WHERE THE GROUND SPEAKS by Helix Ward

Commercial Blurb — Back Cover

They bought the house of their dreams. They forgot to check what was beneath the carpet… and beneath the ground.

After the darkest months of the pandemic, the Carmona Rodríguez family flees the claustrophobia of New York for a fresh start in Pine Crest, an idyllic and affordable California suburb. Identical houses, immaculate lawns, and absolute silence. The perfect refuge.

But cheap things hide their own darkness after nightfall.

Soon, domestic bliss becomes a sensory nightmare. Water from the faucets begins to seep chemical fluids. The walls sweat cold grease. The floating floors groan in uneven rhythms, mimicking the spasms of drowning lungs. No one in the neighborhood wants to talk; real-estate greed has forced everyone to keep silent about the biological secret rotting beneath the asphalt.

Only fourteen-year-old José can see the decaying spirits lined up on the porches. His mind, mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia, has become the transmitting antenna for an illegal mass grave containing six thousand souls compressed beneath the concrete. The dead are cold. They are suffering beneath the weight of quicklime. And they demand that the structural pressure be relieved.

The blood pact has already been sealed. The ice pick is waiting in the bathroom. And the hungry earth will not stop until the soft flesh above it descends to fertilize the trenches.