A Faint Cold Fear

For Byron Carmona, a miasma of dread seems to emanate from the old Cornwall house next door. Three years previous, Billy Cornwall tried to rape Byron's 12-year-old sister, Shelly. And then in the winter of 1963, the Cornwalls all died by carbon monoxide poisoning when Billy's father was crushed while putting snow chains on the car in the garage. The Gebhardt family has moved into the Cornwall place and strange things have begun to happen. Byron's 16-year-old world should have been filled with the wonder and awe of young love when he falls for his new neighbor, Ali Gebhardt. Instead, that summer of 1964 becomes the culmination of a series of horrors that began in 1849, when survivors of the ill-fated Donner Party and their children died under bizarre circumstances in the small mountain community of Glenoaks.