Marrow of Blackwood
By Ethan Ross
The debt of St. Jude's was never forgotten. It was only deferred.
Eighty years ago, the valley was flooded, drowning a town and its dark history under three hundred feet of silty water. But a record-breaking drought has forced the shoreline to recede, exposing the skeletal remains of a civilization?and the rhythmic, wet expansion and contraction of something that has begun to breathe again [Chapter 1].
Arthur arrives at the mud-slicked ruins with a single purpose: to fulfill his grandfather's cryptic final wish. Armed with a bizarre brass key and a warning to "never let the silt settle on your skin," he must enter the flooded vault of the Trust & Timber Bank. But the town of St. Jude's is not empty. In the shadows of rotted Victorian homes, something fluid and multi-jointed watches his every step, dragging itself across the waterlogged floorboards [Chapter 1].
As the black mineral from the local quarry begins to pulse in Arthur's own marrow, he realizes the vault was never meant to keep something out. It was built to keep something in.
When the heavy steel door finally shivers beneath his touch, a voice answers from the dark?a perfect, wet mirror of his own.
The water is gone. The silt is rising. And the interest is finally due.
