So if I understand what you're going for is more of a slow psychological dread that builds more and more as the time goes on. The stories I really like that I think pull this off well start out in a relatively normal/not scary environment, but something definitely feels "off." Usually something that is familiar to us like a house, school, or person in a position of authority/trust that should be comforting, instead feels us with dread just by looking at it or being around it. There's a reason the haunted house is such a used tropes in horror. Everyone is familiar with a house and most people know it as a place of safety and comfort. Subverting that feeling of comfort to the opposite, where the character is trapped in a place of fear and terror but can't escape can be so satisfying because they are essential emotional opposites. It's the same reason (emotional payoff wise) why people also love the enemies-to-lovers tropes: the farther apart your starting emotional arc is to the end of the emotional arc, the more satisfying it is going to feel. It's feels like the reader has gone through more. Granted, if it's something that is super over-used like haunted house, then that is going to water down the emotional pay off because we see haunted houses so much that it starts to feel almost as familar as a regular house. That's usually why if you are doing something really trope-y like that, you need to do it in a way that makes it feel different.
It's a bit like playing poker with the reader. They know you're holding a hand full of scary stories cards. They might even guess what possible story endings are in your hand, but they don't know for sure and they don't know when you are going to play them. You're job is to play them at points in the story that they might not see coming and/or makes the story feel more satisfying. It's cat and mouse. Sometimes you might bluff and play a red herring that ends up being nothing. Sometimes you might show them the card early, but put it back in your hand so they are constantly wondering/worrying about when you are going to play it next. Or maybe you show them to make them think it's a red herring but you're actually setting it up to play it later so it doesn't feel like it comes out of no where when you do play it.
What the written word (aka books, short stories) have as an advantage over movies or other visual stories telling is that with books you are automatically in the POV character's head. Good main characters, whether they are third person limited or first person describe the environment and events around them through their own emotional filter and bias even if they're don't realize it. If you think back to being a kid, you probably remember things that you would still see as an older child/adult very differently. Doctor offices can be terrifying to kids cuz everything is strange and you know you get your shots there. You might remember your parents being super tall when you were a toddler, but now see them when you're full grown, you realize they were always normal heights and you were actually just tiny. I think Brandon Sanderson talks about one of his characters who is a queen or general, but she grew up in a fishing village so even tho she's in a position of nobility or respect, she's constantly swearing and using idioms about fishing.
Learning what scares others is helpful, but good writing imo is really just getting the reader to empathize with your viewpoint characters and putting them in situations that will scare the characters. There's a limit, of course, depending on your skill level where the more ridiculous or adorable something seems, the harder it is to make it scary without breaking immersion. That's why so many dolls or animatronics are designed to be rusty, broken, or dirty. It takes them out of the "cute" category to make them more unsettling or ugly. Building toward the inevitable, but inescapable end is about being able to layer those unsettling moments and items through out the plot, getting more and more frequent, until the finally all come together at the end in a way that we probably saw coming, but were still hoping the character might avoid anyway or cheered when they figured out a way to escape after all. Characters who are smart, think on their feet, and aren't going to make stupid mistakes (they can still make mistakes, but not super obvious ones like not turning on the lights or calling the cops when they hear a noise downstairs) are going to work the best for this because it's going to be way more satisfying watching a MC who knows what theyre doing struggle to the end than an MC who just happens to be lucky enough to survive to the end.
It's all about earning the emotional payoffs that you're setting up with your descriptions and your plot.
