Hidden Pictures

“One of the hardest things about recovery is coming to terms with the fact that you can’t trust your brain anymore. In fact, you need to understand that your brain has become your own worst enemy.”

Not only is Mallory an unreliable narrator, but she is also aware of her own unreliability. She knows that her memories may be fallible or even false. Her brain is still the greatest tool she has for navigating her life, but the tool is drastically compromised by drugs. However, admitting this to herself is a critical step in her recovery, despite how disorienting and discouraging it is to lose trust in one’s own mind.

“‘I see her every night,’ Teddy says. ‘She sleeps under my bed so I can hear her singing.’”

Teddy’s early descriptions of Anya are disturbing. However, his comment foreshadows Anya’s desire to be close to him, not frighten him. If she sings under his bed, it is more likely to be a lullaby than a frightening trick. This becomes a poignant image once the reader learns the truth about Teddy’s history with the Maxwells.

“There is no rest of the story. After Annie died—or went missing, who knows—her family turned the cottage into a garden shed. Wouldn’t let anyone stay out there. And it’s been that way ever since, seventy-some years. Until this month.”

Mitzi introduces one of the story’s major mysteries. The cottage where Mallory sleeps has a dark history, but it has been uneventful for the past seven decades. Now that the cottage is occupied at night once again, it foreshadows the growing influence Margit will exert on Mallory in the coming weeks. In a popular horror trope, Mitzi delivers the story with the relish of someone telling a ghost story around a campfire.