Trinket (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798192255384)

Barkley Savoie wanted someone who would never leave him. He should have been more careful what he created.

Banished from his village after publicly accusing its high priests of harming children, elderly woodcarver Barkley Savoie retreats into the surrounding forest. Hunched, aging, and alone, he builds himself a cabin and settles into an existence defined by isolation.

Then Barkley finds a forbidden tree.

A strange marking has been carved into its trunk, and every warning says the marked trees are to be left untouched. Barkley ignores the old prohibition, cuts away a piece of the wood, and carries it home.

From it, he carves a small wooden boy.

He names him Trinket.

Barkley treats the doll as though he were his own child. He talks to him, dresses him, bathes him, puts him to bed, and even tries to feed him. Trinket never responds.

Until darkness falls.

Soon, disturbing events begin spreading beyond Barkley's cabin. An animal is brutally killed. People in the village begin dying. Small footprints appear where they shouldn't. Barkley remains reluctant to accept what is happening, even as the little wooden companion he created becomes increasingly difficult to explain.

Then Prince, a six-year-old village boy, begins visiting Barkley.

For the lonely old man, Prince offers something Trinket never could: genuine human companionship. Their friendship gives Barkley a connection to the village he lost and a reason to look beyond the isolation that led him to create Trinket.

Trinket notices.

And Trinket does not want to share.

What begins as jealousy grows into a terrifying obsession. Barkley is forced to confront the truth about the creature he has loved like a son-and the horrifying lengths Trinket will go to keep Barkley entirely to himself.

Caught between the living child who trusts him and the wooden child he cannot bring himself to abandon, Barkley must decide how much blood his loneliness is worth.

Because Trinket understands more than Barkley ever imagined.

He understands death.

He understands love.

And most dangerously of all...

he understands exactly who Barkley loves besides him.

TRINKET is a dark folk-horror novel about loneliness, forbidden creation, possessive love, and the terrible difference between bringing something into your life and being able to let it go.