Behind the Lock (ONC 2026)
- Reads 188
- Votes 39
- Parts 33
Complete Tue, May 19, 20264h 18m
#ONC OPEN NOVELLA CONTEST 2026 📚
#ROUND ONE ONC QUALIFIER ✨
Your best friend's blood is warmer than the rest. I'd know-because she wasn't the first I'd spilled today.
****
Keke has four roommates, a dying dream of opening her own restaurant, and a diary full of locks. Normal struggles. Normal life.
Until she reads an entry in her own handwriting that she doesn't remember writing.
Wade has a list of dead people. And I'm the only one alive.
Wade is Blaire's brother-Blaire, Keke's best friend she is definitely not falling for. He's quiet, brilliant, and makes pancakes on Tuesdays..
But he's not human.
So what do you do? You lock your doors. You scream into your pillow. You learn how to stab blindly. You stop trusting water. You write everything down.
And you watch.
Because the truth is behind the lock.
And Keke is running out of time.
***
Behind the Lock is a young adult horror-thriller for readers who like their monsters wearing familiar faces, their romance woven through the fear, and their memory erased one sentence at a time.
Perfect for fans of Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand, House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, and the paranoia of The Blair Witch Project-if the witch lived in your spare bedroom and made pancakes on Tuesdays.
Some locks keep secrets out. Others keep you in.
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