SYNOPSIS:

An Overview for Dead Reckoning “… the vast all that is call’d Evil I saw hastening to merge itself and become lost and dead.” – Walt Whitman In the summer of 2003, two young marine biology students find madness and murder when they reopen a cursed oceanographic project off the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Dead Reckoning is an intense study of terror, redolent of the drowned whispers of a dark, haunted sea. Annie Mitchell – a marine biologist studying at Woods Hole – finds herself obsessed in reopening an infamous oceanographic project that has taken the lives of two scientists some years before. She and her young partner, Stewart Eddinger, get more than they bargained for when they find themselves “haunted” by intense impulses, hallucinations, and an intangible evil that seems to be the biblical Leviathan incarnate. As the two young people continue their investigation into the heart of the mystery, they soon discover that they are being slowly consumed by the legend of the Leviathan. Events begin promising, however; Annie and Stew find good resources on the Outer Banks and they discover the wreck of a work trawler used by the deceased scientists who were lost at sea while they were using a submersible called PHARAOH. Annie believes that if she can find the lost deep-sea submersible, she will be granted ownership of the infamous project – a gambit, she hopes, that will earn her a Master’s degree and considerable clout in her profession as a marine biologist. And then, things begin to turn darker. Experiencing increasing resistance to open the project by her mentor and lover, Dr. Dennis Cole, and the enigmatic owner of the intellectual property of PHARAOH, Dr. Paul Simpson, Annie becomes obsessed. She begins to harbor strange delusions and quickly finds herself addicted to drugs, while her surroundings begin to dissolve into a shrieking madness of paranoia and unreality. Following her is Stew, who finds his own sexual desires all-consuming in his lust for Annie. Even when it appears that they can pull themselves free of the eyes of the Leviathan, something inevitably drags them back into it, and they are soon lost in the maelstrom. When she has begun to despair of ever opening the project – the height of her ambitions – Annie is forced to commit murder. She lashes out to kill Dennis Cole and Paul Simpson, believing them as the instigators of her troubles, and then, later, her best friend Terry Townsend, whom she realizes has been having an affair with her lover. Stew, consumed by his lust, finds himself fixated on Annie, and the two are forced to confront each other at sea, under the spires of an abandoned lighthouse. Within a rising tempest, Annie and Stew struggle with their evils, as well as each other, taking their lives as the curse of the Leviathan comes due. Dead Reckoning is a study of terror and despair, framed within a pop culture that is obsessed with morbidity and estrangement. A lurid, haunting tale, the novel is meant to be read as a creepy summer read. It will work well with viewers who are fans of morbid dark films as THE EXORCIST, THE BLAIR WITCH PRJECT, DARK WATER, BLACK SWAN, PROMOTHEUS; appealing to those who love dark stories that explore the nether-regions of our psyche.