Beta Reader wanted for Mystery/Thriller with a touch of horror

[Matthew]

Wolloh is written in third person present tense. A Fiction Thriller/Mystery with a touch of Horror, complete at 68,756 words.

Home for summer break from their first year of college, childhood friends Al and Marlon decide to take a road trip. Their destination: a remote camping and hiking site nestled deep in the backwoods of Tennessee. After stopping at a roadside diner, things change for Al. He swears, the events unfolding, from their bantered dialog, to an approaching storm, which the weather report did not predict, is hauntingly similar to a nightmare that has troubled him for years.

Driven by the fear of psychological disassociation, Al must prove to Marlon that they have somehow exited the third dimension (their normal plain of existence) and are now living inside the boundary of the fourth dimension (his nightmare). He begins by screeching to a stop in the middle of the road, which mysteriously is barren of vehicles and points through the windshield at a pair of lingering eyes within the tree line that belong to the Mind-Reaper––an unearthly entity that feeds on human souls. He identifies the quarter moon in the menacing sky, and how it mysteriously remains stationary no matter which direction they travel. How a Pink Floyd song on the radio will air just before a lightning bolt strikes the ground, which will force them to veer off the main highway onto a dirt road. And how they must flee on foot deeper into the forbidding forest and find truth within the haunting confines of a wooden Necropolis made from fallen timbers.

In a maze of diversion, Al and Marlon retrace their steps back to the diner. Similar to the road, they find it empty––or is it? Hiding within the shadows of the men’s restroom, Al discovers the old man––the guardian of the fourth dimension, who in his nightmare killed his uncle. In cold-blooded blind rage, Al, who despises firearms shoots him five times with Marlon’s gun––or does he? Marlon, a master at solving riddles, finds a photograph hanging on the wall inside the kitchen. He reveals to Al, the man he thinks he shot was actually Hank, the cook and not some guardian of the underworld. What adds to the intrigue, an adolescent girl standing next to Hank has a striking resemblance to a young woman Al had physical relations with in Florida a year past. Enter Hana, the sexy and sinister twin sister, and the daughter of one of the most dreaded and ruthless serial killers in modern times.

Beyond fear, Al and Marlon make a pact to watch over each other as they follow clues that ultimately lead them to a rickety Charles Manson looking shack buried deep within the haunting Tennessee forest. There they uncover an untold mystery of horror and dark truths as a hero, molded by love, friendship and respect comes forward, and remarkably, they find their way back to their actual realities––or do they?