Overview
From critically acclaimed author, Vivian Schilling, comes a haunting psychological thriller of mortality and seduction. Of epic scope, Quietus is the story of a young woman brought back from the brink of death to find the world around her irrevocably altered.On a stormy winter's evening a chartered flight bound for Boston goes down in the treacherous White Mountains of New Hampshire. An extensive search results in the rescue of five survivors -- noted interior designer, Kylie O'Rourke, and her husband Jack among them. But it is just the beginning of the nightmare for Kylie. Through the haze of morphine she awakens in the hospital to confused and harrowing memories of the crash -- memories not to be trusted. Though trapped within the wreckage, she recalls wandering the icy mountainside and speaking with one of the other victims ... yet he had died upon impact. As the freakish aftermath becomes sharper in her mind it grows darker, with frightening visions of specters and the horrific feeling that she and the others had somehow cheated death.
Reassured by her doctor that her memories are the product of her sedation, Kylie returns to her life in Boston, but the aftermath of the tragedy proves unbearable. The visions continue to haunt her, while her husband slips further away from her into his own world of survivor guilt and deceit. Increasingly paranoid, she soon believes that she is being followed through the streets of Boston. In her nightmares, the predator is a specter crossing over from the mountain top to reclaim her. An old man eyes her in the subway, while a dark figure stalks her through Beacon Hill. Then a sudden and freakish tragedy sends Kylie's world toppling. While those around her fear she is losing her mind, she finds herself caught up in a chain of events she cannot escape.
In this superbly chilling novel, Schilling masters the complex and macabre. She delivers an unnerving psychological thriller that leads us on a collision course where every breath, every step can carry the gravest of consequences. She paints bold and unforgettable characters, while resurrecting disturbing and powerful apocrypha that had been all but buried under contemporary religious doctrine.
With spellbinding intrigue, Quietus takes us to the brink of reason, to the edge where spiritual and physical meet ... a world unto its own that breathes within the shadows, the flutter of a bird, the scamper of a spider. This chillingly hypnotic tale builds with frenetic momentum to its shocking and haunting climax.