Annie Dean: Order and Blood

Chapter 1

Hauntings 

 

The weather had been unusually warm since the clocks jumped forward in mid-March. The air was thick, with an unrelenting heat that required every household in Britain to keep their windows open all day and the oscillating fan on high. 

 

On that late June morning, Annie Dean could already feel sweat gathering on her top lip. She hastily wiped it away with the back of her hand and continued to stare down at the body of the woman sprawled out on the patio. 

 

The woman’s stomach and chest rested on the ground but her head was twisted backwards 180 degrees. A fly, one of those irritating iridescent-bodied blue bottles like an oil slick with wings, crawled across the woman’s eyeball. She didn’t blink it away. Her eyes remained open, becoming drier by the second and they stared up as if she were transfixed on something in the sky above. 

 

The name of this fresh and unblinking corpse was Hayley. Annie had only met her earlier that day but she still felt a little sad now, looking down at Hayley’s crooked neck. The broken bone bulged out from under the skin, reminding Annie of that sickening crunch when you twist and pull a chicken leg from the carcass. 

 

It looked like Hayley had fallen from the upstairs window. But Annie had checked and this was closed. Perhaps the roof? Annie shaded her eyes with one hand and looked up. She noticed that the guttering appeared to be coming away from the wall. 

 

Did Hayley snag it as she fell, catching her foot on the white piping as she dived towards the patio below? Surprisingly, there wasn’t much blood on the grey slabs, just a little fanning out behind her head and soaking into her light brown hair. It pooled in the sides of her mouth, making it look like she’d just taken a gulp of dark red wine but not got round to swallowing it.

 

Annie sighed and glanced through the patio doors. She could see Hayley’s puppy sitting patiently behind the glass, surveying the bent and broken woman on the uneven slabs and the stranger looking in at her. 

 

Was she dead before she fell? Annie wondered, looking up at the roof again. She took a step back in surprise when the puppy smacked its small paws against the glass, making the patio doors shudder. The small dog was a mongrel with patchy black and tan fur and long gangly legs. Its ears were pointed but only one stood to attention, the other flopped down on its head as if it couldn’t quite muster the energy to sit upright. 

 

Annie had never particularly cared for dogs. Her Grandmother had referred to them as “the offspring of Hell Hounds” and Annie had seen pictures of those monstrous creatures in her books with their snarling jaws, flayed skin and dark black eyes. 

 

However, as she looked into the kitchen, she thought the puppy was quite sweet. It let out a small bark, demanding that Annie pay it attention and so she stepped forward and grasped the patio door handle. The door was unlocked. 

 

Annie managed to grab the bundle of fur before it rushed over to its owner. She imagined it licking the blood from Hayley’s mouth and retched slightly at the thought. Annie carried the small dog to the end of the garden, where she found a neat square of lawn and gently placed it down. 

 

The grass was patchy, likely because it had been recently cut while the ground was still wet after an unexpected downpour. The rain, coupled with the warm sun, had encouraged the blades to grow at twice their usual rate. A flurry of lawnmowers were pulled out of sheds a day or two later. 

 

“Go on then,” Annie said to the puppy, but the small dog stood looking back at Hayley, the woman with the now twisted neck and head that sat the wrong way. Annie nudged the dog with her foot and it looked up at her, almost glaring, before squatting to relieve itself. When it was done, Annie picked it up again and carried it back towards the house, stepping carefully on the paving stones that had been neatly spaced out through an area of gravel. 

 

The garden was a good size and Hayley had made it welcoming, with just a patchy lawn and a small patio to work with. A trellis fence created two separate spaces, the one closest to the door that led into the kitchen was an area where people could sit and enjoy the sunshine, while behind the trellis a myriad of bird tables and hedgehog hides worked to entertain and support the local wildlife.

 

Around the edges of the garden were border plants, mainly easy to manage shrubs, and the soil was covered in a layer of bark, to prevent weeds from rearing their heads through the dirt. Hayley had told her that the puppy loved to take pieces of this bark and carry it around like a trophy. But of course, you had to intervene when she settled down on the rug, holding the bark with her two front paws and using her new back teeth to chew on it.

 

“All she does is sleep.” Hayley had told Annie earlier that morning. “Sleep and eat bark.”

 

“What breed is she?” Annie asked although she wasn’t that familiar with many dog breeds – besides labradors and pugs. Hayley paused, thinking. 

 

“Alsatian, mainly. I think. But the vet said there’s also golden retriever in her. She’s still very small though. She just turned up at the door, like, three days ago. I already had a dog lined up, from a breeder in the village.” Hayley frowned, “It’s weird, it’s like she sensed I wanted a dog or something. She didn’t have a chip and no one claimed her when I posted about her online, so I took her in. I named her Bella” 

 

They had been sitting outside in the garden and Annie was doing her best not to display how uncomfortable she was in the heat. She hadn’t even removed her blazer and tie. 

 

This was the first assignment she’d been allowed to scope out alone and she wanted to appear as professional as possible. But even in the shade, the temperature was high. Hayley was wearing a light camisole top and shorts and appeared to be unfazed by the warmth. She’d told Annie she refused to go back into the house after the events of the night before. 

 

“That’s why I called your company,” she’d explained, running her finger around the rim of her glass. “I’d made a note of the number after seeing an ad hanging in the chippie. It’s weird, I don’t usually entertain this sort of thing, but it’s all got a little too real.” 

 

Annie had nodded. She knew that the Order made it easy for people to stumble across their details to get help. They might see a poster featuring their phone number on a corkboard in their corner shop or a targeted ad on social media (The Order has existed since man could first walk on two legs, but they know what a computer is). If the person called, they’d speak to a surly sounding receptionist if it was after dark and she would create an assignment based on the issue. 

 

Hayley had called because she believed she was being haunted. Earlier that morning, looking out into the garden, Annie never would have believed this property could be experiencing a haunting. It felt too calm, too normal. But, staring at the mangled corpse of her client, she presumed she was dealing with some sort of vengeful spirit or poltergeist. 

 

Annie had attended hauntings before while being trained and there had always been something unsettling about the property. The shadows would feel too dark or there would be a sour smell that she couldn’t quite place. But mostly, there would be a small nagging feeling in the pit of her stomach that something was wrong and upsetting the balance.

 

There wasn’t anything of that nature, though. It felt like a normal summer day in a normal garden in a normal new-build cul-de-sac that had sprung up almost overnight on the edge of town. 

 

The puppy had been sprawled out on the grass in the sun as Annie made notes while discussing the haunting with Hayley. The dog's pink tongue poked out from her small mouth and its side rose and fell with each slow breath she took. She seemed to have one eye open though at all times, and this watched the women as they sat at the small bistro table on the patio. 

 

“I don’t want to go back inside. Ever,” Hayley had said, noticing Annie’s discomfort in the heat. “That’s why I wanted to sit out here.”

 

“It’s fine.” Annie had replied. She cupped her hands around her glass of water and ice and then placed them on her neck in a desperate attempt to cool herself down. “Is there nowhere else you can stay?”

 

Hayley shook her head, watching the puppy sleep for a moment with her skinny legs stretched out on the sun-scorched grass. Her pointed ears twitched as a slight breeze toyed with the sensitive hairs on them.

 

“I wish I could be like her, oblivious to everything,” Hayley commented. 

 

As if she knew they were talking about her, Bella’s other eye opened and she sat up. But she didn’t move toward the two women. Instead, she looked up at the bedroom window and stared intently, a low growl coming from the back of her throat.

 

“It’s there,” Hayley whispered, lowering her eyes. 

 

Annie wasn’t sure she wanted to look, but her mentor Lady Catherine had told her she needed more experience in the basics before she could obtain her full Exorcist licence. An “Exorcist lâche” she called Annie. Annie had looked up the word later on Google Translate and learned that it meant cowardly. Sometimes she wished she could speak French if only to go back with some scandalous reply to the woman’s constant muttering in her native language. 

 

With that thick French accent ringing in her ears again, Annie decided that she was going to confront this thing now and prove Catherine wrong – even if she was facing it from the safety of the brightly lit garden.

 

Annie gave Hayley what she hoped was a reassuring smile, then stood and walked towards the puppy, who was still staring intently at the upstairs window. The dog’s eyes were narrowed and the fur along her back raised as if she had fashioned herself a punk hairstyle. 

 

Hayley was also staring but not at the window. Instead, she focused intently on her glass of cola, which fizzed and popped in the quiet. Annie took a deep breath, turned and looked up towards the window. Her fingers almost tingled with anticipation and her throat felt overly slick with saliva. She swallowed it down.  

 

At first, she could see nothing, just the glare of the sun as it hit the clear glass, but as her eyes adjusted they registered a figure just behind the curtain. 

 

She was unable to make out any details but it was dark and swaying ever so slightly in the gloom, like a snake waiting to strike. It looked down at her and the small dog in the garden. Annie’s stomach turned strongly, like that moment on an aeroplane when you hit an air pocket and fall a few feet or you think there is one last step on the stairs and your foot continues to fall down, down, down. 

 

Annie had only come face to face with the dark and the supernatural a few times in her life and now standing there, essentially alone in that back garden she wished she’d never been born into the world of witches.