She could see a few people in the front nodding their heads in agreement. Sensing kindred spirits, Taryn felt her nerves ease up.
“In my job I recreate structures that are usually in disrepair. I help restore them to their former glory through my art. I’ve always had a huge imagination and been able to visualize these structures. Well, I took a lot of historical preservation and architecture classes in college, too. Those helped.”
The audience gave her a round of polite laughter and Taryn’s ears reddened.
“The best part about what I do is that now I can actually see some of the things I’ve imagined for years. And I guess, in a way, that part is a gift,” she finished.
For the next half hour Taryn showed them more than twenty-five photographs, all featuring before and after shots of rooms that had once been bare and then suddenly filled with remnants from its past. She watched and listened as the onlookers gasped, laughed, and shook their heads in awe. Never before had Taryn felt so comfortable talking about this part of her life, expect for when she spoke to Matt and their mutual friend Rob. The people there were all strangers to her, but she could tell they were totally invested and interested in what she had to say.
When she was finished Jerry opened up the floor to questions and brought Taryn a chair to sit in on the stage while she answered them.
The first question was from a young woman in a long peasant skirt and hair that reached her waist. She had a loud, booming voice that carried across the room with ease. “Have you always been able to see and communicate with spirts?”
Taryn shook her head no. “This started fairly recently. A friend, and someone who is kind of an expert on these things, believes my thirtieth birthday might have been a factor. I did have some experiences as a child but I’d forgotten about them and written several off as something else.”
The next question came from an elderly gentleman. His wife helped him stand and then continued holding his hand as he spoke. “Can you talk to the spirits yourself? Do they answer you?” His voice shook and he looked on the verge of tears. Taryn was troubled by the way his eyes bore into her, pleading.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t think some of them were actual spirits. I think they may have been leftover energy. But there have been others I communicated with and, at the time, it felt like they could understand me.”
He continued to stand while his whole body quivered. “We lost our grandson in a fire last November. Have you ever tried contacting anyone on purpose?”
The hopeful look on his face just about broke Taryn’s heart. She hadn’t planned on that kind of question. “I’ve tried,” she admitted. “I think it did work once, but it may have just been a coincidence. I lost my husband, well, my fiancé really, and I would like to contact him as well. I understand how you feel.”
He nodded his head in disappointment and then slid back into his chair. Taryn watched as his wife wrapped her arm around him and nestled her head on his shoulder.
“Does this happen everywhere you go?” someone shouted from the back of the room.
“No,” Taryn replied. “Not everywhere. And not even every time at the same place. For instance, I might take a picture of this room and see a party set up from one hundred years ago. An hour later I might stand in the same spot, take the same picture, and get nothing but an empty room.”
“Can you try it and see?” Jerry asked, smiling.
Taryn bit her lip. If it didn’t work, would they think her a fraud? She’d already taken dozens of pictures in the hotel and none of them had been unusual.
The rapturous applause following his question left her no choice. Jerry gestured to someone in the back and the overhead lights were flipped on, filling the room with artificial sunlight. “You’re on the spot now, Miss Dixie,” Taryn whispered as she turned her camera on. “No pressure.”
Standing on the stage and facing the audience, Taryn aimed her camera at the middle of the room and snapped. She took three pictures in total, trying to visualize the past as she did. The ballroom was original to the first hotel. Although many people had died in the ballroom, it had been from smoke inhalation and not from flames. The flames had only destroyed one end of it, the end the stage was located on, since that’s the part that was connected to the hotel. The rest had been damaged by smoke and water, but salvaged and restored.
As the audience waited impatiently, Taryn removed her memory card and inserted it into her laptop. Within moments the pictures had uploaded and they were looking at them on the big screen. The lights were dimmed again.
As the first image appeared the audience caught a glimpse of themselves from Taryn’s viewpoint. The room was bright and cheerful, the expressions on people’s faces nervous and excited.
In the next image, the round tables full of cardboard coffee cups, Coke cans, and digital cameras were a little harder to see. The room was darker, the expressions on faces difficult to make out.
At first, Taryn wasn’t sure what she was looking at in the third. The tables were still there and still covered with drinks. The digital cameras had been replaced by plates and silverware, however. The audience was no longer standing. Some were running, some were lying limply on the ground, and some were clawing at their throats, eyes bulging and tongues protruding as they screamed in vain.
The excited and nervous expressions on their faces had been exchanged for sheer terror.
Taryn was sitting at the bar in the hotel lobby, sipping on a whiskey, when the elderly gentleman approached her. He was moving slowly, as though every step took effort, and his wife stayed at his side, holding onto his elbow. They walked in tandem, their movements together as fluid as water.
“Hello there young lady,” he said as they neared her. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“I needed a little something before going home,” she apologized. She wondered how it looked, her sitting there alone at a bar with two whiskey glasses in front of her. She was already halfway finished with her second.
“Nothing wrong with a little something to whet your whistle,” he said approvingly.
“Did you not want to go on the ghost hunt?” Taryn asked with a smile. Jerry had asked her to come along with them but she felt like she’d had enough excitement for the night.
“Oh no, no,” the gentleman replied. “I’ll just leave that to the young folks. I was wondering if, well…” His voice trailed off and his face flushed with embarrassment.
“He wants to know if you can try to contact our grandson,” his wife offered. She lovingly ran her hand up his arm and smiled at him. “We’ve been to a psychic but she wasn’t able to communicate with him. Bob has a good feeling about you, though.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Taryn answered. She didn’t want to disappoint them and felt like if she tried contacting their grandson and failed it would be heartbreaking for all of them. “I’ve never tried for someone I don’t know, just myself. I don’t think I’d be any good at it.”
“Please.” It was one word and not even a question but the gentleman’s desperation bled through. There was no way Taryn could refuse.
“I’ll try,” she vowed. “Do you have something of his?”
“Yes,” the woman nodded. “In our room. If you’ll come with us…”
Taryn finished off her drink, paid the bartender, and then set off with the couple. “I’m Charlene,” Bob’s wife said as they made their way down a long, thickly-carpeted corridor. “We’ve been married for fifty-five years. We come here every summer. Been coming for twenty-something years.”
“We used to bring the grandkids,” Bob explained with a slight smile. He stopped in front of a door and fished for his room key in his pants pocket. “After Timmy passed away, though, none of the others wanted to come back. He was the heart of our family, the one who kept us all going. This was his place. The others didn’t care as much.”
Charlene bobbed her head in agreement, her eyes watering. “We were given a gift with him. Everyone
knew it. Our family hasn’t been the same since.”
“How old was he?” Taryn asked as they filed into the bedroom.
The room was extraordinarily neat. If not for the house shoes at the end of the bed and an Agatha Christie novel on the nightstand it wouldn’t have been obvious anyone was staying in it. Taryn thought of the hurricane that she normally left behind in her wake and grinned. She really could make a mess in a short amount of time.
“He was eleven,” Charlene replied. From the closet she produced a small framed picture while Bob picked up something from one of the room’s wing-backed chairs. He returned to Taryn holding a stuffed neon orange elephant.
“This was his,” he explained thinly, handing the stuffed animal to her. “Our daughter gave it to us. It’s one of the few things that made it out of the fire.”
Taryn balanced on the edge of their bed and studied the picture while holding the elephant in her lap. Timmy had been an elfin child with a sweet smile, slight build, and prominent ears. In the picture he leaned against a tree with a puppy at his feet.
“What happened?”
“His parents were out for the night and had hired a babysitter,” Charlene said when it became clear that Bob wasn’t going to answer. “It was cold and his room was drafty. The sitter put a space heater at the foot of his bed. He must have kicked off the covers in the middle of the night. A blanket landed on the heater, and it caught fire.”
“I keep seeing him trying to get out the door,” Bob mumbled, his eyes filling with tears. It had swollen shut so it would’ve been impossible to open it. “I see him crying and pulling at the knob.”
“It keeps him up at night,” Charlene added. Her own eyes were reddening as well. “He has trouble sleeping.”
“What did the investigator say?” Taryn asked. “Was there any way to determined how he died? Where his body was, maybe?” Taryn felt horrible for asking the questions but the more she knew the more it might help.
Bob shook his head. “Our daughter didn’t want to know the details. She was distraught. Her breakdown was so great that she had to be heavily medicated to attend the funeral. We don’t want to ask her any questions. She’s doing better now.”
Taryn nodded. She understood. She hadn’t wanted to know the details of Andrew’s car wreck either but often wondered how long he’d suffered. She’d nearly driven herself insane imagining him lying on the side of the road, bleeding to death or even burning to death, while he waited for help. She’d never asked because she was afraid of the answers. It was enough to drive a person crazy.
Gesturing for the couple to have a seat on the chairs, Taryn stood up and placed the elephant on the bed. She propped the picture up beside him. Taryn sat down on the floor and made herself as comfortable as possible.
After turning Miss Dixie “on” Taryn closed her eyes and tried to focus on Timmy. It wasn’t easy for Taryn to clear her mind, thanks to all the rubbish that danced around in her head at all times, but she imagined a blank screen and worked from there. Little by little she brought Timmy’s face onto the screen. She focused on his sweet smile, his little hands, and his pointy ears. She saw him holding the elephant in his arms, his body tucked into the blankets.
Soon, the air around her began to change. It was a slight difference at first, just a small rise in temperature. Little beads of sweat began forming on her forehead, a warm flush spread throughout her body. It warmed the tips of her fingers, the ends of her toes, and filled her stomach like hot apple cider. Then the air was heavier, more concentrated around her. She found herself struggling to catch her breath, as though something heavy was sitting on her chest.
When she found herself beginning to panic Taryn opened her eyes, lifted Miss Dixie, and snapped a picture of the bed. One, two, three times she snapped. Something then, instinct maybe, had her turning to Bob and Charlene. Pointing the camera at them, she took one last shot before the air exploded from her chest and sent her reeling backward in a coughing fit.
“Are you okay?” Charlene cried, rushing to her side.
Taryn felt like her whole body was on fire. The fever coursing through her was still strong, her heart still racing. Slowly, as Charlene stroked her back, coolness washed over her. Her heavy breathing subsided and she was left lying on the floor, shivering like a fool.
“I’m sorry,” Taryn apologized as she unsteadily rose to her feet. “I don’t know what happened.”
“It got damned hot in here for a minute, I can tell you that,” Bob proclaimed.
“I don’t know if I got anything or not,” Taryn warned them, “but I’ll look.”
It didn’t take long to find out.
The first shot of the bed was a perfectly normal one, if perhaps a little blurry. The orange elephant and picture were exactly where she placed them. In the second picture, however, a small boy lay on the pillow, his little arms wound tightly around the stuffed animal. The blanket sported a superhero image, not the generic hotel floral. In the third image the boy was still in the bed. The blanket was no longer on him, however; it had fallen to the floor. Flames encircled the bed, clawing at the ceiling and licking the walls. Thick, billowy smoke formed a cloud above and reached its tendril arms downward. Even in the somewhat grainy image you could see the boy’s coloring had turned to pale blue. His eyes were still shut.
He had not died trying to escape. He had never been aware of what was happening to him.
As the implication hit Bob and Charlene they collapsed against one another. One of them, and Taryn was never sure which (and it could very well have been her), let out a sob.
They all grew still, however, when Taryn flipped to the last picture.
Bob and Charlene sat in the standard hotel room chairs. Both looked serious, anticipation on their faces. Charlene’s hands were folded tightly in her lap. Bob’s left leg was crossed over his right.
And between them, one hand on each shoulder, stood a small boy.
Chapter 8
Still reeling from the events at the hotel, the ride back to her house was a sober one.
She’d left Bob and Charlene sitting on their bed, holding their grandson’s picture. She’d waited until they’d stopped crying but the stark, wild looks in their eyes had almost been worse. She hoped that, in time, what they’d seen would bring them some amount of comfort.
One thing was for sure, however: Taryn was not cut out to be a professional psychic. She supposed that at the end of the day crossing off a prospective career choice was fairly productive.
It was after midnight as she chugged along the dark road in her little golf cart. She was the only vehicle on the road and felt silly for not driving her car. She also felt completely exposed; the sensation was unsettling. She’d had no idea how much comfort and sense of safety her vehicle offered with its enclosure. Although she liked the feel of the wind in her hair and the night air on her skin, there was little separating her from the outside world, and sometimes Taryn wanted that separation, that disconnection.
Lost in thought, she almost didn’t see the faint flashing light as she pulled into her driveway. A second later and she would’ve rammed right into the cyclist and sent him flying through the air. As it was, she managed to slam on her brakes and swerve to avoid hitting him.
The crash of metal against pavement sickened her. Praying that nobody was hurt Taryn jumped out and ran towards the heap on the ground.
“Am I alive?” came the low moan.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Taryn chanted as she squatted down and took stock of the situation. A young man with long black hair down to his waist lay sprawled on the side of the road. His legs were twisted under his bike but his helmet was still on.
“I don’t think I’m broken. Can you help me move the bike?” he asked.
Taryn gingerly pulled it out from under him and then helped him to his feet. He towered over her small frame and even in the darkness she could see the tight mass of muscles on his bare legs and arms. Dark spots had formed on his right knee
and elbow, and she could smell the blood from where she stood.
“I am sooo sorry,” she apologized. She could feel hot tears springing to her eyes; she thought she’d just about rather die than hurt someone. “I was daydreaming or something. I just didn’t expect anyone to be out riding this late.”
“Yeah, it’s my fault,” he said, dusting himself off and wincing. His accent was something she wasn’t sure she’d ever heard before, curiously flat and yet still somehow musical. “I saw you coming and saw your turn signal and for some reason thought I could beat you.”
“Well here, come inside and I’ll give you some Band-Aids and something to drink,” she offered. She knew she should’ve been concerned about having a strange man inside her house at that hour but since she’d almost killed him, it was the least she could do.
“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” he said gratefully.
Taryn waited while he walked the bike up to her porch. It looked okay, nothing damaged or broken, but he limped. Taryn was filled with guilt.
Once inside he made himself at home in her living room while she scurried around to find the Band-Aids, ointment, and a wet cloth. By the time she made it back to him the blood was dripping down his leg and arm and he was using a red bandana to mop it up.
“Here, this might help,” she said, handing him the cloth. “I’ll go get you something to drink. Coke okay?”
“That’s fine,” he replied. “We’re connected now, you know.”
Taryn stopped in her tracks and turned back around to face him. “Huh?”
“Your arm there.”
Taryn glanced down and saw streaks blood on her arm. It was his.
“We’ve shared blood. So we’re connected not,” he smiled weakly.
He’d cleaned himself up and removed his helmet by the time she returned. His hair was longer than it had looked outside and reminded her of a sheet of black, glossy metal. From his dark skin and dark eyes, she pegged him as Native American, although she wasn’t good at determining individual tribes. He looked around thirty years old, although his face was rugged, and his leathery hands could have made him older than he looked. Taryn could always appreciate a good-looking man, and this was one fine specimen.
Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Page 6
