How to Sell a Haunted House

“Seeing it with fresh eyes, Louise saw it as it was, not dressed in its history and associations. Their little single-story brick rancher had been fine when their grandparents built it in 1951, but as the years passed, the houses around them added additions and screened-in back porches and white coats of paint over their bricks and glossy coats of black paint over their shutters, and every other house got bigger and more expensive while theirs turned into the shabbiest house on the block.”

Louise has returned home for the first time in years and is seeing her childhood home with adult eyes. The contrast between her perception when she was younger and now is heightened further by the way the neighborhood has changed over the years. This quote highlights the way that Louise’s relationship with her family is frozen in time—the result of distance and The Power of Secrets between all of the family members, but especially between Louise and Mark.

“The Mark in front of her had a receding hairline and his gut had gotten bigger since the last time she’d seen him. He wore a King Missile T-shirt he’d had in high school, but it couldn’t be the same one even though it was dirty enough to be, and he wore a flannel she thought he’d owned then, too. The biggest difference from the Mark in her memory were his terrible tattoos.”

Louise is seeing Mark for the first time in years. He is dressed in the same clothing he wore in high school, reinforcing her idea that he hasn’t changed and has never grown up. Over time, Louise’s perception of Mark will shift; however, at this first moment, Louise is still resistant to the idea of Redefining Family and reconciling with her brother.

“Louise knew what it was like to grow up in the shadow of a younger sibling who sucked up all the air. She’d always thought that should have made her and her mom closer, but whenever she tried to talk to her mom about Freddie, she changed the subject.”

Louise struggles in her relationship with her mother but is always looking for things that they have in common and ways they can connect. She sees her relationship with Mark as paralleling Nancy’s relationship with Freddie, without even understanding the true nature of that relationship. The passage speaks to The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships in the novel.

“Sitting in Dad’s chair, Pupkin looked like he owned the house. He looked like he belonged here more than Louise. He made her feel like an intruder. After all, she’d broken a window to come inside. Pupkin had been here before she or Mark were even born. He’d known their mom since she was seven years old. He’d traveled with her to all her shows while they’d waited for her at home.”

It is early on in the novel, and Pupkin is just starting to make his presence felt. His position in Eric’s chair shows his understanding that he is now in charge of the household and foreshadows the dominance he will soon assert. Louise’s awareness of what Pupkin represents is underscored by the fact that Pupkin was always with their mother, even when her children were not.

“Louise swore to herself that she would not cry. Her Mother had arranged this entire performance to humiliate her, and she would not cry. Her shoulders started to shake. A hot tear slipped down one cheek. She would not cry. She could see her dad, standing against the opposite wall, combing his mustache with his fingertips, looking miserable and apologetic the way he got when he knew he’d done something wrong. She wiped at her cheeks, hard. She would not cry.”

Louise has just discovered that her mother has left everything to Mark and is convinced that her mother has done it on purpose to hurt her. In fact, Nancy’s gesture is because of Mark’s difficulty after leaving Boston University, which no one else knows about. After she brought him home, Nancy had never asked about it or told anyone else, but she clearly understood the impact it had on him and felt guilty about Pupkin’s involvement.

“At some point after Louise turned five, the stories lost their shine. She embraced brushing her teeth by herself and putting herself to bed. She loved being responsible, she relished her independence, she got addicted to her parents’ praise when they told her what a big girl she was. It felt more real than hearing yet another story about Pupkin getting in trouble and finally finding his way back home again thanks to the hard work of Girl Sparrow.”

When Louise was younger, she was completely entranced by her mother’s puppets. However, when she was five, everything drastically changed and she withdrew from that imaginary world, dealing only in the practical for the rest of her life. Later, it is revealed that this shift coincided with her attempt to drown Mark, which was actually orchestrated by Pupkin, and Louise’s sudden shift becomes more understandable.

“Louise jumped. She turned and saw him staring at her through the open garage door. Pupkin isn’t there, he’s escaped, he’ll be so angry. She dropped the Squirrel Nativity into the can and slammed the door shut.”

Earlier, Louise put Pupkin in the trash can, and now she returns to find that he is gone. Her thoughts immediately go to how Pupkin will get his revenge, and this may appear strange to the reader, who does not yet understand Pupkin’s full power. She also disposes of the Squirrel Nativity, which will later come back to attack her, showing the extent of supernatural activity happening in the house.

“It looked mangy and the top of its head was missing a patch of fur. Its ears looked chewed. One side of its leathery lips had pulled back and she could see a slice of its yellowed teeth and its eyes were stitched shut and she knew it was from the Squirrel Nativity.”

Louise wakes up to find a squirrel in the room. At first, she thinks that one has gotten into the house from outside, but after seeing it more closely, she recognizes it as part of the Squirrel Nativity. This is the first overtly supernatural event that occurs in the house, and although Louise should understand what is happening at this point, she still does her best to deny it. This denial is characteristic of Louise and her family, contributing to the theme of The Power of Secrets.

“‘This is exactly like when we were kids,’ Mark said. ‘Louise in her little Brownie Scout Hitler Youth uniform barking orders at everyone.”

Once Mark becomes a larger voice in the narrative, beyond just being Louise’s adversary, he offers a different perspective on the family’s past. This realignment will continue, with Mark offering an alternate view of the family and his relationship with Louise. In fact, Mark will become a crucial voice of honesty that pushes the family to leave their secrets behind, Redefining Family along the way.

“Louise felt herself getting sucked into Mark’s world of vibes and gut feelings and intuition. She forced herself to focus on Mercy. She forced herself to focus on what matters: getting the house on the market, getting back to San Francisco, getting Poppy back to normal.”

For much of the novel, Louise pushes back against the supernatural happenings in the house, refusing to accept even the evidence of her own senses. As per usual, she falls back on blaming Mark, even though she knows that he is not making this all up. Louise is resistant to accepting the truth and urgently feels the need to separate herself from the drama of her family and to return to the new family that she has constructed across the country.

“‘I’ll come right out and say it,’ Mercy told them. ‘Strange noises, bad vibes, your mom and dad recently passed—Your house is haunted and I’m not selling it until you deal with that.’”

Although Louise is avoiding the truth, Mercy approaches it head-on, surprising everyone. Mercy and her mother, Aunt Gail, are down-to-earth about this supernatural presence, and their approach adds humor to the text. Until Louise expands her notion of Redefining Family and accepts their help, she and Mark will not be able to move on from their parents’ death.

“‘You tried to kill me,’ Mark said. It wasn’t true. He was lying. She didn’t try to kill Mark. Pupkin did.”

Mark has just revealed the first secret that is keeping his family trapped in the past and under the control of Pupkin: Louise once tried to drown him. Louise, however, adds to it in a surprising way when she reveals that “Pupkin did [it].” Importantly, she doesn’t share this twist with Mark until much later, keeping to her family’s tradition of The Power of Secrets.

“No. Louise would not let this house be haunted. She would not let Mark be the hero of this made-up story. A puppet hadn’t told her to kill a baby Mark. She hadn’t tried to kill baby Mark. He had put the stupid dolls in the stupid bathroom. There were true things and false things and ghosts were false things.”

For much of the novel, this is Louise’s attitude—she believes that she can change the truth simply through force of will. She will keep up this idea, even in the face of undeniable evidence. Louise goes through many journeys in this novel, and one of them is her journey of releasing the idea that she can control her world and accepting help from her family.

“Louise sat hunched in the booth, hand back over her left eye, staring down at the table. Mark had found some sweatpants and flip-flops in his truck, but they were way too big and her T-shirt looked grimy and the collar was torn. Mark was cleaner but he looked like exactly the type of guy who’d go to a Waffle House at three in the morning after shooting a haunted puppet.”

Louise has just nearly been killed by Pupkin, saved only by Mark’s return. Mark shows himself, in these passages, to be worthy of Louise’s trust and capable of taking care of her in the aftermath of the attack. In this scene at Waffle House, he calms Louise down and then begins to work to dismantle the culture of silence the family has cultivated. Louise, however, is still resistant to Redefining Family and looks for reasons to criticize Mark’s appearance and behavior.

“Sticks trembled between us, vibrating with life, and he placed another hand on my leg, then his foot, then he carefully brought his other foot around and now he was standing on my calf, one hand balancing himself on my knee. He weighed less than a cricket. And I heard Clark say, ‘A puppet is a possession that possesses the possessor.’”

In this flashback, Mark has fallen in with a radical puppet collective and is entranced with Clark’s marionette, Sticks. What Clark says at the end of the quote is telling—it will drive the company’s experiences with Pupkin and shows Clark to be susceptible to Pupkin’s control.

“When you’re doing mask work you shape your face to fit the mask. You let go and the mask shows you what to do. It uses your body to pick things up, knock things over, or do things you don’t understand, but the point is you surrender to its will. You don’t fight it. You let its personality replace yours. The nice thing is, you’re not responsible for your actions because you’re a vessel for the mask, and the only rule you have to respect is when the workshop leader says, ‘Take off your mask,’ you take it off right away. The problem was, Clark never told us to take off our masks.”

Mark is explaining his work with the puppet collective to Louise as he relates the story of what happened to him at Boston University. The release of responsibility, and even of control, leads to dangerous results. Clark, however, never releases them, and the group spirals into vicious violence and destruction. Later, Mark realizes that Clark was under Pupkin’s sway and they were all acting in accordance with the whims of the puppet.

“Louise understood. No matter what Pupkin had done, their mom hated leaving her old friend in the dark all by himself, so she’d tried to make him comfortable, she’d tried to give him things to do, toys to play with, a bed to sleep in. But Pupkin hadn’t liked being in the dark, he hated being alone, so he’d found a way into the vents and come downstairs, furious at being locked away.”

Louise and Mark have found Pupkin’s refuge in the attic and see that Nancy has created it for Pupkin. They realize that Pupkin must have been attacking Eric when jealous of Nancy’s attention. Still, characteristic of their family, Nancy and Eric told no one about their troubles, which eventually resulted in their deaths, showing The Power of Secrets.

“Louise felt unutterably sad. They still had the house to sell, but it wasn’t their parents’ house anymore; it was just a house. It was over.”

In the wake of Louise and Mark’s night at the house, which climaxes with Louise cutting Mark’s arm off, they have finally banished Pupkin for good. Although they are relieved, there is also a strange sense of emptiness—in ridding the house of Pupkin, they have somehow gotten rid of their parents as well. In all of the excitement, the grief over the loss of their parents was temporarily forgotten, but now that it’s over, that grief has returned.

“She had kept Poppy safe for so long. She’d protected her from all the stuff between her and Ian, she’d protected her from Mark, she’d protected her from Pupkin and her mom, from the tension between her and Ian’s mom; she’d spent years protecting her from all these adults, and this world, and all the meanness out there, but she couldn’t protect her from this puppet. She needed help.”

Louise has returned home to find that Pupkin has taken over Poppy. She tries to deal with it on her own, as she tries to deal with everything, but realizes again that she cannot do this alone. In the end, she calls Mark, and this is significant in that Louise hates to lean on anyone, especially Mark. Calling him shows how far she has come in her journey toward accepting and Redefining Family.

“Let’s go see Mama. She’s going to be sad that sweet little child couldn’t come up, but maybe that’ll get her out of here faster. After that, we’ll call my girls and see about blasting the Devil out of your parents’ house and sending that little haunted puppet straight back to Hell.”

Louise has returned to Charleston with Poppy, looking for help with Pupkin. This time, she has chosen to confide the entire story to Aunt Gail, showing how far she has come in Redefining Family. This quote, from Aunt Gail, brings a touch of humor to Louise’s tension, and the matter-of-fact way that she both accepts the problem and offers a solution offers Louise a measure of relief.

“They began to argue, and their voices filled the mobile home, and Louise heard her mom’s voice cut through them all. Your aunt Honey tells stories.”

The entire family has gathered at Barb’s house to get the demon out of Pupkin; however, the surprise revelation is that Pupkin is actually holding the spirit of Freddie. When the family tries to get to the bottom of this connection, Louise remembers what her mother said, and knows where she has to go for answers. Although Louise has been resistant to revealing secrets, when Poppy’s safety is at stake, she is willing to confront Aunt Honey and push her to reveal the truth, banishing the family’s most powerful secret.

“‘All her life,’ Mark said. ‘All her life she must have known something was wrong. She never wanted to talk about death or Freddie because she must have known it didn’t add up. Even if it was just a freak accident, she must have felt so guilty that it happened when she took her eyes off her brother. And she never said a word. None of them did. And she clung to the one thing she had to remember her brother by for almost seventy years.’”

Mark offers thoughtful and compassionate insight into Nancy’s behavior. While Louise is angry with their mother, Mark understands why she had chosen to live with the burden of Pupkin for so many years. He also understands what it feels like to live with a family secret that has shaped one’s life and that no one will ever address directly because the family dealt with his attempted drowning in the same way, once more reinforcing The Power of Secrets.

“In that moment Louise thought of The Velveteen Rabbit and she knew why she had always hated it. Being loved didn’t mean you were alive. People loved lots of inanimate things: stuffed animals, cars, puppets. Being alive meant something else.”

The Velveteen Rabbit is a motif that runs through the novel (See: Symbols & Motifs). On the one hand, the fact that Nancy thinks it is her favorite childhood book, when in fact it terrifies Louise, contributes to the theme of The Challenges of Mother-Daughter Relationships. The book also reinforces the notion of the life of childhood toys, and at the end, the notion that Pupkin/Freddie needs to accept not being alive is what enables Louise to convince him to move on into the afterlife.