Read An Exclusive Excerpt From Scorpion Deep, CG Drews' New Eldritch Horror

Published Oct 3, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Nick Bythrow is a Lead Writer for ScreenRant. He has been writing for the site since September 2022. He graduated from Hampshire College in 2022, where he triple majored in Journalism, Communications, and Media Studies. When he's not writing about TV and movies for ScreenRant and his blog, Frayed Branches, Nick is penning speculative fiction and poetry on Amazon. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

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The next big eldritch horror novel is here.

Author CG Drews is set to release their latest book, Scorpion Deep, later this month. Drews is the New York Times bestselling author of the horror novel Don't Let the Forest In, the dark romance book Hazelthorn, and the haunted house story You Did Nothing Wrong. Winner of the Barnes & Noble 2025 Young Adult Book Awards, their critically acclaimed work has been a hallmark of YA horror for several years. Scorpion Deep is set to be their latest venture, this time delving into the world of eldritch horror.

Scorpion Deep follows the story of Jonathan Covey, a resident of the fictional isle Kelcarrow who dreams of attending college on the mainland with friends, feeling left behind by his current circumstances in his home. Longing for more, he pays a tithe to Scorpion Deep, a sea god often regarded as a myth, even by elders on the isle. But, upon paying his tithe, Scorpion Deep shows itself to be very much real. And Jonathan can't resist being drawn to it as a sea of horrors unfolds.

Read the full synopsis for Scorpion Deep below:

The only thing Jonathan Covey wants from the gloomy, moldering isle of Kelcarrow is to leave it. Summer is ending, and his friends are looking forward to college on the mainland, unaware that Jonathan was not accepted to join them. He'll be left behind with nothing but the ocean's haunts and a rising dread of being abandoned.

In an act of wild desperation, Jonathan pays a tithe to Scorpion Deep, an eldritch sea god who many of the locals have dismissed as myth. He wants to forget the past, he wants to follow his friends, and most of all he wants to finally escape.

To his shock and horror, the ritual works—Scorpion Deep awakens. And despite his terror, Jonathan can't help but feel drawn toward the ageless entity that seems just as mutually obsessed with him. As scales start growing down his spine and Scorpion Deep's adoration of him turns bloody, Jonathan realizes the only way to end the nightmare is to destroy the monster one way or another.

But once a god has awoken, the only way to be free is to pay a price of blood.

Drews' new novel promises not only eldritch terrors, but also an exploration of its core protagonist's feelings of being left behind. Like Drews' other work, the horror is a gateway of exploration, with plenty of conclusions that can be drawn on the other end. Scorpion Deep is set to be released everywhere on October 27, 2026.

Below is an excerpt from Chapter 5 of Scorpion Deep. The chapter showcases Jonathan's first encounter with Scorpion Deep, revealing more about his purpose for summoning the creature, and what their relationship will truly be like when the book comes out.

Read An Except From Scorpion Deep By CG Drews

CHAPTER 5

Darkness melts down the walls until everything is collapsing around Jonathan in a nightmare. It is all over him, inside him, a dark so thick it suffocates, and he is fast sliding sideways right off the end of the world.

He is going to die.

He is going to die down here and no one knows where he is and no one will look for him and—

The creature’s head is still cocked at a terrible, inhuman angle. Then it flicks one wrist and a blade that looks carved from bone slides out of his sleeve with a brittle

snick

This is Scorpion Deep.

This is Scorpion Deep.

And Jonathan’s time is up.

Adrenaline slams into his gut with a punch so vicious he gasps, but suddenly the lock on his limbs has melted. White fire shrieks down his body.

Move.

He scrambles backward so hard he crashes into the wall behind him, barely registering the shudder of shelves as books fall out and clatter on the floor. It doesn’t sink in how strange it is that there are bookshelves down here. He simply snatches a book, his whole body thrumming with the need to runrunrunrun, and he hurls it at the creature.

The book hits it square on the shoulder and it sidesteps in annoyance before starting toward Jonathan with a calm, measured stride. The lantern swings and the space is lit up for a second. There, right there, behind it—­ a rusted ladder leads upward to the trapdoor opening, a square cut out of glittering stars and midnight sky.

He can get to it. He can—

But then the creature has grabbed him by the collar and started dragging him deeper underground. If Jonathan wasn’t so dizzy, he could have put up a better fight, but his heart is a bloody beat in his mouth, the world sped up in a blur of friction, and he can do nothing but thrash weakly like a minnow at the end of a brutal hook as he’s hauled down another tunnel lined, impossibly, with more bookshelves. He has no time to absorb his surroundings before he’s hurled through a slim opening in the rock wall.

He is soundless as he hits the ground. A door slams behind them.

The lock clicks.

Scorpion Deep sets down the lantern.

Pain punches up Jonathan’s spine in an explosion of knife-sharp stars as he scrambles backward. But the monster strides after him without pause, an automaton built purely out of midnight and gossamer flaps of decaying fabric, that bone knife still in his hand. Around them, the darkness only grows, though there is a faint, smudgy bluish light coming from somewhere, enough for Jonathan to see his own incoming death.

He frantically worms backward on the ground, but then Scorpion Deep has caught up like a dark wave about to fall. The monster drops on top of Jonathan, knees pinning his hips, the weight of him crushing, monstrous, decimating. Air plows out of Jonathan’s lungs as he tries to squirm free, and the strangled whimper he makes is too soft, too much like a tiny field mouse caught between elongated teeth.

Scorpion Deep raises his knife.

Bone flashes.

The blade plummets down in a swift, sharp arc.

Jonathan flings his arms up, knowing he’s too slow and the gesture is useless. He buries his face in the crook of his elbow as the knife hits with a rush of air.

Silence pulses in, out.

Nothing moves.

It takes a long, long time for Jonathan to realize he’s lying there with his ribs heaving up and down and heartbeat a sickened lurch in his chest—­ no knife plunged through his body.

The blade has bit into the carpet right next to his head, so close it could’ve shorn off the side of his ear.

So. He is not dead.

He swallows and forces himself to slowly, slowly, look up—Scorpion Deep’s masked face is right there, an inch from his own. They stare at each other, both breathing hard. Predator and his pinned prey.

Neither of them moves.

Time slows, sluggish and toxic, as it runs through Jonathan’s fingers and pools around him like the excess blood from a butchery. Static crawls through his brain. Not being murdered is definitely helpful, but Scorpion Deep is also currently sitting on him and crushing him into the floor, and he can’t move or breathe. Or think.

This close, it’s impossible not to stare. The straitjacket looks moth-­eaten, old leather straps barely clinging to the shredded fabric, and rusted buckles clink softly every time he moves. The monster has torn himself fresh armholes in the rotten cloth so that he’s no longer restrained, but it’s easy to see how cruel and tight his arms must have once been, twisted up and strapped down. The mask is sucked so tight to his skull he looks like the gaunt outline of a mannequin—­ it seems impossible he could even see through it. He is a creature made of death and spilled ink and the underside of the deepest sea, and he, too, can’t seem to catch his breath.

He is also soaking wet, his dampness seeping down into Jonathan.

The masked face tilts as he maps his way down Jonathan’s body and pauses on the sliver of pale skin above his jeans where his sweater has rucked up from scrabbling across the floor.

There is a hopeless vulnerability to the softness of that exposed flesh, his stomach shivering as he tries to stop hyperventilating. It would take nothing to slit him open and let his intestines unravel like sea worms.

Skin is such thin protection against the cruel teeth of the world, and Jonathan is again struck by how badly his fits, how much he wants to claw free and simply walk away. If he wasn’t soft, if only he was a hardened, clever thing, this wouldn’t be happening, because at some point in all of this he would have fought back. Yet he didn’t. Blood still trickles down his forehead, and his mouth feels raw and bloodied from cutting out his tooth, the pain boxing him in, confusing him, choking him.

“Jonathan. Covey.” Scorpion Deep leans in suddenly and Jonathan’s heartbeat slams against the flayed inside of his chest. “I will take out your spine slowly and you will watch me crack each vertebra with my teeth while you drown in a bloodied sea of your own foul making. Regret,” he hisses, “everything you’ve done to me.”

He jerks his knife out of the carpet and air slices past Jonathan’s cheekbone. It looks ancient, bound with rawhide and whittled sharp as a shark tooth. Scorpion hovers the tip just above Jonathan’s mouth, ready to plunge the blade down so his last moments will be with his tongue wrapped around bone like a distended ribbon. He is going to die. He has seconds.

“I—­ I—­ I think you have the wrong Covey,” he blurts out.

It probably isn’t the best move to contradict a homicidal eldritch sea god, but logic has left his skull.

The knife pauses.

“You’ve been asleep for a long time.” Jonathan is babbling now, his voice too high. “We’ve never met before and I—­ I—­ I didn’t do anything to you except—­ ”

Suddenly he has gone hoarse, every word sandpaper against his throat. “Except wake you up.”

Even through the mask, he can feel the stare boring into him.

“You are not Jonathan?” Scorpion Deep seems unsure.

His voice also isn’t an unholy, ancient growl like Jonathan originally thought. It actually sounds pitchy and dry, like someone who woke from a too-­long nap.

“Well. I mean. I . . . am.” Jonathan is screaming at himself to shut the hell up. “But, um, you’ve never met me before. I—­ I swear.”

“Lies.” Scorpion Deep tosses his knife to the side and grabs Jonathan’s throat, hauling him up a few inches while he chokes.

“If I split your bones, there would be seawater in your marrow. I know a Covey when I see one. When I am done with you, I shall kill the rest of the Narrowmen you dared bring with you tonight. Then we will be finished, you and I.”

“Wait, wait.” Jonathan grabs at Scorpion’s wrist to ease the pressure. “We’re n-­ n-­ not part of whatever this is. We’re—­ just—random—­

kids.” A blur of charcoal crowds his vision and he can’t get a proper breath in, can’t squeeze out words louder than a strangled whisper. “I didn’t hurt you and I wouldn’t want to. Please don’t . . . kill my . . . f-­ f-­ f-­ friends.”

They must be across the meadow by now, Rae and Ellis, close enough to town to scream for help if they were attacked. But if this monster goes hunting for them—

Jonathan can’t let anything happen to them. He can’t. He knows too well what it is to be terrified and alone, violence disassembling him with brutal force, and he never, never wants anyone else to feel the same.

Scorpion Deep’s fingers dig in harder, and Jonathan feels the bend of his larynx before there’s an abrupt shift and he’s released. His head slams backward against the floor with a meaty thwack and he gasps.

“You are his son, then.” Scorpion Deep sounds annoyed.

“N-­ no, my grandfather’s name is Jonathan.” Jonathan sucks in air with a ragged croak, and before he can second-­ guess himself, he adds, “Was. He’s dead.”

Because he is not letting this creature go after his grandfather. He woke it, he has to stop it. And if dying here alone in the dark to appease its vengeance is what it takes, then he’ll do it.

He starts to tremble, a sick swirl pushing up his throat, until he realizes Scorpion Deep isn’t paying that much attention to him.He’s muttering something, his long, pale fingers moving up and down, and it takes Jonathan a second to understand he’s counting.

“How long has it been?” he snarls.

Jonathan hesitates. “I don’t know? My grandfather is—­ was eighty-­five.”

“Perhaps seventy years, then.” Scorpion Deep goes very still, looking straight ahead as if Jonathan’s importance has thinned to nothing.

He tries to take a full breath, but he is being flattened. “Could you get . . . off me maybe?”

“Silence.”

“Okay,” Jonathan whispers meekly.

Scorpion Deep still seems lost in thought and distracted, quite comfortable crushing Jonathan to death and not about to move soon, so Jonathan snatches a quick look around. He still has no idea what this place is, but it is most definitely not a shallow bootlegger’s hideout. The cave is vast, with rock walls and cavernous ceilings, the carpeted floor empty except for one long table with ornately carved high-­back chairs covered in cobwebs. It looks like a meeting room, untouched for decades. None of this makes sense. Old-­ fashioned oil lanterns sit alight on the table, and it takes Jonathan a second to understand why they’re reflecting a bluish hue.

Beyond the table lies a glass wall, monstrous in height, water refracting off it in calm, undulating ripples.

Because the whole goddamn ocean is held back by that glass wall.

Jonathan stares. It should be impossible to be in a cave this far underground where everything is clearly hundreds of years old and see this kind of architecture. But he can’t tear his eyes away from the magnificent, awe-­ striking view, the sheer power pressed up against that glass. Weak light catches on fish drifting past. It’s incredible. It’s beautiful.

A strange calm filters into his panicked skull and his breathing becomes less erratic; this is always his response to seeing the ocean that owns him, that has held him tenderly under its cool tongue to soothe his wounds on his worst days. Scorpion Deep must notice his captive relaxing and be displeased, because he squeezes his knees tighter and Jonathan feels his bones crackle. His teeth grit.

“Why didn’t you scream?” Scorpion Deep snaps.

I’m not allowed. But it seems wiser to say nothing.

“And why have the other Narrowmen not come back for you?” Scorpion’s voice dips into another growl. “They do not care.”

They’re not Narrowmen,” Jonathan says, although all he can think is that the longer he distracts this monster, the better chance Ellis and Rae have of getting behind locked doors. “We’re just a bunch of dumbass teenagers, I—­ I swear. We don’t know anything about this place or even what Narrowmen are.” His words stretch, his heartbeat speeding up. “Don’t hurt them. I’ll—­ I’ll do anything.”

The magnitude of what he says hits a second too late.

One does not make bargains with the ocean’s rotten playthings and live long afterward. Having grown up fed on sea tales about monsters, he should know better.

Scorpion Deep seems to consider this. “If the first Jonathan Covey is already dead,” he hisses, “then you will eat pain in his stead. Your blood is still his blood. I will have you, all of you.”

“Okay.” It comes out easily somehow, as if a wretched, electrified part of Jonathan wants to agree. As long as everyone else is safe, it doesn’t matter what happens to him.

They are leaving him anyway.

He is halfway to nothing already.

“Do whatever you want to me,” he says quietly. “But you have to swear my friends go free and you will never touch them.”

At least he knows how to drive home a fairy bargain with all the loose edges stitched up.

“You are quick to agree to a slow, painful death,” Scorpion Deep says, low and vicious.

“Or,” Jonathan says, “you could let me live and I’ll . . . help you?”

It’s hard to read any reaction through the mask, but the monster tips forward so his weight bears down harder on Jonathan’s ribs, his straitjacket dripping on the carpet around them. This might be his way of saying Shut up, but Jonathan has nothing to lose now.

His mouth feels full of burnt toffee, the edges too brittle, but he pushes on. “There’s probably stuff you want to know about the world, right? Or m-­ maybe you need help cleaning this place up if you plan to live here. Or, um, I bake . . .” He loses confidence around there and his voice ghosts too soft to hear as his head pounds and blackness keeps crosshatching his vision.

But to his surprise, Scorpion Deep gives an irritated little huff and rolls off him. Instead of snatching up his knife, he just sits there cross-legged on the floor in a flurry of his torn, damp straitjacket, his faceless mask tilted away. It truly seems like he’s frowning.

Jonathan pushes up shakily into a sitting position. He could try to run-

But why does an absolutely unhinged part of him not want to? The bargain has been set on the table, his life for his friends, and he needs to know the deal won’t fracture. Not only that, but he cannot silence the part of him that is fascinated by this ancient thing he has woken when he thought sea gods only existed around the edges of fables.

It’s real. This is all real.

And he alone is witnessing it.

All this time, it was just a tooth needed for the ritual? Though he can’t help but wonder if there’s more to it than that and he just doesn’t know what secret part of the spell he completed by accident.

Scorpion gives a small grunt and snatches up his bone knife again. For a second, Jonathan thinks he’s about to get stabbed, but Scorpion holds it out hilt first.

“Take it.” He sounds eternally pissed off. “You will cut me free.”

Jonathan hesitates, then takes the blade with the tips of his fingers. “But you’re not tied up?”

No expression is needed to feel the pure disdain leaching from behind the formless face. “My mask,” he grits out. “I cannot remove it, but you are under no such binding. So cut—it—off—me.”

The word binding itches at Jonathan like the unraveled edge of an old story. It makes sense, though, if he is a creature bound by spells and wards to sleep in the depths of this underground library. At least, Jonathan assumes this place is a secret library, and he is hungry, all of a sudden, for the truth of this place lost to decay.

This monster was obviously tied down with brutal security, what with the straitjacket and the mask, as if his captors were very, very scared of him. Cutting him free is an extremely bad idea.

But it’s not like Jonathan can say no.

He edges forward on his knees until he’s positioned just behind Scorpion. His fingers ghost the nape of the monster’s neck and he lets out a slow breath before peeling back some of the wet, yellowed collar. He half expects to be stabbed for this, even if he’s doing what he’s told, but Scorpion stays still.

Up close, Jonathan understands the problem. The edge of the mask has been sewn into Scorpion’s flesh with thick flaxen thread, likely with a tough, curved sail needle that could dig down through layers of fat and straight into the meat. It’s not only grotesque, it’s barbaric. Who would even do this? Puckered scars and old lacerations chew around the base of his neck, the skin bunched up in places as if the thread was jerked tight, and the flesh has grown into the cloth. Whatever material the mask is made from, he has no idea, but it’s durable. It feels like weightless silk, though the cloth looks like tiny overlocking plates that mimic shark skin.

“How long have you been wearing this?” he whispers.

“As long as they wish,” Scorpion says. “Now cut it off.”

Trying to be as gentle as possible, Jonathan picks at the thread with the bone blade. The light is poor and the number of threads he’ll have to cut through seems insurmountable—­ but he gets the first stitch loose. It takes a second to worm it free from a knot of scar tissue. Done. Only dozens to go.

After unraveling a few more stitches, he glances at Scorpion’s fists, clenched tight in his lap. This hurts him. But he’s not mak- ing a sound, almost as if he, too, has been told to always remain silent. Pain is not something to be shared, it is a thing to be swallowed back down until it eats through the lining of your stomach and you learn how to cry quietly alone.

Where To Read CG Drews' Books

CG Drews' books are available to purchase on all major book retailer platforms, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells, and Target. Scorpion Deep is just one of their upcoming novels. The other is This Is How You Lie, a horror novel pulling inspiration from The Housmaid and The Haunting of Bly Manor about a nanny discovering a dangerous secret at her new job. The book is set for release on March 16, 2027.

As for Scorpion Deep, Drews' latest horror novel is available for pre-order at every major book retailer. With their upcoming release just a few weeks away, it won't be long until Jonathan's expanded relationship with Scorpion Deep is further revealed for readers to enjoy.