The 6th String

Leo Marsh has not touched a guitar in one thousand one hundred and forty three days. Not since the night he drove his car into a ditch with his six year old daughter Ellie in the back seat. She survived. His marriage did not. Now Leo works the night shift at an Albuquerque grocery store. He attends his recovery meetings. He counts the days. He does not play music. He does not allow himself to want anything.

Then he walks past a pawn shop window. A vintage Fender Telecaster hangs on a red velvet stand. The handwritten price tag says: "Plays itself. You just hold on." The elderly owner tries to warn him away. Four people have returned this guitar. They say it gives them headaches. They say it plays them instead of the other way around. Leo does not listen. He touches the neck. The smell of ozone and burned hair fills his sinuses. He buys the guitar for three hundred dollars. The owner refuses cash. Only a check. "So there's a record," the old man mutters.

That night Leo plays an open G chord. The lights dim. His neighbor's dog screams once and goes silent. His arthritic fingers heal instantly. He writes a riff so beautiful he cries. In the morning he looks in the mirror. He is forty two years old. His hands look thirty. His face looks fifty. A stark gray hair has appeared at his temple. The guitar has awakened something ancient and hungry. The ghost of Emmett Cross, a blues guitarist who died in a 1968 Nashville fire, has been waiting fifty years for someone to finish his masterpiece. The Song That Ends the World. And he will take everything Leo loves to hear it played.

THE SIXTH STRING is a supernatural horror novel about addiction, recovery, and the terrible price of perfection. It is a story about a father fighting to save his daughter from a monster he accidentally freed. About the unexpected power of playing the wrong note on purpose. About the silence between songs where the real monsters live. The Flatpicker has tuning pegs for teeth. He knows your address. And he is waiting for you to play along. Over 200 pages of relentless tension from first chord to final note.