Scott Thomas [Thomas - Violet

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright 2019 Scott Thomas

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Published by Inkshares, Inc., San Francisco, California

www.inkshares.com

Cover design by Lauren Harms

Edited by Adam Gomolin

Interior design by Kevin G. Summers

ISBN: 9781947848368

e-ISBN: 9781947848375

LCCN: 2018943991

First edition

Printed in the United States of America

For Kim
For Aubrey and Cleo
And for my dad

PRAISE FOR KILL CREEK

A menacing and cinematic story that starts off merely creepy but evolves into a bloody, action-driven terrorfest [and] a thought-provoking and enjoyable look at the genre itself, as the characters discuss horror, its history, and its tropes at length. A match for readers who enjoyed Shirley Jacksons The Haunting of Hill House.

Booklist (starred review)

Intensely realized and beautifully orchestrated Gothic horror.

Joyce Carol Oates

Not since I read The Shining in eighth grade has a book scared the crap out of me as much as Kill Creek. The combo of a great premise and an exquisite ability to conjure dread and terror make Scott Thomass debut the perfect Halloween treat.

Andy Lewis, Hollywood Reporter

Kill Creek is the horror debut of 2017. An intimate, twisted gothic testament to horror as a genre Kill Creek is a book from a horror fan to horror fanscreepy, atmospheric, and messed up in all the best ways a must-read for anyone who likes it when their fiction goes to dark places.

Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog

Scott Thomas splendidly creates a fascinating co-dependency between the spooky edifice and the folk that perpetuate (and amplify) its morbid history. Thomas does a fine job with his characters, and the atmosphere is chock-full of delightfully unsettling images. Horror aficionados will welcome it with open arms.

Scream magazine

Suspenseful, foreboding, and macabre, Kill Creek is high-grade horror, successfully bringing together old-world classics like The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, elements of the highly stylized Japanese scare movies like The Ring, and a bit of The Amityville Horror to give readers original twists and deathly scares.

Fantasy-Faction

Therell be no admonitions to read this one with the lights on or alone at night. Thats a given. Alone or with friends, lights blazing, or a single reading lamp casting shadows over the page, it wont matter. The result will be the same: shivers for many nights afterward. Kill Creek is the perfect novel to read on Halloween.

New York Journal of Books

Kill Creek is a slow-burn, skin-crawling haunted house novel with a terrifying premise and a shockingly brutal gut-punch of a conclusion. This debut establishes Scott Thomas as a force to be reckoned with on the horror scene. His remarkable ability to build tension and suspense had me on the edge of my seat until the last page.

Shane D. Keene, HorrorTalk

Kill Creek delivers the cinematic scares of The Conjuring without losing a literary feel. This is the kind of book that reminds you binge-reading came way before binge-watching.

Kailey Marsh, BloodList

Gives us just the right kinds of Halloween-spirit thrills while throwing in some new twists, and great characters.

Horrible Imaginings podcast

I thought there were no more good haunted house stories to tell until I read Kill Creek. Scott Thomas uses a foundation of the expected tropes to build a story with not just a classic horror ambiance but also a unique architecture of tension.

J-F. Dubeau, author of A God in the Shed

An exquisite horror tale The storys unique blend of literary horror and psychological thriller made it an addictive read.

BiblioSanctum

A group of best-selling horror writers team up for a publicity stunt at an infamous abandoned haunted house in the Kansas countryside, and guess what happens? Shit gets real!!! They end up awakening an entity that comes after them. That is creepy and crazy and it has a vibe like, hey, guys, you kind of had it coming. Oh, and it all goes down ON Halloween night. Yeah, this is an obvious All Hallows Read selection.

Geeks of Doom

Friendship is one mind in two bodies.

Mencius

Sorrows child sits by the water

Sorrows child your arms enfold her

Sorrows child youre loathe to befriend her

Sorrows child but in sorrow surrender

And just when it seems as though

All your tears were at an end

Sorrows child lifts up her hand

And she brings it down again

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Sorrows Child

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

UNDER THE RIVER

SHE KNEW ALMOST nothing about the history of the town.

She did not know that once upon a time, the town was not a town at all but a wound in the gypsum hills overrun by Johnsongrass, musk thistle, and milkweed. In those days, the Verdigris River slithered like a brown, muddy snake through the lowlands, the curve of its back brushing up against the towering stalks of thick weeds. The Kiowa called this place poiye tsape ton, meaning hidden water, because not a glint of sunlight on the surface of the river could be seen from the steep ridges overlooking the area. There was no reason to go down into the impenetrable brush. There were no animals worth hunting there, no vegetation worth picking.

The town itself seemed to appear out of nowhere, a collection of small, one-room structures along a dirt road etched into the wild countryside. At one end of the basin, the gypsum hills parted like stone curtains, just enough to allow the road to enter. At the other end, the dirt path hugged closer to the river, following its curve around the bluffs. And then, suddenly, the path shot straight north as if startled out of the odd valleys, back into the vast Kansas prairie.

She did not know that the towns name, Pacington, was nothing more than a bastardization of the original words. But many had forgotten its origin. By the time the first shop owners opened their doors along Center Street, the Native Americans living in Southeast Kansas had long ago been relocated to Oklahoma. As more and more white settlers found their way between the river basin, fewer bothered to consider the people who had lived there before them. The untamed tangles of brush and vine along this section of the Verdigris belonged to the town of Pacington.

She vaguely remembered the stories her father told her about the day the Army Corps of Engineers began construction on a reservoir just outside of town. Their intention was to control flooding to the farmland along the river, but on the second day, workers broke through into a chasm hidden beneath the river floor, unleashing a body of water buried eons ago by the shifting earth. It swirled up through the lazy current of the Verdigris and pushed its edges deep into the surrounding forest. In a matter of minutes, the river became a lake, the fleeing water moving too quickly for man or machine to escape. Two workers lost their lives that day. They were swept down into an ancient abyss, the depth of which easily swallowed fifty feet of a toppled crane. The equipment was recovered, but the bodies were not. Some said they just kept drifting down, down, deeper into the dark, endless waters of that underground lake, forever falling into the earth.