Why I Wrote It

 

I wrote The Walk because the idea that scares me most isn’t being attacked—it’s being managed. Quietly. Systematically. With paperwork, protocols, and a calm voice telling you that what you saw “isn’t possible”.

The first spark came from thinking about infrastructure: the places we don’t look at unless something goes wrong—tunnels, water mains, treatment systems, service corridors under a city. They’re hidden on purpose, and we trust them completely. That trust felt like the perfect foundation for horror. If something was threaded into those systems—something that could alter data, erase evidence, and reshape what people believe—how long would it take before you started doubting your own senses?

I also wanted to write a story where the “monster” isn’t a creature. It’s a process. A programme that behaves like a living thing, adapting every time you push back. A force that doesn’t need chains or locked doors because it can change your perception of the door altogether.

At its core, The Walk is about the modern terror of being gaslit at scale: institutions that can rewrite the record, technology that can contradict your memory, and a world that can be made to look normal even when it’s rotten underneath. Marcus is an engineer—someone trained to trust numbers, readings, systems—and I liked the cruelty of putting a rational mind into a situation where the data becomes the lie.

And then there’s 3:47. That number became the heartbeat of the book: a recurring timestamp, a loop, a signal that something is repeating—whether Marcus wants it to or not. Because the most frightening part of all isn’t that the tunnel is dark.

It’s that the darkness has a plan.