat, and the neap tides would reveal the skeletons of those who thought they could escape its insidious currents. No one ever went near the water. No one apart from us, that is. I suppose I always knew that what happened there wouldn't stay hidden for ever, no matter how much I wanted it to
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When a flood exposes the remains of a long-dead baby on the Loney - a desolate stretch of Lancastrian coastline raked by treacherous tides - Smith is catapulted back to his youth and an Easter Catholic pilgrimage to a shrine there. His brother Hanny was mute as a child, and his devout parents hoped for a miracle that would enable him to talk. But the mournful, rain-soaked Loney is full of enigmas for the boys: Miracles. Death. Superstition. Hidden rooms. Their sinister accommodation - a taxidermist's house. The new, younger priest leading the pilgrimage in place of the zealous, ritual-obsessed Father Wilfred, who died in mysterious circumstances. Something terrible is about to happen - something that will stay with Smith forever, no matter how hard he tries to forget...