I Am the Monster Under the Bed : A Novel - Emily Zinnikas

A horror debut in which a reclusive painter and the only survivor of an unsolved teen massacre returns to her hometown to confront her past, with the help of her childhood boogeyman and the possessed forest that surrounds her haunted house. TIME ONLY MAKES THE NIGHTMARE MORE REAL. Something lives under Willa's bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them. When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems. As her past pulls her back to the place she swore she'd never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind-and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be.