They cut his hands off because they thought he was the Devil. How else could he play the piano without ever taking a lesson? As they threw his mangled body over the cliffs, into the boiling sea, he uttered a curse: death to every one of the descendants of his murderers. It was 1788, and most people in the sleepy town of First Landing, Maine believed in black magic. They were glad he was gone.

Nobody believed in curses anymore, especially sensible Diane Whitehead, who brought her husband and two children to Maine for a vacation—and to trace her ancestry in the picture-perfect town of First Landing. Diane was delighted to be able to rent the very house where her forebears had lived—until strange things began to happen. Poltergeists. Precipices that fell into the sea. Disembodied hands. Hideous deaths. Eerie music. And then one night, Diane's pretty seven-year-old daughter began to play the piano—without ever taking a lesson. The music was beautiful. Too beautiful to be anything but a deathsong.