THE HANGMAN’S DAUGHTER

THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTERTwenty-five years ago, seven-year-old Maribel Keane disappeared into Blackpine Woods. Now she has come home.In 1994, Maribel vanished without a trace. No body was ever found. The only clue was a Victorian porcelain doll discovered beneath an ancient tree with a chilling message: THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER LIVES.Twenty-five years later, journalist Laurel Gray returns to Ashwick for the town's annual Harvest Ball. Among the music, fading Victorian grandeur, and crowded ballroom, she sees a little girl standing alone in the doorway-seven years old, dressed in black, with the same red ribbon Maribel wore the night she disappeared.It is Maribel.When the girl looks directly at Laurel, she says: "You left me there."Then the lights go out.When they return, Maribel has vanished.Again.Laurel's search for answers takes her into the dark history of Ashwick and the forbidding Blackpine Woods, where generations of unexplained disappearances have been quietly forgotten. Old legends speak of an executioner, a lost daughter, and something that has haunted the forest for more than a century.But the deeper Laurel investigates, the more disturbing the mystery becomes.Why has Maribel returned without aging a day?Who-or what-has been waiting in Blackpine Woods?And why does Laurel have memories of that night in 1994 that she cannot fully trust?As the past begins bleeding into the present, Laurel finds herself drawn toward a secret buried beneath the forest and a horror that seems to know her better than she knows herself.Somewhere in Blackpine, something remembers what happened.And it remembers Laurel.THE HANGMAN'S DAUGHTER is a fast-paced supernatural horror novella filled with psychological dread, dark folklore, childhood guilt, impossible appearances, disturbing disappearances, and a relentless mystery that blurs the line between memory and reality.The girl came back.The question is what came back with her.