The Urbex Trip

Eloise Tiller didn't murder her cheating boyfriend. Too bad nobody believes her. When no charges are brought against her, all she wants is to escape the whispers and start over, so she moves six thousand miles away to teach English in Japan. The only problem? The violent intrusive thoughts she's been having—knives, blood, betrayal—have come with her.

When she's invited to the tropical island of Okinawa for an eight-person urban exploration, Eloise agrees to the "urbex trip" in the hopes of getting to know her crush better. Their destination is an old resort atop remote cliff that was abandoned in the mid-seventies under shadowy circumstances.

Soon, the bad thoughts take over. After a violent storm leaves the group stranded in the resort, they find Eloise's crush unconscious and brutally injured. And when wakes, he implies it was Eloise who attacked him. As the others seem to turn against her, Eloise begins to have strange visions of a corpse-like young woman appearing throughout the resort. Her only ally is an offbeat backpacker who doesn't seem to care what anyone else thinks.

And, as it happens, he's also seen dead people in the resort.

More members go missing one by one, and Eloise's only hope of getting out alive is to figure out what's real, and who to trust—her alleged friends, the mysterious stranger she's oddly drawn to, or her own broken mind.

Fans of Adam Nevill's "The Ritual," Scott Smith's "The Ruins," Kiersten White's "Hide," Mike Bockoven's "Fantasticland," Cassandra Khaw's "Nothing But Blackened Teeth," will enjoy "The Urbex Trip" by E.M. Lund.