Nothing But Blackened Teeth

Cassandra Khaw, a Malaysian British writer, published the horror novella Nothing But Blackened Teeth in 2021. Five friends meet supernatural beings in a haunted Japanese mansion, and one of them tells the story. A woman called Cat is the narrator, and Faiz is her closest friend in the group.

Five friends travel to Japan for a destination wedding, held in a Heian-era mansion where a bride was buried alive in the foundations and where a girl was walled up in the house every year afterwards. The venue is paid for by Phillip, an only son from a wealthy family, and the group has come for the atmosphere as much as for the wedding. Their relationships with each other are already complicated before they arrive.

The dead are there, and so are the grudges the group brought with them. Khaw writes the novella in a dense, sensory style, and the horror is bound up with what the friends have done to each other rather than only with the house. The book is short, and it keeps its cast close together in a single night.

It is a standalone novella, and its central relationships were the element most often singled out when it was published.