The children dream of the man in the mine.
Three missing children. One woman forced to face the monster that stole her sister.
Diane Ord escaped Hartgate once.
She has no intention of going back.
But when three children vanish from the decaying County Durham pit village, Diane is sent there on official business — and dragged straight into the nightmare she has spent her life trying to forget.
Thirty years ago, her little sister disappeared near The Clough, the abandoned mine that towers over Hartgate like a curse. The locals blamed an old ghost story: Coal-Faced Ted, the blackened miner who takes children into the dark.
Diane never believed in monsters.
Not really.
But the missing children have all dreamed of a man in the mine. The mayor is desperate to bury the past. The village records have been tampered with. And something beneath The Clough is stirring as demolition crews prepare to tear it open.
To save the children, Diane must return to the place where her own childhood ended.
But the mine remembers her.
And this time, it wants to keep her.
