Corn Dolls

by K. T. Galloway

  Tim nodded. “What are you doing here, Miss O’Malley? Am I in trouble for missing my last session? I never meant to. It all happened so quickly, I just forgot to come and see you.”

  Annie had almost forgotten the working relationship she’d had with Tim in the previous weeks, so much had happened in the last few days. But he was the reason she was on this case, and she owed him the truth. She thought it was strange that he hadn’t mentioned Orla yet, though. Surely the first thought of a parent on waking would be about their child? Annie didn’t know for sure, as she had none of her own, but Tim’s daughter was missing, and asking about her should be a given. Either he knew she was safe, or he had no idea she was missing.

  “I’m not here to tell you off for missing a session, Tim,” she said, gently. “I need to talk to you about Orla.”

  Tim looked down; a flush rose up behind the layer of grey.

  “I feel awful. For Orla and for Maggie. I never meant to hurt them.”

  “What do you mean by that, Tim?”

  He looked back up at Annie, his eyes filled with tears. Her heart raced, was he about to confess to hurting his daughter?

  “I was off the drugs,” he started, pausing for a moment to take a sip of the water. “I promise. I hadn’t really done any since I got out of prison. But…”

  He stopped again.

  Annie kept quiet. She knew, after years of counselling work, that most people with something to say would fill any silence. The machines continued their constant noise and Annie could feel a trickle of sweat making its way down her spine towards the waistband of her trousers. No matter what the season, hospitals were always a few degrees too hot for Annie. Bloody patients and their need to stay warm. She took the time to stare out of the window behind Tim’s bed. The sky was so blue, it looked right out of a children’s cartoon. Not a cloud to sully it.

  After a while it became clear that Tim had no desire to fill the gap left by Annie’s questions, so she probed further. “But what, Tim?”

  He jolted at her voice, and she realised he had simply nodded off again. She felt bad. “Sorry, Tim. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just really important that we talk to you right now.”

  Tim’s face creased with worry. “Why? Has something happened to Grey?”

  “What can you tell me about Grey?” Annie dodged the question like a pro.

  “He,” Tim bit his lip. “I don’t want him to get in trouble. He’s just a guy like me.”

  “Trust me, Tim,” Annie said, with a growing sense of unease that Tim had no idea about Orla. “Drug trouble is the least of our worries right now. I’m not making any promises but if it’s just drugs then I’ll do my best to keep Grey out of trouble.”

  It didn’t count if you crossed your fingers when you said it, did it? Not when there were missing children at stake.

  “I was off the drugs,” Tim continued, still wary. “You saw me. You know I was. I was doing really well and then I bumped into Grey at the local. I’d never seen him there before. He said he was new to the area and had just moved in, was looking for some friends. I’d been in that position myself, and I thought what’s the harm?” He laughed ironically. “Stupid. Stupid. We had a lot in common. Age and that. Grey loves a bet on the dogs too. We hit it off. It was nice having a guy to hang out with. But then he started smoking weed when we were at his house. And that soon turned to a line of coke or a pill.”

  Tim looked down at his bandaged arm, his brows heavy.

  “I’m not that strong. He was offering me smack. And I was injecting before you could say addict. I hated myself for it. I still do. I let down everyone who was there for me. Including you, Miss O’Malley.”

  “Is that why you moved out?”

  Tim nodded. “I had to. I couldn’t put Maggie through that again. And I couldn’t risk putting Orla in that position. How are they? Do they hate me? I can’t say I blame them. I’m so weak. If only I could have said no. But free drugs, man. You can’t turn that shit down.”

  Annie took Tim’s hand in hers. His skin felt paper soft, as though he wasn’t there at all.

  “Tim,” she said, wishing there was a FLO or an actual police officer here to help her. “I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but the reason we needed to talk to you so urgently was to do with Orla. She’s missing.”

  What was left of the blood in Tim’s face soon drained away. His face caved in on its bones, as hollow as Annie felt right then.

  “What?” he whispered. “Is it my fault? Did she run away?”

  Annie shook her head. “It looks as though she was taken. Can you tell me, do you have any association with the Angels of the Water, apart from living in their house? Do you know anything about the meaning of a corn doll?”

  “Taken?” Tim’s eyes were like saucers. “What do you mean taken? And what do you mean about the house? I thought it was Grey’s house, like he rented it and everything. You think Grey is the one who took Orla? I’ll fucking kill him. Let me out of here, I’ll fucking kill him.”

  Tim struggled with the blue blanket wrapped tightly around his legs. The machines were all working overtime now, their beeping had stepped up a notch.

  “No,” Annie said, her hand still on his, but she couldn’t hold him for much longer. “No, we don’t know who has Orla. It’s just a line of enquiry, that’s all.”

  Her lines sounded fake and glib now. She wasn’t a police officer, she’d left all that behind her years ago. She shouldn’t be the one telling Tim this.

  Damn you, Swift.

  A nurse came crashing through the door and shot Annie a look of pure disgust.

  “What’s going on here?” she said, leaning over Tim and checking his pulse against her fob watch. “Tim, love, you need to calm down.”

  Tim was thrashing away at the wires in his chest now, trying and failing to pull them free.

  “I need to get out of here, my daughter is missing. I’ll kill him!” he spat, his body getting weaker as the nurse rolled her fingers over one of the wheels on his drip stand. “I’ll… kill… him.”

  “I think you need to leave, young lady.” The nurse wasn’t asking.

  Tim fell back on the bed into a deep sleep. There wasn’t much else for Annie to find out here. She’d done enough. Quite literally.

  Annie’s office felt cold despite the sun streaming through the large sash windows at the front. She closed the door and turned the lock. Maybe it wasn’t the place that felt cold, maybe it was the lack of sleep, rest, and hot food that was the problem. She filled the kettle and threw the switch. Then double backed on herself and headed back down the stairs.

  “Annie!” Pete the chef cried as she walked into the pizzeria. “Where have you been?”

  He got a little closer and pulled out the chair at her favourite table. “Where have you been?” He looked at her quizzically. “You look like shite!”

  “New work role,” she said by means of explanation. “Can I have the usual and a large glass of red, please?”

  Pete nodded slowly, his head swaying as he took in Annie’s exhausted features.

  “What are they making you do? Wrestle alligators?”

  Annie huffed out an ironic laugh. “Worse, Pete! You don’t want to know.”

  He threw his tea towel over his shoulder and started back for the kitchen. “You wouldn’t catch me being run into the ground by the local government,” he said over his shoulder.

  Annie laughed properly then. Pete was always run off his feet making the world’s best pizza, and he was always complaining about it. But, she supposed, it wasn’t the government ordering the pizzas, not unless she counted herself. Pete dropped her wine off, and Annie took a large sip, savouring the soft warm feeling as it slid down into her stomach. Almost immediately she felt her shoulders drop from where they’d been hanging out making friends with her ears for the last few days.

  “That bad, huh?” Pete asked as he dropped her pizza on the table in front of her and drizzled it generously with
garlic oil.

  “It’s just something I’ve been asked to help with. I can’t say no. But it’s left me feeling a bit drained, that’s all,” she smiled weakly at him.

  “Tough,” he said, setting down the oil and grinding the pepper until the pizza was covered in a liberal sprinkling. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Thanks, Pete,” she said, looking up at him. “I can’t though. Client confidentiality and all that. Well, actually, it’s police confidentiality this time.”

  “Police?”

  “Yeah,” Annie said, slicing through her pizza with the cutter and then lifting a piping hot slice to her lips. “I’m working on the missing girls case.”

  “The two who have been abducted?” Pete’s eyes widened. “I saw it on the news earlier, they were talking about a possible connection with that weird church?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “Well, no wonder you look so pooped,” he said, pulling the chair out opposite Annie and taking a seat.

  Annie sighed inwardly. The last thing she felt like doing was talking about how they were getting nowhere with any of the leads, or how she practically scared one of the parents to death that afternoon with her lack of tact. Not that she could talk about it anyway.

  “I did some work with the Angels once,” Pete said, tapping the side of his nose with his forefinger. “Catering. They love a good pizza and who am I to argue if they think I’m the best of the best? There was something weird about the lot of them if you ask me. A load of men sitting around talking about how they’re going to take over the coastal villages, rule the big cities, and have the women eating out of the palms of their hands. It takes a wrong sort to want to have that much control over people.”

  “When was this, Pete?” Annie asked, her interest piqued, her pizza momentarily forgotten in her hand.

  “Four or five months ago,” he said, taking a slice of pizza for himself and tucking in. “They were at their annual general meeting from the sounds of it. And they’ve asked me to cater for their church birthday party this weekend too.”

  “Have they now?”

  “Have you been there? To their headquarters?”

  Annie nodded. “Amadeus Hyde’s house? It’s not what I imagined. He’s a bit of a clean freak, isn’t he?”

  Pete shook his head. “No, not his house. The actual headquarters? The old, converted barn in Flynt? It’s like some sort of shrine to pagan gods, all candles here and weird symbols etched into the floor there. I’m not sure I want to go there again, but they’re paying triple the cost price, so I can’t afford to turn it down.”

  “Wait,” Annie shouted. “Backtrack a little. Did you say there are candles and weird symbols there?”

  Pete nodded, picking up another slice of Annie’s pizza.

  “I’m sorry, Pete,” Annie cried. “I’ve got to go. Text me the address of the barn, would you? And I’ll pay for all this next time I’m in. Though you can go halves seeing as you’re the one eating it!”

  She grabbed a slice and ran out the door, her phone already connecting to Swift’s.

  Eighteen

  The barn looked as though it had seen better days. Swift flicked his torch on just as Annie turned off the car headlights, sending the barn into an eerie darkness for a split second. All thoughts of an early night had flown out of the window when Pete had mentioned this place. Something in Annie’s waters had shifted and she knew they had to check it out, though she wished she’d actually shifted her waters before jumping in the car and picking Swift up. All the way to the coast she’d been dying for the loo, and it wasn’t like she could squat behind a tree now, as the barn was smack bang in the middle of a corn field with no trees in sight.

  Swift swept the torch beam back and forth, taking in the crumbling brick building with its moss-green pitched roof. It was larger than Annie had expected. And older. Given how modern the church houses were, she had been expecting some new-fangled barn conversion with glass frontage and poplar trees shaped like spheres in pots at the door. As it was, the only things standing sentry at the rickety-looking doors were two great masses of stinging nettles.

  Why is this place so hidden and derelict?

  Annie took out her phone and hit the torch symbol, the hairs standing to attention on the back of her neck. She followed the beam to the small dusty window at the side of the barn and peered in. There was no way of seeing through the darkness, and the light just bounced off the filthy glass, making it hard to see anything other than the spots of white that were now etched onto her eyeballs.

  “Here try this,” Swift said, heading over to the door and rattling the padlock, held on by a thick chain wrapped around the door handles. “Hmm. How can we break and enter this one without getting into trouble?”

  Annie pushed at the window, but it didn’t budge, probably held shut with years of grime. She joined Swift at the door.

  “Maybe there’s a loose panel somewhere,” she said, looking to the corner of the barn. “It’s not in the best condition.”

  “Maybe,” Swift replied, before sending a kick to the door that looked most likely to give way. The door buckled under the strain and fell off its bottom hinge, hanging like a loose tooth from the frame. “Bloody kids, they’re such vandals.”

  He bent down and lifted the door at an angle so Annie could climb through into the space. She held up her phone torch, trying not to show Swift just how much her hands were shaking.

  The inside was a totally different kettle of fish to the outside.

  Annie swept her torch around, taking in the creepy interior, when the whole place suddenly lit up like the Blackpool Illuminations.

  “What the—” she spun around and saw Swift smiling beside a light switch covered in a thick grey plastic casing.

  “Et voila,” he said, mimicking the stance of a magician who had just made a woman disappear.

  Annie’s skin crawled. The exterior of the barn was obviously a ruse to keep people out. The inside was clean and dry, and looked like it had been used very recently. Annie thought back to what Pete had said about it giving him the creeps and she could see why. Chairs were set out in a perfect circle around the edge of the main room. At the centre of the circle, carved into the floor in crude lines, was the Angels of the Water symbol. The walls of the barn were dotted with candle holders, their candles melted almost to the wicks, while in between the metal sconces were symbols created in thick red paint. At least, Annie hoped it was paint. She didn’t recognise any of the symbols as those drawn on Orla’s window, but they could have been from the same book of the occult.

  She walked further into the large space, urging her feet to keep moving despite her brain screaming at her to turn and run away. Swift wasn’t far behind her; she could hear his footsteps on the wooden floor. The room felt warm, not as she imagined. It was as though someone had only just turned off the electric heater that was standing out like a sore thumb at the back of the room.

  Maybe they had.

  The thought occurred to her that maybe they weren’t alone. Holding her breath, she stepped up to the heater and placed the back of her hand against it. It was cold to the touch. Annie let out the breath and turned to Swift.

  “It’s the wood,” he said, before she could speak. “It stores the heat from the sun and keeps hold of it.”

  He walked up to join her. “I remember going to Sunday school in a wooden church hut, like, a normal one, not this satanic weirdness, and during the summer months we’d be baking in our own juices by the end of the Lord’s Prayer.”

  “You went to Sunday school?” Annie laughed, relief flooding her body that they were alone in this creepy place.

  “I’ll have you know I was a pillar of the community back then,” he winked. “Still am.”

  “When you’re not kicking in doors and entering premises without a warrant!” Annie laughed again.

  “Needs must,” he shrugged. “Have you seen any symbols that may link in with our missing kids?”

/>   Annie shook her head, walking up to the nearest symbol splashed onto the wood, a large eye with a scythe in the middle of the pupil. She lifted a finger to touch the paint as it bubbled out in thick brush strokes. It was cool to touch too, and dry.

  “What do you think they’re doing here?” she asked. Annie had told Swift about the annual general meeting that Pete and his pizzas had attended on the drive out to the coast. But this felt nothing like any conference room than Annie had ever been in. “Why use this when they have all those houses, or even Amadeus’s house?”

  Swift shook his head, “Amadeus seemed pretty against having people in his house, didn’t he? He seems to have some mental health issues around cleanliness – could it be OCD? And the church houses are rented out or used for, um, other stuff. I guess maybe they needed a central hub. Somewhere that belongs to them all rather than each individual leader or congregation. It’s certainly big enough to hold a large group of people if we were to get rid of this weird set-up of chairs.”

  “But why pick this place?” Annie asked. “Right out in the middle of nowhere, we’re miles from any of the church houses. The nearest one is near Orla Finch’s home, isn’t it? If I’ve got my bearings correct.”

  “Yeah,” Swift said. “It’s a couple of miles that way.”

  He pointed in the direction they’d arrived from.

  “Oh,” Annie said, surprised. “Just a couple of miles. I thought we were further inland. Anyway, why here? Why this barn? And why does it look so bloody awful from the outside?”

  “All good questions, O’Malley,” Swift said, as he made his way to a small door at the back of the barn. “Are you sure you made the right decision when you left the force?”

  “Hey,” she said, whacking his shoulder. “I just tried to look into a covered-up window with a phone torch.”

  “Swings and roundabouts,” he laughed, trying the handle of the door.

  Annie stood back a little as the door swung open towards them. “Swings and roundabouts,” she whispered, almost to herself.