Amateur journalist Greg travels to a remote mountain area to investigate rumors of a sinister building only to find himself imprisoned there. As he tries to escape, he evinces symptoms of a strange affliction and struggles to remain conscious while maintaining an uncertain hold on reality.
Title: Lesath
Pages: 254 (Paperback) / 268 (Hardcover)
Genre: Psychological Horror, Thriller, Weird Fiction
Release Date: September 30, 2019
Editions (and where to find them):
Paperback || Bookshop.org | Amazon | B&N | Waterstones | Kinokuniya (UAE) | Booksarabia
Hardcover || Bookshop.org | Amazon | B&N | Waterstones
Audiobook || Audible | Apple | Nook | Kobo | Chirp | Storytel | Audiobooks.com
ISBN:
9781733885409 / 9781860635342 (Paperback)
9781733885416 (Hardcover)
9781733885447 (Audiobook)
Italian Edition: Stella Lesath
Pages: 266 (Paperback)
ISBN: 9798986669502
Release Date: September 30, 2022
Editions (and where to find them):
Paperback || Bookshop.org | Amazon
Translation By: Michela De Stefani
Cover Art Illustration: Raquel Aparicio
S Y N O P S I S
Locked in his dark cell, Greg lay awake in bed, turning the small cassette recorder over in his clammy hands, pressing the rewind and stop buttons to listen to the heavy click and spring-loaded clank that initiated and punctuated the faint whirring mechanics.
He knew well-enough no one was going to come looking for him–not while he was in-between jobs, living in a four-door pickup truck and had traveled to an undisclosed location without telling anyone.
What brought him here was the idea of recording and producing an audio documentary of an abandoned building that was rumored to be part of a black site, a rumor that was circulated amongst truckers and drifters like himself; some exaggerated the sinister aspect of the place, detailing with morbid relish the methods of enhanced interrogation that were being developed or deployed there; others assumed the contrarian position and downplayed the horrors if not downright dismissed the whole story as hyperbole.
All the same, Greg did not expect there would be some truth to those rumors, that the building is not quite derelict as he had imagined. And that, thanks to a case of mistaken identity, he was now incarcerated there as an inmate.
He stopped rewinding the handheld device when he detected rustling and soft thumps coming from the ceiling vent–or thought he did, since the quirky nature of unidentified noise is that they usually cease whenever one stops to listen to them.
Like a living body, no running building is without its small, unaccountable bumps and muffled clanks; yet even if they were mostly benign, at night, they’re magnified by the ever-present hush, and their unfamiliarity never fails to inflame the imagination of the sleepless newcomer.
Lesath: (Upsilon Scorpii) a star located in the "stinger" of the southern zodiac constellation of Scorpius, the scorpion.
The name is said to have come from the Arabic word las’a: a poisonous bite or sting.