A series of British horror novels for young adults. They have all been written by different authors under the pen names "Damian Graves" and "Nick Shadow." Quite a few books have been published, but only eight have been published for the 2000s era. Each story revolves around the unfortunate tale of some kids who find themselves facing terrifying, supernatural threats, and each one leads up to a new ending that's bound to scar the reader's brains for quite some time. What makes the stories even more horrifying is that these are all kids suffering these fates. Eat your heart out, R. L. Stine.
For the unrelated Matt Haig novel, see The Midnight Library (2020).
Books in the series
- Voices
- Blood and Sand
- End Game
- The Cat Lady
- Liar
- Shut Your Mouth
- I Can See You
- The Catch (US title: The Deadly Catch)
- The Whisperer
- No Escape
- Dream Demon
- Blind Witness
This series includes examples of:
- And I Must Scream: The writers just love this trope. One story has a boy sealed in a mural, one has a girl trapped inside a meat freezer (with a dead cellphone), another has people slowly turning into trees, and yet another has two kids turned into human sand sculptures at a beach contest. There's also a girl who gets her mouth sewn shut because she stole some candy, a girl whose telepathy eventually overwhelms her and drives her to insanity, and a boy whose sneakers take on a life of their own and force him to run until he literally drops dead from exhaustion.
- Anti-Villain: Miss Tibalt, from "the Cat Lady". Granted she is a possible witch who turns children into cats to keep, but she seems to genuinely love and care for them. She also holds no ill will to poor Chloe for accidentally killing one....but she now wants Chloe to replace it.
- The Bad Guy Wins: You can guarantee this will be the outcome provided the story has a true villain.
- "Man's Best Friend": Even though Ben expels the demon from its parrot vessel and his parents return to normal, the demon than enters his dog, because he didn't complete the incantation. His only hope is if he can recite the spell again correctly, but considering how much a struggle it was last time...
- "An Apple A Day": Tim pranks Bill Cole and eats one of the nasty farmer's apples. This backfires grotesquely when he transforms into an apple tree, and Bill gets a new addition to his orchard, right next to Tim's Grandpa.
- "Liar": "Jessica", Lauren's online alter-ego, becomes real, and thus Lauren becomes imaginary while Jessica takes over her life.
- "I Can See You": The undead Farmer Axby hunts down and kills all the kids playing the flashlight game, one by one.
- "Dream Demon": Alfie thinks he's escaped the ghostly monk, but the ghost materializes through a painting of the Abbey his grandma brought over. Alfie gets garroted.
- "Carnival Dance": Martina's friend Simon turns out to be possessed by Ah Puch at the parade. He unleashes his power on the crowds, sucking the life from everyone and preparing to conquer the world.
- Big "NO!": Brandon lets out a terrified one at the end of "Picture Perfect." Considering what's in store for him, you'd probably do the same.
- Body Horror:
- "An Apple a Day." The protagonist tries to get back at his cruel neighbour for picking on his grandma by vandalizing his apple orchard. As a souvenir, he eats one of the apples. The remainder of the story shows him now slowly and painfully transforming into an apple tree.
- Also present in "Shut Your Mouth", where a group of girls get their comeuppance for stealing candy from an old man's shop. He gives them "special" candy that ends up sewing their mouths completely shut.
- Bowdlerize:Some stories in the American editions were altered to tone down the gruesome violence and explicit death in the original printings. Because of this, some had completely different and slightly less dark endings.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: In 2008, Goma Books published a series that adapts the stories into short Manga, which weren't published in English. Notably, several stories have a cute Bishoujo style that contrasts to the disturbing and dark nature of the stories.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Several deaths manage to be horrific and painful even lacking gore.
- "No Escape": The kids sent back in time are burned alive at the stake by deranged villagers who think they're the evil witch children.
- "Fashion Victim": Becky is suffocated by the magic dress she's wearing at a fashion show, her ribcage being crushed as her oblivious sister tightens the dress on the voodoo doll from the shop.
- "Who Dares Wins": Mark is left trapped in a trunk with small airholes by his sociopathic "friend" Chrissie, who tricked him and Anil into her deadly games, and has just murdered the latter. As he's left to be buried alive at a construction site, Mark reads Chrissie's last message: "Winner dies quick. Loser dies slow."
- "The Caretaker": The titular Caretaker is a slasher villain from a mysterious horror film. His M.O is telepathically assaulting the mind of his victims, bringing forth their worst fears so they die screaming in horrible terror. He notes that he couldn't pull that trick on Alex's parents, but says Alex is a different matter entirely...
- "Blind Witness": Liam is brutally beaten to death in a nightmare after receiving an eye transplant from a murdered man. The real kicker? The man's killer was Lian's father. And Lian only knew this as he experienced his own father do the same to him. Jesus, this series.
- Darkness Equals Death: The premise of "I Can See You" is an after-dark game of hide and seek on the land where a crazed farmer burned to death. Things go south really, really fast....
- Death of a Child: All over the place.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- Stealing an apple from Bill Cole's orchard earns you a gruesome transformation into one of his apple trees.
- In "No Escape", Abby does a jig jokingly over the grave of four executed witch children.Said witch kids get revenge by sending her and her friends back in time, to be hunted down and burned at the stake like they were centuries ago.
- Downer Ending: Damn near every single story has this. Either the heroes are about to die, or have found something that makes death a ''blessing.''
- Emotion Control: A mood ring has this ability in one story, randomly changing the emotions of the girl who wears it. Played for drama/horror; at one point, it makes her burst into uncontrollable laughter after finding out one of her classmates died in an accident.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
- Miss Tibalt, the titular character of "The Cat Lady", genuinely loves and cares for the cats she keeps. Considering most of said cats are likely children she's transformed, that's saying a lot.
- Farmer Axby of "I Can See You" became a murderous ghost after he died in a fire looking for his long-gone wife and children.
- Liam's father from "Blind Witness" is a ruthless, murderous gangster who's often cold to Liam, but he cares enough for his son that he takes time off to help him after he's blinded in an accident, and give him new eyes from a man he recently murdered.
- Exact Words: In "The Sandman", John and Sarah confront the titular sculptor for his illicit art methods. He promises not to make anymore dead animals into sand sculptures. Unfortunately for them, the Sandman didn't say anything about live humans...
- Extremely Protective Child: Tim Barnett of "An Apple A Day" is a tragic deconstruction. Seeing his Grandma cowed by the bullying Bill Cole motivates him to vandalize Cole's orchard to teach the selfish old man a lesson, despite his grandma warning him not to. It ultimately causes his demise when he eats an apple and becomes a new tree, feeding Cole's goading and leaving his Grandmother all alone.
- Faux Affably Evil: In his guise as "Sam", Ah Puch is quite caring and friendly, before unveiling his monstrous nature as a death god.
- Feathered Fiend: The parrot in "Man's Best Friend" is one possessed by a gleefully homicidal demon who murdered the protagonist's grandfather and enjoys rubbing in his face just how much control he has over the household.
- Jerkass Gods: "Carnival Dance" features the Mayan God of the Dead, Ah Puch. Unsurprisingly, he's not here to make friends.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Sadie from "Fashion Victim" is a snooty and cold woman who gets unreasonably angry at Becky for trying on a dress she designed for Becky's friend Daisy. You'd think she'd be the villain, but as it turns out she genuinely wants to save the girls from the dress's deadly power. Not that it does any good, however.
- Karma Houdini: Every single villain. Even if the antagonist is already dead, their undead spirit will still succeed in killing the protagonists and going on to enact more harm. Well, it wouldn't be the type of series it is if this wasn't constant, now would it?
- Mad Artist: The Sandman from "Blood And Sand" is somewhat of a subversion since while he creates lifelike sand sculptures out of dead animals, he states they were dead to begin with and he just sought to tribute them. When two kids discover his secret, though, he decides to make some sculptures of people for once...
- Manipulative Bastard: Ah Puch delivers a surprisingly good performance as a caring friend while he manipulates the humans into preparing his return.
- Multiple Endings: A few stories with extremely dark endings were altered in American editions to be a bit more hopeful.
- Is Anyone There? originally ended with Juliet trapped in the freezer with Luke's corpse. The American version has her freed by Luke's spirit, and she races to reveal the truth of his murder.
- A Perfect Fit had Had Tyler die when the running shoes threw him in front of a tanker. He survives in the newer edition and gets the shoes off, but in both endings another kid finds them.
- The Babysitter ended with the doppelgangers presumably replacing the entire family, but in the American edition the main girl escapes and vows to find and save her family someday.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: So, so much. You'd think there'd be a lot of Asshole Victims, but no, most of the characters who suffer horrible misfortune and death are very nice, well-meaning kids. It really serves to make the stories feel way more mean-spirited.
- Portal Picture: The mural in "Picture Perfect" turns out to be one. You really should've paid attention to that inscription, Brandon.
- Psychic Powers: A more terrifying example in "Voices." The Girl in the story has the power to read other people's thoughts, but this backfires horribly when she begins reading too many minds at once.
- Red Herring:
- "Killing Time": Jordan is a scummy, borderline sociopathic kid who Alexis suspects of poisoning her friend Tori, and later a dog she befriended. Turns out he didn't-Alexis unlocked a deadly power that kills with just one wink, which happened after she winked at Tori, the dog, and eventually her reflection.
- "Carnival Dance": Adam starts acting strangely when he dons the mask of Ah Puch for a carnival parade. Martina's worry grows, and eventually she realizes he's been possessed by the the evil god through the mask. She's halfway right-when she pulls it off, Adam reveals he isn't Ah Puch's host, but his puppet, and that his true host is their friend Sam.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Every single effing story is this. No one ever escapes their grisly fate, the villain always lives to claim more innocents, and quite often the protagonist's family and friends get pulled down with them. It really is a bleak series. The few endings with a smidgen of hope were edited from their original UK release, which are just as hopeless as most of the stories.
- Transflormation: "An Apple a Day" concerns a young boy steals an apple from a neighbour's orchard, turning out to belong to a local witch, then he starts his horrifically slow transformation into an apple tree with his face on it.
- Vengeful Ghost: Farmer Axby from "I Can See You", a gruesomely burned farmer who haunts the land of his death.
- Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: The aforementioned Axby is vengeful and merciless enough to kill playing children, but he's also a man who went mad with grief when his wife and kids left him, leading to his death in a fire. It's implied he's also very, very angry at the town turning his death into a flashlight tag game.
- Would Hurt a Child: Just about every villain. Special mention goes to Old Bill Cole, who mutates them into apple trees, and Farmer Axby, who hunts them down and reduces them to ash.
