³The first time the children saw the Devil, he was sitting next to them in the second row of deck chairs in the bandstand. He was biting his nails.² So begins the horrifying story of a madman loose in a small seaside town ‹ his prey the very young and the very old. Seen through the eyes of Hilary ‹ a precocious, highly imaginative, and lonely child ‹ it is a chilling story about the perceptiveness of children, the blindness of parents, and the allure of strangers. As the adults carry on with their own grown-up antics, Hilary is led further and further into the twilight world of one man¹s terrifyingly distorted view of normal life. But will she have the sense to resist it?