Page 15 of Hex House
He holds her eye, undoing the button with one hand, quick fingers. The skin underneath is paler than his neck, dark hair creeping up from his chest.
“And the next one,” she says.
He does so, and the next, and the next. She catches the slight hitch in his breath that he’s trying to hide. He standsfacing her, a smile waiting at the edges of his lips. His arms hang limp at his sides. He looks vulnerable, unprepared.
“Close your eyes,” she whispers.
He hesitates and makes a sound of resistance that’s almost a word. Then he closes his eyes.
Siobhan looks at him, pristine shirt half-undone, cheeks flushed with expectation, eyelids quivering. She leaves the living room, leaves him standing there. She goes back to the kitchen and smears two fingers around the edge of his pasta bowl, collecting a dollop of thick sauce. One finger she places in her mouth, relishing the cold saltiness, the other she smears onto the sparkling surface of the island.
Just before she closes the front door behind her, she hears Owen call her name.
THEN
Elly is screaming. She’s never heard her voice sound like this before, like it could rip a hole right through fabric. Across the room, Haina is saying something to her, something that might be consoling or explanatory or useful, but she can’t make out the words. All she can do is scream and look at her hands that are no longer hands.
White feathers, sinewy cartilage underneath. Sharp points; creature-like claws.
She stands up, bringing one of her hands to her face in reflex. It slices a shallow cut into her cheekbone, the pain clean and quick. She staggers towards the door, but Haina is faster. Reaching it before Elly, she turns the key in the lock and pockets it, sealing them inside the study. Haina puts one hand on each of Elly’s shoulders and Elly feels as though her skin is crawling; as though it’s too hot to stay on her bones. When her throat grows too hoarse to keep screaming, she falls silent. There’s a strange and slow leaching away, like something abandoning her, somethingseeping between the cracks, leaving her shaking.
“That’s it,” Haina is saying, voice soft and soothing. “That’s it, my angel. It’s all okay now, just breathe a little.”
Elly opens her eyes. Her breath hurts her lungs, as though they’re scorched. She barely dares, but she forces herself to look down, only to find that her hands are her hands again. They’re small and bony, her wedding ring shining on her left hand. She blinks.
“I don’t understand,” she whispers. Then, with a sudden clarity, “I’m going insane.”
“The opposite,” Haina says, taking one of Elly’s hands in her own. “You’re finally seeing the truth.”
Elly lets herself be led back to the armchair, as if her body no longer belongs to her. She can still feel the echoes of her screams in the small room and wonders who else in the house heard them. A thought strikes her, making her skin prickle.
Even if they did hear her, no one came to help.
She sits but stays perched on the very edge of the armchair, in case she needs to run again. There’s a faint queasiness in the pit of her belly, the disorientating sensation of just having woken up from a long sleep. The light has changed again, falling sideways across Haina’s face, casting half of it in shadow. Elly wonders how long she’s been in this room – and distantly, but with a distinct sense of alarm, if she’ll ever be allowed to leave. She balls her hands into fists and then releases them, over and over, not quite trusting them not to betray her again. Haina lets her settle, making notes in a journal on the desk. For a while, there’s only the sound of the fire and the pencil scratching across paper. Elly wonders if Haina is writingabout her, about whatever it is that just happened. She’s starting to think that Haina has forgotten she’s even in the room until she turns and meets Elly’s eye.
“You probably want to know where this house got its name.”
“What…” Elly stumbles over her words, unsure how to get them to obey her. “What happened? What did you do to me?”
“Most people think a hex is a kind of curse,” continues Haina, ignoring her, “cast by someone who’s been wronged. And you know, they’realmostright.” She pours herself a measure of something dark and rich-looking from a decanter on the desk, offering a tumbler to Elly before thinking better of it, glancing at her belly. “The word has lost its way over time. Lots do, you know. What ‘hex’ really means, is something,someone, very powerful. The form someone takes when everything about them has been broken and they’re ready to build themselves again.” She inclines her glass towards Elly. “You just got your first glimpse of your hex. What you might be able to become.”
Elly’s gaze snaps back to her hands, and she’s relieved to still find them their own.
“Don’t be afraid, my angel,” Haina whispers. “Don’t resist it.”
Hex, a voice chimes, somewhere deep inside her.Hex.
Haina finishes whatever was in her tumbler in one gulp, then slaps both of her palms against her thighs, a sudden movement that makes Elly blink in surprise. Haina reaches into her pocket, fishes out the study key then presses it into Elly’s hand. It’s small and gold. “Time’s getting on. We’ll meet again for our second session next week.”
Elly guesses that she’s dismissed – really dismissed, this time. Haina has turned away from her, and Elly studies the way her hair twists together into a plait, a triplet of snakes, before standing. She makes her way to the door and lets herself out, leaving the key in the lock.
Has even an hour passed? Everything out here already looks different, vaguely threatening: the winding staircase leading up into the dark, the patterns in the floral wall-paper that could be simple swirls or hands reaching out to touch her. The sounds of the house surround her, the same as any other house: the muttering of voices, the creaking of floorboards, the clattering of pipes. But this house is not like any other, she knows that now. There’s something deeply, awfully wrong with it.
Or there’s something deeply, awfully wrong withher.
Elly knows she should leave. She could walk right out the front door. Coming here in the first place had been an act of desperate madness, of cowardice. She thought she’d find solace, comfort, or at least safety here. She isn’t quite sure what it is that she has found. Her feet are numb as she climbs the staircase. The few things she owns are in the shared dormitory. She’ll collect them, and then she’ll leave. She’ll go home and she’ll forget all about this place. She’ll forget all about the way her hands had looked: mottled and feathery, like human skin never should.
There are around forty beds in the dorm, twenty running along each side of the room, one row facing the other. When Haina had told her she’d be sleeping in the dormitory, Elly had pictured iron bedframes and stiff white sheets like something from a Victorian hospital, but this room is warm and cosy. Shabby chandeliers hang fromthe high ceiling, and colourful rugs cover the hardwood floor. The beds are large and wooden. Some are empty and stripped but most are topped with bedspreads, blankets and patterned pillows. Many are neatly made while others look only recently vacated, cuddly toys abandoned in the rucked-up sheets. Every bed has its own bedside table. Left alone to settle yesterday, Elly had examined each one, trying to piece together an idea of the owners from their contents: packets of cigarettes, old books, notepads, lipsticks with blunted ends, tampons, sweet wrappers, half-eaten slices of cake, half-drunk cups of tea. She’d dreaded the first night, sleeping amongst all those strange bodies. To her surprise, she’d fallen asleep quickly, but noises in the dark had woken her: muffled chittering, the sound of nails on wood. A rhythmic scraping on the roof above their heads, like something trying to get inside.
