It's a quiet night at The Hangman's Tavern just outside Cedar Hill, Ohio -- that is until a disheveled stranger shows up and begins to tell the patrons a story, one that begins: "His full name was Ronald James Williamson, and he killed his first child when he was still a child himself ..."

The stranger's tale includes a little girl named Sarah Thompson, her mother Lucy, and how a tragedy would, in a way, bring all three of them together and result in the birth of a creature of myth, a Golem of vengeance, called Mr. Hands.

Here for the first time is the author's preferred text of the third novel in the Cedar Hill Series, including new and expanded scenes. Also included is Braunbeck's International Horror Guild Award-winning novella, Kiss of the Mudman.