Some stories are told. Others are unleashed.
Grace Porter has spent fifteen years building a fortress of quiet normalcy around the shattered memory of a single, terrifying night. The night she was the babysitter. The night a child's silly dare and a whispered ghost story ended in an unthinkable tragedy that the world explained away as a psychotic break.
Now, with a loving husband and a young son, Henry, Grace's past is a carefully managed ghost, locked away and never spoken of. But when a new babysitter tells Henry a story-a familiar, chilling fable about a creature that comes for children who have learned the weight of a secret-Grace's fortress is breached.
It begins with a trail of fine black ash where none should be. It continues with Henry's haunting new drawings of a tall, thin man with no eyes. And it escalates into a waking nightmare when Grace realizes the story of the Ash-Eyed Minder is not just a folktale. It's an ancient contagion, a narrative plague that has been passed down through generations... and it has just gone viral in the digital age.
As the lines between her traumatic past and her terrified present blur, Grace must race to uncover the origins of the story that is hunting her son. But the Minder isn't just a monster. It's a predator with rules, and it's getting closer. To save her son from the thing in the dark, Grace must confront the truth of what happened fifteen years ago and make a devastating choice.
To stop the story, she must become the final, most terrifying chapter.
Perfect for fans of Hereditary, The Ring, and the character-driven dread of Stephen King, Ash-Eyed Minder is a gripping supernatural thriller and a heartbreaking exploration of maternal fear. This is a story that gets in the marrow... and never comes out.