Xenoverse origins / R-059
Hailey HexOrigin story
Hailey Hex: The Thing Waiting Behind the Curtain
A handler who believes every fear can be rehearsed must abandon her script when a creature begins anticipating the audience's arrival.
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At the haunted house, every scream belonged to somebody. Customers paid for theirs. Performers earned theirs. The pipes produced several without permission. Hailey Hex could usually tell them apart from the far end of the service corridor.
Hailey's creature completes every rehearsal behind a closed curtain, then collapses when she reveals the empty auditorium.
The sound behind Curtain Nine belonged to none of them. It was a creature trying very carefully not to make a sound at all.
You don't have to be good at frightening me.
From the dossier
Prologue — The Reliable Fright
Hailey knelt outside the enclosure and placed a purple rehearsal card on the floor. Three taps meant approach. Two meant retreat. One meant the performance was over. She had devised the system herself and disliked suggestions that feelings might require additional signals.
The creature remained in the corner. It resembled a stack of coats remembering that it had teeth. Usually it came forward eagerly, borrowing the shadow of whoever approached. Tonight it kept its many sleeves wrapped around something Hailey could not see.
As Haunted House Creature Handler at the Amusement Park outpost, Hailey had earned the Goblin Council's approval by making difficult creatures predictable. The Council addressed its requests directly to her. She knew its inspectors by the particular noises they made when something exceeded their imagination.
Tomorrow they would assess Curtain Nine for an expanded performance schedule. Hailey had promised a flawless demonstration. She had also promised the creature a quiet evening afterwards, a detail she had somehow omitted from the paperwork.
“Three taps,” she told it.
The coat-heap shuddered.
Her supervisor arrived carrying a ceremonial lantern. “Perhaps it needs a stronger cue.”
Hailey disliked him most when he said something she had already considered. She tapped again, louder.
A sleeve unfolded. On the floor beneath it lay a tiny wooden audience, built from broken scenery. Every little face was turned toward the curtain.
Hailey picked up one spectator. The creature flinched as though she had touched an exposed nerve.
Act 1
Notes from an Empty House
Act I — Notes from an Empty House
She removed the miniature audience and began rehearsal from the beginning. Entrance, pause, shadow, teeth. The creature completed the sequence beautifully with the curtain shut. When she opened it, the thing collapsed into its coats.
The auditorium was empty. Hailey walked between the seats, checking for anything that might disturb it. A dropped sweet wrapper. A painted eye on the scenery. A draught making the exit sign tilt. She corrected each imperfection and repeated the cue.
Nothing improved.
Her supervisor suggested replacing the creature with a hanging sheet. The Council would appreciate the reduction in complexity. Hailey said a sheet would be unable to reproduce the performance's emotional range.
“It needn't have emotions,” he replied. “Only cause them.”
Hailey shut the service door on him. Then she heard herself telling the creature that it was embarrassing them both.
One sleeve slipped toward her rehearsal cards and pushed them into a straight line. The gesture was painfully familiar. She did it herself whenever a meeting went badly.
Inside the enclosure she found more wooden spectators. The creature had carved them from everything available: crate corners, broom handles, a portion of its own perch. Some had open mouths. Others held tiny cards. A little figure with long dark hair stood at the front, raising one hand for silence.
Hailey set that figure down gently.
She had rehearsed the inspectors' visit so often that the creature had started practising the part nobody had assigned it: being watched and found inadequate. Each rehearsal corrected a fault. Each correction confirmed that another fault was waiting.
She sat outside the bars and said she was sorry.
The creature produced a perfect imitation of her voice saying, “Again.”
Hailey put the cards in her pocket. For once, she had no useful response to her own instruction.
Act 2
Inspection by Lantern Light
Act II — Inspection by Lantern Light
The councillors arrived early, as though punctuality were a concession they reserved for less important people. They greeted Hailey with unusual warmth. Her name was already printed on a certificate announcing the attraction's expanded schedule.
She told them the demonstration would not proceed.
The warmth disappeared without anyone moving away from the lantern.
Her supervisor offered the hanging sheet. A councillor said they had not crossed the outpost to inspect laundry. Another suggested opening the cage and letting the creature decide whether it preferred performance or reassignment.
Hailey knew what reassignment meant in Council language: someone else would inherit the problem and fewer questions would be asked. She stood in front of the cage.
Behind her, the creature lifted its sleeves. Every shadow in the corridor pointed toward the inspectors. The miniature audience began knocking inside its wooden crate.
The councillors mistook this for the demonstration and applauded.
The creature grew. Coats unrolled into curtains; teeth appeared along seams that had not existed a moment before. It was trying to deliver the fright it believed would finally be sufficient. The ceiling vanished behind folds of black fabric.
Hailey felt the temptation to use her strongest cue. One tap, everything over. But the creature had already heard that cue followed by another rehearsal, another correction, another promise that tomorrow would be easier.
She could not ask it to trust a signal she had emptied of meaning.
Instead, she gave the councillors her own chair and asked them to sit down. They refused. She handed the certificate back and said they could inspect the furniture or wait outside.
Her supervisor took the chair first. That surprised her. He placed the lantern on the floor, below the creature's hidden eyes.
Without the uplighting, the great curtain looked less like a monster and more like something desperately trying to become one.
Act 3
No Cue to Come Forward
Act III — No Cue to Come Forward
Hailey entered the enclosure without a rehearsal card. She sat beside the heap of wooden spectators and waited until the immense sleeves stopped scraping the ceiling.
“You don't have to be good at frightening me.”
The creature borrowed her shadow. It made the shadow stand and bow. Hailey stayed seated.
Outside, a councillor complained that nothing was happening. For the first time that evening, Hailey found the complaint encouraging.
She began dismantling the miniature auditorium. Not destroying the figures, but moving them. One spectator faced the wall. Another stood beside a wooden door. The little version of Hailey sat on the floor rather than directing everyone else.
A sleeve reached out and moved a figure back.
“All right,” Hailey said.
She let it choose. This made the work painfully slow. Several figures went exactly where she would not have placed them. A chair ended up on the ceiling of the little set. The creature seemed especially pleased with that.
Gradually it shrank into its ordinary collection of coats. The shadows returned to their owners. Hailey's supervisor carried the lantern out before anyone could demand a celebratory encore.
The Council withheld the expansion certificate and reduced Hailey's discretionary scenery allowance. She would have to repair the damaged perch herself. She accepted that consequence and argued successfully for the quiet evening she had promised, naming the promise aloud in front of witnesses.
Curtain Nine remained closed the following night. Behind it, the creature built a waiting room rather than an auditorium. Hailey brought spare wood and refrained from improving its layout.
There was one door she did not recognise. No prop inventory included it, and the creature refused to make a little handle for it. Whenever Hailey looked away, another wooden chair appeared beside that door.
At the end of her shift, something knocked from inside the model.
Not three taps. Not two. Not one.
The creature put a sleeve across the opening and looked toward Hailey, waiting to see whether she would invent a cue or finally ask a question.
Who frightens the attraction?
Behind the Amusement Park's haunted-house scenery, creature handling involves temperament as much as spectacle. Hailey has made rehearsal her answer to every difficulty, leaving her poorly equipped for a creature that needs something the performance cannot supply.