Incidents Around the House

by Josh Malerman

Overview

A chilling horror novel about a haunting, told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box

To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?” 

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel. 

But Other Mommy needs an answer.

Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593723135
Publisher:	Random House Worlds
Publication date:	06/25/2024
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	342
File size:	916 KB

About the Author

Josh Malerman is a New York Times bestselling author and one of two singer-songwriters for the rock band The High Strung. His debut novel, Bird Box, is the inspiration for the hit Netflix film of the same name. His other novels include Daphne, Pearl, Spin a Black Yarn, and Malorie, the sequel to Bird Box. Malerman lives in Michigan with his fiancée, the artist-musician Allison Laakko.

Read an Excerpt

1

Good night, Daddo!

Good night, Mommy!

Mommy and Daddo leave my room.

I pull the covers up to my chin.

Other Mommy comes out of the closet.

Hi, I say.

I’m so excited to see you again.


2

Bela, Mommy says to me. Eat.

I’m not hungry, I say.

But still. Eat.

I’m not—­

I’ve got minutes, only minutes. Then work. Remember? That’s the place I go to make all the little money so we can buy things like food. So, you? Eat the food. Help me out here.

Little money? I ask.

Sometimes it feels that way, hon. Like the money I make is physically smaller than what other people get.

I eat. Mommy always gives me oatmeal. Daddo never gives me breakfast because one time he gave me eggs and sausage and I ate till I threw up and Mommy got mad at him and so now only Mommy gives me breakfast. But Daddo does the dishes.

I love you, Mommy says. Bela?

My mouth is full of oatmeal.

Say I love you too, Mommy says. Don’t make me ask you to say that, ’kay?

’Kay.

I love you, Bela.

Love you too.

What’s on your mind? she asks.

Nuthin’.

But there is something on my mind. I’m looking at the recycle bin.

Bela, Mommy says. Eat.

Where does it go? I ask.

Where does what—­

But she looks to where I’m looking.

Are you seriously asking me about recycling right now?

I nod. She looks impatient.

I don’t know where it goes, she says.

Is it a better place?

Better place than what?

Than where we are?

Mommy looks at me the way she does when I say something that surprises her.

I don’t know what that means, Mommy says. The whole point is that it comes back, as . . . something else, I guess.

Something else.

I think of carnations.

Bela—­

But she doesn’t need to tell me again. I eat. Then she’s up from the table.

Be good for your daddo, Mommy says.

When will you be home? I ask.

I don’t know yet. Might be late. I don’t know.

She looks frazzled. That’s the word Daddo uses when Mommy looks like this. She’s wearing her brown leather coat. Her black pants. I don’t have to go anywhere because it’s still summer. Daddo works all the time. Mommy’s schedule is all over the place. That’s how she says it.

Bye, Bela, Mommy says.

Bye.

She leaves the kitchen. Daddo is in the den working already, and I don’t hear her say goodbye to him before she leaves out the front door. I go quietly upstairs to my room. I wait for a second by the table with the flowers in the hall.

Other Mommy is already standing outside my closet doors.

I don’t want her to make the face I think she’s about to make. She gets impatient like Mommy does.

I know she wants to talk about carnations.

I go into my bedroom.

And I wave at her.

And I sit on the end of my bed, where I know she likes to talk.

She’s been coming out of the closet a lot more lately.

She walks over to me now. Sometimes it’s like she floats.

She sits on the bed too. Slowly. Next to me.

And she asks:

Can I go into your heart?


3

The first time I told Mommy and Daddo about Other Mommy they laughed. It was good-­night time and I told Mommy good night and then I said it again and Mommy said,

Why did you say that twice, Bela?

And I said,

I was saying good night to Other Mommy.

They both smiled and their eyes got wide and Daddo made a funny sound like from a spooky movie. Then Mommy’s smile went away and she asked,

Who’s Other Mommy, Bela?

But I was embarrassed. So I said,

I’m tired!

Daddo laughed again and shut the light and they left my room, but I saw Mommy look back once through the crack in the door. Her eyes looked right at mine. Then she and Daddo went to their own bedroom.

Then Other Mommy made the grunting sound she makes when she stands up on the other side of my bed, in the space between my bed and the wall, when she’s been crouched down there on the carpet waiting for them to leave.

Editorial Reviews

Once again, Josh Malerman has knocked it out of the park; his new book, Incidents Around the House, is a master class in terror. This is horror done so well that it’ll make your skin crawl. It’s a haunting exploration of the perils of childhood, and a story that will stay with you for a long time to come. . . . Highly, highly recommended.”—Gwendolyn Kiste, Lambda Literary and Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Reluctant Immortals and The Rust Maidens

“This book is so original that it’s hard to describe: It deserves more than to be called chilling; it deserves more than to be characterized as a work rich in the infectious fears of childhood. These things are both true, but Josh Malerman is a creative genius, and in a child’s forthright voice he has written a masterwork of unadorned, existential terror.”—Zoje Stage, USA Today bestselling author of Baby Teeth

“This book does worse than stay with you—it stalks you. Page-turning, nerve-burning discomfort claws inside. Don’t read after dark. Incidents Around the House will make you a child again, and you’ll remember being small and afraid.”—Hailey Piper, Bram Stoker Award–winning author of Queen of Teeth and A Light Most Hateful

“Josh Malerman is such an insidious architect: I call all of his haunted houses home. Incidents Around the House might just be his most devilish design yet. Not since Anne Rivers Siddons’s The House Next Door has the very blueprint of a possessed piece of property bled into my subconscious, reconfiguring where the house ends and the haunting truly begins. It turns out I’m the one who’s haunted now.”—Clay McLeod Chapman, author of What Kind of Mother and Ghost Eaters
 
“You can’t read this one at night, turn out the lights, and go to sleep. This book has actual jump scares! Trust me: daytime only in a room with no closets.”—Sadie Hartmann, 101 Horror Books to Read Before You’re Murdered
 
“I don’t believe Josh Malerman simply wrote Incidents Around the House. I believe he lit some candles, uttered an incantation in some forbidden arcane language, took parchment and quill in hand, slipped into a deep trance, and when he awoke, this book had appeared. Because that’s how it reads. This novel feels channeled, whispered onto the page by something unseen. Something malevolent. Incidents Around the House is a shocker, a modern horror classic that scared the absolute hell out of me.”—Jonathan Janz, author of Children of the Dark

From the Publisher