Mystery walk

Mystery Walk is a horror novel by the American writer Robert McCammon, published on 13 May 1983 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

The title comes from the book's own idea of a mystery walk: the journey everybody makes through life while working out where they belong and what they are for. Billy Creekmore's version of it is complicated by his ability to see distressed souls and help them on their way, a gift he has inherited from his mother and from his grandmother before her, and one that his devoutly Christian father resents in him.

Billy grows up in the small town of Hawthorne, Alabama, in a household divided over what he is. He learns early that he is different: after a fire at a friend's house, he is drawn to the building and finds the boy's body hidden under a pile of coal in the basement, and the spirit asks him to tell people where he is. Learning how to use the gift, and how to live with it, is the work the novel sets him.