Hashtag Book Club discussion

Prologue: A narrator remembers a time from when he was much younger, 25 years ago, when he was being taken for questioning by police for what appears to be a murder that happened in a nearby playground.

Question: What kind of a reader are you? In college I was encouraged to annotate my books with questions and comments. My instructors encouraged “having a conversation” with the books I read to better understand what the author was trying to convey. Are there things you do to your books while you read to help you digest their contents?


Chapter 1 – (Now): Detective Amanda Beck is investigating the site of a murder that was confessed by two boys. When she arrives on the scene, the body is still present with all of the signs of a ritualistic murder. At the center of the crime scene is a stone painted in red bloody handprints. “Hundreds of blood-red handprints pressed carefully against the stone.”

Chapter 2: Paul Adams is visiting his mother, Daphne in hospice (Gritten) She wakes up while he is visiting and starts to mumble about how he shouldn’t be there and about red hands being everywhere. Daphne then shouts that something is in the house. Paul panics and hits the alarm button to call the nurse.

Chapter 3: Paul is recalling a time when he and his friend, James took a bus with Paul’s mother to a new school the two would be attending. He is remembering this as he has since driven away from the hospice and is now re-entering Gritten for the first time in 25 years. He is remembering the last things his mother had said to him as he drives to her house.

Paul recalls calling the woods “The Shadows” just like the rest of the town due to their secretive and ominous characteristics.

“You have to do something about Charlie.”

Paul feels a sense of unease as well as the thought that something awful was going to happen.

Chapter 4 - (Before): In a flashback, Paul remembers a cold day from the past where he and his best friend James were in Gym class. Their instructor, (name), who was a stereotypical meathead had pitted students against one another in a game of ball. Paul recalls being taller than James and having to protect him against bullies. After the game was over, Paul sees that a bully named Hague has tackled James and is now standing over him laughing. Hague spits on James who is laying on the ground crying.

Paul approaches Hague to confront him and is joined by two other boys, Charlie Crabtree and Billy Roberts.

Charlie tells Hague about a dream he had in which Hague is lying on the ground dying, his skull is smashed open and he can see his brain pulsing along with his heartbeat. Charlie tells him that he only had one eye left and that it blinked up at him as he looked down upon Hague and that in the dream Hague was dying and knew he was dying from where he lay on the ground. He says this all with a smile.

After Gym class, the four boys are walking together across the field. Charlie goats on Hague who carelessly steps into the road and is hit by a van. James notices Charlie is calm still smiling. Charlie notices Paul’s gaze and winks back in reply.

Chapter 5: Paul recalls meeting Jenny in a short story writing club that met once a week during their lunch periods. The two of them loved to write but also really loved Stephen King’s works and bonded over them as well as Stephen King’s themes and writing style.

In the weeks/months since Hague had died, the four boys had become friends, hanging out more often. The four boys would take walks through the woods and hang out in a vacant classroom in the basement of the school during their lunch periods, room C5b. James had taken to becoming fascinated with Charlie and learns that he keeps a journal of his dreams so that he can remember them. Charlie teaches James about lucid dreaming and James finds this more fascinating.

When Paul downplays this idea saying that they’re “only dreams,” Charlie gives him the same smile that he had given to Hague and repeats, “They’re only dreams” causing Paul to suspect there is some kind of secret that is being kept and untold by Charlie.

Question: What are your thoughts on lucid dreams? Have you ever experienced one yourself?

Chapter 6 – (Now): Detective Amanda Beck is trying to make sense of the murder she is investigating. The victim is Michael Prince. The two suspects of the murder, Robbie Foster and Elliot Hick both seem to have dream diaries. Both diaries mention the series of events leading up to the murder from their personal perspectives. Both diaries mention the name Charlie.

On the suspects’ laptops, Amanda discovers that both of them had been involved in the same online forum: “The Unsolved and the Unknown”

Crabtree/Roberts- “RH”

Amanda learns of the murder committed 25 years earlier by Billy Roberts and Charlie Crabtree, two boys who had also kept dream diaries and were also obsessed with lucid dreaming. The two boys believed that a shadowy figure existed who they needed to provide a sacrifice for in order to live in their dreams. After that particular murder, the two boys took sleeping pills and fell asleep in the woods. When Billy woke up, he staggered into town and was arrested. Charlie was never seen or heard from again. Paul was taken into custody in suspicion of the murder. (Prologue)

Question: What is RH?

PART 2 - Chapter 7 - (Now): Paul continues to hang around Gritten. When he isn’t at the house, he is at the hospice visiting his mother. He fears that she may wake up and say something about the past that he has locked away mentally. After visiting his mother, he goes to the pub because it is the only place that he can go to escape the memories that haunt him while at home.

Paul recalls when he and his friends all became obsessed with lucid dreaming.

While at the bar, Paul see’s Jenny and cannot believe his eyes. She is 40 now, she was 15 one of the last times they saw each other. When Paul left Gritten for college, he never came back.

Paul mentions he still has her book, “The Nightmare People,” a horror anthology.

The two of them catch up and bond over beer.

Chapter 8: Paul explores his mother’s house to find clues. He looks through several photos of himself growing up then also looks at a photo of his mother. He comes to the realization that despite the empty shell of a human being that she has become, she was once a vibrant young woman with a life of her own outside of her relationship with her son.

Question to Parents: Have you ever felt the way that Paul did when he saw his mother in old photographs? How does that change the way you view your parents?

Paul finds his way to the attic after staring out a window into the Shadows then glancing up to find a spot on the ceiling. It is up there where he is surprised to see a flock of brightly red birds. At second glace, he realizes that what he’s looking at isn’t birds at all. Instead, they are handprints, his mother’s handprints. He imagines his mother up in the attic placing each print with her hands wet.

In the opposite direction of the handprints, Paul is horrified to find something secret that he wasn’t expecting.

Chapter 9 - (Before): The boys gather in Room C5b during their lunch period with their dream diaries to discuss their progress and experience. Billy seems to have some success, he mentions using “the nose trick” as a technique he used. James, very visibly anxious had no luck at all. Though Paul had had some experience, he tells Charlie that he had no success and sarcastically makes fun of the nose trick to nobody’s amusement.

Charlie presses James to talk more about his dreams, whether or not they are lucid. James mentions a type of gathering or party that is going on that he wasn’t invited to. He seems to be observing it from some distance away. Behind him are the woods that surround Gritten and a man/presence in “The Shadows.” James talks about how the presence is aware he can see him.

Charlie is fascinated by this and presses further for more answers. He is intrigued by James’ answer about the woods and asks about the people/person in the woods. Charlie asks, “You saw him?”

Charlie reveals that he and James were in the same dream and that Charlie had also observed the presence standing in the woods looking at James.

Paul interjects in disbelief but Charlie pulls his notebook out to compare his dream notes to his own from the night before. James takes a look at Charlie’s diary and then Paul eventually reads it and finds this to be true. Charlie describes the man in the woods and what he looks like as the two of them make their way to see James standing just outside of the woods.

Paul can’t explain what he had just read but he senses that what is at work is wrong.

What are your thoughts on this???

Chapter 10 – (Now): Amanda Beck is investigating Michael Price’s death. She’s at his home looking over his belonging for some clues. She feels for Michael’s family. His parents are Mary and Dean Price.

Mary mentions how Michael played a lot of videogames and how he had talked to many friends online, how they were pleased to know he had gained friends in real life.

Amanda tells the parents that there are two boys who are going to be charged for Michael’s death in court.

Dean speaks, coming out of a trance. “Elliot Hick & Robbie Foster.”

Amanda asks if they’ve heard of a man called “Red Hands” or someone named Charlie Crabtree. In her research, this murder is completely inspired by the one that occurred 25 years ago.

Amanda reveals that she believes the murder is due to the belief in a “mythical” being that was made up by teenagers 25 years ago and also that Charlie Crabtree vanished when it happened.

Hundreds of officers and officials tried to find Charlie but resources were exhausted in the search.

Other clues stand out. The JPG file that was attached in the DM was a photo of one of the dream diaries from 25 years ago. That dream diary vanished along with Charlie Crabtree.

Dean asks, “Are you saying my child was murdered because of a ghost?”

Amanda replies, “I don’t know.”

Question: This chapter mentions something Amanda is trying to get away from/forget, what do you think that might be? Do you think it connects to the events that occurred in Gritten?