Echoes From the Abyss

Echoes From the Abyss

Selena Maeve · Completed · 19.7k Words

393
Hot
475
Views
0
Added
Add to Shelf
Start Reading
Share:facebooktwitterpinterestwhatsappreddit

Introduction

When the deputy police chief is found dead in Innsmouth Harbor—naked, bearing a strange symbol, and arranged like a ritual sacrifice—Detective [Name] sees only a staged deception.
The victim’s wife seems too perfect, and his mistress is too eager to confess. Buried records reveal seven ignored distress calls.
Then, the autopsy reveals that the symbol was carved by two people.
Now, the wife’s gentle mask shatters.
The tide pulls back to reveal what’s been hidden all along.

Chapter 1

November in Innsmouth never consults anyone.

The fog rolls in from the Atlantic, enveloping the entire town like a soaked gray blanket. At 5:40 a.m. on the fishing pier, old Harlan Baker stubbed out his cigarette on the gunwale. The white vapor he exhaled mingled with the sea fog, making it impossible to tell which was his own. His knuckles were thick, and the crevices of his fingernails held forty-seven years of fishy stench that could never be washed away.

The winch creaked.

The net rose from the black water, heavy beyond belief. Harlan squinted, his cloudy blue eyes fixed on the surface. He’d lived on these waters for sixty-nine years and had seen every damn thing—torpedo casings from World War II, a refrigerator from the ’80s, and a whole supermarket shopping cart hauled up the year before, rusted like an iron tree sprouting from the seabed.

But whatever was in the net wasn’t a fish.

A waterproof canvas bag was tangled in the net, encrusted with seaweed and barnacles, like a cocoon spun by some deep-sea creature. Seawater dripped from the folds of the canvas onto the deck; the color was off—not pure and clear, but tinged with a hint of brownish-yellow.

Harlan crouched down. His knees cracked like dry twigs snapping.

The fish knife sliced open a corner of the canvas. A smell burst out—not rot, but something else. Rust. Ink. Saltwater. And that scent of myrrh found in churches, clinging sweetly and cloyingly to the back of his nose. Harlan’s stomach lurched, and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He cut a larger opening in the canvas.

A man was curled up inside.

Naked. His limbs were arranged in a fetal position, knees pressed against his chest, hands clasped together in front of him, as if in prayer—the prayer of a dead man.

A symbol was carved into the center of his forehead—not with a knife, but with some blunt instrument, repeatedly chiseled until the skin and flesh were peeled back, exposing the whitish periosteum beneath. Three arcs encircled a dot.

His skin was smeared with a dark brown substance that had dried and cracked into a dense network of lines, like contour lines on an ancient map. Later, the coroner would identify it as a mixture of sheep’s blood and cuttlefish ink. The sheep’s blood provided a dark red base, while the cuttlefish ink produced a deep brown verging on black—

When mixed, the two liquids oxidized on the skin into a color resembling dried blood, yet darker and richer—like ink retrieved from the depths of the ocean.

His mouth was slightly agape, his lips secured with black thread—ordinary sewing thread, not surgical sutures. The corners of his mouth were pulled upward into a curve, not a smile, but a far older expression. Harlan shone his flashlight inside and saw a dark yellow object wedged between the base of the tongue and the roof of the mouth. Parchment.

He didn’t touch the paper. He was sixty-nine years old—old enough to know there were some things he shouldn’t touch. He also knew that once he touched certain things, they would stick to his hands forever.

Harlan stood up and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. His fingers hovered over the keys for a long time, not out of fear, but because he was trying to decide who to call. The police? The Coast Guard? Or the town priest?

In the end, he dialed three numbers. The police were the last.

Forty minutes later, the Insmouth Police Department’s patrol cars filled the pier.

Red and blue lights blurred in the fog, like the color seeping from a wound. Another two hours passed before the State Police’s black SUV arrived, its tires crunching over the broken shells on the pier with a fine, crackling sound.

Last to arrive was the FBI’s gray sedan, which pulled up silently outside the police tape; the sound of the door opening and closing was as soft as a sigh.

Denise Parker stepped out of the black SUV.

She was forty-one, divorced, and had no children. A member of the State Police Criminal Investigation Division with nineteen years of service. Some in the office called her “The Freezer” because she never smiled. In truth, it wasn’t that she didn’t smile—she had simply forgotten how. A smile was an expression that required practice, and she hadn’t had anyone to practice it with in a long time.

Her face was sharply defined, with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes; her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail so tight it almost pulled the corners of her eyes upward.

She wore a dark gray suit and flat shoes, the soles of which made no sound as they touched the wet wooden planks of the pier. It was a habit—nineteen years of crime scene investigations had taught her one thing:

Before identifying the deceased, do not disturb anything, not even the air.

Chief McRae of the Innsmouth Police Department was waiting for her at the pier. He looked terrible—not the kind of terrible that comes from a sleepless night, but the kind where something is clenching his insides. The coffee cup in his hand was trembling.

“Brian Caldwell,” MacRae said, his jaw muscles tensing and relaxing as he spoke the name. “My deputy chief.”

Denise didn’t respond immediately. She crouched beside the body and stared at it for a long time.

Inside the crime scene perimeter, the forensic team was conducting a preliminary examination; camera flashes sliced every inch of the body’s skin into fragments before piecing it back together.

Denise’s gaze began at the ankles and moved upward, inch by inch. Restraint marks—on the wrists and ankles—were visible, though not deep. They weren’t caused by struggle; the victim had been bound after death, or while unconscious.

The symbol on the forehead—three arcs encircling a dot—was a variation of the Yellow Mark. She had seen something similar in the archives at Quantico. Fifteen years ago, in Louisiana, three college students had performed a pagan ritual in the swamps; one of them had been sacrificed by his companions, and the symbol on his forehead bore a seventy-percent resemblance to this one.

The parchment was carefully extracted by the coroner with tweezers and unfolded inside the evidence bag.

It was covered in a dense, bizarre script. Not English, not Spanish, not any alphabet system recognizable at a glance. The lines were twisted, like the trail of insects crawling across the paper, or perhaps a deliberate imitation of some ancient script. There was a certain pattern to the strokes; this wasn’t random scribbling—someone was trying to convey a message using this writing system.

It had the style of The Necronomicon. There was a similar case in the archives—in 1978, in Providence, a Brown University student filled an entire diary with his own invented “Arkhamite” script before jumping from the thirteenth floor. His suicide note, when translated, read: “I heard it. ”

Denise stood up. Her knees gave a faint creak, as unrelenting as the sea fog.

“The symbol on his forehead,” she began, her voice low, “was carved after death.”

The medical examiner looked up—a young woman in glasses named Chen, recently transferred from Boston. “Preliminary findings suggest so. There’s no active bleeding. If it had been carved while he was alive, the edges of the wound would have—”

“I know,” Denise interrupted. It wasn’t impatience; she simply didn’t need an explanation. What she needed was confirmation.

Something fell out of the bottom of the canvas bag and rolled to Denise’s feet.

A police badge. Brian Caldwell’s police badge. It was sent into an almost perfect circle.

Denise bent down to pick it up. She wasn’t wearing gloves, but she used the plastic lining of the evidence bag to cushion her fingers. There was a deep scratch on the metal surface of the badge, running through the center, like some kind of ritualistic act of destruction. The edges of the circle had been carefully smoothed so they wouldn’t cut her. Someone had spent a lot of time doing this.

She flipped the badge over. Engraved on the back was a line of small text—not machine-engraved, but hand-carved with a sharp tool. The letters were so small she had to lean in to read them—

The Seventh.

That afternoon, a single phrase appeared on The Boston Globe’s website: Cthulhu-style murder.

By evening, the phrase was trending nationwide.

Reporters swarmed into Innsmouth like sharks sensing blood.

CNN sent a crew; Fox News sent another. The two groups nearly came to blows outside the docks—not over the story, but over a vantage point to film the ocean.

The town already had a bad reputation—in the 1930s, the federal government had raided a local church, taking away dozens of residents; the files remain classified to this day.

It was no coincidence that Lovecraft named the port in his horror stories Innsmouth. The town’s history was like the water beneath the docks: so dark you couldn’t see the bottom, but you knew what lurked there.

Everyone believed Brian Caldwell had been sacrificed by some cult.

Denise didn’t think so.

That evening, she returned to her makeshift office—a conference room on the second floor of the Innsmouth Police Department, with windows overlooking the parking lot. She spread the crime scene photos across the entire table—the body from every angle, close-ups of the symbols, high-resolution scans of the parchment, and the bent police badge.

She studied them for a long time, then wrote a single line on a sticky note and pinned it to the edge of the desk:

The killer didn’t want the police to believe this was a ritual. The killer wanted us to believe it, and the killer wanted the police to believe it.

She stared at those words, then wrote another note:

The real question isn’t “Why did they stage it to look like a ritual?” The real question is—why did they want us to see that it was staged?

After writing that, she didn’t write a third. Because she knew that once she started asking the third question, she would ask the fourth, the fifth, until she asked the one question she couldn’t ask.

And that question was lying in a white house in North Innsmouth right now, waiting for her.

Last Chapters

You Might Like 😍

Bella and Her Beast

Bella and Her Beast

15.3k Views · Completed · Sheridan Hartin
For all the little girls who grew up wondering what happens after the prince kisses the girl—this is the story they never told you.
.
Locked in her frozen tower, Bella dreamed of warmth, of touch, of freedom and of love. Cursed with the power of ice and snow, she’s spent her life alone. A secret they tried to protect the world from. Her only escape comes in the form of the books she reads. Stories of heat, desire, and the kind of love that could melt even her frostbitten heart.
Damien is the Beast. A dragon King with a temper forged in flame and a soul hollowed by duty. The world fears him. The people call him a monster. But beneath the scales and the rage lies a man who has never been touched by love.
When frost meets fire, the world shatters. She was never meant to leave her tower. He was never meant to find her. But destiny doesn’t bow to kings or care for cages and now the question burns through them both: Can Bella have her Beast? Or will the girl of snow melt in the heat of his desire?

.
"I’m keeping her."
"What?"
Before I can react, he scoops her up. Her small body fits easily in the cradle of his talons. For a split second, she looks startled, but not afraid. Her hand rests against one scaled finger, and she stares up at him with that same curious wonder, as though she’s already forgotten she was ever meant to fear me.
"Put her down," I try to command, panic threading through my thoughts. "You’ll hurt her."
"She’s ours," the beast insists, possessive and fierce. "Our snowflake."
Omega Bound

Omega Bound

2.5m Views · Completed · Veronica White
Ayla Frost is a beautiful, rare omega. Kidnapped, tortured, and trafficked to rogue clans and corrupt alphas to do with as they pleased.  Kept alive in her cage, broken and abandoned by her wolf, she becomes mute and has given up on hope for a better life until one explosion changes everything. 

Thane Knight is the alpha of the Midnight Pack of the La Plata Mountain Range, the largest wolf shifter pack in the world. He is an alpha by day and hunts the shifter trafficking ring with his group of mercenaries by night. His hunt for vengeance leads to one raid that changes his life. 

Tropes:
Touch her and die/Slow burn romance/Fated Mates/Found family twist/Close circle betrayal/Cinnamon roll for only her/Traumatized heroine/Rare wolf/Hidden powers/Knotting/Nesting/Heats/Luna/Attempted assassination
Where The Ice Gives Way

Where The Ice Gives Way

36.3k Views · Ongoing · Sheridan Hartin
Charlotte Pierce is used to surviving in motion. New towns, new schools, the same old house on the edge of nowhere, and the same rule that keeps her standing. Keep her twin brother, Charlie safe. Keep his hockey dream alive. Keep her own needs quiet. She works too much, sleeps too little, and saves the one thing that still feels like hers for the middle of the night, when she can lace up her worn skates and carve freedom into dangerous frozen ice. Charlotte and Charlie shifted once, years ago, and never understood what it meant. They had no pack, no guidance and no protection. Just two twins clinging to each other and pretending the voice in their heads was stress, imagination, or loneliness. Then they move to Wellington.
Blake Atlas scents his mate the moment Charlotte arrives. The bond hits hard and unmistakable, but Charlotte doesn’t recognise it. She doesn’t know why her chest keeps pulling toward the one boy she absolutely cannot afford to want. Blake is Charlie’s new hockey captain. Charlie’s chance at making something good. Charlie makes it clear; his sister is off-limits and Blake tries to do the right thing, but secrets don’t stay buried forever. Rogues prowl the edges of town. The ice cracks. The bond tightens. Then Charlotte’s rare white wolf awakens, the very thing that makes her powerful, also makes her a target.
Shanti needs Shakti. (Peace needs strength.)

Where the Ice Gives Way is a slow-burn YA paranormal romance filled with fated mates, protective alpha energy, fierce sibling loyalty, found family pack bonds, hurt/comfort, and quiet, aching tension. It’s a story about first belonging, learning to be cared for, and what happens when the girl who has always held everyone else up finally falls, and someone catches her.
Alpha Under Love Spell

Alpha Under Love Spell

1.8k Views · Ongoing · doughdessertdelight
“Please listen to me! I am not a thief. I don’t know how that necklace ended up in my purse. Please!” begged Maeve, crying.
Thorin pushed her on the bed and pinned her with his body. He growled near her face, “Liar!”

“No! No! I am not lying!”

“Then explain this!” Thorin whipped the screen of his phone near her eyes. Maeve looked at the screen, and her eyes widened with shock. It was a DNA report. It clearly said that Valeska was Maeve and Thorin’s daughter. “You have been lying to me for months now. Why did you hide that she is my daughter? Why did you start hating me? Did you never love me?”

“What should I have done? Let you kill my daughter!” snapped Maeve.

“What? Kill? What the hell are you talking about?” shouted Thorin.


After a passionate night with the Alpha Heir Thorin Blackridge, Maeve Arrendale, a human, found herself pregnant. She knew she had left her contact details for Thorin to find her, but he never came. Desperately, she went to tell him everything and ask him to take responsibility. But what came at her was humiliation and the devilish serial killer, Ozul.

She had no idea how she escaped her certain but she thanked every god and ran far away from Thorin and his world. She raised her child on her own. She herself had a difficult life and didn’t want her daughter to suffer. So she did everything in her power to give Valeska a good life.

Her life was turned upside down when Thorin came to her office as her boss. His fated mate, Vespera clinging to his arms. Now, Thorin hated her for vanishing from his life, and Maeve hated him for sending a serial killer to kill her.

Will Thorin accept his daughter? Will Maeve forgive him for attempting to kill her? If not Thorin, then who sent a serial killer to kill Maeve? An ancient magic, a prophecy, a powerful child is going to change everything in everyone’s life. Is everyone ready?
They'll Regret This

They'll Regret This

7.7k Views · Completed · Charlotte York
They traded me for their "real" daughter the day she showed up.

My fiancé didn't just dump me—he proposed to her that same night. My so-called family handed me bus fare and a one-way ticket to the countryside.

Perfect. Let them think they won.

They don't know who I really am. The anonymous genius surgeon who saves lives when elite hospitals give up. The legendary artist whose paintings sell for millions at auction. The undefeated shadow queen of the underground fighting circuit. And the true heiress to a fortune that makes theirs look like pocket change.

Now my ex-fiancé begs on his knees. My fake sister's jealousy is eating her alive. And that cold, arrogant CEO who once threw our engagement contract in my face? He's hunting me down like a man possessed, desperate for one more chance.

They threw me away like trash to upgrade their lives.

Joke's on them.

I was always the upgrade.
Rebirth Of The HighSchool Villain

Rebirth Of The HighSchool Villain

2.2k Views · Completed · Trust AW
Aurora Whitmore was the villain of Malcolm & Whitmore High. She was obsessed with her childhood love, Adrian Malcolm.
When he chose Jane Sinclair over her, Aurora lost control and on graduation night, she died after drinking a poisoned wine, not knowing who poisoned her. With her last breath, she wished for a second chance and woke up one year before her death.
This time, Aurora refuses to be the villain. She breaks off her engagement, stops chasing Adrian, and walks away with her pride intact. But the more she ignores him, the more Adrian wants her back.
And when his cold, mysterious half-brother Marcel, the one who was supposed to die, returns and begins to fall for Aurora after she saves him. Now the brothers are at war.
One wants the girl who stopped loving him. The other wants the girl who saved him. But Aurora isn’t chasing anyone anymore. She’s rewriting her fate.
Will Aurora be able to change her fate? Will she return back to Adrian or choose Marcel? Or will fate turn her into the villain again? There is only one way to find out.
Take note, that names, characters, location are all fictional.
Game of Destiny

Game of Destiny

1.2m Views · Completed · Dripping Creativity
Amie's wolf hasn't shown herself. But who cares? She has a good pack, best friends and a family who loves her. Everyone, including the Alpha, is telling her she is perfect just the way she is. That is until she finds her mate and he rejects her. Heartbroken Amie flees from everything and start over. No more werewolves, no more packs.

When Finlay finds her, she is living among humans. He is smitten by the stubborn wolf that refuse to acknowledge his existence. She may not be his mate, but he wants her to be a part of his pack, latent wolf or not.

Amie cant resist the Alpha that comes into her life and drags her back into pack life. Not only does she find herself happier than she has been in a long time, her wolf finally comes to her. Finlay isn't her mate, but he becomes her best friend. Together with the other top wolves in the pack, they work to create the best and strongest pack.

When it's time for the pack games, the event that decides the packs rank for the coming ten year, Amie needs to face her old pack. When she sees the man that rejected her for the first time in ten years, everything she thought she knew is turned around. Amie and Finlay need to adapt to the new reality and find a way forward for their pack. But will the curve ball split them apart?
Falling For The Playboy Billionaire

Falling For The Playboy Billionaire

905 Views · Ongoing · Ava John
A collision of two worlds brought them together. Two single parents, with different personalities and distinct parenting styles.
Henderson Bain a playboy billionaire cares about nothing else aside from his daughter, Itzel who is a spoilt brat all thanks to her father.
Lena Cohen is hunted by her past but despite that, she is an amazing mother to Trent, a sweet well well-behaved boy but life wasn't rosy for them.
Henderson Bain is having a hard time searching for a nanny for Itzel until shows up though qualified, Henderson refuses to offer her the job because of their first encounter but seeing how Lena and Itzel get along, he decides to employ her.
Lena and Henderson were two worlds apart but one thing they never saw coming was them falling for each other.
Will they finally let go of their past, and give love a chance? Or try to suppress their feelings for each other? And what if their past comes knocking at their doors once again?
Rise of the Banished She-Wolf

Rise of the Banished She-Wolf

439.3k Views · Completed · Lily
"White wolf! Kill that monster!"
That roar stole my eighteenth birthday and shattered my world. My first shift should have been glory—blood turned blessing into shame. By dawn they'd branded me "cursed": cast out by my pack, abandoned by family, stripped of my nature. My father didn't defend me—he sent me to a forsaken island where wolfless outcasts were forged into weapons, forced to kill each other until only one could leave.
On that island I learned the darkest edges of humanity and how to bury terror in bone. Countless times I wanted to surrender—dive into the waves and never surface—but the accusing faces that haunted my dreams pushed me back toward something colder than survival: revenge. I escaped, and for three years I hid among humans, collecting secrets, learning to move like a shadow, sharpening patience into precision—becoming a blade.
Then, under a full moon, I touched a bleeding stranger—and my wolf returned with a violence that made me whole. Who was he? Why could he wake what I'd thought dead?
One thing I know: now is the time.
I have waited three years for this. I will make everyone who destroyed me pay—and take back everything that was stolen from me.
Reborn To Rule: I Will Seize The Throne!

Reborn To Rule: I Will Seize The Throne!

2.3k Views · Ongoing · Khira
"Aveline Ashkaar." Rhaedon's voice was low as his golden eyes held mine. "The moment you offered yourself to become my Luna, everything about you became mine. Your life, your obedience, your blood... including the abilities that flow through it."

He paused, his gaze never leaving mine.

"And I don't share what's mine."



I died on my son's death anniversary, betrayed by the man I'd devoted my entire life to, and the woman who stood by, smiling as I took my last breath… was my very own sister.

When I opened my eyes again, I was five years in the past—before the betrayal, before my death and before the beginning of it all.

This time, I refused to marry the man who destroyed me.

Instead, I walked straight into the arms of the only man the entire Empire feared—Crown Prince Alpha Rhaedon Ashkaar.

Rhaedon was everything Lucien wasn't.

Dangerous. Competent. Powerful.

And the perfect weapon for my revenge.

He wanted the throne. I wanted vengeance.

It should have been the perfect alliance, but revenge was never that simple.

With every step I took toward my revenge, another secret from my first life came to light. The deeper I dug, the more I realized I wasn't the only one playing this game.

And by the time I uncovered the truth...

Walking away from Rhaedon Ashkaar was no longer an option.
Pawn of the Starless God

Pawn of the Starless God

1.7k Views · Ongoing · Dee Fietz
I was supposed to die alone in an alley.

Instead, a god found me.

One moment, I was bleeding beneath the neon glow of the city, my life slipping through my fingers. The next, a glowing blue screen appeared before my eyes, offering me a choice that was never really a choice at all.

Accept the Summoner’s Mark. Or die.

Now I belong to the Death Game — a brutal cosmic system where ordinary people are turned into Players, thrown into impossible missions, and forced to survive horrors designed for the amusement of gods.

Every trial has rules.
Every monster has a weakness.
Every victory comes with a reward.

And every reward makes me less human.

My name is Nerissa Valehart, and I refuse to be anyone’s pawn.

But surviving the Game means trusting the one man everyone warns me to fear.

Veyren Ashford is ruthless, powerful, and dangerously beautiful — a veteran Player with blood on his hands and secrets in his soul. He says attachment will get me killed. He says love is a weakness the Game always punishes.

Yet when death comes for me, Veyren is the one standing between us.

In a world where gods gamble with mortal lives, monsters hunt from the shadows, and desire may be the deadliest weakness of all, I have only one goal:

Survive long enough to cross the board.

And make the Starless God regret choosing me..............
Tempted By The Enemy

Tempted By The Enemy

3.9k Views · Completed · rituparna darolia
Twenty-two-year-old Alyssa Van Every is in a dilemma. Her close friend, Sienna, is marrying billionaire, Lucas Donnelly who, along with his brothers, happens to be her older brother, Alex's sworn enemy.
She escapes to Preston Island to attend the wedding without informing him only to collide with Lucas’s hot, fiery and arrogant brother, the twenty-three-year-old, Nicholas Donnelly. Sparks immediately fly between them but Alyssa refuses to acknowledge them fearing her brother's wrath.
The wedding is over and Alyssa tries hard to forget the mysterious Nicholas Donnelly but can he forget her? Can he ignore the attraction he feels for her, feelings that have resurfaced after ten years?
What will Allyssa do when she is stalked by the man who has been invading her dreams since the day she met him? What will she do when she is whisked away to a deserted island by the unpredictable Nicholas Donnelly? Can she tame her heart or surrender to sinful temptations? Read to find out!
Part of the Temptation Series. Can be read as a standalone.