Tenebrous - Daniel Pretorio

Some houses never belong to the living.

When twenty-six-year-old Jillian Duport returns to her grandparents' Second Empire Victorian in rural Pennsylvania, she tells herself she's simply reclaiming her inheritance. But the house on the ridge-with its disconnected turrets, locked third-floor rooms, and a reading loft suspended between stories-has other plans.

Jillian is no stranger to horror. She survived the Indianhead River Killer, who carved a triangle into her cheek. She endured a mother whose rage could shatter a piano and a grandmother whose love always came with conditions. Diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, Jillian hires an investigator to track down the psychiatrist who fled town in 1981-the man who might finally clear her infamous grandfather's name.

When the investigator vanishes, Jillian begins receiving strange calls from someone claiming to be the missing psychiatrist. She knows she's stirred something ancient. Soon a figure with bronze teeth appears in the shadows, leaving messages about dead miners and an unexplained pestilence.

The house has been waiting for her to come home.

Tenebrous is a literary descent into generational guilt where the greatest horror may not be the monster in the attic, but the one who built the house and called it love.