Page 55 of Holly & Hemlock
The words hang in the humid air, a challenge and a curse.
I want to say I am different. I want to say I am not weak, that I can outlast anything the house throws my way. But the truth is, I don’t know. I have never been so uncertain in my life.
There is a pause, then: “If I’d told you about the will, you would’ve run. Or tried to. And Maeve made me promise. If the original will got out, Larkin could have challenged you. Maeve wanted you to inherit it. She said it was the only way to save the house. I couldn’t risk losing it.”
I don’t know whether to pity him or hate him. Maeve once again used her games to manipulate someone who cared for her. Lane thought I could save the house, and Maeve clearly wanted me to break everyone free from it, essentially destroying its power. I was more confused than ever.
“So you just stayed silent,” I say. “You just watched me stumble around here, thinking none of it mattered, thinking I was disposable?”
Lane’s head drops. “I wanted to tell you. I swear, I did. But she made me promise. And no, of course I didn’t think you were disposable. I thought you’d get called to the house the way we all did. Give yourself over to it. Join us here.”
The words stick. I look at the seedlings, their leaves trembling, their whole life measured in millimeters and days. Theurge to destroy them, to sweep the table clean, is almost overwhelming. Instead, I run my finger along the tray’s edge, pressing so hard the plastic flexes.
Lane is struggling to find the word for what I am, what I was supposed to be. His hands lace together, knuckles white. The silence is absolute, thick with the rot and resurrection of everything seeded here.
"You said 'called'," I press. I want him to name it, whatever this compulsion is that keeps us orbiting the ruins of my family. "Like it's a job?"
His eyes flick up, and for the first time I see genuine fear there—not of violence, not of loss, but of me, or rather, what I might become.
"It's the house," he says. The words are so pathetic, so insufficient, that I almost laugh. But his face is grave.
"You don't get it yet. You think it's just the walls and the history and the air. But it's more than that. This place takes from you until there's nothing left but what it wants. Whitby, Larkin—even me. We're not just stuck. We can't leave the grounds if we wanted to. We tried, all of us. Hell, Whitby’s run farther than anyone, and yet every time she ends up right back there at the kitchen table, polishing other people’s silver. Larkin—” He cuts himself off, the ache beneath the words louder than the confession itself. “We’re bound. You’re not, not yet. But the house is trying to make you one of us.”
He scrubs his hands through his hair, leaving crescents of earth at the brow. “That’s why she—why Maeve—chose you. Because she hoped you wouldn’t let it. She told me, if you belonged to yourself, not the house, it would all be over. The chain would break.” He shrugs, the gesture huge but helpless. “Otherwise, none of us ever get out.”
“So I’m supposed to be some savior?”
“Hemlock doesn’t let you leave. Not really. You can go intotown, you can fuck off to college, but it follows. Comes with you, gets into your head. It’s happened to everyone here. Every Vale, every staff member.”
“What about my mother?”
“Your mother got out when she was young. It doesn’t latch on that early. I remember my childhood, being confused by all the older people who seemed stuck here. Even then, I could feel something wasn’t right. But it wasn’t until I was older that it truly took hold.”
I remember my mother telling me never to come here. Telling me she left for a reason and she wouldn’t go back. I thought it was anger, or pride.
“You ever have a dream so real you woke up bleeding? Or talk to someone dead and believe it, not as a ghost story but as fact?”
I remember the dreams, the chains, the way my aunt’s voice sounded in the empty room. I remember the window opening on its own, the cold creeping in even after I locked it.
“Maybe,” I admit.
Lane leans in, elbows heavy on the table. “You’re not claimed yet. That’s why it wants you. That’s why she—” He stops, corrects. “That’s why Maeve did what she did.”
“Claimed?” The word feels strange in my mouth.
Lane nods. “Me, Whitby, even Larkin—we’re bound to it. Not by law, by something more . . . elemental,” he says, after searching for the right word. “I can’t leave for more than a day or two before it pulls me back, makes me sick. Same with them, in different ways.”
I push back from the table, the chair scraping the wet concrete. “That’s not possible. This all sounds insane.”
He shrugs, matter-of-fact. “It doesn’t matter if you believe it. The house believes it.”
I am about to protest, but Lane’s face is so open, sostripped of bullshit, that I stop. I think about the years I’ve spent building protections, escape hatches, the whole network of carefully managed distance. I think about how fast it all fell away the minute I set foot inside these walls.
I look down at my hands, the knuckles gone white around the cup. “What happens if I don’t? If I refuse the inheritance?”
Lane’s gaze sharpens. “Then it gets worse for us. But you can, Nora. You can leave here and try to never come back, but it has its claws in you. It might not have fully claimed you like it has us, but you won’t ever truly get away. The nightmares. The strange urges. Feeling like your mind is playing tricks on you. It’ll all be stuck with you unless you return.”
I feel sick.
