Strange magic

the long version

"In the dead of night, beside a fading fire deep in the cold woods, a solitary man sits on a magician's old theatrical trunk...planning the hideous death of Wilson Kemp. The trunk is battered and cracked, its garish paint peeling, but its contents are very special--Wilson Kemp's worst fear, come back to haunt him. Kemp thought he could escape his past. As time went by he actually began to hope he could leave the nightmares behind him. But he is about to discover that some nightmares have no end and no escape. It's taken years of patient, inexorable searching, but his past has finally caught up with him. And only his blood will satisfy it..."--p.[4] of cover.