From the writing desk ·
When the Streetlights Die
Every door locks at 6:47. When the streetlights fail, the Hollow Men come up.
Complete · Unpublished · Seeking traditional representation
Inside the story
Forest Hills knows what happens when the lights go out.
Tampa, 1983. Every evening, the people of Forest Hills bolt their windows before the siren. When nine-year-old Evan Pike vanishes and returns speaking in stolen voices, seventeen-year-old Daniel Mercer learns the Hollow Men do not simply kill: they keep victims alive beneath the city, draining fear, memories, voices, and vitality until the captives become monsters.
To save Evan and find the mother taken eleven years earlier, Daniel must unite a terrified neighborhood, descend into the tunnels beneath Sulphur Springs, and keep Tampa's last streetlights burning long enough to close what is waking in the dark.
The horror reaches from boarded homes to the tunnels beneath Sulphur Springs, where living captives are stripped of everything that makes them human. Daniel’s fight becomes a neighborhood’s last stand against an enemy that has learned to wear stolen voices.