Baal

Cassius and Max, respectively thirteen and fifteen years old, suspect the adults of their town are part of a satanic sect that operates under the guise of Christianity. As their travels into the wilderness behind their neighborhood grow deeper, their suspicions are complicated and compounded in proportion to the narrowing divide between right and wrong. It is only through graduated treachery and induration that the best friends can hope to avoid collusion and eventual subsumption into a sacrificial world fashioned by their parents.

Written with the earned nostalgia of Truman Capote and the philosophically unsettling horror of Thomas Ligotti, Baal tells the story of two boys whose confrontation with adult evils, both quotidian and monstrous, results in their systemic renunciation of childhood: Cassius must decide whether or not to forfeit Max's innate innocence and love to a fiat of counter-violence; while Max, more and more aware of the racial and sexual chasm that between them has always existed, must decide to what lengths he'll go for unrequited love. Both must figure a way out of the depression and alcoholism rampant in their Michigan town of laid-off autoworkers and their caged wives.