Siobhan #3
All of this, Haina listened to, squeezing Siobhan’s hand.
Nodding as though, yes, she understood it all.
And over time, the lines had started to blur.
Siobhan had started to feel not like an outsider, but part of the very fabric of the house.
Like a guest. That feeling had become, in her mind, inextricably tied to the making of the documentary.
She’d begun to truly understand it: how much the guests needed the house, how much they needed Haina, and she’d felt a powerful pull to preserve it all, to capture it and make it tangible.
She became single-minded in her focus, in her desire to get it perfect.
The documentary would be something special, she knew – it would make her and Theo’s careers.
But as the weeks rolled on, it became about more than that.
Something she couldn’t quite give words to: a way to tie herself to the house, to feel closer to it, and to Haina, even once she’d returned home.
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 so they can 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’s why 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.