Michelle Sacks - The Dark Path - The dark, shocking thriller that everyone is talking about

About the Author

MICHELLE SACKSgrew up in South Africa. Her first short story collection, Stone Baby, was published by Northwestern University Press in 2017. Her earlier writing has been published in African Pens and New Contrast, and by Akashic Books, and she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2014. The Dark Path is her first novel.

The Dark Path

Michelle Sacks

Copyright

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Michelle Sacks 2018

Michelle Sacks asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

First edition published with the title You Were Made For This in Great Britain in 2018

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Ebook Edition © June 2018 ISBN: 9780008261238

Version: 2018-10-22

Praise for The Dark Path

‘Dark, unsettling, and utterly absorbing… I loved it from first page to last.’

Amanda Jennings

‘If dark toxic relationships are your thing, this is one for you. Unsettling intensity with each page turned, arresting and intriguing. I read it holding my breath.’

Nina Pottell

‘everything a psychological thriller needs… toxic and stifling, the story drew me in and kept me up turning the pages long after I should have gone to bed.’

Lisa Hall

‘A chilling, gut-wrenching psychological thriller with an extraordinary intense narrative and utterly believable characters.’

Helen Fields

‘A haunting first novel… an unblinking look at beautiful people with ugly secrets, it has the voyeuristic fascination of a Bergman film.’

Publishers Weekly

‘An insightful and skilfully constructed novel… will keep readers rapt to the final page.’

Booklist

‘The savage beauty of Michelle Sacks’s prose nestled within the most chilling of stories will leave you shaken and bereft. It is a stunning accomplishment.’

Heather Gudenkauf

For my mother, Avril

You must always go carefully into the dark Swedish woods, for within the forests there live many dark, dark creatures. Witches and werewolves and wicked, wicked trolls. Beware the trolls! For they are in the habit of stealing away human children to keep for their own. Oh, you must beware the trolls, for you will not see them coming. They are terribly clever with their disguises.

—Åsa Lindqvist, Det hämndlystna trollet.

Contents

Cover

About the Author

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Epigraph

Merry

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Acknowledgments

About the Publisher

Merry

If you saw us you’d probably hate us. We look like the cast of an insurance commercial: shiny, happy us. The perfect little family, living the perfect little life.

Wasn’t that another perfect day? is what we always say at the end of days like these. A confirmation. A promise. A warding-off of any days that might be anything less. But most are perfect here in Sweden, many more than I can count.

It’s so beautiful, especially now in the middle of the summer, all dappled, dancing light and gentle sun. The little red wooden house we live in is out of a children’s picture book – nestled in the forest, snug as a bug, with the trees all around and the garden lush and blooming, an abundance of life – vegetable patches thick with leaves, bushes heavy with sun-ripened summer berries, the smell of blooms everywhere, heady and sweet, drawing in the bees with their charms. The summer evenings are endless and still, the sky bright well past ten, and the vast lake pale and calm like the very faintest shade of blue on a color wheel. And stillness – everywhere just the sound of the birds and the rustling of the leaves on the branches.

Our lives here involve no traffic, no pollution, no upstairs neighbors blaring music or downstairs neighbors screeching out their misery; no litter on the sidewalk or rotting Manhattan trash or sweaty L-train commutes to work, no crowds, no tourists; no daily encounters with rats or roaches or perverts or street preachers. No. Nothing but this, an impossible life of lightness and dreams. Sam and the baby and me, on our island of three.

Like most mornings after I put the baby down for his nap, I went into the kitchen to bake. Today, a pie from the blueberries we’d picked in the forest this past weekend. I made the dough myself and rolled it out, pricked it with a fork, baked it blind to crisp it. The sun was already streaming in through the big open windows, rays of light casting themselves across the floors of our bright little house. The ripened berries I cooked low and slow, excising out the juices over the heat with maple syrup and a stick of cinnamon, careful not to let it all burn and spoil. Sam in his studio smelled the butter and the sugar and the sweetness of the fruit; he came out to the kitchen to see what I’d made. He looked at me and grinned, just as pleased as punch.

See, he said, don’t I always tell you. The Dark Path.

The pie was good; we ate it still warm with mugs of coffee as we sat out in the garden under the early-afternoon sun. The baby tasted a spoonful of the innards and dribbled it all out again, like a miniature office worker who’d just chewed his blue pen. Sam laughed and scooped it back up into the spoon.

Isn’t this kid the best? he said. He lifted him and jiggled him about, so the baby laughed and squealed and spit up some more. I observed them together. The boys. My boys. Father and son. I smiled, and felt the warmth of the sun against my skin.

Down the dirt road that connects the houses on the reserve, one of the neighbors has a paddock full of prizewinning horses nursing their young. The spring foals wobble about on spindly, unsteady legs; the mares nudge them up with their muzzles, coaxing their offspring gently into the world. They are good at mothering. Patient and instinctive. Fierce with love for their young, as nature demands.