Bloody Moor: A Ghost Story (Taryn's Camera Book 8)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  “Holy crap,” Nicky yelped.

  “Well, that’s something anyway,” Shawn said, his voice unsteady.

  “I hate to say I told you so but…” Taryn tried t joke but her voice fell flat.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  TARYN WAS DRAINED. If she hadn’t needed to take advantage of the sunny day to work on her painting, she would’ve crawled back under her duvet and spent the morning in bed. As it was, though, she had to take advantage of every moment of sunshine that Lampeter offered.

  With all of them craving something sweet and each with the need to get up and move around, they’d traveled down to the kitchen at some point, never moving far apart from one another as they moved through the house. They might have been joined at the hips. They’d stayed up in the kitchen until daylight, finishing off the port and going over each photo with a fine-tooth comb. Nicki had given up on using the glass. Bewildered and motivated by what she was seeing, Taryn had turned and caught her downing the bottle all at once, poking around in the bottom for the last few drops. Finally, dog-tired and blurry eyed, they’d give it up and trudged to their respective rooms for bed.

  “You look shattered,” Nicki said sympathetically.

  Taryn looked up from her canvas and nodded. “I’m pretty tired. Might take a nap later.”

  Nicki wasn’t looking so hot herself. She was pale again, and walked as though the movement pained her.

  “You gonna be okay to work today?” Taryn called as Nicki moved past her and headed for the garden.

  “It’s just the port. I’m a lightweight these days,” Nicki smiled weakly. “And I need to take advantage of this light.”

  “That’s what I said,” Taryn agreed. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Shawn was still in bed. Taryn had heard him snoring when she’d passed his room on her way downstairs. The majority of Shawn’s work took place in the little library he’d taken over. He’d set up a drafting table and every available surface was covered with large sheets of paper and blueprints. Taryn had poked her head in there but had yet to enter; the sight reminded her too much of Andrew. Their own home office had stayed like that until his death, and then for a little while after.

  The owners would be there soon. They were currently in Dubai where they apparently had a vacation house. Most of the siblings were not interested in the grunt work of the house, they were leaving that to Joe and his wife Joanna. Taryn had only communicated with them through letters and phone calls, although Nicki had met them in person; they were friends with her father.

  “Nice people,” she’d shrugged when asked. “Kind of lost in their own little world, if you know what I mean. She’s a little loud.”

  Taryn was wondering what the atmosphere in the house would be like once they were there. If Paul’s attitude would be any different.

  She couldn’t stop thinking about what they’d seen in the photos. For the past several years Taryn had watched the past come alive in her photographs. She’d seen furniture appear in empty room, shadows of people who had died long before she was born. Neglected houses come alive and be restored right before her eyes. She had never, however, witnessed anything like what she’d seen last night.

  Taryn knew that many people had died at Ceredigion House. It was referred to as “cursed”, of course, and the area around it as “Bloody Moor.” Taryn had not, however, expected to see most of those dead people in her pictures.

  Sitting on a stool in the Music Room, his back to the door and an oil lamp glowing in the corner, had been a reedy man with a harp balanced between his knees. The backlight had made him appear as little more than a shadow, or perhaps a cardboard cutout stuck into the middle of a painting.

  “Gruffydd Evans,” Shawn had whispered. “I read about him. He used to play at Christmas parties there in the Music Room and was known for being unusually tall for the time period. He was the official harpist for the family, came here with his music for almost seventy years.”

  “He’s been dead for over a hundred years,” Nicki added in a whisper.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He moved here to live on the house’s property when he was ninety,” Shawn answered. “Within four days he was dead. They called it ‘natural causes’.”

  “Right,” Taryn said quietly. She was certain that nobody had actually believed it natural at all.

  That was the first picture they’d seen. The shock had not yet worn off. By the end, they’d be numb.

  “It’s a little girl,” Nicki had pointed to the screen in the next one.

  She stood around four feet tall and looked to be nine or ten years old. Her dress was plain, her blonde hair in braids. Her rosy cheeks looked feverish. She appeared to be playing a game but, in her hands, she held a set of heavy chains. An enormous padlock dangled from one end and she was smiling as she tugged the links across the kitchen floor.

  “A servant?” Nicki asked, gesturing to her plain clothing and tattered shoes.

  “I was taken in by a little girl,” Shawn declared mournfully, shaking his head.

  “Shawn’s monster was only nine years old,” Nicki teased him, lightly slapping him on the arm.

  “Sounded bigger,” he retorted, “and meaner.”

  “Wonder who she was?” Taryn asked.

  Ironically, the kitchen did not look that much different from the way it did today. The modern appliances and fixtures were gone, of course, and the island had been replaced by a table with a butcher block top, but the layout and floor were the same.

  “I don’t know about any child deaths,” Nicki replied. “That’s sad though. I didn’t think we’d be seeing a kid.”

  “I don’t like it when children are involved,” Taryn agreed.

  “This one,” Shawn pointed to the Morning Room on the first floor. “What’s going on here?”

  “I don’t know,” Taryn replied, “but I am loving that room.”

  The Morning Room had never looked more beautiful, nor grand. Today, soiled heavy curtains dragged to the floor, their bottoms dusty and thick with cobwebs. The mismatched furniture pieces from numerous time periods were beaten and bruised-upholstery was torn and discolored and stuffing peeked out from holes in cushions. Damaged replicas of famous paintings hung around the room, replacing the original works of art that had once graced walls. To Taryn’s horror, the oak-paneling had been concealed with white paint.

  In her photograph though, the room was transformed into something that would have been at home in any museum.

  Matching velvet drapes graced the long windows, their dark blue dye regal in the candlelight. Coordinating wall hangings and seat curtains tied the room together. A beautiful Italian tapestry took up the far side of the wall. Taryn could almost see the threads when she zoomed in on the picture.

  The ceiling, normally embarrassed by its broken crown molding and crumbling plaster, was now outfitted with ornate plasterwork and intricate wood carvings.

  The décor was an eclectic mix of French Rococo, Neoclassicism, and Neo-Palladian. The brightness of the yellow and white fabrics complemented the richness of the drapes and the warmth of the mahogany furniture.

  While Taryn was busy appreciating the room’s transformation, Nicki and Shawn were focusing on the man in the corner. He stood by the fireplace, a letter in his hand. His face was contorted in anguish; his hands were balled into fists. He appeared both angry and saddened by the words he was reading.

  “What do you think that letter says?” Shawn asked. “Think we could zoom in on it?”

  When the women looked at him, he shrugged. “What? I’m nosy. I want to know!”

  Taryn sighed. “Me too. And, to be fair, we wouldn’t be seeing it if it weren’t important.”

  They did their best to zoom in and sharpen but they could only see the shadow of words on the other side. There was no way of making out individual letters.

  “Well, he certainly seems displeased by what he’s reading at any rate,” Nicki said cheerfully.

>   Now that she’d seen a few of the altered pictures, she was getting into the spirit of things. Taryn knew that, to Nicki, it was like watching a movie unfold before her. It was difficult to acknowledge the photos as reality, especially when her brain and logic were telling her otherwise.

  “The staircase,” Nicki urged. “Let’s look at that one!”

  To Taryn’s surprise, the same man from the Morning Room now stood at the foot of the stairs. He carried a small traveling case in his hand. A dark-colored cloak was slung around his shoulders and, on his head, he wore a hat.

  “He’s leaving,” Shawn said, pointing to the case.

  “And in the middle of the night, too,” Taryn added. “Look at the clock.”

  The clock at the top of the stairs was showing 2:00 and the sky outside the window was black.

  “Unless it was just storming really badly that afternoon…” Nicki suggested.

  “So are we to assume he received a terrible letter and had to leave because of it?” Shawn asked.

  “Or that he’s sneaking out,” Taryn said. “Where are the other people? Why is he carrying his own suitcase?”

  Nicki had sat back in her chair and sighed. “These were real people with real lives, weren’t they? Now I feel as though I am intruding.”

  They quickly flipped through the rest of the photographs, pausing on the ones that caught their eyes. There was the man slumped over his desk in the library, a servant lying on the floor with her eyes closed in a parlor. Someone packing a meal into crates in the kitchen. Taryn paused on a shot of Freckles sitting in a window, watching a bird that pecked at the glass.

  The last photo they brought up was one of the shots taken in Taryn’s own bedroom.

  The woman stood at the window. She wore a stay and a hooped petticoat beneath her gray dress. Her hair fell to her waist in crinkled waves. A man was crumpled on the floor at her feet. A crimson puddle pooled around her. The world she gazed into outside her window was dark, so it was possible to see her expression in her reflection. She appeared neither angry nor scared, only the disappointment of resignation.

  “These are all people who have died at the house,” Nicki said at last. “That’s why we’re seeing them. The maid? She literally just dropped over dead one day. Miriam told me. She’s meant to haunt the second floor. And the harpist? The cat, of course. Don’t you see what we’re seeing? We’re seeing all the deaths of Ceredigion House!”

  “She’s right,” Shawn agreed. “If we’d taken outside shots, we might be looking at dead animals right now.”

  “What do you mean?” Taryn asked with concern.

  “It wasn’t just the people that suffered here,” Nicki explained. “The horses. There was a virus or a plague or something. Ten out of their fifteen horses died within six months of each other.”

  “They couldn’t keep dogs here,” Shawn added. “They would apparently show up out of nowhere and be dead within weeks.”

  When Taryn had returned to her room she’d walked over the same window where Iona, the gray lady, had stood. The blood stain was gone. Someone over the past two-hundred years had either found a way to get it out or it had simply faded with time. Taryn had leaned forward, her hands on the glass the same way Iona’s had been. The glass had moved a little and the frame around the window had crumbled, falling to her feet in chunks. Taryn had jumped back in fright. She’d forgotten just how wobbly that window was. If she’d pushed even a little harder, she might have been flying through the air, the cold pavement waiting below.

  Now, on the bench in front of the house with her paintbrush in hand, Taryn closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. What kind of place had she come to?

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  TARYN SAT ALONE AT THE END of the long dining room table. Nicky wasn’t feeling well and Shawn was in Aberystwyth, visiting a friend at the university. Miriam had talked Taryn into going out with her in Lampeter. She had finished eating and gotten dressed and now she was sitting at the table, waiting for Miriam to come and get her.

  With the drapes pulled shut and only two small lamps doing their best to light the substantial area, it was gloomy to say the least. Still, the Georgian-style room was tastily decorated and symmetrical in design, lacking some of the more opulent styles found in the rest of the house. The oak-paneled walls were intact in here but the plaster ceiling and brightly-colored chairs offset the darkness. Miriam had told her that, during parties in the past, the room had held as many as one-hundred guests and a flock of servants.

  The chairs and buffets spread throughout the large space carried such names as Sheraton, Hepplewhite, and Chippendale. Taryn thought she spied an original Rodin and Picasso, too. There was more money in that room alone than she’d know in a lifetime. The owners had talked about getting all of their art out and opening a small gallery on the first floor. She would love to see the rest of the paintings and statues-the ones packed away.

  When Taryn heard Miriam’s honking outside, she grabbed her purse and camera and stood to leave. She was heading for the door that would take her into the entryway when a noise from the kitchen had her pausing. It wasn’t the dinner bell, thank goodness, nor was it Shawn’s chains dragging across the floor. It was definitely a person.

  Thinking that Nicki might have come downstairs for a midnight snack, Taryn turned and walked to the door separating the rooms. She wanted to say goodbye again, and ask if she needed anything.

  When she reached the door, however, she heard a sniffle. Someone was crying.

  Now concerned, Taryn quickly gave the door a push and stepped inside. Shadows filled the kitchen, all dancing in the wavering bulb of the lamp in the corner. There was a moment of darkness, followed by a quick flash of light as the lamp blinked off and on. Taryn stood by the island and held her breath as she looked around, trying to adjust her eyes. Nicki wasn’t there, nor was anyone else as far as she could see. She could hear someone, however. The sniveling came on louder the longer she stood there; whoever was there was only a few feet from her. Little footsteps suddenly raced across the floor away from her; the hard soles of their shoes smacked against the tile.

  Taryn felt her heart quicken as the light flashed off again and then came back on. She felt as though she were standing in the middle of a disco club, the strobe light dancing around her.

  She turned and moved hurriedly towards the door, uninterested in pursuing the incident any further. Just as she was leaving, however, the room was filled with the sound of tiny rocks raining down upon the floor. Taryn hesitated and looked down. She’d heard them clear as day, heard them hitting the floor and rolling in every direction. She saw nothing, however.

  And then, all of a sudden, she saw the tiny clear marble with swirls of color inside lurching slowly and deliberately towards her feet. It paused a few inches from her and then, as though someone had given it a slight nudge, commenced its rolling. When it struck her toe, the marble bounced off and then returned, this time coming to a halt against her boot.

  Taryn bent down and picked it up, feeling its smooth hardness in her hand. It was certainly real anyway.

  From somewhere on the other side of the kitchen, a child giggled. The sound was canned, hollow as though coming from deep inside a well. Then Miriam honked again, the lamp stopped flickering, and she knew that she was once again alone.

  ***

  Miriam’s friends were all in their early forties to early fifties. They were on their second or third glasses of wine by the time Miriam and Taryn reached the pub, the Ivy Bush. When Miriam made her introductions, Taryn was surprised to see Miranda, her server from the Royal Oak.

  “It’s a small place,” Miranda smiled as she scooted over to make room for Taryn. “We’re all friends here.”

  “For the most part,” Miriam added.

  At Taryn’s protest, Miriam took her drink order and saddled up to the bar. Taryn quickly dug through her purse, looking for the correct change so that she could pay her back.

  “So what’s it like
, living there at the cursed house?” A woman with short black hair, thick glasses, and purple lips shouted from across the table.

  “Not so bad,” Taryn answered diplomatically. The music was so loud she had to raise her voice to be heard. Although it was only a Tuesday night, the small pub was filled with everyone from college students playing pool in the back to elderly couples packed around small tables with tall glasses. She liked the mix, appreciate the variety of people. It wasn’t something she saw a lot of back home.

  “You couldn’t get me to go out there and spend the night,” Miranda said. “I don’t have a itching to die today.”

  “Do you think that?” Taryn asked, her curiosity piqued. “Do you think something would happen to you there?”

  The other women at the table were laughing heartily when Miriam returned with the drinks. “She wants to know if we think something bad will happen to us at the house,” purple-lipstick woman said.

  Miriam gazed down at Taryn fondly and handed her the drink. “Aw, bless.”

  “You see, dear, everyone who stays there for any length of time dies eventually,” Miranda explained. Her eyes were glassy from her drink and her mascara and eyeliner were starting to smudge.

  “Or gets really hurt,” someone else chimed in.

  “Either way, you couldn’t get me to do it,” Miranda snorted.

  “Don’t scare her now,” Miriam warned them. “She’s liable to pack up her belongings and faff off.”

  “Iona, she put a curse on the whole place,” another woman who, until that moment had been quiet, added. “She killed while she was alive and now that she’s dead she’s making sure nobody enjoys their stay.”

  The others nodded in agreement but Taryn wasn’t sure she concurred. She had hurt her hip, but that happened all the time. It wasn’t the house’s fault. And, if she were totally honest with herself, she felt safe at the house. There had been some real moments of terror, like what had happened in the kitchen right before she left, but there was something innocuous about the house. She didn’t want to leave. She was needed there. The house desired something of her and she was willing to figure out what that might be.