Today we have a sneak peek from author Norah Wilson’s new young adult paranormal novel, Comes the Night.
Alex, Brooke and Maryanne are all students in their final year of high school at Streep Academy, a boarding school just short of juvie. Although they share a room, the three girls have nothing in common but their own soul-deep pain. But in the attic of their residence, they find the diary of young Connie Harvell, who was confined there decades ago. But in her desperation, a dark part of Connie found a way out of that attic prison, a way to escape her pain. After reading Connie’s diary, God help them, the girls learn to do it too.
Comes the Night is available from Amazon.com, Amazon UK, and Smashwords.
Here is an excerpt from Comes the Night…
ALEX TREMBLED inside as she climbed the steep stairs ahead of Maryanne and Brooke, but she moved quickly, decisively. No way would she let the other girls see the fear she bit back as she climbed up to the darkened attic. But that wasn’t the only reason she moved so quickly. Alex knew that if she stopped, she just might not go on. Might never return to that horrible place.
She’d have felt infinitely safer doing this in their shared bedroom, but at the same time that seemed wrong somehow. She had to honor Connie’s words, and she knew the only way to really do that was to read them in Connie’s prison. She wrapped her hand even more tightly around Connie’s diary, deep in her hoodie pocket.
Behind her, Maryanne carried a thick white candle. They would light it only when they got inside the attic door. Just an extra bit of precaution to avoid being caught. Maryanne had lifted the candle from the house kitchen. She’d been on clean-up duty tonight with a couple of first-floor girls. Two Grade Nine newbies from Fredericton who looked scared shitless to find themselves housed at Harvell.
Not that the candle was likely to be missed, at least not for a while. It was obviously an ornamental thing, since no candles were ever lit at Harvell House. It was forbidden, no doubt for insurance reasons. Even during the power failures that often came with winter storms, no candles were permitted. Instead, they broke out the flashlights until the backup generator could restore electricity. All of which meant if they got caught with this candle, they’d be in trouble for that alone, never mind the reaming out they’d get for entering the off-limits attic. Maryanne had to know this, yet here she was. And when Alex had instructed her to snag the candle, she’d done so with much less coaxing than Alex would have imagined.
Anyway, there was nothing to worry about. They weren’t going to get caught. It was late enough even for the wild girls to have crept back in on a school night. Lights out was ten o’clock, Sunday through Thursday and midnight on weekends, but Alex knew from experience that rule didn’t carry a lot of weight. Especially with her old crowd, or what remained of it. One had graduated, one was back in juvie, and one just hadn’t been heard from. That left Alex, Kassidy and Leah.
Kassidy and Leah. Alex felt the tension pouring in even just thinking about them. They’d been on her case since they’d come back to Harvell. They’d expected the same old hard-partying Alex. They’d fully expected her to have skipped classes with them—gym at the very least—and to join them drinking down by the river with the college crowd. But she hadn’t gone. She hadn’t had a drink at all since that first day back.
She had changed. She wanted to believe that. Needed to.
This sounds great. Spooky.