A teenage girl must save her town from a memory-devouring monster in this piercing exploration of grief, trauma, and memory, from the author of The Valley and the Flood.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt for Rebecca Mahoney’s The Memory Eater, which is out now!
For generations, a monster called the Memory Eater has lived in the caves of Whistler Beach, Maine, surviving off the unhappy memories of those who want to forget. And for generations, the Harlows have been in charge of keeping her locked up—and keeping her fed.
After her grandmother dies, seventeen-year-old Alana Harlow inherits the family business. But there’s something Alana doesn’t know: the strange gaps in her memory aren’t from an accident. Her memories have been taken—eaten. And with them, she’s lost the knowledge of how to keep the monster contained.
Now the Memory Eater is loose. Alana’s mistake could cost Whistler Beach everything—unless she can figure out how to retrieve her own memories and recapture the monster. But as Alana delves deeper into her family’s magic and the history of her town, she discovers a shocking secret at the center of the Harlow family business and learns that tampering with memories never comes without a price.
The scary part is, it’s easy. Scott listens for me in the mornings, even in his sleep. But they’d never expect me to sneak out now. Even when the floorboards bend against my weight, no one stirs.
Outside, humidity hangs like a curtain. I raise the little electric lantern from the front hall closet like a beacon in front of me. And I slip out of the street light, into the mouth of the fog.
There’s about a mile between the Atwoods’ home and the Stinnets’. It’s a long mile.
It’s a warm night. The air swims with mosquitos and wisps of far-off summer storm. But I’m shivering, still. I keep cycling through what she took. My breakup with Charlie. Mom leaving. Grandma dying. Who knows what else. This is why we use padlocks, those safety memories to signify whether or not she took more than she was offered. At any given time, a person has more memories than they can carry. You lose them every day without trying. There was no one there to watch my back— so there’s no way to tell how deep she went.
And then there are the headaches. The hearing things, as of today. As far as I know, that’s never happened to a client before.
Despite my shivers, I can feel a thin line of sweat trickling down my back. I can’t leave her to starve. I can’t go to the council and wait for their punishment. And I definitely can’t do what Grandma asked of me.
So when I reach the Stinnets’ back gate, I only have two clear goals. To know, for sure, what she did. And to make sure the Memory Eater doesn’t see that I don’t know what to do from there.
But I can only bluff for so long. Before I leave that cave, I’m going to need to figure something out.
I slip across the Stinnets’ yard, hewing close to the shadow of the house. There’s one second- floor light on, but I don’t see any movement. Only the windows seem to be watching me as I approach the woods.
The moon is low in the cradle of the sky as I make my way down the waiting stairs. The low tide laps, glittering black, at the edges of the shore. I quicken my pace. There’s no reason to move so carefully. The Memory Eater is already expecting me. I can feel the thread of her attention from the second I dismount to the sand.
When I step through the mouth of the cave, I almost angle the light at the cave floor. It’s habit by now, the little ways I avoid looking at her dead on. But the last thing I need her to think right now is that I’m scared. No matter how true it is.
I don’t know exactly how she used to look. My family’s oldest records described something that looked and moved like a person but could never be mistaken for one. Abigail Harlow’s son, retelling the tale from his mother’s recollections, wrote that when they faced each other, they were close enough in height to look each other in the eye. That’s not true anymore. Not for a while now.
When she’s uncurled, she stands nearly two stories tall. When she moves in the confines of the cave, she has to crawl. And every inch of her ripples with something that used to be life. Reaching arms, writhing joints feeling out the boundaries of her skin. The imprints of faces with dark eyes and open mouths. The first time I saw her, Grandma could barely calm me down. They’re nothing to be afraid of, she told me. Those memories she takes—they’re just what’s left over. They may look like they’re in pain. But they don’t feel anything anymore.
The Memory Eater’s own face—a pale, perpetually masklike stillness—lifts to meet mine. I don’t know if she doesn’t smile, or if she can’t. But she smiles with her voice.
“So you know,” she says.
