When census officer Nadia Rao-Whitlock arrives in the drowned-valley village to count its people, she counts 213. She counts again, and the number slips back to 212. No one in Dunmarrow will admit anything is wrong.

Every dusk, the whole village stands at open windows facing a black, windless lake and calls out names. Every name, in the same order, without missing one. The villagers call it the Evening Roll. They say it keeps them safe.

Nadia has her own reasons for not leaving. Two years ago her younger brother vanished after an argument she can't forgive herself for. Now she finds his handwriting in a register she has never seen, and a watch of his washing up on the shore, stopped at 11:40. The longer she stays, the more afternoons slip away from her, and the more the village seems to be counting her back.

What is the thing beneath the lake? Why does no one remember the people who disappear? And what happens to a woman who has spent her whole life counting, when the numbers start to count her?

The Two Hundred and Twelfth is a slow-burning supernatural horror-thriller about memory, grief and the dangerous comfort of rituals. Read it with the lights on. And don't count.

horror thriller, psychological horror, supernatural mystery, haunted village, missing brother, suspense horror, dark thriller, atmospheric horror, small town secrets, dark fiction.