The Chill: A Novel - Softcover

Carson, Scott

 
9781668012536: The Chill: A Novel
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1668012537 ISBN 13: 9781668012536
Verlag: Pocket Books, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

A supernatural force—set in motion a century ago—threatens to devastate New York City in this spine-tingling national bestseller that “grips from the first page” (Stephen King, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

Far upstate, in New York’s ancient forests, a drowned village lays beneath the dark, still waters of the Chilewaukee reservoir. Early in the 20th century, the town was destroyed for the greater good: bringing water to the millions living downstate. Or at least that’s what the politicians from Manhattan insisted at the time. The local families, settled there since America’s founding, were forced from their land, but some didn’t leave…

Now, a century later, the repercussions of human arrogance are finally making themselves known. An inspector assigned to oversee the dam, dangerously neglected for decades, witnesses something inexplicable. It turns out that more than the village was left behind in the waters of the Chill when it was abandoned. A dark prophecy remained, too, and the time has come for it to be fulfilled—for sacrifices must be made. And as the dark waters begin to inexorably rise, the demand for a fresh sacrifice emerges from the deep.

Unputdownable and suspenseful, “The Chill is an eerie dive into the murky depths of the supernatural. A story that has you looking back over your shoulder on every page” (Michael Connelly, #1 New York Times bestselling author).

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Scott Carson is the pen name for a New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter. He lives in New England. He is the author of The Chill and Where They Wait.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1
October 20, 2000

UPSTREAM
1
Molly packed a black silk bag that could be worn as a hood, because she did not want her eyes to open again until she was back in Galesburg.

The bag was soft and lovely but it was also thick and dark, a stronger shield than the burlap sack or simple white pillowcase that she’d considered. And a kinder shield than the black garbage bag.

She put the silk bag inside her purse beside the spools of heavy saltwater fishing line and the long stainless steel hooks. The iron chains and padlock were already hidden on the bluff above the lake.

The sight of the hooks quickened her pulse, but she didn’t pause, simply folded the silk bag on top of them and closed the purse. She was a stoic woman and took pride in it. Unflappable, her father had called her once when she was a girl, and she’d taken pride in that, too. That was back when the town was emptying out, fewer families left each day, and each night her father took to his chair on the front porch and sat with his shotgun across his lap, prepared for the looters. He was wary of them but not enraged by them. He insisted the real looters had come from the state, and that the dam across Cresap Creek was the real theft.

The rest of this, he said, all rippled out from that first crime. Condemn a town and what did you expect to happen? Sin would flow downhill then, and the town would be left lawless and ungoverned after the ribbon-cutting was held.

She didn’t know if he slept at all those nights. In the mornings, he kept the gun in hand while he walked Molly to school. They would pass the ancient one-room wooden structure where he’d been educated, and he would nod at it or gesture with the barrel of the 12-gauge and tell her how much better it had been back then. Less greed, he always said. Less greed and more principles. Back then, Galesburg was a community rather than a place.

Then he would walk her to the top of the concrete steps in front of the new but already condemned brick school, watch her open the door, and give her a smile and wave, the shotgun held in his free hand.

She would smile back, refusing to show fear, not even in the final days when she was the only pupil in the school, when she sat alone at her desk in the two-story brick building with all of its strange sounds. Or, stranger still, its absence of sounds.

She was Molly Mathers, and she was unflappable. Stoic.

Decades had passed since then, but her temperament hadn’t changed. When she left her bedroom, she was tempted to pause and look in the mirror, to stare at her own image as if it were another person and offer that woman a farewell. That was overly dramatic, though. Unnecessary. She passed by the mirror, knowing that the only face she needed to see today was her granddaughter’s. Of course, that meant a stop by the school. Molly dreaded setting foot in the school, but it had to be done.

She walked out of the bedroom, shut the door behind her, and went down the narrow hall with its antiquated floral wallpaper and then down the creaking stairs to the foyer. To her left was the dining room and, to her right, the library. A formal, stuffy room, a heightened version of the rest of the house, more museum than home. She’d always liked the walls lined with bookshelves, though.

She passed through it now, crossing to the far wall, where a weathered wooden sign read THE GALESBURG SCHOOL. Her father had pried it off the original one-room schoolhouse before the building burned.

Molly hooked her fingers under the molding of the shelf below the sign and pulled. The wall swung inward on oiled hinges, the only door in the house that was always silent. She could smell the smoke and dampness on the other side before she could see the room.

She paused to let her eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping inside. It was too dark in here despite the numerous lanterns that hung from hooks embedded in the center beam. In all directions of the room, in every corner, the walls were lined with old photographs. Mostly photographs, at least. Some of the oldest were sketches. She was aware of each photo or sketch, knew precisely where and when it had been taken. It had been years since she’d allowed herself to study them closely, and she still knew them by heart.

She saw her granddaughter beneath the lantern light. Gillian sat at the desk, facing the chalkboard. Once it had been Molly’s desk.

Gillian didn’t notice her. She was immersed in a book. Brunette head down, blue eyes flicking left to right, nibbled fingernails—her one unbreakable bad habit—drumming off the empty inkwell at the front edge of the desk. Its emptiness was a tribute to Molly, symbolic of one of the few battles she had won with her own mother. Molly had promised she would attend to the lessons of the Galesburg School, but she’d also insisted that her knowledge of the contemporary world wouldn’t be denied. Respect the past but don’t live in it. The Pentel gel pen that rested near Gillian’s hand was a monument to Molly’s victory, relegating the old school desk’s inkwell to pointless status.

Looking at the desk now, though, Molly wasn’t so sure she’d won. Yes, the inkwell had been rendered pointless, but still it was present. The past was always present. It lived in antiques and memories, war stories and warnings, but it was never gone.

And never passive.

Molly left the bookshelf door ajar, casting a thin beam of gray light into the schoolhouse, and walked to her granddaughter’s side. As she walked, she glanced at the ceiling uneasily. The worn poplar planks above were always dark with char marks. Back when Molly sat beneath them as a student, they’d dripped as they slowly dried out, the water coming down in fat, chilled drops. She remembered when her own mother had first hauled them up from beneath the lake, working in a johnboat and using a grappling hook. Molly had been sure the terrible old planks would dry out eventually. They never seemed to, though. Even now, after the driest summer and early autumn in years.

Gillian turned a page in the book and read on. She still hadn’t looked up. She was through the portal now, transported to a fictional world. Molly loved to watch her when she was like this. Loved to know that she’d been carried away so completely.

“Do you like this story?” Molly whispered.

Gillian nodded without speaking. “Gill-ian, Gill like the ones on a fish,” her granddaughter would say indignantly when anyone softened the G and called her Jillian. Her right hand crept toward her mouth, a fingernail aiming for the edge of her teeth, that nail-biting habit that she couldn’t seem to outgrow. As if anticipating Molly’s correction, she stilled her hand and used it to turn the page instead.

The book was a battered paperback from Molly’s own childhood, The House with the Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs, a lovely story that her mother had proclaimed an endorsement of witchcraft. That statement was made shortly before the family took the old homemade tincture to ward off flu season. What was the tincture if not witchcraft? Molly asked.

Tradition, her mother had said. Tradition and common sense. The world will forget them both until the world is reminded. Now take your medicine.

Now the book rested in her granddaughter’s hands, beside the empty inkwell.

The past was never passive.

Beneath the...

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Verlag
Pocket Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2023
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1668012537
ISBN 13 
9781668012536
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
528
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Nicht verfügbar

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