Pine Deep Trilogy

In Ghost Road Blues Crow and his friend Terry have begun having nightmares, with Terry having ones that show him either committing atrocities or watching his city burn. Meanwhile, Crow has been planning to propose to his girlfriend Val, only for her and her family to be brutally attacked by Karl Ruger. The event leaves Val's father dead, her sister-in-law mentally scarred, and both herself and Crow heavily wounded.

At the same time, the local newsboy Mike Sweeney has his own problems. His step-father Vic Wingate is physically and emotionally abusing him under the influence of Ubel Griswold and another town local wants Mike dead, believing that the voice in his head is God telling him that Mike is the Antichrist.

In Dead Man’s Song, Crow and local newsman Willard Fowler Newton, begin tracking the backstory of the events of thirty years ago, while at the same time Vic Wingate and Karl Ruger quietly begin building an army of the undead to prepare for Griswold’s return. They intend to launch the Red Wave, a massive attack scheduled for Halloween Night. While Crow and Newton are down in Dark Hollow, a remote spot where Griswold both lived and died, one of Ruger’s companions, Boyd, has become a strange kind of mindless vampire. While Griswold’s ghost sets a trap for Crow, Wingate sends Boyd after Val Guthrie. The attack ends with the death of Val's brother and the near death of his wife, but Val manages to survive and kill Boyd via a headshot. During this, Crow and Newton investigate Griswold's seemingly abandoned house in Dark Hollow, only to almost die after the porch collapses in on them and a swarm of cockroaches attempts to attack them. They just barely manage to survive, making it back to Val just as she manages to kill Boyd.

At the same time, Terry is spiraling deeper and deeper into depression and insanity due to the images he sees when he manages to sleep as well as the waking visions of the sister Griswold murdered. Terry begins to lose control of himself, snapping at others and acting out of character. It's only after he almost kills his wife while he was beginning to succumb to the evil inside of him that Terry throws himself out of a window in an attempt to commit suicide. Meanwhile, Mike is still being stalked by Tow Truck Eddie, having a few close calls and being saved multiple times by the intervention of the ghost of Owen Morse.

Bad Moon Rising picks up at the end of the events of the previous novel. Val is temporarily hospital-bound, Terry is in a coma, and Mike frequently falls into fugue states where he begins to change into a vampire, as it was revealed in the previous book that he is the son of Ubel Griswold while he possessed a man later revealed to be Terry. Mike continues to be stalked by Tow Truck Eddie as Val, Newton, and Crow attempt to reach out to a Pennsylvania researcher that specializes in the occult, Jonatha.

Meanwhile, Vic Wingate continues to prepare for the upcoming "Red Wave" that will bring back Griswold on Halloween Night, only for Ruger to eventually end up killing his wife Lois and transforming her into a living vampire. She manages to avoid the temptation for human blood, which keeps her soul inside of her body. Lois manages to save her son Mike from being killed by Vic and allows Mike to escape, only for Ruger to force blood inside of her, causing her soul to leave her body.

Crow manages to convince some of the police force that had assisted in the earlier manhunt for Ruger to help with the vampiric threat, culminating in a showdown at Griswold's house that kills one of them and almost kills Vic. During this time the Red Wave begins to take effect in the town, with all paths of escape blown up by bombs and most of the townspeople taken out by candy and beverages spiked with psychedelic drugs. Most of the town is killed and Crow, Val, Mike, and the remaining police officer return to Griswold's home to keep him from rising. They are assisted in their efforts by Terry, who has transformed into a werewolf, but not before much of their group is dead. The group does barely manage to kill Griswold as outside help comes in to take care of the remaining living citizens of the town.