The Drowning Game: A Novella of the Supernatural Plus Six Other Spine-Tingling Tales

by Jane Nightshade

Welcome to the Sutton County Line. . .
It was the hottest summer on record in Sutton County, and Sandy and her friends were desperately in need of a swimming pool. There was a perfectly good one going to waste right in Sandy’s neighborhood—a pool that belonged to the rambling, empty old mansion behind her house—a pool that no one ever used. Until one blisteringly hot summer afternoon, Sandy and her friends made the mistake of trespassing on the mansion’s grounds and taking a dip the pool. Soon they found that something terrible lurked in the pool—something that would prove the old saying that Sandy sometimes heard around town when growing up: “You never know what will happen, once a body crosses over the Sutton County Line.” It was a lesson that Sandy would learn again and again, in a novella and six other spine-tingling tales of the supernatural from horror author Jane Nightshade. Visit the haunted swimming pool of the old Sutton Mansion; the enchanted Old West-themed shopping center in downtown Sutton; the old saloon where an elderly barfly confronts his part in a mass murder, and the other dark places of Sutton County.

196 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 22, 2018

About the author

I write non-fiction and fiction. Check out my non-fiction articles on Horrornews.net and Horrified. My fiction includes The Drowning Game: A Story of the Supernatural, A Scream Full of Ghosts, and the just-released Jane Nightshade's Serial Encounters. I've also been published/dramatized in more than 20 anthologies and/or podcasts.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an incredible novel put together in several shorter stories or episodes. Everything started with the drowning game (a boy actually drowned in a competition who could hold his breath longest under water) in the pool of the old Sutton House. Who is this mysterious Melissa or Melissandre we often come across? What is her connection to the Sutton family (who built this town and were the richest family). I love the reference to the old folk lore of Melusine (a kind of female water demon). Main character is Sandy, a 13-year old girl who was a witness to the terrible drowning of the boy. Later on she takes on a job with Ignace Pace who owns the historical museum of Sutton. What about the gold nuggets he has on display and the mysterious old man who tries to get them back? What is hidden inside the clothes of the mannequin in the window? The author invents a whole town and let's her main character act in a brilliant way from one eerie and uncanny adventure to another. The stories are well plotted, you soon feel familiar with the cast and everything is very mysterious and compelling. I was very surprised about the quality of that book and was very enthusiastic about reading it. Highly recommended!

[Stacy · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC REVIEW

This anthology comprises a series of interconnected stories. Drawing inspiration from Ray Bradbury's stories , the author crafts a narrative centered on Sandy and her extraordinary gift. The stories possess a distinctly eerie tone, balancing originality with suspense. The first tale is especially noteworthy. On the whole, the collection is engaging.

Thanks to Book Sirens for sending me an advanced copy to read and review

[MikeLikesBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 This novel is full of eerie occurrences that all seem to have a young girl of 13 stuck in the middle of. This book had me captivated. Each story kind of bleeds into each other. My favorite was the first one called the Drowning game. It’s tragic but it was interesting how a mystery was solved. I kept wondering why everything was happening to Sandy? I mean, one weird experience is one thing but multiple ones one right after the other? And why in Sutton? Well, you find out a clue at the very end.

I really liked this book. The author has a great imagination.

I received a free ebook from BookSirens. My review is voluntary.

[Jonathan Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Drowning Game is a collection of seven short stories that link together chronologically, following 12 year old girl Sandy through the smouldering summer when her best friend dies, through starting at an unfriendly new school, gaining a friend and mentor in the oddball proprietor of a local museum, through to starting High School two years later. Touched by death and, quite literally, touched by a supernatural entity in the first story, Sandy seems to acquire, at least for a while, the ability to sense and interact with otherworldy forces, triggering the eerie events of the following stories.
Nightshade confesses up front her devotion to Ray Bradbury and the great man’s 1962 classic Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury recast his hometown of Waukegan, Illinois as the fictional Green Town. In place of the small town Midwest of the 1920s, Jane Nightshade invites us to Sutton, the rural California of the 1970s, a place where foundational myths blend with Old World paganism, Indian lore, serial killers, school hauntings and, of course, demonic circuses.
It’s a fine setting, catching a glimpse of the American experience at a juncture when the old lifestyle of tight-knit rural communities, with their semi-aristocratic founding families and peculiar local lore, were blending together into anonymous suburban sprawl. Nightshade is recalling the long hot summers before video games or cell phones, shops without malls, children free to cycle everywhere and, just outside the town limits, the rattlesnake-infested hills where pioneer villages hold strange secrets or, just beyond your garden fence, Victorian townhouses host forgotten horrors.
The first, and longest, story is The Drowning Game itself, in which Sandy and her friends trespass in the obligatory Victorian mansion in order to use its heavenly outdoor pool. The ‘game’ involves holding your breath underwater and Sandy’s anxieties are powerfully conveyed as her friends court death beneath the surface. And death, once courted, responds. A supernatural mystery unfolds around a shocking death but what the ending leaves you with is the profound disappointment of dashed romantic dreams.
In Stagecoach Plaza, Ignace Pierce plays cards with a ghost and in The Girl Who Wasn’t There Sandy experiences a haunting herself. The Silverado Saloon introduces local serial killer lore and ventures further into magical realism. Fresno Kid is a delightful morality tale, in which Nightshade gets to honour Ray Bradbury with her very own supernatural circus. Water Summons takes a slightly more Lovecraftian turn, as an old vinyl record invokes a malevolent entity, but the tone stays resolutely upbeat. Sutton County Line returns to the themes and secondary characters of the first story and rounds out the collection with a monster that Sandy is by now equipped to tackle head-on.
I thoroughly enjoyed these stories. Sandy is an amiable narrator with the right mixture of self-awareness and an adolescent stupidity that keeps her from resolving problems too quickly. Other than the first story, there’s no great sense of peril in these tales. I would struggle to characterise them as ‘horror.’ They are weird tales in the Young Adult genre. Yet there is something here for older readers, which is a powerful jolt of nostalgia for an America and a childhood that no longer exists, a lost age of innocence, which seems to be a ghost that haunts the American mind to this day.

[Joe Senter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished reading The Drowning Game the other night. Kinda made me wish I was reading it during the day...with the lights on... and a popcorn bowl containing silver bullets instead of Orville Reddenbacher.

This book is as well written as pretty much any you'll find, and the imagination of the author is second to none. The suspense factor is as good as any Twilight Zone or Night Gallery episode that I've ever seen. I could just see Rod Serling standing in front of an artist's surrendering of a vintage-era swimming pool, and dropping well-placed hints as to the terror that would follow.

But besides just fear, at which this book does a better than fair job, the reader may find that a number of different emotions have also been stoked: nostalgia (as it is something of a period piece, but not so far back that it takes King Tut to remember it), sentiment, joy and sadness, and "coming-of-age", written in a way that most any reader could identify on a personal level.

The author's imagination as to quite literally the "nature of the beast" is nothing short of stunning. All in all it was highly entertaining and could be justly recommended to any avid or even casual reader. If you like suspense, believe me, Jane Nightshade delivers to goods...and THEN some!

[Susan Alpert · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE DROWNING GAME is a suspenseful, old-fashioned psychological horror tale, influenced by the stories of Ray Bradbury, yet highly original on its own. It takes place among a group of children in early 70s rural California. The descriptions and dialogue are so realistic which takes the reader into that earlier nostalgic time, that some of us also remember. The book is a great escape, especially from this year of the pandemic. Jane Nightshade is a brilliant writer. I can’t wait to read more of her work.

[C J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful

The author note at the start of this book states she was inspired by Ray Bradbury's Green Town trilogy. I love those stories and I found this every bit as enjoyable.

[Carleycatandbooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a brilliant read .

I like stuff about mermaids and this was quite eerie . the first story was my favourite. very creepy.

the other stories were really good too. a lot of mystery and suspense .

It kept me engaged and interested.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book was a bit slow to start but it turned out great. It’s a cozy horror with interconnected shorts stories. My favorite was The Girl Who Wasn’t There. I would read more from this author.


I received this free ebook from BookSirens.

[Bruce Arbuckle · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book grabbed my attention straight away. The town is as much a character as the people who live in it. Loved the humour, horror and supernatural elements of the book.