The Current Beyond - Paperback

by Scott J. Clauss (Author)

The Current Beyond is a dread-soaked, character-driven supernatural thriller about power, consequence, and the thin membrane between worlds.

Dr. Elias Voss has built the Voss Array, a breakthrough device that "harvests" ambient electromagnetic energy. But as the Array locks onto a mysterious resonance-an emergent frequency locals call "Window Theta"-abductions, mirror anomalies, and cold spots spike across Tacoma. Glass breathes. Puddles turn to doors. Something hungry is learning to walk.

Abigail Jensen, a seasoned medium who survives on iron, salt, and stubborn grace, recognizes the signature: the In Between-a liminal realm kept in balance by the Echo, a vast, impartial keeper. The Array isn't just skimming energy; it's punching a pipe into that realm, drawing power and giving the Hollowed and Veilborne-predators of the In Between-new mouths to feed.

Under pressure from a ruthless government fixer and his political patrons, Elias pushes past safe limits. The machine becomes self-sustaining. Mirrors open on command. As panic spreads, a small, uneasy coalition forms: Elias's brilliant colleague Lena Mirek; Naveen, a razor-witted assistant who refuses to be intimidated; and Adrian Kessler, a disgraced former partner whose sabotage helped doom a past experiment-and someone Elias has every reason to hate. With Abigail's help-and Jacob, a quiet boy the Echo seems to favor-they race to starve the Array, close the breaches, and face what's been invited through.

What follows is a siege in fluorescent light: iron chains and lanterns against smoke-wrapped bone, code and capacitors against an otherworldly tide, ethics against ambition. Choices exact prices. Confessions matter. And when the Array finally dies, the Echo reasserts its law-some lost souls return, some remain knotted in the glass, and the survivors must live with what they've broken and what they've saved.

Set in rain-slick Washington streets, abandoned wards, and a lab that turns into a battlefield, The Current Beyond blends grounded science with folklore, tackling the question that sparked it all: if ghosts manifest with energy we can measure, what happens when we decide to take it? And who pays when we're wrong?