Something was niggling her in the back of her mind but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Something about what she’d just said. Sighing, Taryn returned to the sink. She started to move to the other side of the counter to grab another dish when she found herself slipping on something wet and sticky.
When she looked down, she saw that she was standing in a small pool of blood.
“Geeze, Shawn,” she said, trying to skirt her way around the puddle. “Did you cut your finger or something?”
“No,” he snapped. “I don’t generally bleed all over the kitchen floor and leave it for someone else to clean up.”
They were looking at each other with accusation when the reality hit them both. She didn’t know which one bolted from the room first. She would remember clamoring up the stairs, trying to make her legs pump as fast as they could. She’d remember the look of panic on Shawn’s face when he’d turned and grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down the corridor. She’d remember moving in slow motion, feeling as though she were moving through molasses or in a dream-her destination within sight but growing farther away with every step. She’s remember the flickering light sconce, the sound of the orchestra from the “Flowers of December” song raging in her head.
She’d never forget bursting into Nicki’s room, seeing her lying on the bed in a pool of blood, death standing over her.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“YOU NEED TO GO HOME, LASS, and get yourself some rest.” Joe stood over Taryn and offered his hand.
Taryn raised up from the hospital chair and looked around the room. Shawn was sitting on the other side, lost in his laptop. Nicki, still hooked up to tubes and monitors, was asleep. She’d needed three blood transfusions and was in shock when they’d found her. If it had been just a few minutes later. If Taryn hadn’t known CPR…
“A placental abruption,” Shawn had murmured bitterly in the hospital waiting room. “She didn’t even know she was pregnant.”
Her parents had arrived later that night. Her father, distraught, had barely left his daughter’s side. Neither had Shawn and Taryn.
I made her walk around Aberystwyth, Taryn thought with disgust. Made her go for walks all over the uneven moor. Worried her with talks of ghosts. Had her drinking alcohol…
“It happens sometimes,” the doctor had told Nicki’s father. “You might never know why.”
Her ex-boyfriend was meant to be on his way, but that was said two days ago.
“Come on then lass, I’ll take you back,” Joe said. “And then bring you back to Carmarthen later if you wish.”
She didn’t want to leave Nicki but she’d been in the hospital for two days. She was bone weary and needed to sleep in a real bed, eat something that wasn’t from a vending machine.
The same police officers that had questioned her about Paul’s death had arrived at the house even before the ambulance. They hadn’t kept their suspicion from their eyes.
In this instance, however, Taryn wanted to accept responsibility. She truly believed it might be her fault. She had known Nicki wasn’t well. She should have pushed her to rest, made her go to the doctor. If something happened to Nicki.
Taryn tried to imagine a world without Nicki’s smile and laughter and couldn’t. It didn’t seem possible that such a world could exist.
“Go on,” Shawn urged her. “I’ll be here in case she wakes up. When she wakes up.”
Taryn was quiet on the way back to the house. Joe and Joanna had been good to them. They’d sent flowers, visited Nicki, and even offered to pay for a private room. Taryn had called Matt and blubbered to the point that he couldn’t understand what she was saying. There was no way for her to adequately express her upset and sorrow. If Nicki had died…
Damn that house, Taryn thought to herself. Damn it.
People were right. It was evil.
After she’d taken a small nap and eaten a sandwich, Taryn found herself wandering through the rooms alone. She was the only one there. Miriam had still not returned. The police were still questioning her. They continued to insist that a woman had been standing in the room with him which, to them, meant she might as well have just pushed him herself.
With only Miss Dixie for comfort, Taryn walked from one room to the next, just trying to make sense of what had happened. When she reached the kitchen she stopped and took a picture. The small island there in the middle of the floor had been a good place-a place where they’d fixed supper together and laughed with one another. She wanted to remember it.
Taryn had taken dozens of pictures in that kitchen already. So when she saw the man standing in the middle of the floor, she was shocked.
The young man had a port belly and a patch of light brown hair. He wore a dusty cap and stained shirt. In his hands he held a paper that he was studying grimly, his face twisted in a sneer.
Taryn quickly zoomed in on the paper in an attempt to make out any letters. The top half was blurry, too hidden in shadow to read. But at the very bottom, in very legible script, she made out:
Amlodd
Taryn knew exactly what she was looking at-it was almost certainly the letter that Amlodd had left behind, telling Iona of his sudden departure. The one she never received. But who was the man? Why was he reading Iona’s letter? Why hadn’t he given it to her?
Taryn couldn’t possibly do anything else for Nicki at the moment. A cleaning service had come in and stripped the bed, added new linens and freshened the room so that if Nicki returned she wouldn’t have to see what she’d left. Taryn had gone a step further and moved all of Nicki’s stuff to the room on the other side of her.
At this point, though, she was simply wandering around the house in misery. She had to do something productive.
“The center,” Taryn said firmly. She’d go to the University of Wales Religious Experience Center and find out what she could. It was something, at least.
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE CHEERFUL CURVY WOMAN with the cropped brown hair and big eyes opened the door for Taryn with a grin. “Hello there,” she smiled. “I’m so glad to have some company on this dreary afternoon. I’m Chris.”
“Taryn,” Taryn smiled back, relieved to in the presence of such a sunny disposition.
The center took up the top floor of the Religious Studies building. It consisted of offices, a conference room, a small museum, and an archive room with thousands of interviews, stories, and transcriptions of religious experiences from around the world.
“I am not entirely sure what I am looking for,” Taryn said, “but I want to know more about witchcraft in this area. And especially Iona Haycock.
“Ah,” Chris nodded in understanding. “You’re the one out at the old country house.”
“My reputation precedes me I take it?” Taryn asked drily.
Chris patted her on the back and smiled. “I pay no mind to any idle talk from idle mouths. As it is, I am friends with Miranda from the pub. She told me all about your project and art.”
Taryn felt sheepish.
Chris ushered Taryn into a seat while she walked around the archives, opening files and removing papers here and there as she went.
“Witchcraft here has a long and varied history,” she began. In the 1500s, the Bishop of St. David’s accused a woman by the name of Tangwlyst Ferch Glen of living in sin. In retaliation, she was meant to have made a curse against him. A poppet, or voodoo doll as you might call it, was involved.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” Taryn muttered.
“Nor can I,” Chris agreed. With her hands full of sheets of paper, she took a seat across from Taryn. “In 1594, Gwen Ferch Ellis was accused of witchcraft and hanged for her wicked ways. She was meant to be a healer and to help people. For whatever reason, however her friend Jane Conway talked her into leaving a cursed charm at Jane’s enemy’s house.”
“So Jane got her to do her dirty work and the other woman was hung?” Taryn asked. “That sounds modern to me.”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
Chris laughed. “Sometimes, while collecting evidence of black magic, they could collect urine from the victim. If the witch drank it she was meant to suffer such agonizing pain that she would spill the beans, so to speak.”
“Or her lunch,” Taryn added.
Chris nodded her head. “But I imagine that you are wanting to know how all of this applies to Iona.”
Taryn leaned forwarded and studied the other woman. “Do you think she was a witch?”
“Yes,” Chris replied without hesitation. “But not a bad one.”
She gestured to the pages in her hand. “I have here sheet after sheet of records from Ceredigion House. People who went there to drink from the Cup and be healed-and they were. Iona helped people, just as her mother did before.”
“Then why did so many people die?” Taryn asked. “And animals, too?”
“Have you ever thought that perhaps they didn’t die because they went there but went there because they were meant to die?”
Taryn shook her head, confused.
“You think about that a bit, dear girl,” Chris encouraged her.
“I think she was pregnant. I think that’s why they waited on the hanging. I don’t think they let anyone know because they didn’t want anything bad to happen to the baby.”
Chris cocked her head to the side and considered. “You may just have a point there. As it so happens, her hand maid, Anwen, did have a baby at Taryn’s time of execution.”
“I knew it,” Taryn exclaimed. “She told her servant and she helped her by taking the baby when it was born. So someone at the jail took pity on her and kept quiet about it?”
Chris looked as excited as Taryn felt. “I believe you’re onto something. You know, nobody has ever considered that before. Anwen was married, after all. It was just assumed that the child was hers.”
“Chris, when Amlodd left, how did anyone know his problems with illegitimacy?”
“It was Garym, her stable manager, that spread the news,” Chris replied.
“The same Garym that she was accused of murdering?”
“That’s the one.”
“So do we really know that he wasn’t going to inherit his fortune? Or has everyone just taken Garym’s word for it?”
Chris scratched her head and considered. “I reckon I don’t rightly know. I can certainly look into that for you.”
“So let’s see…” Taryn said. “He left in the middle of the night and he dies days later. Garym tells everyone that he isn’t going to inherit his fortune so people just assume that’s why he left. He didn’t tell Iona he was leaving, he just ran out on her. A little while later, Iona kills Garym and we don’t know why. Is all of that right?”
“That sounds right.”
Except that Taryn knew that Amlodd had, indeed, written to Iona to tell her he was leaving. For whatever reason, Garym had intercepted that note.
“Chris?” Taryn asked suddenly. “Was there a little girl that died at the house?”
“Oh yes,” Chris answered sadly. “A poor lass drowned during that same period. Was found in the lake with big chains wrapped around her. She was found just two weeks after the other poor man that died in the lake.”
Taryn straightened. An awful story was starting to click together in her head. “How did Amlodd die?”
“I believe it was poison,” Chris replied. “It was assumed it was over the inheritance, that he was causing too much of a fuss over it.”
Taryn, shaking but feeling a renewed sense of energy, stood. “Thank you for everything. I mean that. I have a lot to think about.”
“Please come back and visit me,” Chris said. “I do mean that.”
Taryn was halfway out the door before she remembered something. “Chris,” she said, “you said that Anwen had a child. I know that was several centuries ago but is there any chance to track down a descendent?”
Chris beamed from ear to ear. “But of course! We keep excellent genealogy records here. I can tell you who what person is right now.”
And so she did.
***
The horse was strong and powerful under her. As he pumped his legs harder and harder she felt herself flying over the land, her hair streaming out behind her. If she rode hard enough, long enough, then perhaps…
But no. She mustn’t think that way. She had a duty-a duty from her mother and grandmother and grandmother before that. The times were hard and troubling but that was what she’d been made for.
Love had crushed her. Love had reached inside, grabbed her heart, and smashed it to pieces as though it were a teacup of the finest china. She’d grieved, oh yes had she grieved, and now she was hollow. Nothing mattered any longer.
What was the point in going on when you didn’t have a heart?
The sky above her opened up and the rain fell down around her. Her horse stumbled over a log and for a moment she thought she might fall, even wished for it, but he righted himself quickly and carried on. They’d been riding for hours, crisscrossing across the land, the vast openness soothing. When she struggled with the idea of being enclosed, felt as though there were too many walls around her, she came here. Nothing but sky and land for as far as she could see.
They’d come for her; he’d see to that.
It no longer mattered. She was no longer real.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?” Shawn asked doubtfully.
“I think I have to,” Taryn replied.
Shawn nodded and they continued their walk around the side of the house. They went on past the garden, ambling through the thick fog that was dampening their clothes.
“I should have realized that the things I saw and heard in the beginning were all connected,” she sighed. “There were just so many ghosts. It was hard to tell what was what.”
When they came to a stop in front of the stable yard, Shawn turned to Taryn and sighed. “I don’t know if I’m ready for this.”
She reached out and took his hand. “I’m just glad you’re here with me and I’m not alone.”
That night in the stable yard. The sound of the child crying. Together, they walked through the opening and Taryn turned Miss Dixie on. Within moments the courtyard was filled with bright light, her flashes bringing daytime into night. She turned from every direction, taking as many as she could.
“Now the back door,” Shawn prodded quietly.
Without talking, they walked through the courtyard and side garden until they reached the kitchen. Standing a few feet back, Taryn aimed her camera at the dinner bell and the steps. Then Shawn opened the door and let her inside. Now, she stood in the kitchen and shot from every angle, focusing on the dining room door.
From there they entered the room where she’d seen Amlodd standing but the fireplace, the letter in his hand. More pictures.
And up the stairs to Taryn’s bedroom.
Shawn remained at her side the entire time, sometimes offering balance when the light flashed too harshly but never wavering. His strength was necessary.
When they were finished he quietly set up her laptop and she inserted the memory card.
“Ready?” he asked.
She nodded.
***
The story Miss Dixie shared with them was one of sorrow, greed, and death. Taryn was sorry that her gift allowed her to see the past now. Sometimes perhaps the past didn’t need to be seen. Sometimes it was just too much.
Shawn and Taryn went through the entire thing twice and then fell back against her wall, neither able to speak.
They had seen it all.
Seen the little girl crying in the corner of the stable yard. “I didn’t do it! I didn’t do it!”
That was after, of course, she’d been in the kitchen playing with her marbles and overheard the conversation between Garym and Amlodd in the dining room. After she’d been caught by Garym peeking through the slit in the door, where she’d seen Amlodd offering him money. After she’d seen the look of greed and anger on Garym’s
face-a look that said it wasn’t enough.
After those things, but before Garym had wrapped the chain around her body and tossed her into the lake.
The main pointing at the water, he’d been trying to tell Taryn that, yes, something else had happened there. Something terrible. He’d been warning them, trying to get them to see. That lake probably held other secrets, secrets they might never know.
They’d watched Amlodd take off in the middle of the night, scared and worried. They’d also seen the cook up early that morning, packing him a meal for his travels. Taryn and Shawn had watched Garym slip the horse medication into the food; the cook had not.
They’d watched as Garym skulked up the stairs with a knife in his hand, the silver blade flashing in the candlelight. Seen him standing over Iona’s bed while she slept, her black hair spilling around her white pillow. Then they’d seen her drive the knife into his heart. And stand in wait for what would come.
“He blackmailed Amlodd for something,” Shawn said. “We might never know what that was.”
“Probably threatened to kill Iona if he didn’t pay,” Taryn added. “Or turn her in, which was what happened.”
“Killed the servant girl for overhearing then decided that Amlodd might tell on him anyway and just offed him too?”
Taryn nodded. “That’s what it looks like to me.”
“Was Amlodd going back to get more money?”
“I guess so. Or a bigger weapon.”
“She never got the letter saying he was going to return,” Taryn sighed. “And then he died. She didn’t mind being carted off to jail. She died thinking he’d just left her. She was pregnant and alone and her one friend in the world was gone.”
“Not her only friend,” Shawn argued. “Look what Anwen did for her.”
“It was self-defense and she never killed any of those other people,” Taryn said.
Shawn pulled Taryn down to his chest and they lay there quiet, back to their own thoughts. It had become a house of sadness.
Bloody Moor: A Ghost Story (Taryn's Camera Book 8) Page 20
