“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that, in the process, he does not become a monster. If you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

A quote from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the Epigraph discusses the power of darkness to consume and overtake. Willingham chooses this epigraph to highlight the major themes of haunting. Nietzsche uses words like “monster” and “abyss” to represent the figures of darkness. He personifies the abyss by illustrating how the abyss will being to “gaze.” His use of second person “you” warns the reader of how vulnerable they are to the darkness.

“And in that moment, the moment of the crash, it made me realize that monsters don’t hide in the woods; they aren’t shadows in the trees or invisible things lurking in darkened corners. No, the real monsters move in plain sight.”

Chloe Davis hints at the disillusionment she experiences at age 12 when her father is arrested for the murder of six girls. This change from innocence to adulthood redefines the rest of Chloe’s life and leads to her experience with anxiety and self-trust. Willingham’s use of the word monster demonstrates the terrifying and active ways danger threatens others within the novel.

“Those four-drawer metal lockboxes symbolized the possibility of me somehow being able to express my pain one day—verbalize it, scream about it, cry about it—then when the sixty-minute timer ticked down to zero, we could simply flip the folder closed and put it back in the drawer, locking it tight and forgetting about its contents until another day.”

A psychologist, Chloe shares how her own experiences in therapy offered her comfort in the aftermath of her father’s arrest. Therapy offers Chloe the ability to release the pain she feels and move on with her life. These experiences influence her life choices and exemplify the coping mechanisms she has implemented in her life to protect herself from her overwhelming feelings of despair and fear.