Melanie Smith

Synopsis

A supernatural-thriller that blends horror, myth and fairytale…

Seventeen-year-old Sephone’s life changed forever the day that her father died. Now she has moved to her mother’s childhood home deep in the Welsh valleys. She hates it; her strange uncle Gabe, the house, and the hideous tree that stands outside. It couldn’t get much worse. Until her friends take her to that place.
For years she has had nightmares about that building, though she has never been there. She learns of the history of missing women, and reels when she discovers that her uncle was once suspected of the murder of his girlfriend, who disappeared twenty years ago.
One night her worst suspicions are confirmed when she finds an old sack containing human bones in his barn. Certain that GABE is now a murderer she wrestles between the need to confront and expose him, and the drive to question herself and bury her thoughts and feelings as well as the need to protect her mother. Her nightmares escalate, becoming otherworldly. As she spirals downwards she is haunted by terrifying visions of a woman soaked in blood and hears the voice of a sinister presence calling her name.

When GABE stays for Christmas, SEPHONE’S thoughts become more chaotic. One night, when her friend BETH disappears after a party and her uncle comes home covered in blood, she finds herself pulled once again to the other world that she knows so well; the locked room in the mansion house which she now knows was once an asylum for women.
Someone is watching her. Something strange is happening.
It could get worse. It just has…