The Vein

An abandoned mine. A mummified corpse. A simmering evil.

When a shriveled body turns up in an old silver mine, failed detective Syl Dixon gets pulled into the investigation. But the strange case is even more sinister than she imagined. And the dying town of Pate, Idaho is full of secrets that don't want to be uncovered. People go missing all the time. Strange howls echo from the woods. Eerie portraits hang like shrines outside homes. But nobody-including the local sheriff-seems to care. The deeper Syl digs, the more she realizes she's facing a malicious darkness that has plagued Pate for over a century. Can Syl rid the town of this evil before it swallows everything in its path, including her?

A lifelong PNW girl, Steph currently lives in Boise, Idaho. Her short fiction appears in Dark Matter Presents: Human Monsters and Mother: Tales of Love and Terror. Her next horror novel, The Threshing Floor, will publish with Dark Matter INK in November 2024.