Page 29 of The Witch’s Orchard

TWENTY-THREE

U P CLOSE, THE DRAKECO Toy Factory is even more dismal than it was from the hilltop.

Two stories of brown brick with big, rusting double doors on the front and most of the windows broken.

Ivy—brown now with the fall weather—clings to the side and roof.

The old lot, almost completely overgrown, is littered with soda bottles, beer cans, condom wrappers, and actual condoms. Otherwise, it’s empty. I’m the only one here.

“Lovely,” I say as I sit there taking it all in. It’s the very picture of rural dilapidation, the symbol of a failed local economy and all the poverty that comes with it.

“Is there anything sadder than a defunct toy company?” I muse aloud.

There’s no particular reason the girls might have been kept in a place like this, but I can’t help wondering what Tommy and Dwight Hoyle are up to, now that Dwight’s back in town.

And I can’t help wondering if it—whatever it is—is somehow connected to Molly and Jessica.

The factory did make dolls, didn’t it? And the girls were traded for dolls, they were dressed like dolls, and both Tommy and Dwight used to work here.

My phone buzzes, startling me.

“Hey, AJ,” I answer. “What’s up?”

“Wanted to let you know I’ve just about collected all these case files. You still available at seven?”

“Sure thing,” I say.

“Want me to bring dinner?”

There’s a moment of silence while I catch myself smiling, feel a flush of heat in my cheeks.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”

Nothing can be awful all the time. Otherwise, we’d all go crazy.

“You wanna hear the choices?” AJ asks. “There are many fine dining options in beautiful Quartz Creek.”

“Nah,” I say, laughing. “Surprise me.”

He chuckles, and I’m about to hang up when I see a glint in one of the upper windows.

The window itself is mostly gone, a few shards of glass clinging to the frame.

I think maybe I’m just seeing things. Maybe just a shift of light and shadow.

Maybe a reflection caused by the way the sunlight cuts through the fog on the mountains.

Maybe there are swallows nesting inside. Maybe bats.

“AJ,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“The DrakeCo factory…”

“What about it?”

“What happened after the factory shut down?”

He sighs heavily and says, “You mean like socioeconomically or—”

“No, was the building ever bought by anyone else?”

“No,” he answers. “No one wanted to set up shop in Quartz Creek. The factory sat defunct most of the time I was a kid. It was up for sale for a few years but, after a while, it was in such bad shape that it was abandoned and condemned. Then it was just… You know how much it costs to demolish a building?”

“And now it’s mostly used by stoners and stuff?”

“Uh, yeah?” I hear him shuffling papers around at a desk, the sounds of the sheriff’s department going on around him, a phone ringing, people talking.

“Was it not locked up?”

“No, it was. Mostly kids hang out outside, but it’s not a fortress. Lately it’s been a rougher crowd around there. Fewer stoner kids, more serious addict types. Someone could’ve got in. What’s going on?”

I see the flicker of light in the glass again and I get out of the car, phone still in hand.

“Well—”

I pause, freeze in place, at the sound of shattering glass. A yelp.

BANG!

A gunshot.

My heart leaps and all my old reflexes come alive, firing, ready. I duck beside Honey, pull my gun with a whispered, “Shit!”

BANG!

Another gunshot.

Into the phone I hiss, “Gunshots in the factory. I’m going in.”

“Annie—” AJ says.

I hang up, slide the phone into my back pocket.

There’s another pop and boom. Another high, yelping scream. It’s a woman’s voice, I think, but I can’t be sure. The quality is thin and hoarse. There’s a frantic, pained quality to it, and, before I can reconsider, I’m running.

I slam into the front doors, yank against their old handles.

They’re locked. Chained from the inside.

I run around the east side of the building, searching for an entryway.

Nothing. All the windows here are boarded up.

I push against each one, but they don’t budge.

I round the corner. There’s a loading bay in the back.

Locked. A small door up a set of stairs.

Locked. There’s a nearly new Chevy pickup parked on the crumbling concrete, but it’s empty.

On the other side of it is a little multicolored Honda. Mandy Hoyle’s car.

There’s another bang. Vibrating with energy and adrenaline, my heart thumping against my ribs, my lungs burning, I run around the west side. Smoke streams out of an upper window.

“Shit,” I breathe.

I try the windows again, giving each slab of plywood a hard shove as I run along. Finally, toward the middle of the building, one gives. Almost like it’s hinged. I push it again. It gives some more.

Up above, the screaming starts again. Wordless and horrified. Again, a woman’s voice.

“Mandy?” I call. But there’s no real answer, just more frantic screaming.

I push the plywood all the way in and find a tattered blanket lying folded over the rusting sill and old glass. I ease myself into the window and look back at the plywood.

If this place is burning down, I need to be able to find a way out. I yank at the wood, but it doesn’t come off. I look around. Find a couple old bricks, prop the plywood open so at least I can see the sunlight through the cracks.

Inside, the place is damp, dusty, and dark.

Huge pieces of rusty machinery take up the entire ground floor.

Here and there, pieces of dolls litter the equipment, the cement floor.

They’re even nailed to the plywood over the windows.

Some of the pieces, mostly heads, are defaced with markers or bullet holes.

Some of the dolls’ plastic eyes have been plucked out.

Pretty much exactly what you’d expect in a defunct toy factory.

BANG!

I keep my gun ready, run to where I hope the staircase is. With all the dust and the dingy light and the smoke billowing down from upstairs, it’s hard to see.

I find a set of creaky metal stairs and hope they’re not rusted through.

It’s been only ten years since this place closed, but it’s humid in these mountains and this place isn’t exactly hermetically sealed.

I start to climb the steps, let my hip rub along the stair rail, guiding me up.

“Mandy?” I call.

A wave of acrid gray-black smoke crashes into me. I cough and sputter against the burning in my throat and pull the collar of my T-shirt up over my nose and mouth.

I hear yelling, screaming. A man’s voice shouting. Shouting that he needs help. And still the woman’s voice, screaming in terror.

I hit the top of the stairs and find that, unlike the open bottom floor, the top is split into several big rooms. I work my way through them as best I can.

Up here the smoke is worse, but at least the windows aren’t boarded up, so some light comes in.

I use what little of it I can to find my way around the maze of rooms, ducking under the smoke.

I follow the sound of the screams.

“Help me, goddamnit!” the deeper voice screams again.

I round one more corner and finally find the source of the fire.

Smoke billows out of a room that’s too small for production, that maybe was once used for storage or as an office.

A man lies on the floor in front of me, half his face melted off, his clothes charred black, still smoldering, no longer moving.

I recognize him from the picture in the criminal records I’d pulled up my first night in Quartz Creek.

It’s Dwight Hoyle.

“Shit,” I hiss again.

Another scream behind me. I turn and see a smaller figure crouched in the corner across the room, just barely in my field of vision. It’s Elaine Hoyle. Staring at her husband, her mouth open to let out a prolonged, horrified scream.

“Elaine,” I say. “Elaine—”

But she doesn’t seem to hear me. Her hair, stained black from soot, is plastered to her face. She holds her fists so near her mouth, I’m surprised she hasn’t bitten her fingers off.

“Elaine!”

Across the room, the other, deeper shouting starts again.

“Help me! Goddamnit! Help me!”

I duck under the smoke and try to locate the source of the scream. On the other side of the room, his leg caught under a fallen wood beam, is Tommy Hoyle.

Bottles of chemicals are stacked on an old table, and they’re burning.

Fire belches out of the bottles, streams across the table and down the other side, where another bottle has spilled.

The bottles are everywhere, overturned and discarded, piled up in a pitifully undersized plastic trash can and stacked on makeshift shelves against the back wall.

There are two large, smashed windows back in the main portion of this floor, and a big squishy tube leads to one of them.

Smoke billows out everywhere it can go, but the room is still foul-smelling and hazy.

This is the cause of the fire and the smell and the screams. This is the source of the bang, I realize with sudden awareness. Not a gunshot. Worse.

This is a meth lab. It is melting down. This whole place is about to blow.

Coughing, I wrench my phone out of my back pocket and dial 911.

I can’t hear anything. If someone is there or not, I don’t know.

I shout, clear as I can, that there’s a fire at an exploding meth lab at the old DrakeCo factory, then cram my phone back into my pocket.

I duck down, as far under the smoke as I can, and look around.

Lying in a folding camp chair against the nearest wall are a couple of full-face respirator masks.

Made of soft green rubber with a big black canister at the end, they look like they came from an Army surplus store.

I grab the nearest one and slide it over my head, hoping the filter’s still half decent.

I grab the other one and crouch-run over to Elaine.

Questions of her being high or armed or both flit through my mind, but as I approach her all she can seem to do is stare, wide-eyed and more than half crazed, at Dwight Hoyle and scream.

I grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

“Elaine!” I shout, my voice coming out muffled through the mask. “Elaine! Can you walk?”

I grip Elaine hard, pull her to her feet, and drag her out of the room.

Her legs are jelly, all but useless. Still, she’s thin and light and fragile-feeling, so I drag her all the way around the corner and prop her against the wall nearest the stairs.

She slumps down, still screaming, eyes wide open in addled terror.

Another bang. Dust falls from the ceiling.

“Damn it!” I shout.

I fight against her wriggling, panicked form and squish the mask down over her head so the respirator covers her screaming mouth. I’d rather have her suck rubber than go on scream-inhaling the toxic fumes.

“Get out!” I shout through my own mask. “Get out of here! Go!”

Elaine doesn’t move. She only continues her screaming.

“Help me! Help me! Please!” Tommy shouts from the other room.

I leave Elaine and run back the way we’d come. The smoke is worse now. Black and awful. I duck under it and find Tommy. The beam is on fire and flames lick at Tommy’s pant leg. Another beam has fallen from the ceiling and smashed the table. The chemicals leak all over the floor, catching flame.

“Is Mandy here?” I shout as I make my way back to him. The question sounds absurd. Like I’m just knocking on his front door again.

“What?”

“Mandy? Where is your wife, Mandy?”

“She’s not here!”

“Her car is—”

“She’s not here! Fucking help me!”

“Damn you, Tommy Hoyle!”

I grit my teeth and grab Tommy’s hand. He grips back.

I pull. He doesn’t budge. I sit back on my butt, brace myself on my elbows, and kick the old fallen, flaming timber.

Once. Again. The sound of my steel-toed boot on the wood is like the crack of a bat, but it still doesn’t shift.

I breathe through the respirator and tense my body.

Brace. All my strength. Again. Finally, a single point shatters into flaming splinters and Tommy pulls free.

“Come on,” I yell.

He does. He crawls out after me. We rush around the corner and I look for Elaine. I shout her name but she is gone. All I can do is hope she found her way out.

I lead Tommy down the rickety staircase, through the smoke.

BANG! BANG!

The whole building rattles, shakes. The windows vibrate. The plywood clatters against the windows. We both duck instinctively, covering our heads with our arms. Tommy screams again, and I resist the urge to punch him in the face for putting me through this to begin with.

I squint through the smoke and dust and see the tiniest sliver of sunlight. I yank Tommy’s arm and lead him toward it, and just as I’m about to reach for the plywood, it flies open and there’s AJ.

“Annie!” he hollers, reaching for me.

BANG! BANG! BANG BANG BANG!

And everything goes dark.