They Returned is a beautifully touching and unnerving story about the unexplained disappearance of three children, two boys and one girl, and their reappearance three days later in a semi-autistic state. Not even the children themselves are able to help anyone understand what happened.

Eight years after a cataclysm and disease ravaged the human race, leaving just one in every ten surviving, all social structures have crumbled like sand castles. All remaining animals have been consumed and no sowing has yet been possible. It is Man at his most basic, destitute level.

A group of boys attending a girl's birthday celebration find her tomboyish behaviour a little too much for them to handle.