If only she’d known then how the house would haunt her, no matter what she did.
Siobhan shakes her head, trying to root herself in the here and now, in the warmth of Theo’s flat. “I’m doing the documentary because you were right, Theo,” she hears herself saying. “We should have told someone about Hex House, about what Haina was doing, when we left. Haina is gone, and yes, that makes it easier. But we can finally leave it all behind. It’s the right thing to do.”
Theo is still standing, blocking out the light from the window. “No,” he says quietly. “The right thing to do would be to go and talk to her husband, Ethan. And her mum. The right thing to do would be to tell them what happened to Elly sotheycan have some fucking closure, not you.”
When Siobhan swallows, it feels as though there are stones in her throat. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
Theo laughs. It’s a cool, hard sound. “I know. That’swhy I’m going to do it.” Siobhan’s head snaps up to look at him. “If you’re breaking our silence, then so am I.”
She finds herself nodding. Haina is dead, what can she do about it now? “Okay,” she whispers. “Okay.”
Theo sits down again, at the opposite end of the sofa to her this time, his legs so long they slope upwards from the hip when he’s seated. “There’s one thing I need from you, Shiv,” he says. “If you’re really going to do it, if you’re going to do this documentary and tell the world about Hex House and what Haina did to Elly, then I need you to do something for me. It’s the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”
Siobhan studies his face carefully, the dark brows, the melancholy eyes. She would do whatever he asked, if it would mean she can be in his life, but she knows that’s not the bargain.
When Theo speaks again, his voice is low and rumbling, like the onset of a rainstorm. “I need you to go back to Hex House.”
Falling. It feels like she’s falling.
Siobhan grips onto the arm of the sofa to steady herself, but it’s still as though her centre of gravity is swimming through the air. “What?”
“Haina’s gone now, right? You need to find any of those poor women who feel like they need to stay there, for whatever reason, and tell them to go back to their lives.” He pauses. His hands are clasped in his lap. “I need you to go and get Elly’s baby, so that her family can finally have a piece of her.”
The baby. It’s the one thing Siobhan has barely let herself think about since that awful day in the woods, the day they ran in the opposite direction from Hex House.It’s the one thing she’s never been able to find an escape from, no matter how much she drinks or how many sweaty clubs she abandons herself in.
“I can’t go back there,” she says, because no other words will come out. Still, they feel wrong on her lips. They rebel against the thing inside her that’s whispering,We could go back. We could really go back. “Besides. I wouldn’t even be able to find the house if I tried now. Haina invited us last time, remember?”
Theo nods gravely, but without surprise, as if he’s been expecting this very obstacle. “I’ve seen you, Siobhan. I’ve seen how you don’t eat and you don’t give a shit who you hurt, and don’t even kid yourself that I don’t know how much you drink. I think you’ll find it. I think the house will want you.”
“Theo,” Siobhan whispers, and it sounds like what it is: a plea. “I can’t go back there. Don’t make me do that.”
Theo’s face is cold and hard, his mind made up. “It’s the only way you’ll ever be able to heal from everything that happened, Shiv. I know you can see that. It’s breaking you apart.”
Siobhan looks down at her hands. They’re shaking. She wants a drink so badly she could scream. She wants to drown in numbness, she wants to know nothing but air in, air out, one step, then another. It is too heavy to carry herself around.
“If you can’t do it for you,” Theo says, more gently now, “then please. Do it for me.”
***
Half an hour later, Siobhan wanders around Kelvingrove Park. She follows the sweeping arc of the river as it cuts through the parkland. The day is freezing and drizzling but there are still plenty of people around: students on their way from one lecture to another, walkers pulling their dogs away from discarded rubbish, men who smell half-dead bundled on benches. Siobhan tries to figure out how someone would categorise her if they saw her, sipping wine from the bottle and sitting so close to the edge of the river that she could ever so gently roll forward and just let it take her.
Until today, she’d thought everything with Theo could be repaired. She’d rationalised it all in her mind as if it was still under her control, assumed that Theo would be a constant in her life always, like breathing and falling asleep. But she hadn’t realised that the cords between them didn’t exist anymore, that she’d taken a knife to them the day they walked away from Hex House and she’d asked him to never, ever, breathe a word of the things they’d seen.
I had to, she reminds herself uselessly.I didn’t have a choice.
She needs to stand up. She needs to get the train back to Edinburgh and slip back into her life, a life that barely makes sense anymore. But all Siobhan can bring herself to do is sit by the river, as if time doesn’t matter at all. She wants to drink and drink until the alcohol smothers and destroys each and every thought in her head, one by one.
THEN
As autumn unfurls and the days get colder, Elly finds herself craving meat. She wants it bloody and rare; she wants it dripping. In quiet moments she finds her mind wandering, imagining tearing a steak apart with her hands, the fleshy give between her two front teeth. She no longer has porridge for breakfast, but strips of bacon, covered in butter, dipped into jam. She stays long after everyone else has left the table for chores, hoovering up discarded strips of fat and half-eaten sausages. She can no longer fill herself up. Even if she can’t fit in another morsel, she still doesn’t feel sated. It’s as though there’s another, secret itch in her belly she can’t find a way to scratch. Margot giggles at the desperate way she eats. She catches the drips of grease from Elly’s chin with her little finger, lifts them to her own mouth. Grace slaps Elly’s hand when she catches her stealing rare cuts of beef from the fridge but also seems quietly pleased.
“I remember it well, that stage,” she says almostwistfully, looking at Elly’s stomach, and Elly doesn’t know if she’s talking about the pregnancy or something else.
Elly wants to talk about hexing more and more. And now that she is one of them, the women seem keen to unravel, to pour their secrets into her. Margot tells Elly that she has never believed in a god, not really, but when she hexes, she feels like she’s touching something timeless. Janine says that when she’s in her hex form, it’s as though her brain is no longer itching. Some of the other women just say they like the way it feels to leave their bodies behind.
The air is growing cooler. The gardens smell of smoke and mulch. When she wakes in the morning, Elly can see her breath. They close the doors in the kitchen while they work to keep the heat in. It’s getting harder for Elly to stay on her feet all day – sometimes the pressure in her pelvis is so intense that she squats down on the floor, and Keiko brings her a stool to sit on and a chicken bone to gnaw. Sometimes, when they are alone together in the kitchens, she shows Elly how to sign different words:hungry, dinner, wine, meat.
One morning, as they clear up from breakfast, Grace is much quieter than usual. There’s no humming old pop songs, no calling out of banal tasks from one side of the kitchen to the other –watch that butter doesn’t burn, chop those leeks a bit finer, check the bread’s almost ready– no swearing outbursts when her hands bother her, though she would always be too proud to admit that as the reason. Aside from her heavy footsteps, she is silent. Elly looks at Keiko, who shrugs. They work on in a heavy sort of quiet, until the door opens and Siobhan comes into the kitchen. She speaks to Grace in a low voice but Elly can just about make out what she’s saying.
