Daniel Church Brings You the Sound of the Dark

On Tuesday, we were proud to present the highly anticipated cover reveal for The Sound of the Dark by the talented author Daniel Church. This gripping tale promises to transport readers into a world filled with suspense and chilling encounters. Today, we are honored to offer you an exclusive extract from this brilliant upcoming horror novel, allowing you a tantalizing glimpse into the intricate plot and the richly developed characters that await you. Prepare yourself for a journey that will keep you on the edge of your seat, as the chilling atmosphere unfolds with every page turned.

The Sound of the Dark by Daniel Church

2.

She brewed coffee, curled up on the sofa with her laptop, then rummaged through her shoulder-bag for her meds. She kept them, along with anything else she considered essential in her shoulder-bag, and which was rarely out of arm’s reach. That was a hangover from Karl, a boyfriend she’d ultimately needed to get away from very, very urgently; she’d left her pills behind and suffered several days of horrible discontinuation symptoms.

Cally logged into her Anchor and YouTube accounts to view the podcast’s stats, and was glad to see You Want It Darker’s figures growing slowly but steadily. People loved true crime: serial killers, unsolved murders, cold cases finally cracked after years of mystery and silence. Cally understood that; after all, she loved them too. 

She used a separate email account for podcast correspondence, but checked it once a week, if that; it usually only received junk mail. Monday was her usual day for that, so she shrugged and logged in there as well.

You have [17] unread messages.

“They’re slowing down,” she muttered, sipping her coffee. She marked most of the emails for deletion straight off, although only six were outright spam. Seven were notifications from YouTube – three new followers and four new comments; that left four, all seemingly direct messages from actual people. Not that that was much to crow about. The subject line of the first two messages were variations on the theme of ‘get back in the kitchen u ugly bitch,’ but with worse spelling and grammar. The third said Check this out Cally and had a picture attached; she almost deleted it unread, then decided to give the sender the benefit of the doubt.

“I’m going to regret this,” she muttered, and clicked the email. She really should have trusted her instincts: it was, exactly as she’d suspected, a dick pic. 

Talk about hope triumphing over experience. But they didn’t even bother her anymore; they were just boring. So she emailed back her standard response – Why have you sent me a picture of a child’s penis? I’ve informed the police – before blocking the sender, which with any luck would ruin the bastard’s morning. Cally smiled to herself: she’d take her victories, and dopamine hits, wherever she could find them.

One email remained.

Subject: The Other World’s End Murders.

“Well,” she muttered, “that’s different.”

Her last podcast had been on the 1977 ‘World’s End’ Murders of Christine Eadie and Helen Scott in Edinburgh, and the 2014 conviction of Angus Sinclair for the killings. They hadn’t been Sinclair’s only victims, but the email’s title suggested something else.

The biggest problem for a true crime podcast was that virtually every serial killer and high-profile single crime had already been done to death (ha-ha,) and Cally was still fighting to catch people’s attention. To do that, she needed to pique their interest with less familiar cases. 

Such cases were often less-known for good reason –they were less sensational, or less information was in the public domain – but while Cally had wandered for years from undemanding office job to undemanding office job to make enough to live on, she could summon vast reserves of dedication when what Iain liked to call ‘the weird shit you’re into’ was involved. The digging and research that went into preparing a podcast, as far as she was concerned, was actual fun. 

She’d been particularly proud of her work on one recent case, so seeing it mentioned in the email was more than enough both to brighten her Monday and put her a receptive mood for the message as a whole.

Hi Cally,

Just wanted to let you know I love the podcast and I think it’s getting better with every episode. I was really impressed by the Miles Giffard one. That case is nowhere near as well-known as it should be, and you did a great job providing the background and detail that brought it to life.

The World’s End Murders one was excellent, too, but have you ever thought of doing one on the ‘other’ World’s End Murders, from 1983? There’s hardly anything about them out there (maybe because some idiot journalist used that name for them, so they always get pushed to the back of the search results by the 1977 case,) but what’s there’s pretty interesting. My family used to live near Blackpool, which is how I heard about it. Here’s a couple of links, anyway – practically all I could find online.

Keep up the great work!

Best,

Pete.

Cally moved the cursor to the first link, hesitating. The email address was a word salad – p56283@gnetmail.org – scammers were getting ever more inventive, or so she kept hearing. But the text of the message itself seemed genuine.

Decisions, decisions.

She went to sip her coffee, and realised the mug was empty. Well, that gave her time to think, or an excuse to delay. Cally padded back into the kitchen and brewed another cup, but when she came back the same links and the same decision were waiting for her: to click or not to click?

Cally sighed, put the mug down and moved the cursor to the first hyperlink. She hesitated once more, then wagged a finger at the laptop screen.

“If I end up with a computer virus,” she muttered, “I’m bloody well hunting you down.”

And then she clicked the link.

3.

The first link, via the Wayback Machine, was to the long-defunct gore.net, a late ‘90s/early Noughties website that had prided itself on displaying the most graphic images imaginable in the name of ‘Documenting Reality.’ The ‘Fresh posts’ listed down one side of the webpage included ‘Poop fetish’ (no way in Hell was Cally clicking that,) ‘helicopter decapitation’ and ‘shotgun suicide.’ The page she’d arrived on, however, was headed ‘murder scene photos.’ 

The first shot showed an expanse of grass, the very end of some sort of white-painted metal structure protruding into either side of the frame. The sky was blue, turning dark directly overhead, and beyond the grass was the sea, into which the sun was setting, a dull red smear. On the open ground in the middle of the picture lay two bodies.

One lay on its back, arms outflung, legs tangled together, the other face down, feet splayed apart. Even at that distance it was clear both victims were young.

Not exactly graphic, but nonetheless arresting and deeply sad. The empty grass, the empty sky, the empty sea, the two bodies the only objects of note. The one on the right wore jeans, or maybe dungarees. The one on the left wore a pink-and-white check gingham dress, the kind Cally had worn at primary school, which brought back ugly memories as her schooldays had been anything but pleasant. She shook her head and scrolled down to the next picture, to find herself viewing a close-up of the child in the gingham dress. 

The head was gone. There was a stump of a neck with rags of skin and hair attached, and the surrounding grass was sodden, blackish-red, strewn with dark lumps and pale, china-like shards. Otherwise, nothing.

The Sound of the Dark by Daniel Church

This atmospheric and eerie folk horror explores the endless effects of sound on our psyche, with plenty of thrills to keep the reader on the edge of their seat. Looking Glass Sound meets The Angel of Indian Lake.

A fun and unpredictable adventure that’s also genuinely creepy.

ABOUT THE BOOK: In 1983 experimental artist Tony Mathias began work on a new installation – it was to be a collage of visuals and sounds collected at an abandoned RAF base called Warden Fell. Various stories and rumours swirled around the place but Tony was interested only in the echoes of history. But soon after visiting the site to tape-record the sounds there, he returned to the caravan where he was staying with his family and killed his wife, his two children and then himself. Another dark twist in Warden Fell’s history?

But the past reaches out. Decades later Cally Darker, gets the chance to investigate the terrible story and perhaps even solve the mystery – a fantastic exclusive story for her true-crime podcast. Tony’s actress sister Stella is desperate for the mystery to be solved before she dies will do all she can to help and passes on the tapes left behind by her brother. But before long, Cally realises that Warden Fell has a far older and darker story to tell. Be careful what you listen to…

Set in the lonely and craggy Warden Fell in Lancashire, The Sound of the Dark explores loneliness, isolation, the physical and psychological damages of sensory overwhelm…

ABOUT Daniel Church:

Daniel Church grew up in Manchester and still lives in the North of England with the love of his life. He loves nature, hills, woods, forest, lakes, rivers, the sea and dogs. He also writes horror fiction. His first novel, The Hollows, was short-listed for the 2023 British Fantasy Society’s Horror Novel of the Year, and The Ravening was published in September 2024. Find Daniel on BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/dannythechurch.bsky.social

Praise for Daniel Church

“The Hollows grabs you by the throat from the first page and doesn’t let up. Church has crafted a masterful action-horror in which small town evil meets aeons-buried horror and the personal stakes are just as powerfully rendered as the cosmic ones.”
– James Brogden, author of Hekla’s Children

“Ellie proves a heroine worth rooting for and the Harper clan make for ruthless and formidable antagonists. This claustrophobic outing is sure to resonate with horror readers.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Daniel Church’s tale of a small community ravaged by unnatural forces – and the way its inhabitants fight back – is beautifully told, right from the first finely honed paragraph. It has a wonderfully atmospheric setting, fizzing dialogue and sharply drawn characters you won’t forget in a hurry.”
– A.J. Elwood, author of The Cottingley Cuckoo

“The Hollows combines human monstrousness and uncanny dread in a breathlessly suspenseful narrative. Startlingly violent, compellingly weird, it carries us through levels of fear to a climax of cosmic terror worthy of the classics.”
– Ramsey Campbell, multiple World Fantasy Award-winner

“The Hollows is an epically ambitious novel given a quality of intimacy by its depth of characterisation and secure rooting in location and season. Proof that folk horror can be not just sinister, but a white-knuckle ride of thrills.”
– F.G. Cottam, author of The House of Lost Souls

“It should please fans of folk horror such as The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy or the folklore-inspired crime fiction of Sharon Bolton’s stand-alone novels.”
– Booklist

“Folk horror meets small-town police procedural with a side of revenge and redemption as police constable Ellie and a likable group of ragtag helpers work together to stop the end of the world.”
– Library Journal

“Stormbound and suspenseful, The Hollows is a barnstorming rollercoaster of action and tension, set on home turf as if John Carpenter directed an episode of Happy Valley.”
– Stephen Volk, author of The Awakening