The Things We Stopped Seeing

Daniel Mercer was seven years old when he stopped seeing monsters. At least, that’s what he eventually convinced himself happened. Like most childhood fears, the impossible figures in dark rooms, shapes outside windows, and creatures no one else could see faded with age. So did his memories of the one that frightened him most: an enormous, crooked humanoid that appeared beside his bed at night. Thirty years later, Daniel starts seeing them again. At first, they’re easy to dismiss. A strange figure glimpsed where no person should be standing. Something moving among people who don’t react to it. But the sightings become impossible to explain away, and then the creature from Daniel’s childhood returns. Mr. Crooked remembers him. Towering, impossibly thin, with limbs that bend where they shouldn’t, a head permanently tilted sideways, and a smile Daniel remembers from his nightmares, Crooked should be the most terrifying thing Daniel has ever seen. Instead, Daniel slowly discovers that Crooked may have been the reason he survived childhood at all. The world Daniel thought he knew begins coming apart. Humanity isn’t alone, and the things sharing our world aren’t ghosts hiding in abandoned houses or monsters waiting in forgotten places. They’re everywhere. Some live beside us without ever realizing we’re here. Others have watched humanity for centuries. Some are intelligent. Some are little more than animals. Some protect people for reasons humans would never understand. And some notice when they’re being watched. As Daniel’s ability grows stronger, seeing these beings becomes a two-way street. Every time he notices something that should have remained invisible, there’s a chance it will notice him too. Curiosity becomes dangerous, because Daniel has spent his entire life needing to understand things that don’t make sense, and now he has an entire hidden reality to investigate. But the deeper Daniel looks, the stranger his own childhood becomes. Memories begin returning in pieces. Mr. Crooked standing beside his bed. Something moving underneath it. Crooked following Daniel through the woods while watching something behind him. Other children who could see things their parents couldn’t. A place Daniel remembers leaving but cannot remember entering. He didn’t simply grow out of seeing monsters. Someone made him stop. Now whatever was done to Daniel thirty years ago is failing, and he isn’t the only one. As Daniel searches for answers, he encounters creatures and civilizations that may have inspired humanity’s oldest stories about demons, angels, shadow people, spirits and monsters. But human folklore captured only fragments of something much larger. Even Mr. Crooked doesn’t understand all of it. There are beings Crooked fears, places he has never seen, and things invisible even to him. Daniel is beginning to understand that there was never a hidden world separate from ours. There was only reality. And the tiny portion of it humanity was capable of seeing. Now Daniel can see more. Unfortunately, more can see Daniel too.