Knock After Midnight
Clara Whitfield has always trusted reason, discipline, and education. Raised in a strict foundling home, she has built her life around independence and the belief that superstition has no place in a civilized society. When she receives an appointment as the new schoolmistress of Oakhaven Ridge, an isolated mountain settlement, she sees an opportunity to escape her past and establish a life of her own.But the moment her carriage reaches the village, Clara realizes that something is deeply wrong.The schoolhouse is surrounded by strange iron reinforcements, its bedroom doors can be locked from both sides, and every mirror is covered with linen before sunset. The villagers obey an uncompromising curfew, barring their doors and shutters before the mountain fog descends. Their elderly leader, Silas Crawford, insists that nobody should walk the parish road after nine o'clock.Most disturbing of all is the warning repeated by the frightened caretaker, Rebecca Sinclair: Never uncover a mirror after dark. Never answer two knocks after midnight. And never open the door to something waiting outside.Clara dismisses these rules as primitive mountain folklore. Yet the first night brings sounds that no rational explanation can easily dismiss. Something approaches her bedroom door, breathing through the keyhole and calling her by a name she has never revealed to anyone in the village.Determined to understand the settlement's disturbing customs, Clara begins investigating its historical records, school enrollment registers, baptismal documents, and forgotten parish archives. The deeper she digs, the more inconsistencies she discovers. Children appear in records without explanation. Names have been erased. Graves conceal secrets that the village council has guarded for generations.Soon, Clara realizes that the villagers are not simply protecting themselves from an unknown supernatural presence. Their elaborate precautions are part of a much older arrangement, one connected to her childhood, her forgotten identity, and the mysterious scars on her fingers.The mountain has been waiting for her.And the midnight knocks are not random warnings. They are invitations from something that remembers exactly who she is.As the fog closes around the schoolhouse and the village's carefully maintained secrets begin to collapse, Clara must confront the truth about the life that was taken from her and the terrible bargain made in her name.Knock After Midnight is an atmospheric gothic horror novel filled with mountain folklore, sinister secrets, supernatural encounters, and an unsettling mystery about identity, memory, and the price of belonging.
Customer Reviews
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
