Steve Merrifield

Steve Merrifield is a UK author of supernatural horror. Writing British contemporary horror novels, and Victorian horror stories through his series The Darkwood Mysteries. A child of the 80s and 90s, his love of dark mysteries and horror was fostered through TV reruns of Hammer Horror movies, video shop rental horrors, classic Doctor Who, and other TV shows such as Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Sherlock Holmes, his writing influences were Shaun Hutson, James Herbert, and Clive Barker. Steve loves folklore, ghost stories, and real life mysteries, and while a skeptic, just like Mulder and Scully he wants to believe. He lives in England with his husband, and in his spare time enjoys reading, movies, long walks, podcasts, modern board games, and tabletop game miniature painting.

 

Steve Merrifield's tales of supernatural mystery and horror are available at most good on-line retailers.

Ivory

Martin Roberts has made a successful career from painting as an artist and lecturer. Yet he is finding that his creativity is slipping away—stifled by family life. That is until he is responsible for running a young woman down in his car. Miraculously she survives, but stranger than her lack of injuries is her striking physical appearance; stark white hair and skin, and jet-black eyes. Being mute, her condition and background remain a mystery. That night should have been the last Martin saw of this girl called Ivory, but he finds he is haunted by her looks, and she has stoked the embers of his creativity. He realises he must paint her and seeks her out in London’s streets of vice, facing dangers of this world and another, pursuing an obsession that he discovers has led to the deaths of others before him and could unleash bloody chaos upon the world…

Harvest

Craig Digby lives in a high-rise block of flats at the heart of Camden and is striving to make a life for himself away from the family business. But when a child goes missing from her locked ninth floor home, he realises he is sitting on a story and an opportunity to begin the writing career he yearns for. The mystery deepens and becomes more sinister as other residents disappear, become uncharacteristically violent, or are killed. Something has been unleashed within the tower. Craig and a handful of disparate residents must overcome their personal beliefs, conflicts and fears, to unite against an evil that can reach into homes, control minds and corrupt flesh, for they alone realise the true nature of what is happening, and only they can stop the Harvest… (due for re-release in 2026)

The Pack

DI Joe Carter investigates the deaths of two fellow officers savaged by dogs while pursuing a criminal organisation. It quickly becomes apparent that this is no ordinary investigation or isolated incident—all across London, man’s best friend begin to bite and tear at the hands that feed them. The dogs are forming a pack that grows as quickly as the victims it creates; the dead, the injured, and the people the dogs infect with their madness. Yet, to Joe, the attacks still seem to be connected to the criminal organisation, and he has a fight on his hands to keep the case and make sense of what is happening. He is convinced that behind the vicious pack of animals is the hand of man, but is unprepared for the truth that will shake his understanding of the world... (due for re-release in 2026)

The Room

An assault at work leaves Tom Willis with Post Traumatic Stress-Disorder: noises and closed doors arouse debilitating bouts of irrational dread of what might lie behind them. He is at risk of losing his job and his girlfriend, but when those closest to him begin to share his terror of something lurking behind closed doors, he realises it is not only his sanity at risk, but his life and the lives of those around him. To unlock the secret of his fear, Tom must revisit a childhood he had done his best to distance himself from. A time when he was an orphan, living in a children’s home. In his hometown, with his childhood best friend, and in the basement of their ruined home, he will face a battered and scarred door. To challenge the room that is haunting him, he must confront the past, and ignore the persistent warning in his mind—“Don’t open the door…” (due for re-release in 2026)

The Darkwood Mysteries

Emily Darkwood is already resisting Victorian society's expectations of her as a woman of the upper classes, when she receives a strange and life-changing inheritance in the wake of her missing parents. A stone of amber that draws her into mysteries, supernatural, cosmic, and criminal. Armed with this guide stone, her wits, revolver, sword-stick umbrella, and faithful servant-companion, the streetwise, scrappy, and young Jack Hobbs, she determines to challenge the mysteries and threats she encounters in her search to understand the origin and power of the stone and its connection to her parents—and their fates. Yet dark forces conspire against her, and her drive for answers and her fight against the darkness of the world risks fought for medical studies, her friends, family—and her life.

The Darkwood Mysteries are a series of short-stories, novellas, and novels that can largely be enjoyed as standalone tales of horror and adventure from any point, or together in order as part of a deeper mystery.

1 The Thief of Faces

Why is Emily Darkwood keeping vigil at her friend's tomb? Darkwood hunts a killer with a gruesome signature mutilation. What does a murderer want with his victim's faces? With her suspect protected by his position in society, Darkwood and her servant-companion, Jack Hobbs, must confront him alone. Four dark-haired and dark-eyed women are dead. Will Darkwood become the fifth? (short story)

 2 The Posthumous Child

What secret haunts the country estate of Cecil House? Darkwood, friend to the family, administers to a cherished servant of the household on her deathbed. After her death, the Cecil family experiences a ghostly tormentor, and Darkwood receives leading messages from the other side that she determines to follow to a dark truth. What does a spirit child want to be known? (short story)

 3 The Luminous Marks

Why have curious glowing marks been left at sites of peculiar petty thefts? Darkwood has deciphered them and searches for their maker in London's fog shrouded night—only to find they have a terrifying source. Darkwood, Hobbs, and Detective Inspector Duggan take their pursuit into dangerous slums, and within they find themselves on the threshold to an altogether different world... (short story)

 4 The Wrath of the Dragon

Who or what is causing terrible fires in the slums of London's East End? With Chinese characters found at the scenes of devastation, London's immigrant population falls under suspicion. Darkwood and Hobbs discover British and Chinese agents on the streets hunting a criminal, while a superstitious fear haunts Londoners—could there really be a dragon in London? (novella) 

5 The Peacock Cabal

Darkwood's latest patient is a young man drained of vitality. He is soon dead. He is not the first to suffer such a fate. What killed him? Men of the green carnation—men who love men—are dying and the secrecy surrounding their love hides the cause. Darkwood finds the truth, not in medicine, but in her patient's tomb. Darkwood and Hobbs discover a conspiracy and a sinister predatory threat... (short story)

6 The Cult of the Scarab

Darkwood attends the unwrapping of a mummified ancient Egyptian at the British Museum. The spectacle is soon followed by the brutal death of a museum attendant and a missing mummy. How do the events connect to Darkwood's nightmarish visions of metallic beetles swarming a foreign red land? The answer is found in death... (short story)

7 The Hag on the Heath

Darkwood is called upon by an acquaintance, Patrin Deakin, to his daughter's sickbed. What ails Florica? The wild of Hampstead Heath is beyond their door, as is something else; a supernatural crone. Why is Florica her target? Darkwood, Hobbs, and the family's gypsy kin embark on a hunt for a witch. But is all as it seems? (short story)

8 The Rat King

Board members of a charity suffer tragic ends. Where others see unfortunate coincidence, Darkwood suspects murder most strange—death through the mischief of rats... Have rats turned upon us, or is someone or something behind the attacks? What is driving the rat king swarm to kill? With Darkwood's aunt made a member of the board, the stakes become personal... (novella) 

9 The Spindly-Snatcher

Why is a writer burning down bookshops? Why does insanity and death surround the answer? Darkwood and Hobbs investigate a creeping madness that no asylum can tame or contain, and in doing so they find a terrible something stalking between fear and insanity. To know of the Spindly-Snatcher is to be known to it—have the hunters become the hunted? (novella) 

10 The Conspiracies of Shadow & Fire

Darkwood is visited by her once intended husband, the disgraced Paul Whittacker. He warns that a conspiracy thought foiled was not given up on. Plots in the past unfold in the present and pitch Darkwood and Hobbs into a desperate struggle. Who can they trust? As the Hellfire Club and agents of darkness manoeuvre Darkwood and her stone into their traps, will she escape the ultimate evil? (novel) 

11 The Hound at the Door

Why are former attendees of séances being hunted by a phantom hound and disappearing? Darkwood, Hobbs, and a reluctant Inspector Duggan, pose as grieving relatives to visit the spiritual medium who hosts the seances to find out. Together, they enter the pitch black of the séance room and sit among spirits in wait for the prowl of a spectral beast. What does the dog in the dark want of its victims? (novella) 

12 The Silence of the Veiled Lady

Professor Meredith and his wife supported Emily Darkwood's entry into her surgical studies. Both are now tormented. Mrs Meredith is trapped by a covenant she was sworn to maintain into death and beyond. The professor is haunted by a missing box and the apparent supernatural force that has taken it. What is the secret, and what is in the box? Darkwood is determined to find out—and see justice done. (novella)

13 The Philanthropy of the Dead

The once dead Montgomery Woods awakens in his tomb. Returned to the living. But why is he set on casting his family into poverty by signing away his wealth? Why have five other men awakened from apparent death to do just the same? Darkwood, Hobbs, and Mr Woods junior have little time to discover the truth before the Woods family is ruined—and face a death cult set upon protecting their plans... (novella) 

14 The Ghosts of the Black Museum

Irene Reuben, spiritual medium, and friend and ally to Darkwood and Hobbs, encounters spiritual tormentors through Scotland Yard's crime museum. Are phantom children unknown victims of the historic Creeping Ghost Killer? Has the executed murderer returned as an actual ghost? Reuben, Darkwood, and Hobbs investigate as spiritual prompts become a harrowing haunting that risks their lives... (novella) 

15 The City of the Drowning

Darkwood has sent Hobbs away. In the care of Inspector Duggan, Hobbs questions the unconvincing reason for his exile and potentially a life without Darkwood and his duty to her—but danger remains. Great sums of money are being left on the streets of London, creating rich from the poor. Who is doing it, and why? With growing tension between the haves and have-nots, Duggan and Hobbs investigate... (novella)

16 The Rise of the Dragon

When a child abduction inflames racial tensions between the London mob and the city's Chinese population, Darkwood suspects her old foe, the terrorist the Mandarin. Reunited with her ally, Captain Carstairs, a man duty-bound to take risks, Darkwood contemplates life without responsibility for Hobbs. With a missing child a cog in a larger, explosive plan, can anyone prevent the rise of the Dragon? (novel)