Shadows: A Novel [Paperback]

They call it the Academy. A secluded, cliff-top mansion overlooking the rugged Pacific coast. A school for children gifted -- or cursed -- with extraordinary minds. Children soon to come under the influence of an intelligence even more brilliant than their own -- and unspeakably evil. For within this mind a dark plan is taking form. A plan so horrifying, no one will believe it. No one but the children. And for them it is already too late. Too late, unless one young student can resist the seductive invitation that will lead... into theShadows."Saul has the instincts of a natural storyteller." --PeopleJohn Saul’sfirst novel, Suffer the Children, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include Perfect Nightmare,Black Creek Crossing, and The Presence.He is also the author of the New York Times bestselling serial thriller The Blackstone Chronicles, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii.PROLOGUE
 
Shadows.
 
Timmy Evans woke up in shadows.
 
Shadows so deep he saw nothing.
 
Shadows that surrounded Timmy, wrapping him in a blackness so dense that he wondered if the vague memory of light that hovered on the edges of his memory was perhaps only a dream.
 
Yet Timmy was certain that it was not merely a dream, that there was such a thing as light; that somewhere, far beyond the shadows in which he found himself, there was another world.
 
A world, he was suddenly certain, of which he was no longer a part.
 
He had no idea what time it was, nor what day, nor even what year.
 
Was it day, or night?
 
He had no way of knowing.
 
Tentatively, the first tendrils of panic already beginning to curl themselves around him, Timmy beglC-