Sophie Rose went missing eighteen years ago. Now the town think they may have found her body, when they were looking for someone else's.
During the hottest summer on record, the small English town of Wymere is holding a summer fete, children play happily with their families and all is well, until a woman reports that her husband and son have gone missing. As a panicked search sweeps the fete, the missing man comes out of the woods covered in blood screaming, 'I don't know what I've done'. He doesn't know what has happened, but his son is nowhere to be seen.
Deep in the Wymere woods, a dead tree grows from a mound of black dirt set in the middle of an old, dried-up reservoir. This is where Sergeant Tony Thorne finds the missing boy. And with it, he may have solved a mystery that has plagued the town for almost two decades, and discovered an evil that has lain dormant for centuries.