SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Leon Kennedy knows better than to chase ghost stories but grief has a way of loosening a man's hold on reason and when his sister takes sick - the kind of sick the town doctor won't name and the church folk cross themselves over - he starts listening to the wrong kinds of whispers.

They said there was a place down South, a nowhere town cut from the map, where outsiders weren't welcome and the nights pressed close enough to smother you. A place where the past never stayed buried, and the living kept uneasy company with the dead.

In that town, there was a woman folks spoke of in half-words and sideways glances. They called her the Devil's daughter, born with a voice that could conjure spirits and hands that worked like heaven itself. A woman with a southern drawl sweet as poison, eyes sharp enough to see the things trailing a man long after midnight, and a laugh that could either save you or damn you.

Leon wasn't a man for superstitions. He'd seen enough death in his time to know it didn't bargain, and it sure as hell didn't care about prayers. But there are places in this country where the rules of this world do not hold.