Riley Sager

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Middle of the Night

The worst thing to ever happen on Hemlock Circle occurred in Ethan Marsh’s backyard. One July night, ten-year-old Ethan and his best friend Billy fell asleep together in a tent set up on a manicured lawn in the quiet New Jersey cul de sac. In the morning, Ethan woke up alone. The tent was sliced open, and Billy was gone. He was never seen again. Thirty Years later, Ethan has reluctantly returned to his childhood home, but plagued by bad dreams and insomnia, he begins to notice strange things happening in the middle of the night. Someone is roaming the cul de sac at odd hours, and signs of Billy’s presence keep appearing in his backyard. Ethan is forced to investigate what really happened that night, a quest that leads him into the quiet woods surrounding Hemlock Circle, where a mysterious institute enacts secretive research on a crumbling estate. The closer Ethan gets to the truth, the more he realizes that no place, even the quietest of suburban streets, is completely safe. And that the past has a way of haunting the present.