A man named Yanaoka asks his friend, the writer Uketsu, to look over the floor plan of a Tokyo house he is thinking of buying for his growing family. The property seems perfect, except for one oddity: a strange, windowless dead space walled into the kitchen. Curious, Uketsu passes the plan to an architect acquaintance, Kurihara, and the two begin to read the house the way others read a crime scene.
What starts as idle puzzling over an awkward layout soon turns sinister. A child's room with no obvious exit, a bathroom placed far from the bedrooms, a passage that should not be there: each detail suggests a purpose too disturbing to say aloud. As Uketsu widens his inquiry to other properties and to the family who once lived there, the diagrams begin to trace a pattern of secrets, ritual, and violence hidden in plain architectural sight.
Originating as Uketsu's viral online mystery, Strange Houses is a lean, ingenious horror-mystery told largely through floor plans and deduction. It is a fast, creeping read that turns ordinary rooms into a source of dread.
