Published: May 1st, 2020
Publisher: Poison Pen Press
Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Apocalyptic Fiction, Dystiopian Fiction

Today I’m sharing an extract from the first chapter of Secrets in the Dark, the second book in the Black Winter Series. Thank you to Amber at Midas PR for the invitation to take part.

Extract

Chapter One

“CLARE? IF YOU’RE THERE, please answer. It’s me. Beth.”
Clare stood at Winterbourne Hall’s kitchen sink as she stared, shocked, at the crackling radio. Gusts of freezing wind howled through gaps in the old mansion’s stone walls. Even wrapped in the cotton dress she’d inherited from one of the manor’s former maids and a fur jacket borrowed from Dorran, the kitchen would have been too cold for her without the fire. The blaze both warmed and illuminated the room, bathing Clare and Dorran in its orange glow.
Dorran stood close enough to touch. He still wore bruises and scratches from the monsters that inhabited Winterbourne, but his dark eyes shone in the candlelight as he looked toward the radio.
“Beth…” Clare’s heart missed a beat, then returned with a vengeance, thumping furiously until her pulse was all she could hear. The last time she’d spoken to Beth, she’d been driving to her sister’s house in an attempt to escape the spreading stillness. That had only been seventeen days before. It felt like half a lifetime. She had kept the radio running constantly since she’d retrieved it from her car, but her hope of hearing from Beth had been whittled down to almost nothing.
Dorran moved first. He strode around the wide wooden table filling the kitchen’s center and snatched the two- way radio off the shelf, then returned and placed it on the table in front of Clare. He didn’t try to speak but bent forward to listen, watching expectantly.
The radio crackled. Clare struggled to breathe. In a flurry of urgent panic, she dropped the dish towel and darted forward, then pressed the button to transmit her voice.
“Beth? Beth, I’m here. It’s me. I’m here.”
She released the button and bent close to the speakers. Her hands were shaking. Her throat was tight, and every nerve in her body felt on fire with a desperate need to hear her sister’s voice again.
Beth, who was the closest thing Clare had to a mother. Beth, who at the vulnerable age of twenty had taken Clare to dental checkups, to netball practice, to school recitals. Beth, who had never stopped worrying about her when she’d moved into her own home.
The transmission was faint and distorted by a weak signal, but the voice was unmistakable. Beth took a gasping, hiccupping breath. “Clare? Is that you? Is it really you? She’s still alive. She’s okay. “Yes! I’m here!”
Beth was crying, and Clare couldn’t stop herself from following. She wiped her sleeves over her face as tears ran. At the same time, a grin stretched her cheeks until they ached.
Dorran moved silently. He nudged a chair in behind Clare so she could sit, then a moment later placed a glass of water and a clean cloth beside her. She gratefully used the cloth to wipe some of the wetness off her face. Dorran took a seat on the opposite side of the table. He was tall, towering over Clare, but he moved smoothly and carefully, even his breathing nearly silent. He folded his arms on the table, his dark eyes attentive, his black hair falling around his strong jaw, as he listened to the conversation.
“Sweetheart, are you okay? Are you hurt?”
Beth never called her sweetheart unless she was frightened. Clare guessed, after more than two weeks of no contact, Beth was about as frightened as she’d ever been. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
That was a half- truth at best. She still had red lines running across her arm and abdomen from where the hollow ones had attacked her. She grew tired too quickly. Her muscles ached. A bite on her wrist and thigh still needed dressing every day.
But she was alive. And, if the hollows were as prevalent as they seemed, that was better than what could be said for a lot of the world.
“What about you?” She pulled the radio closer, struggling to make out Beth’s voice under the distortion. “Are you in your bunker? Are you okay?”
“Yes, don’t worry about me. I’m in my bunker and getting thoroughly sick of staring at these four walls.” Beth laughed. “I paid for every add-on I could for this place…air filtration, water filtration, generator, aquaponics system. The only professional I didn’t think to hire was an interior decorator.”
Hearing Beth’s laughter made Clare feel lighter. She couldn’t stop her own grin. “I guess people don’t really think about throw rugs and wall hangings when they imagine the end of the world, do they?”
Beth chuckled, but the noise didn’t sound quite natural. Clare’s own smile faded. For a moment, the only noise in the kitchen was the soft static and a distant drip.
“It’s all gone to hell, sweetheart.” Beth’s voice had lost its color. “Everything. It’s all gone.”
“Yeah.” Clare swallowed. “But you’re okay. And that’s what matters.”
“Are you at Marnie’s? Is she there? Can I talk to her?”
The questions were like being dunked in a freezing bath. Clare closed her eyes. She took a slow breath and tried to keep her voice steady. “I never reached Marnie.” “Oh.”
Clare’s aunt, Marnie, was the third piece of their tiny family. She lived on a farm two hours’ drive from Clare’s own home. On that last morning, Clare had been trying to pick Marnie up on her way to Beth’s. She’d never made it out of Banksy Forest.
“Well.” Beth sounded like she was choking. “At least you’re okay. At least…at least…”
“I’m so sorry.” Clare stared down at the chipped wooden counter and shivered. The kitchen no longer felt as warm as it had a moment before.
There had been very little chance to think about the world outside the forest during the previous few days. But whenever she had, her mind had turned to her family and what might have happened to them. She’d felt sick every time she imagined it.
She felt sick again, knowing that Marnie must have been waiting for her. Beth would have called her to say Clare was on the way. She’d probably been standing by her front door, a suitcase on one side and a cat carrier on the other. Clare could picture her easily. Brown hair that had started to develop streaks of gray. A body that had been made strong by a lifetime of working in the garden but was always a little on the plump side. She would have been wearing floral clothes and a knit cardigan, like she always did. She was a short woman but had a huge smile and an even bigger heart.
Did the hollow ones get her? Was it fast, or painful and slow?
A warm hand moved over hers. She met Dorran’s dark eyes as he squeezed her fingers.
“But you’re okay.” Beth’s voice crackled through the radio again. She seemed to have rallied. “After your phone went out, I tried reaching you through the radio almost constantly. For days. You didn’t answer, and I thought…I thought…”
“I’m so sorry. I left the radio in the car. It took me a while to get it back.”
“That’s fine. You’re alive. I can forgive everything else as long as you just stay alive. Where are you? If you didn’t get to Marnie’s, does that mean you’re in your cottage? It’s not going to be safe— ”
“No, no, I found a new house. It’s in Banksy Forest.”
She could hear the frown in Beth’s voice. “There aren’t any houses inside the forest.”
“That’s what I thought too. But it was well hidden. The owner,
Dorran, is letting me stay with him.”
Again, Beth hesitated. “Is he a good sort of person?”
“Yes, don’t worry. He’s nice. And we have plenty of food— and a garden. Winterbourne was designed to be self- sufficient and it’s hard to break into. I was lucky. Really lucky.”
“Be careful, Clare. Don’t trust him just because he’s friendly.”
Clare looked down at her hand, which was still enveloped in Dorran’s. She followed it along his arm, covered by the green knit sweater, and up to his face. Thick black hair, grown a little too long, framed a strong, reserved face. His dark eyes, shadowed under a heavy brow, smiled at her. She thought there was no one she trusted more.
“He’s good, I promise. You don’t need to worry about me. How are you doing there?”
“Holding up at least.” There was a speck of hesitation in Beth’s voice.
Clare frowned. “Are you sure? Do you have enough food and water?”
“Yes, that’s all fine. But the generator’s out. I’ve been trying to fix it, but it’s been a challenge without the lights.”
A chill ran through Clare. She pictured Beth, sitting in a dark box, having to feel her way through the space every time she needed food or the bathroom or water. There would be nothing to see. Nothing to do. Just her, alone, listening to the seconds tick by.
“I’m doing fine, sweetheart.” Her voice took on the familiar hint of warning she used whenever Clare was doing something she didn’t approve of. “I have a flashlight. I’m using it judiciously— apparently an excess of batteries still isn’t enough— but I’m hardly suffering down here.”
Clare wasn’t sure if she could believe that. But she tried to keep her voice bright for Beth’s sake. “We can talk on the radio as much as you want. I can carry you around with me and keep you company.”
Beth laughed. “Oh, that would be fun. But I think it’s better if we keep our chats short.”
That was unexpected. “Why?”
“Ah…”
“Tell me, Beth.”
“Too much noise attracts them.”
Dorran’s fingers laced through Clare’s, trying to reassure her. She barely felt it. Her hands were turning numb. “The hollow?”
“Yeah.” Beth’s voice cracked. “I was the only person on my street who had a bunker.”
Clare understood. Without shelter, all of Beth’s neighbors would have been affected by the stillness.
Under the static’s crackles and her own too- fast breathing,
Clare thought she heard another sound. The noise had dogged her for weeks, following her even into her sleep, and every fiber of her being revolted against it. Fingernails, digging. Clawing.
Scratching. They were at Beth’s bunker door.
They’d heard them. They were hungry.

MEET THE AUTHOR:

Darcy is the USA Today Bestselling author of Hunted, The Haunting of Ashburn House, Craven Manor, and more than a dozen horror and suspense titles.She lives on the Central Coast of Australia with her family, cats, and a garden full of herbs and vegetables. Darcy loves forests, especially old-growth forests where the trees dwarf anyone who steps between them. Wherever she lives, she tries to have a mountain range close by.

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Published: October 1st, 2020
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Format: Hardcover, Kindle, Audio
Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

Today I’m delighted to be sharing an extract from the chilling Playmate. Thank you to Head of Zeus for the invitation to take part and the gifted copy of the book.

Extract:

1.

Elisa
Sandefjord, 19 October 2017

I’ve had the day off, cramming all the things I never normally have time for into the afternoon – highlights and a trim, nails, a half-hearted hour at the gym, and I’m almost late for pick-up. First, I got stuck in bad traffic by the E18 motorway exit, and then Lyder decided to throw a fit when I picked him up from nursery, dropping to the floor like a slab of meat, flopping around in my arms and rolling his eyes back as I shoved his limp limbs into his winter suit.
‘Stop it,’ I hissed, pushing his stockinged feet into his sheepskin boots before grabbing his lunch box, an enormous cardboard artwork and his nursery folder in one hand, my other hand half-dragging my son out the door. ‘Come on!’
In the car, Lyder whines about the fact that I haven’t brought him a snack.
‘Everyone else gets raisins after nursery,’ he wails. ‘Or carrots. Or biscuits. Carl gets biscuits, the kind with chocolate bits in them, it isn’t fair…’ I block out his thin voice droning on and on. It’s been a long week and I feel the beginnings of a headache at the back of my skull. I press my finger to the spot that hurts, staring at a red light taking forever. Three minutes left until pick-up time. Four minutes before Aud, the sour-faced woman running the after-school club, starts stabbing my phone number with her long acrylic nails.
The light turns green and I drive fast down the last few quiet suburban roads to Korsvik School, making Lyder giggle nervously in the back seat at the squeal of the tires. I pull up in front of the school and hand Lyder my iPhone, his face breaking into a surprised smile. It’s 4.29 – I made it.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I say, and hurry across the school yard to the brightly lit red wooden building.
‘Mamma!’ squeals Lucia and runs towards me. She jumps into my arms and I kiss her soft golden hair. ‘You’re late.’
‘No, I’m right on time, actually.’
‘Can I go home with Josephine?’
‘Who’s Josephine?’
‘She’s a new girl in my class. Can I? Please?’
‘Not today, sweetie. You know we have to arrange playdates ahead of time, it’s just easier.’
‘Her mom said it’s fine. They’re waiting, in the cloakroom.’ ‘Sweetheart…’
‘Please, Mamma.’ Lucia points through the open doorway to the changing area shared by first- and second-graders.
I sigh and go through with her. A little girl wearing a beautiful pink quilted Moncler jacket and moon boots sits on the bench in the far corner, next to an equally chiclooking mother.
‘Hi,’ I say, and smile at them both. When the girl smiles back I notice that the left side of her face creases strangely, and then I realize it is a circular, puckered scar cupping her cheek, reaching all the way to her hairline at her temple.
‘Hello, I’m Line, Josephine’s mother,’ says the woman and smiles widely. She is beautiful, the kind of beautiful that has the power to instantly disarm people. Her eyes are wide-set and clear blue, her hair is thick and dark, curling perfectly around her shoulders, and her lips are plump and shiny with nude gloss. She is wearing a khaki version of her daughter’s Moncler jacket – cinched at her tiny waist, a white cashmere polo neck, and elegant, knee-high olivegreen leather boots.
‘Nice to meet you. I’m Elisa. Elisa Blix.’ I turn to Lucia.
‘We need to hurry, sweets, Lyder is waiting alone in the car.’ ‘I want to go to Josephine’s house!’
‘It’s absolutely fine with us,’ says Line. ‘The girls have been asking for a playdate for a while, and we’re not doing anything this afternoon.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Well, okay, if you’re sure.’
‘Absolutely sure. Let me give you my number. We live on Asnestoppen, so not far from here.’
‘Okay. I’ll pick her up around six thirty, if that works?’
‘Six thirty is perfect.’
‘When did Josephine start? I don’t think I’ve met you before.’
‘Pretty new. We moved here from Oslo at the beginning of term.’
‘Ah, okay. Liking it so far?’
‘Yeah. Josie has settled really well at school and my older son is happy at his senior school, too.’
‘Oh, great,’ I say, and we smile at each other again. I like her; I could imagine us being friends. There is something calm and centered about her, and I suppose I am quite awestruck by her seemingly effortless elegance. The girls, too, seem to like each other – as Line and I speak, they do an intricate clapping game I can’t remember seeing Lucia do before, then they burst into fits of high-pitched giggles.
‘Do you want to call my phone from yours, that way I have your number too?’ she says.
‘Sorry, I’ve left my phone in the car with my son. Why don’t you just call me, and I’ll drop you a text in a sec?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay, have fun on your playdate, girls,’ I say and give the faux-fur blob on the top of Lucia’s hat a little tug.
She laughs and walks away with Line and Josephine, holding Josephine’s hand, the two of them skipping in sync, the sound of their squeaky rubber-soled boots reverberating around the empty corridor.

It’s just before six when my phone vibrates. It’s a picture message from Line, of Josephine and Lucia sitting close together on a huge white sofa in matching pink princess dresses, laughing and cradling a shaggy brown cat. Its paws are crusty with dirt as if just came in from outside, and its eyes are bright yellow and mesmerizing. I am still staring at it when the phone begins to ring in my hand.
‘Hello?’
‘Mamma?’ Lucia’s light voice is hiccupy with giggles.
I smile. ‘Hey baby,’ I say, ‘I’m just about to get ready to come get you, okay?’
‘Yeah, but Mamma, we were wondering… could we have a sleepover? Please oh please oh please!’
‘Oh.’ Lucia has never slept at a friend’s house before, though at seven, some of the girls in the class have started sleeping over. I know my daughter isn’t a particularly anxious child, but she doesn’t know Josephine that well, and I’ve never even been to their house.
‘Mamma, please! It’s Friday!’
‘I know. Just… you don’t have any of your stuff with you. And you’ve not been on a sleepover before.’
‘Yeah I have! With Julie!’
‘Yes, but she’s your cousin. I don’t know.’
‘It’s so fun here! Mamma, please! Here, talk to Josephine’s mom.’ The phone goes quiet for a moment, then Line’s voice fills my ear.
‘Hi there, Elisa. What a fun girl you have! The two of them are having such a good time.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘Lucia sounded very happy.’
‘So, you gathered the girls have been asking for a sleepover. What do you think? It is totally fine with me. My husband is in New York for work and doesn’t get back until tomorrow and Josephine is generally easier to deal with when she has a buddy around, so I don’t mind in the slightest.’
‘Oh. Okay. Yes, well, it’s just that Lucia hasn’t slept at a friend’s house before.’
‘Right. Well, I mean, we could try, and if she feels like going home, I could just give you guys a call and you could collect her?’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose that would work. Okay, so I will need to pop round with her stuff. You know, toothbrush, pajamas, teddy, of course.’
‘Sure.’

Fredrik walks through the door so red in the face from the fierce wind it looks like he’s been slapped.
‘Hi,’ he says, pecking me on the cheek. ‘Where are the kids?’
‘Lyder is zonked out in front of The Lego Movie upstairs and Lucia is at a classmate’s house. She’s been asked to sleep over, actually.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘That’s okay, I suppose?’
‘Yeah, I don’t see why not. We can put Lyder to bed early and get some us-time.’ He winks at me and runs a light hand across my bottom before grabbing a bottle of Mexican beer from the fridge, snapping its cap off and taking a long glug from it, his Adam’s apple rising and falling in his throat.
‘Yes, it actually works quite well. My flight tomorrow is at nine, so you could just have a slow morning with Lyder and then go get Lucia sometime before lunch.’
‘Yeah, okay. What time do you think you’ll be back?’
‘I land at five thirty.’
‘Was it Milan?’
‘No, Rome.’
‘Lucky you.’
‘Well, it’s not like I’ll see anything other than the airport, honey.’
‘And blue skies.’
‘True. There is that.’ I smile at my husband and go into the hallway to pull my boots on. I am driving, but I still put on a woolen hat – though it is only October, winter seems to have come fast on icy winds from the east.

‘Hi,’ says Line, ‘come on in.’
I step into a large, immaculately tidy hallway with a vaulted ceiling and expensive-looking spotlights. When I take my boots off, my feet are immediately warmed by underfloor heating. I hear children laughing upstairs, and when we go up into a huge open living space, Lucia and Josephine are doing cartwheels, still in princess dresses, stopping only to heave for breath through peals of laughter.
‘Wow, what a beautiful house you have,’ I say. It’s all sleek modernity, with unbroken white surfaces, quite the contrast to our home, which is full of family photographs, boxes of toys, kids’ drawings tacked onto walls. This is clearly the kind of family who can answer an unexpected house call without worrying about piles of shoes in the hallway, towering dishes in the sink, overflowing laundry bins in the bathroom, half-eaten jam sandwiches abandoned on windowsills. Unlike us.
The house is built at the very top of a rocky hill, above Asnes beach on the Vesterøya peninsula, with no immediate neighbors. One wall is entirely glass, looking out onto the rugged coastline dotted with patches of forest and a moody ocean rolling out far below us, its frothy crests occasionally visible in the sweeping lights from the lighthouse across the bay.
‘Thank you,’ says Line. ‘We’re really happy with it. I think I saw half the houses in Sandefjord before we finally bought this one.’ She laughs and so do I. ‘Do you want a tea? Or a glass of wine?’
‘I have to get back to my son before he goes to bed around seven thirty,’ I say. ‘I promised him a bedtime story.’ Line smiles, and I am struck again by how beautiful she is. ‘Sure. Just a quick one then?’
I nod and she returns after a moment with two glasses of champagne. ‘It is Friday, after all.’ We could definitely be friends. I follow the crawl of a droplet of condensation down the outside of the glass, then raise it towards Line in a little toast.
‘Maman,’ says Josephine, ‘regarde!’
Line claps as Josephine does a wobbly double-cartwheel, then collapses onto the carpet.
‘You speak French?’
‘Yeah, sometimes. Josephine used to go to the French school in Oslo. We figured another language is always an advantage.’
I feel suddenly dull and painfully average next to this glamorous woman and her sophisticated daughter. ‘I see. And, yes, you’re absolutely right, such an advantage.’
‘What about you guys? Are you from around here? It is a really nice place to live, isn’t it?’
‘It is nice. Quiet, I guess, but still central. I’m from Lillehammer originally, and my husband is from Sandefjord, so we chose to live here as he works in Tønsberg and I work out of Torp Airport. It takes me less than twenty minutes to get home from there.’
‘Ah. So what do you do?’
‘I’m a flight attendant. For Nordic Wings.’
Line’s eyes light up. ‘Oh wow. That must be a fun career.
I always had a vision of myself as a flight attendant when I was much younger. Sometimes I wish I’d pursued it.’
‘It can be fun. But it gets less and less glamorous, put it that way. I used to work long-haul, for Qatar, before the kids. That was probably more like the vision most people have of the job.’
Line smiles and takes another sip of her champagne.
‘Then, when we had the kids, I started working for Scandinavian Airlines, but commuting to Oslo Airport got pretty exhausting – two hours’ drive each way was just too much – so I started with Nordic Wings three years ago. It’s been great for this region, to have a new low-cost airline connecting us to lots of European destinations, but it’s hardly glamorous. Anyway. What about you – are you working?’
‘Yes, I am a make-up artist. For TV, but I work freelance.’
‘Now, that sounds like fun. Do you get to meet anyone famous?’
‘Nah. I do mostly newsreaders.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s easy to combine with the kids, though. You know – flexible. I only take jobs when I can see they’ll work around whatever the kids have on, as well as my husband’s schedule. He travels a lot for work.’
‘What does your husband do?’ I try to imagine the husband – he must be quite the guy to attract someone like Line.
‘He, uh… He’s a banker. He works with investment stuff for a… a French bank. Paribas.’
I smile and nod – Line sounds just like me when people ask me what Fredrik does – Uh, something to do with financial law in, umm, a law firm. We speak for another couple of minutes about the girls and how well they get on, and I give Line Fredrik’s phone number so they can make arrangements for pick-up tomorrow.
I stand up and walk over to where Lucia and Josephine are playing the clapping game again.
‘Mamma has to go home now, sweetie,’ I say, but Lucia barely glances up. ‘Sure you want to sleep over?’ She nods, not going to break the chant.
‘My name is funky lady,
Lady funky, what you got?
One, two, three, clap!
One, two, three,
One clap, two clap, triple clap!’
‘If you need to speak to me, just call, okay?’ Lucia nods again.
‘I’ve brought you your stuff. Minky Mouse is in the bag, too.’
She smiles and steps into my arms in a close hug. Her forehead and neck are sweaty from the exertion of the cartwheeling, and I kiss her hot red cheek. ‘I love you.’ ‘Love you, too,’ says Lucia.
‘Let’s play twins again,’ shouts Josephine, grabbing Lucia by the arm.
‘Yeah! Let’s!’
‘Lucia is my twin!’
I smile, first at the girls, then at Line. Looking at them with their arms wrapped around each other, grinning widely, each exposing several missing teeth, they could well be twins, except for Josephine’s thick chestnut hair and Lucia’s fine blonde hair. They have quite similar brown eyes and full lips. ‘Have fun, little twinnies,’ I say and go back downstairs, trailed by Line. She gives me a little wave as I step into the cold darkness outside. I stand a moment outside the house looking up at thin drifts of clouds being pulled across the sky by the brisk wind. Tomorrow will be bumpy.

If you enjoyed this extract, you can buy the book here. You can also read my review here.