“Well, that’s something at least.”
She was surprised at how chilly the grocery store was, how cool it was outside. It had been a shock to her system to step outside the sweltering hotel room. She’d looked silly in her rolled-up tank top and flip flops, when Aker was wearing a down jacket and gloves. He’d looked at her strangely but hadn’t said anything.
“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know,” David said. “When I got back to Georgia I decided to do some research on it myself.”
“Thanks, I appreciate it. Did you happen to find anything else out?”
“Just that lots of bad things seem to happen there. But I guess that’s not surprising considering the type of place it became, and the people it drew.”
“Anything about Parker?”
David signed. “Only that he was a talented musician who died before his time and suffered from a big drug problem. Same old story, unfortunately.”
“Yeah,” Taryn said sadly, “same old story.”
Twenty-Five
Taryn tried to reconcile the happy, sweet looking boy in the pictures with the anger and fury that ran rampant in the motel room.
She couldn’t.
Parker Brown’s boyish face looked out from the old photographs with the hopefulness of youth, blissfully ignorant of the fact that he’d be dead in just a few short years. As Taryn scrolled through the photos of him she’d unearthed on the internet she couldn’t help but think of how normal he looked, how healthy.
“He doesn’t look like he had a drug problem,” she remarked to Miss Dixie.
Not that she knew what a drug problem looked like. All she really had to go on were movies and episodes of “Intervention.” She imagined that his eyes might be bloodshot and glassy, his skin ashy, his hair limp due to infrequent washings and a neglect of hygiene.
Instead, what she was seeing in the multiple social media groups dedicated to the fallen singer was a youthful man with clear blue eyes, glossy brunette locks that fell to his shoulders in accordance with the time period’s popular style, an easy smile, and skin tanned from the southern California sun.
She flipped through what felt like hundreds of photographs of him relaxing in the California desert with the rest of the band, goofing off as he scampered over boulders with the energy of a young kid and posing on his motorcycle.
“He loved the desert so much,” Ruby had shared with her on a visit. “He said it was the one place where he felt like he could find God. Parker wasn’t a religious man, but he was a spiritual one. He loved going out there alone, lying on the hood of his car, and watching the stars. Said they were brighter out there.”
Taryn now had an aching desire to visit Parker’s desert.
She found shots of him leaning back against a shabby old couch in an undisclosed living room, surrounded by laughing friends, a beat-up guitar lovingly balanced on his knees.
Standing on a dusky stage, eyes closed and head tilted back, a glaring spotlight focused on him. His Nudie Suit with its marijuana leaves, rolling dice, and ruby red lips set afire by the beams of light, making him appear to glow.
Never did he look better or happier, however, than when he was with Ruby. As with their music, the two of them sharing a frame was nothing short of magic.
The carefree, girlish figure who stood with her arms wrapped around his waist and her head on his shoulder was a far cry from the sophisticated, soft-spoken woman who’d played for royalty and was revered for her charity work.
The girl who had waved her tambourine as she danced around Parker on the stage, posed with her tongue stuck out next to Parker in front of a now-demolished Vegas hotel, and stood on the bed of a truck with a beer in her hand and the sun setting behind her was gone. Part of her had probably died in that motel room alongside of him. (Though Taryn had seen a glimpse of her on the patio, the puppies cavorting at her feet.)
It was for that girl and boy that Taryn was going to see this through to the bitter end for. They deserved it. Ruby deserved some peace. If Taryn could give it to her, then she couldn’t not finish what she’d started.
She couldn’t disappoint Ruby, Miss Dixie, or herself. Taryn just wasn’t built that way.
Aker stood back, arms crossed over chest, and considered the canvas as Taryn lugged it from the trunk of her car. When he let out a slow, loud whistle Taryn stopped and turned. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“What made you go with that?”
“Huh?” Taryn put the painting down and gently leaned it against the wheel. She then walked over to Aker and stood next to him. Together, they looked at the painting.
She had been staring at it almost nonstop for the past eight days but now she tried to step out of her own head and examine it through Aker’s eyes. His poker-face was impossible to read, but his eyes were burning. She thought she might know why.
“It’s the wall isn’t it?” she asked.
Aker nodded.
The painting presented the past. The furnishings and décor were straight out of the late 1960s and what would have filled the room when Parker and the rest of the band had stayed there. She hadn’t conveyed anything modern into the artwork at all.
“So what is that?”
“I don’t know,” Taryn replied honestly.
And she didn’t. She’d watched those shadows prance across the wall for a week. For nearly eight days she’d watched as it started near the floor and slowly reached upwards, until it met the ceiling and began spreading towards the middle of the room, stretching to her. It was only recently that she realized the shadow was growing, expanding, because it was signaling a person entering the room. It grew larger as the figure drew closer.
That shadow was as much a part of the room’s past, and Taryn’s present, as the mirror. She couldn’t leave it out.
“I think it’s important,” she added. She hadn’t meant for Aker, or anyone, to see the painting before it was finished. Now that she’d seen his reaction to it, she was even more uncertain of her decision to include it.
Aker nodded but didn’t look convinced.
Taryn turned and looked at him. “I think it has to do with Parker,” she said, watching his face for a sign of life.
He wouldn’t meet her probing gaze.
“Parker was alone that night,” Aker barked. He straightened his shoulders, turned, and brusquely stomped to his chair where he busied himself unfolding a blanket and straightening it over the seat, readying it for his long wait.
It was Taryn’s turn to be skeptical. “Are you sure?”
Everything she’d read, seen, and felt shouted that Aker had been with Parker that last night, either before or after his death. Whether that implicated him in the singer’s demise was questionable but she was certain he’d been dishonest regarding his whereabouts that evening. It was a feeling as much as it was a combination of the interviews and information both she and Matt had read following the death.
“Parker was alone,” Aker repeated, keeping his back to her. “If someone had been there he wouldn’t have died the way he did. He would’ve gotten help. It wouldn’t have been too late.”
“Maybe they were scared. Maybe they thought they’d get in trouble,” Taryn said. “Police didn’t find any drugs in the room, only in his system. Shouldn’t there have been some there with him? Something? Maybe someone thought they were protecting him and took them away before anyone could get there.”
“And maybe the authorities aren’t as clean as some people think,” Aker snorted. “That was a different time. I quit for a reason.”
“And you went back,” Taryn pointed out.
Aker didn’t reply and continued his stony stance.
“Why wasn’t he with Ruby?” Taryn could be like a dog with a bone, and she had lots of questions she wanted answers to. Aker was the only one who could answer them at the moment. She wasn’t ready to go to her employer. “Ruby was just down the road. Why wasn’t he with her, staying with her, being with her?”
Aker turned
at that, his face paling. “Leave Ruby out of this,” he snapped. Taryn thought she might have seen his lips quiver a little, but she knew she must be seeing things. “If she’d known some of the things that were going on she would’ve…”
“Would’ve what?”
Aker’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He suddenly looked much older and less powerful. “She was always a smart girl. Not just pretty, but so smart. She was better than that, always better than those around her. She should’ve hightailed it out of there long before things for the way they did. They think they can save the world. They think they can save everyone. Some people just aren’t worth saving. Some can’t be. People like that, like you, they don’t know when to stop.”
“Like me?”
“That’s what you’re doing here, right?” Aker gestured with his hands, taking in the parking lot and building. “Here. Trying to bring back the past so that you can fix it? I see what you’re doing and, more importantly, I see what it’s doing to you. You think I don’t notice? I saw it in her, too. It took over her life. Took over his, too, if you want to be honest about it. Don’t let it take over yours.”
Taryn was stunned into silence. Feeling vaguely embarrassed and ashamed, she looked down at her feet. They’d suddenly become very interesting. Her toes were cold in the Birkenstocks but she’d appreciate having them once she entered the room.
“I know more than you think,” he said.
Taking one last look at the painting before averting his eyes and slipping on his sunglasses, he shook his head. “Don’t you have work to do?”
Taryn kept to herself as she carried her supplies across the parking lot to the motel room. Aker stayed seated and flipped through his book.
It was only after she was inside with her jacket removed and her hair pulled back off her neck in a ponytail that she realized the other thing troubling her: Aker hadn’t checked the perimeter or any of the rooms. It was the first time he’d let her go in first.
Twenty-Six
She’d been working on the painting for over a week; Taryn should’ve been finished but she wasn’t. She’d done nothing but work on it, rarely stopping long enough to eat or grocery shop or even sleep for more than a few hours at a time. She’d taken to sleeping in the evenings as soon as she got home, waking up around midnight so that she could work through the night.
The nightmares weren’t as bad when she slept in the evening.
Taryn had put so much work into the painting of Room #5–details that only she would ever see. The wood grain was so lifelike that feared getting splinters if she ran her fingers over the nightstand. The radiance of the sunlight streaming in through the tiny window was warm to the touch; the heat that wafted from the radiator thawed her fingers when her own heater in her apartment failed.
The shadow that loomed over the room, stretching up the wall and reaching towards the center of the ceiling, observed all that went on, a witness to the secrets and actions of that night.
She thought it might be one of her best pieces of work.
But she couldn’t finish it.
“You have to let me go Parker,” she rasped, her throat sore and scratchy. “I have other things to do here. You have to let me out of this room.”
The equine painting was back; the horse was running across the field now, his mane flying straight back from his glorious head. The barn had vanished. She yearned for the wind she could almost feel from the painting.
“Remember,” the soft voice whispered from the bed, tempting her to come closer.
The pain in Taryn’s hip and legs throbbed. Her heart pounded in her chest as her blood bubbled under her skin. The pressure in her head was so intense she thought her brain might be expanding.
She did not feel well.
Most of all, though, was the desperation she felt inside. The hopelessness was overwhelming. She’d tried to take a walk around her block the night before. It was a pleasant evening and the children playing outside had warmed her soul. It was still daylight when she got home and, rather than staying cooped up inside and watching it grow dark, she’d been excited at the prospect of getting out and walking around.
She’d barely gotten to the bottom of her stairs when the pain in her legs had grown so intense that she’d burst into embarrassing tears–even more embarrassing because two of her perky neighbors were coming in the front door at the same time and had seen her. They were both Vanderbilt graduate students, both in their early twenties, and still had the bubbly personalities and perfect figures that only college co-eds seemed to be able to possess.
They’d offered to help her back up but Taryn had declined. She’d rather crawl.
She’d literally had to hold onto the railing and pull herself up the stairs, one step at a time. When she’d finally fallen through her door, she’d vomited right there by the basket where she kept her umbrellas. It had been a nice soup, too–one of those expensive, creamy ones with real chunky vegetables.
She didn’t think she’d ever be able to eat that soup again and that was too bad since she’d bought eight cans of it.
Until the sun set, Taryn had sat in her window, looking out over the expansive lawn in front of the building. Children kicked a ball back and forth to each other as hip and energetic parents stood on the side and cheered them on. Pedestrians crossed against a light, rushing to the other side of the street with their hair flying out behind them, bakery bags in one hand and a steaming cup of coffee in another. Bikers and joggers whizzed by on the sidewalk.
Taryn wasn’t a part of any of it. She might as well have been watching it all through a television screen. Life was going on around her and it didn’t feel like she was ever going to be a part of it at all.
Now, sweating and steaming in the motel room, she thought about Parker on that last night.
Had he felt that same way? Had he been ready to throw in the towel? What had happened between him and Ruby? They’d loved each other, that was obvious through their songwriting and numerous photographs. The looks they’d shared between them, the touches depicted in the candid shots…the lyrics she’d continued to pen about him long after his death.
Matt loved her too, of course. Maybe it wasn’t fair to think that Ruby could’ve saved Parker. When you were that deep inside yourself, that lost, it was hard to feel the light anymore. Sometimes you even thought you didn’t deserve it.
Cruel laughter filled the room, a harsh sound that stuck to Taryn and drilled deep into her skin. It was a mean sound, full of ridicule.
Was it male? Female? She couldn’t tell.
Taryn covered her ears with both hands and shook her head from side to side, trying to get it to go away.
“Mind over matter, mind over matter,” she chanted.
The laughter continued, growing louder by the second.
Taryn dropped to the bed in front of her and crawled to the middle. The bed was clean now, still covered in a generic motel room floral blanket, but not home to the urine and excrement it usually boasted. Taryn curled up in the middle and brought her knees to her chest.
Keeping her hands still on her ears she found comfort in the fetal position and tried to imagine cuddling close to Matt, to her grandmother, to Andrew.
Was it too late to call out for her mommy?
“Mommy,” she whimpered, scared and ashamed. When the fear became so strong, it was primal to call out to a mother, even when that mother was a symbolic one. Taryn’s had certainly never been comforting.
The room began shaking then, tremors that vibrated the bed and pained her.
“Parker, stop!”
Though the incessant laughing and shaking continued, something crawled up behind her and molded its body to hers. She could feel the heat of the figure next to her, feel the hardness of a thigh and legs as they molded themselves to hers. The desperation permeated strongly from behind her, but there was comfort in the companionship and, together, they held on through the heat and insanity.
Suddenly, the room’s front d
oor flew open. A gust of cold air washed over Taryn, knocking the breath out of her. The lamps flickered once then went dead, leaving the room in shadows again. The bedspread under her sent waves of acrid filth drifting upwards, making Taryn gag. The quine painting was once again replaced.
Aker stood before her, nothing short of horror on his face.
In one swift movement he had his coat off and draped over her then had her up in his arms. He was carrying her out the door before she could speak.
“What are you doing,” she asked.
“You’re freezing,” he said shortly, marching towards his car.
“I’m burning up,” she insisted. “I’m sweating.”
“That room is an ice chest,” he barked. “It gets colder by the day. I’d say it’s not a degree over forty in there right now.”
Taryn couldn’t believe it. She’d been so hot.
“Has it been like that every day this week?” she asked weakly.
“Yes, every day. Each day you come out of there, looking like death. Your skin’s been turning blue.”
“I didn’t know. I felt hot…”
“You need to stay out of there,” he said. “Here, get in my car.”
Taryn waited as he turned up the heat and turned on his seat warmers. “Just move those over,” he barked, gesturing at the pile of photographs that littered his seat.
Taryn obliged and began picking them up, one by one, so as not to crush them.
“I’ll be right back. Just put them in the back.
She held the photos in her hand and waited as he turned and went back to the room. He emerged carrying her painting supplies and canvas. These, he placed in his trunk.
Taryn was about to put the stack of 4X6 photos in the backseat, when one caught her eye. The man in the picture was much younger, and had a full head of hair, but it was definitely Aker. He stood next to a smiling Parker, whose arm was slung around a laughing Ruby, Lenny, and a woman. The woman next to Aker, the one with the pouty lips and full bosom, had to be the same one Taryn had seen in bed with Parker.
Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) Page 18
