Halloween is almost upon us, and what better time is there to get excited about a spooky new paranormal horror novel?! Today I’m sharing an extract of THE HAUNTING OF LEIGH HARKER by Darcy Coates. If horror is your thing, I hope this gets you excited to pick up a copy for yourself!
The Haunting of Leigh Harker: Synopsis
Sometimes the dead reach back…
Leigh Harker’s quiet suburban home was her sanctuary for more than a decade, until things abruptly changed. Curtains open by themselves. Radios turn off and on. And a dark figure looms in the shadows of her bedroom door at night, watching her, waiting for her to finally let down her guard enough to fall asleep.
Pushed to her limits but unwilling to abandon her home, Leigh struggles to find answers. But each step forces her towards something more terrifying than she ever imagined.
A poisonous shadow seeps from the locked door beneath the stairs. The handle rattles through the night and fingernails scratch at the wood. Her home harbours dangerous secrets, and now that Leigh is trapped within its walls, she fears she may never escape.
Do you think you’re safe?
You’re wrong.
—
Extract from Chapter 1
Something lingers outside my room.
I am paralyzed. My hand-quilted blankets no longer feel like a warm cocoon but a straitjacket. They lace me to my bed. They strangle. My mouth hangs open as a breath dies in my throat, unable to reach my lungs.
And the something outside my bedroom creeps nearer. Just an inch, enough to reinforce its presence, to make sure that I won’t begin to doubt my senses.
I don’t dare avert my eyes. Nor am I foolish enough to move, not even to breathe. These straightjacket blankets will betray me. They will rustle. It will hear. I do not know what will happen then, and I do not want to learn.
My heart is so loud that I wish I could squeeze my fist around It just to make it go silent. Old oak branches, stripped bare by winter, jostle for space outside my window. They cut through the moonlight like knives, turning it into a lattice of sharp angles – a broken, shimmering glass discarded across my carpet and speckled up my walls. And over it. The four or five slivers of light that touch the dark shape reveal only tiny pieces of it, forcing me to glimpse it as though my eye were pressed to a keyhole.
It fills my doorway. Arms hang at its side. It gives the impression of grayness – grayness with a tinge of sickly green. Skin or clothing, impossible to tell.
I cannot make out where the face ends and the hair begins, but there is hair, and it is long. I cannot see a mouth. Its eyes dominate its features. Round circles, too large unnaturally huge, like an owl. Sheer white, they catch the moonlight.
The eyes are fixed on me. They do not move. They do not blink. I know, innately, that the slightest movement will call it closer. My heart is too fast, too loud, too painful. That breath is held prisoner in my throat, my lungs aching.
It turns. It lurches. The terrible something disappears as it paces along my hallway. The knifelike shards of light glance off the edges of its form as it moved away and I see hair, gray, gritty, and unreal, flowing behind it.
Its legs are not visible, but it must have them, as its steps ring out. Heavy, laborious, each one falls like a gavel on the wooden floor. It moves slowly, but I have the unwelcome sense that it is only feigning sluggishness. That, when the time comes, I will have no hope of outrunning it.
How do I know this? Have I been here before?
—
The Haunting of Leigh Harker by Darcy Coates is out now, published by Sourcebooks in paperback original, priced £11.99.
