WHAT GROWS IN THE DARK
Jaq Evans
On Sale Date: March 5, 2024
9780778369684
Trade Paperback
$18.99 USD
304 pages
The
Babadook meets The Blair Witch Project in this
chilling contemporary horror novel about confronting trauma. When fake spiritualist
Brigit returns home to investigate the disappearance of two teenagers, the case
eerily echoes her own sister's death sixteen years earlier.
This
chilling tale of siblings, the emotional toll of the places you once called
home, and the necessity of confronting and moving beyond past trauma brings
together the psychological horror of The Babadook with the
found footage and supernatural eeriness of The Blair Witch Project.
Brigit
Weylan’s older sister, Emma, is dead. Sixteen years ago, Emma walked into the
woods in their small hometown of Ellis Creek and slit her wrists. She was
troubled, people said—moody and erratic in the weeks leading up to her death,
convinced that there was a monster in Ellis Creek, and had even attempted to
burn down the copse of trees where she later took her life. Marked by the
tragedy, Brigit left and never once looked back. Now, Brigit and her cameraman
Ian travel around the country, investigating paranormal activity (and faking
the results), posting their escapades on YouTube in the hopes that a network
will pick up their show. The last thing she expects is a call from an Ellis
Creek area code with a job offer—and payout—the two cannot refuse.
When
Brigit and Ian arrive in Ellis Creek, they’re thrust in the middle of an
investigation: two teenagers are missing, and the trail is growing colder with
each passing day. It’s immediately apparent that Brigit and Ian are out of
their depth; their talents lie in faking hauntings, not locating lost kids.
Except for the fact that, in the weeks leading up to their disappearance, the
teens had been dreaming about Emma—Emma in the woods where she died, ringed
with trees and waiting for them. As Brigit and Ian are drawn further into the
investigation, convinced that this could be the big case to make their show go
viral, the parallels to Emma’s death become undeniable. But Brigit is worried
she’s gone too far this time, and that the weight of being back in Ellis Creek,
overwhelmed by memories of Emma, will break her…if it hasn’t already. Because
Brigit can’t explain what’s happening to her: trees appearing in her bedroom in
the middle of the night, something with a very familiar laugh watching her out
in the darkness, and Emma’s voice on her phone, reminding Brigit to finish what
they started.
More
and more, it looks like Emma was right: there is a monster in Ellis Creek, and
it’s waited a long time for Brigit Weylan to come home.
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Excerpted from What Grows in the Dark by Jaq Evans. Copyright © 2024 byJaq Evans. Published by MIRA.
1: BRIGIT
Connecticut
October 2019
An Attic
Brigit Weylan slid her fingers across the
vintage tape recorder in her lap, the plastic warm as living skin.
“Are
you picking anything up?” Ian asked, snaking a hand beneath the camera on his
shoulder to massage his trapezius. He caught her watching and she cut her eyes
away, thumbed off her mic.
“Nothing but your breathing.”
“It’s ambience. And we’re stalling because…”
She
shifted on the pine floor. Pinkish clouds of insulation erupted from the walls
on either side, and the ceiling sloped aggressively. It was a delicate maneuver
to uncross and stretch out her legs in this tight space, but her foot was at
risk of falling asleep. Brigit switched her mic back on.
“Sorry for the technical difficulties. We’re getting a little
interference, which is actually a good sign—
At the far end of the attic, a
cardboard box fell off its stack. Papers spilled across the plywood in a plume
of dust that brought the moldering scent of dried mouse droppings. Ian coughed
but kept the camera level. In the living room downstairs, the baby goth who’d
hired them would have a perfect view.
“Hello?” Brigit asked calmly, holding in her own cough as her throat
burned. “Logan, is that you?”
Logan Messer, struck down by a heart attack in 1998. Craggy of face and
black of eye, he’d glared up from the obituary they’d found in the Woodbridge
library like a nineteenth-century oil magnate. Definitely the most likely of
several spirits that could be haunting Haletown House. At least, that’s what
Brigit and Ian had told its newest occupant.
A
gust of wind ruffled the scattered papers in the corner, although the attic had
no windows and the rest of the air sat thick and claustrophobic. Dust motes
swirled through the wedges of light cast by the single hanging bulb. Brigit
pushed her short hair back from her forehead and presented Ian’s camera with an
unobstructed slice of profile.
“Logan, my name is Brigit Weylan. My sister and I are here to help you
find peace.” She took a moment to steady her voice. “Is Emma with you now?”
From the corner came a sharp rap like knuckles on wood. At the same time
Ian strangled another cough in the crook of his arm, nearly drowning out the
knock. Brigit kept the tension from her face by digging her fingertips into her
thighs. A small black hole had opened in her chest where her sister’s name had
passed.
“I
know you don’t want to leave, but I promise you’ll be happier once you do. All
you need to do is take Emma’s hand and you’ll be free.”
The
knocking came again, louder. Brigit had expected an echo, but the air seemed to
catch the sound. The rest of the house was so chilly, all its warmth trapped up
here like breath. Whatever mice had left those droppings probably suffocated.
Little mummies in the walls.
“Brigit,” Ian murmured. “Can you see them?”
“I
can’t see anything.” She licked her lips. Her tongue felt dry, chalky with
dust. “But Logan is here. I can feel him in the room with us. I may need to
move—don’t lose me.” Brigit raised her voice. “Emma, I’m with you. Let me help.
Let me give you strength.”
She
stretched her hand toward the corner. The knocking was a drumbeat now, even
faster than her pulse. Slowly, Brigit shifted to her knees and readied herself
to crawl toward that wedge of darkness—and the drumming stopped. Ian let out
his breath in a quiet whoosh. Brigit exhaled too, long and slow. Then she
turned to face the camera and smiled.
“It’s done,” she told Haletown House’s youngest resident.
“This house is clean.”
The
boy who’d paid for their services was waiting on the couch when Brigit and Ian
climbed down from the attic. Brigit went first, Ian following with the camera
bag now stuffed with their equipment: the laptop and its associated Bluetooth
speaker, the miniature fan she’d hidden underneath the boxes, the fishing line
trap in the corner. There were a few other props around the outside of the
house—such as the rotten eggs in the upstairs gutter, which had been carefully
planted in an early-morning excursion that had nearly put Ian in the
hospital—but those were all biodegradable and couldn’t be traced back to them.
In
and out, that was the modus. They were surgeons like that, implanting a psychic
placebo effect. Honestly, most of these people? They just wanted to feel
believed. The rest wanted to see themselves on YouTube.
Brigit hadn’t needed that moral reassurance when she finally agreed to
Ian’s pitch for the series a year ago, but there was something about this kid
today. A familiar sloppiness to the liner drawn below his pale blue eyes. He
asked, “You think the old man’s really gone?”
“I
hope so,” she said. Ian watched her from the doorway to the living room. Brigit
could feel it on her neck as she dropped into a plush armchair. “You’ve got our
contact info if he isn’t.”
The
boy shrugged. “Guess I’ll be on the show either way.”
“Technically we need the waiver signed by someone over eighteen,” Ian
put in. The kid looked at him while Brigit looked at the kid. Dyed black hair,
chapped lips. His sneakers weren’t actually black, just Sharpied to a purplish
gray. She sat forward.
“You’ll be on the show. Your birthday’s what, next year? This wouldn’t
go online for a few months anyway. We can hold the episode.”
Why
had she said that? It didn’t matter how old he was. Their first season hadn’t
gotten picked up despite all attempts to woo a real television network, and
neither would the second. Ian was fooling himself if he thought this thing was
going to happen for real.
The
kid smiled, and his eyeliner cracked. Discomfort fisted in Brigit’s chest.
“Cool,” he said. “Thanks.”
“I
do need something in exchange. If things keep happening around here, stuff only
you can hear, smell, whatever? Tell your parents. Call us too, but you have to
tell your folks.”
“Why? They’d lose their minds if they knew about this.”
“Because you’re a minor, and this isn’t exactly a hard science. If it
turns out I screwed up in there and it comes back on you, I need to know you’ve
got someone in this house who can get you out.”
Or
if he was in real trouble, the kind that could hit kids at around his age, that
he would confide in someone other than a fake psychic out to pocket his summer
cash. It was a moment of weakness, wanting this promise she’d never be able to
confirm, but Brigit couldn’t stop herself.
The
kid chewed at the inside of his lip. Something turned behind his eyes, a
decision being weighed as Brigit held her ground. Then he grimaced. “What if I
lied to you just now?”
“About what?”
“They wouldn’t lose their minds. They wouldn’t care at all,” he said.
“My dad doesn’t even live here. The house was a bribe to keep my mom from
making his life more difficult, and she hates that she took it, so she just
works all the time. I tried telling her before, about the old man, and she said
I needed more friends. That was before the wine.”
The
spike of decade-old commiseration at this was so sharp and startling that
Brigit almost laughed. Behind the kid, Ian looked faintly stricken.
“Got
it,” she said briskly, and relief eased the kid’s shoulders. “How about a
neighbor? Someone at school?”
“Ms.
Brower, maybe. My English teacher?”
“Classic choice.” Brigit calibrated a wry smile and won half of one in
return. “Okay. More weird stuff goes down, you tell Ms. Brower and then you
call me. Deal?” She stretched her hand across the coffee table.
The
kid hesitated. Behind her, Ian’s breathing was louder than anything else. Then
a slim, chilly hand smacked into hers, and for a moment, Brigit wasn’t in this
stranger’s living room at all. She was in the woods, the Dell, in the cold dark
night, her sister’s icy fingers clamped around her own.
You want to be the wild child, Wild Child?
“Deal,” said the kid. Brigit didn’t blink. The room came back to her,
his grub-white face, cold palm against her own. Vanilla candles on the mantel.
Nothing of Emma or their game but the bitter tinge of earth beneath her tongue.
Jaq Evans is a graduate of the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program and a former Pitch Wars mentee . Her short fiction has been published in Three-Lobed Burning Eye, Apparition Literary Magazine, Fusion Fragment, and others.
SOCIAL LINKS:
Author website: https://www.jaqevans.com/
Twitter: @jaqwrites
Instagram: @anomisting
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