Hekla’s Children

The past is not dead in this time-looped horror tale that tries to elevate the mundane to the legendary but only succeeds in making it tragic. Nine years after three high school students disappeared on a hike, mummified human remains are discovered in the same park. Nathan Brookes, the teacher who chaperoned the missing students, returns to the site to encounter a puzzled archaeologist. Dating the corpse indicates it is 3,000 years old, but it also shows a modern surgical repair. And Nathan has a vision of Bark Foot, a local legend whose description matches the mummy. When Sue, the only student to return from the hike, kidnaps the archaeologist and goes off to meet Bark Foot, Nathan decides to follow her trail, no matter how far into myth it seems to lead. Brogden presents a believable set of characters all struggling to deal with the unforeseen and their own desires. Unfortunately, the central tragedy that twists the plot lacks the grand passion or obsession that would believably warp history into horror. (Mar.)