Hidden Pictures is a 2022 horror/thriller novel by Jason Rekulak. It tells the story of Mallory Quinn, a 21-year-old recovering addict who becomes the nanny for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. During her summer watching their son, Teddy, Mallory begins to suspect that Teddy is in danger and that she is either in the middle of a supernatural conflict or suffering mental instability, possibly because of her drug use.

Content Warning: The source text contains depictions of child abuse, child abduction, fratricide through a car accident, drug addiction, and assault via involuntary drugging.

Plot Summary

The novel begins with a brief passage in which Mallory recalls being part of a research study that tests her sensitivity to the male gaze. She is blindfolded and asked to raise her hand each time she feels one of the five men in the room staring at her. She raises her hand correctly 97% of the time, which is unprecedented. However, she sells her phone for drugs that afternoon and never follows up with the researchers.

The story then begins with an 18-months-sober Mallory. Throughout the novel, she reveals small details explaining how she became an addict, which is at odds with her physical dedication to running, evinced by her offer from Penn State to be on the cross-country team. Through her sponsor, Russell, Mallory gets a job interview with Caroline and Ted Maxwell, who need a summertime nanny for Teddy, their five-year-old son. Ted is initially aloof toward Mallory, citing her history as cause for concern, but he relents and brings her to Spring Brook for the summer when he sees how much Teddy likes her. They give Mallory a list of rules for the house, which forbid her from having overnight guests, speaking with Teddy about religion, giving Teddy too much screen time, and more.

She and Teddy bond instantly. She enjoys their mornings playing in the Enchanted Forest, which is what they call the woods bordering the property. Teddy has an impressive imagination and loves games of make believe. While on the job, Mallory meets a young man named Adrian, who is part of the landscaping crew. They have instant chemistry, and he becomes a support for her. Adrian’s father runs a successful landscaping business. He and his family live in a house with a beautifully decorated yard that Mallory calls “The Flower Palace.” Mallory lies to Adrian about her past, claiming to be a Penn State runner who is on a full-ride scholarship. The Maxwells’ next-door neighbor, Mitzi, is a spiritualist who claims that she can communicate with the dead and read people’s auras. She is constantly high on marijuana and gossips about the Maxwells, who encourage Mallory not to speak to her.

Shortly after arriving, Mallory learns about Annie Barrett, a young woman who was reported to be murdered in the guest cottage where she is staying. She enjoys her time with Teddy, a creative child who loves to draw, but soon Teddy’s drawings start to disturb Mallory. Most of his sketches feature a woman named Anya. Teddy says Anya talks to him and often sleeps under his bed so that he can hear her sing. Ted and Maxwell claim that Anya is a healthy, stereotypical, imaginary friend that Teddy will grow out of.

Mallory soon becomes obsessed with learning about Anya and Annie Barrett. She enlists the help of Adrian’s mother, Sofia, who works part-time at a library. Mallory becomes convinced that Anya is trying to use Teddy to communicate with her through the drawings. She hides a baby monitor in Teddy’s room to see what happens during “Quiet Time,” when he usually draws in his room alone. The screen glitches, and she hears an unfamiliar voice say “hello” in Teddy’s room. When she goes into his room, Teddy’s right hand is covered in drawing charcoal, even though he is left-handed. To test her theory that Anya is using Teddy, she holds a séance with Mitzi as Adrian watches Teddy. While using a spirit board, the planchette moves itself frantically, producing a seemingly random jumble of letters. Mitzi leaves in a hurry and claims that the séance was a failure.

Ted makes a series of escalating, awkward advances on Mallory. One night, she comes home from a date with Adrian to find Ted in her bed. He is drunk and says that he and Caroline had a fight. He describes their terrible marriage as he promises to protect Mallory and take her away with him soon.

One afternoon, Mallory falls asleep for four hours, leaving Teddy unsupervised. When she wakes, the walls are covered with drawings of a sinister man and a strangled woman. Her right hand is smeared with ink and charcoal. She believes Anya used her to do the drawings and that Anya is trying to communicate with her, not threaten her or Teddy. The Maxwells are gentle but firm: They agree to let her stay for the weekend, but she can no longer work for them. Adrian then arrives for their date. Ted tells him about Mallory’s past, and Adrian leaves, hurt and angry. He then receives a drawing from Anya and knows Mallory was telling the truth. He drives Mallory to the house of her estranged mother, but Mallory chooses not to go inside. Instead, she and Adrian go to a park, where she tells him her history of addiction, as well as her role in the death of her sister, Beth. Mallory was driving Beth and a friend to an amusement park when she was involved in an accident while checking the results of a running meet on her phone. The crash killed Beth, and Mallory’s resulting injuries required greater doses of drugs.

Adrian and Mallory let themselves into Mitzi’s house to talk to her about the séance, but she is gone. They find drug paraphernalia in her home as two detectives arrive on the scene. Detective Briggs tells Mallory that Annie Barrett was not murdered. Rather, she was a white woman who fell in love with an African American man. The couple moved to escape the racism of their town. Because she wasn’t murdered, Annie Barrett cannot be the person making the drawings.

The Maxwells have a goodbye party for Mallory. As she talks with Teddy, he says that he has never been on an airplane, which doesn’t make sense. Ted and Caroline told Mallory they flew with Teddy from Barcelona, but Teddy insists that they drove. She doesn’t know why they lied to her. That night, Adrian stays on the floor of Mallory’s cottage to watch for signs of Anya. They hope that she will use Mallory to create another message. Near midnight, she sits up and draws a black circle, which she believes is the hole where the man from the drawings buried the strangled woman. She and Adrian make love, and she decides to confront the Maxwells about the airplane the next day.

When Mallory asks for an explanation, Ted hits her with a wine bottle. Mallory wakes in the cottage, bound to a chair. Caroline tells her that she and Ted were unable to get pregnant. They took a year-long sabbatical to try to conceive. While on a walk, Caroline saw a Hungarian woman named Margit Baroth with her two-year-old daughter, Flora. Margit was ignoring the child as Flora stared at a phone, despite the hot air balloon festival happening on the horizon. Flora began following a rabbit, and Caroline followed her. When Margit noticed that Flora was gone, she followed them and argued with Caroline. Caroline shocked her and then strangled her when Margit began to have a seizure. Ted buried the body, which was soon found by police dogs. They took Flora, cut her hair, and raised her as a boy named Teddy. Teddy has no memories of that time. Soon after, wherever they went, Margit—whom they knew as “Anya,” the Hungarian word for “mommy”—followed them. They hired Mallory so that Anya would focus on someone else.

Caroline injects Mallory with heroin to make her overdose and then leaves. This is also what she did to Mitzi. As Mallory dreams, she thinks she sees Margit, who is telling her that it is not her fault. She sees her sister Beth, who says that the accident was a misunderstanding. Ted enters and reveals that he swapped the heroin for baby powder. He wants Mallory to run away with him. Caroline returns and shoots Ted with Mitzi’s gun as Mallory and Teddy escape into the woods. Mallory hears one more shot. She and Teddy hide in their tree fort, but Caroline finds her. Teddy jumps down and stabs Caroline with a fragment of an arrow that he and Mallory found previously while playing Enchanted Forest. Mallory sees Margit doing the actual stabbing, but she takes the blame for the murder as the spirit vanishes.

One year later, Mallory has reconciled with her mother. Teddy—now Flora once more—lives with her father, Jozsef. Mallory visits them and finds that Flora is now living as a girl. She is quiet, and Mallory realizes that Flora is trying to forget about her. Before she leaves, Flora hugs her and gives her a pamphlet that says “MALLORY’S RECIPES.” Mallory then reveals that the text of Hidden Pictures is the book she wrote for Flora. One day, if she wants to learn the truth about her past, and about the summer Mallory freed her from the Maxwells, the book will teach her everything that happened.