The Caretaker He Buried

The job came with a room, three meals, and a locked east wing. Nell Ashcombe has nowhere left to go, so she takes the live-in caretaker post at Everhollow, an old convalescent home perched above a grey Devon sea. The rules are simple. Lock the doors at nine. Don't ask about the east wing. Don't look in the boiler room. She finds the ledger anyway — four decades of residents, four decades of deaths, all in the director's elegant hand. Two of those names are dated the week she arrived. When Nell starts asking questions, Dr. Pryce is patient, kind, reasonable. He tells her she's tired. She is tired. But the next resident to arrive wears a scar that Nell has only ever seen on her own arm. Some doors are locked to keep people out. Others are locked to keep one person in.