The Remanent

When Officer Sean Mercer moves to the small town of Ashford, he wants nothing more than silence. His wife is gone, his badge feels heavier than ever, and a quiet place seems like the only cure. But Ashford has a silence of its own - one that doesn’t keep the peace. On Mile 47, a house waits. Its upstairs window glows when it shouldn’t. Voices call from the fog, too smooth to be human. Inside, a ledger keeps accounts no town should have: names, debts, lives marked gone as if erased from history. The townspeople whisper about curfews, quiet hours, and the cost of speaking too loud. Some obey. Some resist. And Sean, tethered to grief and duty, finds himself caught between noise and nothingness, between memory and erasure. Because the house doesn’t just want quiet. It wants balance. And it always collects. Remanence is a chilling novel of grief, memory, and the horrors that linger when silence becomes more dangerous than noise.