Excerpts Horror Read an Excerpt From The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson On an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. By Neil Sharpson | Published on September 9, 2025 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from The Burial Tide by Neil Sharpson, a horror novel drawing on the creatures and horrors of Irish horror—available now from Zando. A woman who can’t remember her death.On an eerily quiet island off the coast of Ireland, a woman with no memory claws her way out of her grave and back to life. But not everyone welcomes the return of Mara Fitch.An island with a terrible secret.Inishbannock. Where strange misshapen figures watch from the trees and the roads are covered in teeth. Where two brothers gamble for nothing, the doctor only treats one patient, and the pub owner speaks in riddles. Where a poet loses and finds his soul. And a man without a heart claims he’s the key to unlocking Mara’s secrets.A past that refuses to stay buried.As Mara returns to her life on this upside-down island, her memories begin to leech their way back to the surface. The more she remembers, the more the village will do anything to stop her…But the sea remembers it all. The day was heavy and overcast. As Mara trudged roughly in the direction of Doctor Quinn’s house, she nested her hands in her fleece pockets to guard against the Atlantic chill. As always, the dead silence of the island quickly became oppressive and she whistled to stave it off. As she walked, she thought about Doctor Quinn’s little memory-card game. Was that really to help me recover my memories? Or was she just molding me into a convenient shape? As if on cue, Doctor Quinn’s house emerged from below the line of hedges. It sat up on a hill, giving the good doctor an excellent vantage point to watch over her patients and to see anyone approaching. While it was a perfectly lovely two-story farmhouse, the kind that you’d see over the logo on a bag of flour, to Mara, it looked implacably sinister, square and black as a cell door against the blank sky. She hunched down low and pulled her hood over her head, keeping close to the dry-stone wall until finally she was out of sight of the doctor’s house. She passed the field still empty of its sheep, but where a great flock of crows, as well as numerous flies, croaked and shuffled over something that lay on the ground, obscured by their shining wings. Something told her not to look at it, to keep moving. Farther along the road: a house skinned to the bone by fire. Most of the structure collapsed. The front wall stood alone with empty windows, like an eyeless mask. Mara stared at the blackened wood and fragments of bubbled, melted glass and could almost hear the crackling of the fire and taste the smoke on her lungs. And yet, she felt cold. She had the sudden, inescapable sensation of walking on a grave. Someone had died here. She was certain of it. Some ghost lingered, screaming silently under its breath. She shuddered, and forced herself to walk on, but was startled to come upon a tiny old woman whose hair was as white as a rabbit’s tail. She wore bright-pink Wellington boots and a purple woolly hat, and as she sat on the wall outside the burnt and gutted house she kicked her legs like a little girl. “Hello, Máire,” she cooed as Mara went past, her shoulders hunched against the cold. Mara stopped, mostly to assure herself the woman was not a ghost, but living flesh and bone. Buy the Book The Burial Tide Neil Sharpson Buy Book The Burial Tide Neil Sharpson Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “Hello,” she said. “Do I know you?” The old woman looked at her in shock. “Know me? Of course you know me. We played handball together last week and you cheated.” Mara smiled sadly. The old woman was clearly “away with the fairies” which was a nice Irish way to say “in the grip of advanced senile dementia.” “I don’t think that was me. But if I did I’m very sorry.” The old woman looked huffy but then relented. “It’s alright. I might have cheated, too.” “What’s your name?” Mara asked. “You know my name, Máire, are you playing a game?” “No,” said Mara shaking her head. “And it’s ‘Mara.’ I had an accident. I can’t remember anything.” “Ah,” said the old woman with a nod, as if they were both on the same blank page. She must have been in her nineties, but there was an elfin childishness to her. “What’s your name?” Mara asked again. The old woman frowned. “What time is it?” “Must be almost eleven,” guessed Mara with a smile. “Then I’m Bridie,” she said. “Does your name change depending on the time?” Mara asked. The woman looked at her with a knowing smile. “Course. All names change with time. Sure you know that, Máire.” “Mara,” she corrected her. “Here,” said Bridie. “Would you like to see the gun?” “What gun?” Mara asked. Bridie pointed over her shoulder to a thick hedge in the garden where a faint dull glint could be seen peeping out from the base. Curious, Mara swung over the wall and went to examine it. Bridie stayed where she was. Mara reached down and, sure enough, found herself holding a large double-barreled shotgun. “It’s because of the sheep,” Bridie called over her shoulder in a sing-song voice. “Someone was shooting sheep?” Mara asked, confused. “Don’t be silly! It’s because the sheep are getting ’et,” Bridie explained with a laugh. “So the farmers came out and they were shooting at them, to scare them off.” “To scare who off?” Mara asked. Bridie looked at her, genuinely confused. “Is it a game, Máire?” she asked. “Yes,” said Mara. “So?” “They were shooting at the Fomor,” Bridie said. “To scare them. But they don’t always scare. The bigger they are, the braver they are.” Fomor. Mara didn’t know the word. But she remembered the sheep screaming and running in terror in the darkness outside Doctor Quinn’s house. She remembered the sound of hands softly padding on the walls. She looked again at the weapon in her hands. She knew next to nothing about guns, but she guessed that if it had been stashed here to be used again, the owner would be disappointed. The weapon was filthy, and there was a dark-red patch that she assumed was rust on the stock. There were also dents here and there. She would have thought the weapon would need to be cleaned and repaired before it could ever be used again. Maybe it had not been stashed here. Maybe it had been disposed of. Maybe no one was meant to find it again. “What time is it?” Bridie asked. Mara clicked her tongue. “Just eleven,” she said. “I have to go,” Bridie said. “My mam will be waiting for me.” The only place her mother could possibly be waiting for her was the hereafter, but Bridie was so small and delicate that it took Mara a moment to realize that there was anything amiss with what the old woman had said. Mara ran back to the wall and watched the retreating figure vanish around the corner. “Bridie!” she called. “Come back!” “That’s not my name…” was all she heard in reply. Excerpted from The Burial Tide, copyright © 2025 by Neil Sharpson. The post Read an Excerpt From <i>The Burial Tide</i> by Neil Sharpson appeared first on Reactor.