The Nature of Evil and Monstrosity
What This Theme Explores
A Flicker in the Dark argues that evil is not an otherworldly force but a disturbingly ordinary human capacity that hides behind familiarity, routine, and love. Through Chloe Davis, the novel probes whether monstrosity is innate, learned, contagious—or catalyzed by the stories we tell to explain it. It asks how well we can ever know the people closest to us and whether “darkness” is a genuine affliction or a convenient alibi. Most unsettlingly, it collapses the distance between monster and victim, showing how protection can mask complicity and how fear of evil can breed it.
How It Develops
The theme begins with a child’s revelation and a town’s certainties. In the Prologue, Chloe learns that the monsters she feared don’t lurk under the bed; they live in the next room. Her father, Richard Davis, is unmasked as the killer who terrorized Breaux Bridge, and the community’s sense of evil becomes fixed, contained, and nameable.
When new disappearances echo the past, that containment dissolves. Patterns reemerge, and Chloe’s professional training collides with trauma-fueled suspicion. She wonders if monstrosity can be replicated—if it leaves blueprints others can follow—and begins to doubt those closest to her, including her fiancé, Daniel Briggs, and a grieving father, Bert Rhodes. The copycat hypothesis, encouraged by Aaron Jansen / Tyler Price, reframes evil as something infectious: a script that can be studied, adopted, and performed.
In the climax, the story pivots from mimicry to origin. The true killer is Chloe’s brother, Cooper Davis, and Richard’s “confession” is revealed as a protective mask. The revelation relocates monstrosity from the notorious father to the trusted brother, showing how love and proximity can hide the worst truths. Finally, when Chloe kills Tyler, the boundary between survivor and perpetrator blurs, forcing her—and the reader—to confront the “flicker” of darkness that fear and desperation can ignite.
Key Examples
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The monster in plain sight: The book’s thesis is seeded in Chloe’s childhood realization that evil doesn’t look like a nightmare; it looks like family. The shift from “shadows” to “a face” captures how horror becomes concrete only when it belongs to someone we know.
No, the real monsters move in plain sight.
I was twelve years old when those shadows started to form a shape, a face. Started to become less of an apparition and more concrete. More real. When I began to realize that maybe the monsters lived among us. -
The confession of darkness: Richard’s testimony personifies evil as an invading force, seemingly absolving him of agency. Later, we learn he is performing words fed to him—proof that “darkness” can be both an explanation and a mask that shelters the truly monstrous.
“I have a darkness inside of me,” he said at last. “A darkness that comes out at night.” ... “It’s like a shadow. A giant shadow always hovering in the corner of the room. Every room. I tried to stay out of it, I tried to stay in the light, but I couldn’t do it anymore. It drew me in, it swallowed me whole. Sometimes I think it might be the devil himself.”
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The emulation of evil: Aaron/Tyler outlines copycat psychology, presenting evil as an obsessive study that breeds repetition. His own duplicity proves his point: fascination with a monster can be the very path to becoming one.
“Copycats murder because they’re obsessed with another murderer,” Aaron continued, placing his arms on the table and leaning in. “They know everything about them—which means that this person could very well know you."
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The final revelation: Cooper’s verbatim echo of Richard’s words unmasks the origin of the script and the manipulator behind it. By recycling the same “darkness” language, he exposes how rhetoric can launder responsibility while enabling harm.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Chloe.” His voice is thick like syrup, his tongue made of sand. “I have a darkness inside of me. A darkness that comes out at night.”
Character Connections
Chloe Davis embodies both inquiry and contamination. As a psychologist, she tries to categorize darkness; as a daughter and sister, she lives inside its blast radius. Her vigilance—always scanning for monsters—ironically blinds her to the brother she loves, and her killing of Tyler forces her to reckon with how trauma, fear, and agency intersect. The novel doesn’t label her a monster, but it refuses to let her believe she is exempt from the capacity for violence.
Richard Davis complicates culpability by choosing to look like the monster to shield the real one. His “confession” dramatizes how evil can be staged: he sacrifices his identity to protect Cooper, collapsing the difference between protector and accomplice. The novel invites readers to ask whether motive—love, duty, desperation—can ever redeem the act of taking on the mask of evil.
Cooper Davis is monstrosity perfected as invisibility. He weaponizes intimacy—childhood trust, family roles, grief—so that others will carry his crimes: his father by confession, Tyler by imitation. Cooper’s true talent is not killing but choreography: he scripts narratives that make other people look like monsters while he stands beside them, clean.
Aaron Jansen / Tyler Price shows how evil disseminates through story. His obsession with the Breaux Bridge murders turns knowledge into enactment; he doesn’t just report on monstrosity—he rehearses it until it becomes his own. As a bridge between audience and perpetrator, he indicts the cultural appetite for proximity to darkness.
Symbolic Elements
Darkness and shadows: Darkness in the novel is both fear’s habitat and denial’s cover. Chloe’s nyctophobia externalizes her dread that evil thrives where sight—and certainty—fail, while the title’s “flicker” signals that revelation tends to be brief, fragile, and hard-won.
Masks and façades: Identities function like costumes—father, brother, fiancé, journalist—worn to deflect scrutiny. The motif insists that monstrosity is not an appearance but a performance calibrated for its audience.
The old Davis house: The abandoned home is a mausoleum of secrets and a geographic center of dread. Returning there forces Chloe to exhume what love and time have buried, turning the house into a map of how evil embeds itself in memory and place.
Contemporary Relevance
In an era captivated by true crime, the novel interrogates our urge to classify, consume, and narrate evil. It cautions that proximity—through media, relationships, or shared history—can dull our skepticism and amplify the power of a compelling story. The book also speaks to ongoing debates about nature versus nurture, mental health, and accountability, challenging the allure of “darkness” as diagnosis when it can also be disguise. Above all, it reminds readers that trust is a risk, and the ordinary is often the most dangerous camouflage.
Essential Quote
No, the real monsters move in plain sight.
This line reframes the entire mystery as a problem of perception: evil thrives not in distance but in familiarity. By stripping monstrosity of spectacle, the quote primes us to distrust comforting narratives and to notice how love, normalcy, and social roles can conceal the very things we’re taught to fear.