He embalms the dead. But no one ever taught him how to bury his own mind. Merrill Crowley, 27, is a mortician by day — and a haunted man by every other hour. After one unspeakable tragedy, his already fragile world fractures. Grief turns to delusion. Silence becomes a voice. And in that voice… a new version of himself takes root. With the law closing in, and his mind slipping further into hallucination, Merrill finds himself unraveling alongside his sins — guided by Ritz, his shadow, his conscience, his double. The Forest That Merrill Grew is a psychological horror tale told through a grieving narrator who may not survive his own story. What happens when death feels safer than living? "Who are you, when no one's watching?"