Inhalation

“A fresh and masterful exploration of what it means to be haunted." —B.R. Yeager, author of Negative Space With only weeks left to live, retired auto body mechanic Milo St. Lawrence refuses the option of hospice care in California and returns to the forgotten New England home where his family was destroyed. Dying of cancer and haunted by fragmented memories, Milo believes he must confront something buried in the shadows of the past before death claims him. Confined to a hospital bed inside the half-rotten structure once called home, repressed childhood memories resurface. One by one, he recalls his siblings’ mysterious illnesses, his parents’ rigid Catholic faith, and the cult-like devotion that replaced medical care with prayer. He remembers watching his estranged sister Marie speak to an imaginary friend in the corner of the living room—and how their parents eventually began communing with it too. As the past and present collide, Milo remembers the night he fled. The night Marie revealed the truth about the many-limbed caterpillar man and the alien hookah device that had siphoned the life from the St. Lawrence children for decades. Armed only with his engineering skills and a dying man’s resolve, Milo devises a plan to modify the supernatural parasite’s hookah for human operation in a desperate attempt to siphon the monster's life from the device before he becomes its final offering. Blending cosmic horror and psychological terror, Inhalation is a haunting exploration of family tragedy, corrupted faith, and the monstrous forces that lurk in the corners of darkened rooms.