Meet Philip: a young boy with a desire to self-destruct. His family thinks he's a monster, but that's okay. Monsters are usually destroyed in the final act, and Philip knows that's exactly how he'll end up. A pale corpse, rotting in the wind... Hilary Bunce feels like a monster, too. His dysfunctional family is unbearable, turning him into a shadow of the man he really is, lost and afraid, with little awareness of the emerging horror he is about to confront. The world isn't designed for people like Philip and Hilary. That's why they each like to visit the Fade, an empty landscape of desert and rolling hills that seems to float beyond existence itself, accessible to only a privileged few, where all the world's misery and loneliness dissolves. But the Fade is not as empty or as isolated as it appears. A tall, thin man named Pappy stalks the desert carrying a large burlap sack. His job is to clean up the Fade. He lives in a grey house on top of a hill, eternally watchful, forever alert. And he will do whatever it takes to rid his kingdom of disease... The Fade...An unforgettable novel of visionary horror by one of Britain's most accomplished writers of contemporary dark fiction.