House of Hollow

Iris gets the latest copy of Vogue in the mail with her “achingly beautiful” sister Grey’s face on the cover, the story titled “The Secret Keeper” (6). The article describes Grey’s successful modeling and fashion career for her House of Hollow brand; she creates unique pieces with tulle, embroidery, beads, and secret messages stitched into lining. She adds scraps of rolled-up paper, shards of engraved animal bones, vials of her signature perfume, and such within the fabrics. Iris reads up to a sentence about the creations reflecting Grey‘s mysterious nature. She knows the next part will be about the sisters’ past, which none of them remember, and how their father died.

Iris texts her mother, Cate, that she’s going on her daily morning run. Cate works as a nurse and tracks her daughter’s GPS location on her phone. She watches Iris’s “dot” run through the neighborhood.

Vivi calls while Iris jogs through London. Vivi’s band has a gig, and Grey is flying in from Paris, so she wants all the sisters to meet up. When Iris complains about the impromptu plan, Vivi tells her to skip school, or she’ll give them an excuse about her needing an STD test. Appalled, Iris begs Vivi not to intervene with school, which she ignores.

As Iris runs through a thick garden, she sees an eerie man at the end of the street. He doesn’t have a shirt on, despite the February cold, and wears a horned skull over his head, reminiscent of the antlers Grey’s models wear. Iris smells a familiar scent of woodsmoke and something wet and feral. Scared, she rushes home. The man doesn’t follow her, but Iris laments strangeness returning with Vivi’s call.

Iris returns home, overhearing her mother Cate on the phone, who is back from her night shift in the emergency room. Cate’s voice rises as she pleads with a private investigator. When the investigator suggests that she needs mental help and should ask her daughters, Cate swears and hangs up. Every year, around the anniversary of the Hollow girls’ disappearance, Cate hires a PI. No one ever has answers for the girls’ sudden disappearance for a month.

Cate stifles tears and braids Iris’s hair. Iris asks if she can see Vivi and Grey that night, and Cate reluctantly agrees. She feels lucky, since their mother tried to separate her from Grey in particular for unknown reasons. Iris looks at a family photo from the day she and her sisters disappeared, stating they looked so different.

Cate leaves to make breakfast, and Iris considers how her mother and her father, gentle carpenter Gabe, don’t fit with their daughters—who are extremely tall and angular with sharp features. The girls used to have light blue eyes and dark hair like their parents, but after vanishing, they came back with black eyes and white hair. They were always hungry, eating ravenously but never gaining weight. They had matching crescent moon-shaped scars on their necks, and their baby teeth grew back. The sisters spent all their time together, whispering, and couldn’t sleep unless in the same room. Doctors believed their symptoms were the results of PTSD and other acronyms, but at last dubbed them “strange.” 

Iris thinks about how Grey wields her beauty like a weapon, fearlessly wearing revealing clothes and walking alone at night. Meanwhile, Vivi hides her beauty with rage, piercings, and tattoos. Iris falls in the middle, not intoxicating or aggressive, wearing little make-up and baggy clothes. She then finds an envelope of evidence in her mother’s dresser: The police report states that the sisters didn’t remember anything, the police officers who questioned them experienced the same nightmares, the cadaver dogs reacted to them, and Gabe insisted they were different. Iris chokes up, then finds a photo of 11-year-old Grey with living, white flowers growing out of her eye sockets.

Iris feels jumpy at her private school, as usual. Her hands smell of the putrid flower from Grey’s photo, the same one she uses in her designs. Iris ignores the scent of rotten meat and braves the crowd of rich students, thinking she doesn’t fit in.

Iris meets Paisley, a 12-year-old whom she tutors in coding, in the library. Paisley heard that Iris is a witch, and that her sisters sacrificed a teacher to the devil. Iris denies the rumors and reviews the younger’s computer code. Paisley adds that Iris’s white hair is like witch’s hair, and Iris lies that she dyes it (though she tried to dye it dark after vanishing, but it didn’t change). The younger girl reveals that this is their last tutoring session because her religious parents didn’t realize Iris’s background. She hands Iris a note, in which her parents mention “concerning accusations” about Iris’s family (28).

Iris huffs as Paisley leaves. Iris’s classmate Jennifer arrives and asks if she’ll introduce her to Grey, since she’s a fan. Jennifer, along with Justine Khan, are her bullies; Jennifer usually ignores her, while Justine tortures her with dead birds placed in her locker among other acts. After her sisters left school, Iris tried to befriend them, but after a horrific game of spin the bottle at Jennifer’s house, she became a loner. Iris denies Jennifer’s request.

During her first class, Iris readies her copy of Frankenstein, which she’s read twice and highlighted, looking for the “right answer.” Out the window, she sees the shirtless man with the bull skull watching her.

Iris jumps, knocking over her desk from seeing the bull-man. She fakes being sick and the teacher allows her to leave; she races outside to confront the man. However, the man is gone. Iris calls Grey to calm down, but hears her voicemail. She then calls Vivi, who answers and waves from the parking lot.

Vivi gets Iris out of school by calling Cate and reassuring her that Iris is fine, though Iris knows if Grey did the same, Cate wouldn’t approve. After telling her English teacher that Vivi is taking her home, Iris and her sister have a bonding day—checking out Vivi’s favorite music shops, tattoo parlors, and restaurants before her band’s gig.

Outside the club, Iris’s bullies Jennifer and Justine shout at her from the long waiting line. When Jennifer cozies up to Iris with fake kindness and begs to meet Grey and her boyfriend Tyler Yang, both famous models, Vivi verbally attacks her, asking if she even knows her band’s name. Jennifer sputters while Justine calls Vivi a witch and storms off.

By the rock-and-roll band’s fourth song, Grey is still missing. Iris thinks about the three’s sisterly connection and that “you may not see [Grey] for months, and then she’d show up and know every word to every song” of Vivi’s band or read all Iris’s school papers and discuss their merits (36). She checks her messages and Grey’s social media, which has over 90 million followers, but Grey hasn’t posted for days.

Toward the end of the set, Vivi stops playing her bass, wide-eyed and panicked, a tear streaking down her face. Iris meets Vivi backstage, where she’s still shaken. She also saw the bull-man, and Iris suggests he’s an internet stalker like the woman who broke into their house. Vivi disagrees, saying he smelled “familiar.” They both worry about Grey and set out to find her.