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

  Cafeteria during the morning and noon and big playroom for the rest of the time, it served the same purpose as many other small-town school gyms did. Even now she could see tables standing upright on their wheels, pushed back against a wall, ready to be rolled back out in time for the next meal.

  Thinking of the yellow foam ball she’d seen in the closet by the principal’s office, Taryn snapped a few pictures of the middle of the floor, wondering what rainy day games had been played in there. The school had had a successful basketball team, at least for some time. They’d won the county tournament. It was hard to imagine the room full of spectators, pushed up against the walls in plastic chairs (since there weren’t any bleachers) and the smell of hot dogs and sweat in the air.

  She stopped moving and looked across the floor at Matt, who stood on the other side of the room. With something akin to despondency she raised her shoulders then let them fall back down. He nodded his agreement.

  They began making their way across the floor to one another when a sound had them both stopping in their tracks. “Is that–” Matt started.

  “Singing,” Taryn finished.

  The shadows of the gym obscured his features, but Taryn still made out the anxiety. She scurried across the floor and broke the distance between, reaching for his hand. “Wanna go?” she asked hopefully.

  “Just a second,” he whispered. “You have Miss D ready?”

  Together, holding hands, they crept to the doors. Taryn didn’t feel right about having the vast room to her back, but with Matt there it didn’t feel as foreboding.

  The tinny music that rolled down the hall was familiar. Taryn recognized it right away.

  “James Taylor,” she quipped, still looking straight ahead.

  “That was two notes,” Matt hissed.

  She squeezed his hand. “I know my music.”

  As they listened, neither one daring to breathe very hard for fear of making whatever was happening stop, Taryn attempted to determine where the voice was coming from. It was a good, loud clear voice. Female, with a deep reverb.

  At first, she thought it might be coming from a radio. It was almost too good to be live. (Well, “live” in whatever sense you wanted to make of it.) But as the music grew louder, and the words became clearer, the single backing keyboard became more prominent. It was live; someone was in the school, singing “You’ve Got a Friend.”

  Or had been there, singing it a very long time ago.

  “Let’s follow it,” Taryn mouthed quietly.

  Matt sent her an “are you crazy” look but Taryn merely shrugged. Her mettle hardened when she was with him; nothing bad could possibly happen when the two of them were together.

  With her taking the lead, Matt and Taryn crept down the hallway, sidestepping plastic wrappers and Coke cans as they went, trying to make as little noise as possible. They didn’t want to spook the spooks.

  There was little doubt where the singing was coming from–it was Classroom Number 5, explosion site. When they neared the door, Taryn paused and pointed to the cardboard sign hanging skewed from the knob. Half of it was gone, torn from the blast, but it clearly read “Welcome to Mrs. Evans’ Class.” Mrs. Evans. The teacher that, according to Jamey, had scared the bejesus out of everyone. Taryn wondered how she’d missed the sign the first time. She’d been too intent on taking her photos.

  Inside, the musician continued to pound on the keyboard as their voice rang out clear and strong. Even though the music was very clear, Taryn felt very far removed from the sound. When she peeked into the classroom, with Matt on her heels, she saw nothing. There were no students, no musical instruments, and no musically-inclined instructor.

  Matt peered in over her head and she could feel his sharp intake of breath.

  The song was a happy one, a hopeful single that had played incessantly on the radio for several decades. The singer was emoting, doing their best to belt it out. The musical notes traveled straight through the walls and leveled over Taryn’s head, wrapped around her and squeezed. Taryn was a huge music lover; she loved music almost as she loved painting. She could get lost in a tune and completely forget where she was; music had the ability to make everything better for her and always had.

  This was not uplifting in any way. Instead, she felt sick to her stomach just listening to it. If Matt hadn’t been with her, she might have covered her ears and screamed, probably as she ran from the building. Her reaction was utterly confusing; the fact that she wanted to pull her hair and cry out baffled her.

  Matt coughed then, a faint sound, but the interruption was enough to cause the song to come to a sudden stop. A single note lingered in the air, before fading away with a harmonic resonance.

  Taryn tugged on Matt’s hand, slowly pulling him inside the classroom.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  The desk at the front of the classroom was covered with ashes, burnt-out cans and paper cups, insulation, and shards of glass from the windows. All of this went rocketing through the air, as though given a mighty shove by an irate set of hands. The debris shot off the desk like a terrible gunshot and though Taryn and Matt were not in the direct line of fire, they both ducked and made to cover their heads.

  Before she even had time to process what had just happened, a chair by the door flew from the ground and hurtled towards the line of windows. Taryn watched in horror as it landed against the wall and shattered into pieces, the wood breaking as easily as if someone had snapped a twig.

  Then, for the second time in less than a week, Taryn found herself running down the dark hallway, looking for a way out.

  Twenty-One

  “So when did ghosts start throwing stuff at us?” Matt still couldn’t wrap his head around what had happened earlier. She’d taken him to dinner, after stopping at a yard sale on the side of the road to pick up a few more pieces of clothing, and now they were heading back to her room. Neither one had spoken much of Muddy Creek and the events that had transpired there. Taryn didn’t even know where to start.

  “They don’t normally do that,” she replied. “Like I said, there’s something different about that place. I can’t even begin to figure out what happened there. But it was obviously something not good.”

  “I didn’t uncover a single murder there. No tragedy that caused a death. Nothing negative about the school at all,” Matt grumbled.

  Taryn couldn’t help but smile. There they were, complaining that nobody had died or suffered a terrible fate.

  “Then it’s obviously something that nobody knew about,” Taryn said. “Something that was hidden or covered up. Only a few knew, and that’s why the ghosts are irritated. They want their stories told.”

  “Do you think Lucy has anything to do with it?”

  “I don’t know,” Taryn replied. “Probably. But we need to go visit her now. Well, not like right now, but soon. I hate to bother her with everything that’s going on with the trial, but she did ask.”

  “That teacher, Mrs. Evans. That’s whose room we were in, right?”

  Taryn shook her head. “Yeah. The one nobody liked.”

  “You think she could’ve had something to do with it? She was one of the ones killed that night,” Matt pointed out.

  Taryn pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine. “Possibly. And maybe that’s what the words on the wall in there meant. ‘Look Away.’ That Mrs. Evans did something awful, and nobody knew about it. Now her ghost is still there, still angry, and the student she did whatever to still haunts the building because that’s where they knew her from.”

  Matt sent Taryn a satisfied smile. “You’re so good at this. That has to be what happened. But what makes you think there are two spirits?”

  “The one we dealt with today is obviously an adult. That singing voice did not belong to a child. The angry ghost, that’s the adult. That’s the one who did, well, whatever happened. But the wailing, the crying, the specter in the window? I think that’s something completely different. I don’t w
ant to make this too complicated, but I don’t want to write it all off as the same thing just yet.”

  “So what did you make of the bouquet of flowers on the desk? That’s the image that’s been bothering me,” Matt said. He’d tugged his suitcase from her trunk and was pulling it towards her door as he spoke.

  “What flowers?”

  “The big bouquet of flowers. On her desk. Daffodils and something else. Hard to see. Pretty arrangement, though,” Matt added. “But completely out of place to see all this black debris and a pristine floral arrangement right in the middle of it.”

  Taryn stopped walking and stared at him. “What flowers?”

  Matt turned and looked at her. “In the classroom? The classroom we were just in?”

  “Just now? I didn’t see any flowers. I saw all that stuff fly off the desk, but not any flowers.”

  “No, not today. From the pictures. I thought you would’ve brought it up now, to be honest.”

  As it registered, Taryn slapped her forehead. “Oh my God. With what happened with the makeshift photo projector that night I totally forgot to look at the rest of the images. I just…”

  “You have a lot going on,” Matt reminded her gently.

  She knew what they’d be doing that night. Well, some of the evening anyway…

  “Hey Taryn, I’m glad I caught you!”

  Taryn turned and saw Sandy jogging towards her, a barefoot toddler with sticky fingers waddling in tow.

  “Hi Sandy, what’s up?”

  By the time Sandy made it to Taryn’s door, she was red and panting. The little girl, eating an ice cream sandwich, had spilled most of the vanilla down the front of her Dora the Explorer t-shirt.

  “Come on Neveah,” Sandy snapped, blowing a piece of hair from her eyes.

  “Everything okay?”

  Sandy nodded and bent over at her waist, trying to catch her breath. When she raised back up, her gaze landed straight on Matt. And didn’t move. “Yeah, sorry. Just out of shape. That’s my daughter, Neveah. Anyway, I talked to my mom. She wants to meet with you. Tomorrow if that’s okay.”

  Taryn looked at Matt and he shrugged in return. It was okay with him.

  “Yeah, that would be great. Where does she want to meet?”

  “She said at the restaurant around the corner, maybe at eight?”

  Taryn gulped. “A.M.?”

  Sandy snickered. “Yeah. She has to be to work at noon.”

  “Well, if we must,” Taryn sighed with disappointment. She’d been planning on making it a long night.

  “Oh, and she said she’d bring her pictures with her, if you want to see them.”

  Well, that was something.

  “Thanks, Sandy. We’ll look forward to seeing her in the morning then.”

  Sandy sent them another smile and with one movement bent over, scooped a messy Neveah up in her arms, and sauntered on down the sidewalk.

  “You’re my good luck charm,” Taryn teased Matt as she opened her door. “I’ve been waiting for that invitation. And she was totally checking you out.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” But the tips of his ears were red.

  “We’ll be doing ghost stuff all night. Let’s try something else first,” Taryn told him, slamming the door shut behind her.

  She’d been lonesome for awhile.

  * * *

  “ARE YOU GOING WITH ME?” Taryn asked. She’d overslept and was meant to be meeting Sandy’s mother in less than fifteen minutes. As she frantically ran around the room, trying to piece an outfit together and find her new makeup, Matt stirred in the bed.

  “Ohhhh,” he moaned. He sat up and looked around sleepily, trying to adjust his eyes. “Yeah, I will. I guess if you can get up.”

  Taryn laughed and tossed his pants to him. “Come on, we don’t have long.”

  By the time she reemerged from the bathroom he was dressed and standing by the door. In his hand he held what looked like a notecard. He studied it intently, as though trying to decipher a foreign language.

  “What you got there?” Taryn asked as she walked up behind him.

  “This,” he said, handing it to her. “It was here in the floor, like someone slid it under the door.”

  It was a plain notecard, available at just about any discount store. And though it only included one line of text, it was enough to have Taryn momentarily forgetting her promptness:

  Ask Heather about that fire.

  * * *

  THE WOMAN WAITING FOR HER donned bright-red hair with black roots, a t-shirt with fake dollar bills sewn onto it, and stretch pants. She probably weighed around three-hundred pounds and wasn’t much over five feet. Her face was lined with wrinkles, despite the fact she wasn’t that much older than Taryn, and her blue eyeshadow had creased and flaked. But she smiled warmly when Taryn walked in.

  “Hello there,” she called from across the room. “Saving you a seat over here!”

  Matt excused himself to place their order while Taryn made her way over to where Sandy’s mother, Misty, was seated.

  “So how did you know it was me?”

  “Oh honey. You live here as long as I do and you know everyone in town,” she cackled. Taryn noticed she was missing two teeth, yet the others were as straight and pearly white as could be. For some reason, this fascinated her. She needed to get out more.

  “And how did you know I wasn’t a reporter?”

  Misty rolled her eyes. “You don’t have that sliminess clinging to you like they do.”

  When Matt joined them, Taryn slid over in the booth. “I hope it’s okay. I brought my boyfriend with me.” She rarely referred to Matt as anything other than “my Matt” but, in this case, she thought it would be less awkward if her hostess realized he was more or less part of her family.

  “Oh, I don’t mind having a good-looking man sittin’ across from me,” Misty beamed. “Misty might not be a spring chicken no more, but she’s no fool.”

  Matt laughed, obviously enjoying her.

  “So we were hoping to ask you some questions about your time at Muddy Creek,” Taryn began once their drinks arrived. “If you could tell us anything about what it was like to go there, that would be great.”

  “Oh,” Misty smiled, “I loved being little and going there. It was a good school. All the teachers really cared about you. Not like these days where they’s all runnin’ out before the students at the end of the day and don’t even try to get to know their names.”

  Taryn nodded. “I know what you mean. Times have changed.”

  “I don’t know if you seen it, but there’s a path that runs up the mountain behind the school. We used to go for walks up there sometimes, as a class. ‘Nature walks’ we called ‘em. There were some old coal ponds and whatnot. Real scenic like. I remember Miss Adair bringing her dog with her ever time. He’d run off the snakes, you know? Why, they wouldn’t let a dog come to school for nothing these days!”

  Or let teachers wander around a mountainside with snakes and a bunch of students, Taryn thought to herself.

  “I saw pictures of the basketball tournaments and stuff. Looked like you had some good teams,” Taryn prodded.

  “Yep. I weren’t no cheerleader or nothin’, but I went to those games plenty. High school and middle school, too. Man, I had me some times. If I’d known then what I know now, I’d a had me even more fun, too!” She chortled after just about everything she said.

  “So can you tell me anything about the teachers there?”

  Misty took a sip of her coffee then closed her eyes. “Well, let’s see. There was that one that was always falling asleep in class. We’d toss water on her head, trying to wake her up. That was fun. And then Miss Adair. Mr. Scott.”

  “You remember a Mrs. Evans?”

  Misty’s eyes popped open then glassed over. “I do. Lordy, ain’t nobody gonna forget her. That woman was meaner than a snake. I hated her.”

  “What did she do?” Matt asked.

  “What didn’t she do? She yelle
d, put kids down. You couldn’t do nothing right. You’d work so hard on something and then she’d come along and just about call you stupid to your face. You know, I came to school once and in the middle of class she walked right up to me, bent down and sniffed my hair, and said, ‘Misty, you don’t smell good today.’ Lordy, I was mortified.” Misty shivered at the memory. “When I left that school I didn’t care if I ever saw that old cow again.”

  Taryn had a faint memory of seeing Mrs. Evans’ sister in a television interview, talking about how much she’d loved her students, how she’d considered them part of her family. Her students had clearly formed other opinions.

  “And Mr. Scott?”

  Misty ran her tongue over her lips and offered another toothy/toothless grin. “Never saw a teacher love his students more. He’d bend over backwards for them. You know, he is the one that taught me about music. He and Mrs. Evans was the only ones that had music classes back then. And he made the best art projects with us. You shoulda seen these punkins we made out of balloons one time. And these little Christmas trees out of pinecones. I still have mine somewheres. You know he bought ever student in his class a Christmas present one year? Went to the thrifty store and bought toys, books, clothes, and shoes. Some of them kids, I bet them’s the only gifts they got that year.”

  “I’d also like to know about Lucy Dawson. Were you friends with her?”

  “Well,” Misty started, “I knew her of course. We was in the same grade. But we weren’t friends, not like that. Just acquaintances I’d guess you would say. She wasn’t a very likable girl. Not even back then.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not?”

  Misty grimaced. “A shit stirrer is what we’d call her today. Always up in everyone’s business, trying to cause trouble.” She leaned in closer and lowered her voice, despite the fact that everyone else in the restaurant had cleared out. “You know, I weren’t no surprised none when I learnt about what she done. No I wasn’t. I always knew that girl would do something like that. Always.”