Scream Like a Prayer - Hardcover

by S. H. Mansouri (Author)

A perfect capsule of growing up, or trying to, in 1985. Except this 1985 is seeping blood, and blood, and more blood.

-Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times Bestselling author of The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

Scream Like a Prayer is a knockout possession novel, haunted by twisted family secrets and lurking violence, replete with all the bright and feverish terrors of childhood.

-Josh Rountree, author of The Unkillable Frank Lightning

Sometimes you have to pray in the dark for a miracle to happen.

1985, San Dimas, California.

When eleven-year-old Samuel McCammon writes five words on the blackboard that kill his sixth-grade teacher, he starts to wonder if something is seriously wrong with his mind. A trip to the hospital reveals that nothing is physically wrong with him, but he keeps hearing fragments of a song he can't remember, and keeps seeing flashes of the demon he once saw in his mother's bedroom mirror. Maybe there's a reason why his parents suddenly enrolled him in a religious school, why his mother insists he takes deep breaths and prays when he gets angry, and why his father always seems to keep him at a safe distance. The only way 'Sammy' will ever discover the painful truth about the worst thing he ever did, is for him to finally face the demon in the mirror.

Scream Like a Prayer is a coming-of-age horror story about a family held together by lies, half-truths, and violence, and the lengths to which a desperate and confused child will go to unravel it all, and break the cycle forever.