Trust Me

Twenty-five years ago, Leo Vance was seven years old when a strange boy named Charlie became his closest friend. Charlie appeared when Leo was lonely, promised he would never leave, and always knew exactly what Leo needed to hear.

Then came the games.

At ten, Leo followed Charlie onto a rooftop after hearing the words he trusted most: "Trust me." Leo fell, suffered serious injuries, and woke to adults insisting that Charlie had never existed. Eventually, Leo learned to doubt his own memories and bury the childhood he could no longer explain.

But some things do not disappear simply because we stop believing in them.

Years later, Leo discovers that the one person who may have believed him was the exhausted old man who lived next door—a man Leo had been legally forbidden from approaching for decades. That man is Ethan Brooks, the survivor of the events surrounding Charlie in Don't Forget Me.

When Leo finally learns Ethan's story, he begins to understand that what happened to him was not an isolated childhood nightmare. The entity he knew as Charlie has worn many names, found many lonely children, and turned trust itself into a weapon. It isolates its victims, convinces the people who love them that they are dangerous or unstable, and waits patiently for them to forget.

Now the past is reaching into the next generation.

As old memories return and buried truths begin to surface, Leo must confront the place where forgotten children and abandoned memories remain trapped. To survive, he will have to decide what—and whom—he is willing to trust.

Because the thing in the darkness has been waiting.

And it has never forgotten him.