Coming Soon​
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​​​​​​Dead in the Water
​​​Coming December 1, 2025
Disgraced FBI agent Rachel Owens has hit rock bottom. Her drinking cost both her job and marriage. Now, faced with losing custody of her kids, she returns to her hometown of Newbridge, Maryland, to bury her father, the former police chief. Their relationship had been strained as a result of a cold Christmas Eve night in Rachel's past when her mother left and never returned. When she's offered the chance to investigate a cold case her father couldn't crack, Rachel agrees, in desperate need of this shot at redemption. But old habits die hard, and she finds herself giving into the temptation of the bottle, much as her mother had. Strange happenings in her childhood home, including the ghostly figure of a mysterious woman, lead her to question the circumstances of her mother's disappearance. And as her investigation into the cold case deepens and she draws closer to the answers she seeks, Rachel learns that some truths are too horrifying to uncover, and some secrets are best left dead in the water.
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Excerpt:
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Rachel woke, startled from sleep. Disoriented and groggy, she raised her head from the pillow and saw someone standing in her bedroom doorway. At first, she thought it was Daniel and felt the same momentary panic she might have if one of her own children had come to her in the middle of the night, hurt, scared, or sick, but as she sat up, saying his name, she realized she was wrong. The figure wasn’t the tall, lanky form of a teenage boy—but rather, a woman.
“Shit!” Seized with immediate alarm, Rachel groped wildly for the drawer on her bedside table, where she’d put her father’s pistol. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What are you—”
Like a marionette whose strings have been severed, the shadowy figure abruptly collapsed. Throwing back her blankets, Rachel scrambled out of bed and toward the door, expecting to find the woman sprawled across the floor. Instead, however, to her surprise—her complete confoundment—there was nothing. The doorway was empty.
Almost.
She saw a dark stain on the floorboards where the woman had been standing, and when she flipped on the lights, she saw it was a small puddle of what looked like the same black fluid she’d found splattered across the entry downstairs.
The same shit that came up out of the basement sink.
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“What the hell?” she whispered. Just past the puddle, she saw another, then another, a trail of what looked like wet footprints crossing the landing. With renewed alarm, Rachel rushed out of the bedroom and down the hall toward Heather’s door.
Daniel!
From the doorway, she could see the boy in bed, his back turned toward the door, blankets drawn up to his shoulder. She heard the soft whisper of his breathing as he slept, peaceful and undisturbed. As she turned, she saw the trail of water hadn’t led to his door after all, but rather, from the staircase itself. She could see splatters along each of the risers leading to the second floor. Even without turning on the entry light or following them herself, she knew instantly and without a doubt where they’d lead: the basement door, which she felt with ominous certainty would again be standing wide open.
“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No, no, no.”
Rachel ducked into the bathroom and shut the door, hoping on some desperate, childish level that when she opened it again, those strange, glistening footprints would be gone. She turned the cold water on in the sink, then cupped her hands together, splashing herself in the face several times.
Get a hold of yourself, she thought sharply, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Water dripped from her chin, nose and eyelashes. Her wet hair clung to her face in tangled strands.
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There’s a logical explanation behind this. There has to be.
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Because the alternative was a haunting, some waterlogged ghost living down in her father’s basement, and the idea of this was so ridiculous and insane, she had to laugh. Bracing herself with her hands against the sink rim, she uttered a low, shaky exhalation and fought to compose herself.
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I imagined the woman in the doorway, she thought firmly. I was half asleep and got confused in the dark, saw something that wasn’t there. If the water on the floor is real, that means there’s a leak in the roof, clogs in the pipes Charlie didn’t find, something to explain it. Something logical, rational, and real.
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Steeling herself with this resolve, she turned the water off and grabbed a towel. After blotting her face dry, she returned to the hall, then made her way downstairs as she mopped up the puddles. As she’d expected, she found the basement door open but refused to give in to the irrational temptation to panic.
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The lock must be broken, she told herself, and that’s why it wouldn’t stay shut. Changes in air pressure, drafts from the cellar—something is forcing it open, letting whatever’s down there get out.
“Get your head out of your ass,” she whispered, and if she’d had a bottle of vodka anywhere close at hand, she’d knock it back by the greedy mouthful in that moment.
I need a drink.
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(c) 2025 S.E. Howard
