The Hanging Wall

Deep beneath Cornwall, something has been waiting in the dark.

Nance Trewin knows mines. She knows the heat, the pressure, the explosives, the old workings and the sounds that rock makes when thousands of tonnes of granite are hanging above your head.

But she has never heard rock knock back.

At 2,290 metres beneath the surface, workers at Wheal Verity break into an unexplored void. What begins as a routine drilling operation quickly becomes something no one in the mine's plans, geological surveys or safety procedures can explain.

There is hot water.

There are strange white filaments.

There is something moving in the darkness.

And then comes the tapping.

Three knocks.

Then three more.

The miners tell themselves it is pressure. Water hammer. Sound travelling through the tunnels.

Until something answers.

When men begin disappearing underground, Nance discovers that the new mine has been built through the forgotten workings of an older one — and that the miners of 1968 encountered something they were never supposed to find. The truth was buried behind concrete, hidden from the authorities and erased from company records.

But it was never destroyed.

Now the old barrier is failing.

Trapped kilometres underground with the mine becoming increasingly hostile, Nance and her crew must navigate flooded workings, collapsing passages, failing ventilation and an enemy that does not need to see them to hunt them.

It can hear them.

It can learn them.

And worst of all, it can sound like them.

As Nance fights to get her people back to the surface, she is forced to confront not only what is living beneath Wheal Verity, but the history her own family has carried for generations.

Because the deepest danger in the mine is not the rock above them.

It is what has been waiting beneath it.

THE HANGING WALL is a tense, atmospheric underground horror thriller combining mining realism, claustrophobic survival horror, scientific mystery and creature horror. Perfect for readers who enjoy stories about unexplored depths, terrifying discoveries, isolated survivors, ancient organisms and things that should have remained buried.

Go deep enough, and eventually something hears you.

📖 262 pages