Summary

Prologue - New Years Eve:

The novel opens with an omniscient third person voice narrating the events that are happening to an unnamed man walking in Blackwater on New Years. The man his drinking and he is in a daze as he walks along the marshes, not feeling the cold and singing a tune. He decides to go for a midnight swim to shake loose his drunken stupor; he recalls how he would always go swimming as a young boy at midnight. The marshes are familiar to the man and he throws off his coat and stumbles in, still singing and just in time to see something lurk in the water. The young man is not yet afraid, however, due to the alcohol, and so he moves closer to it. At that moment a cold blast of...