Welcome to Rainy Day Reviews!: #Giveaway Shadow's Keep by Meghan O'Flynn

Shadow's

Keep

Meghan O'Flynn

Genre:

Crime Thriller

FROM

THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF

FAMISHED

”Dark

and intense, with an M. Night Shyamalan-level twist.”

~Kristen

Mae, bestselling author of the Conch Garden series

OLD

SINS. NEW BLOOD.

Deputy

Sheriff William Shannahan doesn’t feel like a detective, at least

not like the ones he admires on TV. Not that he needs to be; the

small town of Graybel, Mississippi, is a peaceful place, with acres

of farmland, neighbors who always take care of their own, and noise

from the outside world muted by a hundred miles of forest.

That

silence is about to be broken.

When

a child is found dead in the woods, the medical examiner deems it a

dog attack. But the paw prints belong to something far larger than

any creature in the Mississippi forests, and what animal would remove

the victim’s eyes? Though no one believes him, William can’t

shake the feeling that a human killer lurks in the shadowed

woods.

And

his girlfriend, Cassie, has a son the same age as the victim.

Cassie

Parker was raised amid horrors she’s long pushed from her mind, but

her scars won’t let her forget. Nor do the hallucinations, dreams

so vivid she can feel and smell and taste them. And no one is more

terrified than Cassie when another victim is found mauled to

death—because this body has been drained of blood. She knows

exactly what type of person would sacrifice a child, and why they’re

after hers. But how can she explain it to William?

This

is William’s chance to act like a detective, to protect the woman

and child he’s desperate to save. Pushing back against prejudice

and presumption, he uncovers a trail of cruelty that spans decades,

but each clue brings him closer to a truth more horrifying than

killer beasts in the forest. For concealed beneath small-town

politics is knowledge that will shatter everything he knows to be

true about his town—and the people in it.

compulsively readable thriller in the vein of

Cujo, The

Girl on the Train

and M. Night Shyamalan’s

The

Village

, Shadow’s

Keep

a mind-bending exploration of obsession, desperation, and how far

we’ll go to protect those we love.

Add

to Goodreads

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Please let it be a doll". But he saw the flies buzzing around the top of the boulder. Buzzing. Buzzing.

William crept forward along the path, reaching for his hip where his gun usually sat, but he touched only cloth. The dried yellow paint scratched his thumb. He thrust his hand into his pocket for his lucky coin. No quarter. Only his phone.

William approached the rock, the edges of his vision dark and unfocused as if he were looking through a telescope, but in the dirt around the stone he could make out deep paw prints. Probably from a dog or a coyote, though these were enormous—nearly the size of a salad plate, too big for anything he’d expect to find in these woods. He frantically scanned the underbrush, trying to locate the animal, but saw only a cardinal appraising him from a nearby branch.

Someone’s back there, someone needs my help.

He stepped closer to the boulder. Please don’t let it be what I think it is. Two more steps and he’d be able to see beyond the rock, but he could not drag his gaze from the trees where he was certain canine eyes were watching. Still nothing there save the shaded bark of the surrounding woods. He took another step—cold oozed from the muddy earth into his shoe and around his left ankle, like a hand from the grave.

William stumbled, pulling his gaze from the trees just in time to see the boulder rushing at his head and then he was on his side in the slimy filth to the right of the boulder, next to…

Oh god, oh god, oh god.

William had seen death in his twenty years as a deputy, but usually it was the result of a drunken accident, a car wreck, an old man found dead on his couch.

This was not that. The boy was no more than six, probably less. He lay on a carpet of rotting leaves, one arm draped over his chest, legs splayed haphazardly as if he, too, had tripped in the muck. But this wasn’t an accident; the boy’s throat was torn, jagged ribbons of flesh peeled back, drooping on either side of the muscle meat, the unwanted skin on a Thanksgiving turkey. Deep gouges permeated his chest and abdomen, black slashes against mottled green flesh, the wounds obscured behind his shredded clothing and bits of twigs and leaves.

William scrambled backward, clawing at the ground, his muddy shoe kicking the child’s ruined calf, where the boy’s shy white bones peeked from under congealing blackish tissue. The legs looked…chewed on.

His hand slipped in the muck. The child’s face was turned to his, mouth open, black tongue lolling as if he were about to plead for help. Not good, oh shit, not good.

William finally clambered to standing, yanked his cell from his pocket, and tapped a button, barely registering his friend’s answering bark. A fly lit on the boy’s eyebrow above a single white mushroom that crept upward over the landscape of his cheek, rooted in the empty socket that had once

contained an eye.

“Mike, it’s William. I need a…tell Dr. Klinger to bring the wagon.”

He stepped backward, toward the path, shoe sinking again, the mud trying to root him there, and he yanked his foot free with a squelching sound. Another step backward and he was on the path, and another step off the path again, and another, another, feet moving until his back slammed against a gnarled oak on the opposite side of the trail. He jerked his head up, squinting through the greening awning half convinced the boy’s assailant would be perched there, ready to leap from the trees and lurch him into oblivion on flensing jaws. But there was no wretched animal. Blue leaked through the filtered haze of dawn.

William lowered his gaze, Mike’s voice a distant crackle irritating the edges of his brain but not breaking through—he could not understand what his friend was saying. He stopped trying to decipher it and said, “I’m on the trails behind my house, found a body. Tell them to come in through the path

on the Winchester side.” He tried to listen to the receiver, but heard only the buzzing of flies across the trail—had they been so loud a moment ago? Their noise grew, amplified to unnatural volumes, filling his head until every other sound fell away—was Mike still talking? He pushed End, pocketed the

phone, and then leaned back and slid down the tree trunk.

And William Shannahan, not recognizing the event the rest of his life would hinge upon, sat at the base of a gnarled oak tree on Tuesday, the third of August, put his head into his hands, and wept.