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

  Now, as she had time to stew on it, Taryn wondered if the reason the tub hadn’t been opened was because the intruder couldn’t open it or had run out of time.

  She wasn’t surprised they’d been able to do the amount of damage they did. During the daytime there was hardly anyone around the motel. The motel guests were there to work–they all left early in the morning and most came home after dark. Of course, they did pop in and out during the day as they returned for things they needed or took breaks, but in general the place was pretty quiet.

  “Who’s mad at me now?” Taryn grunted. She always seemed to be pissing someone off.

  But, although she was feeling a significant amount of rage, there was also another thought running through her head: this might have been a break for her. If she was making someone angry, or uncomfortable, then she was close to something that someone didn’t like.

  So what had she done? What had she said?

  She’d talk about it when she saw Matt. They’d figure it out together.

  * * *

  SINCE SHE’D HAVE TO DO IT eventually anyway, Taryn forged ahead with the next activity of the day: going through her pictures. She stocked up on Cokes and candy bars from the vending machines (now two doors closer) and found a Rom Com on television. Then, with her favorite blanket spread over her legs (they’d missed it under the pillow) and her back up against the flimsy headboard, she opened her laptop and braced herself for what she might find.

  “Bring it on,” she whispered, but her smile wavered. There was a reason she was keeping all the lights on and the volume loud.

  But what could go wrong when Kate Hudson was making eyes at Matthew McConaughey?

  As silly as it might sound, Taryn found herself slightly disappointed in the first ten shots she flipped through. Oh, they were spooky to be sure. The hallway looked even gloomier than she’d remembered. Possum and bird carcasses littered the floor in the library–something she had not noticed while she’d been too excited about the Nancy Drew books. Now, in her pictures, their glassy eyes looked up at her with desperation while their bodies lay flat.

  “Sail possums,” she whispered, referring to the flat sail-shapes their bodies took on postmortem.

  Then there was the graffiti, writing only illuminated by the flash of her camera. Curse words were intermixed with song lyrics and crude drawings. Uninformed vandals, confused by what they’d probably seen on television, had left pentagrams in hopes of signifying a satanic presence.

  But all of these things, though jolting, were typical.

  “Maybe there’s nothing there after all,” Taryn shrugged, popping a bit of chocolate into her mouth.

  And then the lights went out.

  Taryn sat up straighter and looked around, half expecting to see the shadowy figure again. Unable to see beyond the glare of her computer screen, she settled back against her headboard and gripped her blanket, pulling it up to her neck.

  “Ghosts can’t hurt you, ghosts can’t hurt you,” she chanted, willing herself to believe it. A ghost had not hurt her yet, anyway.

  She made a feeble attempt to tug on the lamp’s string, but nothing happened. She knew it wouldn’t. Apparently, the show was just getting started.

  “Focus, focus,” Taryn reminded herself. “You’ll be okay.”

  Resigned to what was going on around her, and choking back her fear, she returned to her pictures. The ones taken in the principal’s office were next. There were ten in all. The first few were not exceptional in any way.

  However, as she found herself peering closer to the screen, once again lingering on the words “Look Away,” she paused.

  “From what?” she asked the dark room. “Are you telling me not to look? Or am I barking up the wrong tree?”

  “Watch.”

  The single word, spoken at barely more than a whisper, had Taryn bolting upright in the bed, frantically scanning the room in panic. “Hello?” she croaked. “Wha–”

  “Taryn, watch.”

  The command was clear and close; the person speaking could have been sitting on the bed next to her. Indeed, as Taryn held her breath and turned to her left, a faint misty white cloud began to materialize in the air beside her. It was fresh, sweet-smelling, and almost comforting. The sheet under her bottom shifted, as though the person next to her had lowered themselves down and disturbed the bed. She might as well have been hanging out with a friend, going through the pictures together. She could feel their breath on her cheek, sense their nearness.

  The deep familiarity of the floral perfume, the faint whiff of cigarette smoke, and talcum powder was overwhelming.

  Only, her Aunt Sarah had been gone for nearly two years. She couldn’t have possibly been there with her.

  “Aunt Sarah?” Taryn whispered, humbled that her human response was hopefulness, and not fear. “Is that you?”

  “Watch,” the voice demanded again. She’d never heard her aunt speak in such an authoritative tone. She’d never seen her in action on her job, though. Perhaps there had been a side to her aunt she hadn’t known. Everyone had such a side. “Look.”

  In obedience, Taryn turned back to her screen, resisting the urge to dive into the empty space beside her and engulf herself in the last bit of residue left of her entire family.

  “I’m looking, I’m watching,” she muttered. The coolness around her shifted in approval.

  But there was nothing new in the picture of the office. The image had not changed; Taryn did not see anything suspicious or questionable in the shot aside from the scrawling on the wall that might even simply be more graffiti.

  “Moving on then,” Taryn said. She waited for some show of authorization, but when nothing came, she shrugged again and went to the next shot.

  She was inside the classroom, the room where the explosive detonated.

  Taryn had taken the first picture from right inside the doorway. The next had been taken while she was standing in the center of the room, inside the circle of blackness, facing the line of windows. Once again Taryn felt chilled by the implication of where she’d been and what she’d seen, but if she was expecting some overwhelming sense of clarity to occur, she was to be disappointed. Nothing happened.

  For the third picture, she’d stood at the front of the room, her back to the chalkboard. She faced the room, stood before where the students would have most likely been seated. The desks and tables were no longer in any order but she could use her imagination to envision what they must have once looked like: little desks and orange plastic chairs, all line up in neat rows facing the teacher like tiny soldiers.

  Only now, that wasn’t what she saw at all.

  As Taryn watched in fascination, the glare of her screen grew brighter and brighter until she could barely stand to look at it. Beams of light zoomed towards her in even sheets; she was reminded of being in a movie theater and looking up at the projection booth–the dusty beams of light soaring towards the big, white screen.

  Shielding her eyes, Taryn rose to her knees and moved the computer off her lap. She placed it several feet down the bed from her and watched as the shaft of light grew more brilliant, momentarily forgetting about her guest.

  Then she looked behind her.

  In its brightness, her computer had turned into a projector of sorts and now it was facing her pressed-wood headboard. The image transposed before her was the same room as in the picture, but the scene was not the picture she’d taken.

  Taryn sat back on her heels and cocked her head to the side, studying the scene with critical eyes. There were the desks, all neatly lined up as she’d expected. Only now they were full of students. The children appeared to be about nine or ten years old, an equal number of girls and boys. All but one of the seats were filled.

  The classroom was a cheerful place, full of the fun, exciting things any child at that age appreciates. A “Ghostbusters” movie poster was tacked on the back wall by the coat rack next to a poster of a kitten holding a pencil and large, pink eraser. Childis
h, handmade lanterns dangled from the ceiling. Orange pumpkins, fat and smiling jack-o-lanterns, lined the ledge below the windows. They looked like papier-mâché. The walls were covered with printouts of everything from superheroes with spelling words to barnyard animals holding onto long-division charts. Books were lined neatly on shelves.

  It was the scene of an ordinary classroom, the kind in which she had once sat.

  She could not see the front of the room, of course. That’s where she, Taryn, had been standing. Whatever the class was looking at she, herself, was obscuring.

  But there were the students.

  Some were engaged in their reading. These were intent on staring at their pages, noses pressed almost all the way to the paper, not lifting their eyes. But others were–what were they doing?

  Several little girls were looking at one another, sharing muffled giggles behind their hands. A small boy with bright, red hair looked into a faraway distance, his face nearly as red as the top of his head. Some children covered their faces, only revealing their eyes. They looked on the verge of tears.

  And then there was the awkward looking child in slick pigtails and big, thick glasses. She sat in the front row closest to the door. Although she had an open book in front of her, and her fingers had carefully marked her place, she wasn’t reading. Unlike the others, she wasn’t smiling or laughing or embarrassed. But she was looking forward.

  Looking straight at Taryn.

  Their eyes met through the decades and locked. Taryn didn’t dare to breathe. She and the young girl watched one another with grave interest, unmoving until the child cocked her head to the side and gave her counterpart the nod.

  Taryn gasped and fell backward as the headboard went black.

  Nineteen

  Taryn wore a navy blue skirt with a white, buttoned-up blouse. Both had been found at one of the local thrift stores early that morning. She hadn’t had time to do any real shopping since the majority of her clothes were destroyed.

  Still reeling from the last night’s events, she marched down the sidewalk with purpose, quickening her pace after glancing at her watch and noticing the time.

  “Hello there,” the woman who held the double doors of the courthouse open for her was the same one that had gone in and checked her room a few nights earlier. “You joinin’ us today?”

  Taryn nodded, feeling surreal at the fact that not only was Frieda Bowen holding the door open for her but that she looked shy about it. Taryn returned her friendly smile with politeness. “Yes. Just for today, though.”

  She laughed. “Wanted to see what this circus was all about?”

  “I’m a glutton for punishment,” she said drily.

  “Well, it’s an interesting case for sure. Just make sure you don’t make a lot of noise or draw attention to yourself. Judge doesn’t like any distractions. He threatens to throw us all out just about every day.” Frieda rolled her eyes.

  Taryn highly doubted she’d do anything to draw any attention to herself. As she took her seat on a padded bench behind the defense’s table, she wondered again about her decision to join the courtroom antics. So far she’d had little interest in actually watching the proceedings; seeing the highlights on television each night had been more than enough.

  But that was before Lucy Dawson had nodded at her through twenty-five years and a camera.

  The Lucy that walked out with her attorney looked vastly different from the one in pigtails, or even the one Taryn had sat with on the porch. This one wore her hair in a tight bun, modeled a navy blue business suit, and carried an expensive-looking leather briefcase under her arm.

  Of course, the thick glasses were still perched on her nose, the suit was already wrinkled, and the briefcase was scuffed with a broken strap. To Taryn, it looked as though Lucy had an awareness of what “normal” people might wear for such an occasion, but hadn’t quite been able to replicate it.

  “How were they even able to hold the case here?” Taryn whispered to Frieda. Perhaps feeling as though they’d bonded back at the motel, the celebrity reporter had followed her in and taken the seat beside her. She guessed that, since she’d been looking for scary people in her room and they were staying at the same place, they were kind of buds now. “Doesn’t everyone in town know her?”

  Frieda shrugged and rolled her eyes again. She looked much more like the person on television today. Like the shark she was often called. “We’ve been playing that game for months. Her attorney didn’t even ask for a change of venue. Can you believe it?”

  “So this local woman can kill half a dozen other local people in a county where everyone is related to everyone else and they thought they could still find a fair jury?” Taryn tried wrapping her head around that logic and failed.

  “You’re telling me. Just wait until you see how some of this unfolds. Better than most TV I’ve watched,” she whispered with a grin. “Or hosted.”

  Lucy’s attorney was a tall woman with blond, frizzy hair. Taryn had seen her on television as well and recognized her right away. She wore an ill-fitting black dress that showed off multiple layers of blubber on her stomach and hunched over a cane when she walked. She didn’t look more than fifty-years-old. Taryn hoped she was good, but after taking a quick glance at the prosecutor, with his tailored suit, Mac unfolded on the table before him, and youthful (and hungry) looking face, her expectations fell short.

  It was going to be a long afternoon.

  * * *

  “CAN YOU GIVE US A GENERAL SENSE of Ms. Dawson’s well-being at the time you knew her?”

  “Objection.” Lucy’s attorney struggled to rise to her feet and wobbled once she’d made it. “Calls for speculation. Mr. Winston here is not a healthcare worker.”

  “Sustained.”

  The prosecutor shuffled through a stack of papers on his desk shrugged his shoulders. “Can you recall any altercations between Ms. Dawson and anyone else from that time period?”

  The middle-aged man on the hot seat had what Taryn thought of like a hipster beard–it fell to the middle of his chest. He’d chosen a flannel shirt and gray corduroys for his courtroom debut. Between his heavy, brown work boots, facial hair, and little horn-rimmed glasses he looked like a nerdy lumberjack.

  Granted, Taryn didn’t know a lot about legal proceedings, just what she’d seen on “Law & Order,” but she found it outrageous that a man Lucy Dawson had dated in high school was testifying against her. As what? A character witness? Prosecution couldn’t do that, could they? Well, they were. So far he’d told them that she’d had a volatile temper, difficulty making friends, and was prone to erratic phone calls in the middle of the night, calling him over to sit with her when she couldn’t sleep.

  Taryn’s heart went out to Lucy. She, herself, would’ve been mortified to have that dragged through the community (not to mention the rest of the world). Most people would be. Who the hell wanted their high school loves to get up and talk about them twenty years later? Like they couldn’t change? And what a weeny he was to get up and talk.

  “Well, yes I can in fact,” the man, this “Mr. Winston”, replied. He said it with such a smile that Taryn shrank back against her seat in disgust.

  As the witness answered, he spoke not actually to the prosecutor but the entire courtroom. His eyes traveled from one side to the other as his hand gestures became elaborate and his voice rose and fell with great reverb.

  Why, Taryn thought, he’s putting on a show! What a joke!

  She could almost hear him ask, “Am I projecting enough for those in the back?”

  Weeny.

  “I do recall one particular incident in which we’d been to a party after a basketball game. She was speaking to one of our acquaintances, she and Lucy were not really friends but knew each other, and the other girl became extremely emotional.”

  “Can you elaborate?”

  “Yes, she began crying, wailing really, and then she reached out and struck Lucy.”

  “Did anyone else there draw any conc
lusions from this?”

  “Yes,” the witness nodded. “It looked as though Lucy had provoked her. She was asked to leave the party.”

  He spat out that last part, as though he still carried around the anger with him–anger that he’d had to leave thanks to her antics.

  “Did she say what that altercation involved?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “Just said that it was personal and that the other girl, her name was Wendy.”

  “Can you clarify what you mean by ‘was’?”

  “Yes sir. Wendy committed suicide the next day.” He said it dramatically, eyes widened to the room.

  “Oh, come on,” Taryn seethed quietly. “What does that have to do with anything? Are they seriously trying to say that Lucy had something to do with that as well?”

  She waited, with baited breath, for the objection that was sure to follow but none came.

  The woman beside her sympathetically patted her on the hand. “It’s been like this for almost two weeks,” she whispered. “You can’t even imagine. Best stuff I’ve had in years.”

  Taryn looked at her from the corner of her eye. She was both disgusted and drained by her presence. In one sense, she was just doing her job, just like Taryn was. In another, she didn’t have to be so gleeful about it.

  “Did Ms. Dawson ever mention her years at Muddy Creek Elementary?”

  The witness shook his head “no.” “No. Not in any extraordinary way. She would occasionally talk about it in reference to things she’d learned, but didn’t offer any anecdotes about her time there.”

  “Did she seem to hold any animosity towards anyone from her past?”

  Taryn thought there might be an objection in that, too. How could this dude know who Lucy was angry at? More so, just because she was mad at someone when she was sixteen didn’t mean it held any relevance today.

  “When Lucy turned seventeen I took her out for a birthday dinner over in Huntington. We went to the Red Lobster. It was a nice meal for a birthday, an expensive one.”