The House at Black Tooth Pond

By Stephen Mark Rainey

AIKEN MILL, VIRGINIA… A legend-haunted town in Sylvan County, located in a remote, mountainous corner of the state. With its long history of countless deaths and disappearances, Aiken Mill has become known to law enforcement as “The Cold Case Capital of the World.”

Now, an unidentified, mutilated body has turned up in the town. During his investigation, Sheriff Bryce Parrott discovers frightening clues that lead him to believe some ghostly force—or entity—may be responsible for the killing.

While exploring the darkest corners of Sylvan County, psychology professor Martin Pritchett and his brother, Phillip, happen upon a crumbling, century-old house beside a body of water called Black Tooth Pond. A strange compulsion leads both men back to the house time and time again, but neither can remember any of the events that occur there.

As both Sheriff Parrott and the Pritchett brothers attempt to solve their respective mysteries, their paths begin to converge—paths that lead inexorably to the ancient, foreboding house at Black Tooth Pond.

Praise for The House at Black Tooth Pond

“Rainey brings Lovecraftian horror to rural Virginia in this chilling tale…the grounded and believable characterization of his protagonists makes suspending disbelief easy. This is cosmic horror done right.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Author Stephen Mark Rainey takes the abandoned house in the woods trope and turns it inside out as the walls of The House at Black Tooth Pond close in on the reader page by page, scene by scene. Rainey tells a dark, claustrophobic story bursting with atmosphere, with just enough dread to keep horror fans satisfied, and mystery to whet the appetites of thriller fans.”
—Michael Laimo, author of Dark Ride, Missed Connection, The Demonologist, and others

“Stephen Mark Rainey’s The House of Black Tooth Pond dwells at the intersection between the traditional haunted house story and tales of cosmic dread, expertly combining both into a frightening, genre-bending novel that both thrills and chills.
— Peter Rawlik, author of Reanimators, Reanimatrix, The Book of Yig

“What T.E.D. Klein did for Lovecraftian horror set in upstate New York and NYC, Stephen Mark Rainey does for the rural South.”
— Leverett Butts, author of Guns of the Waste Land

“Stephen Mark Rainey’s talent is on display here like never before. His masterful use of imagery transported me to Sylvan County. I heard the eerie cry of the whippoorwill, the cry that marks the presence of an evil entity that roams the woods and lurks within the walls of the house at Black Tooth Pond. You will hear it too.”
— Mike Davis, Lovecraft eZine

“Stephen Mark Rainey presents us with another masterful crime/horror/sci-fi/paranormal genre-blending book that is hard to put down. I read The House at Black Tooth Pond in one sitting—it was that exciting and that frightening. Think of a traditional haunted house story but on LSD. I enjoy horror that is more of the creepy type, and this book did not disappoint.
— Carson Buckingham, Hellnotes

“Stephen Mark Rainey writes literary horror like it’s nonfiction… It’s this realism that elevates Rainey’s stories to a literary level… I see other reviews calling this Lovecraftian. I think we’re past calling Mark Stephen Rainey’s work ‘Lovecraftian.’ It’s time to use the more applicable moniker: ‘Raineyan,’ for Real Horror.”
— Dark Entertainment Trends

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