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The Earthen Dark
There are things underground you would not believe.
Disgraced anthropology professor Jim Murray has been drawn into the dark. Ousted from his career by the algorithm and mob rule, desperate for money, he joins a shabby crew of repairmen working in the tunnels beneath the City of Detroit. They say their job is to keep the earth from falling in.
One day, waist-deep in the filth, they stumble upon an ancient secret and soon discover that the city above them is no longer home. In time, the sewer will show Jim worlds far a landscape scourged by fire and insanity, a dystopia ruled by a mad god...To find his way through the labyrinth will prove to be a brutal test of his soul—and a penetration into the nature of reality.
File literary psy-fi, blue collar cosmic horror, McCarthyian Weird Fiction, Borgesian thriller, the good stuff.
Disgraced anthropology professor Jim Murray has been drawn into the dark. Ousted from his career by the algorithm and mob rule, desperate for money, he joins a shabby crew of repairmen working in the tunnels beneath the City of Detroit. They say their job is to keep the earth from falling in.
One day, waist-deep in the filth, they stumble upon an ancient secret and soon discover that the city above them is no longer home. In time, the sewer will show Jim worlds far a landscape scourged by fire and insanity, a dystopia ruled by a mad god...To find his way through the labyrinth will prove to be a brutal test of his soul—and a penetration into the nature of reality.
File literary psy-fi, blue collar cosmic horror, McCarthyian Weird Fiction, Borgesian thriller, the good stuff.
232 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 11, 2026
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January 25, 2026
patreon.com/agitator or just look up Agitator where you listen to podcasts to catch us talking with Brad Kelly on his latest MASTERPIECE, a word I am not using lightly here. THE EARTHEN DARK is blue collar cosmic horror--trippy, poetic, grimy, funny, and genuinely terrifying. Do not sleep.
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