<P> Retired horror author Iris Blum suffers from dementia and lives in a remote New England house built in the early 19th century . Ms. Blum's estate manager, Mr. Waxcap, hires live - in nurse Lily Saylor to care for her . In a voice - over Lily explains that she just turned 28 years old, and that she will never reach 29 years old . Lily declares that a house with a death in it can never be bought or sold; it can only be "borrowed" from its ghosts . </P> <P> Lily begins to experience strange events . On her first night in the house, the telephone is wrenched out of her hands by an unseen force . A spot of black mold appears on a section of wall and slowly grows as the months pass . Lily often finds a corner of the rug at the base of the stairs has been flipped up, but she is the only person in the house who walks on the first floor . Ms. Blum only calls Lily "Polly," never using her real name . Mr. Waxcap explains that Polly Parsons is the protagonist of Ms. Blum's most popular novel, The Lady in the Walls . Lily presses him about how the novel ends, but he says she must read it herself . Lily responds that she is easily scared, and cannot bring herself to read it . Later, Lily opens a copy of the book in Ms. Blum's study, and it has a dried chrysanthemum pressed between the pages . Steeling herself to read, Lily learns the novel's central conceit: that Ms. Blum communicated with the long - dead Polly, and is retelling Polly's story . Lily puts the book down after a few pages, too frightened to continue . While rinsing berries in the kitchen, black mold spots cover Lily's hands and arms, then her arms bloat and turn sickly gray as if they are rotting, but a second later she looks down again and everything is normal . She glimpses a figure dressed in white reflected on a TV screen, but no one is there when she turns around . </P> <P> Discovering a moldy box labeled "Polly," Lily reads Ms. Blum's handwritten notes for the novel, and she comes to believe that Ms. Blum's conceit may be more than a fictional device; it may be based on an actual murder committed in the house . In a flashback, Polly is a bride, and a man, presumably her groom, kills her with a hammer in front of a part of the wall that has been stripped of its boards - the same section where mold is growing in the present . The man, covered in blood, hammers those boards in place, hiding Polly's body in the walls . Ms. Blum confronts Lily, believing her to be Polly, telling her that beauty never lasts and that she's going to rot and "fall apart like flowers ." </P> <P> On the final night of Lily's life, she descends the stairs to investigate a knocking sound, finds the wall boards piled beside the re-opened old burial place in the wall, sees Polly's ghost, and dies, overcome by terror . Since Ms. Blum never receives visitors and no longer has a nurse, she too dies . </P>

I am the pretty thing that lives in the house kritik