Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  A purposeless reality show on VH-1 (her biggest vice, although not her only one) played softly in the background, mostly for company. She knew it might cost her some brain cells, but it somehow mollified her to see rock stars she had once idolized stooping to the level of looking for dates on television. Everyone was apparently going through a dry spell.

  What she’d felt at the house unnerved her. Okay, who was she fooling, it had scared her. But she didn’t have the luxury of giving into those fears. Last month, her car broke down and she’d needed a new transmission. Between that and some dental work back in the spring, her meager savings were cleared out. Lots of offers had come through, but they just barely covered the bills. Taryn was in financial trouble, hardly able to do more than make her credit card payments and rent. Everyone wanted her; nobody wanted to pay much. She needed this job. Without it, she might end up on the street. Whatever was in the house would learn to live with the fact that they were going to be stuck together for the next month or so. Besides, she didn’t really believe in ghosts and bad vibes couldn’t kill her.

  She didn’t have much history on the place other than dates. She knew a little bit about it from her correspondence with the president of the historical society, though. The first owner had the home built and lived there until 1902. The second owner, and the last person to really live there, bought it in 1903 and lived there until 1934. Although the next owner bought it right away and apparently moved furniture in from the looks of things, it was never truly lived in again, although the land was farmed. The house was sold again in the 1970s. The current owner was the son of the last owner. He inherited the house from his father. That was all Taryn knew. For all intents and purposes, despite the addition and the furniture inside, the house had been empty since 1934 according to her correspondence.

  She was curious about what had happened to the house, but Taryn wasn’t there to make judgments on the events that occurred during the house’s lifespan, at least not out loud. She would probably judge them eventually because, well, she was human. In Taryn’s occupation, it was more important that she painted the structures she saw as they would have been in their glory days, before the devastation they were currently facing. She was to see through their destruction and find remnants of their former splendor and life and try to capture that in paint for future preservation. Before they were demolished. Or, in some rare cases, to help with their restoration. It was true, anyone was capable of coming in and taking pictures of their house or property, even the owners themselves, but what she offered was something special.

  Taryn’s talent was in seeing things and places the way they once were and then showing that in her paintings through creativity and a certain amount of sensitivity. Her degree and studies of historical architecture helped her look at even the most dilapidated of places and restructure them in her paintings, sometimes the only complete version of the building her clients had ever seen. She’d been called in to paint houses that had little more than the columns still standing and she’d been able to give the clients beautiful (their word, not hers, she wasn’t that narcissistic) renderings of their ancestral homes complete with second floor, attic, and gazebo.

  It was true, of course, that most of the places she was hired to capture were in shambles, which made her job a lot harder. This one, however, still looked secure from the outside. Painting it would take a little imagination on her part, since part of it had crumbled, although she had a feeling she would still need to use sensitivity.

  Sometimes that sensitivity could get her in trouble. It was one thing to use your imagination to visualize the way a grand staircase used to look with its polished oak and sparkling crystal chandelier above it. It was another thing to actually see it. And sometimes, just sometimes, she thought she could. If she closed her eyes hard enough, she imagined and even saw what the place would have looked like before time and neglect set in. She even dreamed about the places she worked in, sometimes seeing them fully furnished and ready for balls or weddings or decorated for the holidays.

  Occasionally, she became so wrapped up in a place she became attached to it and invested in it, and sometimes it was hard to move away from those feelings once the job ended. She’d become part of more than one house. It was an occupational hazard. Of course, she wanted to purchase every single one she fell in love with. But nobody paid her that well.

  Chapter 2

  Reagan Jones was an energetic young man, no more than thirty, with a developer’s eye and a politician’s smile. Taryn had met many men like him over the years, those who thirsted for real estate development and hated to see an empty field as much as some people hated to see strip malls. This was the first time she’d met one quite so young, however.

  He hopped out of his SUV with a big smile and had her walking around the property again in no time, pointing out landmarks and explaining his future plans for the area. “It’s all going to be a subdivision,” he said hurriedly. “But not one of those with all the houses looking the same. Each house will have at least one acre, maybe two if they want to purchase more. It will be like having a mini farm!”

  It wouldn’t be anything like having a mini farm, Taryn thought to herself, but she smiled pleasantly. He was, for the time being, sort of her boss. “I’m going to have to get a little more information about the property and was hoping you could answer some questions for me.”

  “Well, I can surely try,” he said seriously, his large hazel eyes growing wide. He had a slight paunch and some of his features were a little large for his small face, but he wasn’t an unattractive man and Taryn was receiving a warm vibe from him, despite his enthusiasm for tearing down a large, seemingly structurally sound, and beautiful home. He spoke with an easy drawl but even with his polished look and laid-back style (he wore loafers and jeans) he was calculating. She suspected that he was one of those men whom everyone liked, even when they were being bulldozed. “I don’t rightly know a whole lot about it. It belonged to my daddy who bought it from the third owner. It got passed down to me because I’m an only child. My daddy owned a lot of properties around here. Nobody’s lived in it since the thirties. My daddy was the oldest son, his other brothers died in the war, and he lived there on the property for about a year and then gave it up. Lived in a camper. Never used the house at all. Just storage, mostly. After he built our house he just used the barn here. The other owners before him didn’t really live in it at all. Maybe a few nights here and there. Nobody’s lived in it permanently, as far as I know, since 1934.”

  “It looks like it,” Taryn mumbled. “I’m sorry, but I stopped here yesterday and walked around a bit. I went inside because it was open and for a minute I was startled and thought someone might be staying here. It looks lived in.”

  “Yeah,” Reagan laughed. “It does that to you. Me? I don’t like to go in there unless I have to. My wife won’t go in at all. Says it gives her the willies. Local kids don’t even bother it. You won’t find anyone sneaking in there to smoke or fool around. I could leave the door open year round and not a soul would touch it.”

  Taryn must have looked skeptical because he laughed. “What? You don’t believe in ghosts? And I thought your job was seeing things that aren’t there. Isn’t that another way of seeing ghosts?”

  Taryn shrugged. “I chalk it up to having a good imagination. And no, I’ve never seen a ghost. I don’t think I believe in them. Not really.”

  Reagan laughed and patted her shoulder. “Well, maybe that’s why you haven’t seen them.”

  “I think I believe in something,” Taryn smiled. “I just don’t know what yet.”

  “Stick around,” Reagan laughed. “Just stick around. You will!”

  Considering her occupation, people were always asking her if she ever saw any ghosts. But what could she tell them? That she always felt the presence of something but could never quite put her finger on what it was? She liked to think of her talent as a kind of sensitivity to leftover energy. Like the photographs she took, she
thought places held memories and figured she was tuned into those, or something to that effect. Occasionally, she did stumble across a spooky place that made her feel uncomfortable, like the old mental hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts (or that Victorian monstrosity that had her seeing shadows and questioning her sanity a few times), but usually after being in it for a couple of days she was able to get past whatever she felt and work well within the environment. As long as she remembered that what she was seeing and feeling was nothing more than a memory or hologram she kept the ill feelings at bay.

  Yesterday had been unnerving, and she hadn’t slept well the night before, but new places always did that to her. Besides, it was possible that she had simply been tired and had imagined what she felt. Old houses had personalities and perhaps this one’s was just a little strong. It didn’t mean that she slept any easier that night, however.

  After a quick trip around the exterior of the house, Reagan went back to the kitchen door Taryn had entered the day before. “This is about the only way you can get in and out. Front’s all boarded up. I can take the boards down if it will help with the doors and stuff.”

  “It would help, actually, especially if the original door is still there behind the planks. Why do you have them boarded up if you say people won’t come in here?”

  “Well, when I first got the house, I didn’t know that. Had the whole thing boarded up. When I saw nobody was going to bother it, I took them down in the back. I like to come in and check on things from time to time...not often though,” he added.

  The kitchen looked the same, vacant and unused, but was set for a breakfast scene that was never going to happen. On closer inspection, the tin cans had obviously been there for a long time, possibly twenty years or more.

  Reagan took her into a room off the kitchen she hadn’t seen the day before. It was a small, narrow room with a single bed and a battered dresser. Both were in bad shape. A man’s work clothes were scattered about the floor and hangers were tossed carelessly about. It appeared someone left in a hurry. The clothes didn’t give the impression to be that far out of style, and Taryn looked at them in confusion. “Was somebody staying here?”

  “Yeah. Two summers ago, we decided to fix this place up, me and my wife. Thought we could add on to it, it doesn’t have but two bedrooms upstairs and we’ve got three kids, and make it real nice again. I heard it used to be a real beauty. So we brought this guy in to pack up the good stuff and haul out the junk. Do some of the landscaping, too. Told him he could stay here while he did it, cause we knew it would take a couple of months.

  “Well, he stays for about a week and then ups and leaves. Tacks a note on my front door saying that he can’t stay no more and he’s gotta be getting back to Indiana, to home. So I call him and ask him if he wants me to send him his clothes and such that he left behind and he says no, he don’t need a thing. Beat all I ever seen.” Reagan shook his head at the memory and laughed. “I came in here and looked around and found his wallet, full of money. I mailed that to him. Must’ve been in a hurry. I’m gonna put in a call to the Salvation Army and see if they can use any of this furniture. My wife has everything at home the way she wants it and doesn’t want me bringing anything else in to mess it up.”

  Taryn smiled pleasantly and gave a nod, hoping it looked to be in encouragement.

  The jovial smile never left Reagan’s face. “You’ll understand that better if you ever meet the missus. She’s real particular about certain things.”

  “If there are two bedrooms upstairs, why didn’t he sleep up there?”

  Reagan shrugged, and turned back to the kitchen. “Don’t know. Might make more sense when you see one of them, though. Came in here that first day and looked around and then said he’d rather sleep down here. I hauled in a bed from our storage unit. He said that was fine.”

  “So after that, you decided not to fix it up?”

  “No, we still thought we might. My wife came over a few times and worked outside. Still keeps some gardening tools here because the shed here is bigger. We live in a subdivision I developed myself and only have but one outbuilding to make room for the swing set and swimming pool. Came in with some boxes—you’ll see them in the living room—and tried to pack up some stuff herself. Then she said she didn’t like it anymore and wasn’t going to come back by herself. She got spooked. That was the end of that.”

  They were heading toward the living room, and her breath caught. She hoped that whatever she felt before was nothing but the result of a long day of driving because she was damned if she was going to look like a fool in front of him. The scent that accosted her on her first visit was already less potent than before. But when they stepped across the doorway, she was still surprised. Nothing. Not even a chill passed over her skin. Maybe it had just been an illusion, she told herself.

  “This here was the dining room,” Reagan continued. “My daddy was going to use it as a living area himself. Must’ve been easier to heat than the living room and the parlor. I don’t know. There was an old couch in here. We already hauled it away.”

  “Was he related to the other owner? Your dad, I mean?”

  “Oh, no. He bought it at auction. And that guy did, too. None of us knew Robert Bowen, the one who lived here longest.”

  “Did Robert live here alone?” The personal background was probably more helpful to Taryn than any other research she could have done. Sure, she had her design books back in her room and a history of the area, but it was the people who made the house and figuring out how they lived put it all into perspective.

  Reagan shook his head and went on into the adjoining room. “No. Well, at the end he did. Died of a heart attack or something or other. In the beginning he was married. She died around five years into the marriage. One of those old-timey diseases that nobody gets anymore. I can’t remember what it’s called. Sorry. Don’t know much about her. They had a daughter but she died, too. That I do know. After that, he lived alone.”

  “How did he make his money? And what did he do through the Depression? Or was this area not hit very hard?”

  “Oh, this area was hit. Kentucky was hit just as hard as anyplace else, though the smaller towns didn’t get all of them riots and stuff cause they was fairly small to begin with and employment had always been bad around here. But it got hit. No, he made his money from tobacco, same as a lot of people here. Even in a Depression, people gotta smoke.”

  So he was a farmer, Taryn made a mental note. And this wasn’t a grand house inside, although it was large, so he probably did at least some of the work himself. She wondered when the wife and daughter died. Local records would show that, if she decided it was important enough to know. It might not be. She had a lot to work with already. She was already starting to get to know the house and too much more might muddle things up. But sometimes her curiosity got the best of her. It was funny how stepping through the doors of a place could instantly start her wheels turning.

  The living room was large as well. She hadn’t noticed before. She’d been too caught up in trying to figure out what was going on. It was the front room, and a glance at the boarded up door gave Taryn faint chills. She brushed them off by telling herself the boards simply blocked out the natural light and made the room unusually dark. That was enough to give anyone the creeps.

  Reagan, as if reading her mind, chuckled. “Guess it does make the place spooky. Sorry it’s so dark in here. I’ll get those taken down. Won’t be able to take any pictures if you can barely see your hand in front of your face. I read your website. I know you like to take pictures first,” he said at her bemused expression.

  “That’s okay,” she shrugged. “I don’t mind being cyber stalked.”

  “This here was the living room. Nothing left in here anymore except the fireplaces. And some old furniture, of course. When Dad died, we took most of the good furniture, especially from these front rooms. Sold anything we could. Nothing really in here, though. Never was. Seems like that’s as far as they got
though because as you saw from the kitchen and as you’ll see from the upstairs, everything’s still left up there from when Robert and his family lived here in the 20s and 30s. Interesting thing about this room is the two staircases. See?”

  Taryn looked around and indeed, saw the two sturdy wooden staircases in the two corners of the room. “Where do they go?”

  “One goes up to one bedroom and one goes to the other. Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. You’d think maybe they was added separately but they weren’t. House was built at the same time except for the back. After the Bowens died off, nobody ever really used the place. Not for long anyway. Just farmed the land.”

  Taryn nodded absently and then wandered over to the nearest staircase and studied it. It was simple and sturdy, but not ornate. Something one might find in a farmhouse. A ray of pale light fell down through the steps, suggesting there might be a window upstairs. The fireplace mantle was decorative, however, with carvings and decorations adorning it. Why spend money on one and not the other?

  Taryn was so intent on her musings she didn’t notice when Reagan wandered out of one room and into the next. Suddenly, a wave of cold air blasted her and she staggered, caught off-guard. Cold needles pricked her skin and as she brought her arms up to cross in front of her protectively, the room began to swim. As if seeing it through a wave of water, she blinked her eyes, and watched as murky shadows began to manifest. Scared at first, she couldn’t help but be a little intrigued as well, and she experimentally reached out her hand to touch a nearby passing shape. As her fingers made contact, a flash of lightning struck them. “Ouch!” she cried out in pain.

  “You okay in there?” Reagan’s voice was faint, as if coming from a well, with a slight echo. She could hear his footsteps coming toward her and she closed her eyes again. When she opened them, he was standing before her and the room was once again empty.

  “Sorry, splinter,” she tried to laugh. “From the staircase.”