In the Dark of the Night

By: John Saul

Narrated by: Mel Foster

It has waited seven years for someone to come back to the rambling lakeside house called Pinecrest, which has stood empty since its last owner went missing.

For upscale Chicago couple Dan and Merrill Brewster, the old midwestern manse is an ideal retreat, and for their kids, Eric and Marci, it's the perfect place to spend a lazy summer exploring - which is how Eric and his teenage friends discover the curious cache of discarded objects stowed in a hidden room of Pinecrest's carriage house.

The bladeless hacksaws, shadeless lamps, tables with missing legs, headless axe handle, and other unremarkable items add up to a pile of junk. Yet someone took the trouble to inventory each worthless relic in a cryptic ledger. It has all the makings of a great mystery - whispering, coaxing, demanding to be solved.

But the more the boys devote themselves to restoring the forgotten possessions and piecing together the puzzle behind them, the more their fascination deepens into obsession. Soon their days are consumed with tending the strange, secret collection - while their nights become plagued by ever more ghastly dreams - nightmares that soon seep into reality.

And when a horrifying discovery surfaces, so does the chilling truth about the terrifying events that rocked the town seven years before and the mysterious disappearance of Pinecrest's last resident - a twisted legacy with a malevolent life of its own...and a bottomless hunger for new victims.

©2006 John Saul (P)2006 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

Critic reviews

"[An] undeniably creepy horror chiller." ( Publishers Weekly)
"Foster gives just the right touch to Eric and his friends while at the same time perfectly rendering the story's growing tension." ( AudioFile)

With in our Possessions

What an interesting story of 3 wealthy families who vacation together at Phantom Lake.Eric and his two friends spend an unusual amount of time going through old photos and objects in the old house that Erics parents have rented for the Summer.The objects they find happen to be the collection of the former houses owner a Dr.Darby,who was very eccentric in his collections,these items happened to once belong to various murderers,happen to be possessed by the evils that inhabit those people,causing Eric and his two friends to have horrific nightmares only to wonder and discover that those nightmares were real and if some how,they had caused them.Things get real on the 4th of July when an old homeless man decides to hatchet off the heads of all the celebrants gathered around to watch the fireworks.This act puts an end to Phantom Lake,a horrific scandal to cause the area to become deserted only to allow the evil to once again lay in wake for another opportunity to unleash the evil it's harbors.

Just Ok

I found this story quite boring. it took FOREVER to get interesting and it was too predictable. The narrator was great, the book itself was not.

John Saul

I've loved listening to John Saul books for a while. Thank you audible for the book.

Sigh....so disappointed.

I keep hoping Saul's books will be as good as I remember when I first read them in the 80's, but the last few have been somewhat disappointing.

This book reminds me of the television show Friday the 13th: The Series with its cursed objects. I failed to engage with the characters and just kept waiting for the book to conclude. The plot was not very original and the story would have made a better short story.

The narrator did a good job but I felt the voice effects (talking on phone, otherworldly voices) was extremely distracting and unnecessary.

This will most likely be the last John Saul novel I read or listen to.

Absolutely gripping

Once I got the book downloaded, I couldn’t put it down. I listened to it for two days straight, even falling asleep to it at night. Excellent book, has become my new favorite by John Saul. It’s a must have for your collection.