Where He Can't Find You

by Darcy Coates

Genres: YA Horror

Synopsis

From USA Today bestselling horror/thriller author Darcy Coates comes the chilling legend of a monster no one can escape.

DON'T WALK ALONE, OR THE STITCHER WILL FIND YOU.

Abby Ward lives in a town haunted by disappearances. People vanish, and when they're found, their bodies have been dismembered and sewn back together in unnatural ways. But is it the work of a human killer…or something far darker?

DON'T STAY OUT LATE, OR THE STITCHER WILL TAKE YOU.

She and her younger sister live by a strict set of rules designed to keep them safe―which is why it's such a shock when Hope is taken. Desperate to get her back, Abby tells the police everything she knows, but they claim their hands are tied.

DON'T CLOSE YOUR EYES, OR THE STITCHER WILL REMAKE YOU.

With every hour precious, Abby and her friends are caught in a desperate game of cat and mouse. They have to get Hope back. Quickly. Before too much of her is cut away. And before everything they care about is swallowed up by the darkness waiting in the tunnels beneath the home they thought they knew.

Chilling Reads by Darcy Coates:

The Haunting of Ashburn House

The Haunting of Blackwood House

Voices in the Snow

The Whispering Dead

From Below

Gallows Hill

Release date: November 7, 2023

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Print pages: 416

Sample

Before

The air was rotting. Biting cold and heavy with moisture, it filled January’s throat with every inhale, so dense that it felt as though it was suffocating her.

She crawled through the dark. Sharp rocks scraped her palms, her knees, her shoulder blades. She flinched and dropped lower, hunching to fit through the narrow tunnel, her hands feeling to find a path forward.

How long had she been down here, in the dark and the cold and the damp?

Days?

Weeks?

She couldn’t stop moving. The thing in the dark would come back for her soon. And she didn’t think she could survive the next time.

Her fingers touched something delicate and disgusting. Threads, crisscrossing the darkness ahead of her. They were as fine as spiderweb and slimy from the damp. When she tried to swipe them away, they refused to break.

She couldn’t see them, but she knew what color they were. Red. It was always red threads. They trailed through the maze, gathering drops of moisture from the air, tangling over the rocks and one another. They bit into January’s flesh when she tried to force her way past them. Cutting into her throat, into her face, into her numb fingers.

A distant sound broke through the background noise of dripping water and her own uneven, echoing breaths. January’s heart pitched, jittering in her chest. She clamped a hand over her mouth, fighting to muffle her breathing.

It couldn’t see well in the dark. The maze held no light; January had been staring into the nothingness for so long that she’d started to hallucinate things moving around her. Unnatural shapes danced, taunting her, only to vanish when she looked at them directly.

The sound repeated: hands grasping at rocks as it pulled itself closer. The shift of flesh against flesh. A dry, hollow exhale.

It couldn’t see well, but it could hear and smell.

It knew where she was.

Terror overwhelmed common sense. January threw herself forward. She didn’t feel the rocks cutting into her palms or the drop of blood trailing down her cheek. But she felt the threads as they snagged around her, tightening.

She’d rushed right into them. January fought, thrashing like an insect in a spiderweb as she tried to break free. Some of the threads snapped. They gave her just enough room to drag herself forward another inch, then another foot, until she was nearly on the other side of the web of red threads—

A cold hand fastened around her leg. January had just enough breath left to scream. Then the thing in the dark dragged her back to join it, and her voice cut out into nothing.