Beauties in the Deep

By Zachary Owen

Ivory was only supposed to go fishing with her father. She was never supposed to run off and get into trouble. But that's what she's done. And now the cries of a drowning boy beckon her into icy waters, into a madness which lurks deep inside the lake, waiting to paint her world black.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zachary Owen
• Release date: Sep 18, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311103208

Zachary Owen

Zachary T. Owen is an arsonist. You can find him on twitter and other internet vacuums.

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Beauties in the Deep

Zachary T. Owen

--2014--

Beauties in the Deep copyright © 2013 Zachary T. Owen

Cover design copyright © 2014 Leslie Gordon

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, physical or electronic, without prior written permission from the publisher or author. However, small passages of this publication may be quoted for use in book reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and situations are either the product of the author’s sick imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

eBook design by Zachary T. Owen

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Second Digital Edition: March 2014

Print edition published by Short, Scary Tales Publications

15 North Roundhay, Stechford, Birmingham, B33 9PE, England

Purchase a print edition of Beauties in the Deep at: www.sstpublications.co.uk

For those who stoked the fires of my imagination.

And for my wonderful mentors at Edinboro University.

But no man knows where the Castle of King Death is. All men and women, boys and girls, and even little wee children should so live that when they have to enter the Castle and see the grim King, they may not fear to behold his face.

--Bram Stoker, Under the Sunset

1.

Geoff Wattman was taking his daughter fishing. He scratched his wrinkled, scarred chin with a hairy finger. With his left hand he firmly grasped his daughter’s arm. She wiggled, trying to free herself and look at all the rubber worms and colorful, useless fishing gear.

Geoff handed a wad of crumpled bills to Jerry Lissett, the store owner. With a quick nod of understanding, Lissett disappeared behind a door two feet from the counter. When he reappeared he had in his hand a Styrofoam cup of lively earthworms, wriggling in loose soil. The smell of dirt was strong. He showed them to Geoff to gauge his satisfaction, then capped the worms and put them on the counter. He counted the wad of bills, opened the cash register and handed Geoff his change.

Daddy, let me look! his daughter cried.

No, Ivory. We have to get going, Geoff said calmly. But out of sympathy, realizing what it was to be a child, to want to explore and imagine, he let Ivory go and kept an eye on her as she zigzagged through the aisles.

She grabbed a pile of yellow, fake worms and squeezed them hard. She dropped them back into place and ran to the end of the aisle, pinpointing her gaze on bright fishing bobbers. Her father came around the corner and slipped his hand into hers. C’mon. It’s time to go now.

Geoff saluted Lissett and then he and Ivory went on their way. As they opened the door, a bell jingled and the sun glared down on them. Ivory shielded her eyes and Geoff reached for a pair of sunglasses that were snug in his pocket, one end tucked in, and lifted them to his face. The sunlight disappeared behind the grayness of the lenses and Geoff opened up the passenger side door of his truck. He lifted Ivory and set her in her seat and buckled her in. He went around to his side and popped open the door, hauling himself up. As the door thudded shut, he took a lingering look at the store window. Even through the grayness he could make out the small sheet of white paper in the corner, a young girl’s humble face upon it. It read: Have you seen Melissa Hooper? Below the girl’s photo were multiple phone numbers, the last time and place Melissa had been seen, and a reward ("$1,000 but Negotiable") for anybody who found her.

Geoff started up the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. Real shame, he said to himself, his hands tight on the steering wheel.

While he drove, Ivory watched the trees. She tried to count them, but couldn’t keep track. She wished her mother had come along. Her dad was always trying to get her to do things she had no interest in. Daddy is just trying to make up for not having a boy, her mother had said. The statement didn’t mean much to Ivory. She didn’t care if the things they were doing were supposed to be for boys or not, as long as they were fun. But as it turned out, they usually weren’t—so she pretended she was on adventures, to make things more exciting.

As the trees passed, she imagined her dad and her were headed to a secret place in the woods—a place where she could explore caves and swim in frog-filled