Going to the Boulder House is a field trip that the senior class of River Red High won't soon forget... if they survive to remember it, that is. A house that's home to unimaginable terror is explored by five teenagers in The Devils You Know, the new horror adventure novel from M.C. Atwood (and it sounds like it will be right up your alley if you enjoy Channel Zero: No-End House). To celebrate the book's release today from Soho Teen, we've been provided with an excerpt to share with Daily Dead readers that offers insights into the haunting backstory of the Boulder House.

You can learn about the twisted history of the Boulder House by reading our excerpt from The Devils You Know below, and to learn more, visit Soho Press, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and IndieBound.

The Devils You Know synopsis: "Plenty of rumors surround the Boulder House, but nobody takes them seriously. Certainly nobody believes that the original owner cursed its construction—or that a murder of crows died upon its completion, their carcasses turning the land black. If anyone did believe it all, there's no way River Red High would offer a field trip there for the senior class. When five seniors are separated from the group, they discover that what lies within Boulder House is far more horrifying than any local folklore."

Excerpt:

WHEN MAXWELL CARTWRIGHT, JR., CUT into the boulder to build the House, they say a murder of crows landed and perched in the trees around him. They stayed there until they starved to death, every last one of them. The forest floor turned black with their corpses.

Every day, Maxwell dug deep into the cursed land, forming the House so that it wrapped itself around and above an in and through the boulder. Until the House was the land and the land was the House.

He hired vagrants and wanderers, people easily forgotten, to labor and hack and cut and sweat until the foundation of the House took form. They say those unfortunate workers sacrificed unwillingly—their bones becoming the very foundation of the House—so that Maxwell’s power grew unchecked.

When the last stone of the House in the boulder was laid, Maxwell looked at what he had wrought and rolled his shoulders. He cracked his neck. He smiled a wicked smile. Lightning struck each tree that stood around him. The wind, starting as a breeze, blew with a gale force so fierce it blew the bones of the crows three counties over. They say the land glowed red. Some say his eyes did, too.

But he wasn’t finished. Maxwell Cartwright, Jr., had just begun.

He started collecting. He traveled to the farthest corners of the Earth, bringing back enchanted and cursed objects, objects that seemed to have a life of their own. Anything and everything and everyone that caught his eye, he bought, he stole, he bartered for. But his favorite way of procuring his collection was to play for it. Maxwell Cartwright, Jr., loved to play games. Because he always won.

He added warehouse upon warehouse to his creation, rooms to house his collections as he won them. Rooms that ran one into another so that those who entered were enveloped completely, stuck in the twisting paths of his twisted mind. He gave these rooms themes, sinister homes for the objects he now owned. Maxwell added bands that played by themselves, fortunetellers in glass cases. He recreated entire streets stuck in time, built huge scenes with mythical creatures. He collected snow globes and sailboats, sculptures and statues, mannequins and marionettes. He built a carousel—fierce and fulsome—collecting and procuring creature after creature to ride, each more fearsome than the last. And always, always he collected dolls, old and tattered and legion. The result was a House not sane, that held within it a seething energy. Maxwell’s seething energy. Of games played and lost, and evil seen and succumbed to. With each object he won, his souls went further into the darkness, his obsession twisting in on itself like a coiled snake.

After years of building and hauling and placing, of collecting and plotting and devising and playing, Maxwell Cartwright, Jr., finished the last warehouse and surveyed his creation as a whole.

Now his precious collection had its place. A place to sit and seethe.

Waiting for the next poor souls to join them.

  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.

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