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Book 5 · You should be scared.

The House That Wasn’t There

Seer Frights #5 · by B. Carter

Jonah Mercer notices when things are wrong. Little things — the picture that hangs a half-inch crooked, the stair that didn’t used to creak. He keeps a list in his head and crosses things off, because there’s always a boring reason. That’s the deal he has with himself: the list stays short, and the world stays the way it’s supposed to be.

Then he comes home one ordinary Tuesday and the front door is on the wrong side.

His dad has a reason. His know-it-all best friend Wesley has a better one. So Jonah goes inside. But the next day there’s a kid in the family photo who was never there, and the day after that the dog that died last winter is back on the porch — and Jonah’s list stops getting shorter and starts getting longer.

Here’s the worst part: the wrong house is nicer. The bad year didn’t happen here. Part of him wants to stay. That’s the trap — and he walks into it smiling, because it’s exactly what he wished for.

His mom says it’s always been this way. She isn’t lying — she remembers the wrong house all the way down, with love, and there’s nobody left to tell. The real house, the sad true one, is on the far side of a door Jonah can no longer find. And on Friday morning, something ordinary and final is going to lock the swap forever. He has one thing the house can’t copy, and one old brass key that’s been trying to tell him the truth the whole time.

A creepy, funny, page-turning middle-grade horror story where the thing you want most is the trap. Every chapter ends on a scare and half of them are real. Reads as a standalone — no prior books required.

Available now in paperback and ebook.