CRIMP
About
Walter Crimp died in Pentlockin Prison in 1955—The Gallows Man didn't.
Urban legends are easy to dismiss—until someone dares you to summon one.
Brynn Evesham would have done the same, if a stranger hadn’t warned her about the name she heard at her mother’s grave.
The Gallows Man.
The Gallows Man.
The Gallows Man.
It should mean nothing, but the deeper Brynn digs, the more Walter Crimp refuses to remain in the past: a prison riot, dying men on tape, online records that refuse to disappear, and an ex-convict in an asylum with more to say than Brynn ever wanted to hear.
Walter Crimp—an executioner killed during a riot at Pentlockin Prison in 1955, then erased from record for what he did to the men inside its walls.
With her world spiralling, Brynn uncovers a truth that sends her to the one place with answers that could prove the legend wrong.
Pentlockin.
Now a museum with echoes of a tragic past, a working execution chamber, and a man who still walks its corridors with a swinging baton and a hum that arrives before him.
And yet she goes.
And so did he.
He is not a story.
When The Gallows Man arrives, he brings judgement.
The noose is just how he delivers it.
CRIMP dismantles the mind through dread, illusion, and guilt. It’s not a story you simply read. It’s a story that rewrites itself around you.
Every scene shifts meaning when revisited. Details dismissed as background reappear as evidence. The book uses narrative sleight-of-hand and recontextualisation to implicate the reader in its horror.
At its heart is Walter Crimp: part legend, part memory, executioner, judge, horror returned.
Praise for this book
"Startling, slithering, and spine-chilling, Pentlockin by Cain Quillman is a novel about death, fear and grief set-in modern-day Yorkshire England. Meet the quirky, troubled, but endearing Brynn, a young woman, who becomes obsessed with an urban legend of an executioner from a local prison museum. When the lines between everyday existence and the afterlife are blurred, a craving to get to the truth, while simultaneously running from it, takes the reader on an unforgettable spiritual and mind-bending journey with a satisfying ending.
I loved the figurative language, the British vernacular, and suspenseful narrative that come together in a whispered message that fear, and trauma dwelling inside of us, are to be succumbed to or survived. Both have consequences. Somewhat allegorical, this story slithers under your skin and reminds you that you have a choice to confront your fears or let them kill you. Highly recommended for lovers of psychological horror and thrillers."
A haunting, elegantly written psychological horror that grips from the first page and never lets go. With lyrical prose, mounting dread, and twists that linger long after the final reveal, CRIMP is an unforgettable descent into fear and obsession.
“As someone who never reads horror, I was stunned by CRIMP. I was drawn in from the first page and terrified alongside Brynn. The ending had me questioning everything I thought I knew. This story refuses to leave my mind.”