The Seething

by Ben Monroe, Elizabeth Leggett, MJ Pankey

Genres: Horror

Synopsis

“Midsummer meets The Mist in The Seething, a slow-burn tale of creeping terror and a pressure cooker of a novel from horror’s rising star Ben Monroe. Not your usual summer vacation by the lake, The Seething is irresistibly ominous.”
—Lee Murray, four-time Bram Stoker Award®-winner and author of Grotesque: Monster Stories

A family's relocation looked like a chance to relax and regroup—but as they settle into their new home, teenage Kimmie Barnes’ special senses make her the target of something primordial, evil, and utterly malign.

Darkness…

Golden Oaks, California is a sleepy town on the shores of Oro Lake, and the residents have no idea what horrors lurk below the glittering waters.

Beneath the waves…

One by one, as people begin to disappear, the once quiet town is soon in the grips of a waking nightmare. An unimaginable horror consuming everything before it.

Hungry…

All while echoes of an ancient evil spread out like malignant spider webs, like dead hands reaching, grasping…

SEETHING…

 

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Release date: March 23, 2023

Publisher: Brigids Gate Press, LLC

Print pages: 392

Sample

Chapter One

Golden Oaks was a resort town, and busiest during the summer when people came from all around Northern California to enjoy the mountain lake nearby. But as summer waned, a calm descended over the town. The bustle and noise of summer visitors was slowly replaced with the everyday quiet comings and goings of the people who lived there year-round. A sense of relief blanketed the town as the residents began to feel like they could return to their normal lives.

On the first day of autumn, Mike Barnes woke up to the quick jerk and shudder of an earthquake. He wasn’t sleeping well anyway, or he’d probably have slept right through it. And he’d been a Californian long enough that it didn’t faze him. He lay still in his bed for a minute or so after the shaking stopped. He probably would have gone back to bed if he hadn’t heard a crash of glass from downstairs.

Mike grudgingly got out of bed, and when he went downstairs to investigate, he found a framed picture of him and June had fallen off the wall, the glass shattered across the hardwood floor. He carefully picked up the frame, carried it over to the trash and turned it over the bin, letting loose glass shards and slivers tumble into the can. The photo had been on the wall for years; so long that it had become part of the background. For the first time in a long time, he looked at it, looked at the frozen moment in time when his wife had still been healthy and full of joy. “Miss you,” he whispered, and placed the frame on the kitchen counter.

After he swept up the glass and tidied up a few other things that had been shaken off-kilter by the quake, he was restless, cooped up in his home on the edge of Oro Lake. For the last couple of weeks, he’d been thinking about renting a rowboat and taking it out for the day. He decided today was as good a time as any and was soon looking forward to a quiet day of fishing and drinking on the water.

The last year had been difficult for him. A couple of winters back, his wife of forty years had died, and he’d never really recovered from that. Their marriage hadn’t always been easy, but he’d loved her and was still hollowed out from her death. Their son, Gabe, his wife, Laurie, and their daughter, Kimmie lived a few hours away and came to visit from time to time, and that was good.

Mike often wondered if maybe he and June shouldn’t have moved away from Golden Oaks when they got married. June had wanted bigger things, more excitement, more life. Just more. More than she ever got in Golden Oaks, anyway. They’d talked when they were first married about moving to San Francisco or Los Angeles. Somewhere with excitement and bustle. But this was where he’d found a job, and they had made a home, and in time she had come to love it too. They’d raised Gabe here in Golden Oaks, and even though he’d moved away to go to college and start his own life, he still came back to visit.

It was slow and quaint, but that was fine with Mike. They’d been mostly happy here. And even without June, he still loved the funny little town. But he missed her an awful lot. On the rare occasion that anyone asked him how he was doing, he’d force a smile, maybe crack a joke. And cry himself to sleep when he got home.

After June died, Mike took an early retirement from his job at the bank in nearby Keyford and took part-time work at the hardware store in town. The commute to Keyford had been killing him, and he found he liked helping customers with their house projects a lot more than pushing pencils all day anyway. He could even ride his bike to work if he felt like it. He still visited June’s grave almost every day, but the visits had dulled from melancholy monologues to quiet contemplation. Mike called once in a while to talk to his son, but even those calls were becoming fewer and farther between.

Now he lived alone in the house he’d raised a family in, the house where Mike’s marriage had started and ended, and he kept to himself. It was quiet, and nobody bothered him, and that was okay. Sometimes he missed his kid, and his granddaughter. He occasionally thought about selling the place in Golden Oaks, giving most of the money to Gabe to put a down payment on a house in Alcosta. Mike thought maybe he could find an apartment nearer to his son. But he knew the boy had his own troubles, and Mike didn’t want to be a burden. Maybe he’d invite Gabe, Laurie, and Kimmie to stay with him over the Christmas holidays. Golden Oaks was too low in the mountains for a proper White Christmas, but it was still nice to be around family for the holidays.

But for that first day of fall, Mike had an itch to be alone on the lake. He wanted to crack a few beers, maybe catch a few trout.

There was a path behind the property, overgrown with weeds and poison oak, which ran across a little rill of a creek and right down to the lake’s edge.

During recent years, the creek was always low, and with the dry summer they’d had, it was pretty much dry clay, and he could cross it on foot. There was even a little pier on the edge of the lake that the previous owner had installed. It was a little rickety though, and Mike had been meaning to replace it ever since Gabe had been a kid.

He’d done the short hike plenty of times in the past, but today he didn’t feel like it. He didn’t want to spend the extra time hiking through the bracken and bush, dodging poison oak.

He could see the lake from his back porch, the vague snaking shape of the path that ran toward the beach lost in weeds and scrub. The path used to be clear, used to be a short walk to the water. But it took time to clear it, and when June got sick, Mike sort of let it slide. Taking care of her had been all he really cared about, and the path became neglected. Maybe next spring he’d clear that path. Maybe if he cleared the path next summer, he’d buy a boat he could leave alongside the pier, so he could go out on the water whenever he wanted. Maybe.

With a six-pack of Bud and a few sandwiches he’d picked up at the Raley’s downtown on the way home from work the night before in one small plastic cooler, and an extra empty cooler for anything he caught, he was ready for the day. He threw the coolers, his rod, reel, and tackle box into the storage area in the back of his little sun-faded Toyota Tacoma. He slammed down the rear hatch, just as he saw a bicycle wobbling toward him from up the road. The bike came closer, wobbling on the rough asphalt, weaving around a few potholes, and soon he recognized Peter Guilford, a local teenager who lived a few miles further north. Peter didn’t cause anyone any real trouble, and Mike had gotten used to seeing him tooling up and down Ringgold Drive on his venerable old Schwinn. Peter was always the athletic type, and even though his family owned a spare car, Peter was always getting around on his mountain bike.

“Hey, Peter, how’s things?” Mike said, as he circled around the side of the car to open the driver’s side door.

“Good-good!” Peter called back. He looked left-right-left, and right again for good measure before he veered across the street between them. “Goin’ fishing?” he asked, as he brought his bike to a slow stop, and propped his dusty green Oakland A’s cap from his forehead.

“Yeah,” Mike replied, as he opened the latch to the car’s door. “Warm days won’t last forever. Felt like getting out on the lake before the cold and rain comes in.”

Peter peered around Mike into the back of his car. “Yeah, nice day for it, I suppose.” He stood up straighter and hitched up his faded jeans. “What kinda bait you using?”

Christ, Mike thought, I’ll never get out of here now. “Yeah, don’t know. Figured I’d stop by the store on the way to the lake and see what they had. Maybe some PowerBait or something.”

“My dad says worms are best,” Peter replied, hands in his pockets. Mike braced himself for a lecture. “Worms wiggle and thrash, see? The fish like going after something that squirms. They don’t want any of that purple stuff that floats there. He says fish’re mean sons of bitches.” He looked up at Mike, realizing he’d sworn in front of a grownup, not his pals from school. “Least, that’s what I heard, you know?”

Mike opened the Tacoma’s door, and slid into the driver’s seat. “Good to know, Peter,” he said, closing the door. He rolled down the window with one hand as he slid the key into the ignition with the other. “I tell you what,” he said as the window fully opened. “I’ll get some live bait, and some of the goop, and see which works best.”

“Now you’re talking!” Peter laughed. “You’ll see what the fish go for. Hell, maybe you can write an article for Field & Streamabout it when you’re done.”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Mike said, and turned the key in the ignition. The engine shuddered to life. Mike raised his voice above the engine’s dull thrum. “But I’ll get dinner out of it. Hey, aren’t you off to school soon?”

Peter nodded and ran his hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes. “Yeah, leaving for Davis next week actually.”

“That’s great,” Mike said. “Any idea what you’ll be studying yet?”

“I’m kinda leaning toward Entomology or Botany right now,” he said. “But haven’t decided yet.”

Mike nodded thoughtfully. “Well, you won’t have to declare at first. Get your solid biology foundation classes in, and you’ll figure it out. Davis, huh? Good school, I hear.”

“I was accepted to Davis and Cal State Alcosta, but in the end, Davis won out.”

“Well, that’s great,” Mike said, as he threw the engine into gear. “Davis’ll be lucky to have you. Alright, well those fish won’t wait all day. Say hi to your mom for me, okay?” he said.

“I will Mr. Barnes, sure thing!” Peter said.

Mike smiled and waved as he pulled out from his driveway. In the rear-view mirror, he could see Peter waving after him.

He turned on the radio where Bob Seger was growling about lost highways and shattered dreams, and Mike felt like he would have a pretty good day for a change. He cracked open a can of Bud, took a long swallow and thought, Maybe things are looking up.

***

Mike stopped in town and picked up a jar of purple “garlic flavored” bait that felt like Play-Doh, a tub of pile worms, and another of salmon eggs. He rented a little plastic rowboat as well and dragged it into the back of the Tacoma.

By the time he made it to Oro Lake, it was about nine thirty. Later than he’d have liked, but considering it was a spur of the moment decision, he didn’t really care. Even if the fishing was better earlier in the morning, he was mostly happy to be on the water at all. He’d avoided it for most of the summer while the lake was filled with summer people.

The rowboat cut across Oro Lake, the first chill breezes of autumn whispering across the rippling water. Eddies of cool air snaked between the gusts of lingering summer heat, mirroring the undulating lake water below. Silence surrounded him, the quiet hiss of the boat cutting through water, and the occasional intermittent splash of his paddles slicing the lake’s surface. He was warming up already, and decided to remove his life jacket, since it made him hotter and restricted his movement as he rowed. Tossing it to the floor of the rowboat, he cracked another beer and drank it down in three long swallows. He was already getting a nice buzz and felt like it was going to be a pretty good day.

He pulled against the oars, and soon could see Deer Island, a small island at the center of the lake about a mile away. Deer Island was the only landmass within the otherwise clear lake. It was covered with clusters of oaks, and as he looked toward it, Mike saw one of the eponymous California mule deer dart between the trees. Mike often wondered how the deer got to the island. He never saw any swimming out, and it was too small for any to live there. He guessed anyway. Maybe he’d ask a ranger someday.

The boat was gliding freely through the water as he neared the island when he hit something with a dull thud. Something sharp that scraped along the outside of the boat’s hull as the water dragged it past. The boat shuddered as a gnarled shaft, slimed and black with algae pierced the rowboat. A branch maybe, or something similar. “Fuckety-shitballs,” Mike muttered as water began to flow into the boat through the puncture. He remembered reading in the paper that, thanks to the summer drought and the resulting lowered water levels of the lake, all kinds of things long-forgotten had come closer to the surface.

He tried covering the leak with his foot, but water instantly sluiced around his sneaker. Looking back toward shore, he guessed the island at the center of the lake was closer. Despite the “Keep Off!” signs posted on it, he rowed there to get out of the water and try to patch the hull. He thought briefly of putting on his life jacket, but decided it’d be better to quickly get to shore and patch up the boat. He could call for help when he got to the island. Mike had his cheap little cellphone in his pocket, and it was fully charged. He was glad now that Gabe had insisted he get one.

It was a struggle against the water pouring into the shell of the boat, but with effort, Mike managed to get the boat to the island beach. He jumped out of the boat, landing in cold water up to his waist, and began dragging the boat toward shore when it caught on something. Mike gave it two quick tugs, as the craft listed to one side, filled with water, and sank beneath the surface, sliding backward, away from the island and into the deep water. Within moments, it had vanished along with his fishing gear. The coolers floated on the surface though, and he dashed back into the water. Wading out awkwardly until he was up to his waist, he reached out and grabbed one. The other floated out of reach, but the one in his hand was heavy. It was the one with the sandwiches and beer inside; at least he wouldn’t go full on Robinson Crusoe—for a few hours anyway.

He had turned and began splashing back to shore, dragging the cooler behind him, when his foot caught on something under the water, a root maybe, and he went under.

The water was green and cold, and he hated it already. Regaining his footing, he stumbled to shore.

Mike fell to the island’s sandy beach, his feet still in a few inches of the lapping water and took a deep breath, spitting out lake water as he did. He wiped his wet hair out of his eyes and peered into the silty water of the lake.

“Fucking-A,” he muttered. Sunlight danced across the rippling surface of Oro Lake as he wondered how the hell he was going to get himself out of this mess. He drew his phone from his pocket. Water poured from the seam in the plastic, and the LCD screen was dead gray.

“Shit!” he yelled and arcing his hand overhead, tossed the phone across the sparkling water of the lake, where it disappeared with a quiet splash.

The sand was warm and slightly damp where he sat. He leaned back on his elbows, stretched out his legs, and sighed. A deep, weary sigh of frustration and resignation. He scanned across the rippling surface of the lake, hoping to see another boat nearby. Surely, he couldn’t be the only person who’d decided to go fishing this morning?

His eyes drifted across the glittering lake water, but something seemed off to him. He stopped and peered into the water a dozen or more feet in front of him. Where the water began to get dark, and a submerged shelf gave way to the cool green depths of the lake, he glimpsed rippling lighter spots beneath the surface. They might have been light colored fish, but he couldn’t tell for certain. “Hope you choke on the bait,” Mike muttered. He looked around, wondering where the rowboat had come to rest beneath the water, but couldn’t see it at all.

He yelled for help. He banged sticks together and jumped around while waving his arms overhead, trying to alert anyone on the shore. Far in the distance, he could barely make out hikers, runners, happy couples walking their dogs and children on the distant trail which circled the lake. But none of them took any notice of him at all. He was as good as if lost at sea.

Maybe he could swim to shore, but he didn’t think he’d make it. He was a decent swimmer form-wise but was out of shape. And it must be over a mile back to shore. He wished he’d kept up with his swimming.

So, he took a walk. He decided to see what was on the island after all, take a look around and see if he could find a better vantage point to signal for help. But after a few hours, he’d marched around the perimeter of the island a few times, eaten all the sandwiches he’d brought, and finished the last of the beers. He’d continued calling and waving, but no help had come.

He hiked over the top ridge of the small island, crossing from one side to the other. When he was about at the top, he found an area where the earth had been flattened down. It looked decidedly man-made, yet covered with a sprinkling of leaves and dirt. He trudged across it and noticed how hard the ground was. He kicked at the ground with the sole of his soggy sneaker and uncovered dingy concrete. “Weird,” he muttered. He felt odd talking out loud where nobody could hear him. Mike looked around, left and right and behind him instinctively. He heard rustling in the trees and looking around, noticed a pair of ravens watching him. Perhaps waiting for him to drop a morsel of food. Or to keel over and die.

“Sorry birds,” he said. “Got nothing for you.”

He kicked again at the dirt, walking out toward the edges of the concrete. Mike tapped and poked with his foot until soon he was able to determine the edge of the slab and where it met the surrounding earth.

He circled around the perimeter, until he’d cleared away the edges completely. When he’d uncovered the edges, he could see that it was indeed a concrete slab, roughly ten or a dozen feet to a side. He was considering stepping onto it when he noticed a thin, jagged crack across the center of the concrete.

Mike was raising his foot to take a step onto the concrete when the ground shook. Jerked and bounced. The trees surrounding him shuddered and shook briefly, and he spread his feet to keep his footing. Aftershock, he thought.

A groaning crack! as the fracture in the concrete slab, began to spider-web out, then stopped. For a moment, everything was quiet and still. Suddenly the slab fell, a dull crumbling thump as the concrete collapsed inward in a cloud of pale gray, gritty dust.

Mike leapt back as the concrete caved in, rattling and echoing as it fell into a cavity below. He stood back from the lip of the hole, far enough where he thought he was safe, watching it, waiting for the edge to collapse further. But other than a cloud of dust kicked up by the falling concrete, all was still.

After a minute, the dust settled, and he approached the lip. The pit wasn’t too deep, a conical shape maybe six or eight feet across, and twice that deep. It looked deliberate, like a chamber dug into the top of the island and then covered over with the slab. He saw the concrete rubble piled up in the bottom of the hole, and a few fissures in the surrounding walls leading into the depths of the earth: small passages so tiny only snakes and vermin could explore them. Something about the pit unsettled him. The air wafting up from it carried a faint smell of trapped decay, and a strange hint of ozone. When he turned from it, he didn’t like having it behind him. He had the distinct feeling of something predatory and malign at his back.

He rotated in a circle and saw that this vantage point probably once had a clear view of the entire lake. Or maybe it was still a valley when the concrete was laid down. The lake had been dammed up in the 1930s as part of a WPA project. A few trees blocked his view intermittently, but they were thin, surely fewer than fifty years old.

He retreated from the edge of the hole and circled it again, looking into the distance as he did. His foot hit something hard under a pile of brown rotting oak leaves. Mike kicked the decaying oak leaves away. They were wet slimy as he scraped deeper into the pile. When cleared away, he uncovered a chunk of old wood. It was squared off though, carved and shaped, not like a fallen log. Looked like maybe eight inches to each side, and it was a few feet long. He cleared the length before finding a splintered, rotten end.

Mike stood up, wondering how the beam got up here. And the slab. Maybe it was a surveyor’s shack, or a fire station lookout tower back before the valley had been flooded to make the lake? The original survey team must have sealed off the cave or pit and used the concrete slab as the base for their survey tower.

He went back down the hill, sat on the shore, and glared out across the lake. More hours passed, and rain came. Cold and miserable, he moved back from the shore and sat under the oak boughs. The moon rose, night came, and a chill set in. By morning, he had a fever, and he was hungry and parched.

He opened his mouth to catch some rainwater, and sucked on his soaked shirt, but it wasn’t enough. He got on his hands and knees at the edge of the lake and gulped a few mouthfuls of the cold water.

Slow, cold rain oozed down Mike’s back as he sat on the shore, staring out across the lake. The sun rose, and golden ripples reflected off the lake’s surface. The constant drizzle was irritating, and he felt wretched. Mike wished the rain would come harder, would pour out of the sky in bucketfuls and splash across the surface of the lake. At least he wouldn’t have the false hope that the people he glimpsed on the far shore of the lake would notice him and send for help.

He lay in the rain-wet mud, shivering, and coughing. A thick, wracking cough that ripped at the insides of his chest. Mike approached the water. Nobody was coming to help him. The day had barely broken, and most people hadn’t even risen for their morning coffee yet. He would either die alone on the island in sight of the shore, or he could swim. He stepped closer to the water’s edge and heard a rustling in the leaves nearby. Turning to look behind him, he saw a pair of ravens, midnight black, and staring at him from a branch in an old oak tree. “Least you can fly out of here,” he said, before turning and walking toward the water. The ravens flapped down from the tree and onto the sand, hopping after him.

He stepped off the shore and his feet sank into soft, silty sand. The ravens flapped and cawed as he did. A cacophony of beating wings and furious noise.

In final desperation, he lurched out into the water. His head was pounding and thick as he strode into the lake. When the water was up to his thighs, he stepped off the shelf and began paddling toward shore. He reached and pulled at the water, kicked his legs to put the island as far behind him and as fast as possible. But his chest was thick and heavy, and breathing was agony. His muscles weakened fast, and he was reduced to treading water while trying to keep his head above the surface.

He bobbed under, taking in a mouthful of cold lake water, thrust up and spat it out, coughing. Mike rolled on to his back, arms and legs splayed out and stirring slightly to keep him afloat. He rested, his ears below the waterline, hearing the muffled ebb and flow of the low lapping waves.

Lying on his back, he leaned his head forward, and saw the island beyond his feet. He was about to turn back over and begin a crawl-stroke again when he saw something dark, sinuous, but indistinct through the haze of his fever vision, slithering through the tree line in the distance. Mike turned onto his stomach and began to pull at the water with weak strokes of his arms. His legs kicked behind him, and he sliced into the water, panic rising in his chest.

Something grabbed at his limbs, clutched with biting cold, slithered around his arm, dragging it back until the joints strained and popped from their sockets, pulling tight and digging into his skin. He took a final breath as his throat was encircled, and he was dragged under. His vision flooded with green lake water as a last breath of air exploded out of him, and his lungs filled with liquid as he was pulled down into the slime at the bottom of the lake.

A lancing, searing pain from his arms and legs, a cloud of crimson, and he saw nothing more.

***

Many miles away, in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Alcosta, California, Kimberly Barnes (Kimmie to her family and some friends) woke with a start. Her sheets and sleep shirt were damp with night sweat, her heart was racing, and she had the taste of lake water in her mouth. A vestigial memory from her dream. A dream of being dragged underwater, of cold, grasping darkness and indistinct forms slithering in the slime at the bottom of a lake.

And she knew that her grandfather was dead. She wasn’t sure how she knew, but she did. Kimmie often had strange insights, or hunches, that turned out to be true, but this was the strongest one she’d ever felt. It was as if she’d seen him dying in her dreams. No, not exactly seen him. It was almost like she was him. Like she was watching the events unfold through his eyes, through his body. Felt his fever, his wracking cough. His desperation and terror as he was dragged into the water of Oro Lake. The lake where she’d visited him with her parents so many times. She’d recognized the little island at the center of the lake, the one that, on a clear day, she could see from her grandfather’s back yard. The one she’d asked him to take her to, but he’d said it was off-limits.

She looked out the window at the sunrise starting to creep over the hills to the east. It was still an hour before she had to leave for school. She usually liked to sleep in a little longer. But with her heart racing and blood pumping, there was no point in trying to get back to sleep now.

Kimmie stumbled out of bed and got into the shower. The hot water washed away the tension and nightmare sweat, and by the time she’d toweled off and gotten dressed for school, she was starting to feel almost normal.

She came out into the apartment’s hallway and was greeted with the smell of freshly brewing coffee. She’d never liked the taste of it but loved the smell. Something about it felt homey and comforting to her. She came into the kitchen where her father, Gabe, was scrambling eggs over the stove.

“Morning, sunshine,” he whispered as she came in. “Mom worked late last night, so shhhh!” he put his finger over his lips and smiled at her. “Got time for breakfast with your old man before you jet off to school?”

She nodded before pulling up a seat at the small wooden table in the breakfast nook in the corner of the kitchen. She scooted her chair up as Gabe placed a plate of eggs in front of her.

“Hey, kiddo,” he said. “You’ve got your worried face on. Everything okay?”

She looked up at him, her dark hair falling forward and framing her face. “Dad,” she said sheepishly. “I think you should check in on Grampa.”