Welcome to Riverbend, a sleepy Western outpost where nothing ever happens and, it seems, nothing ever will. But one fateful day the stagecoach rolls into town, its team of horses covered with an unidentifiable substance.As the strange stuff spreads its devastation, the terrified townspeople turn to their leader. Whatever this evil is, Sheriff Ned Hardy aims to put an end to it. He mounts his horse and leads a posse to hunt down the source of the curse, but just as they close in on their suspect, the cowboys are frozen in a mysterious light that suddenly fills the sky.Master artist and storyteller Chris Van Allsburg has created another surrealistic journey into the imagination, a provocative story within a story that leads the reader to ponder the realities of fictional worlds and the lives of the characters who populate them.