Black House (The Talisman #2) by Stephen King & Peter Straub

French Landing, Wisconsin - home of Kingsland Ale, Goltz's farm implements, Maxton's old folks' home and Radio KDCU, the voice of the Coulee Country. A comfortable, solid middle-Americans; and a serial killer.

Ten-year-old Irma Freneau's mutilated body lies in the rotting ruins of Ed's Eats & Dawgs in the woods close to the Black House. No one has discovered her yet; no one, that is, except for a host of flies and a wild dog. But her severed foot, complete with size 5 New Balance sneaker and an obscene note, is about to make its way home to French Landing, packed into a shoebox.

Slippage is occurring in the Coulee Country. Three children have been lost to the world. Three children: slaughtered by a fiend with a taste for child's flesh. Linking the murders with those carried out by a previous century's serial killer, the local newspaper has dubbed the perpetrator 'The Fisherman', and if local police chief Dale Gilbertson doesn't catch the Fisherman soon, he'll lose his job, and another French Landing mother will lose her child.

If only Jack 'Hollywood' Sawyer - the ex-detective from LA who cracked their last case for them - would help, Dale might save his neck. But, plagued by visions of another world, Jack has retired to this pretty rural retreat precisely to avoid such horrors. And having recognised the touch of madness on this casem he has no wish to revisit the Territories whence such madness issues.

Soon, he'll have no choice: for the Fisherman is about to select his fourth victim. Tyler Marshall, left behind one afternoon by his bullying friends, pedals past Maxton Elder Care and is accosted by a crow. 'Gorg!' it caws, and 'Ty!' What ten-year-old could resist a bird that speaks his name? Not Ty, that's for sure. And as he follows the crow towards the old folks' home, he is grabbed by the neck and dragged into a hedge.

The Fisherman has made another catch...

black house

is a masterwork from two of the greatest storytellers of our time.