Spoilers ahead!
There’s a reason demonic kids exist as a subgenre within horror: the unfiltered aspect of children — their very innocence — makes them prime conduits for evil. Jason Rekulak’s 2022 book, Hidden Pictures, is a unique blend of written and illustrative horror of this kind. In fact, I’m shocked no adult horror book I’m aware of has tried a similar combination because it works so well. I loved the use of illustrations by Will Staehle (who does the child-like drawings from Teddy, who is 5-years-old) and Doogie Horner (who does the more mature drawings from Anya, Teddy’s imaginary friend). My paperback edition has an interview Rekulak conducts with each, and it’s fascinating how they approached the drawings, particularly Staehl, who was trying (and accurately, in my estimation!) to draw like an actual 5-year-old would. What’s particularly amusing is that the most uninteresting illustration, with all due respect to Horner, is the book’s cover itself! All of the alternative cover designs displayed at the back of the book would have been much better. But I digress …
Hidden Pictures is a story about grief, ultimately. Mallory was on her way to being a world class runner in Philadelphia when an injury introduced her to OxyContin. Then, while driving her younger sister and her sister’s friend to an amusement park, they are in a terrible accident that results in the younger sister’s death. Already filled with guilt and grief, Mallory follows the predictable trajectory from OxyContin to heroin. She becomes a full-blown addict. But, fortunately, she’s able to get clean and sober. She’s been sober for more than a year when her sponsor, Russell, sets her up with a rather cushy seeming job for the summer: to be a nanny to Teddy in Spring Brook, New Jersey, while his parents, Caroline and Ted Maxwell, work, she at the VA and him doing tech work. (More on that Russell bit in a second.)
The nanny job seems cushy because not only is Mallory being paid a lot, but the Maxwells provide her living arrangements in the form of a cottage in their backyard. Things seem to go pretty easily with Teddy, a precocious, curious boy, who likes to draw. He draws innocuous pictures at first. Then, he starts drawing pictures with a charcoal-like, long-haired woman. They’re rather creepy and a slow-burn of concern builds up within Mallory. She also learns of a story, perhaps more of an urban legend, around Spring Brook, that a woman was murdered in her cottage after WWII. As the pictures get more alarming, Mallory thinks they’re connected. Teddy’s “imaginary friend” Anya is using Teddy as a vessel to communicate with Mallory about her murder. Shockingly, she even brings this up to Caroline and Ted, who are incredulous.
Here’s where my thinking was at that juncture, and it’s a rather brilliant move by Rekulak: I was thinking Mallory was experiencing some sort of effects stemming from her drug addiction, or that she’d even unfortunately fallen off the wagon. The ghost aspect was a mere red herring, which again, is exactly what Rekulak wanted us to think.
Well, I was right, I thought! Mallory befriends and then falls for Adrian, a local man her age. He believes Mallory, and receives his own drawing to cement his belief in what she’s saying. He goes to Akron, Ohio to further follow the clues, and learns, actually, there was no murder — it was an urban legend stemming from racist motives! — and in fact, the woman went on to live a happily married life with a Black man, which started off scandalous in 1948. So, no ghost, then? Not quite.
Actually, Teddy is a girl, and he was kidnapped by Caroline, who couldn’t have children of her own, and Teddy’s mother was killed by Caroline and buried by Ted. Hence the drawings of being strangled, dragged into the woods, and horrifically buried alive (operative word because the mother, who is the ghost, tells us as much). The Maxwells absconded to New Jersey and tried to further conceal their kidnapping by passing off the girl as a boy. This is where I circle back to Russell, whose friend at the VA knew about Caroline. How the heck did Caroline get that job at the VA? How are these two, who didn’t seem remotely financially successful, come into wealth after the kidnapping? Nonetheless, the reason Caroline brought in a third party — which would seem a risky proposition when you’re trying to not be uncovered! — like a nanny in Mallory is to dissuade Teddy from his ghost mother.
So, there is still a ghost! Not just evil parents. The ghost wasn’t a red herring, it was just a different ghost than we expected, and the drug addiction effects I suspected earlier was a red herring to throw us off, but it was also the motive Caroline uses when she tries to kill Mallory. Ted saves us her momentarily; he actually wants to flee with Mallory because he’s creepily in love with her.
In the end, Teddy’s ghost mother possesses him long enough to stab Caroline to death and save him and Mallory. How could the mother do that?! Throughout the book, Mallory and Adrian speculate whether the ghost is violent or merely trying to communicate — because throughout the book, she never did anything violent. So, for her to be violent through her 5-year-old child, even if it was in self-defense, was shocking!
Like I said, the set-up with the horror aspect of the written story and telling it in conjunction with the progressively creepy, puzzle-piece like illustrations, was brilliant. I was so enthralled, but Rekulak should have picked one way or the other. Either Mallory was actually up against sick people, who kidnapped a kid and were willing to kill to conceal their secret, or she was up against a ghost hellbent on avenging her murder. But not both! And I would lean toward the latter because of the parallel between Mallory’s story and that of the murdered woman. They both carry grief: Mallory for texting-and-driving when the crash that killed her sister occurred, i.e., she was distracted; and the mother, who was so engrossed in her painting, she didn’t even realize her daughter was kidnapped by Caroline. Mallory was besieged by a ghost long before she met that ghost. Such is the way grief operates.
Still, Hidden Pictures was a fun, immersive ride, owing to the illustrations. And regardless of the outcome, Rekulak kept me guessing at what the heck was really going on. Well-done!
Milam's Musings 