First to Sleep – Kobo eBook

In Tern Hollow, Hana Idrissi and her father are sorting through a dead woman’s belongings when a landslide takes out the only road. By nightfall the power is gone, a neighbour lies injured, and the people still able to walk the lanes agree to take turns keeping watch. They tie brass bells to exposed doors. If someone needs help, the rest of the village will hear.

By morning the bells have vanished. Hana finds them gathered at Nabil Rafi’s house. He is asleep inside. He is also the man they were counting on to take the next shift.

The first alarm leads to someone who really needs help. The next pulls the watch away from the place it was meant to protect. As the calls multiply, Hana has to decide which ones to answer, whom to wake, and which houses can afford to wait. The thing moving through the village is watching the same decisions. It is learning who will come running and who will be left alone when they do.

Gathering everyone in one building sounds like a way to get through the night. But Hana knows there are people beyond the cut who cannot simply come when called. To reach them, she will have to let others take on work she has been keeping for herself, even after she has seen what one missed alarm can cost.

First to Sleep is a mountain-village horror novel about the work of keeping watch, and what happens when something outside starts counting on the people inside to get too tired to do it.