Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (12 page)

With Miss Dixie hanging around her neck, she opened the door and tentatively placed her foot over the threshold. So far, so good. No scary shadows or screaming or anything other than the sound
of her own labored breathing.

The pictures had to happen again. That couldn’t have just been a fluke, something
only meant to occur once. Why would the house let her see what it once was if it didn’t want her to use that knowledge in some way? And no matter how many times she looked at the photos, she just couldn’t come up with any possible reason as to why the past was being revealed to her, other than the fact that the house wanted her to know something important.

“I’m listening, I’m here, and my battery is fully charged,” she tried to say cheerfully. “So maybe I don’t believe in ghosts-
ghosts
, but I believe something is here. Now will you let me see it?”

The house remained quiet, but the stillness seemed to move around her, like a ripple through a wave. The strong scent of decay that accosted her on the first day filled the room and she coughed, trying to force it out of her mouth. It was making her stomach a little queasy.

She wasn’t going to go upstairs today—that was just too much—but in the meantime, she’d try to experiment with the downstairs area. Walking steadily through the rooms, she snapped pictures of the crown molding, the mantle, the windows…details she could explain later in case Reagan or someone else showed up and wondered why she kept going inside.

Each time she took a picture, she quickly looked at the LCD screen and was each time disappointed by the fact the display was normal. Nothing was happening.

Feeling like a total failure, she started toward the front door again, but stopped short of putting her hand on the knob. Turning back around and facing the center of the room, she tried to look past the bare floors and plain walls with their peeling paper and imagine the house as it had once been. It might not have been a happy place, but someone tried to make it homey and clean. She imagined an end table, a lamp, a settee, and pictures on the wall. She imagined a fire blazing in the fireplace, its golden tips reflecting light against the walls. She thought about the curtains that hung from the window and the floor rugs t had probably been beaten out on the porch. While she visualized the room in the same way she had imagined every other old place she’d explored in the past, she raised her camera to her face and snapped a picture. Then another.

Still feeling a little defeated, she finally opened the door and went back out into the sunlight. But this time, when she looked at her screen, she was vindicated. In the center of one of the images was an oak coffee table, doilies littering its top and what looked like a family Bible in the center. It was the only thing in the room, but it was a start.

“Damn, if you don’t mind me saying so, that is one fine painting!” Re
agan let out a slow whistle and stood back, his hands on his stomach. Taryn felt her cheeks redden in spite of herself.

“Well, I’m not finished, but thanks.”

He was dressed in khaki shorts, a spool shirt, and golf shoes but he still looked every inch a politician. She’d heard rumors that he was going to run for county commissioner. She’d pegged him a politician the minute he’d introduced himself. She wouldn’t hold that against him, though, because she couldn’t help but like him.

Today he
’d brought his wife, a pert slim blonde with a wispy figure and beauty shop hair. She’d pumped her hand with her cold manicured fingers and then gone off toward the shed where she’d said something about gardening tools. Her little summer dress flounced. Taryn had known girls like her in high school; girls that always had perfect hair and perfect skin and always looked in style. Personally, she hadn’t been one of those. Her hair had either been frizzy or oily, and at some point, she’d had some kind of weird cowlick that nobody’d been able to explain, not to mention the embarrassing slight overbite that had never gone away and the braces they hadn’t been able to afford. She thought of the story Reagan told her about his wife coming here and trying to clean the place up by herself and couldn’t imagine it at all.

“So when do you think you’ll be finished?” he asked casually, leaning up against his Silverado. It sparkled in the sunlight,
virtually dripping water. She could tell it had just been washed.
They must be on their way somewhere,
she thought. Stopping here to what—check on her? Under the guise to pick something up?

“In about a week
,” she answered only half-truthfully. “But don’t worry. My cost is for the painting. I don’t work on an hourly basis. I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

“Oh, hell,” he laughed. “I’m not worried about it. You’re doing a great job. The women down there at the Society and the mayor and everyone’s going to love it. Take your time. We’re not going to get to this for at least another two months. I got held back on another project anyway. You’re fine.”

Biting her lip, Taryn looked off in the direction of where his wife disappeared and debated on asking him what she really wanted to know. Then, biting the bullet, let it out. “I need to ask you something…”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“How much do you really know about this place? I mean, about its history.”

“Not a whole lot, I’m afraid. What do you need to know?”

There wasn’t anything scary standing here in the cool of the afternoon talking to this perfectly normal-looking man with his perfectly normal society wife getting her gardening tools from the shed and now she felt foolish, but she had to know and this might be her only chance. “I know that it has a reputation for being haunted. What do you know about that? And about the man who lived here? What happened here, Reagan? Do you know anything? Because I’ve heard things and felt things. And I know it’s not in my head. And you said yourself that your wife heard something and felt it.”

Looking toward the shed himself, he took a step closer and leaned his head in to her, whispering. “Look, you’re not going crazy. And the fact is, I don’t know what happened here.
Like I told you, the man, Robert was his name, he died in ’33. Heart attack or something. He’s buried up in the public cemetery. Big old grave. You can’t miss it. First big headstone on the right when you first go in. He made sure of that. Folks say that only four people went to the funeral though, that’s how much people liked him. You see how big this house is, or was? He died completely in debt. Owed so much money that he died with nothing. Only way he could afford that headstone was because he’d already paid for it. Paid for it when his wife died. Only thing he was able to pay for was keeping this house in his name. Everyone else he owed money to.”

“Why was his daughter buried in the backyard? Why wasn’t she buried next to them?” Taryn found that she was whispering too, suddenly aware that the breeze died down as if the house, too, might be listening.

“I heard that he didn’t give a rat’s ass about his daughter. Maybe he lost interest when his wife died. Some men are like that. Me? My daughters are the world to me. My life. But some men, especially back then, who knows. Maybe he wanted sons. Maybe his heart turned black or some shit like that when he lost his wife.” Seeing the look on her face, Reagan frowned. “Oh, hell, what do I know? Maybe not. Maybe he wanted his daughter buried close to him while he was alive?”

The last part was a nice thought, but Taryn didn’t think so and
it was obvious Reagan really didn’t, either.

“And the ghosts?”

“I think it’s him,” Reagan confided. “I’ve never seen him myself, but it feels like a man. I heard a scream once. It was primal. Shook me to my soul, it did. It was at night. I come up here to get my tools and I was in one of those upstairs bedrooms. There was a set of keys. I didn’t remember seeing them before. I picked them up and I heard something I’ll never forget. A scream that—”

“Shook you,” she finished for him.

Reagan nodded. “You’ve heard it, too?”

“Yes, but it sounded to me like it was coming from outside.”

“To me, too, but then I heard things flying around downstairs. I got out as fast as I could. My wife, she’s heard things she won’t even talk about. I threw those keys down on the floor and left. When I came back a week later, they were right back on the dresser.”

Re
agan looked like he might be about to say more but at that instant his wife appeared around the corner of the house, a bucket full of seeds and gardening tools in her arms and a bright sunny smile on her face. The breeze picked back up again and her hair lifted and blew around her face. “You ready?” she sang.

“As I’ll ever be,” he smiled and gave her a light peck on the cheek.

“You call me if you need anything,” he said as he hopped up in the cab of the truck.

With a wave of her brush, Taryn saw both of them off and went back to work.

T
aryn tried not to think about what Reagan had told her as she pushed open the door with a shove and tentatively walked to the foot of the staircase. The broken glass still littered the front steps and porch, but the living room was clear of debris and stone cold quiet. There were no signs that anything had happened on her last visit.

“Hello!” she called. “Yea, it’s me! I’m back! Any shenanigans you want to try? Because let’s just get them out of your system right now if you do! I’m coming up!”

Bracing herself on the staircase, she waited and listened. Nothing. Taking a gentle step with her right foot, she tried going up one. Again, nothing. So far, so good. Halfway up the stairs, she thought she might have heard a squeak down below and thought about turning around and hoofing it back down, but when she didn’t hear anything else, she kept going on.

The bedroom looked exactly as it
did the first time she’d been in it. She still couldn’t get over how pristine and untouched it was compared to the rest of the house. The bed might have lacked a sheet and bedspread, but it still looked as though it was waiting for someone to come lie down at any moment. A music box sat on the dresser, a drawer opened to reveal a necklace with a charm on it—a horse. It looked like something a child might wear. Articles of clothing were folded up in an open trunk in the corner of the room next to a rocking chair. The entire room was oddly devoid of dust, although there was a faint touch of grime, almost mildew, that settled over it like a blanket. She couldn’t see it, but felt it, as though something invisible was touching her skin.

Standing in the middle of the room, Taryn made slow circles in place, taking everything in. It didn’t look like anything had been moved in years. There were three pairs of leather shoes next to a wardrobe. She wanted to open the wardrobe and peer inside, but was afraid to. Too many horror movies, and too many bad experiences inside the house already…

A set of skeleton keys with two smaller keys on the key ring was on the dresser.
That must have been what the woman at Chester’s was talking about
, she thought, and again marveled at the fact that the keys were still there. Taryn walked over to it and felt compelled to pick it up. It was the only thing in the house she had touched so far and the heaviness of the keys felt odd and foreign in her hands. She’d held the keys for more than a couple of seconds when she looked up and caught her reflection in the mirror.

Moisture eroded the mirror’s silver backing over the years and the black distorted her image. She watched her face as it wove in and out of the black spots of the faded reflection and then watched in horror as the bed behind her seemed to move, inch by inch, out from the wall.

Dropping the set of keys with a clang on the floor she turned around just in time to hear a loud scream was not her own. In fact, it seemed to come from outside. The bed stopped moving, but as the scream stopped it was replaced by the sounds of the saddest cries she had ever heard.

She
’d heard the word “weep” before, but it was an old-fashioned word and not one she was accustomed to using herself. The way this sound rose and fell throughout the hushed house and seemed to echo through the walls and pierce her heart was the only way she would describe it. This soul crushing sound was
weeping
and it seemed to come from everywhere at once. It was all female and she could do nothing but sink to her knees and join along with it until it was over.

I
t had been a slight stretch of the truth when she told Reagan it would only be a week before she finished but if she kept up with the momentum she’d experienced today she might be finished sooner than she’d thought. There hadn’t been any distractions and at the end of the day she stood back and gazed at her canvas with satisfaction. The oil glistened and even her paintbrushes seemed to be sweating in exhaustion. She was tired, wet with sweat, and dirty but she felt good; invigorated. The porch was almost completed. Of course, that was only a small percentage of the house but it was also one of the most difficult parts since a good majority of the porch was no longer standing, thanks to the collapse. She felt
good
.

She felt the vibrations of the car in the driveway before she heard it. It was so rare that a vehicle passed by that the stir of the air currents was enough to shift the atmosphere and change the mood. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun, she turned around and looked down the drive. An old model Caddy slowly maneuvered the winding, narrow drive and pulled up behind her. A tall, thin woman with short cropped gray hair in a blue polyester shirt and gray slacks unfolded herself from behind the wheel and made her way to Taryn with the help of a cane. Taryn recognized her as Priscilla as soon as she started speaking. She would know that whiskey/cigarette voice anywhere.