5

I will leave the storyline below, in hopes that you might be able to help me find it.

Boy moves to a new house in the suburbs with his parents. After moving, they notice the houses in the neighborhood have strange modifications like boarded-up windows and reinforced doors, except for their house.

During night, the house exhibits unusual phenomena like glowing walls and levitating objects.

The boy discovers the house was built with materials from a fallen meteor. It was previously used as a fort during a war, granting soldiers within accelerated healing and resilience.

His initially strict parents begin acting strangely, becoming reckless and exhibiting animalistic behaviors. The boy finds bear traps in the nearby woods, hinting at a similar past threat.

He discovers a concealed room with claw marks and evidence of other children who sought refuge there.

The story culminates in his parents transforming into monstrous wolf-like creatures. The boy teams up with other children to set traps and fight back against the creatures.

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  • Hi, welcome to SF&F. Do you happen to recall the cover art? The names of any of the characters or where the story took place?
    – DavidW
    Commented Mar 2 at 12:27
  • Hello & thank you! The action was set in the USA, since the mentioned war was between Native American Indians and white settlers (totems are also mentioned at one point in the book). I believe on the cover there was a house on a hill or something similar.
    – Kas
    Commented Mar 2 at 13:31

1 Answer 1

5

I found it. The book is Cauchemar à louer, translated to Romanian as Coşmar de închiriat (in English, Nightmare For Rent) by Serge Brussolo.

THE HOUSE ON THE HILL...
A grey, gloomy fortress, with open windows like unhealed wounds.

THE TOWN...
A fortress protected by bars, a strange zoo, attacked by ferocious and merciless visitors.

THE FOREST...
An infernal thicket, full of rusty traps, fatal a century ago, still fatal today.

The rented house is the secret gate to another world, which grows like a tumor in the flesh of reality, transforming places and people into something terrible and foreign.
For David and his parents, the house on the hill is a...
NIGHTMARE FOR RENT..

3
  • Translation of the blurb is courtesy of Google Translate
    – Valorum
    Commented Mar 2 at 16:48
  • 1
    You can accept an answer by clicking on the checkmark by the voting buttons, as per the tour, but as a self-answer, you can't complete the process until 48 hours after asking.
    – FuzzyBoots
    Commented Mar 2 at 17:51
  • It's actually Cauchemar à louer. The other title is the Romanian translation.
    – Adamant
    Commented Mar 2 at 17:55

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