Pieties: Expanded Edition

Wheaton, Illinois. 1981.
After contracting a debilitating new mystery illness doctors are calling GRID, Andrew Fineman reluctantly bids farewell to his new life in NYC, returning to the uber-religious suburb where he was born—and the control of his estranged parents.

Sick, destitute, a thousand miles from his West Village circle, Andrew finds himself trapped in a home overseen by his strict, domineering father. A man who believes Andrew’s sickness may be a punishment from God.

While more sympathetic, his mother appears ill as well, sleepwalking the darkened halls, her body covered in unexplained sores and bruises. At night, his father disappears for hours into the secluded, picture-perfect Japanese garden behind the house, a strange obsession he’s cultivated as long as Andrew can remember. And there’s a horrible scratching in the walls that may or may not be rats…

When he spies his father in the garden with a stranger, late at night and half hidden in the stands of bamboo, Andrew begins to investigate. Before long, a series of ominous events convinces him there is something far more dangerous than mere adultery at play. Even worse, his mother may end up being the next victim...

Madness creeping around every corner, Andrew wonders if these incidents are merely symptoms of his illness, or does some terrible secret truly lurk between the black surface of the koi pond and his father’s forbidden, walled-off groves of whispering bamboo?