Where They Wait
A Novel
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3.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
A “mesmerizing” (Stephen King) supernatural novel about a sinister mindfulness app with fatal consequences from the New York Times bestselling author of The Chill.
In this “taut, creepy techno-chiller” (Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts), recently laid-off newspaper reporter Nick Bishop takes a humbling job: writing a profile of a new mindfulness app called Clarity.
The app itself seems like a retread of old ideas—relaxing white noise and guided meditations. But then there are the “Sleep Songs.” A woman’s hauntingly beautiful voice sings a ballad that is anything but soothing—it’s disturbing, and more of a warning than a relaxation—but it works. Deep, refreshing sleep follows.
So do the nightmares. Vivid and chilling, they feature a dead woman who calls Nick by name and whispers guidance—or are they threats? And her voice follows him long after the song is done. As the effects of the nightmares begin to permeate his waking life, Nick makes a terrifying discovery: no one involved with Clarity has any interest in his article. Their interest is in him.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Nick Bishop, the narrator of this uber-creepy horror thriller from Carson (The Chill), has fallen on hard times after being laid off. So, despite experience that includes a stint embedded in Afghanistan, he considers a job that would ordinarily be beneath him—writing a puff piece for his alma mater's magazine. A classmate who runs the PR department for Maine's Hammel College offers Bishop $5,000 to profile alum Bryce Lermond, who's developed a new app that's able to shape dreams. Lured by the payday and a chance to visit his mother, a dementia patient who was once "one of the nation's preeminent scholars in the field of memory research," Bishop, who says he never dreams, agrees. Lermond persuades Bishop to beta test the app, Clarity, which plays an ominous song before Bishop loses consciousness. His investigative reporter senses go on even higher alert after Lermond's No. 2 at his company, an old friend of Bishop's, warns him never to use Clarity. Superior prose ("The elevator doors sealed across her like gravedigger's dirt") enhances a craftily twisted plot, which sticks its landing. Peter Straub fans will hope for more from Carson.
