Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (6 page)

Matt
sighed. “Oooh! Did I mention that I got to give a tour of the lab today? We had visitors come down from DC! They were very impressed with…”

Taryn managed to tune him out after a few seconds. She (mostly) loved talking to
Matt. He was her oldest friend and had stuck with her since childhood. He also understood her like few people did and his house provided refuge when she was feeling stressed and needed a break from the rest of the world, like she often did. There had even been a few times in the past when they tried to kindle a romance between them and sometimes it even worked, at least for small periods of time. But she could only handle him in small doses.

Between “The Golden Girls” on television and making the appropriate noises to
Matt on the telephone to let him know she was indeed still listening to him speak, she almost forgot to check on her laptop and her pictures. She was just about to head to the small hotel-sized refrigerator to grab a drink when something caught her eye, and nearly made her topple onto the floor. “What the hell,” she muttered, dropping the cell to the floor.

“Taryn?” came
Matt’s muffled response, sounding a mile away. “You okay?”

Grabbing the computer, she pulled it closer to her and began tapping some buttons, trying to make sense out of what she was seeing. Three, four, five, six…no, FIFTEEN of the eighteen photographs
she’d taken of the downstairs rooms were unlike anything she had ever seen before.

When
she’d taken them, the rooms were a little dark. They’d contained some furniture, but the furniture was dated, mismatched items from different time periods. Old calendars dotted some of the walls. Boxes lined the floors in two of the rooms. Stains were on the hardwood. The rooms had general unlived in feels to them. The windows were boarded up. The rooms were dark. They’d used flashlights to walk around and see.

But in her pictures…

The boards were gone. In their place were curtains; light, airy, lacy things that let in sunbeams that played across the floors. There was a settee in the parlor. Framed pictures were on the wall. There were no stains. There were no calendars on the walls.

The photographs were not focused. They weren’t perfect. The lines were blurry and appeared to be
superimposed atop the original ones, perhaps? But it was clear the rooms were the same, only they looked completely different. A glance through the rest of the pictures of the house showed her that none of them had come out. They were all black.

Picking the phone back up
, she told an impatient Matt that she’d have to call him back. “Something came up,” she explained in a whisper. “I’ll tell you later.”

F
or the next three hours, Taryn alternated between staring at her pictures, cleaning poor Miss Dixie, and poring over the internet. It wasn’t really helpful. What she was supposed to type into Google, after all? Every time she tried to enter something into the search engine like “things in picture that aren’t supposed to be there” the only thing she came up with were pages about camera defects. She was clearly in over her head as far as the paranormal pages went, too. She’d always been sensitive when it came to sappy commercials and cute babies and since Andrew’s accident, she thought she picked up on some things that maybe other people didn’t a little more often than not but wasn’t this taking things just a little bit too far?

Still…a small part of her couldn’t contain
its excitement. She couldn’t stop looking at the pictures. It was addictive! Once she got past the shock, she’d hooked up her printer and printed out two copies of every photo she’d taken and then got to work painting them, just in case something happened to the prints themselves. What if she woke up in the morning and found the whole thing a dream? What if she’d accidentally taken too many anxiety pills and this was some sort of weird hallucination?

She wanted to remember what they looked like.

As she studied them now she appreciated the differences in the images. The rooms had a slight feminine feel to them that were oddly gentle against the darkness. They were clean and bright, but sadly lacking any personality. The rugs were bright, their colors cheerful, and care had been taken in choosing them since they matched but there weren’t any knickknacks or flowers in vases. Just rooms, simple and tidy.

Sitting back, she smiled to herself as she put her paintbrushes away. It was dawn. She had been given a gift. After all these years
, she’d finally been given something useful. She’d used her imagination and talent to try to help clients see the past. Now, for once,
she’d
actually been able to see it herself. It would probably never happen again, and it wasn’t quite like going back in time, but it was a jolt she’d certainly never forget.

So the house was a little creepy and apparently bad enough to keep vandals out
, but that didn’t really concern her. She wasn’t there to hurt it; she was there to make it come alive. She might not have believed in much when it came to the afterlife or religion, but she
did
believe in positive thinking. If she ignored the bad and focused on the good, then surely the house would work with her, right? Whatever was there had been dead and gone for a long, long time. And the past couldn’t hurt her. At least, not
this
past. This wasn’t her past, after all. This was someone else’s past.

Then, why, suddenly, did she feel like crying?

S
he hadn’t planned on sleeping past noon, but since she’d seen the sun come up, Taryn really didn’t see a way around it. She needed more than just a few hours’ worth of sleep if she was going to be able to function at all. Still, as she pulled herself into the small diner on the outskirts of town she felt jetlagged and disoriented. The young waitress looked at her sympathetically as she handed her a menu. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“Something with a lot of caffeine,” she muttered.
She’d start doing that tomorrow.

“I hear that,” she laughed. She was tall and willowy and wore braces. Taryn estimated her to be anywhere from sixteen to twenty-five but the braces threw her off. “I’m having one of those days myself.”

“You recommend anything?”

She shrugged. “We make everything
, so it’s all okay. Well, except for anything with fruit. That usually comes in a can unless it’s summer, like now. I like the pancakes myself.”

Handing her
back the menu, Taryn nodded. “I’ll take those then. And some sausage. And hey, are you from around here?”

“All my life,
why?”

Taking a moment, Taryn described the house she was in town for. “Let me go put your order in and I’ll be right back.”

The restaurant was empty and she busied herself going through the pictures on her digital camera, still marveling at the images that shouldn’t be there, until the waitress came back. Sliding into the seat across from her, she leaned into Taryn and started chatting. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

“I didn’t know anywhere still let you do that
.”

“Well, they don’t,” she said.
“But nobody around here says anything or cares.”

Taryn waited patiently while her waitress sat back and blew a few puffs, the white rings drifting off into the aisle and floating toward the empty counter. The sounds of dishes and silverware rattling
back in the kitchen were the only noises in the otherwise quiet room. She must have missed the lunch crowd.

“I know the house, of course. Everyone does.
It’s kind of the town haunted house, if you know what I mean. Some people called it ‘the Devil’s house’ growing up or just ‘the stone gate to hell’ because the gate out front is made of stone. Well, you know. We used to dare each other to go in there as kids. As teenagers, really. I’m Tammy, by the way.”

“Taryn.”

“Nice to meet you,” she smiled, revealing her braces again. “Why you asking about the old place? You thinking of poking around in it?”

“Well, actually, I’m working there for a
while,” Taryn explained. “I’ve already poked.” She took a few minutes and explained what she was doing and then laughed when Tammy shuddered.

“Better you than me, girlfriend, better you than me.” When Tammy smiled
, her face lit up and she possessed the kind of easygoing all-American beauty that Taryn envied. Even in her waitress uniform and braces, she managed to be pretty and perky. In contrast, Taryn still felt tired and haggard and her wrinkled khaki capris and buttoned-down western shirt (a size too big) made her feel dowdy.

“You ever go in there?”
she asked, sensing a story waiting to be told.

“Once,” Tammy answered
conspiratorially. “But never any further than the kitchen. I was with my boyfriend at the time. We were sophomores. He’d just gotten his license, you know? Second day. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving and it was kind of cold like. There was a group of us and everyone else was poking around the property. Smoking, walking around. Just being kids, really. We decided to go
in
the house. Nobody else would. Lots of stories about that place, you know? Everyone daring everyone else to go in, but not too many people really did it. Anyway, we were going to be all brave and do it. So we walked up to the door, my boyfriend being all macho, and he pushed it in. We stepped inside and he pulled out the flashlight. He goes in first. It is
dead
quiet. Steps in, looks around. Says it’s okay. I go in. He’s all the way in the other room by the time I go inside. I’m halfway through the kitchen when he starts running back through the house and he’s out the door. I have no idea why so I just stand there, kind of frozen like. Then I saw it. Well, first I heard it.” Tammy shivered at the memory and snuffed out her cigarette into a saucer.

“What was it?” Without realizing it, Taryn leaned forward.

“A cry. It was the longest, saddest cry I’d ever heard in my life,” Tammy whispered. “It came from upstairs. A woman. Well, a girl, really. Maybe my age. Like it was just breaking your heart. It shook the whole house. I felt it all the way down to my toes. I knew that cry. I’ve cried like that myself when my own heart was breaking. You know when you’ve had a breakup or felt like nobody loved you and your world was ending?” Tammy stopped talking and waited for Taryn to concede.

Not knowing quite how to answer, Taryn glanced down at the table and fiddled with her straw wrapper. “I know what you’re talking about. Hey, I was a teenager once, right?” She said the last part hurriedly, hoping Tammy would continue. She did.

“
I heard that and wanted to cry along with her. I couldn’t move. But then I
did
move because right after that, this figure appeared in the kitchen door. It was solid black and it wanted me. Don’t ask me how I knew—I just did. It was coming for me. It felt evil. You know what I mean? I turned and ran out of that house as fast as I could but I could feel it watching me all the way to the car. I will never forget it.”

Tammy shivered again and
rolled her eyes. “Sometimes, in my sleep, I still hear that cry. You know, the shadow, the evil thing? It bothered me, it scared me. But it was that cry, it was that sound that still bothers me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I still don’t know what my boyfriend saw. He won’t talk about it.”

She gazed absently out the window at the passing cars and Taryn studied her. She had no reason to doubt her story, especially
since it rang familiar. In fact, Taryn figured most people believed in the stories they told you, and there was a little grain of truth in everything.

The two women sat in companionable silence for a few moments, each one last in their own thoughts. A bell at the window rang and Tammy jumped up and brought Taryn’s pancakes to her. “There are others in town that might be able to tell you their own stories. There
has been stories about that place for years, ever since my mom was a little girl.”

“Did anything happen there? I mean, is there a story? Did anyone die?”

“Not that I know of,” Tammy replied. “I mean, not tragically or anything. Just old age and stuff like that. But I can talk to my grandma. She knows most of that stuff. Here, I’ll give you my email.” Hurriedly, Tammy jotted her information down on a slip of paper and then went back into the kitchen again.

O
bviously, it wasn’t the first time Taryn had heard a ghost story about the place she was painting. All old houses were meant to be haunted. It was almost an insult if they weren’t. She had found that if there weren’t any real tales to be told about the place, people were generally happy enough to make them up.

Tammy had
seemed perfectly reliable and honest. But there were many reasons why a person might see or hear something in an old house. Taryn explained similar stories away for years. She had to. If she didn’t, she might never step foot inside some of the places she worked in.

But she couldn’t deny
that Tammy’s story had given her chills, similar to the ones she herself had felt inside the house. There was something going on inside and apparently more than one person had picked up on it. She needed to remember that. This house was different. She couldn’t shrug these stories off like she had the others. Not after what she saw on her camera.