Elly #2
Elly watches the empty doorway for a while.
She can still feel the ghost of Margot’s palm on her lips, the way her pupil had almost seemed to quiver when she said, Haina won’t like it.
She feels heavy but forces herself to move – zipping up the hoodie she’s wearing, leaving the dress where it is on the bed, and making for the doorway.
No one pays her any attention as she descends the staircase and walks back down the hallway.
There’s a gentle hubbub from the kitchens, and a few more guests are lounging in the parlour room, playing cards.
She can hear the faint tinkle of piano keys.
Haina’s study door is shut, and Elly stares at it for a second before moving away.
Outside, the day is hot and bright and the women in the gardens are hard at work, brows sweating and backs bent as they prune the rose bushes, weed the twisting borders, trim the grass.
They look so normal, but do they all know?
Do they all change, too, behind the thick panelled door to Haina’s study?
No one looks up as she makes her way down the path and into the woods.
Elly feels relief almost immediately as the house retreats further and further behind her, the trees offering a cool shade from the heat.
The sun is still high in the sky. If she walks quickly, she could be at her mum’s house – radio always on, wellies by the door – before evening.
The thought makes her stomach feel strange, like there’s a hook buried deep, starting to loosen.
But what will she say, when she gets there? How can she possibly explain where she’s been, why she left?
Don’t think about that now, she tells herself. Just keep walking.
When she’d run through the woods, she’d arrived at the house relatively unscathed.
The skin of her bare feet had been almost unbroken, as if the woods had welcomed her, carried her.
Now, twigs catch at her forearms and leave forked scratches, like bloodied lightning.
She trips over protruding roots, and nettles give her red welts when she brushes past them.
She feels unwanted, like an intruder, but forces herself onwards; crossing streams that shimmer in the sunlight and climbing over fallen logs grown over with lichen, no idea whether she’s going in the right direction.
The woods are filled with the sound of birdsong, and she strains to hear the steady whooshing of cars.
She keeps waiting for a trail to appear, or another walker, or the outlines of buildings in the distance.
After a while, she stops to rest against a thick oak trunk.
It would have been a good idea to bring some food with her, or at least some water.
She’s starting to feel woozy and detached, her muscles weaker with every step.
Elly has been walking for another hour when she sees it.
The pointed roof emerging from between the trees, the pretty gabled windows, the door left open to let the sunshine in and the women milling around the gardens like worker ants.
It looks as inviting as it had on that first night: a mirage, an impossibility conjured from nothing.
No. It can’t be. The woods look the same from every angle – she must have gotten disorientated and walked in a circle. Elly backs away without taking her eyes off the house, half-expecting it might follow her in retreat, then sets off again in the opposite direction.
She walks and walks. There’s a blurriness to her vision now, as if everything is only half-formed and undecided.
She stops at a stream to splash her face and then carries on.
She doesn’t know how far she walks. The sun is starting to dip when the house appears from between the trees again.
There are no women in the gardens now, and light is spilling from the kitchen window, along with the homely smell of something cooking.
“No.” Her own voice makes her jump, makes her stagger backwards. “No, no.”
Back in the woods again. Stumbling, feet on fire.
The sky is a mellow blue streaked with coral, the sun disappearing, the air cooling.
Elly picks up a stick from the ground and snaps it into a point, carves an X into the dirt at her feet.
She walks on, making Xs at regular intervals.
She won’t get lost. Soon, she’ll find a road.
She doesn’t come across any of her Xs. It’s dark by the time the house appears again. The lights are on in all the windows. She can hear the low hum of voices and she’s so tired that she can barely stand.
Elly limps towards the house and when she’s close enough, she watches the faces through the glass panes of the refectory.
The guests inside grin as bowls of food are passed around and shared.
The dough she kneaded earlier has become a proud loaf that’s being sliced and buttered, consumed by many mouths.
The room is candlelit, flickering gently, in and out of focus.
Someone is singing. Elly has the peculiar sense that she’s looking in at someone else’s family, at a scene forbidden to her.
She shivers with jealousy. Inside her belly, the baby twists.
She’s hungry, so hungry. The exhaustion goes as deep as her bones.
“Elly,” comes a voice from the open front door.
Elly turns, blinking back tears. She’s overwhelmed by the house, by Haina standing in the doorway again, calling out to her, just like on that first night.
The glow from the hallway seems to sit upon her skin, making her look golden.
Elly already knows that nowhere else has light quite like that.
“Won’t you come inside, my angel? It’s getting cold. ”
Elly doesn’t say anything. She wraps her arms around herself, casts one last glance back at the woods, and then follows Haina inside.
The house is a different animal at night.
Elly walks behind Haina into the low-lit parlour, where the women are now draped over chairs and drinking, spilling out into the garden with their cigarettes, others wrapped up in one another in shadowy corners by the slow-burning fire.
Elly eats the slice of bread Haina has given her slowly, watching Janine and Lakshmi dance in the centre of the room, bodies hot and close.
Everything is abundant: the piles of food on plates, the bottles topping tables.
The room quivers in the light of coloured lanterns, casting everyone’s faces in shades of amethyst and emerald.
Music thrums from a record player, throbbing bass and whispering guitar, low and suggestive, and Elly feels aware of her every limb.
She doesn’t know where to look. There’s an edge to the atmosphere, as if the night is on the brink of turning feral.
It smells of sweat and spice and something sweet, slightly burnt.
“I trust you won’t try that again?” Haina whispers in her ear, stroking her arm. Elly flinches and stares at Haina, but her smiling face doesn’t match her threat. She leaves Elly’s side and disappears into the crowd.
A moment later, Margot appears and nuzzles into her shoulder like a hungry cat. When she squeezes Elly’s arm, it only hurts a little bit.
“Knew you’d come back, Little Mouse,” she whispers. “Once the house wants you, it wants you.”
* * *
The night unravels like a spool of dark thread.
Elly gives in to her fatigue, sinking heavily into the cushions of the sofa.
She lets Margot slip a plump segment of tangerine between her lips.
She listens to the tinkling of piano keys, the icy voices of the red sisters as they sing an old Gaelic song.
Then, sometime after midnight, Elly becomes aware of a new quiet.
Everyone is looking at Haina, who has climbed up onto the coffee table in the middle of the parlour.
As the guests notice her, one by one, they fall silent.
Haina presses one hand to her chest, smiling benevolently.
Her voice is calm as the sea on a windless night.
“My angels. I have a very important and exciting announcement to make.” Her voice has no problem filling every inch of the room.
Elly pictures it seeping into the weave of the upholstery, forcing its way into shadowy corners.
Beside her, Margot is tapping her palms against the outside of her thighs, like she can’t stay still, like there are insects crawling beneath her clothes.
“Many of you will know how fiercely I guard our privacy here. How important it is that we’re protected from everything going on…
out there.” Those two words seem to hurt her tongue.
“It’s only by untethering ourselves completely that we can really begin to heal. ”
On the night she arrived, one of the first things Haina asked Elly was whether she had a mobile phone.
Elly had left hers back on the bed in the cottage; hadn’t even thought to take it with her in the molten second she’d decided to run.
She’s heard from some of the other guests that Haina took their phones and stamped on them with the heel of her boot until they were mangled.
It’s one of the things that gives Hex House its intense immediacy, she realises now.
No one’s attention is divided. There’s nothing else to do or think about other than what’s in front of you.
There’s no intangible world to escape into.
There is no other place. Only here, only now.
“That being said,” Haina continues, “those of you who’ve been here a while will notice that we’ve had fewer arrivals recently.
Our newest guest aside.” Heads swivel to seek out Elly, and she finds herself pierced by many eyes.
She keeps her eyes trained ahead, on Haina.
“Despite the best efforts of the flock, most of the people who need us aren’t finding us, and I’ve been thinking hard about why that might be.
And I think one of the reasons, perhaps the biggest reason, is that people out there don’t understand what Hex House is, or what it can offer.
Some of you have told me about the rumours.
They won’t believe in it. And those that do, don’t think that this is a safe place.
They don’t know how much it can help them.
And what good is this sanctuary if the people who need us misunderstand who we are?
” She pauses, her hand still braced on her chest. Her eyes are large and watery, and Elly wonders how long Haina’s been here, for her to care this much.
“So,” she says, brightening a little, “I’ve made the decision to invite two outsiders into our midst. Filmmakers.
” She says the word as though it’s an exotic fruit.
“Over the next few months, they’ll be staying with us and making a documentary about the important work we do here.
Eventually, they’ll broadcast our mission to those who might benefit from it. ”
The room starts to simmer with uncertainty, maybe a little panic, hushed whispers passing back and forth.
Beside Elly, Margot’s leg taps have become slaps.
Elly reaches out a hand to calm her and finds her skin clammy, cool to the touch.
The idea of filmmakers, here, their cameras and microphones amongst all the candles and roses, is surreal.
Elly remembers how her hands had looked today and bites down on her tongue, hard.
There’s a shape to this place that Elly doesn’t understand yet.
How much can Haina really mean to show the rest of the world?
Haina raises a hand, and the room falls silent again.
Elly tastes saltiness in her mouth and realises she’s bitten her tongue hard enough to bleed.
“I understand that it’ll take some getting used to,” Haina says, more gently now.
“I realise that it might even feel frightening at first, to open up the walls of this sanctuary, just a little. Please know – anyone who doesn’t wish to be on camera can ask for their identity to be hidden.
I have selected these filmmakers especially for their affinity with the house, their sympathy to our ethos and what we do here. ”
Near the back of the room, Grace has raised her hand. Her thin lips are set into a hard line.
“Yes, my angel?”
“When will they get here?” Grace’s voice is different here than in the kitchen, where she sounds authoritative and sure. Now, it is small, contained.
Haina beams, teeth gleaming. “That’s the best part of all. Our new friends will be here with us within the week.”