Hooked: Neverland will never let go...

by A. C. Wise

Genres: Fairy Tales, Folk Tales, Legends & Mythology; YA Fairy Tales & Folklore

Synopsis

A dark, gorgeous reimagining about what happened to Captain Hook after Neverland from the bestselling author of Wendy, Darling – filled with eerie suspense and heart-breaking anguish

Once invited, always welcome.

Once invited, never free.





Captain James Hook, the immortal pirate of Neverland, has died a thousand times. Drowned, stabbed by Peter Pan’s sword, eaten by the beast swimming below the depths, yet James was resurrected every time by one boy’s dark imagination. Until he found a door in the sky, an escape. And he took the chance no matter the cost. 



Now in London twenty-two years later, Peter Pan’s monster has found Captain Hook again, intent on revenge. But a chance encounter leads James to another survivor of Neverland. Wendy Darling, now a grown woman, is the only one who knows how dark a shadow Neverland casts, no matter how far you run. To vanquish Pan’s monster once and for all, Hook must play the villain one last time… 



Exploring themes of grief, survivor's guilt and healing broken bonds, Hooked is a modern-day Peter Pan story, perfect for fans of retellings, Christina Henry and V.E. Schwab.

 

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Release date: July 12, 2022

Publisher: Titan Books

Print pages: 321

Sample

A TASTE OF THE POPPYLONDON – 1939

The wave curls above him, poised, laden with panic.

He remembers drowning.

Limbs weighted and wanting to drag him down, lungs screaming with the thwarted desire to expand, mouth poised to open traitorously and let in water instead of air.

James gropes for the table beside him, for the pipe, but the smoke is already in his lungs. He remembers to breathe out. His lungs stop screaming when he does. The smoke coils in the air above him, hanging there a moment, teasing the outline of a shape, but when he looks again, it dissipates.

Hunger gnaws at him and he pulls in another lungful. As he does, James feels himself doubled, a ghost rising from his skin to move about the flat. Slipped out of time, he feels himself once again taking the actions he took moments ago—his hand shaking with need, guts cramping, sweat slicking his skin. He hears the wooden box rattle, the scant amount of opium inside dwindling every day.

A dizzying sensation as he watches himself, feels himself, rolling tar into a sticky ball, pulling it into long strands, filling his pipe. He feels smoke in his lungs. Only a small slip this time, minutes not hours or years, but still, it is disorienting. And it has been happening more and more frequently, his unmooring from time. His guts cramp again, the urge to vomit, and in the next moment, he slams back into his body where he lies on the chaise, gasping for air.

He remembers drowning.

The drug should blunt the effect, stave off the memory of the deaths he suffered again and again at the hands of a mere child, a boy. It used to, but now it only makes the sensation worse, stretching him thin between two worlds, this one and…

James refuses the name. He’s not there; he is here, in London. Home.

But what manner of home is it without…

He glances to the wooden box beside him. What will he do when the opium is gone? He’s an old man, feeling his age now as he never did before. His fingers, once quick-slipping into pockets to relieve them of their bills, once quick with a blade as well, have slowed. What skill does he left to live by?

He lets himself lie back, a rough chuckle taking him and turning into a cough. If he were any other man, he would fear. It would be a race to see what would take him first—starvation, withdrawal, or madness. But he’s always been too stubborn to die, too determined. Weary as he is, above all, he knows he will survive.

James lifts the pipe again, using his flesh and blood hand. The other, wood, gleaming warm in the light and chased in silver, rests in his lap. The delicate, articulated joints that allow him to bend or straighten the fingers when he can be bothered to remember curl slightly now, as if cupping something gently in his palm, but his hand is empty. He draws breath and holds it.

“You promised me you’d be careful. Your dreams are dangerous things, James.”

The voice is a knife, and James whips around. Another fit of coughing leaves his eyes streaming. Through the blur he sees Samuel standing in the corner, hands folded neatly in front of him, expression mixing admonishment and sorrow.

James forgets how to breathe entirely. He forgets the ache in his leg and the fact that when he walks now, he needs a cane to steady him. He’s halfway to rising, going to Samuel, when a twinge in his thigh brings him crashing to one knee beside the chaise. Pain spikes from the point of impact and catches as a gasp in his throat. And still, he almost crawls to the surgeon on hands and knees, a pitiful thing, ready to bury his face in the hem of Samuel’s coat.

But James forces himself to straighten.

“Fuck off.” The words come out smoke-roughened, harsh with emotion and the effort to speak with conviction. “You’re not real.”

It’s unkind, but then so is Samuel’s ghost.

“I don’t want you here.” James tries to curl his lips into their old sneer.

He

pulls the memory of striding the deck in a swirl of blood-red coat, men trembling before him, around him like armor. He must be that, not this pathetic creature, brought low with need. Samuel isn’t in the room with him; Samuel has been dead for fifteen years.

Yet the grief hasn’t lessened. Always the wave of it is there, ready to swamp him if James lets his concentration falter for even a moment. If he lets his guard down, time comes unstuck and the pain is just as fresh as it ever was—worse than dying, worse than every time he’s drowned.

The specter in the corner refuses to waver. Samuel’s eyes were never the blue-gray shade fixing James balefully now. Nor was his skin the color of seawater, and just as translucent. James can see straight through him to the wall.

Samuel isn’t real. He isn’t here. And knowing as much does nothing to lessen James’s wanting, the hurt undoing him, unraveling him and leaving him flayed.

“Leave me alone in my misery why don’t you?” He snaps the words, angling his body away so he won’t have to see whether Samuel obediently fades.

But he feels it. A tsk, a disappointed sound pinging directly against the delicate bones of his ear. A sigh of displaced air, and then Samuel is gone. Just like all the other pirates, leaving James alone, the only one.

The sense of loss is immediate. But instead of scrambling to the corner to plead with empty air, he presses down on the feeling of absence like a bruise and lets it ground him. The ache in his chest eases, if only for a moment.

He braces one arm and levers himself up, muscles trembling with the effort. There’s a cold pulse of complaint from his thigh where the shards of something that may or may not be metal buried themselves long ago. But his leg holds when he stands, and James retrieves his cane where it leans against the back of the chaise.

He runs his gaze across the shelves crammed with books—of which he has not read a single one—along the wall, and up to the window that peers like an eye out over London, to the bed, far too large for one man alone, to the stove, the kettle, the wardrobe, his coat hung by the door. Last, as always, his gaze comes to rest on the skull sitting on the bedside table.

James moves slowly, limping to the bed. He ignores the grinding pain from his knee where it struck the floor and the steady ache in his thigh as he sits. His hand—the flesh and blood one—touches down atop the skull. The whorls of his fingertips meet the whorls carved into the bone. The pattern chased in silver is the same design covering his other hand, the wooden one. He’d found a scrimshaw artist to do the work, and though the man had balked when presented with a human skull, James’s money was good enough in the end.

As

he pulls the skull onto his lap, his heartbeat finally calms, his breathing steadies. He is here and now, in London. His name is James, not Hook. And he is no one’s captain.

And yet… It is nothing to summon the feel of the deck rolling beneath his feet, the creak and sigh of the ropes and the snap of sails. Neverland—he admits to the name at last; it is always there, and Hook is always there, just beneath the surface. At times, he never left, never fled and fell through the world.

That’s what Samuel never understood, what James could never explain. Samuel had warned him that his dreams were dangerous—that the smoke trance he put himself into in place of actual dreaming would act as a beacon, drawing Neverland’s eye. But without the drug, James remembers too much. He drinks, he smokes, to dull that other self, to keep Hook and Neverland from rising again.

He did it, always, to keep them safe.

Empty sockets gaze up from under ridges of bone, as reproachful as Samuel’s ghost. James replaces the skull on the table, turns it slightly so it looks away. For years, he resisted the pull to keep them safe, to keep Samuel safe, but who is there left to protect now? What does it matter if he’s reckless with his own life?

Neverland creeping steadily closer, pressed against the skin of this world, hungering, wanting what it’s been denied all these years—James, Hook—as its last meal.

Why should he deny it?

And another thought rises, a sliver of sick hope he shouldn’t dare, and yet cannot help. What if some remnant of Samuel waits for him in that other world? Yes, he swore to Samuel, but what does a promise mean to a dead man?

It’s been fifteen years, and the pain hasn’t grown less, contrary to popular logic. All the while, James kept holding on, promising himself that time would heal him if he could only be patient. But if anything, the hurt has grown worse. As if all this time, the way between worlds has only grown thinner, his memories sharper than the life he lives now, leaving the loss fresher, the wound opened wider rather than scabbed over or scarred. Neverland has always been a beast snapping at his heels; now he can almost feel it, and he’s tired of running.

He’d kept his promise, determined to honor Samuel’s memory, and yet Samuel’s ghost haunts him, pitiless. If keeping his promise brings no relief, what is the point of it? More and more, he finds himself unanchored in time. Now, or then—what does it matter? He is old, he is tired. Hasn’t he at last earned the right to rest, to stop fighting against temptation?

James pushes himself up again and returns to the chaise. He draws in another lungful of smoke, and lets himself drift. Lets himself think deliberately of Neverland. After so long, after years of bearing up under the weight of grief alone. He lets himself go.

And almost immediately, waves rock him. He feels the lift and fall of the deck, the peak and trough. The air is salt-crystal—dense enough to crack between his teeth. He is hale and hearty, in a coat the color of blood, armed with a wicked blade.

The ceiling of his flat blurs into a sky smeary with clouds over a scattering of stars. He closes his eyes as he leans back against the chaise. Or perhaps they remain open. It doesn’t matter. Waking or sleeping, eyes open or closed, he would still see Neverland. It’s been drawing closer all this time, and he no longer has the will to resist it. Among the stars is a place where the sky grows thinnest, framed in sharp-edged silver light.

A door.

It’s a thing he’s sensed before and never allowed himself to look at fully, but now he turns his attention to it and lets himself see. James lets himself feel the weight of that other world and everything it contains—his ship and his pirates and Pan—all leaning against the imagined door in the sky. Imagined, but also real. Because of course in a world made for a child all ego and desire, wanting would be a door, a literal door. Why shouldn’t James avail himself of it too?

Reckless, yes, and ill-advised, but he doesn’t care. As he once threw himself wildly into the teeth of a storm, James draws one more breath of smoke and throws all his will and wanting against that door, reaching back for a world he swore he’d never reach for again.

There’s a sensation like lightning striking, electricity jumping the gap and snapping through his bones. A rush of displaced air, and on the other side of nowhere, something grabs ahold of his reaching hand.

Breath leaves him in a startled gasp. When the coil of smoke hangs in the air this time it doesn’t just tease a shape, it twists slowly, gathering mass, solidity.

Scales and wide-open jaws. The beast rolls in the air above him, lazy and mocking. His chest compresses beneath fathoms of seawater gone the color of blood-dark wine. Fear all at once rushing back when he’d thought himself immune.

Pan’s hunting beast. In Neverland, he’d felt it always, moving beneath the world’s skin. He’d been aware of it wherever on the island it was, just as it was always aware of him. But he’d come to London, he’d escaped.

Yet now all the beast has to do is turn its eyes like rotten coins upon him and it will know him.

Your dreams are dangerous, James.

Panic

freezes James upon the chaise. The old desire to live, almost despite himself, pumps through his veins with an almost painful intensity. He does not want to die, not again. A prelude to a death roll, the beast makes another turn, seeking. Starlight glints from it like light striking a blade. Jaws open, the beast plunges down.

James ducks, throwing an arm up in a vain attempt to ward off the teeth. The motion sends him crashing to the ground, knocking the table over, his pipe and matches and the wooden box scattering. The beast sails overhead, missing him. James presses himself flat, rolling beneath the chaise. The beast whips around, a frustrated motion, its jaws snapping at nothing.

It circles once, and again, searching. James forgets terror for a moment—can’t the beast feel him? Can’t it see him? But if he closed his eyes, would he know where the beast was in the room? No. It’s like a sense has been removed from him, one he’d almost forgotten. He can’t feel the creature as he once could, the dreadful awareness of it always clinging to him wherever he was. It seems the beast cannot feel him either. James remains where he is, flat beneath the chaise, waiting, but the pounding of adrenaline in him fades. There must be something else wrong with the creature. It is reduced from its former terror, its former glory, broken. Much like James himself.

The beast turns once more, churning the air, sailing farther away from him and toward the window, blundering like a creature lost. James holds his breath a moment longer; when he dares to poke his head from beneath the chaise, the beast is gone.

His pulse stutters. James blinks at the room, expecting for a moment that it will become the room at the prow of a ship, with a narrow bed hung in rich brocade. But it is only his room, his flat in London. There is no beast.

Perhaps there never was. Perhaps he imagined the whole thing. Another moment slipped out of time. The door, only another illusion, born in smoke and wanting.

Reflex draws his gaze to the corner, hoping for Samuel’s ghost, but the space remains stubbornly empty. It hurts more than it should.

James forces himself up one more time, leaving the fallen table and scattered pipe as he makes his way to the eye-shaped window overlooking London. His whole body feels bruised, as much his age as the fall. He lets the cane take his weight. A starless sky stretches over the city. From here, he can see the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. Nothing looks amiss, yet he feels something out of place, something that doesn’t belong.

A brass scope sits atop the bookshelf below the window, a gift from Samuel, an old joke, as if this flat perched above the city were a crow’s nest. James puts the glass to his eye. He scans 

freezes James upon the chaise. The old desire to live, almost despite himself, pumps through his veins with an almost painful intensity. He does not want to die, not again. A prelude to a death roll, the beast makes another turn, seeking. Starlight glints from it like light striking a blade. Jaws open, the beast plunges down.

James ducks, throwing an arm up in a vain attempt to ward off the teeth. The motion sends him crashing to the ground, knocking the table over, his pipe and matches and the wooden box scattering. The beast sails overhead, missing him. James presses himself flat, rolling beneath the chaise. The beast whips around, a frustrated motion, its jaws snapping at nothing.

It circles once, and again, searching. James forgets terror for a moment—can’t the beast feel him? Can’t it see him? But if he closed his eyes, would he know where the beast was in the room? No. It’s like a sense has been removed from him, one he’d almost forgotten. He can’t feel the creature as he once could, the dreadful awareness of it always clinging to him wherever he was. It seems the beast cannot feel him either. James remains where he is, flat beneath the chaise, waiting, but the pounding of adrenaline in him fades. There must be something else wrong with the creature. It is reduced from its former terror, its former glory, broken. Much like James himself.

The beast turns once more, churning the air, sailing farther away from him and toward the window, blundering like a creature lost. James holds his breath a moment longer; when he dares to poke his head from beneath the chaise, the beast is gone.

His pulse stutters. James blinks at the room, expecting for a moment that it will become the room at the prow of a ship, with a narrow bed hung in rich brocade. But it is only his room, his flat in London. There is no beast.

Perhaps there never was. Perhaps he imagined the whole thing. Another moment slipped out of time. The door, only another illusion, born in smoke and wanting.

Reflex draws his gaze to the corner, hoping for Samuel’s ghost, but the space remains stubbornly empty. It hurts more than it should.

James forces himself up one more time, leaving the fallen table and scattered pipe as he makes his way to the eye-shaped window overlooking London. His whole body feels bruised, as much his age as the fall. He lets the cane take his weight. A starless sky stretches over the city. From here, he can see the rooftops of the neighboring buildings. Nothing looks amiss, yet he feels something out of place, something that doesn’t belong.

A brass scope sits atop the bookshelf below the window, a gift from Samuel, an old joke, as if this flat perched above the city were a crow’s nest. James puts the glass to his eye. He scans 

the forest of chimneys, the dense world of brick.

For just a moment, he imagines a sinuous shape moving between them, the flick of a tail disappearing from sight. But is that only because he wants to see it? If the beast is real, and remains, perhaps Samuel does too. His breath catches, but when he looks again, there is only the London sky and the city below him.

Perhaps he should be relieved. Samuel is—was—right. Neverland was a terrible place; they escaped it, and it’s better left behind for good. He dared too close to the edge tonight, and perhaps his desire did finally crack that door wide. And perhaps something slithered through. A monster. A shadow. A thing of scales and jaws twisting through the night. It snapped once and missed, but will it circle around again as it always has, time and time before? He wishes he could dismiss it as illusion, an effect of the drug, but he fears he has done what Samuel always warned him again and drawn Neverland’s attention.

And now the creature is out there. Searching for him. Hunting.