First look at Cease Upon the Midnight

Here's an exclusive sneak peek at my upcoming folk horror/magical realism novel, publishing April 2026. ARC sign ups available on homepage.

RU home

Why?

meet me by the church

what? when?

now

Im busy

no ur not

The sky was starting to turn bluish grey as the sun disappeared behind the rows of smart Victorian semis opposite the church.

“What are you doing here?” Ziggy asked. Callum’s smile was mellow as he stood up on the pedals of his bike, rolling towards her before dismounting.

“Had nowhere better to go,” he replied lightly.

Callum lived on an estate at the edge of the town centre, a good half-hour bike ride from the village and his bike was the grubbiest piece of scrap metal Ziggy had ever seen. The back tyre was balding, its spokes speckled with rust. He didn’t look much better, if she was honest. There was a fresh rip in the knee of his jeans, definitely not the kind her mother would scornfully call ‘fashionably distressed.’ He was wearing a red tee shirt with the logo for the album White Pony on the front, but no jacket, though There were inky doodles on the skin of his forearm, faded but not completely washed off. A new bracelet of colourful plastic beads stood out among the fraying leather and braided silk that usually wrapped his wrist.

He leaned his bike against the wall of the churchyard.

“Missed you last week. You okay?”

“No, you didn’t, you just want this.”

Ziggy, bundled up in a hoodie against the evening chill, pulled it up over her long plaits. She produced the little plastic sandwich bag from her pocket and handed it to him, grateful to be rid of it. He grinned at her and immediately went into his own pocket to fish out a packet of Golden Virginia and liquorice Rizla.

“You’re gonna do that here?” she asked, looking around. Callum peered up and down the empty street. It was getting dark and only a fat pigeon gazed down from the tree above, cooing softly. He shrugged.

“Can go in there if you like.” He gestured with a thumb over the wall into the churchyard and Ziggy rolled her eyes. “Come on,” he said with a grin. “Let’s have a look. I could use some more inspiration for my final piece.”

Callum’s level of enthusiasm for art lessons wavered along with his attendance. There was no doubting his talent. Like Ziggy, he was particularly good at pencil and ink drawings, and like her, his tastes ran to the macabre and weird.

He had an aptitude for drawing architecture, and often submitted pictures of churches, gothic buildings with sharp spires and grotesque gargoyles, but regularly his work was unfinished, late or simply forgotten. He rarely contributed in lessons, usually appeared to not even be paying attention, drawing swirling patterns on his own hands and arms. Then occasionally he would surprise everyone by turning in an incredibly skilled and thoughtful piece of work that nobody knew he was capable of.

“Can we climb over?” he asked, looking up at the wall.

“The gate’s just down there,” she pointed.

Callum wheeled his bike down the path to the corner of the street, pausing under the glow of the streetlamp to look around again.

“So, are you alright?” he asked as she followed him through the high wrought-iron gate. Earlier that day, the bells had tolled their regular call, and a dozen or so faithful patrons had attended Sunday mass at the church, but in the dim evening light, the churchyard felt abandoned and bleak.

“I’m cold,” she said, folding her arms. “Aren’t you?”

“Not really,” he said, and she knew she wasn’t fooling him by dodging the question, but he let it go. “Do you ever come in here? Which one’s your house?”

“My garden’s over that wall,” she pointed towards the mossy wall, near the back corner of the churchyard, where it curved around the small stone building. Beyond the wall, on the other side of the building, there was woodland, and these were the ancient yew trees that loomed heavily over the garden and Ziggy’s caravan. “I came in here once, years ago with Lena, in the middle of the night. We were trying to scare each other.”

There was a faint smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The whisper of wind through the trees made her shiver. Callum left his bike leaning against a tall headstone and hopped up onto the wall that lined the path to the door of the church to sit and roll his joint, sprinkling the crumby green stuff out of the little packet in with the rolling tobacco with a practiced hand. The grass was well kept, but the headstones were rough and weathered, a few with ivy crawling all over long forgotten names.

“I’ve been dreaming about it lately, though,” Ziggy admitted, uncomfortably. She climbed up onto the wall next to him. Despite the dampness soaking through her jeans, she preferred to keep the high wall at her back and Callum at her side. Although she wasn’t sure encouraging closeness with him was a good idea, or how he might interpret it. He didn’t appear to even notice, as he lit the joint and took a slow drag.

“About what? The churchyard?”

“Yeah… I think it’s because of this painting I’m working on. It’s kind of creepy.”

That got Callum’s attention. He blew smoke with an amused look on his face.

“Oh yeah? What’s creepy enough to give you nightmares?”

“It’s not just that. It’s probably because of my Nana as well… it’s got me thinking about dark stuff…. Stuff that happened years ago that’s hard to forget, y’know?”

Callum’s face had fallen. He took another drag and looked down at his hands. He fiddled with the beads on his wrist, pastel pink and blue. Some of them were heart-shaped and others had letters stamped on them but didn’t spell out anything that made sense: CHOXXX.

“You mean when Lena’s brother died?” he asked quietly. “I heard about that. It was the year before I moved here, wasn’t it?”

She nodded.

The earthy, fruity smell of his smoke had made the muscles in her back and neck soften and she leaned against him a little, but in her mind’s eye she saw the gore-soaked Converse trainer floating in the stream. The sunflower yellow hair dripping blood. An involuntary shudder rippled down her back.

“What was your dream about?”

Callum’s pupils were huge. He held out the joint to her, but she shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said. “It’s stupid.”

He gave her a calculating look, then smiled lazily.

“I’ll tell you my dream,” he offered, like it was a bargaining chip. He stubbed out the joint against the wall although there was still half left and wrapped it up in the Golden Virginia packet before tucking it away in his pocket. Ziggy scoffed.

“No thanks,” she said. “I don’t want to know what goes on in your head.”

Except she sort of did.

Callum laughed and slid down from the wall.

“Are you gonna show me your creepy painting, then?” he asked.

“Alright, but I don’t take criticism.”

She jumped down after him, disarmed again by his casual acceptance of her rebuff and mostly pleased to be leaving the churchyard. It was starting to mist with rain again. She licked her lips, tasting a sharp metallic tang in the chilly evening air as she scuffed along after him. He picked up his bike, the tyres scraping on the ground and just then a sound cut through the shadows. A low vibrating growl.

It didn’t sound like a dog. Or if it did, it was a dog made of gravel and grave-dirt. It rumbled, distorted; like it had come from beneath the ground.

Ziggy’s stomach twisted. Her hand shot out, catching Callum’s arm before her brain caught up and he spun around, pale eyes wide.

“-the fuck…”

He dropped the bike in alarm, and it clattered on the crunchy stones. The growl rose to a bark, sharp and vicious. Ziggy’s eyes darted about in a panic, seeking the source. “Let’s go,” Callum hissed. “Now.”

Cease Upon the Midnight will be published on April 13th, digital ARC copies will be available in February, signups from ctklass-author.com