In a Dark Mirror (Paperback)

A decade-old crime unites its devoted fans in a haunting novel about delusions in the dark and the dangerous games children play.

Twelve-year-old Maddie Thompson and her friend Lana share a love of horror stories and wild imaginings. But Lana insists they are too old for pretending. It’s time for a different game: serving Him, a figure she sees lurking in the dark, mysterious and demanding. According to Lana, she and Maddie must obey Him or else suffer the consequences. Maddie doesn’t want to lose her most important friendship, even if it means luring an innocent girl into the woods―as a sacrifice for Him.

Ten years later, Maddie is released from an institution and must reintegrate into society for the first time as an adult. While finding her first job and forming new friendships, Maddie struggles to determine what it means to forgive―or to trust―herself. Particularly when she discovers an online community that is not only eerily obsessed with her but committed to the cult of Him.

This is Maddie’s chance at absolution―to convince them not to follow in her violent footsteps. But the loyal devotees have a pull. And Maddie knows that these games often have deadly consequences.

Kat Davis has an MFA in fiction from Washington University in Saint Louis and currently resides in the Boston area. Her fiction has been published in Wigleaf, Juked, Cosmonauts Avenue, New Orleans Review, and Monkeybicycle. Her work has also appeared on the longlist for Wigleaf’s Top 50, and her essays and literary criticism have been featured in the Chicago Review of Books and on the Ploughshares blog. Kat’s most recent piece of flash fiction, “The Babysitter,” was selected as a finalist for the Mythic Picnic Prize for Fiction and appears in The Best Small Fictions 2022.