The Elementals

by Michael McDowell · 1981

When the Savage matriarch dies under strange circumstances, her family and the neighboring McCrays retreat to Beldame, a remote Alabama Gulf‑Coast resort where three Victorian houses loom over the sand‑kissed beach. Two homes are lived in, but the third—half‑buried by an ever‑growing white dune—has been empty for decades. Inside, a malevolent presence waits, a creature that has haunted Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since childhood and may be linked to a series of inexplicable deaths. As the summer heat rises, the house’s buried secrets surface, turning a seemingly tranquil vacation into a nightmarish battle against an ancient, elemental evil. Michael McDowell delivers a uniquely terrifying haunted‑house tale that blends Southern gothic atmosphere with relentless, visceral horror.