She might have had a boyfriend, but she was human.
“So what were you doing out riding this late?” she asked, sitting down on a chair across from him. “And I’m Taryn, by the way.”
“I like getting to know a place in all its clothing,” he explained, wincing as he cleaned the wound. “It’s difficult to get a feel for it if you only see it illuminated. Things change at night, don’t you think?”
Taryn knew what he meant but still thought riding after dark was pushing it. “Couldn’t you have gotten a feel for it in a nice air-conditioned car?”
The man chuckled revealing perfectly straight white teeth, a stark contrast to his dark skin. His laughter was melodious. “You’re not connected to anything in a car. You can’t feel the wind, smell the air, and feel the lay of the land under you.”
Taryn shivered as she remembered the fact that she’d been thinking almost exactly the same thing right before she saw him.
“Oh, and I’m David. Do you live here year round?”
“No, I’m just here doing a job for the hotel. Just staying in this house until I’m finished. I take it you’re here on vacation?” she asked.
“I’m here for work too, in a sense,” David replied. “I work for the National Nonprofit for the Preservation of Native Lands. We call it the PNL.”
“Is there a preservation effort going on here?” Taryn asked, surprised. She hadn’t heard anything about it yet although, granted, she hadn’t been out much.
“Not yet, but that’s why I’m here. The Golden Isles haven’t been as excavated as one might think. There was a problem over on St. Simon’s awhile back, and now we’re trying to ensure that it doesn’t happen again,” he explained.
Something clicked in Taryn’s mind. “And with the new hotel development going up…”
“Right,” he nodded. “We just want to make sure it’s all going by the book and nothing gets disturbed that shouldn’t be.”
“Like they build their Holiday Inn or whatever it’s going to be on top of an Indian burial ground,” Taryn laughed. “I got you.”
“You wouldn’t believe how often that actually happens,” David said ruefully. “Of course, it’s better now than it used to be.”
“How long will you be here?”
David shrugged. “As long as it takes to convince my boss that everything looks okay. They just started breaking ground two days ago. So far, so good. They’re working with us well enough. I’ve talked to the site manager, Douglas Everson, a few times and he wants to do it all by the book. Things can change, though. People can get greedy when it comes to making deadlines and earning money.”
Taryn knew that well enough. She’d seen people do all sorts of crazy things for money.
“So what’s your job here?” he asked.
Taryn felt comfortable talking to him. He reminded her of Matt, perhaps because of the Native American connection. Matt also had Italian in him but had always looked more Indian to her. She briefly filled David in on her job at the hotel, omitting any of the supernatural elements.
“That’s very interesting,” he said when she concluded her spiel. “So I guess we’re both here to do a little of the same–preserve the past.”
Taryn smiled, happy to meet a cohort. “To the past,” she said, raising her Coke can in the air.
David raised his as well. “And keeping it alive,” he added.
Taryn shivered, chills racing up and down her arms. What was it her grandmother used to say?
Someone just walked over your grave…
It was nearly three in the morning by the time she and David stopped talking. He’d resisted her offer to drive him and his bike home, claiming he was just staying a few houses down.
“We’re neighbors,” he’d smiled and she’d blushed.
The thought of him being so close by was both comforting and unsettling. On the one hand, she liked the idea of someone she could get along with being nearby, on the other hand she felt disloyal to Matt since that “someone” was so good looking.
Unable to sleep, and with Matt on her mind, Taryn sat down and composed an email to him. She could’ve waited and told him all about her evening when she talked to him later, but sometimes she preferred getting her thoughts down on paper. They’d been exchanging notes since they were in elementary school, often getting in trouble with their teachers for not paying attention in class. In fact, they’d been writing to one another for so long that sometimes she found herself composing mental notes to Matt, letters he’d never receive, as a way of processing what was going on around her. In many ways, Matt was her second brain in the same way that Miss Dixie was her second set of eyes.
Taryn found she still couldn’t sleep, even after she was finished. There was nothing on television but infomercials and movies about animals taking over the world. She wasn’t opposed to either (indeed, Night of the Lepus was one of her favorite truly bad horror films and her Magic Bullet was her favorite small appliance) but she wasn’t in the mood for either.
Too tired to get out the canvases and paints and then clean it all up later she popped Miss Dixie’s memory card into her laptop for some photo editing.
Ignoring the pictures she’d taken in Bob’s hotel room because she just wasn’t ready to face them yet, she brought up some of shots she’d taken earlier that evening. She’d use some of the shots of the audience in the ballroom for her website. She wasn’t a great public speaker but some people made good money doing gigs. If she ever wanted to pay off her student loans then she might have to start doing them as well and just get over herself.
The rest of her pictures were of the hotel. They weren’t great, but she hadn’t been trying for professional shots, just something for herself and her scrapbook.
The hotel’s entrance looked grand in the late evening sky. The wraparound porch was lined with white wicker furniture with bright red seat cushions; she could almost hear it calling out to guests to sit for a spell and sip on ice-cold lemonade. The steps leading up to the porch were flanked with potted flower arrangements, the blossoms spilling over their containers in colorful cascades. The lush green ferns that hung from the ceiling offered vibrant contrasts to the hotel’s pristine white.
It was picture perfect, in spite of the pun, and every bit as lovely as the spreads she’d seen in magazines.
Still, something bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe she was just tired.
“Shame that Steve’s picture didn’t turn out,” she said aloud as she flipped through the ones taken of the exterior. She’d had a problem with Miss Dixie while he posed for her at his valet stand, all GQ smiles and apple pie dimples. The photo was missing completely now; there wasn’t even a blurred or distorted version for her to study.
She liked Steve. He was handsome in an obvious, popular high school boy kind of way. He was also friendly and had a bit of a mischievous air about him too, though, and she appreciated that. He was the kind of man she could appreciate from afar, almost too perfect to truly take seriously.
David, though…David could be an issue. She felt her skin prickle just thinking about him.
Taryn was already up and starting into the kitchen for another drink when she realized what had been bugging her. Racing back to the desk she pulled up the pictures of the hotel again and began flipping through them. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. There was absolutely nothing foreboding or peculiar about any of her shots.
Or, at least, there wouldn’t have been to most people.
As Taryn stared at them a second time, however, she saw that it wasn’t just Steve missing from the pictures…his valet stand was missing as well. In the stand’s current location there was now an enormous marble potting container, perennials spilling from it. And the bright red seat cushions on the white wicker furniture? They’d been blue for the past week.
Taryn realized then that she was not looking at the hotel as it was today, but as it had looked before the fire. For more than a dozen shots, Miss Di
xie had transported her back to 1907.
She was falling through space and time, her body light as a feather. The weightlessness was alarming at first but soon Taryn grew fascinated by it and stretched out her arms to feel the air rushing past her. She was flying and reveled in the new freedom it brought.
Surrounded by darkness, she could see nothing. The blackness was thick and impenetrable, but its coolness was invigorating.
But suddenly she felt herself not flying but falling–spiraling downwards so quickly that she flailed her arms and clawed at the air, reaching for something she couldn’t touch. When she landed on the hard floor, her head rattled and her bottom ached from the impact. Surely, if this were a dream, she would awaken. She’d never hit the ground in a dream before.
Am I dead now, she wondered to herself as she attempted to gain her bearings. Andrew, her parents, and her grandmother were nowhere to be seen, however.
Still, Taryn didn’t recognize the space around her. It was still dark, but a trail of light filtered through a tiny hole, and revealed a patch of pine floor beneath her. She crawled towards the opening and put her face against it. It was a keyhole. On the other side she could see a large four-poster bed, a coverlet turned down neatly and an old-fashioned porcelain doll placed primly against a fluffy pillow. A fire burned cheerfully in the hearth, but the warmth didn’t reach her. She was chilled and damp and suddenly realized with embarrassment that her bottom was wet, as though she’d sat in something. It smelled of urine.
Taryn felt around the space at once and exhaled with relief when her hand landed on a knob. To her dismay, however, when she turned it, nothing happened. It was locked.
Fear began creeping into her heart and as she pounded on the door in front of her, she found herself crying out for someone she didn’t know. Taryn had always been a little claustrophobic, but this was much different. The small universe was closing in on her, and the suffocation threatened to seal her throat, making breathing difficult. Choking, she gasped for air, clawing at her skin and chest and brushing the rough fabric that clung to her aside.
Chapter 9
Taryn had decided to allow herself one meal out a day.
Today, as a reward for getting up bright and early, that meal would be breakfast. She was actually enjoying grocery shopping in Brunswick and cooking in the house’s modern, clean kitchen but sometimes a girl just didn’t want to clean up after herself.
The small restaurant was attached to a hotel but it offered some of her favorite things: pancakes, biscuits, and grits. Her server was an older woman, Taryn judged her to be in her late sixties, and she was chatty.
When Taryn ordered nothing more than a pancake and sausage link, the server pursed her lips. “You sure you don’t want something else to eat?” she asked dubiously.
“Later I’ll probably regret not eating more but right now I’m still trying to wake up,” Taryn explained.
The server didn’t look convinced and shook her head as she walked away.
When she returned with Taryn’s food she lingered for a moment. “You here on vacation?”
“Sort of,” Taryn answered. “Kind of a working vacation.”
“You been to Driftwood Beach yet? You should if you haven’t.”
Taryn nodded. “I went the other day, but I need to go back and take some more pictures. Is there anything else I should see while I’m here?”
“A lot of people like taking those guided tours. They do one of the historic area and a ghost tour, too. You might like that.”
Taryn smothered butter and syrup all over her pancake and watched it sink in. “I’ve heard the ghost story about Mary the Wanderer. And about Ivy House being haunted. Are there other stories I should know?”
The server, whose nametag read “Eldean,” nodded. “Oh yes, we have lots of ghosts here. Let’s see…there’s the pirate ship that sails up and down the island. They supposedly buried their treasure here and now can’t remember where they put it. And then there are the ghosts of the Horton House. You can still hear drinking parties going on inside of it at night. Of course you know about Mary…What else? Oh! You might like the story about the haunted grave.”
“The haunted grave?”
“Yes, that one is my favorite,” Eldean smiled.
“Well let’s hear that one,” Taryn said. “If you have the time. I don’t want to hold you up.”
Eldean shrugged. “It’s okay. Slow morning.”
Making sure nobody was looking, she pulled up a chair and scooted in closer to Taryn. “So you know the story about William and how he murdered his wife and burnt the original hotel down?”
“Yes, I’ve heard that. And he was hung for his crimes, right?”
Eldean bobbed her head, her hair barely moving from all the Aqua Net holding it in place (Taryn had been around in the 1980s–she’d know that starchy fragrance anywhere). “Yes. Well, apparently while he was in jail he complained to anyone who would listen that he’d promised his wife never to leave her alone.”
“Shouldn’t he have thought about that before he killed her?” Taryn asked.
“That’s what I’ve always said. At any rate, I guess he put up such a fuss that the jailer finally felt sorry for him. So each night up until the day he was hung Juniper, that was the jailer’s name, carted William all the way across the island to her grave. When he got there William would light a candle and leave it burning. After he was hung, the light kept appearing from out of nowhere. Even now, on some nights, if you go over there you can still see the glow.”
In spite of all the ghost stories Taryn had heard, she was chilled by the tale. It struck her as…sad. “Well that’s kind of a nice story,” she said at last.
Eldean stood to her feet and pushed back a lock of silver hair. “Yeah, I always thought so. If you take away the fact that he killed her and then committed arson to one of the nicest hotels in the south, it’s almost a love story.”
Adena Cottage was happy to see her, Taryn could feel it the moment she stepped from the golf cart, but she offered no clues that afternoon.
Taryn started off her day by walking around and taking more pictures. Though she studied her LCD screen after every shot, she was disappointed to find that they all came out normal–no shadows, no furniture that shouldn’t be there, and no men or women sitting on the porch sipping their lemonade or tea or whatever it was they used to drink. Taryn was frustrated but that’s just the way the ball rolled sometimes.
She got the feeling that Ivy House was glad to see her pass by. She’d felt the old cottage glaring in her direction as she’d zipped past it, barely tossing it a glance.
“Yeah, well, I’ll get back to you later,” she’d mumbled when it was out of ear shot. She was still determined to make that house like her, although it felt like a losing battle.
She spent most of the afternoon trying to find the shade. Too much sun caused her paint to thin and run, and that was making a mess. There were three trees in front of Adena and she’d been under all three of them, chasing the protection, if not the cool, of the shade they offered. She was about to wrap things up for the day when she heard the footsteps approaching her.
“Hey there,” came the friendly voice behind her.
Paintbrush in hand, Taryn turned and saw Steve coming up behind her. “Hey,” she called back.
His curly hair was frizzy from the humidity and she could see sweat stains on his gray T-shirt. He looked like he’d been out walking for a long time.
“I wanted to come say hello and see how you were doing,” he explained as he drew nearer.
He stood by her easel for a moment and studied her painting and then broke out into a huge smile of admiration. “It’s totally awesome! I mean it. How do you know what it used to look like?”
“A lot of research,” she replied. “I’ve looked at the other cottages, studied the architectural style in books and online–you know, stuff like that. And I have a good imagination.”
It wasn’t the time or place
to mention Miss Dixie.
“Well, it looks great. Hope they’re paying you well,” he said.
Taryn felt like he might be fishing for information, but she wasn’t one to usually share income since it tended to cause more trouble than not. Instead, she just smiled. “Well, you know, it’s not going to make me rich anytime soon but it pays the bills. Mostly. So what are you doing out today?”
“Oh, I have the afternoon off.” Steve studied the ground for fire ant mounds and then plopped down at her feet and leaned back against the tree trunk. “Wasn’t ready to go home so I thought I’d just take myself for a walk.”
“Do you live around here?”
Now that she’d been interrupted it would be difficult to regain her momentum. She didn’t mind stopping, though, so Taryn began putting away her supplies. She wrapped her brushes in wax paper and bound them with a rubber band. She’d wash them when she got back to the house.
“Ha,” he snorted. “I live over in Brunswick. Just on the outskirts of the ghetto.”
“I didn’t know Brunswick had a ghetto,” Taryn smiled. She’d been over there to go to Target and Walmart. It looked a lot like any other medium-sized southern town she’d been in. She’d heard good things about the downtown historic district but hadn’t been there yet.
“That’s just what I call it,” he retorted. “It sucks being poor.”
“Well, I can agree with what,” Taryn said.
After following his lead and examining the ground for fire ant hills, she lowered herself to his side. In close proximity he smelled of some kind of young man’s cologne and sweat. It wasn’t an unpleasant odor at all. If she’d been about five years younger then his pretty face, lean build, and confidence were exactly the kinds of traits that would’ve attracted her.
Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Page 7
