Genre Fiction
![Carissa Orlando - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B0CGXYBHL3.jpg)
The September House
"Why run from a haunted house when you can stay and ignore the ghosts? Just when you thought you'd seen everything a haunted house novel could do, The September House comes along and delivers an eerie, darkly funny, and emotionally grounded book about the ghosts that haunt houses and marriages."– Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street-for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price-they couldn't believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.
Margaret is not most people.
Margaret is staying. It's her house. But after four years Hal can't take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he's not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine-who knows nothing about the hauntings-arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.
A woman is determined to stay in her dream home even after it becomes a haunted nightmare in this compulsively readable, twisty, and layered debut novel.
When Margaret and her husband Hal bought the large Victorian house on Hawthorn Street-for sale at a surprisingly reasonable price-they couldn't believe they finally had a home of their own. Then they discovered the hauntings. Every September, the walls drip blood. The ghosts of former inhabitants appear, and all of them are terrified of something that lurks in the basement. Most people would flee.
Margaret is not most people.
Margaret is staying. It's her house. But after four years Hal can't take it anymore, and he leaves abruptly. Now, he's not returning calls, and their daughter Katherine-who knows nothing about the hauntings-arrives, intent on looking for her missing father. To make things worse, September has just begun, and with every attempt Margaret and Katherine make at finding Hal, the hauntings grow more harrowing, because there are some secrets the house needs to keep.
Editorial Reviews
"Shocking, electrifying, and absolutely original. Carissa Orlando takes us on a journey that moves from savagely funny to terrifying with the turn of a page. It's an unflinching exploration of the dark things we don't talk about, and it's a must read for horror fans."
– Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases
"Why run from a haunted house when you can stay and ignore the ghosts? Just when you thought you'd seen everything a haunted house novel could do, The September House comes along and delivers an eerie, darkly funny, and emotionally grounded book about the ghosts that haunt houses and marriages."
– Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
"This utterly original haunted house tale is a joy."
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A rich and wholly satisfying haunted house novel about dark family secrets and patterns of destruction. It will charm you and terrify you and break your heart, often within the same sentence. An exhilarating debut."
- Rachel Harrison, National Bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle
"The metaphor is layered and at times heartbreaking, as secrets held by both a house and a family come to light with terrifying poignancy in this wonderfully eerie debut."
- Library Journal (starred review)
"A genre-blending masterpiece that is part horror, part complex psychological suspense, and part dark humor, all of it tied together with beautiful prose. It creeped me out in the best possible way."
– Jesse Q. Sutanto, national bestselling author of I'm Not Done with You Yet
"Simply outstanding. What starts as a slyly funny story about a mild-mannered woman and her very haunted house turns into a chilling examination of abuse and resilience. Somehow, Orlando has cr...
– Simone St. James, New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Cold Cases
"Why run from a haunted house when you can stay and ignore the ghosts? Just when you thought you'd seen everything a haunted house novel could do, The September House comes along and delivers an eerie, darkly funny, and emotionally grounded book about the ghosts that haunt houses and marriages."
– Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of How to Sell a Haunted House
"This utterly original haunted house tale is a joy."
– Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A rich and wholly satisfying haunted house novel about dark family secrets and patterns of destruction. It will charm you and terrify you and break your heart, often within the same sentence. An exhilarating debut."
- Rachel Harrison, National Bestselling author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle
"The metaphor is layered and at times heartbreaking, as secrets held by both a house and a family come to light with terrifying poignancy in this wonderfully eerie debut."
- Library Journal (starred review)
"A genre-blending masterpiece that is part horror, part complex psychological suspense, and part dark humor, all of it tied together with beautiful prose. It creeped me out in the best possible way."
– Jesse Q. Sutanto, national bestselling author of I'm Not Done with You Yet
"Simply outstanding. What starts as a slyly funny story about a mild-mannered woman and her very haunted house turns into a chilling examination of abuse and resilience. Somehow, Orlando has cr...
Short Excerpt Teaser
One
The walls of the house were bleeding again.
This sort of thing could be expected; it was, after all, September.
The bleeding wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been accompanied by nightly moaning that escalated into screaming by the end of the month like clockwork. The moaning started around midnight and didn't let up until nearly six in the morning, which made it challenging to get a good night's sleep. Since it was early in the month, I could still sleep through the racket, but the sleep was disjointed and not particularly restful.
Before Hal absconded to wherever it was he went, he used to stretch and crack what sounded like the entirety of his skeleton. Margaret, he would say, we're getting old.
Speak for yourself, I would reply, but he was right. I was starting to feel a bit like the house itself sometimes-grand but withering, shifting in the wind and making questionable noises when the foundation settled. All the moaning-and-screaming business in September certainly didn't help me feel any younger.
That is to say, I was not looking forward to late September and the nightly screaming. It was going to be a long month. But that's just the way of things.
As for the bleeding, it always started at the top floor of the house-the master bedroom. If I wasn't mistaken, it started above our very bed itself. There was something disconcerting about opening your eyes first thing in the morning and seeing a thick trail of red oozing down your nice wallpaper, pointing straight at your head. It really set a mood for the remainder of the day. Then you walked out into the hallway and there was more of it dripping from in between the cracks in the wallpaper, leaking honey-slow to the floor. It was a lot to take in before breakfast.
As early as it was in September, the blood hadn't yet made it to the baseboards. Give it a week, however, and it would start pooling on the floor, cascading down the stairs in clotting red waterfalls. By the end of the month, deft footwork would be required to walk down the hallway or descend the stairs without leaving a trail of prints throughout the house. I had grown practiced in dodging blood over the past few years, but even I had slipped up on occasion, especially once the screaming was in full effect. Sleep deprivation really takes a toll on your motor functioning.
I used to worry over the walls, getting a bucket and soap and scrubbing until my arms were sore, only to see my work undone before my eyes. I would rub the sponge over a crack in the wallpaper and watch a fresh blob of red leak out of the open wound that was the wall over and over again. The wallpaper is ruined, I fretted, but it never was. It all went away in October. So now I just allowed the walls to bleed and waited patiently.
The first year we were in the house, Hal tried to convince me that the bleeding was just a leak. An oozing red leak. He carried on with that line of reasoning much longer than was logical. By the time the blood poured down the stairs and Hal was almost ready to admit that maybe it wasn't a simple leak, October hit and the blood vanished. Hal considered it a problem solved. I suppose he thought it was an isolated event and never considered that such a thing might be cyclical. He seemed surprised when the blood returned that second September. There's that leak again, he mused, fooling nobody. Everything, of course, changed after the third September, and Hal's opinions about the bleeding during this fourth September could be best summed up by his abrupt absence. I supposed I ought to feel trepidatious about facing September alone. However, I was never quite alone in this house, now, was I?
I couldn't tell you why the walls bled. I couldn't tell you why there was screaming at night. I couldn't tell you why a lot of things happened in this house. Over the years, I had developed a few working theories about the goings-on and why September made everything so much more difficult, but each was half-formed at best. Eventually, one has to give up asking questions, just accept that things are the way they are, and act accordingly. So when I woke up to a wall dripping with blood and to a foggy head from not-quite sleeping through hours of moaning, I simply nodded and got on with my morning.
My only plan for the day was to try to get some painting done. I had learned from past experience that it became difficult to focus on painting or really much of anything as the month progressed, what with the sleep deprivation and the blood and the loud noises and the wounded children running everywhere. As such, I wanted to front-load my pleasures in the hopes that they could carry me through the remainder of the month. Planning is important. So I set myself up in my sun...
The walls of the house were bleeding again.
This sort of thing could be expected; it was, after all, September.
The bleeding wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been accompanied by nightly moaning that escalated into screaming by the end of the month like clockwork. The moaning started around midnight and didn't let up until nearly six in the morning, which made it challenging to get a good night's sleep. Since it was early in the month, I could still sleep through the racket, but the sleep was disjointed and not particularly restful.
Before Hal absconded to wherever it was he went, he used to stretch and crack what sounded like the entirety of his skeleton. Margaret, he would say, we're getting old.
Speak for yourself, I would reply, but he was right. I was starting to feel a bit like the house itself sometimes-grand but withering, shifting in the wind and making questionable noises when the foundation settled. All the moaning-and-screaming business in September certainly didn't help me feel any younger.
That is to say, I was not looking forward to late September and the nightly screaming. It was going to be a long month. But that's just the way of things.
As for the bleeding, it always started at the top floor of the house-the master bedroom. If I wasn't mistaken, it started above our very bed itself. There was something disconcerting about opening your eyes first thing in the morning and seeing a thick trail of red oozing down your nice wallpaper, pointing straight at your head. It really set a mood for the remainder of the day. Then you walked out into the hallway and there was more of it dripping from in between the cracks in the wallpaper, leaking honey-slow to the floor. It was a lot to take in before breakfast.
As early as it was in September, the blood hadn't yet made it to the baseboards. Give it a week, however, and it would start pooling on the floor, cascading down the stairs in clotting red waterfalls. By the end of the month, deft footwork would be required to walk down the hallway or descend the stairs without leaving a trail of prints throughout the house. I had grown practiced in dodging blood over the past few years, but even I had slipped up on occasion, especially once the screaming was in full effect. Sleep deprivation really takes a toll on your motor functioning.
I used to worry over the walls, getting a bucket and soap and scrubbing until my arms were sore, only to see my work undone before my eyes. I would rub the sponge over a crack in the wallpaper and watch a fresh blob of red leak out of the open wound that was the wall over and over again. The wallpaper is ruined, I fretted, but it never was. It all went away in October. So now I just allowed the walls to bleed and waited patiently.
The first year we were in the house, Hal tried to convince me that the bleeding was just a leak. An oozing red leak. He carried on with that line of reasoning much longer than was logical. By the time the blood poured down the stairs and Hal was almost ready to admit that maybe it wasn't a simple leak, October hit and the blood vanished. Hal considered it a problem solved. I suppose he thought it was an isolated event and never considered that such a thing might be cyclical. He seemed surprised when the blood returned that second September. There's that leak again, he mused, fooling nobody. Everything, of course, changed after the third September, and Hal's opinions about the bleeding during this fourth September could be best summed up by his abrupt absence. I supposed I ought to feel trepidatious about facing September alone. However, I was never quite alone in this house, now, was I?
I couldn't tell you why the walls bled. I couldn't tell you why there was screaming at night. I couldn't tell you why a lot of things happened in this house. Over the years, I had developed a few working theories about the goings-on and why September made everything so much more difficult, but each was half-formed at best. Eventually, one has to give up asking questions, just accept that things are the way they are, and act accordingly. So when I woke up to a wall dripping with blood and to a foggy head from not-quite sleeping through hours of moaning, I simply nodded and got on with my morning.
My only plan for the day was to try to get some painting done. I had learned from past experience that it became difficult to focus on painting or really much of anything as the month progressed, what with the sleep deprivation and the blood and the loud noises and the wounded children running everywhere. As such, I wanted to front-load my pleasures in the hopes that they could carry me through the remainder of the month. Planning is important. So I set myself up in my sun...
