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

  She’d been employed by historical societies, nonprofit organizations, private homeowners, and even concerned citizens who raised the money themselves through crowdfunding sites to hire her. On canvas, she could revision the building’s past and recreate it through her paintings to reflect the grandeur of its heyday–before it lost a wing or a roof or most of its backend to a fire.

  Sometimes her paintings were the only thing anyone had to visualize what the building had once looked like before it fell into ruin. Oftentimes, the buildings had been constructed before cameras were popularized, or even existed. Or, perhaps, the only pictures made of it had been lost over the years. They’d been destroyed in storms or fires…

  Occasionally her paintings were given to architects for the sake of remodeling jobs, or her employers simply wanted them for the sake of preservation, especially if the building was on the verge of demolishment.

  Now, for the first time ever, Taryn had no inkling as to why she was hired or for what purpose her work would be used.

  “Nobody will miss the Black Raven Inn if someone just tore it down,” she’d confessed to Matt. “Trust me.”

  Unlike some small hotels that were old and ugly but still held sentimental value to those who’d stayed there and treasured fond memories of the place, she highly doubted if the majority of the folks who’d stayed at the Black Raven Inn even wanted to remember their time in it. Or could.

  “You should have read the reviews of it before it closed,” she told Matt. “In fact, you can still read them. They’re still online. Just don’t do it before you go to bed.”

  “I think I’ll pass,” he’d replied drily.

  “Your loss,” she’d laughed. “You’re missing out on some incredible reading. One reviewer called his review ‘The Second Layer into the Fiery Pits of Motel Hell.’ I mean, how awesome is that? And that’s not even the worst one!”

  She could feel Matt shuddering all the way from Florida. There were few things he hated more than the idea of dirty hotel rooms, bedbugs, and cockroaches.

  Guests at the Black Raven Inn enjoyed all those and more.

  The motel had turned off its “Vacancy” sign for one last time a year ago, but before it closed it was well-regarded as a seedy establishment that nobody with any sense visited after dark. It was a well-known fact in Nashville that the motel’s parking lot and rooms were filled with hookers looking for quick cash and lonely men looking for a quick companion. Addicts looked for a quick fix, pushers for a quick sale. And down-on-their-luck entertainers who’d lost everything to hock and needed a place to crash before running home with their tails between their legs, full of stories of how they’d “almost” made the big time.

  But while Taryn had trouble understanding why Ruby Jane wanted her to do the work, she had no trouble when it came to understanding why Ruby Jane herself had bought the old place (though the wild price of $1.3 million dollars threw her a little).

  The motel was, after all, the scene of not only one of country music’s most senseless tragedies (VH1 still counted it as one of the “top 10 heartbreaks in music history”), but the setting of a catalytic moment in Ruby Jane’s own personal life.

  Her musical partner and rumored lover had died in Room #5 nearly fifty years earlier, the result of an apparent overdose.

  That monumental loss to the music world changed the way some record labels would handle the welfare of their entertainers on future tours, and Parker’s memory would forever cast a shadow on each album Ruby Jane would go on to record–all thirty six of them.

  If there was one thing Taryn understood, it was the inability to let go of someone who had died tragically and unexpectedly.

  Especially when that person’s death was your own fault.

  “You’re not going there alone, are you?” Matt asked in dismay.

  “Uh, no?”

  “Taryn!”

  “What! It’s not like someone is going to shoot me in broad daylight,” she muttered as she navigated the busy street.

  “You just spent the past two days telling me how awful the motel was, and I did read some of those reviews. They were as bad as you said they were,” he admitted.

  “Yeah, but that was when it was open,” Taryn teased him. “It’s closed now!”

  “And I’m sure the abandonment has made it a dozen times better,” Matt remarked wryly.

  Taryn wasn’t meeting with her new employer for another day but, as nervous as she was, she wanted to be as prepared as humanly possible. She’d stayed up most of the night before doing as much online historical research as she could and it had been eye opening.

  Thank God for You Tube.

  Never before had research on a site been so entertaining or enlightening (or well documented; most of it was like watching an episode of “Cops”, indeed, an episode of “Cops” had been filmed there).

  Today, she was going to visit it in person.

  “It’s not like I’m not prepared,” Taryn promised Matt. “I’ve got my mace and pocket knife.”

  “You know they’d have to be right on top of you for that knife to be useful,” Matt said.

  “Yeah, well, that’s what the mace is for!”

  “I remember that motel when we were growing up. It was bad twenty years ago,” Matt mused. “My parents used to talk about it in a whisper, even spelling the motel’s name up until I was ten. Like ‘raven’ was a bad word.”

  “Maybe they thought the bad word was ‘black’,” Taryn snickered.

  “Considering who we’re talking about, you have a point.” Matt sighed. “I refuse to believe I came from them. I am going to order that DNA test one day.”

  “I can see the Jerry Springer episode now… ‘Help! I’m A Genius and My Parents are Morons: Who’s My Daddy?’.”

  Matt laughed in spite of himself.

  Having lived between Nashville and Franklin her whole life, Taryn also knew the Black Raven Inn; everyone did. Growing up, it had been known as the cheap motel that singers who had zero money and fewer connections liked to stay in until they “made the big time.” In college, it had garnered the reputation as a place so bad and so dangerous that cops no longer even responded to complaints. High school kids even pooled their money to stay in nicer places after school dances; it’s cheap prices weren’t worth it.

  It advertised itself as a “no frills budget motel” but that was code for “crack house” around town.

  “Did you notice that the motel’s website said it had a ‘vintage feel’?”

  Taryn snorted. “Yeah. Saying it has a “vintage feel” and claiming it contains ‘some of the original features and fixtures’ might have sounded good and looked attractive on paper, but what it really meant was that the building hadn’t been updated since it was built. Original features meant something totally different when one is talking about lighting fixtures versus toilet seats.”

  “I could never sit in a toilet in that motel,” Matt said, his voice shuddering.

  “I could never sit on a bed in that motel,” Taryn agreed. “I hate to think of the things that went on there.

  Unfortunately for its neighbors, it was located in what was turning into a desirable part of town. The area was becoming gentrified and the eyesore had everyone up in arms. Hipsters didn’t like their upscale shops and fusion restaurants being just a stone’s throw away from its run-down entrance.

  The new condos and townhomes building up around it were currently on the market for half a million bucks for a 2-bedroom unit. Taryn still couldn’t get over the idea of living in what basically constituted as an apartment for so much money. Especially considering that her job as a freelance artist had her traveling all over the country. It provided her with a glimpse of other markets and just how far a dollar could stretch.

  Expensive townhomes and condos, boutique hotels, specialty coffee shops, bakeries with artisan bread, daycares that cost more than her college tuition ten years earlier, upmarket shops…

  And the Black Raven Inn.

/>   A blemish on the Nashville roadmap that stuck out like the oozing sore it was, making everyone who lived, worked, and played around it cringe in disgust.

  Still, the property had two acres in a prime location. The sex shops and massage parlors that had once surrounded it had been bought out, closed, and razed.

  Everyone on that side of town was hoping that once the hotel closed, the razing would come again, especially now that the property had been sold. When it did come down, and everyone assumed it would, Taryn was sure she’d hear an audible sigh of relief from all of East Nashville.

  She had no idea what Ruby Jane’s plans were for the unmentionable blot on the landscape. Most people weren’t even aware that the singer was the one who’d purchased it; they assumed it was a corporation or real estate mogul who intended to develop it into some high rises or new chain hotel. Perhaps a nice Hibachi Grill, surrounded by trendy boutiques. Or a Whole Foods Market. Maybe an Embassy Suites with a manager’s cocktail hour and made-to-order omelet bar.

  Taryn had a feeling they were about to be sorely disappointed.

  Two

  The Black Raven Inn didn’t look that bad from the outside. Well, it was bad, but it wasn’t scary-bad. In fact, Taryn thought it was rather charming in a neglected, kitschy kind of way.

  “Eh, I’ve seen worse,” Taryn said as she shrugged her shoulders.

  Despite the ominous name, the building was painted a cheerful yellow. Or rather, it had been a cheerful yellow a long time ago. Over the course of several decades the color had faded and was almost white in some places; in others it had peeled and flaked off, leaving behind crumbling scars of bleak concrete. As an old roadside motor lodge, it only had one floor and was the kind of the place where you could drive right up to your door. The windows, now boarded up to slow down the vandals if not stop them completely, still mostly contained the bright red shutters that flanked them.

  The 1950’s-era sign that still rose proudly above the building had once lit up the area at night, blazing stark neon colors across the sky.

  It was miraculously still on, but only the letter “I” in “Inn” still worked. The other bulbs had either burned out or been intentionally damaged from people trying to put them out.

  The parking lot and motel were surrounded by a makeshift plywood wall in an attempt to keep trespassers away. There was a gate, though, and Taryn squeezed through it easily enough.

  Worried about people who shouldn’t be there, she carried her “weapons” in her back pocket. Although, to be fair, if someone attacked her she’d never have a chance. It took her a solid minute to get the blade out (the fear of cutting herself was strong) and the one time she’d tried the mace she’d almost blinded herself.

  Still, it was something.

  Taryn didn’t need to worry about people, though. She was the only one trespassing at the moment.

  Up close, the motel didn’t look so much different from some of the roadside inns she’d stayed at on job assignments. The income she earned from recreating the past with her paintbrush earned her just enough to pay the major bills and give her a little left over–it didn’t exactly leave her living high on the hog.

  Of course, things had changed over the past few months. The settlement she’d received on her last assignment on Jekyll Island had allowed her to live a very comfortable lifestyle and, if she continued to manage her finances prudently, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for awhile. She couldn’t quit working, of course, and would still have to take on jobs but she could select them more wisely now and not have to take everything that was thrown her way, like she had in the past.

  “If I sold Aunt Sarah’s house…” Taryn mumbled as she trudged across the parking lot.

  But that wasn’t a thought she liked to seriously entertain herself with. Sure, the old farm house in New Hampshire would fetch her a pretty penny if she put it on the market, and the attorney had assured her it would sell quickly, but Taryn couldn’t stand the thought of parting with it, especially after having paid it a visit at the beginning of summer. It was going to take a ton of money to fix it, and she’d need all those grants and loans she’d researched if she was going to preserve it, but it was worth it.

  “Maybe I’ll even live in it,” she mused thoughtfully, her tennis-shoed feet crushing weeds that poked up through the cracked asphalt.

  Matt, though. Matt would be a problem.

  He couldn’t possibly leave his job at NASA and relocate to the woods of the northeast. He said he could, that he’d go wherever she went, but she wasn’t sure she could take on that responsibility. What if he hated it? What if he got up there, after quitting his job, and grew depressed and ended up resenting her for taking him away from the one dream he’d had since childhood?

  “What if I’m not really in love with him?” she asked herself out loud.

  That, of course, was at the heart of the issue and something she struggled with every day.

  Taryn had loved Matt since the day they’d met as children–two misfits who had bonded together and created a magical childhood fortress nobody else had ever been able to penetrate or share. Not even Andrew, her fiancé who’d passed away in the car crash that had changed her life.

  And they had a tremendous amount of chemistry together. Not only could they read each other’s thoughts from hundreds of miles away, but touching him was electric.

  “But still.” She sighed.

  That niggling “still” was what kept her awake some nights.

  If they were truly in love, wouldn’t they have moved in together by now? Or made some kind of formal commitment? After all, they’d been in a physical relationship for a year. And although there had been talks here and there of the two of them moving in together or making a more central base together, the discussions were always vague.

  “It’s a fact. I’ve been spoiled by romantic books and movies,” she groaned as she stood in the middle of the parking lot and stared at the building in front of her. “I’ve got to cut back on the Rom Coms. Kate Hudson and Sandy Bullock, we’re going to have to break up for awhile.”

  She hoped they wouldn’t miss her too much.

  Maybe this was what love felt like in real life. Maybe it was more complicated and stickier than she’d originally thought as a young idealist engaged to Andrew. Back when she’d felt butterflies every day.

  “I still feel butterflies,” she said. And she did. In fact, she was feeling them right now, just looking at the Black Raven Inn. “I still get them.”

  Now, the butterflies came from somewhere else. She got them from the old houses and buildings she worked with. Taryn had never met an old house she didn’t like. (Windwood Farm might have been stretching it, but to be fair she liked the house. It was everything that went on inside of it that turned her off.)

  The motel before her had seen better days for sure, but there was still something mesmerizing about it.

  It was nothing compared to the sprawling, glossy complexes built today. The chains with their cookie-cutter rooms and lookalike lobbies. Interior designed to include the same generic prints above all the beds, the same duvets, and same marble backsplashes.

  The high rises that climbed into the air with their state-of-the-art fitness centers (key card entry only, please) and pristine indoor swimming pools with WiFi access in every corner.

  Televisions that allowed you to order room service without even picking up a phone.

  Wake-up calls set by pushing a series of numbers.

  Checkouts by leaving your key card in the room and agreeing to the receipt via email.

  Why, these days, you could stay in a hotel without ever interacting with another human being.

  The Black Raven Inn consisted of twenty rooms, all with kitchenettes. It had boasted a swimming pool but that had been filled in years before; local skateboarders had used it for practice and one had actually broken his neck. That had put an end to that bit of fun.

  There were parking spots in front of each room, as well
as about two dozen general spots. The doors were made of cut-rate wood, some with holes in the bottom where someone had given them a good kick or fallen drunkenly into them. The rooms had never upgraded to key cards; they still used the “old fashioned” keys in their rusted holes. Brass numbers hung, some lopsided, in the middle of each door. Most were tarnished from years of neglect and some were missing altogether.

  “Souvenirs,” Taryn laughed, the sound strangely hollow in the barren landscape. People would take just about anything if they could get their hands on it.

  The main office's entrance was under an awning that allowed cars to drive up and stay covered while the owner checked in, was boarded up. Taryn couldn’t see inside.

  Someone, or more likely several people, had graffitied over the pavement by the entrance and over the boards that kept people out (hopefully kept them out and not in). Some of the images Taryn found fairly interesting–popular cartoon characters and three dimensional graphic designs. These were interwoven with curses and would-be “Satanic” symbols like pentagrams and upside down crosses.

  “Someone needs to do a little Googling.” Taryn sighed, tracing her finger over a pentagram with the word “Satan” scrawled inside it.

  With the complex enclosed inside the fence, Taryn felt cut off from the outside world. She didn’t mind this.

  Although she could hear the traffic speeding up and down the road less than one-hundred feet away, she couldn’t see it. With her music playing as she worked, it would be easy enough to block out the sound. She’d been promised that although the fence would remain, the boards and all barriers to the interior of the motel would be removed. She’d have free access to whatever she needed.

  Taryn continued to walk around the outside of the motel, occasionally pausing to step back and take it all in, or move in closer to touch a board on a window or a door knob.