***“Into the Cruel Sea is a love story bearing a dripping wet machete, featuring creatures from the blackest of lagoons: the human heart. This is a vicious story, and a viciously touching story, and if you enjoyed Brian Keene’s Ghoul or James Moore’s Deeper, you’ll enjoy this story of relationships gone off the deep end and splashing into something…crueler than life itself.” ~ Michael Arnzen, author of 100 Jolts and Proverbs for Monsters***

Excerpt:

After hacking off his parents’ heads with a butcher knife, Wade walked to the beach, slumped against the trunk of a palm tree, and waited for the voices to return, calling him into the ocean. Blood had dried on his forehead and face. The more he sat unmoving, the more his fingers stuck together, but that didn’t bother him. Wade never took his eyes off the water, the tiny waves – mere ripples – lapped against pink sand. His sweat threatened to short out his cassette player’s earphones. Through the crackles, Lemmy’s rasp roared on with Motorhead’s racing guitars.

Wade’s mind wasn’t on the music, though, or the security patrols making their rounds. They wouldn’t have discovered the bodies yet, but then again, they never ignored teenagers sitting on the beaches at night. Regardless, Wade watched the waters, waiting. His time was coming. He knew they were coming too, and he couldn’t wait. He’d paid the entrance price, especially when he watched his mother sob in the bathroom mirror before slitting her throat.

Wade didn’t want to think about that. Hours stretched on until the night softened to a dark gray and the first streaks of red and orange broke over the horizon. Lemmy and Motorhead still blared in his ears but as the sun began to rise, Wade yanked off the headphones and tossed the walkman aside. The music continued but from a distance. It sounded scratchy, tinny.

And that’s when it finally happened.

Dark spots in the water moved toward the shore until all four hairlines broke the surface. Slowly, their foreheads and eyes emerged, glaring forward. They stopped when they were waist deep. Water glistened on their gray skins. Two of them were old men with pronounced rib lines and sagging bellies. The other two were women. One had wrinkled, drooping breasts and the other appeared young, perky, and shapely. They never blinked their bright white eyes and their grins showed sharp, brown teeth. The young one beckoned with her forefinger.

Wade reached into his jean jacket for a half-folded note and spread it out. After using his cassette player as a paperweight to keep it in place, he stood and stripped, leaving a pile of clothing as he walked into the water. The young woman threw her arm around his shoulder and guided him away. The others followed. Saltwater touched Wade’s chin, and then his mouth. When it went over his nose, he didn’t thrash about or gasp for breath. Eventually, the top of his head disappeared into Castle Harbour.

He was gone. Once the police found the bodies of his parents, they searched the Naval Air Station and the surrounding off-base areas of St. David’s Island. They even checked some of the sensitive areas of the air strip that the U.S. Navy shared with the airport. Airliner baggage holds were examined for stowaways but they never found him. On a beach facing Castle Harbour and Nonesuch Island, there were only his clothes, a pair of sunglasses, a walkman, and a bloody butcher knife covered with Wade’s fingerprints. As for the message, it contained one simple sentence in pencil:

I will always love you, Beth Weller.