Under the Water

Nathan Holloway is good with children. As an elementary school counselor, he's built his life around protecting them—a calling he's never examined too closely. He's careful. Controlled. The kind of man people trust instinctively. Then his girlfriend Emma vanishes without a word. No fight. No warning. Just a text that says Please don't contact me and an empty apartment where her things used to be. Weeks later, Nathan finds himself drawn back to his hometown—and to the pond at the edge of his family's old property. He hasn't been there in twenty years. He can't explain why he needs to go now. There are gaps in Nathan's life. Hours he can't account for. Moments when his hands don't feel like his own, when his reflection seems to move a half-second too slow. He's always had explanations for these things. Stress. Grief. The ordinary fractures of an ordinary mind. But the explanations are running out. The gaps are getting longer. And something is waiting in the water—something that remembers what Nathan has spent his whole life trying to forget. Under the Water is a psychological horror novel about buried secrets, fractured identities, and the monsters we make of ourselves.