Discover the internationally best-selling supernatural mystery

People are saying:

Enjoy a sample from DONN'S HILL:

CHAPTER 1

The pickup hit a pothole and bounced me up into the air. Not high enough to send me over the tailgate and into the highway, but enough to get me to flail my arms and make an ass out of myself. When I landed back down on the cold metal truck bed, the battered paperback copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House flew out of my hands.

“No!” 

I hurled myself after it, managing to grab it out of the air before the wind carried it away. Cradling the book, I flipped backward through the pages and checked for damage until I reached the inscription on the inside front cover: Happy birthday Mackenzie! Love, Dad.

The book was irreplaceable. It’d been stupid to try to read it in the back of a pickup truck while we were speeding along the highway, but I didn’t have anyone to talk to on the hour-long drive from Moyard to Donn’s Hill. Boredom had gotten the best of me. 

You’ll just have to live with being bored, I told myself, tucking the book into the bright yellow hiking backpack that held all my worldly possessions. It’s not worth the risk.

It was just as well that I stopped reading; the truck was slowing down. I craned my neck to see over the tall cab to make sure the driver was taking me where I’d asked to go, and that he wasn’t making a detour to a cabin full of his deranged cousins or something.

The prospect of being killed on the way to my new life was why I’d been nervous to hitch a ride with a stranger. I thought it was pretty ironic that the driver had made me sit in the open truck bed instead of in the cab with him as though he was in danger from me. Me, the tiny twenty-seven-year-old girl who sometimes still had to buy clothes in the juniors’ section at Kohl’s.

My fears were put to rest when I saw a weather-beaten sign at the side of the road reading e-z sleep motel. The pickup truck pulled into the motel’s parking lot, coming to a stop under the awning that sheltered the front office. I hopped out with my pack on my back.

“Thanks for the lift,” I told the driver.

He leaned out his open window and tugged on the brim of his baseball cap. “You sure you want to stay here? There’s better places in town. My sister runs a B&B right on Main.”

I’d priced that B&B and all the other lodging options within Donn’s Hill’s city limits. The rates were outrageous; all of them were five times as much as a room at the E-Z Sleep. 

I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m good here.”

He cast a doubtful eye over the structure. The motel was older, built in the seventies, with a row of small rooms strung side by side on a single floor. The building sat sideways, perpendicular to the highway to maximize the number of rooms that got to enjoy the breathtaking view of the weathered paint and broken windows of the abandoned lumber mill next door. Despite the low room prices, there wasn’t a single other car in the weedy parking lot.

“If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure. Thanks again.”

He shrugged and pulled away, heading back down the highway toward Donn’s Hill. I put both hands on the small of my back and pushed it forward, stretching out my spine. It ached from the long bus ride to Moyard and then the pickup truck. I couldn’t wait to relax in my room, maybe even draw a bath and soak for a while.

I tugged open the door to the motel’s lobby. The scent of stale cigarettes made my nose crinkle, and a sallow-faced clerk stared at me from behind a Plexiglas window.

“Can I help you?” He punctuated the question with a spit that he shot into a narrow-necked beer bottle with the label torn off, adding a bit more to the pool of murky brown saliva that filled it. 

“Um, yes. I have a reservation.” 

He chewed in silence for a moment before responding. “Name?”

“Mackenzie Clair.”

The clerk rifled through a small pile of papers in a tray on the desk. Beside me, a baseball game played on a flat-screen television mounted on the wall. The technology felt out of place among the lobby’s ripped vinyl furniture and the motel’s outdated filing system. I wondered if my online reservation was the first they’d ever gotten.

At last, the clerk found my reservation receipt. “Okay, looks like you already paid. Just gonna need to scan your ID.”

I unslung the backpack from my shoulders and dug out my wallet, handing over my driver’s license. A pang of sadness hit me as I realized that the address it listed wasn’t mine anymore. I didn’t even know what it was going to be replaced with. For some reason, the prospect of having to register for a new ID card in this new state made my decision to pick up stakes and move to Donn’s Hill more real than packing my bag had done.

The clerk heaved himself out of his little desk chair and crossed the office to make a copy of my ID. “So what brings you to town? Hope it’s not for the festival. You’re two weeks too early.”

He chuckled, as though he’d made a good joke, and then returned to his desk and spat into the bottle again. My stomach turned. I was grateful the Plexiglas window was blocking whatever smell was probably wafting up from the clerk’s bottle every time he added to it.

I swallowed back the bile that threatened to fill my mouth. “Personal business. How far is it to town, anyway? Could I walk there in the morning?”

“I’m sure you can manage it. It’s just a few miles.” 

He took a sip from a bottle. For one hideous instant, I thought he was drinking his tobacco spit back down. Then I realized the label on the second bottle was intact.

He passed me a receipt, a small bronze key, and a television remote control. “Sign this. And don’t go walkin’ off with that controller, or it’s a $30 charge to your card.”

“All right. Thanks.” I pushed the receipt back to him, took my key and remote, and left the lobby. 

“Have a good night,” he called. I heard him laughing as the door swung shut behind me.

* * *

My room felt… sleazy. It was the kind of place I imagined Josh and his other girlfriend had had all their secret rendezvous. That is, when I’d been in town. When I’d been out of town, like for my father’s funeral, he’d just brought her home to our bed.

The wound was still fresh. It took all of two nanoseconds for my anger to bubble up to the surface, and I hurled my backpack into the corner of the room. I had to remind myself to breathe.

Simmer down, I thought. You left him behind. Let him go.

I turned my focus to inspecting the room. It was reasonably clean, but there was no getting rid of the lingering odor of stale cigarettes that had followed me from the lobby. The only attempt at decorating was a sad watercolor of a storm-tossed sailboat, which hung above the queen bed. Nothing from the dusty brass fixtures to the peeling floral wallpaper looked as though it had been replaced since the motel opened. 

My visions of soaking in a bubble bath evaporated the second I opened the bathroom door. A clear shower curtain hung limply from its rod, revealing a cramped stall and a worryingly small shower head. Everything was made from one giant piece of molded plastic, presumably so it could be thoroughly cleaned with a power washer. It was the kind of modern efficiency I imagined a serial killer in the movies would appreciate.

Rubbing the small of my back, I meandered back over to the bed and collapsed onto the rough comforter. I lay there for a while, staring at the heavy curtains that covered the window and wondering, not for the first time, if I’d made the right decision. 

I unplugged the alarm clock and switched off the lamp. Tomorrow, my new life would begin.