There’s something inside you, Siobhan. You’re not ready yet.
But you will be.
Siobhan stays frozen where she is, lurking by the park a hundred or so yards away from Owen’s building. Bile rises in her mouth.
Then she’s running, running faster than she can ever remember, barging roughly into the shoulders of passersby, curse words following in her wake. She can’t slow down – if she slows down, she’ll think, and she can’t afford to do that. Not now. At first, she doesn’t know where she’s going, but gradually it occurs to her that she’s following a scent: the scent of coffee, citrus and pine.How is that possible?But of course, she knows the answer. All of her senses are sharpened knives now.
Siobhan only stops when she reaches a tall, old building on Rankeillor Street, sitting in the shadow of Arthur’s Seat. The hill was once a volcano, but now it’s a popular walking spot, all granite and gorse. Hardy hikers holding water bottles and wearing waterproofs pass her and sayGood morning, their smiles drooping when she leers back at them. Someone is coming out of the building, and they hold the door open for her. Siobhan slips inside. She follows the scent up to the second floor and rings the bell.
When Zara sees her, her mouth falls open and her hands drop to her sides. Siobhan pushes past Zara and into the flat, ignoring her protestations of, “Wait, how did you…”
“I need to talk to you,” Siobhan says. She walks straight into a small living room, then stops, breath short in her throat.
The flat is nothing like how she expected. There are no comfy sofas to sink into or art prints on the walls, no purring cat or meticulously tended house plants. The roomis stark, almost bare. The only pieces of furniture are two armchairs and a coffee table, and they’re surrounded by boxes, taped tightly shut.
“I’m moving,” Zara explains. She sounds tired, as if her voice is a heavy thing to carry. “They sacked me. At SunWolf.”
“What?” Siobhan blinks, trying to get the scene to make sense, trying to root herself in the present. “Why?”
Zara sighs and slumps down into one of the armchairs. “I haven’t been completely honest with you, Siobhan. I guess there’s no reason not to tell you now. They never…” She trails off, blows air out through her lips, then continues. “They never backed the Hex House documentary. I pitched it, but they never wanted it. I’ve been using company resources and equipment anyway. They finally rumbled me.”
Siobhan walks over to the second armchair, sits down. She feels dizzy from running so far. For a second, she forgets about Owen, the sound his body had made when it hit the pavement. Zara’s words make certain things slide into focus – why Siobhan never met anyone else at SunWolf, why they always did their interviews at the library and not the office. “But why didn’t you just drop it?” she asks.
Zara’s eyes shift to the coffee table, and Siobhan sees now that it’s covered completely with pieces of paper and photographs, like Zara’s been trying to patch something together from disparate pieces. Siobhan’s eyes snag on one of the photos. Dark curls. Pale skin. A single, staring eye.
“I’m sorry I lied,” Zara’s saying quietly. It sounds like all the air has left her body. “I just needed you to trust me.”
“Why do you have all of these pictures of Margot?”Siobhan asks. She picks up the one closest to her. Margot, much younger than when Siobhan met her at the house. She’s pregnant, and she has both eyes. She’s standing in front of Edinburgh Castle, beaming into the camera. There’s a taller, older girl next to her. Her hair wasn’t yet dyed that bright, artificial red – it’s the same coal-black as Margot’s. It’s only the open, earnest expression that Siobhan recognises as Zara.
“I’ve been looking for my sister for a really long time,” Zara says, sighing sadly. “I didn’t expect it to happen like this.”
Siobhan feels pieces of information clicking into place, keys into locks, sending doors swinging open. “Willow.”
Zara nods. She drags her hands down her face. Her eyes are shifting from left to right, as if she’s rapidly calculating how much she should give away. She reaches for a bottle on the coffee table and hands it to Siobhan. It’s whisky – strong, bitter. Siobhan’s hand shakes around the bottle, the liquid inside trembling.
“We were obsessed with Hex House, growing up,” Zara says. “Margot especially. She always believed it existed, but then, she was just like that. Kind of… whimsical. She wanted fantasies and fairytales to be real. It’s no wonder, really, that she rebelled against our parents the way she did.” Zara laughs. It’s a humourless bark, reverberating in the almost empty room. Siobhan remembers one of their first conversations over chow mein at her flat.I had kind of an intense childhood. Me and my sister moved up here as soon as we could, but she… she didn’t last long.
“Margot went missing seven years ago,” Zara says. Her voice has regained its polish, its professional sheen,as if she’s talking about just another story she’s covered. “It’s been a cold case for most of that time. No leads, no sightings, no evidence. Then, six months ago, the letters started. Willow, she signed them. At first she was pretending to be someone else. It took me a while to make the connection, to figure out it was her, and even then, I still didn’t believe she wasactuallyat Hex House. I thought maybe she was just confused and unwell, or she wasn’t ready for me to find her. But it wassomething, a way for me to get closer to her somehow. I started doing my research, found the HexHeads forum, pitched the documentary, followed her lead to you. And then you showed me that footage.” Zara shivers. “And I knew then that it was all real. That Margot had been telling me the truth. I knew exactly where my sister was, and it was one place I could never go.”
Siobhan listens, eyes scanning the pictures on the table. In one of the photos, Margot and Zara are teenagers, both wearing school uniforms: grey skirts and dark green blazers. One of Margot’s socks has fallen down and she points her tongue into the camera. Zara is looking at her, frowning, her uniform immaculate.
“She wants to come home, Siobhan,” Zara says, her voice cracking. “I’ve been trying to get her out, her and Thomas, but Haina won’t let them leave.”
The air in the flat feels still. Cold. Siobhan closes her eyes, lets the realisation come flooding in. It feels like icy water up to her neck, stealing her breath.
“Haina isn’t dead, is she?” she whispers.
“No, Siobhan,” Zara says, very quietly. “She’s waiting for you, at the house. She… she wants you back.”
Siobhan grips onto the corner of the armchair, feeling weightless. Of course, it would come to this. She understands now. She was always going to go back. The pull of the house, the pull of Haina – it’s been dragging her backwards since the second she left.
You’re ready now, a voice chimes, and she doesn’t know if it’s her own, or Zara’s, or even Haina’s. It barely matters. She already feels like her body is elsewhere: in the wilds, in the woods, searching for the door.
“She’s been using Margot, using me, to get to you,” Zara is saying. “The documentary. I thought it would be the best way to persuade you to go back, and help me get to the house. Margot said if you thought Haina was dead, then you might…” She trails off again. Her face is pale, pained. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you. I’m just trying to help Margot. I have to get her out, Haina’s not well, she’s—”
“What does she want with me?” Siobhan interrupts.
Zara is quiet for a long moment, raking a hand through her hair. “She says you’re part of the house,” she murmurs eventually. “That you need it. That it needs you. That it’s where you belong.”
