Professor James Lowry doesn't believe in spirits, or witches, or demons. Not until one gentle spring evening when his hat disappears, along with four hours of his life. Now, the quiet university town of Atworthy is changing?just slightly at first, then faster and more frighteningly each time he tries to remember. Lowry is pursued by a dark, secret evil that is turning his whole world against him while it whispers a warning from the shadows: "If you find your hat you'll find your four hours, and if you find your four hours then you will die!" Praised alike by readers and authors such as Ray Bradbury and Stephen King, Fear turned the horror genre in the direction it goes today?one in which the horror is based on everyday realism and could conceivably happen to anyone. L. Ron Hubbard took an ordinary man, in a very ordinary circumstance, and descended him into a completely plausible but extraordinary hell. Why is Fear so powerful? Because it really could happen.