I guess it's a bone orchard?

Going through goodreads.com's best of 2018 list really expanded my To Be Read pile,a and the first one to clear the hurdle was Craven Manor by Darcy Coates.

We start with Daniel Kane, who more or less lives hand to mouth, while his roommate/cousin Kyle walks all over him. Daniel is more or less an Aladdin character, known for giving what little he has to those he perceives as needing it more. Which leads to an odd job offer received by handwritten note under the door, on the night Kyle decided to let Daniel know he's being downgraded to couch surfer, since Kyle's work friend needs a place to stay and can provide more than bill money.

The job is for groundskeeper at an abandoned estate a few miles out of town. One with literally no real road going to it. Indeed, it's a huge manor that's falling apart, although there is a groundskeeper cabin in the garden, not far from the family mausoleum. Pay comes in the form of two antique gold coins, delivered weekly in an envelope, and there are a few rules as part of the employment. Things like keep the curtains closed between midnight and dawn, don't open the tower, and never answer the door if someone knocks.

Given this is a horror novel of sorts, pretty much all of the rules get broken eventually, including the one about no strangers on the property, courtesy of a drunk Kyle who lets greed cloud his judgement.

However, most of the rules deal with the ghost of a little girl, Annalise, who's mother, Eliza, is locked in the tower. Annalise's brother, Bran, would be Daniel's erstwhile employer.

As Daniel becomes more involved in affairs of the estate, he discovers a small village in the surrounding wood where the residents have obviously never seen/read The Ruins, since to a being, all of them have been dead for a century and are covered in some kind of infectious black mold.

Which does set up the central conflict in the book, of whom Daniel should trust. His employer Bran, or out of date town gossip as to who really tore the door off the church and infected the townsfolk with mold? And who really was responsible for the death of Annalise?

It wound up being a different read than I expected, particularly since the setting and stories about Annalise suggested either gothic or vampire fiction. Instead, we get a fairly good ghost story without either a fairy tale ending or a really dark ending. I particularly liked that there is no real sense of place outside the manor, since the adjacent city is never named, and about all we see of it is Skid Row.

While not the best thing I've ever read, it is well written and engaging,which is a good thing.