Beneath the Stairs
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Published by: Atria Books
Release Date: February 22, 2022
Pages: 352
ISBN13: 978-1982177157
Synopsis
In this spine-tingling, atmospheric debut for fans of Jennifer McMahon, Simone St. James, and Chris Bohjalian, a woman returns to her hometown after her childhood friend attempts suicide at a local haunted house—the same place where a traumatic incident shattered their lives twenty years ago.
Few in sleepy Sumner’s Mills have stumbled across the Octagon House hidden deep in the woods. Even fewer are brave enough to trespass. A man had killed his wife and two young daughters there, a shocking, gruesome crime that the sleepy upstate New York town tried to bury. One summer night, an emboldened fourteen-year-old Clare and her best friend, Abby, ventured into the Octagon House. Clare came out, but a piece of Abby never did.
Twenty years later, an adult Clare receives word that Abby has attempted suicide at the Octagon House and now lies in a coma. With little to lose and still grieving after a personal tragedy, Clare returns to her roots to uncover the darkness responsible for Abby’s accident.
An eerie page-turner, BENEATH THE STAIRS is about the trauma that follows us from childhood to adulthood and returning to the beginning to reach the end.
Add on GoodreadsPraise
"This character-driven read is a wild ride … a horror-thriller blend that promises an adrenaline rush while also touching upon real-life nightmares such as abuse, PTSD, and mental illness.”
—Booklist
“This novel reminds readers how easily a thought becomes a truth, how quickly a dream becomes a nightmare, and how unknowingly we ourselves can become haunted houses… Fawcett’s debut is both incredibly suspenseful and immersive.”
—Library Journal
"Beneath the Stairs, the first novel from playwright Jennifer Fawcett, is hard to categorize: Is it a horror, a mystery, or a literary-thriller? It's all of those, with a psychological exploration of adolescent trauma ... [A] spooky ghost story twists into a very credible and terrifying mystery. [A] nail-bitter of a novel."
—Cheryl McKeon, Shelf Awareness
“A spell-binding horror story, where the terror comes not from ghosts, but from the haunted places we find within ourselves. A thoroughly engrossing and compulsive read.”
—Elizabeth Brundage, author of The Vanishing Point
“Jennifer Fawcett’s Beneath the Stairs had me from the very first page. Tense, surprising, and utterly gripping, I loved this book!”
—Karen Dionne, author of international bestsellers The Marsh King’s Daughter and The Wicked Sister
“A poignant haunted house tale about guilt, grief, and the nightmares of adolescence that follow us into adulthood. Fawcett delivers genuine scares in this chilling, mesmerizing debut.”
—Rachel Harrison, author of The Return
“A thrilling, thoughtful, character-driven crucible that reveals the ways childhood fear clings to us, shapes us, but can also show the one way out of our adult darkness.”
—Andrew Pyper, author of The Residence and The Demonologist
“Beneath the Stairs is an audacious debut. With plotting as intricate and wild as the Hill House adaptation, it'll keep you guessing until the very end.”
—Sarah Langan, author of Good Neighbors
“A novel brimming with menace and secrets, a haunting story of friendship and old betrayal that I devoured in one sitting. . . Atmospheric, cleverly constructed—the past meets the present in this gripping debut.”
—Karen Brown, author of The Clairvoyants and The Longings of Wayward Girls
“An enthralling debut by a gifted storyteller!”
—Wendy Walker, author of Don't Look for Me and All Is Not Forgotten
"Author Jennifer Fawcett makes an electrifying debut with her atmospheric story... Not only a ghost story, but it is also the exploration of friendships and those "lost to time," girls trapped in childhood history, haunted by people and events."
—Leslie Zemeckis, Montecito Journal
"Beneath the Stairs remains exciting and engaging to the end... It hurts you and scares you and holds you, but then lets you go. And sometimes, that is just the kind of novel you need."
— The Michigan Daily
"Told via multiple timelines, this novel was creepy and compelling. It was a haunted house story, a romantic suspense story, and a crime story all wrapped up into one."
—Fictionophile
Audiobook Excerpt
Excerpt
Prologue
SPRING
One of the girls found out about the house first. It was always this way; one heard the story and told the others, and so the secret was passed down, girl to girl, generation to generation. She heard her mother talking about it, about something that had happened there before the girl was born, something bad. This secret place still existed, hidden in the woods, waiting to be found again.
And so, one spring afternoon, the girl led her friends around the curve in the road where the field stopped and the woods began. Partway along, she slowed down, searching for the spot where the fence was only hooked over the nails. Easy to pull back; easy to hide. They hid their bikes just inside the woods and followed the old road. Insistent undergrowth pulled at their legs like barbed seaweed, but they kept moving deeper. “Why would you build a house in here?” “Are you sure this is where she said it’d be?” “Maybe it’s gone now.” None of them were willing to say that they wanted to turn around, that as soon as they’d crossed into these trees, they knew this wasn’t a place for them. And then they tumbled into the clearing. And there, alone and asleep, was the Octagon House.
They went inside. Of course they went inside.
Their feet crunched over decades’ worth of broken beer bottles, leaves, animal droppings, and scattered remains of garbage, all of it turned a uniform shade of dust. The girls shivered and wanted to hug themselves but didn’t. They walked carefully around the two large rooms on the first floor. They glanced up the decayed stairs to the second floor. They looked at the strange door, too large for a regular door and made of metal instead of wood. “It must lead to the basement,” they said. They wiggled the latch, but it was broken, the door firmly shut. The girls were quietly grateful for that. They wandered back into the old kitchen where they had started, kicking at the garbage, wondering what to do next.
But the one who had brought them returned to that metal door. It was once dark green, but the rust had spread over most of its surface, slowly gnawing its way through. Nothing stays hidden forever, she thought. And then she remembered how her mother had sounded when she’d talked about this house, that old fear coming awake again. She heard the others and turned to follow them. Just as she did, there was a click, and the door began to slide open. The air that escaped was cold and wet and smelled of earth and rot. Go, she thought, they’re leaving. But her legs wouldn’t move. The door opened farther, and now she could see the top of old wooden stairs.
She wanted to look.
She didn’t want to look.
She dared herself to look.
Only darkness, but there, on the lowest stair: something. She leaned into the doorway and looked down. She took out her phone and shone the light into the darkness, but that only made shadows, so she turned it off again. And in that millisecond, the instant between the light and the dark—
Help me.
The voice was inside her head, but it wasn’t hers.
Her friends called out to her: “Are you coming?” They were already at the door, stepping out of the grip of the house like it was nothing. She was alone.
Help me leave this place.
She pulled herself away and ran to them.
The girls bolted across the clearing, giddy with adrenaline and release. And as they disappeared into the woods, the door shut. But it would open again. The house was awake now.
She would come back. They always came back.
