Read the First Chapter of Genre-Bending Suspense Thriller Vanishing Daughters

Author Cynthia Pelayo returns to her beloved Chicago with her latest novel, a story that blends fairy tales, history, and urban legends with genuine horror and sharp-edged grief. One part haunted house story, one part murder mystery, and one part exploration of loss, Vanishing Daughters is a wildly original tale that deftly dances between genres: Is it a psychological thriller? A fairytale deconstruction? A horror story? A true crime mystery? The answer is, somehow, all of the above.

The story follows a journalist named Briar, who has begun having nightmares in the wake of her mother’s death. The family mansion is the sort of dwelling that feels as though it would inspire Mike Flanagan and Shirley Jackson, a rambling wreck of a place teeming with ghosts both figurative and potentially literal. In the outside world, a serial killer has already killed fifty-one different women, and his victims bear a striking resemblance to the women who appear in Briar’s dreams.

Here’s how the publisher describes the story. 

It started the night journalist Briar Thorne’s mother died in their rambling old mansion on Chicago’s South Side.

The nightmares of a woman in white pleading to come home, music switched on in locked rooms, and the panicked fear of being swallowed by the dark…Bri has almost convinced herself that these stirrings of dread are simply manifestations of grief and not the beyond-world of ghostly impossibilities her mother believed in. And more tangible terrors still lurk outside the decaying Victorian greystone.

A serial killer has claimed the lives of fifty-one women in the Chicago area. When Bri starts researching the murders, she meets a stranger who tells her there’s more to her sleepless nights than bad dreams–they hold the key to putting ghosts to rest and stopping a killer. But the killer has caught on and is closing in, and if Bri doesn’t answer the call of the dead soon, she’ll be walking among them.

Vanishing Daughters will be released on March 11, but we’ve got a sneak peek at the story’s first chapter for you right now. 

CHAPTER 1
TIME: Midnight
DATE: Friday, December 1st

“Keys and gates and locks and thorns,” I say. “But what’s my name?”

I’m seated at the edge of my bed. My heart is racing and my hands are twisted around the comforter, as if grasping onto this fabric will keep me grounded and safe somehow. I did it again. I woke myself up screaming. 

I don’t know what happens in those moments, all I know is my body jerks, I sit up quickly and scream.

Now I am awake and I’m staring out the window trying to piece together what that was. Was it a nightmare? Something else? These episodes started happening the night she died. I turn to the pink dream journal beside my bed and the white pen. I pick them both up, open to a new page and write the date at the top:

 December 1st

I woke up again. It’s 1:43am. I feel scared. Like I want to cry. I can’t remember what I was dreaming about.

I set the pen down on the bed beside me and flip to previous pages; they are all the same. Dates and times. Waking up in a panic. Unable to recount what it was that caused the terror and racing heart.

The only thing I can think of is that this is yet another symptom of grief.

The only source of illumination in my room pours in from the soft yellow glow of the

streetlight just outside of what is now my house. The sparkling snowflakes gently descending

across the dark city sky look like soft silvery confetti. There’s a delicate scent of rose lingering in the air.

Very often with these aging historic homes there’s a familiar smell that hangs in the air. I noticed it when I returned home. I pushed the front door open, my suitcases at my side. I stood at the threshold for a moment, peering into the darkness, taking in the shapes and shadows welcoming me back. 

When I stepped foot in the house, there it was, the smell of my childhood, that of velvety roses.

I rub my temples. I’m struggling with memory. My thoughts are thick like syrup. I’m trying to pull myself away from the cloud of sleep.

I close my eyes tight and I remind myself that I am here. It is winter. I am in my mother’s, now my house.

 I open my eyes once again, directing my focus to the window.

In a way, I always knew I’d come back here. I loved this house. This is a house of dreams. Multiple floors. Built-in shiny oak dressers that when polished just right you’d see your reflection. Rich wood paneling. Chandeliers that hang in the living room and dining room, those pendants like fat sparkling diamonds.

As I walked through the house when I first returned, I noticed how with time the colors of the wallpaper had faded. Layers of dust collected above chandeliers, and spiders spun their fluffy webs along the edges of dressers. Even now, sitting here on this bed, I can feel the cold wind blowing in from along the sides of the old window. Of course Mother couldn’t keep up with the demands of this house through the years on her own, with her modest salary.

I feel bad now that as the years passed, I failed to notice those details when I visited her

when she was alive. I was just too wrapped up in my own life, working and writing.

There is no doubt that with time things change, but even with age, this is still a grand house.  Without her presence here though, this space, all of its rooms, hallways, and foyer, it all feels so cold and empty.

Mother and I liked watching those silly murder mysteries on PBS. In many of them, the stately homes built of stone, their walls decorated with red and gold tapestries, dark oil paintings, or landscapes with blooming botanicals, had wonderful names like Styles Court or Swinley Dean, Gossington Hall or the End House.

“Why doesn’t our home have a name?” I remember asking Mother one evening as we both watched a murder mystery, the blue light of the television casting the living room in a dreamy glow. While our home was built of stone, its walls weren’t decorated in tapestries, but we made up for it in paintings.

Mother smiled and then laughed. “The house does have a name.”

It was in that moment that I realized people could keep information from their loved ones for years, decades even. Maybe it was unintentional, I tried to reason. I didn’t want to believe that Mother kept this a secret from me all this time.

Why would she conceal the name of this house from me on purpose? Maybe it had just been a mistake? Something she had always wanted to tell me, or maybe she thought it was something I had already known. 

Mother crossed her legs beneath her on the sofa and pushed back her swooping blonde curls away from her eyes and said: “Rose House.”

It’s so silent and pretty outside, but inside of this house and inside of me there’s these fast-spinning threads that are tangling together.

Time passes.

I don’t know how much, and all throughout this night I can still hear Mother’s musical voice pinging in my head.

There are dreams that dissipate with the morning sun and then there are dreams that linger. Mother called these dreams omens, messages, an occurrence so otherworldly we could not simply shake them off with the sunlight, because those people we encountered and those conversations we engaged in felt just so real.

“Dreams hold much more meaning, much more power than we wish to realize,” Mother said.

And I guess, I want to know why. What are dreams trying to tell us? What are my dreams trying to tell me? Even the ones I can’t remember.

My head is full of fairy dust, but I see it now, materializing along the edges of my memory.

Black asphalt. Iron cemetery gates. A car the color of midnight.

In the distance, I hear that voice. It’s radiant, like the strumming of a harp. That voice.

Her voice. It’s still playing back in my head.  

I rub my eyes, forcing these last lingering sprinkles of sleep and dream, that cloud one’s

thoughts, away from my mind.

I stand.

I feel the plush carpet beneath my feet, and I begin to pace. To think.

I stop and dig the palms of my hands in my eyes. My arms are shaking. I take a deep breath, exhale, and relax my arms down at my sides.

What was it I saw just moments ago. Was that a dream? A hallucination? A memory from something I saw a long time ago? A movie? Something else?

What do we call a dream that seems so crisp, so clear? Because to call it a dream doesn’t feel right. I feel like I was right there, a participant in all of it.

That’s where I first saw her, this woman who materialized in my dreams, whom I had never seen before.

I look to my hands, and I can see her so clearly now, the woman who comes to me when I sleep. Her luminescent skin. Her sparkling blue eyes pleading:

“Please take me home,” she said.

I remember her bright lovely face. Her golden blonde hair pulled back in a high ponytail and her beautiful white gown.

My thoughts are swirling, wondering.

Am I her?

Is she me?

Am I someone else?

My hair is long and fair, but much longer than the girl in the dream. My face is much narrower too, not round and plump like hers. She reminds me of young Grace Kelly.

I can’t be her, but I know her, I’m connected to her somehow.

I feel like this is all colliding into a singular moment? Or is it collapsing? Falling stars shimmering against the black sky.

My eyes move to my cluttered desk. More notebooks and pens, some books, and my computer. The green and gold woodland wallpapered wall catches my eye.

Loops and swirls and ribbons can be spotted deep within the pattern. In parts, along the edges of the wall, the wallpaper is peeling back, curling in on itself, yellowing on the inside.

This entire house is a defiant act of decayed decadence.

I reach my hand out to touch the wallpaper, but I pause, remembering my mother’s words.

“This house, in this city is special, because it is eternal and timeless. Things within these walls do not move like things in other houses.”

I remember what I’d said to that. “It’s like a time warp.”

“Yes,” mother had nodded, her gaze looking up. “A time warp. But that’s what makes this home special. The trees on either side, the plants and the pond and greenhouse. This is our little fairy kingdom in this vibrant place. While things out there move with electricity and speed, in here, there’s a gentle shift that takes place like the delicate adjustment of a radio dial.”

Mother took great pride in our garden, and people would come from all throughout the city to drive past our house, or walk along our sidewalk, to peer into our property and admire her work.

She’d said: “Our family planted these trees and planted these bushes and grew these roses and lavender and rue and marigold and hyssop. A great wooded garden for a great Victorian Greystone mansion nestled along a grand, historic boulevard. The bold and bright colors of this house radiate against the bustling cityscape. Still, we must remember that everywhere there is light, darkness is always waiting to creep in and for that we should take care.”

The wallpaper in front of me feels like it’s slowly moving away. I forget if I’m breathing, and so I have to remember to inhale, and count each breath, one, two, three, and four. And just as my heart rate settles I am reminded that I will never hear her voice again. My brain is unkind to me. 

At that thought it feels as if the room shifts forty-five degrees and I am standing on an angle. Everything feels off.

I close my eyes and try to steady myself here, in this point in time, but there I go, falling under the spell of dream dust.

I see my mother, in a black sweater dress. Her hair is smooth and long and down past her shoulder. Her eyes look dim and her skin lacks luster. She looks very, very tired, as she did, days before her diagnosis, but still, she smiles. I can smell her scent, the sweet, toasted perfume of warm vanilla.

She speaks to me, there, in that quiet space:

“Remember, my darling, that we are timeless, eternal, existing forever and ever. Sometimes patterns repeat, but sometimes a pattern must be broken in order to move the story forward. Remember that and remember my love for you. My connection to you and to this house can never be severed. I know that. The house knows that. It is important that you know that as well. In this, our forever house. You and I are brightly colored contrasting pieces of fabric stitched together on our family quilt. We will always be together.”

The scene disintegrates into a shimmering sheet of black. I open my eyes and I am right back here, in my bedroom. I focus on the wallpaper, green and gold and I press my hand to it, feeling the embossed edges of golden leaves beneath my fingertips.

My heart is racing. I feel it in my throat.

“Remember,” I press my palm against my temple. Trying to catch my breath. “What is my name?” I plead with the house. Why are some things coming so easily to me, but my name is just lost out there in the ether?

Everything else is there. Pictures steadily developing. The notes of a song forming. Flashes of dreams erupt along the edges of my vision, like crackling fireworks in the sky.

In my mind I see a pretty white dress and pretty white dancing shoes. These were her things, not mine, I tell myself.

My name.  

I need to remember my name, but all I can think about are the images that form behind my closed eyes that make no sense. Some are my memories, but some are not.

How is this a part of grief?

I’m scared to sleep. When I sleep these are the things I see. And the only way to awaken from these dreams is first to remember that I’m dreaming and then to jolt my body awake somehow.

A steady hum begins somewhere deep within the house.

Is it the heating system? A fan? What is that noise? As seconds draw on, I realize it is nothing mechanical. Instead, it’s a series of discordant creaks and cracks, stomps, and low murmurs, a doorbell, and then a scream and the sound of something falling.

None of those sounds make any sense. I am home alone.

I open my bedroom door. Cool air hits me, followed by the sweet smell of flowers. The long hallway just outside of my room is much draftier than my bedroom. When I was a little girl I’d get so scared to step into the hallway to go to the bathroom. This long stretch seemed so endless when the lights were off, like it extended on into forever. I felt like the moment I started walking down this hallway alone I could be trapped into an eternal night. Wandering a never-ending path.

I close the door and then in my room, the walls come alive. There’s pounding and scratches from behind the wallpaper, as if someone has been sealed behind the drywall, immurement. Sealed high up, in a turret, in a tower.

The sound fades. I approach the wall and press my left ear against it, listening. A slow, steady susurration, like the sound of leaves swaying in a forest, melds into the words: “Bring her home. Bring her home. Bring her home. Bring her home. Bring her home.”

Excerpted from Vanishing Daughters by Cynthia Pelayo. Reprinted with permission from Thomas & Mercer, an imprint of Amazon Publishing. All rights reserved.

Vanishing Daughters will be released on March 11, but you can pre-order it right now. 

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB