Muddy Creek: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 7)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  “Uh…” Taryn sat up and perched on her knees, looking around the murky room. The noises continued outside around her. If anyone else’s power had gone out, they weren’t complaining.

  Just as she was about to get up and try the overhead light, she was struck by a repugnant scent and movement from the corner of her eye. When she turned, there, against the wall across from her, stood a man. In the dimness she could just barely make out the outline of his body–stocky and hunched over, and definitely male.

  He stood there quietly, watching her. Taryn felt the blood drain from her face. For a second she had a horrible thought that someone had been in there with her the whole time, hiding behind the shower curtain or under the bed. And now they were there to do terrible things to her.

  With mounting terror, she panicked, casting a glance at the door and quickly trying to calculate the amount of time it would take her to reach it without the figure overcoming her.

  She’d risk it.

  In one fell swoop, Taryn had pounced from the bed, the box springs protesting under her weight, and was to the door without her feet barely touching the floor. With trembling figures she swiped back the chain and yanked the door open, imagining the feel of his meaty hands on her neck as he dragged her back into the room.

  But then she was outside. Nobody had touched her or prevented her from leaving.

  She stood there now, outside her door, panting with wide eyes. A group of men and one lone woman stood just feet away and turned to look at her now, eyes amused.

  “What’s the matter? Devil after you?”

  “T-there,” Taryn panted, pointing inside. “There’s a man in my room!”

  The men weren’t laughing now, but none offered to move. They all appeared frozen in place.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the woman hissed. Handing her to purse to the man standing next to her, she marched past Taryn and pushed everyone else aside as she charged in, fists up and face excited with the threat of danger. With someone else taking the initiative, two other men in her part followed suit, feeling braver in a crowd. Taryn, feeling somewhat safer now that others were involved, stood outside, her bare feet now cold from the late-night air.

  When they reemerged, however, all three looked confused.

  “Maybe you were just having a bad dream?” one of them suggested. “Or something on the TV?”

  “No,” Taryn shook her head. “There was someone there. I saw him. And the TV wasn’t even on.”

  “Well, it’s on now,” the man in the middle pointed out. “And there’s nobody there, ma’am.”

  Intent on proving them wrong, with fear pushed aside Taryn stomped back into her room. The lamp was back on, the television was blaring an episode of “Sex and the City” and nothing was out of order. Too confused to be embarrassed, Taryn poked her head back outside.

  “I don’t know, then,” she shrugged. “Maybe it was just a dream. I’m sorry.”

  The men walked away but the woman drew closer to Taryn.

  “You okay, honey?” she asked. The woman’s sweaty, wet hair was hanging limply in her face. Black eyeliner and mascara was smudged on her hollow cheeks. She looked like she’d been up for days. She’d had red lipstick on at one point, but she’d eaten most of it off and the rest was stuck to her front teeth.

  In short, she looked the way Taryn felt. Still, her face looked concerned and she was the only one speaking to Taryn.

  “I don’t know,” Taryn replied truthfully. “I know I saw someone there.”

  The other woman nodded. “I believe you. I’ve had a few experiences like that here myself. I can tell you this, I’ll be glad when all this is over and I can get back home. There is something here, something I don’t like.”

  “You and me both, sister,” Taryn agreed.

  The women laughed and Taryn returned to her room.

  With her door closed and the chain back on, she stood in the middle of the floor and looked at the spot where the man had stood. He’d definitely been there, she’d seen him. But who was he? And what did he want?

  “Maybe I was on the right track today,” Taryn murmured as she did one last check around her space. “But which part do I need to revisit?”

  Sighing, she turned back to her television. She wasn’t in the mood for a comedy. Instead, she picked up the remote and began flipping through the channels. When she landed on the late news, she paused. Frieda Bowen was on, a repeat from her earlier show. She was in the process of yelling at her guest, both arguing over whether or not there was any scenario in which Lucy Dawson could have been justified in her actions.

  Despite the heated shouting match going on before her, Taryn began laughing. Of course, on the screen Frieda’s lipstick was on her mouth, and not on her teeth. And her eyeliner wasn’t running.

  Other than that, though, she’d looked exactly the same in person.

  Fifteen

  With sleep impossible to achieve after what she’d see that night, Taryn stayed up until daylight, poring over the links to the newspaper articles Matt had sent her.

  It was no wonder he’d asked her to look at them herself and didn’t want to talk about what he’d found. He was right; the story was pretty horrific.

  From what she’d learned, Lukas Monroe had seen more by the time he was fourteen than most people would ever have to in a lifetime.

  His father had not only been the owner of one of the pizza places (now closed), but had sat on the school board. (So Lucy’s explosion definitely wasn’t the first sordid affair the local system had been indirectly involved in.) At the age of fourteen he was visiting a friend and the friend’s mother had apparently called the police–Lukas was covered in bruises. He was also missing five teeth, limping on an ankle that turned out to be broken, and had three dislocated ribs. Police were shocked to discover that he was severely malnourished, battling MRSA thanks to an infected wound on his back, and about twenty pounds underweight.

  The entire town was shocked when they found out what had really been happening…

  For the past three years Lukas’ father, respected town citizen, had been chaining little Lukas to the family’s toilet at night. In the beginning he would sometimes be left there for eight or nine hours at a time. In the past five months, however, he hadn’t been let go at all. The school had not reported his truancy. He’d finally broken free, thanks to the help of a sibling, and escaped to the friend’s house.

  Lukas had been whipped with chains and belts, starved, burned with cigarettes, humiliated, and suffered severe emotional and physical trauma. Both of his parents were arrested and held on $500,000 bonds. Although she would sometimes sneak scraps of food to him when his father wasn’t looking, his mother had done nothing to stop the abuse. During the trial, Lukas had even claimed that she would sometimes go in to use the toilet and, despite his pleading, not even acknowledge that he was there.

  Taryn had read through the interviews growing more and more stunned with each passing one. Then she’d broken down in tears. The capacity of human cruelty was unfathomable to her.

  “The fact that the little fellar was right here the whole time, right on Main Street, and nobody knew was a real injustice,” one arresting officer had told the local paper.

  In a twist of cruel irony, Lukas’ house had been next door to the county jail.

  After that, Taryn eventually stressed herself to sleep once daylight trickled in through the curtains. It had not been a restful slumber, though. The picture of his sweet face, with broken teeth and big, brown eyes, haunted her. She thought it always would.

  Lukas had not attended Muddy Creek Elementary. He’d gone to the city school, and then to the middle school. As far as she could tell, his family didn’t have any ties to her school at all. She didn’t think his experience, as awful as it was, had anything to do with what she was working with.

  But it was still terrible all the same. Most every place had a dark, underlying secret that it hides from the world. When you started peeling back the
layers, you didn’t always like what you found.

  * * *

  SHE WAS PREPARING TO WALK out her door when an unexpected knock came from the other side. The reporters had already filed out for the day; she knew it wasn’t any of them. When Taryn opened the door Sandy stood on the other side, a hair dryer in hand.

  “Here,” she said proudly, thrusting the Conair towards Taryn. “Got one for you.”

  “Hey, thanks! So you found one around here?”

  Taryn took it from her and welcomed the girl inside.

  “Nah, didn’t find one here. That one there’s my mom’s. She got her a new one for her birthday so she don’t need it no more,” Sandy shrugged.

  Taryn appreciated this kind of hospitality–the kind one didn’t exactly get from the Ritz Carlton.

  Exhibiting no shyness, Sandy began walking around Taryn’s room, peering at her stacks of canvases and tubes of oil paints. She even bent over and looked at her laptop, but the screensaver was on. She thought she caught a look of disappointment on Sandy’s face.

  “Oh, hey,” Taryn said, suddenly remembering. “While you’re here…You said your mother went to school with Lucy Dawson?”

  “At Muddy Creek, yeah,” Sandy nodded.

  “She wouldn’t have any pictures or anything from those days would she?”

  Sandy shrugged. “Yeah, probably. I can ask. What for?”

  “It helps me,” Taryn explained. “I went to the library yesterday and found a few but I’d love to see more of the kids. To, you know, get a feel for what kind of school it was.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ll ask her. She likes talking about the ‘good old days,’” Sandy laughed. “She’d probably get a kick out of having a new person to tell her stories to.”

  “Tell her I’d be happy to meet with her at any time.”

  “Sure. She don’t work no more, not since she got the fibro. So she’s home all the time. Except on Monday nights and Thursday nights,” Sandy said. “She goes to Bingo at the church then.”

  Taryn considered asking her about Lukas Monroe, ask what happened to him and if he was still around, but the story was still too fresh for her. Like Matt, she wanted to process more. Or perhaps she needed to put poor Lukas and his trials to rest. She wasn’t one of the bloodthirsty reporters, after all. Just that morning she’d gone online and seen a scathing interview with a guy Lucy Dawson had dated for three weeks in college. They were getting desperate for information. Maybe she didn’t need to be digging any of that up where Lukas was concerned. He’d probably moved on a long time ago. It was none of her business.

  * * *

  THE LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL was only one story, but it was sprawling. The visitor’s parking lot was at the very back. It took Taryn a good ten minutes to walk the length of it and then around the building to get to the front door. She was surprised that there wasn’t anyone waiting at the front, any security of any sort. She was able to stroll right on in and look for the principal’s office on her own.

  “I don’t often get visitors of the good kind,” Jamey laughed as he led her past his secretary’s desk to his private office.

  “I don’t often visit the principal’s office,” Taryn laughed. “Or I didn’t.”

  “So to what do I owe the pleasure?” When he settled back into his chair Taryn thought he posed a striking figure–a well-dressed, well-groomed man with a movie star face and kind eyes. She wondered how many teenage girls found reasons to get sent to his office.

  “Well, sorry to just bust in on you like this, but I was on my way out to the school and this was on my way,” Taryn apologized.

  “No, no, that’s fine. In fact, Heather will be here in just a minute. She was just asking about you, too.”

  Taryn took a seat across from him. “I was actually wondering if you had any pictures of the school from when you attended it,” she began. “I am starting to sketch today and really wanted to kind of get a feel for the student life.” After talking to Sandy that morning, the idea of asking Jamey had seemed like an even better one.

  Jamey folded his hands under his chin and closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were as clear as a bell. “You know, I don’t think I do. I mean, I did have some but they’re all gone.”

  “Oh,” Taryn said. “What happened?”

  Yeah, like it’s any of my business, she thought to herself. God, I am so nosey.

  “There was a fire at my mother’s trailer about ten years ago,” he explained. “You ever see one of those go up in flames? There’s no real way of saving it. You’re lucky to just get yourself out alive. They were all destroyed.”

  “Oh, geeze,” Taryn cringed. So much for her not bringing up anything traumatic today. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have asked.”

  Just then his door opened and Heather breezed through it and made for her husband, the scent of apples and vanilla trailing in her wake.

  “Hello baby,” she cooed, leaning down to kiss him on the forehead. He preened upwards for it and gave her a genuine smile, one that caused a twinge of jealousy in Taryn. She missed that–the ability to touch her loved one whenever she wanted. Her fiancé, Andrew, had died in a fiery car crash several years before. She’d never really had that daily closeness since. Just being able to reach out and physically feel the person beside you whenever you so desired was what she missed the most.

  The old adage “they still live on in your heart” was a crock. What good was his memory when they’d never make new ones, when she could never touch him again?

  “Hello Heather,” Taryn smiled, plastering on a polite smile. “Sorry to butt in on your visit.”

  “Oh sweetie, that’s okay,” Heather laughed. “I always stop in right before lunch. You’re not intruding at all!”

  The fact that Heather was beautiful and nice was just a little much for Taryn. She had a hard time trusting that particular combination.

  “Taryn was just asking if I had any pictures from my old school days,” Jamey told her.

  “Oh, well, we’ve got your old basketball pictures at the house. And your graduation…”

  “She means older, dear,” Jamey teased her, pulling at her long, blond hair. “From Muddy Creek.”

  Heather frowned and scratched at her cheek. “Oh, yeah, well that’s going to be a problem.”

  “He told me about the fire at his mother’s,” Taryn explained. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know about it or I wouldn’t have asked.”

  Heather pooh-pooed the idea off with a wave of long, elegant fingers. “No worries. The good thing was that she wasn’t home at the time. We knew that place was a deathtrap, a fire hazard. Those wires had bothered Jamey for years. But, she wouldn’t leave. She’d lived there all of Jamey’s life. His father died when he was eight and Carmie always said that she still felt him there. She wouldn’t leave him.” Heather rolled her eyes as she said this, as though the whole thing was ridiculous, but Jamey looked down at his desk and frowned.

  Taryn felt her face growing warm. She hadn’t meant to open up a big old can of worms. She just spreading cheer and bringing up all kinds of stuff today. Good going.

  “Well, now that I’ve dredged up the past, I think I’ll head on out to the school,” Taryn said as she rose to her feet. “And I’ll let you all enjoy your time together.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t help,” Heather apologized. “But if there’s anything else you need, anything then please let me know.”

  Sixteen

  The sketching was going well. Her hands were black from the charcoal, but Taryn was in her element, sitting outside on a blanket in the fresh air. Her iPod was tuned to her favorite sketching mix (not to be confused with her painting mix, photography mix, or editing mix) and from time to time she bopped her head along with Shooter Jennings’ “Fourth of July.” The upbeat melody with the crisp chill, gray sky, and scent of dead leaves gave her an extra shot of energy.

  If only the stench of the stagnant water didn’t keep trickling in. At times it was nauseatin
g, causing her to wrinkle her nose in disgust. She hadn’t found the source of the water yet, since the creek behind the school seemed to be flowing fine, but she could certainly smell it.

  When she heard the roar of Lucy’s truck, she looked up and watched the Jeep as it attacked the gravel road with purpose. The small woman at the wheel’s face was hardened, her mouth set in a grim line. When she saw Taryn she slowed down to a roll and Taryn thought she might stop altogether but then she offered a slight wave of her hand and Lucy laid on the gas again, sending the gravel flying.

  “Bad day in court I guess,” Taryn murmured to herself. Of course, she guessed that if you were on trial for murder then every day was a bad day in court. In fact, it was likely that most good days involved not being in court at all.

  Sandy’s mother had claimed Lucy was “weird” in school, at least according to Sandy. Taryn found herself wondering what constituted as “weird” in Muddy Creek. Was it her music choices? The movies she’d watched? Did she eat her own hair? Talk to her imaginary dragon during class? (To be fair, that last one was all Taryn. Only it had been an imaginary Chinese girl. Taryn herself had also been a little weird.)

  She wanted to know more about Lucy, wanted to know more about the school.

  She wanted to know why Lucy had killed those people.

  “I can’t believe she’s a cold-blooded murderer that wanted to kill anyone,” Taryn muttered. “I just refuse to believe it.”

  The crashing sound came from within again, a reply to Taryn’s spoken thoughts. It wasn’t the first time she’d heard it, of course, and the last incident had left her with a picture from the past. Now, with curiosity piqued, Taryn stood and gazed at the school, wondering what she should do next.