Nightshade's Requiem

by Anthony Hains

Overview

Before she died, Cole Nightshade's grandmother taught him how to keep his demons from coming out of their hiding places and wreaking havoc. But none of Nana's lessons have prepared him for Saint Edwards Mental Asylum, where he's landed after a foster-care placement gone wrong. Saint Edwards has a history of abuse and death that makes itself known to Cole in alarming ways. Walls containing the spirits of prior inmates scream in agony. Young women who once ran from monsters, or from their own pain, leap to their deaths again and again.The good news: Cole's new friends on the pediatric ward believe him when he tells them what he sees. The bad news: they have a bigger problem than ghosts. For years, a creature known as the Creeper has been preying on kids in the asylum. Rumor has it that if you catch a glimpse of him, you die. And someone-or something-has been stalking Cole since his first night at Saint Edwards.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781732388031
Publisher:	Pcny Books
Publication date:	01/18/2020
Series:	Nightshade Chronicles , #1
Pages:	260
Product dimensions:	5.51(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.59(d)

Editorial Reviews

2022-01-26
An adolescent boy in 1962 fights to survive in an asylum rife with ghosts and a murderous creature in this paranormal thriller.

Cole Nightshade can sense demons. He keeps them at bay by obsessively counting things (like floor tiles), something his beloved grandmother taught him. His foster family is less accommodating: “The boy ain’t right,” says his abusive foster father, as he signs Cole over to a mental institution. Yet Saint Edward’s State Asylum, a former boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains, isn’t entirely unwelcoming. Cole befriends several patients in the pediatric ward who recognize him as a “seer.” He can see spirits that haunt the asylum and suffers dreams and visions that seemingly predict future events, including certain people’s deaths. But it’s the Creeper whom Cole and his friends fear the most—a bloodthirsty ghost who eats children. According to lore, anyone who lays eyes on the Creeper dies. But if that’s true, then who or what is the misshapen, ragged figure that Cole repeatedly spies roaming the halls? In this series opener, Hains creates a moody atmosphere that rarely lets up. Cole sees ghosts before he even steps inside Saint Edward’s. Meanwhile, a corresponding present-day plot—a tour of the haunted asylum—highlights the institution’s checkered history without decelerating the steady narrative pace. Readers will easily sympathize with Cole, who has OCD and sees and hears terrible things that no one else does. While the Creeper is horrifying, so is the asylum itself, complete with diabolical staff members and controversial treatments like electroconvulsive therapy. Notwithstanding bursts of violence and startling deaths, the tale avoids graphic specifics, letting suspense drive the story: “The corridor was full of murmuring sounds. Cole searched for the source but could only see an empty wooden chair at the end of the hall.”

A wonderfully spooky and gripping tale with a tormented young hero.

Kirkus Reviews