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Midnight Voices

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Overview

What if insidious evil flourished in the one place where you feel most safe: your very own home The chilling answer comes from New York Times bestselling master of suspense John Saul-in a new novel that makes terror a household word.

Editorial Reviews

Saul knows how to dish out thrills, and with a sly tribute to Ira Levin's Rosemary's Baby, as well as other horror classics, this latest pulp shocker should have fans lining up. Mother of two and widow of a murdered Central Park jogger, Caroline evans thinks she has found the answer to her prayers in her new husband, Anthony Fleming. The family moves into his apartment in the Rockwell, a storied old Upper West Side building. Ryan and Laurie, the children, quickly begin to have nightmares in which they are haunted by menacing voices, while Ryan realizes that he doesn't like his creepy stepfather. Elderly, eccentric neighbors bring them strangely flavored food. Laurie befriends ailing Rebecca, the foster child of a neighbor couple, who is mysteriously wasting away. Tension mounts when Rebecca's social worker, a close friend of Caroline's, can get no information from Rebecca's doctor - yet another elderly resident of the Rockwell - despite her threat to obtain a subpoena. Soon the social worker disappears, Rebecca follows on her heels and Laurie herself becomes ill with whatever Rebecca had. Meanwhile, the "niece" of an elderly neighbor, who looks suspiciously like a younger replica of the old woman, replaces her aunt in the Rockwell. Readers who appreciate Saul's homage to undead fiction will probably see the plot twists coming, but die-hard devotees should enjoy the chilling, sometimes gruesome goings-on at the Rockwell nonetheless. (June) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of John Saul

JOHN SAUL's first novel, Suffer the Children, published in 1977, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. He has since written twenty-three successive bestselling novels of suspense, including The Manhattan Hunt Club, Nightshade, The Right Hand of Evil, The Presence, Black Lightning, Guardian, and The Homing. He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Mr. Saul divides his time between Seattle, Washington, and Maui, Hawaii.

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Additional Info

Imprint

Ballantine Books

Filesize

758.45 KB

Number of Pages

384

eBook ISBN

9780345459497

Excerpt from: Midnight Voices by John Saul

PART I

THE FIRST NIGHTMARE
The girl lay in bed, determined not to go to sleep.

That was when it all happened, when she was asleep.

That was when the dreams came -- the terrible dreams from which she could never awaken -- so if she didn't want the dreams to come, she had to stay awake.

But it was so hard to stay awake. She'd tried everything she could think of, tried them so many times she couldn't even remember.

Tried sitting up, just sitting in the darkness, her back against the hard headboard so she wouldn't be too comfortable, gazing at the lights playing on the window blind. Sometimes she'd left the blinds up, thinking the brighter light would help her stay awake.

But it had never worked.

She'd tried sitting in her chair, too. The one by the window, where she could look out. In the daytime it was one of her favorite places to sit, because she could watch everything that was happening outside. But at night sitting in the chair didn't work any better than sitting up in bed.

She'd tried reading under the covers, using the flashlight she kept in the nightstand next to the bed, but she'd known the first time she tried it that it wouldn't work: she was way too comfortable, and the batteries in the flashlight started to give out after she'd read only a few pages.

Besides, it was even harder to breathe under the covers than it was in the dream.

Part of the trouble was that the dreams didn't come every night. Some nights she just drifted into sleep, sometimes in her bed, and sometimes in the chair, and woke up to find the sun shining on the window shade. Those were the good mornings, when she didn't wake up in the grip of the terrors of the dreams, her breath coming in gasps, her body so tired and weak that it felt as if she'd been running all night.

Running from the terrible things that happened to her in the night.

She looked at the clock, but its glowing green hands had barely moved at all.

Get up, she told herself. Get up and walk around. Walk around all night, until the sun comes up. But the bed was soft and comfortable, and as she pulled the covers snug around her and closed her eyes, another voice spoke.

Maybe the dreams won't come tonight. They didn't come last night -- maybe they won't come tonight, either.

She let herself relax -- just a little -- just enough so the bed seemed to cradle her.

And then she heard it.

A moan -- so soft she wasn't certain she'd heard it at all.

She froze, holding her breath, straining to hear. But she couldn't have heard anything -- couldn't have! She only heard the moans in the dreams, and she wasn't asleep yet.

Was she?

She opened her eyes to search the darkness.