Six perpetrators.
A means for the scarred, abused, and powerless to take their revenge upon those who have wronged them. To make them pay the ultimate price for their crimes.
Dan Hepworth is forced to return to his home town of Scarsdale after his mother’s death where memories of fear and abuse still haunt him. His disabled sister, Lindsey, and her live-in nurse, Alison, still reside in his mother’s isolated rural house where Dan is to spend the next few days for his mother’s funeral. However, all is not right in Scarsdale. A ghostly robed man walks the hills around the town at night and unearthly singing had been heard coming from the derelict asylum across the valley.
Worse still, retired nurses and ex-patients from the asylum are being targeted at night by unknown assailants, enduring psychological and physical attacks on their person and property with the word CHOIR scrawled across the walls of their homes after each attack. When Dan’s sister, Lindsey, is visited by the robed apparition and those around her are stalked by the violent assailants, Dan begins to uncover uncomfortable truths and dark secrets about the asylum and its former patients.
Dan starts a perilous journey into the past as he gets close to finding out the identity of the nocturnal attackers, the abuse carried out on those too weak to defend themselves, and the reason why the ghostly singing can be heard from the asylum at night. Alone and isolated in the run-down former hospital, Dan will need to accept the mind-bending truth as he comes face to face with the Dark Choir.
Once upon a time, one woman stood up for those who could not defend themselves. One nurse dared to speak out against the horrific abuse at the asylum, but she was shot down, shut up and driven out.
Dan Hepworth knows what it is to be abused. He grew up under the thumb of an abusive religious fanatic, but he has moved on from his traumatic childhood, escaped his mother's clutches and built a life for himself, never to see or speak to her again. Now she is dead and Dan is forced to return to his hometown to tie up loose ends and arrange for the care of his older sister Lindsey who is disabled. He plans to stay only a few days but soon becomes entangled in the mystery of the choir.
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, and The Dark Choir certainly provides generous and heaping portions. Perfectly chilled and aged to perfection. Just when those most deserving least expect it, the singing starts and vengeance is served. I am not a vindictive person but as it pulled me toward a most satisfying conclusion I almost sang along.
5 out of 5 stars
I received a complimentary copy for review.
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About the author
Paul’s publishing history includes a short story in Dark Horizons, (The British Fantasy Society’s fiction magazine) about a farm that bred humans for meat. More recently a story of his was featured in issue 13 of Murky Depths magazine. This joyful piece was a satire on euthanasia entitled Do Not Resuscitate. In October 2010 one of his stories was included in the anthology Shoes, Ships and Cadavers: Tales from Northlondonshire. Edited by Ian Whates and Ian Watson with an introduction by Alan Moore (a Kindle version of this anthology is being considered by NewCon Press for release during 2011).
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