Gulpswallow | Wattys2024 Shortlist

At age six, Pullman Grier was abducted by a monster.

Held deep underground in the Ontario wilderness, he and four other children laboured for years, scrounging for the creature's food, until the day the impossible happened: Pull slew the monster. Three children crawled out of the cold earth and made the long, bleak trek back to civilization.

Now an adult in frozen Winnipeg, Pull scrapes by on a minimum-wage job, a stomach destroyed by childhood malnutrition and a grim sense of humour. The only good thing in his life is an online group that uses image recognition to search for victims of human traffickers and return them home.

Then, a local boy vanishes.

Unable to find help, the boy's desperate father approaches Pull's group. Only Pull sees the calling card of the monster that took him sixteen years prior. The monster that is supposedly lying dead and buried in the Canadian wilderness.

Knowing the thing that stole his childhood could still be abducting children and that more will be taken if he fails, Pull scours secrets buried in his old prison. Secrets that have lurked in the darkness just beyond the firelight for all of human history.