Gary Porter
Theo Kahru
Theo Kahru wants to be a Viking. At 6'4" and 218 pounds with long blond hair, he even looks like a Viking, but he has the heart of a frail kitten. He owns the Viking Prince Tattoo Shop on Main Street and at age 24 is the youngest business owner in town. For six years, he's been planning a solo Viking raid on Price's Mansion, but he lacks the courage to ever go through with it. He's handcrafting a kayak in his father's woodshed and plans to kickoff his raid once he finishes sanding it -- which will never happen. He has a single tattoo on his body, which he inked himself -- a hazy eyeball on the palm of his left hand. For Theo, it represents Odin and his thirst for knowledge. He has no friends, and he's afraid to share anything important with anyone. He is deeply embarassed by everything that he treasures.
Devin Truby
It's 2am, and he's on the ledge of Ebeneezer Bridge waiting for a phone call. If the call doesn't come, he's going to jump. It's not suicide. At least he doesn't think it is, not really. It's a rite of passage. He doesn't want to die, but if he can jump and survive, he would accomplish something powerful, and it wouldn't even matter if the call came or not, because he would be a man. Devin's father, Jack, was a small-town football hero who played for the Minnesota Vikings for two years before breaking his ankle. He's dead now. Devin is waiting for the Vikings to call for a Free Agent contract. He had a try out with their coaching staff 2 weeks ago. He just needs to accomplish something in life -- to not be a complete failure like everyone else. He keeps a bottle of Jack Daniels that belonged to his father and is haunted by the eye of his Mamaw Sybil.
Firefly Jones
That's not a joke, by the way. His real name is Firefly...Firefly Daydream Jones. His parents were both high when they named him. He's 20 years old, and the Ozark Valley Mountain Music Festival recently crowned him the best hammered dulcimer player in the world. All it got him was a blurb in an online magazine that nobody reads. But he's developing a solid reputation as a go-to session player -- flying to New York, Austin, Nashville, LA nearly every weekend. He's got a lot on his plate, holding down a day job at the Bethel Springs Resort and protecting his Mom from his Dad, Everitt, who has gone completely crazy. Firefly believes the mineral water from the local springs is frying his brain, but his Mom doesn't buy it, and she's determined to love her husband even if it kills her.
Zavior Goode
Zavior felt lost until he met Gabe. Gabe saw something in him that no one else ever saw and became his best and only real friend. Zavior still keeps his nose in a book most of the time, but he's learned to read the world just by watching Gabe and trying to see life through his eyes. He would die for Gabe. He knows that for sure. And he's just trying to soak up every moment he has left with him. Gabe's graduating this year, and Zavior knows that things change after graduation. He's seen it happen. So when Gabe gets the itch to knock over a liquor store and pick a fight with a gang of college kids across the lake, Zavior is all in, because right now is the best that things are ever going to get.
Caleb Bebout
Caleb just turned 22, and he's lost all confidence. Back in the day, he was the cock of the walk. He's not exactly sure how it happened, but it has something to do with his wife, Kya. He truly loves her, but she's a ball buster and can't hold down a job, so he feels pressure to be the sole breadwinner. And Kya doesn't care at all about expensive stuff or anything, but she has a strange need to go on adventures and disappear for weeks at a time. And Caleb loves it and loves that about her, but every six months he has to quit his job and drop their entire savings into a hiking trip to the Adirondacks or a ski vacation in Jackson Hole or a rock climbing adventure to God knows where. And then he has to start all over with a new job. It's slowly killing him, so when he overhears 2 coworkers conspiring to swipe a pricless artifact from the Bethel Springs Resort, he sees as an opportunity for he and Kya to pull off one job together that could fund a lifetime of adventure.
Kya Bebout
Kya's not sure what's going on with her husband, Caleb. He's not the same guy she fell in love with that day on the Haunted Hayride at Sundrasik's Woods back in tenth grade. She can't put her finger on it. Things just aren't working out. She needs more from life. He even wants a kid, and she's not ready for all that. She needs to get out of this trash heap of a town. That's for sure. But when Caleb comes home from work one day with a crazy plan to sell everything they own and go on a dangerous canoe trip upriver, she catches a glimpse of that boy she'd forgotten, the boy who fought for her on Halloween when she barely even knew his name.
Ellis Ridge
Ellis never lost a race. A lot of good it did him. He still loves Layna profoundly, but he can't think about her anymore. It would kill him. And he hasn't seen his boys in years. She took them away. He deserved it. His sole earthly possession is a model 70 Winchester he won in a poker game, but that diamond necklace -- he thinks about it every day. And the way her face lit up when he gave it to her, and he could see the stars in her eyes. He has to push the thought away. They told him his leg would never heal, but he's been walking without a limp since he started living out in the Wilds -- eating fresh-killed meat and drinking from the springs. She destroyed him, but she also made him stronger than he's ever been.
Layna Ridge
Layna doesn't have time to think about him, but she does anyway. Every day. She's busy -- a single mom running the family restaurant, keeping the books, designing the marketing, hiring employees, purchasing supplies. It was just a phase for her that he never grew out of. She had her pick of every boy in town, and she chose him. She was his princess until things got hard. And then he fell apart. That was the last straw when he hit her. That was it. She wasn't stupid like all those other girls, and she wasn't about to let him make her just like them. She deserves better. Their boys deserve better. But she can't take off that stupid necklace he stole for her and served six months of probation over. Can't take it off. Can't touch it. Can't even look at it. But he still has her heart.
Alaska Bennett
When Alaska was 14, she was abducted, locked in a dungeon, and tortured for over a year. While captive, she began to draw. She drew in notebooks and on the stone walls of her dungeon. She drew on the floor under her bed. She drew visions of this secret world poking through the cracks and the recessed window. She drew knots and shapes and puzzles and webs and everything she could glimpse of this secret world. On Christmas, she escaped and left her drawings behind -- leaving them unfinished. Back at home, nothing worked. She wasn't the same. Her parents broke up...again. Her sister, Carolina, hated her. The friends she thought she had and the things that once made her happy, now seemed shallow. Everything was just off. She tried to draw what she remembered of the secret world, but it was only sad, dim fragments. One year to the day after her escape, she runs from home back to the dungeon to find her secret world again.
Everitt Jones
Everitt Jones is an engineer by trade, trained by the military. When he moved his family back home to Bethel, there was no work for engineers, so he taught himself to be a surveyor and mapmaker for the Commonwealth of PA. He built an A frame house for his family, a treehouse for his son, and an arch bridge so they could park across the spillway. During his first tour in Afghanistan, he became infatuated with conspiracy theories. Years of drug use and his experience working for the state made conspiracies his reality. He is now crazy. He cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality. He loves his wife, but when he has an episode, he is convinced she's been replaced with an impostor who's spying on him for the government. He's tried to hurt her on multiple occasions.
Moriah Gazy
Moriah grew up in Bethel Crossing, went to college at Georgetown, and settled in Bethel Park (a wealthy suburb of Pittsburgh) with her husband, who makes a buttload as an investment banker. She got a good job at a technology company and worked her way up to become the youngest VP ever at the firm. When her son, Dexter, was diagnosed with Autism, she reluctantly quit her job to be a stay-at-home Mom. What did she know about being a mother, but her husband had no idea how to handle an autistic child, so Moriah felt the full burden of raising a special-needs child. At every fork in the road, she has chosen Dexter over herself, and she is beginning to resent him. If he just smiled at her once in a while or showed her some form of affection, she could handle it. She's falling apart. She feels trapped.
River Gazy
The youngest of the Gazy kids, River has all the talent in the world to do whatever he wants in life. Foregoing a football scholarship to Penn State, he went to Stanford on a full ride. He quit after just three semesters to go on a two-year bender, in which he kayaked the Amazon, backpacked Machu Picchu, climbed mountains in the Himalayas, and made a rabbit sculpture with a chainsaw. River has always been fearless and self-reliant. Even as a baby, he never cried. He faces his greatest challenge when he becomes a father. He vows to be the best ever and to give up drinking. He never liked drinking anyway. It was just something to do.
Nazareth "Nazzy" Poe
Nazzy hates her name. Seriously. But at least it's not like everybody else. That would suck if her name was, like, Brittany or something and it was spelled all wonky like with two i's or something. Her Mom left when she was real young, and Nazzy's only seen her a few times. She couldn't stand it out in the "kingdom of cow poop" as she called it. Nazzy's Dad has been the Lead Pastor of Charisma Chapel, the biggest and fastest-growing church in the county, for almost 20 years. Nazzy is just over six feet tall with a size 10.5 shoe. She is an exceptional athlete and is hoping for a Volleyball scholarship to Penn State. Her secret ambition is to become an adult film star on the day she turns 18. If her Dad knew about this, he'd freak.
Easton Ridge
The youngest of the Ridge boys, Easton was always different -- shy, quiet, sensitive. But somehow he grew up to be a loving husband and father and a capable farmer, willing and able to learn and adapt to whatever is necessary. One day, he wakes up, and the world is a different place, where death looms around every corner. Everyone he encounters seems to be ravaged by a deadly, violent, and highly contagious disease. Forced to kill and bury his friends, his neighbors, and even his own family to survive, he hides out deep within Sundrasik's Woods. As far as he knows, he is the only survivor. He hunts and scavenges for food and murders when necessary to stay alive. There is a hunting camp out on Scare Pond Lane where he plans to spend the winter, but he's just not sure anymore if life is still worth living.
Dakota Magi
At age 32, Dakota is the youngest sheriff in the history of Tioga County. Trained to be a detective with the PA Attorney General Bureau of Criminal Investigation, he quickly burnt out on a horrific case that tragically went unsolved. To escape the fallout of the case, he moved his family to the small town of Wellsboro, PA. He won the Sheriff election before ever setting foot in the county. After moving to the beauty and tranquility of Wellsboro, he soon realized that the nearby town of Bethel is a deceptively dangerous and turbulent place. What was supposed to be a low-stress career move has become a daily battle. Secretly, he begins seeing a therapist in Bethel but refuses to admit this to his wife, and she naturally begins to suspect he is having an affair.
Sunset Odom
When Sunset held her nephew B.B. for the first time, she felt an instant and undeniable connection to the newborn. She was eleven. On her fourteenth Birthday, her Mom OD'd on the living room couch, and Sunset ran away from home, but she stopped on her way out of town to take B.B. with her, believing she could provide a better home for her nephew. Sunset and B.B. have been on the run for over 2 years, and they've finally found a hunting cabin on Scare Pond Lane to squat in. Sunset scavenges for food, steals copper pipes from abandoned houses, sells prescription pills on The Heights, and does whatever she needs to do to provide for B.B. She wears a long duster, a pair of oversized boots she stole off a woman from Ninevah Hills, and a semi-automatic pistol she found under the mattress of a hunting cabin on Scare Pond Lane. She sleeps in a hammock in a tree and guards B.B. with her life. Her goal is to make sure B.B. gets to his first day of school.
Bobby Sutton
Bobby Sutton was never very good at anything, but he sure tried hard. After graduation, everyone thought he was going nowhere fast, and they were probably right, because when he was nineteen, he realized he could run all day long and never get tired. He entered the Pine Creek 60, which is a 60 mile race winding along the Pine Creek Gorge, and he placed fourth alongside some of the best ultrarunners in the country. Soon after, he stuffed his life into a backpack and took off running on a 327 mile journey to start a new life with his sister and her family in upstate New York.
Neil Hopewell
The motion-activated hallway lights at the Bethel Springs Jr/Sr High School kick on in sequence as Neil Hopewell hobbles in on his crutches at 5:15am. He teaches Junior High English and coaches the JV girls' basketball team. Even with an Ivy League education, he had to move to rural PA to get a job in his field. His 6 older brothers and sisters are all wildly successful lawyers and investment bankers. They are confused, amused, disappointed, and perplexed by Neil's decision to become a teacher, and in an effort to somehow meet their lofty expectations, Neil's ambition is to develop his own Charter school. When he's not teaching, grading, lesson planning, reading, tutoring, or playing backyard football, he's writing up a Charter School proposal. He is always exhausted. He has no friends, but he's an incredibly dedicated teacher.
Gracie Vynes
Gracie Vynes goes to Charisma Chapel every Sunday and plays mandolin in the worship band. Two years ago, she was prophesied over by Reverend Poe. He told her, "Satan has put his mark on you, but God is coming to wash it away. He wants to renew you. He has a great plan for you that you will rise up beyond those who persecute you, that you will see God in His glory in a new way." Every day, Gracie wonders what mark Satan put on her and when God will come to wash it away and what plan He has in store for her. She has a Master's degree in Counseling from Penn State and works for Tioga County's Child and Youth Services by day while running her own Counseling practice out of the church basement at night. High strung and detail-oriented, she lives with her parents and waits for Rev. Poe's prophecy to play out in her life. She is 27 years old.
Violet Harrell
Violet calls her Mom every day, because she's convinced an 11-year-old is trying to kill her. 2 years ago, she graduated from Charys College with a degree in Music Education. She spent a year and a half substitute teaching at $55/day for an average of 3 days per week. When she saw an ad for a live-in nanny for a wealthy family requesting applicants with an Education degree, it was the best career opportunity she'd seen since...ever. The Teagardens hired her after 3 awkward interviews, including a meet-and-greet with their strange son and beautiful, infant daughter. Violet moved into the carriage house behind their mansion a week later. She loves Etha, the ten-month-old she is charged with, but Rex, the sociopathic preteen, is her worst nightmare.
Brady Shrugg
Brady owns his own business. He does high-end home repair and carpentry, but in his free time, he builds wooden sculptures. His best client was David Price...until he died. When he started working for the Teagarden's, he met Violet, and now he's a bit obsessed with her. He's too shy to ask her out, but he hopes she notices him. He has certainly noticed her deep blues eyes and magnetic smile and even the way she braids her hair. He also noticed that the Teagarden's son, Rex has a hopeless crush on her, and that kid is crazy. Like for real.
Ford Odette
Ford Odette lives on Ridgeview Drive, the tippy-top road on Bethel Heights, with his Dad, who's bedridden. Ford is a shut-in with a crippling anxiety disorder. He survives by selling off his father's prescription meds, which are delivered to him in bulk once a month. He sees and hears and smells and tastes everything vividly and can't seem to escape the feeling that the whole world is slowly poisoning him. He goes out of the house one night every month, when he allows himself to take one pill from each of his Dad's prescription bottles, and he prowls the streets of Bethel Heights with a scary, drug-induced confidence. He needs that one night -- needs it like oxygen.
Dante Covey
Dante Covey is old. He can't remember how old exactly. His business card says he is a "Freelancer." He tunes pianos, builds and restores stringed instruments, and...exorcises demons. Also, he sees things. He would say he sees into the "Spirit World," and it's not that these things aren't there exactly. It's just that most people can't see them. He's lived a long time with them, and they are, in some ways, his closest friends, but it wasn't always like that. Because he's not like them, he had to earn their respect. When he moves to Bethel, he visits the Trebel Clef music shop to meet the owner and leave his card. There, he meets a young girl who is haunted by demons, and his heart breaks for her.
Jude Autry
Some people you can just tell are up to no good. And it's not that Jude's a bad guy. He's an Actuary by trade, brilliant with numbers and percentages. He worked at an Insurance Company making a six-figure salary and supplemented that by gambling obsessively and so effectively that his bookies, who were convinced he was cheating, ran him out of town. A self-proclaimed money addict, Jude is taking some time away to clear his head. He bought the Old Ripley House so he can restore it and learn some valuable home repair skills. He plans to set up a server room in his basement and host websites to make some cash. But once he moves in and sees how wide open the drug trade is in Bethel, he decides to alter his career path a touch.
Rev. John Poe
Pastor Poe used to brim with energy and charisma, but now he just feels old and tired. He's been the lead Pastor at Charsima Chapel for almost 2 decades, and he has always been convinced it was his life's calling even though it cost him his wife. She hated living in Bethel and divorced him after 2 years of living in a graveyard surrounded by cow fields. Now that he's about to tip over the edge of 50, doubt is starting to creep into his life for the first time. With a daughter on the verge of college, he can't afford to retire, but he's ready to rest on his laurels with his feet up and the Big Ten Network playing 24/7.
Ezra Shrugg
When Ezra was young, he trained to be a preacher, but at 23 he felt God calling him to join the military. He spent 20 years working in CounterIntelligence with a specialty in hiding or destroying information. After retiring from the Army, he worked 2 years in Corporate Espionage before retiring for good and moving back to Bethel. It's been 25 years, but it still looks the same. He hadn't been in town a week before David Price invited him to the mansion and asked him to do one big job that could set him up for the rest of his life. He had no intention of taking the job, but the amount of money on the table was impossible to ignore. His task was to make David Price's greatest sin from his past disappear forever.
David Price
David Price is the richest man in the county and the sole heir of the Bethel Springs Resort fortune. His biggest regret in life happened when he was 19 and his sister was born in the mansion. Price bribed the doctor to say that the child had died. Then, he kidnapped her and left her in the woods to die. Every day of his life, he lives in fear that his sister will resurface and demand her share of the inheritance. One morning, he woke up from a nightmare at the top of the main stairwell in the foyer of the house...about to fall. He broke his neck and fractured his spine. He believes he is haunted.
Wyatt Howell
Wyatt is Isaiah Glass's best friend, but he has no idea. Wyatt is the popular kid at school but thinks he's way too cool for everybody. In his mind, nobody understands. Nobody see the world as clearly as he does. He's the son of Grady Howell, the former Pittsburgh Pirates' relief pitcher, and he's an all-state pitcher in his own right. He works at the Bethel Springs Resort and smokes pot on a rock up in the woods behind the Resort, where he can see the whole Shadow Valley stretch out forever. Isaiah encourages him to join the swim team, and he becomes an instant star -- as he does with everything.
Isaiah Glass
Isaiah could be in the room with you right now, and you wouldn't even know it. He is painfully shy and socially awkward but incredibly intelligent, and he absorbs knowledge like a sponge. He actually has a need to learn new things. It's like an addiction. He never knew his Dad, and his Mom left home when he was a baby to travel the world and do drugs, so he was raised by his Grandparents, Dez and Dotty Glass. Dez and Dotty own their own business making stained glass and custom furniture. From his Grandfather, Isaiah learns to build or repair almost anything. But Isaiah's best attribute is his startling ability to empathize with other people. Everywhere he goes, he carries with him all the hopes, fears, and dreams of everyone around him.
Quiet Darrow
Quiet definitely lives up to her name. She rarely speaks even when spoken to, but she has a bright, warm smile and a gentle, loving way that you can feel when she enters a room. Calvin is her best friend. Every Friday night, they go up to the cemetery and write their own pen and paper RPG. She really likes him, but she doesn't think they'll ever be more than friends. They're just too different. Quiet hopes to always do the right thing and to help make the world a better place, but there's a dark sadness inside that frightens her. When she grows up, she wants to write horror movies and find ways to let the sadness escape through art. And, quietly, she is good at everything. She picked up the drums after just a few weeks of playing after school.
Calvin Letters
Calvin never knew his Dad. He lives in Bethel Run with his Mom at Grandpa's old farm. His Mom, Miranda, was an installation artist in New York City before her breakdown. They moved back to Bethel a few years ago, and she struggles to find work. When Calvin rides his bike over the bridge by the Old Ripley House, he pretends he's entering a different world where everything is new and strange, but it's just a game, and by the time he reaches town, the magic is gone. Like all the other kids in Bethel, he's bored to death. When his Mom kills herself, he rides his bike over the cliffs near Breakneck Point and breaks his ribs. He is never the same after that.
Gabe Sundrasik
Gabe's completely confident he can beat you up, so...he's not worried. And everything always seems to work out for him. He's just blessed. He's smart, tough, popular, good-looking. There are no consequences in this life. He can do anything. He's a god. Whatever random thought pops in his head, he can make it happen. Every night is a chance to burn like a flame until morning. He's got a new girl on his arm every week, but there's something different about MacKenna, and on the brink of graduation, he's ready to watch his life unfold.
Heck Heckathorne
His real name's Dale, but everybody just calls him Heck. He earned a PhD in American History from Carnegie Mellon and taught at Charys College for nine years before "retiring." He owns the Root Cellar Antique Shop in downtown Bethel and runs/writes/edits an online magazine featuring alien encounters and revisionist history. Once a month, he visits Sundrasik's Woods with a video camera and a Geiger counter, looking for evidence of the spacecraft wreckage left behind from the supposed "Bethel Hollow UFO Landing" of 1971. Heck is an encyclopedia of knowledge on almost every subject and probably knows your ancestry better than you do. He lost his license back in '97 for excessive DUIs, so you probably know him best as the crazy old coot who drives his lawn mower down the sidewalk.