Backsliders

Two ex-best friends must reunite after a cursed time capsule is unearthed, dredging up a fateful summer at church camp seventeen years prior.

A debut horror romance perfect for fans of Chuck Tingle and Grady Hendrix.

Deep in the Adirondacks, there’s a church camp where Ben and Ike buried the shattered remains of their relationship—along with a half-finished D&D campaign—in a time capsule. After a summer that ended with the disappearance of another camper, the boys never spoke again.

Now, seventeen years later, Ben returns to the abandoned Camp Pentecost to retrieve his family ring from the capsule so he can collect on his father’s estate. But he doesn’t count on digging up something more.

When Ike receives a strange phone call from Ben after spending the last decade indulging in his vices to smother his religious trauma, history comes crashing back. Visions of the past begin to erode Ben and Ike’s reality, wounds won’t heal, and something made of thread and burlap stalks the woods and church hallways. Torn between old grudges and an unresolved romance, the two men must reunite to bury that awful summer for good and finally finish what they started all those years ago.

Combining the deep themes of Chuck Tingles Camp Damascus with the haunting queer romance of Lee Mandelos Summer Sons, Backsliders explores what happens when you can no longer outrun the monster of your own trauma.