“Your turn,” she whispers.
***
Fifteen minutes later, Elly emerges from the study. Her muscles don’t feel like her own – they’re too loose, barely contained by her skin. Standing on the other side of the closed door, she runs her fingertips over her wrists, remembering how they had looked just minutes ago: sleek, avian. It had felt so different from the first time. She’d still been afraid when she saw herself changing, had still felt as though she’d somehow fallen outside of the natural way of things. But this time, she’d felt something else, too. A lack of resistance. She’d felt able to push open the door a crack, and to welcome it in – a thin trickle of fury.
I’m so angry, Elly had whispered, and Haina had said back,Good, my angel. You should be.
There is a white bandage wound around the crook of her right elbow. The blood is blooming through. Elly is so busy studying the pattern it makes, like the tiny handprint of a newborn, that she doesn’t realise she isn’t alone in the hallway. It isn’t until she hears a quiet beep, so incongruousin the quiet of the shady hall, that she looks up to see Theo standing over by the staircase. He is holding a small camera in one hand, held up to his face, pointed in her direction. Elly looks directly into the black eye of the lens, into the nothingness there, and then at the single eye of his that she can see. It is wide and green and questioning. He doesn’t lower the camera. She doesn’t look away. The feeling of being watched, of being recorded – the idea that this image of her is being preserved and that it might be watched in a different time, in a different life, makes her skin tingle all over. It isn’t an unpleasant feeling. Shewantsto be seen like this, she realises. She no longer cares who might see her. She simply wants to be witnessed in this rare moment of strength.
Elly looks back into the lens as she slowly unwraps the bandage from her elbow. It falls away, reveals the wound underneath, already smaller than it was in the study. Theo takes a step closer to her and then adjusts a dial on the side of the camera. It makes a whirring sound as it zooms in. Elly stands still, offering up her bloodied skin. She feels fiercely seen, acknowledged. Neither of them speak. She can hear Theo breathing, the quickness of it, the slight hitch. Elly fights it, the sudden urge she has to remove the rest of her clothing, too, piece by piece – to let his camera drink her in for what she is. After a moment, she rewraps her arm and walks away from him. There’s a beep, soft as a sigh, as the recording stops.
NOW
On Tuesday morning, Siobhan enters the hubbub of Black Medicine Coffee and orders a double espresso. The café is dark and atmospheric, all exposed stone walls and intricately carved wooden furniture. It’s close to the university campus and popular with students, so there’s only a tiny table left in the corner when Siobhan arrives. She grabs it, glad for the view of the door. She’s arrived early for this very reason – so that she can watch Zara enter and not the other way around. This meeting is all she’s been able to think about for the last few days, working the box office with Sylvie and wandering the aisles of Tesco, trying to buy something other than wine. She’s talked herself in and out of attending more times than she can count.
It’s just a conversation, she reminds herself now, sipping at her espresso, grateful for its heat and unapologetic strength, the way it assaults her tastebuds. She’s only here to find out what she can about Haina. It doesn’t have to be anything more than that, not if she doesn’t want it to be.
When a young woman comes into the coffee shop wearing an orange beanie, Siobhan slumps down further in her seat.I’ll be wearing an orange hat, Zara had told her in her last email.Besides, you can’t really miss me.
Siobhan knows now what she meant. Almost every visible inch of Zara’s skin is covered in tattoos: snakes coiled around both wrists, a spiderweb across her collarbone. Her hair is dyed a deep, artificial red and piercings glisten in her eyebrows, nose, lips. She’s short, curvy, with a presence that demands attention. From her place in the queue, Zara scans the room. Siobhan wills herself invisible and Zara appears not to see her, or know what she looks like, so she’s granted a couple of extra minutes to observe. Zara smiles at a baby gurgling at her, widening her eyes and sticking out her tongue. She checks a smart watch on her wrist, frowning before her face becomes neutral again. At the till, she orders something with a long name, extra hot, leaves a tip in the jar. When she’s collected her drink, she stands at the front of the coffee shop and looks around again, no sign of nerves or discomfort in her face, just anticipation. Reluctantly, Siobhan raises a hand to wave her over. Zara’s face breaks into a smile so warm and genuine that Siobhan feels momentarily wrongfooted. She can’t imagine ever being that pleased to see anyone, let alone someone she’d never met.
“Great to meet you, Siobhan,” Zara says, approaching the table and offering out her hand to shake. She has a strong Yorkshire accent. Siobhan’s gaze snags on a tattoo just below her thumbnail: a staring eye. She takes Zara’s hand, feeling ridiculous and overly formal. Zara sits down and removes her jacket, revealing a bright yellowhalter-neck beneath a heap of layered necklaces. It’s cool in the coffee shop, and she obviously isn’t wearing a bra, but Zara doesn’t seem to notice or care about the way her nipples strain against the fabric.
“Thanks so much for meeting me,” Zara is saying. “Everyone at SunWolf is really excited. Did you have to come far?”
“No,” Siobhan says. She thinks about offering more information, then decides against it. She’s feeling surly. She holds the power here and she’s keen now to wield it, to make things difficult. Zara’s smile doesn’t fade. She takes a long sip of her coffee and leans back in her chair. She doesn’t seem in any rush. Under the table, her legs are spread out wide. She takes up space without apology, seemingly at ease with the moment and whatever it might contain. Siobhan thinks she was probably like that once, too.
“How did you find your source?” she asks Zara. “And how did you get my email address?”
“Oh yeah, sorry,” Zara says, laughing. It makes her look younger and Siobhan briefly wonders how old she is. Twenty-eight, maybe thirty. “I probably should have explained that. Let me give you a bit of background to the whole thing. I don’t know if you’ve heard about the HexHeads?”
“Thewhat?”
“It started out as an internet forum, really, but it’s a whole community now. Hex House conspiracy theorists. Mega fans.”
“Mega fans,” Siobhan repeats flatly.
“People who really,really, want the house to be real. They post supposed ‘sightings’, blurry pictures of facesbetween trees. A few say they know someone who’s been, friend of a friend, cousin’s best friend’s dog, you get the gist. They arrange meet-ups in the woods down in the Borders to hunt for the house, share links to any new rumours, that sort of thing. There’s even a HexHeads podcast. It’s pretty popular.”
“That’s fucking weird,” Siobhan says, draining her espresso.
“Yeah, I guess it is a bit.” Zara laughs again – she’s so quick to laugh, Siobhan thinks – and shrugs. “Anyway. I’m a total HexHead.” She must sense Siobhan’s hostility, because she rolls her eyes in a way that somehow manages to be both self-deprecating and dismissive. “Some of them are real nut-jobs, let me tell you. But we’re all allowed our obsessions, right? And a sanctuary for women in the wilderness that no one can find? Comeon. Ever since I heard of it, I knew there was a story there, that there was so much more to it than some Atlantis-style conspiracy theory. I pitched it to SunWolf last year.” A brief pause. “I’m so glad that they’ve been receptive to the idea, that they saw the potential in it.”
Siobhan imagines Zara sitting with a bunch of other beautiful young people – and perhaps a few stern-faced, older men – talking about how much money Hex House might make for them.You think you know what you’re getting into, she almost says out loud,but you have no idea.
“A couple of months ago, things were drying up a bit. We were in the early research phases but not really getting anywhere. I had no idea about you or your documentary, and I didn’t have any sources. All my leads came to nothing.But then someone reached out to me. Willow. Viapostof all things.” Zara laughs into her drink, shrugging. There’s something slightly forced about her nonchalance. “Apparently, she’s still inside the house. Using some kind of network to get the letters out.”
Siobhan’s breath catches in her throat. She bites down on the inside of her cheek, hard.
“People have pretended to be at the house before, obviously, on the HexHeads forum,” Zara is saying, “but their posts were usually pretty transparent: hyperbolic, vague on the details. Plus, I doubt Hex House is the kind of place with a high-speed internet connection, you know? Willow’s letters are just…different. She’s so specific. She writes about what the women eat, what they wear, what they do all day. It’s bizarre. She’s never included an address, so I can’t write back, but she just keeps on sending them. So much information, so much detail. It doesn’t feel feasible that she could make it all up. Whatever Hex House is, I feel like she could really be there.” Zara’s speaking quickly, her voice high and excited. “She told me all about Haina.” Zara pauses. “And all about you.”
Siobhan stares down into her espresso mug. She feels suddenly warm, and regrets the old fleece she’d shrugged on this morning.
“It wasn’t hard to find out more about you, and your email address, once I had your name,” says Zara. “You should probably tighten up your internet security a bit. There are weirdos out there, you know.”
“You don’t say.”
Zara gives her a wry smile. “Touché. Anyway. From what Willow has told me, I think Hex House is so muchmore than some cult in the woods.” Her smile fades. “I think it’s the place where missing girls go.”
