Shadow's Keep by Meghan O'Flynn Book Tour and Giveaway :)
Shadow's Keep
by
Meghan O'Flynn
Genre:
Crime Thriller
FROM
THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF FAMISHED
”Dark
and intense, with an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist.”
~Kristen
Mae, bestselling author of the Conch Garden series
OLD
SINS. NEW BLOOD.
Deputy
Sheriff William Shannahan doesn’t feel like a detective, at least
not like the ones he admires on TV. Not that he needs to be; the
small town of Graybel, Mississippi, is a peaceful place, with acres
of farmland, neighbors who always take care of their own, and noise
from the outside world muted by a hundred miles of forest.
That
silence is about to be broken.
When
a child is found dead in the woods, the medical examiner deems it a
dog attack. But the paw prints belong to something far larger than
any creature in the Mississippi forests, and what animal would remove
the victim’s eyes? Though no one believes him, William can’t
shake the feeling that a human killer lurks in the shadowed
woods.
And
his girlfriend, Cassie, has a son the same age as the victim.
Cassie
Parker was raised amid horrors she’s long pushed from her mind, but
her scars won’t let her forget. Nor do the hallucinations, dreams
so vivid she can feel and smell and taste them. And no one is more
terrified than Cassie when another victim is found mauled to
death—because this body has been drained of blood. She knows
exactly what type of person would sacrifice a child, and why they’re
after hers. But how can she explain it to William?
This
is William’s chance to act like a detective, to protect the woman
and child he’s desperate to save. Pushing back against prejudice
and presumption, he uncovers a trail of cruelty that spans decades,
but each clue brings him closer to a truth more horrifying than
killer beasts in the forest. For concealed beneath small-town
politics is knowledge that will shatter everything he knows to be
true about his town—and the people in it.
A
compulsively readable thriller in the vein of Cujo, The
Girl on the Train,
and M. Night Shyamalan’s The
Village, Shadow’s
Keep is
a mind-bending exploration of obsession, desperation, and how far
we’ll go to protect those we love.
FOR
WILLIAM SHANNAHAN, six-thirty on Tuesday, the third of August, was
“the moment.” Life was full of those moments, his mother had
always told him, experiences that prevented you from going back to
who you were before, tiny decisions that changed you forever. And
that morning, the moment came and went, though he didn’t recognize
it, nor would he ever have wished to recall that morning again for as
long as he lived. But he would never, from that day on, be able to
forget it. He
left his Mississippi farmhouse a little after six, dressed in running
shorts and an old T-shirt that still had sunny yellow paint dashed
across the front from decorating the child’s room. The child.
William had named him Brett, but he’d never told anyone that.
To everyone else, the baby was just
that-thing-you-could-never-mention, particularly since William had
also lost his wife at Bartlett General. His
green Nikes beat against the gravel, a blunt metronome as he left the
porch and started along the road parallel to the Oval, what the
townsfolk called the near hundred square miles of woods that had
turned marshy wasteland when freeway construction had dammed the
creeks downstream. Before William was born, those fifty or so unlucky
folks who owned property inside the Oval had gotten some settlement
from the developers when their houses flooded and were deemed
uninhabitable. Now those homes were part of a ghost town, tucked well
beyond the reach of prying eyes. William’s
mother had called it a disgrace. William thought it might be the
price of progress, though he’d never dared to tell her that. He’d
also never told her that his fondest memory of the Oval was when his
best friend Mike had beat the crap out of Kevin Pultzer for punching
William in the eye. That was before Mike was the sheriff, back when
they were all just “us” or “them” and William had always been
a them, except when Mike was around. He might fit in somewhere else,
some other place where the rest of the dorky goo#alls lived, but here
in Graybel he was just a little … odd. Oh
well. People in this town gossiped far too much to trust them as
friends anyway. William
sniffed at the marshy air, the closely-shorn grass sucking at his
sneakers as he increased his pace. Somewhere near him a bird
shrieked, sharp and high. He startled as it took flight above him
with another aggravated scream. Straight
ahead, the car road leading into town was bathed in filtered dawn,
the first rays of sun painting the gravel gold, though the road was
slippery with moss and morning damp. To his right, deep shadows
pulled at him from the trees; the tall pines crouched close together
as if hiding a secret bundle in their underbrush. Dark but calm,
quiet—comforting. Legs pumping, William headed off the road toward
the pines. A
snap like that of a muted gunshot echoed through the morning air,
somewhere deep inside the wooded stillness, and though it was surely
just a fox, or maybe a raccoon, he paused, running in place, disquiet
spreading through him like the worms of fog that were only now
rolling out from under the trees to be burned off as the sun made its
debut. Cops never got a moment off, although in this sleepy town the
worst he’d see today would be an argument over cattle. He glanced
up the road. Squinted. Should he continue up the brighter main street
or escape into the shadows beneath the trees? That
was his moment.
William
ran toward the woods. As
soon as he set foot inside the tree line, the dark descended on him
like a blanket, the cool air brushing his face as another hawk
shrieked overhead. William nodded to it, as if the animal had sought
his approval, then swiped his arm over his forehead and dodged a
limb, pick-jogging his way down
the path. A branch caught his ear. He winced. Six foot three was
great for some things, but not for running in the woods. Either that
or God was pissed at him, which wouldn’t be surprising, though he
wasn’t clear on what he had done wrong. Probably for smirking at
his memories of Kevin
Pultzer
with a torn T-shirt and a bloodied nose. He smiled again, just a
little one this time. When
the path opened up, he raised his gaze above the canopy. He had an
hour before he needed to be at the precinct, but the pewter sky
beckoned him to run quicker before the heat crept up. It was a good
day to turn forty-two, he decided. He might not be the best-looking
guy around, but he had his health. And there was a woman whom he
adored, even if she wasn’t sure about him yet. William
didn’t blame her. He probably didn’t deserve her, but he’d
surely try to convince her that he did, like he had with
Marianna … though he didn’t think weird card tricks would help this
time. But weird was what he had. Without it, he was just background
noise, part of the wallpaper of this small town, and at forty-one—no,
forty-two, now—he was running out of time to
start over.
He
was pondering this when he rounded the bend and saw the feet. Pale
soles barely bigger than his hand, poking from behind a rust-colored
boulder that sat a few feet from the edge of the trail. He stopped,
his heart throbbing an erratic rhythm in his ears. Please
let it be a doll". But he saw the flies
buzzing around the top of the boulder. Buzzing. Buzzing. William
crept forward along the path, reaching for his hip where his gun
usually sat, but he touched only cloth. The dried yellow paint
scratched his thumb. He thrust his hand into his pocket for his lucky
coin. No quarter. Only his phone. William
approached the rock, the edges of his vision dark and unfocused as if
he were looking through a telescope, but in the dirt around the stone
he could make out deep paw prints. Probably from a dog or a coyote,
though these were enormous—nearly the size of a salad plate,
too big for anything he’d expect to find in these woods. He
frantically scanned the underbrush, trying to locate the animal, but
saw only a cardinal appraising him from a nearby branch. Someone’s
back there, someone needs my help. He
stepped closer to the boulder. Please don’t let it be what I
think it is. Two more steps and he’d be able to see beyond the
rock, but he could not drag his gaze from the trees where he was
certain canine eyes were watching. Still nothing there save the
shaded bark of the surrounding woods. He took another step—cold
oozed from the muddy earth into his shoe and around his left ankle,
like a hand from the grave. William
stumbled, pulling his gaze from the trees just in time to see the
boulder rushing at his head and then he was on his side in the slimy
filth to the right of the boulder, next to … Oh
god, oh god, oh god. William
had seen death in his twenty years as a deputy, but usually it was
the result of a drunken accident, a car wreck, an old man found dead
on his couch. This
was not that. The boy was no more than six, probably less. He lay on
a carpet of rotting leaves, one arm draped over his chest, legs
splayed haphazardly as if he, too, had tripped in the muck. But this
wasn’t an accident; the boy’s throat was torn, jagged ribbons of
flesh peeled back, drooping on either side of the muscle meat, the
unwanted skin on a Thanksgiving turkey. Deep gouges permeated his
chest and abdomen, black slashes against mottled green flesh, the
wounds obscured behind his shredded clothing and bits of twigs and
leaves. William
scrambled backward, clawing at the ground, his muddy shoe kicking the
child’s ruined calf, where the boy’s shy white bones peeked from
under congealing blackish tissue. The legs looked … chewed on. His
hand slipped in the muck. The child’s face was turned to his, mouth
open, black tongue lolling as if he were about to plead for help. Not
good, oh shit, not good. William
finally clambered to standing, yanked his cell from his pocket, and
tapped a button, barely registering his friend’s answering bark. A
fly lit on the boy’s eyebrow above a single white mushroom that
crept upward over the landscape of his cheek, rooted in the empty
socket that had once contained
an eye. “Mike,
it’s William. I need a … tell Dr. Klinger to bring the wagon.” He
stepped backward, toward the path, shoe sinking again, the mud trying
to root him there, and he yanked his foot free with a squelching
sound. Another step backward and he was on the path, and another step
off the path again, and another, another, feet moving until his back
slammed against a gnarled oak on the opposite side of the trail. He
jerked his head up, squinting through the greening awning half
convinced the boy’s assailant would be perched there, ready to leap
from the trees and lurch him into oblivion on flensing jaws. But
there was no wretched animal. Blue leaked through the filtered haze
of dawn. William
lowered his gaze, Mike’s voice a distant crackle irritating the
edges of his brain but not breaking through—he could not understand
what his friend was saying. He stopped trying to decipher it and
said, “I’m on the trails behind my house, found a body. Tell them
to come in through the path
on
the Winchester side.” He tried to listen to the receiver, but heard
only the buzzing of flies across the trail—had they been so loud a
moment ago? Their noise grew, amplified to unnatural volumes, filling
his head until every other sound fell away—was Mike still talking?
He pushed End, pocketed the phone,
and then leaned back and slid down the tree trunk. And
William Shannahan, not recognizing the event the rest of his life
would hinge upon, sat at the base of a gnarled oak tree on Tuesday,
the third of August, put his head into his hands, and wept.
Meghan O'Flynn is a clinical therapist, writer, artist, wife, and mom. She adores her amazing little boys, dark chocolate, tea, dirty jokes, and back rubs with no strings attached, in that order. Meghan is the bestselling author of The Jilted, Shadow's Keep, and the Ash Park series--which includes Famished, Conviction, Repressed, Hidden and Redemption--and has penned a number of short stories including "Crimson Snow" and "Alien Landscape." She is frankly amazed that her wonderful husband still agrees to live with her after reading them and even more shocked that he seems to sleep soundly.
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