The Drowning by Rachel Ward || Release date: May 2013
What happens if you've done something terrible? But you can't remember what. And you don't know how to put it right ...When Carl opens his eyes on the banks of a lake, his brother is being zipped into a body bag. What happened in the water? He can't remember And when he glimpses a beautiful girl he thinks he recognizes, she runs away. Suddenly he knows he must find her - because together they must face the truth before it drowns them.
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Guest Post: Rachel Ward on her Inspirations for The Drowning
When I was thinking about writing ‘The Drowning’ I knew I wanted to write a ghost story, but I didn’t want to use creepy ivy-clad mansions, abandoned theme parks or anything else remotely Scooby Doo. I ended up exploring the haunting of a deprived boy, Carl, who lives in a damp flat above a parade of shops - a very contemporary, 21st century kind of ghost story.
My ghost isn’t conventional either. He exists in the medium of water – the thing that killed him. In this country we tend to take water for granted. We’ve got clean, safe hot and cold running water on tap. In other countries, water is a scarcer resource and sometimes it harbours diseases which can kill.
In ‘The Drowning’ water is harbouring something sinister and, hopefully, rather frightening. If Carl gets wet – runs his hands under the tap, gets caught in the rain or sets off a sprinkler system inside their school – he hears or sees his brother, Rob, who drowned when they were both swimming in a lake with a girl called Neisha. Water takes on a menacing form. It invades Carl’s bedroom, as a damp patch in the ceiling spreads towards him as he sleeps, while outside it rains and rains as if the whole world is drowning …
If you want a different take on a spooky tale for Halloween, you might give ‘The Drowning’ a try … but I wouldn’t recommend reading it in the bath. Mwahahahahaaa….
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