Siobhan
NOW
She looks disappointed.
“We have to go,” he kept saying, panting, like he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs. “We have to get the fuck out of here and get that girl some help.”
Every few seconds, he’d sit down, frenetic activity replaced by quiet sobs. “Fuck,” he whispered. “What the hell is this place? How was that even possible?” Then he was pacing again, his eyes desperate.
Siobhan could do nothing but stand with her back to the door. She was numb and shivering. It was only when Theo started shaking her shoulders that she returned to herself, that she was able to pin down the fracturing of her thoughts.
“We can’t leave, Theo,” she told him, watching his eyes widen in response.
“Do you have any idea what we just got on tape? Bird women who fly through the sky? Jesus Christ. This documentary could make us, Theo. We have to stay.” Her voice sounded shaky and strange, but she believed the words with everything she had.
This was the reason she’d been brought to Hex House, she knew now.
In this moment, she had to choose between being afraid or becoming someone unforgettable, exceptional, and she already knew her answer.
“Whatever’s happening in this house, we have to be here to witness it. ”
Theo shook his head, studying her eyes, as if he couldn’t quite recognise her. “How can you even think about the doc right now? That girl…” he whispered raggedly, before trailing off.
“We’ll tell everyone, Theo,” Siobhan said quickly, laying a steadying hand on his shoulder. “We’ll expose what’s going on here. But don’t we need all the evidence first?” She sucked in a breath, mind reeling. “Just imagine what else we might film, if we stay.”
Theo didn’t respond. His shuddering exhales were the only sound in the room.
Eventually, he said, “Are you really na?ve enough to think Haina is going to let us leave with that footage? A woman falling from the sky? She could die, Shiv, don’t you understand that?
” Siobhan flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Jesus. No one in their right mind would ever set foot in this house.”
A knock at the door had startled them both, sent them jumping backwards.
Siobhan opened it to find Haina, holding out two cups of tea.
Theo didn’t move, so Siobhan accepted them both, watching Haina enter the room and sit down on the edge of Theo’s bed.
She was careful and calm, Siobhan remembers now, moving as though through water. She was so measured.
“What you saw tonight,” Haina said, meeting both of their eyes in turn, “was very unfortunate. It’s also very rare.”
“Is that girl… Lakshmi…” Theo wrapped his arms tightly around himself. “Is she still alive?”
Haina nodded. “She is. The women here are very strong.”
“Are you going to make us delete the footage?” Siobhan heard herself ask, feeling Theo’s gaze snap to her, incredulous.
Haina slowly turned her head. “And why would I do that?”
“Surely no one would ever come, if they saw. If they knew.”
For the first time, Siobhan saw a hardness in Haina’s eyes, the glinting of something furious.
“Everything that happens at Hex House is natural. It’s beautiful.
It’s ancient. The whole world out there might be terrified of our true potential, but we’re not.
We have nothing to hide.” She stood and crossed the room to Siobhan.
“I need them to see. They have to see.” She lowered her voice, picked up one of Siobhan’s hands and cradled it in her own.
Siobhan’s skin tingled at the touch. “You have to see.”
“She needs medical help,” said Theo from the corner, still visibly trembling.
Haina watched him carefully. “Her state is too precarious to move her, I’m sure you can see that. We will take care of her. Here. Don’t worry – Lakshmi is exactly where she needs to be. This is the safest place in the world.”
Theo barked a harsh laugh, but Haina didn’t flinch. “This place is fucked up,” he hissed. “They’ll come for you. The police.” Even as he said the words, he seemed to recognise their futility. He deflated a little, swearing under his breath.
Haina dropped Siobhan’s hand and moved to Theo.
Gently, she pulled him in close, and to Siobhan’s surprise, Theo let her.
His face rested on Haina’s shoulder, turned towards Siobhan, his expression stunned and eyes watery.
Haina stroked his back, fingernails drawing slow circles.
She was tactile with all the guests, but with Theo, something felt different.
There was nothing comforting or maternal about it. Siobhan looked away, skin bristling.
“Those who need us will find us,” Haina whispered. “Anyone else will simply find themselves lost in the woods.”
Siobhan feels cold all over, like she’ll never be warm again. She exits the video player and sits shaking on the sofa. She’s shivering so much her teeth are smashing together, so hard it hurts. She doesn’t know how long she sits there. She doesn’t know how long it is until her phone rings.
Zara’s name appears on the screen. Siobhan stares at it for a long second before it makes sense to her.
Zara has called multiple times since their meeting at Black Medicine Coffee, but Siobhan has ignored each one.
She doesn’t know what makes her answer this time – perhaps only the sudden, desperate need not to feel so alone in the flat, to rid herself of the image of Lakshmi’s broken body, Haina’s dispassionate gaze.
“Siobhan,” Zara’s northern lilt chimes down the phone, “thanks so much for picking up.”
“What time is it?” Siobhan says. She feels disorientated, exhausted.
A hesitant pause. “About 10 p.m. Why? Are you alright? You sound a bit… shaken.”
Four hours. She’s been watching clips of Hex House for four hours.
After a while, the laptop screen had seemed to melt away, and it was as if she were there again, walking the corridors with their peeling wallpaper and vases of flowers on every surface, brushing her fingers along the velvety roses outside the parlour window.
The camera crawled its way through the house, drinking in everything with its single eye, and the time elapsed between this life and that one had dissolved into vapour.
She could almost smell the fresh bread cooking in the kitchen, hear the creak of the floorboard on the landing as the guests came and went from the dormitory, see the way the sunlight refracted through the stained-glass window on the landing.
The light in that house. It made her feel weightless once.
Like anything was possible, like she could live forever.
“Siobhan?” Zara’s voice down the line, questioning and insistent. “Look, I’m really sorry about the other day. I pushed you too far, too fast – I can see that now. I shouldn’t have asked you about… well, you know.”
When Siobhan swallows, it feels like pure bile.
“Would you be willing to meet me again? Just to chat. I won’t press you, I promise.”
“Can I come over now?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Can I come to your flat?”
Siobhan rubs her hand along her lower abdomen, feeling the ridges of her scar bristle against the fabric of her T-shirt. If she doesn’t have company, if she doesn’t have a real person’s face to look at and voice to respond to, she’s going to tear it wide open.
A long pause. “It’s late.”
“Please,” Siobhan says.
“I’ll come to you,” Zara says eventually, haltingly, then adds, “if you want me to, sure, of course. I can come.”
Once she’s given Zara the address and hung up, Siobhan takes a deep breath in, relieved she won’t be here alone all night.
If she had to guess, she would say that Zara would be the kind of person to have well-watered house plants on every surface, framed feminist art prints, all line drawings of breasts and vulvas.
There was probably organic handwash by the sink.
Maybe a purring cat sleeping on an artisan throw.
Siobhan looks around her own flat, trying to see it through Zara’s eyes: the woven rug that had been there when she moved in (sometimes she imagines all of the people-dust trapped inside all the fibres, all the eyelashes and hairs and tiny fragments of nail); the fridge containing half a bottle of wine and an expired yoghurt; the unmade bed covered with sheets she can’t remember washing.
This flat is a display of her most intimate failings.
It’s where she keeps all her broken parts.
The thought of bringing Zara here feels a bit like showing her the inside of her mouth, the softening places where the cavities hide.
She thinks about tidying up, putting some of the washing in the machine, clearing the sink of its debris, but can’t summon the energy.
Instead, she clicks on the radio, pours the last of the wine and listens absent-mindedly to tinny trance tracks until the buzzer rings.
She opens the door to Zara bundled in a bright orange teddy coat, gold hoops dangling from her stretched lobes, so large Siobhan could fit her fist through them.
Her rounded cheeks are flushed red with cold.
She’s drawn on thick eyeliner in two symmetrical flicks and wears a pair of shining Doc Martens.
In one hand, she holds a bottle of vodka – the cheap, perfect kind that burns on the way down – and in the other, a plastic bag filled with takeaway cartons.
Siobhan can already smell greasy noodles, sweet and sour sauce.
“Just in case you didn’t have anything in,” Zara says.
“And you sounded like you needed this.” She holds up the bottle as she follows Siobhan inside.