In Lock Haven, a quiet little town in Washington State, there is a very special street. Bird Street. The residents of Bird Street are all successful, wealthy, healthy and happy. And their children are all well-mannered and smart and high achievers.
At least they are for eleven months of the year.
In November, however, the ‘Darker Days’ begin. For November’s the month when things take a turn for the worse: accidents, bad luck, familial conflict and illness take hold. And it is in November that a stranger comes to Bird Street to collect the debt owed by the residents.
Because, you see, there is a price that must be paid for all the happiness and good fortune they enjoy for the other eleven months of year. And that price is one human life. Every November. Without fail.
And so it has been for over a hundred years. To ease their guilt, the residents of Bird Street seek out individuals – usually the elderly or the terminally ill – who wish to die with dignity and are content to be helped on their way.
But this year, things don’t go to plan. This year events take a terrifying turn . . .
Propulsive and haunting, Darker Days is a devastating modern take on the Faustian pact, and begs the question: how far would you go for your own happiness?
"Thomas Olde Heuvelt is back with another wicked, fascinating, chilling tale, expertly balancing the supernatural with the horrors inherent in human nature. Darker Days reinforces that Heuvelt is one of the most vital and exciting voices in modern horror."
Mike Flanagan, writer/director of The Fall of the House of Usher, Dr. Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House and The Life of Chuck
"Darker Days is a meticulous work of terror, a harrowing drop into a moral nightmare. If you can imagine the philosophical oomph of Bergman's The Seventh Seal joined to the rustic shocks of Midsommer, and all of it transported to America's suburbia, you'd have something like Darker Days. It's a scream."
Joe Hill, #1 New York Times bestselling author of King Sorrow
"No one builds agonizing tension like Thomas Olde Heuvelt. Darker Days is his best yet."
Catriona Ward, bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street
"This masterly work of horror, gripping and terrifying on more than one level, is probably Olde Heuvelt’s best novel yet."
The Guardian
"The Netherlands-born author digs deep into the conflicts and consequences arising from the premise, his tale neatly and slyly probing the rotten roots of privilege, all the way to a gut-punching final twist."
Financial Times
"Stephen King is so associated with horror stories set in cozy small-town America, seamlessly blending pedestrian everyday living with supernatural dread, that it comes as a surprise that Darker Daysis not from his pen....Utterly creepy and mesmerizing." Irish Independent
"Darker Days is a remarkable and disturbing morality tale about the true cost of lucky lives. It’s a tremendous achievement by Thomas Olde Heuvelt as well as a frightening gift for readers."
On a foggy winter morning two children discover the impossible: the wreck of an eighteenth-century ship stranded in a field.
One enters the hatch on the deck and is never seen again. And she isn't the last to disappear . . .
Soon a government agency begins to investigate, determined to uncover the ship's secrets before a media storm erupts. They enlist Robert Grim, a retired specialist of the occult, to unravel the mystery, who soon realises the ship could be a harbinger of an ancient doom awakened under the sea.
In a maelstrom of international intrigue and pure terror, Grim must race against time as he comes face to face with an open doorway to the apocalypse.
