The Blood Oath by Herb Garrett

Description

Fleetwood, Miss. 1911

A small town in the swampy wilderness whose inhabitants are living in fear due to the fact that during the last nine months, 4 boys between the ages of eleven and fifteen have been murdered and left for dead in alligator pits by some unknown assailant apparently hiding in the swamps.

The town doctor, Peter Maxwell, then adopts a ten year old boy who is a psychological mute, and brings him to town to live. Timmy, the mute boy, becomes befriended by the town outcast, a young teen named Emil Rhodan, and the two of them become innocently intertwined in the vicious game the killer is playing and become targets.

Then Peter Maxwell dedicates himself to finding the killer, and uncoverers a deadly secret hidden in the past, whose perpetrators took a blood oath not to reveal.

In a fiery climax, the boys come face to face with the killer, and the final horrifying consequence of the past deed is revealed, that turned a normal person into a deadly killer.