Siobhan
NOW
She’s insulated in the queasy fuzz of her hangover, not quite part of the world yet.
She stands yawning by the sink, one hand clutching the cool stainless steel of the draining board and the other pouring boiling water over lumps of old coffee at the bottom of a cafetière.
There’s a window over the sink, tall and thin, crowded by plants she never remembers to water.
Past their brown and curling leaves, the city sprawls like an ancient body finally given permission to recline.
Tiny people shuffle down its veiny streets, cells in constant motion.
I hope you don’t mind me reaching out. My name’s Zara Doherty, and I’m a journalist. I work for SunWolf Productions here in Edinburgh, and we’re currently putting together a new documentary that I’d love to discuss with you. The working title is: Hex House: Coven or Cult?
Apologies if I’ve misunderstood the situation, but I’ve been led to believe by an anonymous source that you were working on a documentary about Hex House a few years ago.
Is that true? I heard the doc ultimately didn’t pan out for you, so I just wanted to touch base and see how you’d feel about working together on this, or even coming on as co-director.
We’ve got a great budget for the project at SunWolf, and everyone is really excited about the doc and keen to get your expertise on the team.
This is a real passion project for me, and I think it has the potential to be huge. Obviously, everyone’s heard of Hex House. It’s got real enduring appeal. Together, I reckon we can get to the bottom of this whole thing and debunk one of the biggest urban legends out there.
Also, and this is maybe a bit unorthodox, but my source also asked to pass a message on to you. She wants you to know that Haina is dead. My apologies if this is upsetting news, but my source was very keen that you should know as soon as possible.
I appreciate all this might be a little confusing, so I can share plenty more if we were able to speak in person.
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Zara x
Siobhan swallows.
Haina is dead. Haina is dead. Haina is dead.
She leans back against the sink, Haina’s name ringing in her ears.
It’s a name from another life; a name she knew when she was a different person.
She rereads the email until the words become shed snakeskins, unfamiliar, without meaning.
How neatly she’s been able to push that life aside, to almost convince herself that she’d made it all up: Haina, Elly, all of it.
Seeing Haina’s name, she feels it tugging taut – the thread connecting this life to that other, impossible one.
She puts her fingers to her throat and is almost surprised to find that there’s no hand there, squeezing out the breath.
Haina is dead. She can’t let herself think about what that means.
Siobhan swallows. SunWolf – the biggest production company in Edinburgh. Following graduation, it was the place everyone wanted to land a job, Siobhan included. She reads the email a final time, then hits delete.
* * *
The second day of the Horror Film Festival at the Showroom is dedicated to Hitchcock.
Women appear at the box office in lime-green dresses, plastic crows attached to their arms, chests, faces.
Some have had real fun with the gore, their peck marks scarlet and oozing.
Siobhan looks only at their eyes as she serves them their tickets, the way they glitter with the heady anticipation of being frightened.
“Jesus, Siobhan,” says Sylvie, who’s manning the other till in the box office. A French accent clings to the curves of her words like a silk slip. “You’re making the whole booth smell like a bar.”
Siobhan raises her forearm to her nose and sniffs the skin. It’s clammy and tart, like something souring. She taps the glass that separates them from the customers. “Thank god for this, then.”
Sylvie gives her a tight smile. Red lipstick stretches over her teeth, which are startlingly white against her dark skin. “Just don’t let Keith smell you.” She shrugs. “If you care at all about keeping your job.”
Sylvie is Parisian and young, younger than Siobhan, with an acerbity Siobhan admires and the kind of seriousness that only comes from intense, innate ambition.
She’s still in the first year of her undergrad degree but already has an impressive portfolio of short pieces online.
Siobhan has clicked through her website more than once, usually in the middle of the night, growing more agitated with every well-judged and well-produced clip.
She never knows whether to feel envious or proud or something else entirely.
In a quiet moment between customers, she asks Sylvie, “Do you have Owen Jameson for any of your classes?”
Sylvie is smoothing her tight curls into a low pony. She nods, removes the claw clip from between her teeth, and says, “Yeah, Documentary. Why?”
“What do you think of him?”
Sylvie rubs at an invisible mark on her pristine polo with her thumb.
“I dunno, he’s fine? Quite a generous marker apparently, so maybe I’ll like him more at the end of term.
But I do get the feeling he’s a bit of a…
creep. Like if he was standing close to you, he’d try and smell your hair or something. ”
A teenage couple approach the box office, wrapped in bloodstained shower curtains, their hair slicked back to look wet. They glance between Sylvie’s and Siobhan’s tills and choose Sylvie’s. The girl giddily requests two tickets for Psycho.
Siobhan leans back in her chair and pulls out her phone.
Two new messages. The first is from her mum, asking how she is, and has she done a proper food shop recently, and would she like a delivery of some basics, you know like potatoes and some bananas?
Does Siobhan know bananas are full of potassium and make a great breakfast, that they have plenty of calories but good ones, not like alcohol?
Oh also, and no big deal, but Theo is popping round this weekend, would Siobhan consider stopping by to say hello?
Siobhan stares at the message then clicks on the next one. It’s from Owen.
Come round tonight, it says. I’ll make you dinner. Here’s the address.
It’s no surprise to learn that he lives in the New Town, Google Maps revealing a flat on Heriot Row.
She thinks about going there and wearing something low-cut and watching him try not to look at her.
Would it be fun? He’d probably make some elaborate pasta dish and she’d have to say things like love the sauce and compliment his vintage record collection.
She’s exhausted at the thought, but then she thinks about the alternative: going home, sitting in the gloom, trying not to look for Zara’s email in her trash folder.
“Sylvie,” she says, when the couple have moved on to the concession stand, “what are you doing tonight? Want to go out?” They’ve been out before. Not often, and mostly work drinks, but enough so that it’s not weird to ask.
Sylvie blinks. “I’m going to the theatre with some friends,” she says. Siobhan waits for the invite that doesn’t come, then returns to her phone.
I’ll be there, she types to Owen.
Two minutes later, he replies. Bring wine! Siobhan stares at the winky-face emoji and wishes she was already drunk.
* * *
She doesn’t often have reason to come to this part of town and had forgotten how sleepy it is.
There’s not much to it but street after street of stately Georgian townhouses in elegant arched configurations, locked parks for residents only, dog walkers emerging to side-eye her bag clanking with bottles.
The pavements are so clean. Even the pinking sky looks washed, scrubbed at.
Owen buzzes her into his building and she steps into his stairwell.
It’s airy, tiles buffed to sparkle underfoot, scented by a fresh diffuser on an antique dresser.
Who thought to put that there, she wonders, who took time out of their day to do it?
When she gets to the top level, he’s already waiting at the open door.
She almost turns around at the sight of his tightly tied apron, but there’s nowhere better to be tonight.
His cheeks are flushed and his hair is ungelled.
He looks homey, healthy, like someone’s well-meaning husband.
“You made it.” He beams, as if surprised, as though she hadn’t texted him just ten minutes ago to let him know she was on her way.
He reaches out one arm, perhaps for a kind of side hug, but Siobhan meets his outstretched hand with a bottle.
He looks down and she relishes the way he tries to hide his disappointment.
She’d chosen the cheapest she could find, a bottle without even a grape variety on the label, simply block letters reading ‘red wine’. Just to see what he’d do.
“Wow,” he says. “Never tried this one before.” He grins again and steps to one side to let her in.
Siobhan walks down a spacious hallway and into an impressive kitchen, all butcher’s block counters and abstract art above the Aga.
The room is warm; it smells of butter and melting cheese.
Colourful children’s drawings are pinned to the stainless-steel fridge, ‘Uncle Owen’ scrawled unevenly on each.
There’s an enormous window at one end of the room, bigger than she is tall.
She’s drawn to that window; it pulls her over.
Through the slightly steamed glass, Edinburgh’s dusk lights blink back at her.
Beyond the city is the sea, and in the other direction, the quiet villages and towns to the south.
Somewhere lurking in all that loose countryside, somewhere on no map and with no address, is a house that until this morning, she’d almost convinced herself couldn’t really exist.
Haina is dead.