When Anne Mitchell was 11 years old, something happened that erased the whole first decade of her life; 25 years later, she has come home to find out what really happened to Laughs in the Wind.
Oh, she gets it. She understands that something profoundly evil lurks in the swirling purple haze of her amnesia.
For 25 years, she was enslaved by what she called the "Boogeyman"-- images from her lost childhood that appeared in the shadows behind her reflection in mirrors and wine glasses, haunted her dreams and attacked her in screaming night terrors. Fear of facing that secret held her hostage. Like a schoolyard bully, it twisted her arm behind her back and forced her to accept that her life began in the dirt beside the ditch where the family station wagon burned like hell had opened up a crack in the world right there in the back seat.
Then the monster shattered her career.
And Anne saw him in her dying mother's eyes. With her last breath, Susan Mitchell begged for her daughter's forgiveness. She didn't mean for it to happen, she gasped, but she'll burn in hell for what she did all the same.
What did her mother do? Anne has to know.
So she has come home to a small Texas prairie town, to live with her crazy grandmother in the rambling old house where she grew up, to take her stand against the Boogeyman. But Anne isn't really prepared for how expensive remembering might be. The cost of her memories could very well be her sanity.
Each new revelation loosens Anne's grip on reality.
Surely her crazy grandmother didn't do THAT to Anne's beloved parakeet! Yes, the old woman DID! No ... actually, she didn't. The horror that attacks her in the garage--it can't possibly be real...can it?
And most important: what happened to the little girl with a face like a china doll whose name was Laughs in the Wind?
The Boogeyman knows.
He also knows Anne's here. He knows it's showtime. And he knows what she doesn't--that Anne might very well have to pay for her past with her future, that the cost of remembering could be her life.
