Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) Read online

  Black Raven Inn

  Book 6 in Taryn’s Camera

  Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  For Ruby Cravens, who gave me a picture of Elvis and said, “You’d better have that out someplace where I can see it when I come visit you”

  and

  Emma Jane Chumbley, who gave me a copy of Gram Parsons’ “Grievous Angel” and Emmylou Harris’ “Duets” and said, “You’d better actually listen to them.”

  Did you read and like Windwood Farm, Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera?

  If so, read to the end and download a special companion short story for FREE!

  Contents

  Prologue

  Book

  Special Notes

  Free Book Offer

  Visit Amazon

  About Rebecca

  Anthology

  Other Books By Rebecca

  Rebecca’s Links

  Haunted: Ghost Children

  Reviews for Taryn’s Camera

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Sleep meant certain death. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that.

  He was heavy eyed, and lethargic. The jumbled thoughts in his head were all over the place, as rowdy and insistent as any child he’d known. As he sank back into the standard motel room pillow, however, his body began to change.

  Warmth started at his feet and traveled throughout his body in calming waves, moving inch-by-inch all the way to his ringing ears and into his brain where his mind finally quietened and settled. The euphoria that followed had him smiling and flinging out his arms, the Messiah on the cross. His stomach moved up and down in shallow motions as his breathing became heavier, more labored.

  The torment he’d been living with was gone; his problems dissolved into the air, scattered away by the ceiling fan above. He could do anything, be anyone…

  Everything was going to be okay.

  His head nodded back and forth in a familiar rhythm, crushing the pillow below. Was it one of his songs or someone else’s?

  Well, it didn’t matter.

  Beneath him, he could feel the firmness of the bed and slippery material of the generic quilt. He was touching them, yet both felt so very far away. Perhaps they belonged to someone else, or to another time period. He couldn’t be sure. He might as well be floating on a cloud.

  Gratitude for the respite swelled in his chest so he closed his eyes and gave in to the sensation, the feeling of being outside his own body. The aching in his heart and the pains that regularly plagued his body began fading, replaced by a sense of relief.

  His eyes shot open almost at once. “No!” In a blind panic he struggled to focus on an object in the room, anything to bring his attention back to reality.

  He must not fall asleep. He wouldn’t.

  His eyes scanned the room in alarm until they landed on something familiar. With an audible sigh of relief, he fixated on his guitar case propped up by the door. Beaten and covered in chipped paint, it was comforting to see the old case standing there like a sentinel. Or a friend.

  For a brief moment, his head cleared. The pain returned with a vigor, but he was no longer swimming in the murky, dangerous waters. Maybe he needed a doctor. Something wasn’t right. He’d taken the same amount he always did. He was careful not to take more, just enough to make him human again. But he’d been around the block enough to know that something was wrong.

  He wasn’t feeling sick, exactly; in fact, he’d never felt better. His mind was comfortably numb, his muscles loose and languid. He even felt a tinge of excitement about the new album and tour and God knew he hadn’t been able to feel that particular emotion since he was a little boy. The world was beginning to make sense again.

  If he could just keep his frigging eyes open.

  There was a dim throbbing sensation in his stomach but this he could ignore. It was just a nuisance, really. Probably his poor old liver. He’d given the old girl a workout, for sure. He was going to cut down on some things as soon as this tour started. She’d see to that. She always did.

  The drowsiness struck him again, this time even harder. He wasn’t sure he could fight it. Again, he felt his eyes closing, the weights on his eyelids lowering them like a bucket in a well. Try as he might, he could not pry them open, not even when he rubbed furiously at eyelids with his black-stained fingers.

  They felt so good closed, though. The second they were shut the pain disappeared and he was transported to another world, one in which he soared straight through the roof of the grungy motel room, where his friends and mother awaited him with open arms, where his body floated with weightlessness, free from the worry and restraints of the world below.

  Maybe just for a second, he thought with contentment. Just a minute or two wouldn’t hurt. I’ll wake myself up…

  He’d been on the road for weeks, after all, and in the studio nonstop for nearly seventy-two hours. He could use a little rest.

  Though he was already lying down, he soon felt himself falling backwards and as he descended, an ethereal angel appeared before him. Her beautiful chestnut hair swirled around her lovely aristocratic neck and cascaded down her back; her bright blue eyes shone with heat. The silky dress she wore was covered in tiny roses and he knew without touching it that would be soft under his hands, just like her skin would be. He groaned aloud when she reached her hands out to him and smiled, the radiance stemming from her body brighter than the white light surrounding her. Without shame, a tear slid down his cheek as their fingertips touched.

  He continued to plunge backwards, falling into a depth that swallowed him whole.

  One

  Taryn didn’t just read the email from Ruby Jane Morgan multiple times–she printed it out (on cardstock, no less) and hung it on the refrigerator. She was still trying to decide whether or not framing it would be a little much, a little too cheesy.

  “Eh, what the heck?” She grinned with pride as she stood back and studied it. It wasn’t like she had tons of visitors over at her apartment to laugh at her corniness.

  So, until she could find a frame worthy of it, the short but incredibly important message from her childhood idol hung in the middle of her ancient refrigerator, held up by a magnet from Daytona Beach. When she did frame it, she’d attempt to do it in the most tasteful way possible. Not cheap, plastic, fake wood but maybe a nice silver frame. Something from a real department store, not just the discount places where she usually shopped.

  She’d had the email for three weeks now but that didn’t matter. Taryn was still experiencing the afterglow, similar the all-consuming elation she’d felt after attending an intimate Rosanne Cash concert at the Exit In when she was twenty-three. After that concert she’d replayed every note, relived each blessed moment, and thought of little else after the show ended.

  And that afterglow had only lasted for a week.

  “Ruby Jane Morgan,” Taryn had gushed to Matt, her best friend and sometimes boyfriend, over the phone. “Can you believe it?”

  In excitement she’d forwarded him the email, the one propositioning her for a job, as soon as she’d received it.

  “Well, she’s just a person, right?” he’d asked, mystified at her reaction.

  Taryn gasped. She thought she felt her heart skip a beat. “’Just’ a person? Ruby Jane is not ’just’ a person. She’s considered one of country music’s biggest legends. And she’s still alive which, you know, is kind of a big deal with legends. She’s right up there with Dolly and Loretta.”

  “Who’s Loretta?” Matt asked innocently.

  “Oh, you did not just say tha
t.”

  “I just don’t think I know who she is,” Matt said lamely.

  Taryn felt an unreasonable irritation at his lack of enthusiasm over her exciting and unexpected news. She wasn’t sure how such a person had even known who she, multi-media artist Taryn Magill, even was. It wasn’t like she was the toast of the art world, though some wouldn’t even consider her a real artist, considering her subject matter.

  “She’s done harmony on almost every important country album for the past forty years. Created an entirely unique sound that people from every genre use? Been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? She’s inspired multiple generations of artists, won five Grammys?” Taryn offered helpfully.

  “What’s her famous songs?” Matt asked. “I probably know them.”

  Taryn appreciated the fact that, in spite of his obvious lack of interest, he was still trying to play along but his question left her feeling deflated.

  “Well, she’s never really had a hit. She’s more of an artist than a hit maker. But there was ‘Crying a River’ and ‘Remember December’ and ‘Angry at the Moon’? I mean, those songs didn’t go to number one or anything but they still get played on the radio and a lot of other people covered them.”

  “Don’t think I’ve heard of them…”

  Taryn exhaled and shook her head in disgust at her camera, Miss Dixie, who watched her from across the room. She was almost certain that Miss Dixie smiled back at her in sympathy.

  “Well, and then there’s Parker Brown.” When Matt didn’t respond, Taryn forged ahead. “When he was still alive they recorded a lot together. ‘Watch Over Me in the Night’ is considered a gospel standard, even though technically it’s about needing drugs. Bet they’d love that in church if someone in the congregation ever figured out the lyrics. And ‘1,000 Roads’ was on at least three movie soundtracks in the 1990’s alone…”

  “Parker who? I’m sorry. I just don’t know her,” Matt apologized. “But if you’re happy about it then I am excited for you.”

  “Some people have zero appreciation for country music history or tradition,” Taryn grunted, feigning agitation.

  Realizing the conversation was completely one sided, Taryn changed the subject. She later hung up trying to remind herself that she wasn’t exactly interested in everything that Matt was into, either.

  Like end-of-the-world apocalyptic movies. (“The Day After” had given her nightmares for weeks; she still couldn’t hear the phrase “nuclear winter” without having a mild panic attack.)

  Or space stuff and avocados.

  Eating at restaurants and then returning home and trying to recreate the dishes they’d just had so that they never had to go back again.

  And definitely not anything related to math, which seemed to rock his world.

  It was okay that they were two different people, with different interests. What mattered was that they loved each other and, even more, that they were friends.

  Still, she thought it would’ve been nice to have someone who shared her enthusiasm of being contacted for a job by one of the most famous, and important, women in music.

  Now, as Taryn dropped onto the wilting, but still cozy, featherbed that had once belonged to her grandmother, she let her mind wander.

  Whether Matt appreciated it or not, she, Nashville native/artist/photographer and sometimes ghost hunter Taryn Magill, had just been commissioned to create not one, but four paintings of the Black Raven Inn–one of Nashville’s oldest, and most notorious, motels.

  And she’d been hired by someone she’d grown up listening to so much that, to Taryn at least, Ruby Jane Morgan felt like more of a family member (distant cousin perhaps) than a celebrity she’d only met through recordings.

  “I don’t care if nobody else understands,” Taryn whispered to her ceiling. “This is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me.”

  Ruby Jane Morgan’s music had been there through so much of Taryn’s life that it was impossible to think of a past without her. Her music was that important to Taryn.

  And later, when she’d lost her fiancé in the fiery crash, she’d felt Ruby Jane’s own personal tragedy coming through in her music and that, too, had meant something to Taryn.

  In fact, on the long dark nights when Taryn had thought there was no longer a point in going on, Ruby’s music had saved her.

  As a child she’d literally worn the 8-track version of Ruby Jane’s concept album out. The album (when listened to in chronological order) told a story about a woman who lived during the Civil War and dressed as man to fight alongside her husband.

  She’d played it so much that her parents had dreaded going anywhere with her because it meant getting in the car where the album played on a continuous loop. In fact, Taryn wasn’t convinced that they didn’t have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of said 8-track.

  “Sorry, honey,” her mother had apologized one hot August morning, they’d all piled in and Taryn had recoiled in surprise as the Rolling Stones spilled from the speakers. “It must have fallen out. Or something.”

  But her mother had not sounded apologetic at all and, in fact, her father had even looked a trifle relieved. And guilty.

  Luckily, however, her grandmother had bought her a new version, this time a ’45 record.

  “Keep this here at my house,” she’d winked as she handed it to Taryn on her next visit. “We’ll take special care of it here and I can guarantee you it won’t go missing.”

  Taryn had listened to it every time she visited, and played it out later when she moved in. Eventually, her grandmother Stella had replaced it with a CD, doing it quietly without making a fuss, as she did most things where Taryn’s needs were concerned.

  And now…

  She was going to meet Ruby Jane. In person. Not as a fan, either, but as someone the artist herself had sought out. It was a dream come true–to be considered an equal, more or less, by your idol. She was meeting her on equal footing, under the impression that she’d somehow gained the other woman’s respect.

  “I knew that BA in Fine Arts would come in handy eventually,” Taryn laughed gleefully, tossing a throw pillow in the air. “It only took $60,000 in student loans to get here!”

  Taryn figured she probably spent more time between the art supply store and camera repair shop than anywhere else when she wasn’t out on the road. For the first time in a long time she would be working a job right there in Nashville, her hometown. That made things much easier; she knew where everything was and could run out to the store and pick things up whenever she wanted.

  Still, it was important to get a head start. “I need to hit the ground running with this one,” she told the salesman at the camera store as she picked up an extra battery charger for Miss Dixie.

  At least he’d had the courtesy to look impressed when she name dropped her client.

  “Ruby Jane Morgan?” he’d asked incredulously.

  “I know, right?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  She quickly filled him in on the job and then watched as he processed the information. Finally, he narrowed his eyes and leaned in to her. “You know that place is meant to be haunted, right?”

  Taryn nodded. She knew that paranormal investigators had gone in there and supposedly caught orbs and EVPs on recordings. She wasn’t going to put too much stock into those until she explored it herself, though.

  “I’ve heard that,” she replied. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know man,” he said, scratching his head in thought. “Some pretty weird shit has gone down at that place, you know? Some bad characters hanging around.”

  “You think the place is haunted because of the people who stayed there? Kind of picked up on their energy?”

  “Or maybe they were drawn there because it was a bad place,” he reasoned.

  Taryn bit her lip and considered. It was the chicken or the egg riddle.

  “Well, g
ood luck,” he said sincerely. “Break a leg and all.”

  Luck was something she might actually be needing.

  Taryn would be doing a series of paintings for the old Black Raven Inn, a special project commissioned by the entertainer herself. For the next couple of months, Taryn would be spending her days immersed in the history and ambience of the rundown, seedy roadside motel.

  The Black Raven Inn was not the kind of place she was used to working at.

  Granted, the structures she was usually called in to paint tended to be neglected, rundown, and even abandoned, but they’d all contained their own kind of unique beauty–or at least some fascinating historical significance that the community was intent on seeing preserved.

  Not this time.

  There was nothing pretty about the Black Raven Inn, nothing exciting ever happened there. At least, nothing that anyone was proud of. It was like the Viper Room in Los Angeles, which would always be known as the place where River Phoenix overdosed on cocaine and morphine. People drove by the old motel to point and whisper, but it wasn’t a part of Nashville’s history that the city boasted of in its brochure. It would never appear alongside of, oh say, Belle Meade or Grassmere on a downtown billboard.

  The Black Raven Inn was a far cry from the opulent splendor that was the Jekyll Island Club Hotel or even the fine-looking reckless beauty of Griffith Tavern. This was unlike any other place she’d ever worked.

  For the most part, Taryn was hired to recreate buildings to reflect their glory days. She was brought on board to restore (on canvas anyway) the magnificence of old private residences, historical buildings central to the town’s development, and other noteworthy structures that had, for various reasons, fallen into disrepair over the years.

  She’d worked at antebellum mansions that had remained in the same family for eight generations. Quaint mills turned into charming B&Bs. Soaring courthouses built right after the Civil War. School houses constructed by the WPA in the Roosevelt era. Buildings with historical significance. Sentimental significance.