Sanctum - Couverture souple

The sequel to New York Times bestseller ASYLUM, SANCTUM follows Dan and his friends back to Brookline, where they are determined to find closure from their haunted past. With more mind-bending revelations, thrilling action, and creepy found photographs, SANCTUM wil keep readers guessing until the very end.

Back at their high schools, Dan, Abby, and Jordan are plagued with nightmares about their traumatic summer in the Brookline asylum. Abby and Jordan just want to forget about it all, but Dan is convinced the only way to get over what happened is to return to campus and close the case once and for all - especially after he gets a letter from his old roommate, Felix, with a string of cryptic numbers that correspond to addresses around Camford. So the three friends return to New Hampshire college for a prospective students weekend around Halloween, and they are paired with three undergrad hosts who promise to take them to sample classes and even a few parties.

But on the very first campus tour, a prospective student in the group stares eerily at Dan, then promptly tries to throw himself out of a second story window. And as the weekend continues, other college students aren't acting like themselves, either. Sneaking away from the group, Dan and his friends track down the houses from Felix's letter, and find old photos and letters from the town's twisted past - some that predate the asylum, from when Warden Crawford was still a child obsessed with a creepy carnival that came to town, and some from when the asylum closed down, and all its allegedly cured patients were let loose in the town. Those patients include a man who went on to become the Postman, a man who lured girls into Camford in the 70's for a cult-like group - girls that were never seen again.

Finally, Dan discovers that this cult never left Camford, and some of its members are actually students at NHC, led by the professor who tried to trap the friends in the asylum over the summer. It seems the Warden's experiments on patients were influenced by the dark brand of hypnosis he learned as a kid at the carnival. And with a number of college students under the Warden's control, Dan and his friends have fallen right into his years-long trap. Now they can only hope to make it out of this campus visit weekend alive.

The past is back to haunt them.

Dan, Abby, and Jordan remain traumatized by the summer they shared in the Brookline asylum. Much as they'd love to move on, someone is determined to keep the terror alive, sending the teens photos of an old-timey carnival, with no note and no name. Finally, Dan receives a list of coordinates pointing to abandoned houses in the town near Brookline, and he is convinced that the only way to end this nightmare once and for all is to return to New Hampshire College and follow the trail.

But when Dan and his friends arrive under the guise of a prospective students' weekend, they discover that the carnival from their photos isn't just real, it's here on campus—it has returned for the first time in many years. And as they sneak away from their undergrad hosts to visit the houses on their list, they find secrets far darker than anything they'd imagined.

In this thrilling and creepy sequel to the New York Times bestselling Asylum, found photographs from real vintage carnivals help tell the story of three teens who exist on the line between past and present, genius and insanity.