Muddy Creek: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 7) Read online

  “Oh shit,” Taryn mumbled. She allowed Miss Dixie to do her thing, but this was one shot she didn’t care to look at right away. She’d wait until she was back outside. Maybe in her motel room. Far away.

  The good thing was that Taryn had made her way to the other end of the school, the end with the fire and collapsed ceiling. It was a lot lighter down there and Taryn wasn’t sorry to leave the darkness behind.

  “Let’s just get this over with,” she sighed, stepping into the first classroom. It was the one where she’d seen the figure, heard the noises. She’d known all along that if there was anything going on inside the school, it might be in this room.

  “Room Five,” she read aloud the number hanging over the doorway.

  She’d seen the damage from the outside, but it was a lot different being on the other side of the window. The large, gaping hole that allowed the sky to poke through above her looked like a portal into another room. The charred walls, black ashes leaving the floor covered in a black snow, and the leftover furniture tossed around haphazardly, were a contrast to the almost whiteness of the sky above. She’d seen little sunshine since arriving.

  Taryn started to lift Miss Dixie then abruptly came to a halt. “Oh!” she cried with a stark realization.

  This was the room of impact, the place where the explosion had gone off. And she was standing in the very location where the pipe bomb had been placed and sent fiery waves throughout the building.

  The nefarious circle around her feet was eerily perfect. Long, black streaks led out from it, fanning towards the desks and tables like sunrays. By the door a stain remained, a blemish so red it was almost black. Taryn had walked right over it without noticing it and now she gasped. Someone’s blood…There were no remnants of the homemade bomb, they’d been taken away as evidence, but nobody had done anything to clean up the mess it had left behind. Why would they?

  Taryn closed her eyes and bit her lips. People had died in that room. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in a room with a known death. She’d spent many hours in the hotel room where a famous musician had died years ago. She knew many of the places she’d worked at had their own sordid stories.

  But this was different. For one thing, it was recent.

  Now, as she looked at the desks and chairs turned on their sides, some of them missing pieces, she appreciated what she was really looking at. This wasn’t evidence of neglect and abandonment, not like the rest of the school. This disarray had happened during the explosion.

  One of the teachers had been blown right out of the classroom. Their body was found down the hall, which meant it had soared from the room and actually turned the corner. Another was discovered on the roof.

  She’d been doing more research on the incident, despite the fact that she had hoped to come in with impartial eyes.

  “So, this is it…,” Taryn said weakly. “This is where it all went down. Where the magic happened.”

  Unable to take the creep factor of standing in the explosion’s home, she stepped from the circle and strode to the row of windows on the other side of the room. Now, looking out, she was able to see the embankment where Lucy had been found standing. Lucy hadn’t just placed the explosion, after all, she’d stood back and watched the action as she detonated it.

  “Damn. People are crazy.”

  Most of the walls were discolored. What was left of them anyway. Big chunks were missing in places–another reason the room was lighter than the others.

  As Taryn carefully took in the scene before her, however, her eyes focused in on the far wall, the one that would have been at the back of the classroom. Above the coat rack and shelves that would have served as storage, she saw the same blue spray paint she’d seen in the principal’s office.

  “Haunting Me,” she read, intently focusing and trying to make out the letters that were warped and smeared from the flames and firemen’s water. “Haunting Me? Apparently.”

  There was another one on the wall opposite of her too, though. It was much clearer. “Friend,” she read. “Friend? What does any of this mean?”

  Look away from the friend? Don’t look at what’s about to happen? Was a friend haunting someone? Was it a warning to those who had died, an attempt to provide a puzzle that could’ve saved their lives, if it had been solved in time? Had Lucy been playing games with them?

  From the condition of the paint, it was clear that they’d been created before the blast, not after. She couldn’t exactly see Lucy hanging around at the school after she’d been arrested. But, then again, she did just live up the road from it and could have easily sneaked back in any time she wanted. Taryn had been there for almost two weeks and rarely saw any vehicles of any kind drive by. Even the reporters had better things to do and those guys would jump at just about any story lead.

  She had work to do, however, and her heart and mind had had just about had enough. For the next twenty minutes Taryn wandered around the room, taking extra care not to disturb anything. The police tape that had once existed was wadded up in the floor. Police weren’t doing much, if anything, to keep it secured. Still, she didn’t want to be responsible for contaminating the crime scene.

  Again, Taryn resisted the lure to look at her camera’s screen. Quite frankly, she was scared. If she saw something that distressed her, she was likely to make a run for it and fly right out that window behind her. She’d done a lot of crazy things in her life, but this set the bar at a new high.

  When she was finished she stood back in the middle of the room, did a little bow, and offered a “thanks” to the remaining energy. Despite the opening and fresh air, the room was still stuffy and a little claustrophobic. She was happy to depart, but wanted to leave behind good vibes in case she had to return.

  There were only a few more rooms left, including the gym. Taryn could see it from where she stood. She could have been in and out in another half hour, tops.

  “Might as well do it while I’m here,” she sighed. “Get it all done at once.”

  As Taryn began walking back down the hallway, though, she was abruptly struck by the feeling that someone was watching her. She paused, turned, and looked behind her, half expecting to see another interloper like herself striding through the wreckage.

  Nobody was there. The hallway had grown so dark, however, that she was unable to see the library end now. The blackness was opaque, thickening near the principal’s office then, in a hombre, slowly building upon itself as it traveled down the tile, until it became thicker and denser. It was almost solid, an idea that Taryn found uneasy.

  “It’s just the sun,” she said aloud, her voice echoing around her. “The sun just dipped behind the mountains.”

  The cry came then, the wretched howl that shook her to the core. It came from the gym. The sound, simultaneously seductive and menacing, flicked its invisible tongue and licked at her, tempting her to turn and march onwards.

  But Taryn wasn’t playing. She’d had enough.

  Although it meant running towards the darkness, Taryn held onto Miss Dixie to steady her and began to take off at a frenzied pace, her backpack slapping her with each step. As she ran, felt something from the gym watching her, following her, and quickening its pace.

  The fear eating at her was all-consuming. The quicker Taryn moved, the thicker the sticky quicksand she was traveling through grew. She might have been in a dream, distances distorted and geography skewed. The short expanse of hallway that logically should have existed between where she’d been and where she was headed stretched on for miles. She could feel the ice-cold fingers reaching out for her, grabbing her hand and stroking the nape of her neck. She could feel and smell its bitter, fetid breath.

  “Oh God,” Taryn croaked, hot tears streaming down her face. “Don’t fall, don’t fall!”

  When she reached the principal’s office, rather than continue on to the storage room in which she’d entered, she made a sharp turn and aimed for the front entrance. The board was inches away from her now and wit
h one mighty kick Taryn had it pushed aside and was rocketing out the door, safely received by the welcoming daylight.

  Taryn didn’t stop until she reached the embankment, the same one Lucy had stood on and waited, watching.

  Whatever had been behind her was gone, of course. If it had ever been there at all.

  She’d done enough.

  Eighteen

  Still shaking two hours later, Taryn had yet to return to her motel room. First, she’d driven around town, going down side streets and traveling out into the hollers that branched out from the main street like long, skinny arms. The driving, and especially the music she played while doing it, helped clear her mind.

  There was a strange juxtaposition of dwellings in Venters County. If she’d felt like stopping or even slowing down in the middle of the road, she could have taken some great shots. She was looking at a mixture of old and new, of wealthy and poor.

  Down one holler (the street sign read Cresty Hollow), she’d been surprised to see new constructions stacked side-by-side at the beginning of the road. The small, brick houses were mostly ranch-style. Each one had about half an acre with it. Small vegetable gardens grew in the backs and on the sides, wicker furniture graced the front porches, and gravel driveways housed trucks, campers, and the occasional motorcycle. The same kind of place could be found just about anywhere in the country.

  Further down the road, however, things changed.

  A mile into Cresty, Taryn found herself facing much older homes. The material changed from brick to wood, even to veneer in some of them. Gray, cheerless houses sat back from the road, hiding behind clumps of trees. Chicken coops and garden sheds housed geese, roosters, and goats. Dilapidated roofs slanted over sagging porches filled with big, plastic children’s toys that had faded from the sun. Windows were covered with garbage bags or aluminum foil. Chimneys expectorated black, sooty smoke.

  Taryn didn’t want to gawk or be disrespectful, but the change was fascinating.

  On another road, this one without a name, she dipped over the side of a hill and found herself in what felt like a hole, surrounded on all sides by sloping banks. A young boy in jeans and boots, but no shirt, stood above her and watched as on her radio Patty Loveless wondered if her lover still missed her when she was gone. The house behind him was small enough to have fit in her motel room. The porch was covered with lawn mowers and engines. The oil had spilled from many of them, leaving shiny puddles dotting the gray, concrete floor. The sad-looking yard was bare of grass, save a few straggling weeds that came to the boy’s waist. Scattered around were children’s toys: a mechanical car big enough for two children to ride in, a plastic shopping cart holding a headless doll, bicycles, basketballs, neon green plastic machine guns, a child’s kitchen set with stove…They were dirty, dented, and damaged in a number of ways.

  In the side yard she saw an above-ground swimming pool, partially caved in. With the slight breeze, leaves were blowing off a nearby tree and gently landing in what she imagined to be murky, fetid water. A brand new Ford Explorer gleamed in the driveway.

  Around the corner she saw something else that nearly made her do a double take. A large, brick, three-story house rose from a hilltop. Its expansive yard was well-manicured and unnaturally green. Wrought iron outdoor furniture flanked both sides of the front door. A gazebo to the side held an outdoor kitchen that cost more than her vehicle.

  There was no one real “style” to the architecture of Venters County. As Taryn explored more and more she learned that there were an equal number of ranch houses, bungalows, Craftsman, trailers, modular homes, farm houses, and McMansions. They came in all shapes, sizes, and colors.

  There was great wealth and great squalor around Muddy Creek. Piles of garbage towered by $50,000 vehicles. Tiny, windowless houses that didn’t look bigger than chicken coops boasted high-quality RVs in the driveways. Corroded, single-wide trailers had exotic in-ground swimming pools. Miniature mansions with rusted out pick-up trucks on their last legs. They were all mixed together in some sort of abnormal pattern. She’d never seen anything like it.

  For awhile the exploration took Taryn’s mind off what had happened at the school. But then it grew too dark to see and she was tired. Supper took care of another hour. She ate in a small restaurant that served fried chicken and mashed potatoes out of little cast iron skillets. The noise of the jukebox and pool players in the game room adjacent to the dining area was comforting; she could be alone without being by herself.

  Eventually, though, Taryn had to retire.

  “I will be there in two days,” Matt promised. She kept him on speaker phone as she drove back to her room. “Is there anything you want me to bring?”

  “Just you,” Taryn answered. “It will be good to see you. All this is getting to me.”

  “The job?”

  “The job, the trial, the reporters, the school…I guess I’m just not as adventurous as I used to be,” she laughed weakly.

  “You’re plenty adventurous to me,” he assured her. “Do you want to go ahead and send me some of the pictures you took today now or wait and let me look at them when I get there?”

  “I haven’t even looked at them myself, yet,” Taryn admitted. “But if it’s okay, I’d like to go ahead and send them to you. Then we can talk about them when you get here.”

  “Sure, just upload them to Dropbox and I’ll take a look. Give me something to do on the flight up there.”

  Taryn still had him on the phone when she parked the car and began walking towards her room.

  “Well, shit,” she whimpered, stopping in her tracks a few feet from her door.

  “What’s wrong? Everything okay?”

  “No,” Taryn seethed. “Looks like the maid didn’t shut my door to when she left.”

  “You have maid service there?” Which was beside the point yet surprisingly relevant.

  “Sort of. They bring towels. Great. There better not be anything missing,” Taryn said as she resumed her pace and hurried towards her door.

  Sure enough, it was standing wide open. Nobody else was milling around. She figured they were all out to dinner. The lightbulb outside her door was stark yellow, casting an orange glow on the door. She hadn’t left a light on inside, since she hadn’t intended on returning so late.

  “Keep me on here,” Matt said, “just in case.”

  Knowing him, he’d probably already picked up his other phone and was prepared to dial 911 if he heard anything he didn’t like on her end.

  Taryn flicked on the light inside the door with a flourish. Then she gasped.

  Her room had been vandalized. It looked like a tornado had gone through it and taken no prisoners. Paints were squeezed out and left in globs on the carpet. Linseed oil made an oily trail around her bed. Three of her canvases were in the middle of the floor, holes punched through their centers. Extra charcoal pencils were broken in half and left in a pile on the little table. Articles of clothing had been snatched from the tiny closet and were dispersed around the room; some had been dipped into the oil and paint, others were torn or hacked with scissors or knives. She was suddenly very glad she’d been wearing her favorite boots. At least they weren’t damaged.

  Furious, Taryn stomped into the bathroom and flipped that light on, too.

  “Oh, man, not my makeup,” she groaned as she scanned the small space. Her Kat von D foundation had all been poured out. The thick, creamy liquid oozed down the sink even now as she watched in anger. Lipsticks were pushed all the way to the tops of their tubes and then smashed by their lids.

  “What happened? Everything okay?”

  “Someone came in here and destroyed all my stuff,” Taryn cried. “My makeup! They destroyed all my makeup! Can you believe that?”

  “Make sure they’re not still there. Hurry, look around!” She could hear Matt’s concern but brushed it aside.

  “They’re not here, dude. I just stood in the middle of the room and saw everything. There’s nowhere to hide. Damn it.”r />
  Fire in her eyes, Taryn turned and marched towards the main office. Someone was going to pay for what they’d done. That was the nicest makeup she’d ever had. It had been a birthday present. And nobody messed with her clothes. Nobody.

  * * *

  LATER, AS TARYN sprawled on out the bed in her new room, she continued to feed her anger and throw herself a pity party. Of course the maid hadn’t even been working that day. Whoever had done it to her room had taken their own initiative to welcome themselves inside. The lock had been broken.

  The manager offered to refund the rest of her stay, another three weeks, but that did her little good. She wasn’t paying for it in the first place. He then offered her a check for $300 “as our sincerest apology.”

  In other words, “please take this money and don’t sue us.”

  She’d settled for $500. They could afford it. They were charging those reporters a fortune.

  Still, there was at least four times that much damage done to her art supplies alone.

  Luckily, she’d had her most important possessions with her at the time. Miss Dixie, for one, was with her. Taryn never went anywhere without her. Her laptop was in her trunk; she traveled with it as well, just in case she got a wild hair while she was out and decided to some photo editing. She had extra canvases and brushes with her as well.

  Another piece of luck on her part was that the intruder had not been able to open one of the storage tubs Taryn had unloaded into her room the night before. The lid always stuck on her. Sometimes she had to use a knife. It contained more paint, a sketchpad, and oil. So she really didn’t need to buy anything at the moment, although a few extra shirts wouldn’t hurt.

  And her makeup, she thought sadly. She was actually grieving for a tube of lipstick she already missed.