“Ha ha! Don’t let Ellen catch you talking about that,” Amy warned her. “Seriously. She is dead set on nobody bringing that shit up. But yeah, it totally happened. Everyone knows. Why? You think it has something to do with the ghosts?”
“I don’t know,” Taryn answered honestly. She recoiled as Amy barreled down on a rusty pickup and came within inches of rear-ending him before slipping over into the right lane and quickly exiting off. “It was a long time after the fire so it seems unlikely, although Adena Cottage is haunted. So I’ve heard,” she added swiftly.
“Yeah, you never know, though,” Amy mused. “They could’ve gotten the ball rolling sooner.”
Taryn considered this. Amy was right, of course. Who knew when the men had started action– if the meeting was even real? What if the first meeting had been during that New Year’s Eve?
Taryn could see a jet taking off less than a mile ahead of them and let out a huge sigh of relief. Land, land!
Amy, who seemed to assume Taryn had nothing interesting left to share, turned up her CD player. The rollicking song was part rockabilly, part traditional bluegrass and she knew every word. However, not only did she sing along with the words–she added her own hand gestures and dance moves right there in her seat, frequently removing her hands from the wheel and turning sideways to serenade Taryn.
For the love of God woman, Taryn screamed inside her head, look at the damn road!
Just when she thought they were going to go the way of Dottie West and die in a car crash mere yards from their final destination, Amy pulled up to the unloading area and unlocked the doors. “Here you go my dear!” she shouted over the music. “Just text me when you leave! I’ll drop you off and head on over to Steve’s!”
As Amy was pulling away and Taryn was dragging her carry-on through the lobby Amy’s boyfriend’s name registered with her.
Steve? Was Amy dating the valet? Nothing surprised her anymore.
Well, most things didn’t anyway.
By the time she landed, picked up her rental car, and was on the road it was already 4:00 pm. Since her hotel was out of the way, Taryn decided to head straight to her aunt’s house. As it was, it would take her at least an hour to make the drive and she was running out of daylight. Because the house’s electricity wasn’t turned on, and it was kind of out in the middle of nowhere, should something happen Taryn didn’t want to find herself stuck there after dark.
Along the way, Taryn stopped at a K-Mart and bought a cheap flashlight, some batteries, a few snacks and drinks, and bug spray. She had no idea what she’d find once she arrived, but she wanted to be as prepared as possible.
A good part of the drive to Sarah’s house was on a busy highway. Although it was picturesque with the mountains off in the distance, there were lots of cars sharing the well-maintained road with her. She turned up her Patty Loveless “Classics” CD and loudly sang along with “Timber, I’m Falling in Love” and “You Can Feel Bad (If it Makes You Feel Better)” as she sped along the scenic highway. Unlike Amy, however, she refused to do any choreography while driving.
When she turned off the main road, however, and got on the county version things got bumpier and lonelier. Taryn lowered the volume and tried harder to concentrate as she dodged potholes and barking dogs and kept her eyes peeled for the bends that seemed to come out of nowhere.
She passed extraordinary covered bridges, mom ‘n pop grocery stores, and gas stations that didn’t have “pay here” options at the pumps. These were all mixed in with new Shell stations, showy Chinese restaurants with dazzling paintings of the Great Wall on the signs, and modern homes with RVs in the driveway that cost more than her college education. Like most places she visited, this part of rural New Hampshire was a land of contradictions.
Sarah’s house was the only building on her road and, of course, was at the very end.
The driveway was unpaved and, thanks to an early afternoon rainstorm, black with mud. As Taryn turned off onto the ethereal lane she felt she was entering another dimension. The giant trees closed in around her, towering over her and her little Camry and managing to block out all the sunlight. As she inched along the narrow gloomy road she prayed she wouldn’t get stuck. The woods enfolding her were dense and soundless; she rolled down her windows and couldn’t even hear the songs of the birds, just the purr of her car’s engine and the muted melody rising up from her radio.
Up ahead she thought she saw something big and black on the edge of the road. As she drew near she was almost certain it lumbered into the woods. A bear? It was possible. Sarah had talked about seeing them.
“Just don’t feed them,” she’d warned a young Taryn. “That’s when you run into trouble.”
The driveway wound on for more than two miles, an eternity when she couldn’t drive faster than 10 mph. At last, however, she came to a small rise. With one final push on the gas, she heaved the car forward and the road suddenly opened into a generous meadow, wildflowers and thigh-high grass waving in every direction. The soaring mountains with their abundance of foliage and wildlife encircled the acreage, acting as a natural barrier to the outside world.
Sarah’s farmhouse stood in the middle of the meadow, its familiar porch with the timeworn steps and splintering wood bringing tears to Taryn’s eyes. She could almost see her aunt sitting in one of the rickety rocking chairs, a bowl of green beans in her lap, stringing them and tossing the bits into a strainer.
Taryn had spent some of her happiest childhood memories between this house and her grandmother’s place. As Taryn grew older they’d stopped visiting Sarah for some reason, but she’d still kept in touch with her aunt over the years. Sarah’s house was one of the first places she thought of when she needed solace or to remember where she came from.
She’d always loved her aunt and the house. Sarah had understood her like few others. Sarah’s warm smile, youthful energy, and unorthodox ways had driven her mother (Sarah’s sister) mad. Sarah with her talk of spirits, of “energy,” of the beasts and fairy tales that might very much be real had been Taryn’s bedtime stories when she’d stayed there at the house.
And now Aunt Sarah was gone. She’d died sick and alone.
The waves of guilt nearly brought Taryn to her knees as she stood in the middle of the unkempt yard and stared at the rundown beauty in front of her, remembering all the things she’d lost: her parents, her grandmother, her aunt, her fiancé…
And how could she, someone who loved the past and tried to preserve it the best way she knew how, let something like this happen to her own aunt’s place?
Disgusted with herself, Taryn marched up to the porch, ready to do what she should’ve done a year earlier, and peered inside the windows. They were caked with dirt and cobwebs and these she brushed away with her hands. The interior still contained all of Sarah’s furniture, just as she’d left it. It was now covered with sheets, giving it the appearance of bulky ghosts. Lying await in a sea of antiques and magazines.
A complicated locking system hung over the brass doorknob but when Taryn gave it a push it dropped into her hands. With her flashlight ready she entered the foyer and began her exploration.
The house, which had always been full of laughter and Motown when Sarah was alive, was as quiet as a tomb. As Taryn shuffled through the deserted rooms and took stock of the damage done by neglect and the most recent storm she cried noisily, appalled by the mistreatment and her own delay. Over and over again she lectured herself aloud.
“You should’ve been here,” she snapped with bitterness. “How could you have let this happen?”
The worst of the damage was to the two guest bedrooms upstairs and the small nursery, which had always housed Sarah’s doll collection. A tree had, in fact, fallen in on the nursery. Although plastic had been nailed down to the roof and the limbs had been removed, there was still much that needed to be cleaned up. Several of the dolls now lay scattered in the middle of the floor, their porcelain faces smashed and shards of glass littering the a
ncient Persian rug. Water was still managing to find its way in, in spite of the effort that had been made to keep it out. Taryn knew from experience that if the roof didn’t get patched or replaced altogether, soon the entire house would suffer.
And those were just the things she could see. Who knew what kind of mold was growing in the walls and cellar?
Sarah’s room was miraculously intact.
Taryn stood in the doorway of her late aunt’s bedroom and smiled through her tears at the floral bedspread, Sarah’s delicate fairy collection lined up across her chest of drawers, the old-fashioned loveseat in the corner with the multi-colored handmade quilt neatly folded on the back, the ruffled throw pillow in the old rocking chair that had been brought in from the front porch…
Taryn felt guilty touching anything at all in the house, much less in that room, but she couldn’t help herself.
The heavy, antique vanity set that had once belonged to Taryn’s grandmother Stella was still resting on Sarah’s bureau. The silver was tarnished, but the glass was unspoiled. Taryn picked up the comb, brush, and mirror and gingerly placed them in her knapsack. Her aunt and grandmother wouldn’t mind. After all, the house had been left to her and she needed a reminder of the ones she loved.
As she was placing the padlock back on the front door, this time ensuring it was secure, the antique ring on her finger began to burn.
“Shit!” Taryn cried, dropping the lock on the porch with a loud “clang” and crying out in pain. She looked down at her hand and saw that her finger was turning scarlet, as though she’d been holding her hand in a pot of boiling water. “What the hell?”
When she inquisitively touched the band the pain ripped through her other finger, the ache simultaneously icy and searing.
Unsettled, and for the first time consciously aware that she was physically alone and not just emotionally, Taryn bent down and grabbed the lock and secured it again–this time with haste.
Still nursing her painful fingers, Taryn leaped from the porch and began making her way to her rental, her shoes barely making a sound in the overgrown yard. The sun was beginning to set and Taryn was startled to realize that she’d been inside longer than she’d thought.
When she glanced at the clock on the dashboard and saw that it was after eight ‘o clock she scoffed. “Oh, that’s not possible.”
She figured she’d been in there an hour, an hour and a half tops. Not more than the two hours her clock implied.
The ring on her hand continued to ache as she turned around in the patch of grass that served as a parking spot and began driving towards the gloom of the woods.
Even as a child, Taryn had always been painfully conscious of the feeling that someone or something at her aunt’s house had watched her. She’d felt it with nothing more than slight curiosity while she played, slept, and moved about the property on her endless adventures. It had never frightened her; indeed, sometimes she’d found it comforting.
Now, however, as the unseen eyes bored into her back Taryn trembled from the iciness and tapped the gas harder than she needed.
She was no longer the trusting, innocent child she’d once been. Not everything that watched her was benevolent.
Chapter 18
Gerald P. Evans was a short, stocky, and nervous-looking man with a facial tick and pants that stopped a few inches too short, revealing his burgundy socks.
Taryn could smell the lawyer on him as soon as he entered the cramped, cheesy hotel bar. She’d spent a lot of time with attorneys over the years. First there had been the ones who’d overseen her parents’ estate and then the one who’d been in charge of her grandmother’s and then, the last one, the woman with Andrew’s estate. Since Taryn and Andrew were engaged but not married she hadn’t been entitled to much, other than the house and property they’d owned together. His parents had allowed her to keep whatever she’d wanted of his, though, and she’d kept most of it. They lived in a small condo in St. Petersburg, Florida and simply didn’t have the room.
“So you saw the house,” he began in a voice that was more feminine than it should’ve been.
“Yes,” she agreed, taking a sip of her whiskey and Coke. She thought the situation called for alcohol. “It’s not as bad as I’d thought, but worse than I can afford to handle.”
“Unfortunately these things tend to happen when a home goes empty for an extended period,” he replied prissily.
Taryn bristled at the remark. “Well, I am unable to live here full time. I have a home in Nashville, and I’ve signed a lease.”
Of course, that lease was up now and had been as of last month. But that wasn’t any of his business.
“Of course, of course,” he replied, his cheeks turning pink. “I didn’t mean to imply that–“
“It doesn’t matter,” Taryn cut him off. “You’re right. I’m just not sure what to do at this point. Can you lay out everything that needs to be done to it to make it livable?”
Taryn listened in earnestness. Heart continued to sink lower and lower as he went over the costs for the new roof, central heat and air (it only existed in part of the house), new wiring for the electrical system, plumbing updates, new insulation, and a better drainage system. “As it is, the cellar floods every time it rains, both from problems with the gutters that need replacing and orthostatic pressure from an underground water source,” he explained.
“Good Lord,” Taryn sighed. “How in the world did Aunt Sarah even live there?”
Gerald shrugged. “She was a stubborn woman. She used all three of her wood stoves in the winter and constantly had wood delivered up there. Didn’t care for air conditioning from what I heard. And only one of the bathrooms is usable. She kept it in order and just let the others go.”
Taryn shuddered. “And wood delivery? How were people even able to get up there in the winter to bring it to her? How did she get out?”
Taryn could only imagine trying to get down that driveway with three feet of snow on the ground.
“Well, she didn’t get out much there in the end. She had a snowmobile, however, and used it when she needed to. Road department felt bad for her and cleaned the drive when they could. Like many folks around here, she started collecting her wood back in the summer to let it dry out properly. There are good folks around here. They helped her out,” he added with pride.
“Listen, I’m going to have to think about this and figure out what I want to do,” Taryn said, feeling like she’d been punched in the stomach. “I don’t want to make any hasty decisions right away.”
“If you want my advice,” he leaned in towards her, his tiny little eyes shifting nervously behind his glasses, “I’d sell. You’d get a fair price for the land alone. Too much house and too much work to fix it yourself. You’re looking at a money pit. Just take what mementos you want and leave the rest of the trouble for someone else. Start yourself a nice little nest egg.”
With that, the attorney, who Taryn was disliking more and more by the minute, leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms with smugness. She wished she’d met the other attorney, the one who’d been keeping in touch with her up until now. She’d liked him. This guy was a tool.
“I don’t know about that yet,” she said politely, forcing a smile on her face through pursed lips.
“Well, it would be nearly impossible for you to secure a construction loan of that magnitude. You, a young woman like yourself who’s not gainfully employed,” he added, narrowing his eyes at her.
For the second time since he sat down, Taryn bristled at his words. “Well, thank you, but I am employed. I am just self-employed. I actually run a successful business.” There was no reason for him to know that she’d bought the underwear she was wearing seven years ago. And that they had come from a package of five, on sale at Walmart. And that she’d been overdrawn so many times in the past year that her bank had simply stopped sending her the notices, probably figuring that they were wasting too much paper.
“I just meant that you would
be in far over your head with this,” he insisted. “It’s too much!”
If there was one thing Taryn hated more than anything else, it was someone telling her what to do. Likewise, she couldn’t stand it when someone told her what she couldn’t do. Like it was any of their business. If she wanted to do something, then by God she’d find a way to get it done.
Rising to her feet, Taryn smiled sweetly down at the portly man, masking her irritation behind southern charm. “Thank you for your time. I appreciate it. I’ll be in touch.”
After paying at the bar, Taryn stalked to the elevator and muttered angrily to herself on the whole ride up to the tenth floor.
She’d be damned if she was going to let someone she didn’t even know boss her around. If she wanted to live in Aunt Sarah’s house and pay to fix it up, she’d do it. She would do it.
The air was thick, almost chewy. Gasping for breath, she felt the weight of a thousand pounds on her chest and wanted to scream for air. When she opened her mouth to gulp what she craved, she found her lungs filled with dense smoke that burned her throat and stomach as it slid down the narrow passage.
She couldn’t see. The room was dark, and a thin film covered her eyes, distorting the world around her.
Taryn wasn’t herself again. She could feel her bare legs under the long nightgown and felt it scrape the floor as she crawled on her hands and knees, coughing and sputtering.
When her head touched something hard, and a dull pain traveled down her neck and spine, she rose to her feet and flattened her breasts against a wall. Closing her eyes now, she inched along, arms outstretched, searching for a way out. She couldn’t see the fire, but she could hear it. She never knew flames could be so loud. These were thunderous, though, and in their roaring drowned out everything else.
She didn’t know where she was or how she got there; she just knew she needed to get out.
She knew she was dying, knew her lungs and heart couldn’t take much more. When her left hand touched another wall and she realized she’d hit a corner she crumpled to the floor in defeat, her eyes stinging from tears and smoke. Sobbing now, she raised her arms over her head and scratched weakly on the wall above her.
Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Page 17
