Page 66 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Haunted,” Nicole says. “People say it’s haunted. But nobody goes there unless…”

“Unless they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing. Kids don’t even park there. Not anymore. It’s like only the hard-core tweakers go.”

“And your dad’s going?”

Tam shrugs.

Nicole pulls a buzzing phone out of her back pocket and checks it.

“Hey,” she says. “We need to head back. I can’t be late for calc again.”

“Yeah,” Tam says. “Okay.”

“I hope those help,” Nicole says, looking toward the drawings in my hand. They’re on old paper, faded and fragile, but they feel impossiblyheavy in my grasp. I look at these kids and I feel that same heaviness. A mix of fear and worry and a gnawing, sick feeling.

Nicole starts around to the driver side of the car but pauses when I ask, “Whose number did you call me from?”

“Mine,” Tam says. “Nicole’s mom watches her phone like a hawk.”

“Okay. Well, call me again if you think of anything else.”

“Okay,” Tam says, but he almost seems like he’s not listening.

“You two aren’t going to go investigating, right?”

They glance at each other.

“Please don’t,” I say. “Please just call me. Call me, okay? Anything comes up, call me.”

Nicole looks at Tam, who finally says, “Okay.”

They get in the car and drive away. I stay there a while longer, looking down at the papers, the endless spirals all joined together, hundreds of them, filling every page.

“What did you see?” I ask the spirals and the mind that they came from, the young woman who does not speak but whose head might hold the key to all of this. “Where were you taken?”

I lean against Honey and stare at the spirals until I’m dizzy with their spinning color. I close my eyes, then look again at the waving horizon and the DrakeCo Toy Factory on the distant hilltop. I wonder whether Tommy and Dwight Hoyle are there now. What they might be up to in an abandoned factory that even local teenagers shy away from.

“Seems like something worth checking out,” I mutter. I climb back behind the wheel and put Honey in gear.

TWENTY-THREE

UP CLOSE, THE DRAKECOToy 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.