Worm Rising

Parents buy a haunted castle? Check. Screaming, thrown objects, and ghosts? Check. A primeval engine of destruction threatening to be unleased? Double check. Here's to the first summer out of high school!

Life couldn’t be better for Elle Taylor.  Her father purchased a castle in Ireland to convert into a hotel, and yes, it’s haunted.  There are stories about the place going back centuries.  Even the spirits Elle runs into initially seem reasonably chill, if dead.  Elle’s father even hires a young local man to run the hotel bar, and he is more than willing to fill Elle in on some of the darker lore of her new home.  Everything is going swimmingly. 

That is, until someone breaks through a floor and finds a horribly mutilated skeleton, complete with silver chains and an unusual sapphire ring. 

Of course, all hell breaks loose.

Elle’s allies are few.  She’s got the barman, the cranky old lady in the woods, and her brain.  She will need every one of them.  The being her family unleashed is a destructive force older than memory, aided by a malevolent human intellect acquired centuries ago.  It will not be long before the Worm breaks through the barrier laid thousands of years ago to resume its trail of devastation. 

But there is one friend she hadn’t counted on.  One of the darkest horrors of the castle, a supposed demon, may be her best hope of helping to contain the Worm.  The question then becomes, is this thing willing and able to help?  And what of the beings that lurk outside the castle’s barrier?  Will they offer aid, or are they worse than what is inside the stone walls?

Carlow Castle: By Poleary91 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=35700891