Root Rot

by Saskia Nislow · 2025

When nine children arrive at their grandfather’s remote lake house, the vacation quickly turns nightmarish. Eyes blink from the bottom up, mushrooms ooze blood, and faces seem to shift when you stare too long. As the land itself seems to creep inward, the kids—known only as The Liar, The Secret Keeper, The Crybaby, and others—are forced to confront a series of grotesque transformations that warp their sense of time and place. Watching her friends succumb to an unseen fate, The Liar must decipher strange clues—a sky devoid of stars, amber vials that taste like milk, a tangled rope—and decide whether to join the encroaching horror or resist it. Set against a predatory family dynamic and a property that keeps expanding, Root Rot is a haunting exploration of how bodies, homes, and loyalties can be corrupted, and what it takes to push back against the structures that seek to consume us.