Silk Hills is a 2022 Graphic Novel written by Brian Level and Ryan Ferrier and illustrated by Kate Sherron.
Ex-marine private investigator Beth Wills is called to the old coal town of Silk Hills to search for a missing man. She quickly realizes that the small town likes to handle its own business, and that the kitschy Mothman merch runs deeper than a gimmick to attract tourists...
This novel provides examples of:
- Action Survivor: Beth is a former Marine sergeant turned private investigator. She's equipped to handle kidnappings and possible murders, and when push comes to shove, holds her own against the moth cultists with little more than a handgun and her instincts.
- Animal Disguise: The Kitter clan use protective padded clothing, masks and goggles to protect themselves from the moth dust that coats the abandoned coal tunnels, making them resemble a large, humanoid moth when fully dressed.
- Animalistic Abomination: The deer-thing appears at first to be an unusually aggressive deer, but has a human face embedded in its chest. It's real, and absorbs the sheriff into its body as one of the casualties of the investigation.
- Big "NO!": Enoch, the apparent cult leader is reduced to this after Beth escapes her bonds and Malikeh apparently ignores their ritual. It's all he can say before Beth drops him.
- Company Town: Silk Hills is said by a local as once having been a coal town, before Partridge forced many mines to close in order to open his mills, taking the locals' livelihoods with them.
- Fantastic Drug: "Bug dust" or "moth dust" becomes the preferred company of many addicts in the decaying town. It's made using the poisonous scales of a local species of moth, and is just as potent fresh off the moth, meaning that unprotected exposure to the caves where the moths live can induce severe, apparently unprompted hallucinations.
- Higher Understanding Through Drugs: After being completely covered in moth dust, Celia has an encounter with an unfathomably large spiritual creature in the vague shape of a mothman. It speaks to her and attempts to merge its will with hers.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Much of the story is depicted through the perspective of people hallucinating on moth dust, making it difficult to tell how much of the depicted events should be interpreted literally. Multiple characters see the apparent mutant deer with a human face, and Able is restrained in what appears to be a silken coccoon stuffed full of moths. The epilogue shows a truly colossal moth, which apparently emerged from Abel, menacing the town and flying into the night, with shocked reactions from dozens of bystanders.
- Semper Fi: Beth finds a common connection with Derick, who owns a gas station in Silk Hills, through their common past in the Marines.
- The Mothman: Kitschy Mothman merch is said to be the only reason tourists blow through Silk Hills, by the time the story takes place.
- A Mothman is seen observing several scenes, though whether it's the genuine article, a hallucination brought on by dust, or a cultist keeping tabs on the situation is never revealed.
- The Unseen: Malikeh, the entity evidently worshipped by Enoch and the moth cultists. Beth catches a distant silhouette in a tunnel which may or may not have been Malikeh making his grand entrance, but after she breaks her restraints, the ritual abruptly ends.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Silk Hills is a near-ghost town full of addicts and transient workers. It's also home to two warring families who have been feuding for generations, one of whom went literally underground and started a cult. The cult serves the dual purpose of worshipping an unseen entity while picking off meddling townsfolk through human sacrifice.
