The Waking That Kills — Stephen Gregory

A dark novel of Possession. The ghosts that haunt us are not always strangers. Lawrence Lundy's military-pilot father is missing, and the boy is doing everything he can to keep his presence alive in the family home. Into this strange house comes Christopher Beale, a man just returned to the country who becomes drawn in to the apparent madness of the Lawrence and his mother.

A long, hot summer's dream. A suffocating nightmare. Shattered by a violent awakening! When his elderly father suffers a stroke, Christopher Beale returns to England. He has no home, no other family. Adrift, he answers an advert for a live-in tutor for a teenage boy. The boy is Lawrence Lundy, who possesses the spirit of his father, a military pilot -- missing, presumed dead. Unable to accept that his father is gone, Lawrence keeps his presence alive, in the big old house, in the overgrown garden. His mother, Juliet Lundy, a fey, scatty widow living on her nerves, keeps the boy at home, away from other children, away from the world. And in the suffocating heat of a long summer, she too is infected by the madness of her son. Christopher Beale becomes entangled in the strange household... enmeshed in the oddness of the boy and his fragile mother. Only by forcing the boy to release the spirit of his father can there be any escape from the haunting.