The Rooms Beneath Blackwater House

When disgraced sleep researcher Dr. Mara Voss accepts a caretaker job at Blackwater House, she tells herself it is temporary: six weeks alone on a storm-cut island, cataloging the estate’s contents before its demolition. The pay is enough to silence her creditors, and the isolation should help her recover from the public scandal that destroyed her career. But the house does not stay still. Rooms appear where no blueprints allow them. Hallways lengthen overnight. And every morning, Mara wakes with muddy feet, salt in her lungs, and memories of conversations she cannot remember having.

Blackwater House was built over the remains of a drowned village, and the islanders whisper that the tide never gave the dead back. As the sea rises and the last ferry stops running, Mara begins finding journal pages written in her own handwriting, describing surgeries performed on people who are still alive. The house seems to be dreaming through her—reshaping flesh, architecture, and memory with the same patient cruelty. To survive, Mara must decide whether she is being haunted by the house, by the sea below it, or by a version of herself that Blackwater has been growing in its walls for years.