Taryn's Camera: Beginnings: Four Haunting Novellas Read online

  Taryn’s Camera

  4 Short Stories

  Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  Contents

  Sarah

  Pieces: A Shaker Town Companion story

  The Devils House: A Prequel to Windwood Farm

  Stella

  About Rebecca

  Rebecca’s Links

  Rebecca’s Books

  Sarah

  A Prequel to

  Sarah’s House

  * * *

  Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  “It was a dark and stormy night.”

  Sarah laughed at herself as her words were swallowed by the darkness of the parlor. Outside, the wind howled something fierce. It was carrying on like it was the world’s last night, its last chance to show everyone what it had. The trees around the house were bowed nearly to the ground, bending and struggling not to break in half. She’d heard branches snapping and hitting the ground all night. Some had even hit the house.

  “More money down the drain,” Sarah groaned as she took a sip of tea. It was lukewarm. The cup was cold in her hand. The power had gone off hours ago, leaving the house dark and cold. She had a fire going upstairs in her bedroom but had come down for a new book. Something to take her mind off the storm.

  Sarah had lived alone for forty-two years. She’d never married, never had children…never even had a roommate. The last time she’d lived with anyone was when she was still in her parents’ home.

  Sarah sighed, feeling melancholy at the thought of her parents. Her mother was living with Sarah’s young niece, Taryn, in central Tennessee. Her father had passed on several years before. She missed them both terribly, hated being so far away from them in New Hampshire.

  But she’d made a promise to Stella, her mother.

  “You’re the only one who cares about this creaky old place,” Stella had warned her when she’d been a teenager, intent on leaving the small town and moving to Boston where there were things to do and people to see. “It will be yours one day and you’ll have to take care of it. And…”

  Sarah could still remember the way her mother had paused then, and looked down at her feet as though she didn’t know how to continue.

  “And what?” Sarah’d asked impatiently. After all, she was sixteen and her friends were waiting for her outside. They were going to North Conway–all of them. Sarah had changed clothes four times, just trying to find something that would impress Billy.

  “And everything that goes with it,” Stella had mumbled at last, unable to meet Sarah’s eyes.

  “’And everything that goes with it,’” Sarah repeated now, almost hearing her mother’s voice ring out through the cold, damp room.

  Another explosion of lightning hit, followed almost immediately by a crack of thunder. The house shook a little, trembling on its foundation. The storm was over her now, hitting her at full force.

  The next flash of light illuminated the half-empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey on the buffet. Sarah glanced down at her cold cup of tea and the beckoning bottle.

  “Oh, why the hell not?” she muttered to herself, crossing the room.

  She opened it, poured a generous dollop into her cup, and took a sip. Then she placed the bottle back down on the buffet and turned to leave.

  When the next crash of rolling thunder filled the house and shook her to the core, Sarah turned back around, shoved the bottle under her arm, and headed for the stairs.

  SARAH LOVED THE fact that she never knew what lay in store the day after a good thunderstorm. Sometimes the storms brought a pristine brightness, leaving the world looking and feeling renewed; the sky clear and blue, the air pure and fresh, and the grass sparkling green.

  Today it brought the fog.

  Sarah felt the fog before she saw it. She woke up with her bedroom cold and damp. Her breath left her in little white clouds. The duvet on her bed was cold, almost moist to the touch. Sometime during the night, her fire had gone out. Feeling the chilly floorboards beneath her feet, Sarah scampered across the room to light the fire again. When it was blazing again she let it warm her legs and feet, pulling up the hem of her long nightgown so that the warmth could spread up her body.

  Satisfied she’d thawed out, she walked over to one of the windows that faced the edge of the woods and lake beyond. The fog was thick and gray and hovered just a few feet above the ground. From that vantage point she could usually see the shores of the gray, matte lake. Sometimes, if she strained her eyes enough, she could see boats out in the center of it. There were caves buried beneath the surface and some adventurers tried to dive down and find them in the summertime, once the water had warmed. Legends of buried gold and lost treasure had plagued the lake for as long as she could remember.

  Sarah couldn’t see a darn thing that day. She could barely see past the gravel road and her rusty old Ford truck. The fog was just too thick.

  She shivered, but not with fear.

  “We live to hide another day, old friend,” she spoke with confidence to the walls that surrounded her.

  There was nothing Sarah liked more than feeling isolated and cut off from the rest of the world.

  “THE POWER’S BACK on Madge,” Sarah said, rolling her eyes as she balanced the cordless phone on her shoulder. “We wouldn’t be talking if it was still out. My phone would’ve died.”

  “We get so worried about you up there all by your lonesome,” the woman on the other end of the line tittered. “So worried. You, a woman, alone…”

  “Well, I’m armed and dangerous if anyone messes with me,” Sarah assured her.

  “Good,” came the vehement declaration.

  Sarah had mostly lived in Center Heronborough all her life. Her mother was from there. She’d grown up in that farm house, had only left it for a short time for college. She’d never had any trouble, other than a few curious sightseers who found their way up to her house after turning down her driveway and meandering down the five-mile lane. No one had ever tried to hurt her.

  Still, because she was a single, middle-aged woman people worried.

  “They ought to be more worried about anyone who tries anything,” Sarah muttered now as she picked up another fallen branch and tossed it into the pile. She’d have herself a good bonfire soon. Splintered branches littered her yard. She had to pick them up now or else she’d tear up her new riding mower in a couple of weeks when mowing season started.

  The air outside was neither warm nor cold; it was as though the fog had sealed in whatever temperature the storm brought, leaving the world caught in the middle of the thermometer. She was sweating inside the down jacket and LL Bean jeans lined with flannel, but the sweat was a cold one. And, since she was going through “The Change” she could never quite be sure what was environmental and what was her own body playing tricks on her.

  She’d been outside, cleaning up debris from the storm, for a solid two hours when her back and legs started complaining from all the walking and bending over.

  “Not the spring chicken you used to be, old girl,” Sarah sighed as she straightened and began massaging the small of her back. “But you’ve still got some miles left in you yet.”

  Icy sweat was running down her forehead, and as she fished for her bandana and started mopping at it, something from an upstairs window caught her eye. It was a flash of light, a glint that cut through the dirty fog and moved back and forth in rapid movements before quickly disappearing.

  Sarah shielded her eyes and squinted hard, trying to force her eyes to cover the distance and make out what might lay beyond the glass. It was useless, though; the air was too thick.

  “Well that w
as strange,” she said with a shrug. “Maybe I’m growing blind as well as brittle.”

  Curious and confused, though not frightened, Sarah traipsed back to the house. Not wishing to track in mud, she kicked her men’s boots off at the door and left them to dry on the porch. She’d scrape the mud off later.

  The window in which she’d seen the peculiar flash was on the second floor–it belonged to one of the guest rooms. The house hadn’t seen guests in years so it was more of a storage room these days. Sarah kept the door shut to keep the heat from entering it. No use paying to heat a room nobody used, she’d reasoned.

  At one time the bedroom had belonged to her sister. Her sister had not used it in fifteen years, however. And now she was dead and would never use it again.

  Spring had begun its tentative dance and some days were even nigh on warm but the news had apparently escaped this particular room. It was as frigid as an ice box.

  Shivering, Sarah stepped inside, flipped on the light switch, and took a look around. The bed, dresser, and chest of drawers from her childhood were all still there–covered in several years’ worth of dust now. She rarely cleaned the rooms she didn’t use. A cluster of porcelain dolls and stuffed animals with matted fur and milky eyes watched her from the bed.

  Sarah had never cared for dolls. She’d always felt like they were silently mocking her.

  The heavy brocade drapes that helped trap the warm air in the winter and cold air in the summer hung limply at the windows. As Sarah neared them, she got the unpleasant whiff of mildew.

  “Damn it,” she grumbled. “Must have a leaky window.”

  She tried not to think about how much money that would cost her, especially if she was looking at water damage and rot.

  Sarah didn’t know what she’d find when she opened the curtain. A loose nail or screw, perhaps. Something a bird had carried in, maybe.

  There was nothing there, however. Nothing rested on the windowsill, nothing metal or shiny was caught on the drapes.

  “Maybe it was just my imagination and I AM getting old,” she said with a slight laugh as she started to close the drapes again.

  And then the glass in the window pane caught her attention.

  Sarah gasped, took a step backwards, caught her toe on the area rug’s tassels, and tumbled to the floor. She went down with a “thud,” calling out in pain as she cracked her tailbone on the landing.

  Still, she didn’t remove her eyes from the sight before her.

  As Sarah watched in horror, the drapes slowly swung back and forth in a methodical rhythm, gently swaying from the way she’d abruptly let them go. Each time they parted she found herself looking at the reason she’d fallen: two perfectly formed handprints were pressed into the glass, clearly outlined by the fog that was starting to seep in from the outside.

  “MOTHER, ARE YOU SURE?”

  “She says she wants to see you, that she misses you,” Stella insisted. “And she’s getting ready to start Spring Break so now’s as good a time as any.”

  Sarah enjoyed having her young niece, Taryn, visit her but she was still unnerved by the handprints. She’d seen them three days ago and while nothing had happened since, and she’d even locked the bedroom door with the skeleton key, she was still unsettled by the experience.

  “And you don’t want to come with her?” Sarah asked.

  Her mother laughed. “I’d love to but I’m on a Garden Club committee and we have a gala in three weeks. Since I’m the co-chair they’d have my head in a tulip arrangement if I skipped town at the last minute.”

  Sarah laughed. “Okay, okay. Well, she is eleven. I suppose it’s fine if she flies alone.”

  “Ha. That girl is more mature than either one of us,” Stella snorted.

  It was true, of course, Sarah thought. Taryn had always been quietly mature and so serious. And one hardly knew she was even in the room. If you couldn’t find her, all you had to do was a check a corner. More than likely she’d be curled up in a chair, buried behind a book.

  “I look forward to seeing her next week, then,” Sarah said at last. “Just send me her flight information and I’ll pick her up from the airport.”

  She had eight days to freshen up the house, get Taryn’s room ready for her, and do some grocery shopping.

  She hoped whatever had happened with the window had gotten that out of its system and wouldn’t be back.

  THE SCRATCHING woke her up. At first, she thought it was part of her dream. She’d been having a lovely dream of sitting at her old desk, listening to the students as they ran around outside her window at recess. Before she’d retired and was still an elementary school principal, that had been her favorite time of the day. Sitting at her desk, eating lunch, and listening to the laughter and shrieks of the children on the playground had always been comforting.

  Then came the scratching.

  In her dream, a little girl she didn’t recognize stood at the window, tapping on it. Sarah was not surprised. Children had often knocked on her glass and waved. She’d always waved back and then shooed them off as she called out for them to “Go play!”

  The little blond girl in her dream had kept waving, however, even when Sarah had walked over to the glass and knocked back, motioning her on to the playground.

  That’s when the child had started the scratching. It started out delicately, a light sound as her childlike fingernails gently scraped up and down the glass. Then it grew louder as her nails dug deeper into the glass, grating and harsh. Sarah had banged harder, gesturing for the child to stop.

  The little girl had smiled then, an impish grin that should have been cute but wasn’t. It was somehow irritating, like that of a child who was cunning without being mischievous.

  In her dream, Sarah had turned her back to the window and covered her ears, cutting out the discordant sound that burrowed under her skin and tickled her mind.

  On the verge of screaming, she’d finally awakened, relieved to be rid of the irritating and disorienting dream.

  To her dismay, however, the scratching continued.

  It wasn’t in her dream at all, but in her bedroom.

  The glow of the embers in her fireplace cast ghastly shadows over her walls and threw spirited patterns on her ceiling. She couldn’t see the glass, it was shielded by her paisley print drapes, but it was obvious the sound stemmed from the window above the antique loveseat.

  A tree branch? Sarah asked herself, swinging her bare feet over the side of the bed and searching for her slippers. No, she didn’t think so. There weren’t any trees growing close enough to the house.

  Remembering the handprints in the guest room, she moved slowly across the floor, dread building in the pit of her stomach. At the most unfortunate time, the scene from “’Salem’s Lot,” the one with the little vampire boy striking the window, flashed through her mind, unsettling her.

  “Never invite a vampire into your house,” she whispered aloud with a nervous snicker.

  The flames shot up in her fireplace, bathing the room in a golden glow.

  As she neared the drapes, her slippered feet softly padded against the hardwood floor. Her skin chilled and she swallowed nervously, trying to push back the fear that embarrassed her.

  “There’s nothing there, there’s nothing there,” she chanted.

  “Scratch, scrape, scra-a-a-tch,” came the grim reply.

  With an unsteady hand, Sarah opened the curtains at a snail’s pace, bracing herself for what might await beyond.

  The small, winged creature that beat at the window pane was desperate, intent on making it inside. The wide-eyed bat was small enough to fit in the palm of her hand, yet it was somehow responsible for the ruckus that had sneaked its way into her dream and roused her.

  “Shoo,” she commanded, drumming on the glass in an attempt to scare it off. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a bat around her house. She didn’t want it to injure itself. “Go away!”

  The bat remained unfazed.

  �
��If you really are a vampire and this is your disguise then you’ve done a pretty bad job of choosing something frightening,” she chuckled, giving the glass another blow.

  The vampire-bird paused then and Sarah could’ve sworn it actually looked at her, its tiny eyes searching her knowingly. Unsettled now, she closed her eyes and shook her head, her fingers tightly gripping the drapes.

  You’re tired and seeing things, she lectured herself, that’s all.

  After a moment of silence, her heartrate lowered and her breathing returned to normal.

  When she opened her eyes, however, the bat was gone. In its place was the young girl from her dream. The child’s long, wheat-blond hair whipped around her small shoulders in the night breeze; her wide, shockingly gray eyes were ablaze with fright. Sarah zeroed in on her rosebud mouth, for a moment unable to remove her eyes. But her lips, open in a silent scream, was not the least of what had Sarah crying out–it was the fact that she could see right through the young girl as she floated thirty feet in the air.

  SARAH, FATIGUED AND achy from lack of sleep, sat on her front porch in the white wicker rocking chair and contemplated the impenetrable wall of the forest around her. Like the fog, the trees surrounded her, offering another barrier between her and the outside world. The fog hadn’t lifted yet. It was still dense and dirty. She shivered, but not from the biting cold.

  Twice, something had come to her window. Sarah was retired. She’d lived in that house most of her life. Her mother before her had lived in it for a lot of her life. As far as Sarah knew, nothing had ever happened there, nothing that couldn’t be explained. And now…

  “What is going on?” she asked the unmoving trees. “Why now?”

  If they knew, they weren’t revealing their secrets.

  Water. Water was what she needed.