Description:
Not many seventeen year old girls have a best friend who’s a ghost, but then Mary Hades isn’t your average teenager.
Scarred physically and mentally from a fire, her parents decide a holiday to an idyllic village in North Yorkshire will help her recover. Nestled in the middle of five moors, Mary expects to have a boring week stuck in a caravan with her parents. Little does she know, evil lurks in the campsite…
Seth Lockwood—a local fairground worker with a dark secret—might be the key to uncovering the murky history that has blighted Nettleby. But Mary is drawn to him in a way that has her questioning her judgement.
Helped by her dead best friend and a quirky gay Goth couple, Mary must stop the unusual deaths occurring in Nettleby. But can she prevent her heart from being broken?
The first in a series of dark YA novels, Mary Hades follows on from the bestselling Kindle Single My Daylight Monsters. A spine-tingling tale with romance, readers will be shocked and entertained in equal measure.
When I started writing My Daylight Monsters, I was very influenced by Gothic literature. That’s a very broad brush. I always loved Victorian Gothics, like Dracula and The Picture of Dorian Grey. These novels always have a supernatural element and always have some sort of dark, looming presence. In My Daylight Monsters, that presence is the hospital, and the deepest fears we harbour there. In Mary Hades, that looming presence is the Yorkshire moors—of course, inspired by Wuthering Heights. Other influences could include Daphne Du Maurier. I had a few scenes from Jamaica Inn playing in my mind as I wrote this book. Mary Hades is much more grown up than my other novels. In the past, my books like The Blemished and White Hart have been more suited to younger YA. Mary Hades is best for older teens and adults.
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Yup, you better believe it. In the midst of fighting a really scary ghost, Mary manages a holiday romance. Hey, call me a romantic, but I think a girl needs to take some time off from her ghost hunting once in a while.
In all seriousness, I want the books to be scary AND uplifting. There’s a definite contemporary feel to the writing, and hopefully that ties in with the romance.
EXCERPT
Chapter One
The
promise of July: sunglasses and cut off shorts, feeling the warm blades of
grass between your toes, trips to the brook at the edge of the woods, short
nights that seem to go on forever—smothering you with oppressive heat until you
wake up gasping for breath, your hair plastered to the back of your neck.
The long days provide freedom
from school and parents, and often even friends. It’s a time to be alone, to
let yourself grow, to shed another layer of skin as you progress through
adolescence. Each summer tracks your maturity with the flakes of skin trailing
your footsteps. Those layers are childhood husks. You know that when you go
back to school, passing notes in class will become a thing of the past; too
immature for us now. Crushes become relationships. Gossip turns from who
snogged who to who shagged who.
We are in the midst of that
rarest of things—a warm and sunny English summer. It has lasted for almost two
weeks and even the old ladies at the bus stop have stopped talking about the
weather. No one wants to jinx it. No one wants to frighten the sun away. We
treat it like a bird in the garden, tip-toeing our way through the lawn, trying
not to startle it into taking to its wings and abandoning us.
I’ve been waiting for this
moment. Since the fire, my burns have taken time to heal. Now the bandages are
off, and I can go out in the sunshine. I want to enjoy the rest of my summer
before it fades into September and brings the school term with it. The thought
of exams and coursework make my abdomen clench with anxiety. Right now, I want
to forget about all that, enjoy being alive, enjoy my well-earned freedom.
But as soon as the opportunity is
within my grasp, it’s snatched away by those who-think-they-know-best. I find
myself pouting like a little girl, regressing into the stereotypical teen,
whinging away at my parents.
“You’ll enjoy it, Mary.” Mum has
her back to me, folding clean clothes into three neat piles. One of those piles
is mine. “It’s nice to get away from here. There will be plenty of people your
age.”
“Camping?” I say again. “I shouldn’t be going camping with my
parents anymore. I’m seventeen.” The
words it’s not fair are within
dangerous proximity. I’m a cliché.
She turns towards me and seizes a
t-shirt from the basket. “It’s a static caravan on a campsite. It’s not like
you’ll be in a tent. Discos every night—”
“For children.”
“—entertainment—”
“For children.”
She purses her lips. “The holiday
will be what you make of it.” Her eyes dart to the door and back again. She
lowers her voice. “It’s all we can afford this year. You know, since your
father lost that job.” She mouths the last words as though she’s ashamed to say
them.
Dad used to teach at a private
school. It was a good job, bringing in a high salary. But they decided to cut
back in the science department and now he’s had to take a job at a
comprehensive school in Leeds. It’s an hour’s commute and less pay. I see less
of him, and he spends a large portion of his salary on petrol. Mum’s a full
time office manager, but her firm has had a freeze on pay-rises for the last
three years, due to the recession.
“You should be proud of his new
job,” I say. “There’s nothing wrong with it.”
“I am,” she replies. “But your
father isn’t. That’s why it’s easiest to avoid the subject.” A silence hangs
for a moment. No matter what she says, I hear that tone in her voice, the one
that speaks louder than her words. Now she can’t turn her nose up at the
riff-raff at the office, or attend the Christmas prom at Dad’s old school
wearing her one diamond necklace. She’s back to being a regular wife. “Mary,
take these clothes up to your room and start packing.”
The bundle of clothes is thrust
into my arms and I pull it to my body, inhaling the clean scent. My feet pad
across the carpet.
When I’m halfway to the hall, Mum
calls out, “Hey, you never know, you could have a holiday romance.” She waggles
her eyebrows for emphasis.
“In Nettleby, North Yorkshire?
I’d be lucky to find anyone under sixty,” I reply. But somehow the tension
fades and we both laugh at the same time.
She pauses before she says, “You
know, I hope there is a nice boy in Nettleby. It would do you good.” Her eyes
drift to the scars on my neck and the smile fades from my face.
I shake the uneasy feeling away,
the one that tells me my mum wants someone to make me feel attractive again.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe it won’t be so bad. After everything that has happened
in the last few months, it’ll be nice to spend some time with my parents. And
to be honest, Nettleby does sound peaceful, and peace is what I could do with,
right now.
My fingers fumble with the door
handle to my room. My room. The one place in this house I can call my own.
The summer has turned it into a
hot house, with sunlight streaming through the attic window. Tiny specks of
dust are illuminated as they hang in the air like daylight stars. I flop down
on the bed, the motion wobbling the mirror-ball I keep on my bedside table
where it catches the light from the window. Squares of gold move along the
pastel blue curtains, dance over my dressing table, and travel shakily across
my MGMT poster.
I bury my head in the duvet,
inhaling the scent of lavender from Mum’s brand of washing powder. As much as
we clash with each other, if she was hurt or died, I would come into my room,
smell the lavender, and have the world pulled from under my feet. She’s a rock,
and I have to remind myself of that, even when she’s really annoying.
She helped me get better.
Well, she tried.
As my mind drifts from daylight
stars to daylight monsters, the temperature of the room dips, and my muscles
tense. A prickling cold spreads over my skin. Someone is here.
A light film of sweat forms on my
forehead as I inch myself up on my elbows. At the end of the bed stands a girl,
about my age, and most definitely dead.
Not that you can tell.
Her blond hair falls into her
eyes, which are ringed in black. She wears a grey hoody, with the hood down,
and grey jogging bottoms without a cord or belt. Her blue eyes bore into mine.
Her jaw opens to speak…
“’Sup, Mares? Give you a fright
did I? Couldn’t knock or owt, what with the… you know.”
“Inability to take corporeal
form?” I say.
“That’s the one.” She grins at
me. “So what’s the news? The afterlife is boring as hell.”
A shiver of guilt passes down my
spine.
Did I forget to mention that my
best friend is a ghost? Well, it’s complicated. I was in a mental institute at
the time—so was Lacey—and we had a murderer to find. The day that he found us,
I had expected to die; instead, he killed Lacey. He stabbed her in the back.
Since then she’s stuck around.
“We’re going camping,” I say with
a groan. “Can you believe it?”
Lacey leaps forward to grab my
arm, but her form crackles like electricity and fails to make contact. “Damn
it, stupid ghost form. Camping though, mate. That’s awesome! I used to love
camping. Can I come?”
I laugh. “Sure, you can come. You
know the drill though, right?”
Lacey chuckles. “You mean I’m not
allowed to stand next to people pulling faces and twerking on them?”
“Oh man, I got thrown out of that
cinema but it was so worth it.” I can’t keep the grin off my face as I remember
Lacey dancing around the cinema, rubbing her bum against the unsuspecting
people on the front row. I almost choked on my popcorn. Unfortunately, my then
boyfriend didn’t find it so amusing. “Mo still hasn’t called. I can’t believe
he ended it like that.”
“Fuck him,” she says. “Actually,
no, don’t. Delete him. Delete his number, burn the photos—get him out of your
life. He’s not worth it. You would think after everything he’s been through
he’d have more of an open mind.”
I met Mo on Magdelena Ward. I was
in for schizo hallucinations, he was in for paranoid schizophrenia. I guess it
was always doomed to fail, but the final nail hit the coffin when I told him
about Lacey. He reckoned my “negativity” and inability to “see the truth” could
tip him over the edge when it came to his mental health. I don’t blame him, to
be honest. But that doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed in him. Why couldn’t he
trust in me?
Lacey leans forward and my skin
chills again. “Seriously. Forget about him. He’s not worth it. He’s not worth you.”
Lacey Holloway, the
one-woman-ghost committed to bolstering my self-esteem. It’s a tough job, but
someone’s got to do it. A hesitant smile forms on my lips, but then I remember
how Lacey will never have another relationship and that smile is replaced by a
heavy feeling of guilt: like a woollen blanket, familiar but itchy.
“Mum said I might have a holiday
romance,” I say.
“That is a perfect idea. You need
to get over Mo.” Her eyes widen with excitement. “I can be your wing-ghost.”
I start laughing, but then catch
my reflection in my dressing table mirror. My hair is long, thick and dark.
Destined to never be tamed, it falls over my eyes and ripples down to my collar
bones. But from the laughter, I’ve shaken it away from my pale, oval face.
My fingers rise to my throat, which has become
exposed from me tipping my head back. There I trace the lasting reminder from
the fire at Magdelena. There I trace the translucent white marks left to me by
Dr. Gethen. My nightmares are filled with that night. I replay it over and
over. My skin warms beneath my fingertips, as though I’m there again. I pull
myself away, move my hair over my neck, and try not to think about it.
“You’re coming camping with me,
then?” I ask Lacey. “Because there’s no way I’m getting through the week on my
own.”
She winks at me. “Do ducks fart
underwater?”
I frown. “Eh?”
She laughs. “I dunno, my dad used
to say it. Yes, Mary, of course I’m coming!”
To drown out the sound of me
talking to a ghost, I put on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at full blast. Before long
we’re wailing along with Karen O. Lacey dances around the room, crackling and
sparking like a broken television. My suitcase fills up and I don’t even care
about camping, anymore. At some point, I forget that Lacey is dead. I forget
about how her body is in the graveyard three miles away, off the main road
heading north. The Lacey I know is the vibrant, dancing, singing girl pogoing
up and down with her arms spread wide. A rush of something—I don’t know
what—fills me up from my toes to my ears. Maybe it’s that freedom I wanted.
*
The smell
of exhaust fumes sneaks in through the open car window. The leather seats stick
to my bare thighs, and the sound of honking horns is my soundtrack as everyone
decides to try to travel on the motorway at the same time. In the front of the
car, my parents argue while holding the AA road map across the dashboard. I
lean back against the head rest of the back seat in our stationary vehicle, and
zone out the traffic jam, parental swearing, and fumes by plugging in my iPod
and escaping into the music.
A few hours later—after a greasy
meal at the motorway service station—we leave the major roads behind at last,
and navigate the twisting rural lanes of North Yorkshire. It’s moorland here,
heather growing amongst the spongy grass, stretching out for what feels like
forever. Jagged rocks peek out of hillsides. The occasional sheep looks up and
stares at our car, chewing its grass in a languid, deliberate motion, as though
its mind is occupied elsewhere.
I lean forward, hitting the back
of Mum’s seat with my shoulder. “There’s nothing
here. What are we going to be doing?”
“We’re not there yet,” Dad
reminds me, grinning at me in the rear view mirror. “Positive thinking, Mares.”
I sigh and lean back into my
seat. I guess he’s right. I let my head swing to one side, watching the world
go by. This bit—I like.
I love the way the greens and
browns merge together as the car travels through the countryside. Beneath me
the car rocks like a cradle. I used to read wherever we went somewhere, but now
I follow the landscape with my eyes, picking out the occasional stream, the
flowers in the grass verge, and the black and white splodges of cows.
A fleeting memory pops into my
mind—driving through the countryside with Dad, him slowing the car to a crawl
so I can reach out of the open window and pick the long flowers swaying above
the reedy grass. He had one of those ‘Dad’ smiles—the ones where their eyes are
sad because you’re growing up so fast. Then he whispered, “Don’t tell your mum.
If she knew you’d had even a finger out of that window…” I’d giggled. Knowing
that we were breaking Mum’s car-rules made it even more fun.
But then the world changes. That
safe feeling is pulled out from underneath me, as though I’ve leapt high into
the air before glancing down to see the trampoline disappear. My heart freezes
before it quickens and the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. My throat
tightens. I clutch the edge of the seat so hard I feel the blood drain from my
hands.
You would think I’m used to
seeing them now, but I’m not. I never will be.
Standing like a scarecrow in the
middle of a crop field, is one of them.
Its skull shines through its face, and haunting sunken eyes stare at me, dark
as night. A chill passes over my body.
This is a warning.
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About the author:
She is the author of the popular YA dystopia series 'Blemished' and the gothic novella 'My Daylight Monsters'. Her latest series is called White Hart – a YA fantasy about a girl who hides magical powers from everyone around her.
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1 comment:
longest giveaway ever, could make the world record books... lol
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