Accumulation

by Aimee Pokwatka

Genres: General Fiction; Horror; Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

A twisty, searing, conversation-starting novel about a filmmaker-turned-housewife who moves into her dream house and is forced to consider whether it's the house or herself that is haunted.

When documentary filmmaker turned stay-at-home mom Tennessee Cherish moves into the the dream house her husband bought for her, a brighter future seems to be on the horizon. Even if her husband is frustratingly absent due to his new high-paying job. Even if their two young children begin acting out in strange ways. Even if she feels lonelier than ever.

Distracted by the endless details that come with moving into a new town, a new house, and new schools, Tenn doesn’t notice when odd things begin happening at home. The faucet that runs at all hours. The creepy doll that seems to show up in every room. The human tooth they found in the floorboards.

As the kids’ outbursts and the strange events start to escalate, the family finds themselves increasingly caught in loops, repeating everyday actions with dangerous—and then devastating—effects. Tenn realizes she must find the source of what is haunting her family, before it kills them all.

Taut and twisty, scary and searing, Aimee Pokwatka’s Accumulation lays bare the high price women pay for the promises of domesticity and motherhood, and the many ways in which families can be haunted.

Release date: May 5, 2026

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Print pages: 336

Sample

When Ward found the doll, Tenn was in the backyard, pulling weeds nearly as tall as she was. They'd been in the house for less than a week, and this was the first time they'd turned their attention to the yard. The previous owners had let it go wild, and there was no telling what might be hiding in the overgrowth. The house was still teeming with boxes, but it was important to Tenn that she knew the yard was safe, that there were no dangers lying in wait for the kids.

As Ward approached from behind, Tenn's attention was focused elsewhere. She was prone to fixating on details, and she'd just discovered a cluster of symbols carved into the worn brick of the patio-a flower inside a circle, a cross with a backslash cutting across its bottom. This house was old-the main part built in the 1750s. The bricks of the patio were likely not as old, but running her fingers over the etching, Tenn was flooded with a sense of camaraderie that felt tethered to a different time. Then something spidery brushed against her shoulder, and she screamed.

"Welcome home, Tennessee," Ward said, making the doll do a dance on her shoulder. "I've been waiting for you."

Tenn swatted at both her husband and the doll, wiped a filthy hand across her sweaty forehead. It was hot even for August. They hadn't expected New York to be as hot as the South. Rivulets of sweat trickled down her torso under her overalls, over the crest of her hip, and down her thigh.

"You scared the shit out of me," she said, and snatched the doll away. It was small-the length of Ward's gloved hand-and bald, wearing a nightgown that had once been pink or blue but was now a dingy gray mottled with grass stains.

"Where'd you find this?" she asked. The doll looked up at her with soft, pursed lips, its blue eyes expressionless inside its plastic head. From one sleeve, a tendril of dead grass sprouted like an arm.

"Up front in the ivy," Ward said, and pulled Tenn close. "I like making you scream." He'd been like this since the move, despite the tenuousness between them that had preceded it. Even the day they'd moved in, after sixteen hours of carrying boxes in ninety-five-degree heat, they'd collapsed into bed and, as if magnetized, melded into sticky, exhausted sex. He bit off a glove and slid a hand inside Tenn's overalls, just in time for the kids to come running.

"Unhand her, beast!" Anders yelled, waving a stick that Tenn tried not to worry he'd impale himself on.

Ward kept his hand inside her overalls, roaming.

"Never!" Ward said, and kissed Tenn so deeply Anders shrieked and covered his eyes.

Aisling wasn't far behind, her small arms cradling one of the giant Nerf guns Tenn had bought, as promised, for their cooperation during the move. They'd never been allowed toy guns before. Tenn had never needed an outright bribe before, but it was hard to leave everything you've ever known behind, nearly impossible.

"You're not shooting at cars, are you?" Tenn asked.

She hadn't been paying enough attention to the kids, the work ahead of her in this ancient house so overwhelming she'd allowed herself to fall into a trancelike state. The kids had been on the roof of the detached garage, which was situated at the rear of the property. The garage roof had been a favorite hangout spot of the previous owners' daughter-they'd built a ladder onto the side for her to climb, nailed in so it couldn't slip.

"What's that?" Aisling said, and reached for the doll in Tenn's hand. Tenn extended her arm in offering, but her hand didn't open, the doll firmly in her grip.

"I found it up front," Ward said. "It was buried under the leaves."

Aisling prodded the doll but didn't take it. "I don't like it," she said.

"That's too bad," Ward said. "One of the selling points of this house was that it came with its own possessed baby doll. Your mother has been dreaming about this her entire life."

Tenn set the doll inside her gardening caddy, positioning it so its head peeked out the top. It was probably crawling with ticks. She listened for Gogo but didn't hear her. Also probably buried in the leaves, crawling with ticks. The doll gazed up at Tenn, dirt smudged across its dimpled cheeks. "At last," Tenn said. "Our family is complete."

"When I heard you scream, I thought a bear was getting you," Anders said. He still had the stick in his hand, ready to fight.

"I'm sorry to disappoint," Tenn said. "Maybe the doll is warding off the wildlife."

"You couldn't fight a bear," Aisling told Anders.

Anders whapped her in the side with the stick.

"Absolutely not," Tenn said, and yanked the stick from Anders's hand-too hard, she realized, when Anders balled his hand in pain. She reached out for him, to assess the damage, but he shrank from her grip. She hadn't meant to hurt him.

"Whatever!" he yelled. Anders had always been a little volatile, but the move had undone something inside him, his impulse control left behind in North Carolina. "Let the bears eat you!"

He ran back to the garage before Tenn could respond. She turned her attention to Aisling.

"Are you okay?" she asked. Anders hadn't hit her very hard, but Aisling too had been different since the move, floating around the yard, detached. Before, Aisling had been a burrower. She liked to nestle in the nooks, under blanket forts, inside closets. She liked to be tucked away, inside of things.

"That doll is creepy," Aisling said. Her curly hair was knotted at the back of her head, and she'd already made up her mind not to let anyone comb it. She raised her gun at the doll, its blank, worn face. "Don't you try anything," she said. "I'm watching."

Then she followed her brother, climbing the ladder to the garage roof with a lack of caution that surprised Tenn. Maybe the move would be good for them, eventually. They would learn to be adaptable. Tenn closed her eyes and willed them not to throw anything into traffic.

Gogo appeared from the front yard and deposited a splintered bone at Tenn's feet. The previous owners had also had a dog, judging by the scratch marks at the base of the back door. Tenn tried to snatch the bone before Gogo ate it and made herself sick, but Gogo was faster and disappeared into the woods with her prize.

Ward slid his hand back inside Tenn's overalls, cupping her sweaty ass. Tenn's underwear was soaked with sweat, but she liked it, liked Ward like this, liked the small hope growing inside her that the move would fix what they were both terrified was unfixable. She was still holding Anders's stick and was suddenly aware of its potential as a weapon.

"We should get you out of these," Ward said. He kissed her, and she felt his erection through his Carhartts. "These overalls are filthy."

"You're filthy," Tenn said. She dropped the stick and kissed him back, and the kids groaned from the garage. "What's gotten into you?"

"I must be channeling a demonic spirit," Ward said, tilting his head in the direction of the doll. It had been months since he'd been like this-unburdened. "I'm all wound up."

"I don't care if the doll is full of ticks, then," Tenn said. "We're keeping it." She would keep Ward like this, free from the strife of the last year. They could start fresh here, remember how they used to be. Ward slid his tongue inside her mouth.

On the street behind the house, a mulch truck honked, the sound resonating through Tenn's body. The kids were pumping their arms at every passing vehicle.

"The neighbors are going to love us," Tenn said. She went back for another kiss, aware of the doll in her peripheral vision, its face pointed upward from the caddy.

"And if they don't," Ward said, working his hand into Tenn's flesh, "we'll hex them."

Tenn felt his hand on her slick body, his nose against her cheek, his desire bending her back, like he might pin her down right there, in the yard. He only stopped at the sound of screeching brakes, and they looked up to see the unmistakable orange of a Nerf dart in the street, and the kids flinging themselves off the garage roof, forgoing the ladder, and slinking into the woodpile to hide.

×××


The house was on Harmes Way-that was the first thing. When Ward had told Tenn the name of the street, she hadn’t believed him.

"Maybe we should see if there's anything available on Murder Lane first," she'd said. "We don't want to limit our options."

The second thing was that the house, thanks to a number of additions patchworked on over the years, was confusing. The living room connected to both the dining room and the extra bedroom; the sitting room upstairs connected to both the bathroom and the primary bedroom. Tenn got lost a lot, those first weeks, always walking through a doorway and arriving someplace unexpected. She couldn't remember which stairs led to which rooms. She couldn't remember where any of the light switches were. The house predated the use of electric lights by over a hundred years, and when it had been wired, all the switches were installed in unintuitive places. The switch for the dining room chandelier was in the kitchen. The switch for the kitchen light was inside the back staircase, behind a door. Tenn put Post-its on the doors and the light switches, on the cabinets so she could find the silverware and dishes, but it was humid, and the Post-its kept curling and dropping to the floor, where Gogo would find them and squirrel them away. Sometimes Tenn walked from room to room and imagined that the house was changing around her, manifesting new halls and doors to seal her in. It felt like the kind of house that might absorb people.

Ward was six feet tall, and he had to duck through the doorways, and the door frames were all crooked, giving the house a Wonderland vibe. The floor in the living room was so pitched that if you stood in socks at the north end, you would slide down to the south. If you went up to the attic, you had to prop the door open; otherwise it would slam itself shut. Many of these quirks were due to the way the house had settled, the real estate agent had been quick to add. Not because it was haunted, she said with a laugh. Apparently it had concerned one family enough that they'd moved on. People chose not to buy houses for all kinds of reasons.

Probably people had died there, statistically speaking, but the light was good.

The third thing about the house was that it was a gift-from Ward to Tenn. He was trying to make something up to her, though this went unspoken between them. They'd been together forever, Ward and Tenn, fourteen years now. Not everything needed to be said out loud. And they both knew as soon as they saw it that this house-with its crooked floors and nonsensical light switches, with its kitchen window seat and big screened porch, with its wide plank floors scratched and worn by the many occupants who'd survived worse here before them-was Tenn's dream house. Buying Tenn her dream house-Tenn understood without Ward having to say it-was Ward's plan to get them back on track. And Tenn wanted it. She wanted it too. She wanted it so much she was willing to overlook a lot.

×××


Tenn pulled the doll from her robe pocket and hid it behind Ward’s coffee mug in the cabinet beside the microwave. Ward was upstairs, in theory preparing for his first day at his new job but really just chasing the kids around with tickle fingers, his attempt to soften all their first-day jitters. Tenn’s own new job didn’t start for another two weeks, but Ward was going to help more, he’d told her that morning, holding a wide-tooth comb and steeling himself for battle with Aisling’s newfound stubbornness about her hair.

Tenn started a batch of eggs on the stove and opened the drawer labeled utensils in search of the spatula. In the drawer, she found a box of foil, a handful of rubber bands, and three wilted dandelions, a dubious gift from one of the kids. She opened another drawer-a drawer that actually contained utensils-but the spatula was not inside. Tenn tried to remember unpacking the spatula but instead remembered opening this drawer and pulling out a long, thin fillet knife. She'd never put knives in a drawer at all, though; they had a knife block for that. And Tenn had never filleted anything in her life. But it happened to her sometimes, because-like the house-she was absorbent. She picked up strangers' accents and mannerisms without meaning to; she picked up their gaits and their moods. She was like that with images too-after years of studying and working in film, her brain absorbed scenes that didn't belong to her, braiding them into memories of her own life. Sometimes it was hard to distinguish what was hers and what wasn't.

Ward was partway down the stairs when Tenn heard him. "Fuck!" he yelled, just as Anders entered the kitchen.

"Language," Anders scolded, mimicking Tenn's tone.

The door by the pantry opened, and Ward appeared, clutching his forehead. He'd come down the back staircase, which descended from his office, off their bedroom, to the kitchen. The back stairs were unusually narrow and steep-Tenn had fallen down them already, their second morning in the house, awake before sunrise, undercaffeinated and wearing socks that were too slippery. They'd made it a rule-no socks on the Murder Stairs. Her tailbone was still sore from the fall; her body hadn't felt right since.

"Did you slip?" she asked him. She leaned in for a kiss, but Ward went straight to the microwave to examine his reflection.

"Hit my forehead," he said. "These fucking ceilings."

"I thought you loved the ceilings," Anders said. Anders had gone on a brief hunger strike when the move had been announced, which meant he refused to eat at home while steadily emptying his cafeteria e-wallet, filling his backpack with pretzels and cookies at school so he wouldn't break in front of Ward and Tenn. "What about all the character?"

Ward had countered the kids' protests with a hard sell on the house-it would be a big change for all of them, but change could be good. The kids didn't care that Ward had been offered an executive position, a six-figure salary for the first time in his life. They didn't care that he'd be able to work from home two days a week, that his commute to the office would be a breezy fifteen minutes, that he'd be more flexible, more present. But in New York, he told them, there were better schools than in North Carolina, with cooler playgrounds, and they'd be only an hour from New York City and all its museums and musicals and restaurants. In the new house, they no longer had to share a bedroom, and there was a big flat yard where they could play. Gogo too. That, and it was their mom's dream house. The kids were still soft enough that this last bit moved the needle.