The Understory: a Folk Horror Novel

Every family has a debt they’ve stopped naming. Some debts don’t care what you remember. They only care what you owe.Dana Pratt is an insurance investigator sent to a dying Pacific Northwest logging town. Her assignment: determine why a development project has suffered nine workplace accidents, one missing person, and millions in unexplained equipment failures. Find the fraud. Close the file. Go home.But Selden isn’t hiding fraud. It’s hiding something older.Three generations ago, the town’s founders made a bargain with something beneath the forest. They prospered. They forgot. And now the debt is coming due.As fog descends and workers vanish into the treeline with smiles that aren’t their own, Dana discovers that finding the lie was never the point. The real question is whether she can survive the truth—and whether she’ll become the next payment on a debt that’s been waiting four generations to collect.What do you owe that you’ve never been told about? Would you pay it if you knew?A slow-burn supernatural mystery for readers who love atmospheric dread, small-town secrets, and horror that lingers long after the final page.