Middle of the Night

In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again. Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle? The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed monsters roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate. The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place--be it quiet forest or suburban street--is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

Autorentext

Riley Sager is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, most recently The House Across the Lake and The Only One Left. A native of Pennsylvania, he now lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Klappentext

In the latest jaw-dropping thriller from New York Times bestselling author Riley Sager, a man must contend with the long-ago disappearance of his childhood best friend—and the dark secrets lurking just beyond the safe confines of his picture-perfect neighborhood.

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend and neighbor, Billy, fell asleep in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in a quiet, quaint New Jersey cul-de-sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. During the night, someone had sliced the tent open with a knife and taken Billy. He was never seen again.

Thirty years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home. Plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone seems to be roaming the cul-de-sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in Ethan’s backyard. Is someone playing a cruel prank? Or has Billy, long thought to be dead, somehow returned to Hemlock Circle?

The mysterious occurrences prompt Ethan to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that reunites him with former friends and neighbors and leads him into the woods that surround Hemlock Circle. Woods where Billy claimed ghosts roamed and where a mysterious institute does clandestine research on a crumbling estate.  

The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place—be it quiet forest or suburban street—is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.

Leseprobe
One

Scriiiiiiiitch.

I wake with a start, unnerved by the sound zipping across the dark room. It echoes off the walls and snakes back to me in multiple waves. I lie in bed, completely still, eyes wide open, until the noise fades.

Not that it was ever there to begin with.

Decades of experience have taught me that it was just in my head. Dream, memory, and hallucination all at once. My first since coming back to this house. Honestly, I'm surprised it took so long, especially with the anniversary of what happened here fast approaching.

Sitting up, I look to the clock on the nightstand, hoping it reads closer to dawn than midnight. No such luck. It's only quarter after two. I've got a long night of no sleep ahead of me. With a sigh, I reach for the notebook and pen I keep next to the clock. After much squinting in the darkness, I find a fresh page and scribble four frustrating words.

Had The Dream again.

I toss the notebook back onto the nightstand, followed by the pen. It lands with a clack against the notebook's cover before rolling onto the carpet. I tell myself to leave the pen there until morning. That nothing will happen to it overnight. But the bad thoughts arrive quickly. What if the pen leaks, its midnight-black ink staining the cream-colored carpet? What if I'm attacked in the middle of the night and the only thing I can use to defend myself is an uncapped Bic, which now sits out of reach?

That second one, as alarming as it is improbable, pulls me out of bed. I grab the pen and set it on the notebook. There. Much better.

Anxiety soothed-for now-I'm about to crawl back under the covers when something outside catches my attention.

A light.

Not unusual for Hemlock Circle. Despite the lack of streetlights, it's never completely dark here. Light spills through bay windows onto immaculate front lawns and brightens second-floor bedrooms before the sun rises and long after it sets. The sconces flanking the Chens' front door burn from dusk to dawn, warding off both trespassers and the bats that occasionally try to roost in the eaves. All summer long, the Wallaces' backyard pool glows an alien blue. At Christmas, lights twinkle at five of the six homes in the neighborhood, including the Patels', who put theirs up at Diwali and don't take them down until a new year begins.

Then there are the garage lights.

Every house has them.

A pair of motion-activated security lights centered above the garage doors that glare like headlights when triggered. In the evenings, they flick on and off around the cul-de-sac with the frequency of fireflies as residents return from work in the waning light, go out to fetch the mail, haul recycling bins to the curb.

As it gets closer to midnight, a few will continue to spring to life. When deer skulk through the neighborhood on their way to the woods. Or when Fritz Van de Veer sneaks out for a cigarette after his wife, Alice, has gone to bed.

The light that's caught my attention is the one above the Patels' garage, two houses away. It illuminates a patch of their driveway, the glow turning the asphalt ice white. Curious, I go to one of the windows in a bedroom I still don't consider my own. Not technically. The room that once was mine , and in my mind still is, sits across the hall, now vacant. This is my parents' bedroom, where I rarely ventured as a child. Now, though, through a series of recent developments I'm still grappling with, it's become my own.

The windows in this new room offer a panorama of Hemlock Circle. From where I stand, I can see at least a piece of every house on the cul-de-sac. I glimpse a sliver of the old Barringer place on the left and a corner of the Chens' house to the right. Across from me, in full view from left to right, are the Van de Veers', the Wallaces', and the Patels', where the garage light still glows.

What I don't see is anything that could have set it off. Mitesh and Deepika Patel are presumably inside and fast asleep. No animals scurry from the light. No wind blows that could have caused a nearby branch to sway hard enough to trigger the motion sensor. All I can see is an empty driveway on a quiet cul-de-sac in the dead of night.

Soon I can't even see that, for the Patels' garage light suddenly goes out.

Ten seconds later, the one at the Wallaces' house clicks on. It's next door to the Patels', separated by the single road that leads into the cul-de-sac, which is currently free of cars, free of people, free of anything.

I draw close to the window, my nose almost touching the glass, strai…