Gilbert Connatt was once Hollywood's brightest star. Now he's slinging hash at a roadside stand, waiting for a miracle. That miracle arrives in the form of Varduk: a strange, commanding director who claims to have discovered an unknown play by Lord Byron. The lead role is Gilbert's if he wants it, and God knows he needs it. There's only one condition: the play opens at a remote summer theater in the Berkshires, far from anywhere that matters. What begins as a desperate actor's second chance curdles into something far darker. Sigrid Holgar, Gilbert's former lover and now a genuine megastar, is cast opposite him, and their old flame reignites. But the theater holds secrets. Malignant shapes prowl the grounds. Varduk himself seems untouchable, inhuman, when a sword goes through him and draws no blood. An occult scholar named Judge Pursuivant arrives to authenticate the manuscript and finds himself confronted with an impossibility: the paper is less than ten years old, yet the words are unmistakably Byron's. The valet's warning comes too late. Something ancient has been waiting for this play to be staged, and the final act is about to begin. Wellman blends gothic dread with the hollow glamour of celebrity, creating a horror story about what happens when desperate men make bargains with forces they cannot comprehend. The theatrical setting becomes a trap, and the play within the play becomes a summoning. For readers who like their horror literary, atmospheric, and genuinely unsettling.
