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

  “That’s what I’d heard, too,” Taryn confided. “So was she kind of a recluse?”

  “Dunno. I guess. She went to school with my mom back in the day. Mom said she was weird even then.”

  Taryn made a mental note of that. She never knew when she might need some of the random information she collected and carried around.

  “Well, I’d better get on to work,” Taryn said at last. She might want to talk more, and she didn’t want to wear out her welcome while it was still early. She pointed to the vacant parking lot. “Gonna hit the road and avoid the traffic while they’re all eating or whatever they’re doing. It’s quiet out there.”

  The sun was starting to drop down behind the mountains. If she timed it just right she’d hit the school at twilight and still get in some good shots. She had time to make the magic hour.

  “Okay, no problem,” the girl sang as Taryn turned to leave. “Oh, and by the way, my name’s Sandy.”

  Taryn had a feeling she’d be seeing a lot of Sandy.

  * * *

  SOMEWHERE, A PACK OF DOGS BARKED. They could have been on the other side of the school or the other side of the mountain. The location and valley floor’s acoustics made it hard to tell.

  These were not friendly, sociable “yips” but low, angry bays and growls. The hostile symphony added a sinister quality to the already isolated and eerie setting. Taryn had already been around the building once, snapping pictures as her feet quietly disturbed the fallen leaves strewn on the spongy ground. And now the sun had almost entirely faded away. The oblong school was becoming a black outline against the purple sky, a shadowy ghost with the dark line of ridgetops closing in behind it.

  Taryn shuddered a little and self-consciously pulled her cardigan tighter around her shoulders. She’d taken around two dozen photos but wasn’t satisfied. She’d need to return for more, preferably when she had more daylight to work with.

  Taryn had always possessed the talent of seeing the past, even before she could literally see it. She’d always been able to look at a building, or park or empty field, and visualize what it had once looked like; she’d seen everything as it had once been when it thrived. It was why she’d gone into Historic Preservation. Taryn’s love of history had her living with the past secured firmly around her, just the way she liked it. She saw into the past the way fortune tellers were meant to see into the future. Where others saw a dilapidated farmhouse with broken windows and collapsed roof she saw a couple pushing off on the wooden porch swing, caught the aroma of fried chicken wafting through an open window, and heard children giggling as they darted across the wooden floors.

  Try as she might, however, Taryn was having trouble seeing anything with Muddy Creek Elementary.

  “Don’t let the incident that’s going on now cloud your judgment or imagination with what went on then,” she scolded herself, looking away from the burned-out section and, instead, focusing on the side that was “only” damaged from neglect. “Just pretend that the other thing didn’t happen…”

  Of course, she couldn’t logically act like the school hadn’t been blown up with a homemade bomb–that seven people weren’t dead because of one woman’s alleged madness. There was no way she could avoid thinking about that; Taryn’s compassion alone wouldn’t let her forget it, much less the gaping black holes in the cinderblocks

  With the last flickers of light now dissipating, Taryn studied the back of the school as she walked towards her car. She really put her mind to work, attempting to evoke imagery that was having difficulty coming. She focused on the classroom windows and pretended she could hear happy children inside. Singing. Teachers reading aloud from primers. Little voices reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in unison.

  Instead of broken glass, she tried seeing colorful construction paper taped to the windows, artwork by stubby little hands. Rather than the putrid scent of standing water, she made herself pick up on the scents of a cafeteria kitchen–those rectangle pizzas and soft chocolate chip cookies.

  And, for a moment anyway, it worked. She could almost see and feel it the way it had once been. She was there, standing outside the school on a gray, fall day. Children laughed and sang. Music drifted through the open windows. Pumpkin spice and apple cider filled the air. School buses began dipping over the side of the hill, ready to take eager students back home to their parents.

  Suddenly, however, the intense itching on her arm had her breaking the mood and slapping at herself in annoyance. Then came the itching on her neck, on her ankles, in her other hand…

  When Taryn looked down, she was startled to see every inch of skin covered in hundreds of tiny mosquitos. Her ankles were black.

  “Ew, ew!” Taryn yelped as she continued to swat at the air and slap at her skin. “Get off!”

  That standing water, suspected but not yet seen, had created a new set of problems.

  Taryn danced around in a circle, waving at the air like a crazy person. As she dashed the rest of the way to her car, mumbling and griping with each new bite, Miss Dixie vaulted back and forth on her chest keeping rhythm.

  Inside, she locked the door in defiance, a satisfactory if not a logical decision. Welts were already cropping up on her pale skin.

  “Well, damn,” Taryn muttered as she cranked the engine.

  A light flashed then, a light that shouldn’t have been there at all. A light from inside of the school. At first, she’d thought it was a flashlight, that someone was exploring the old place. Maybe a kid, or perhaps even an optimistic journalist hoping for a new angle on the story. Perhaps someone had followed her, deciding she was someone of importance after all.

  But it wasn’t a small, probing flashlight beam. As it flickered again, she saw the room nearest her fill with light–the desks piled upon one another, the blackboard against the wall, chairs pushed against the door. It only remained lit for a second or two, but it was obvious that the light was an overhead one, fluorescent.

  Troubled, Taryn still tried to shrug it off as she pulled away. She didn’t think the electricity could still be on, but stranger things had happened. Maybe there was a short.

  Still, she refused to look back.

  Six

  She’d collapsed on the bed, sleepy and achy, not long after she returned to her motel room. However, she’d tossed and turned until she’d finally given it up got up at 2:00 am, frustrated and still tired yet unable to sleep.

  “May as well work,” Taryn lamented, remembering how her grandmother had done the same. She’d lived with her grandmother off and on throughout her childhood and then until she’d passed away. Taryn still missed her and felt a pang when she ran her fingers over the antique ring that hugged her left ring finger. A present from her grandfather to her grandmother on one of their anniversaries.

  Stella had been a significant figure in Taryn’s life, and the most stable one after Matt. Her parents were good people with good intentions, but they’d been neglectful of Taryn in more ways than one. They’d been wrapped up in their jobs, in each other, and had little love or attention leftover for the daughter they didn’t really understand. When she’d asked to move in with her grandmother, she knew her mother had been secretly relieved.

  With the television on for background noise, Taryn flipped open her laptop and popped in Miss Dixie’s SD card. “Might as well see what I’ve got so far…”

  She’d taken fifty-six photos of the school that evening. “Dang,” she said, impressed with herself. “I was busier than I thought!”

  It wasn’t uncommon for Taryn to get lost in her work. She could take hundreds of photos without registering it, or totally lose track of time and not realize that she’d been painting for five hours straight until her hand started cramping.

  The photos popped out of her through the glare of the computer screen, all lined up in neat little rows. She studied the thumbnails, trying to figure out where she wanted to start.

  “Miss Dixie sees things that I don’t always notice,” she’d explained to M
att once. “There’s something different about every place that is unique to it. Miss Dixie usually finds those features a lot faster than me.”

  There were the windows in the antebellum home in Georgia, the extraordinary wood carvings in the row house in New York, the twisted wrought iron on the porches and balconies on the place in Memphis…

  It wasn’t just buildings that Taryn and her camera were drawn to. On a backpacking trip to Croatia when she was in college she’d been drawn to the colorful laundry that hung from the ancient buildings. Blue jeans and red miniskirts had flapped in the wind, draped between crumbling stone edifices. On a job in Montana she’d planned on being mesmerized by the glorious mountains, but Miss Dixie had picked up on the mind-boggling sky: sunrise, sunset, thunderstorms, even midnight…there was a subtle magnificence about the wide open space above them there. And, on Jekyll Island in Georgia, it was the Spanish moss. Whether it hung from live oaks or lampposts, Miss Dixie had discovered something magical in it and featured it in most of her photos.

  She didn’t yet know what Muddy Creek Elementary would have in store for her.

  It certainly was bright, though.

  Taryn giggled. Then, remembering Beaches, “It looks like a flamingo threw up in here!”

  It was times like these she wished she had a close girlfriend, someone she could quote “Steel Magnolias” with or discuss Barbara Hershey’s Hilary.

  Taryn was suddenly hit with a pang for Matt then, a slight yearning that made her want to hear his voice. It was too late, even for them. He’d be dead to the world and, with his early mornings, getting up in a couple of hours. She wouldn’t disturb him.

  “I need some friends,” Taryn muttered.

  She had acquaintances, people she could exchange emails and messages with. She’d met lots of other women on assignment. Melissa, for instance, back in Kentucky was someone she still spoke to regularly and even saw on occasion. But there wasn’t anyone in her life she could just go out for a drink with, drag along with her to listen to live music, hit the Macy’s Black Friday sales with…

  “Huh.” Taryn had gazed at the thumbnails for a good five minutes. Her attention not been piqued by any one shot in particular, but now it settled on one towards the end. The picture had been taken about ten minutes before the Great Mosquito Attack.

  Curious at what she was looking at, Taryn clicked on the image and enlarged it.

  The light she’d seen in the classroom window was on again. It flickered through the broken window, casting a warm glow into the blackening night. She didn’t know how she’d missed it when she’d been there. “It must have happened so fast I just didn’t see it,” Taryn murmured.

  At first, she thought her flash might have come on and she was simply looking at a reflection of Miss Dixie through the glass. When she zoomed in on the picture, though, she knew it wasn’t her camera. Sure enough, the light was on inside the classroom. It became apparent, then, why she’d missed it in person.

  It hadn’t been on then.

  Taryn was no longer looking at a broken window and neglected classroom. The room in the picture was bright, organized, and full of life. Although she could only see a portion of the room through the two windows, and she’d been standing back pretty far when the shot was made, she could still see the rows of desks, the little orange plastic chairs pushed neatly under them. There was writing on the blackboard. A cluttered desk with stacks of folders and papers stood solidly in the front of the room. Multi-colored streamers dangled from the ceiling. Fluorescent overhead lights illuminated the lively scene.

  “Oh no,” Taryn groaned, the implication of what she saw sinking in.

  Although her camera did, on occasion, pick up insignificant peeks of the past, the hollowness in the pit of her stomach assured Taryn that this was no random glimpse back in time. It was a preview of things to come.

  “Welcome to Muddy Creek,” she called over to Miss Dixie. “Looks like we’re going to have our hands full.”

  Seven

  “So was it just the one picture then?”

  Taryn nodded, despite the fact that Matt couldn’t see her head bobbing through the phone. His voice sounded so good to her. They talked every day, and sometimes more than once, but she always welcomed hearing from him. The familiarly was reassuring.

  “Just the one,” she said in between crunches of crispy bacon, “so far.”

  “There might not be any others,” Matt mused thoughtfully. “That’s happened before.”

  “Not this time,” Taryn said, a little surprised at the unintended force in her voice.

  “But you’ve become more sensitive, we’ve discovered. So it’s possible this doesn’t mean anything at all.”

  “It means something, I am sure of it,” she declared.

  “Okay. I just don’t want you getting worked up and upset if there’s nothing to get excited about.”

  Taryn bristled, the cold burst of air hitting her stomach with a punch. Some people got hot and saw red when they were angry–Taryn grew cold and blue.

  “I am not ‘worked up,’” she said evenly, keeping her voice low and measured. It was her first morning eating breakfast in the small diner downtown. The “fried chicken place,” she’d heard the reporters call it. The small room was crowded and she didn’t want to cause a scene.

  Not that most of them would’ve noticed her anyway. Everyone seemed to be barking on phones, mesmerized by their laptop screens, or conversing frantically with the people squeezed in next to them.

  “Okay, okay,” Matt said, attempting to soothe her. “It’s just that we’ve seen the things that can happen and they’re not always good. The road isn’t always worth going down.”

  “The road hasn’t always been easy, but the result has always been worth it,” Taryn argued, remembering some of the things that she’d helped put to rest in the past. Sure, she’d almost been killed once or twice (okay, maybe more) but with each incident, she’d become a little more powerful, a little more focused.

  “This is why I’m here, Matt,” she stated firmly.

  “Well, you’re mainly there to paint that school. Keep that in mind, no matter what; it’s still just a job.”

  “Not here as in Muddy Creek but here,” Taryn tried again.

  “Ah.” Matt wouldn’t argue that point with her. In fact, if there was one thing they agreed on it was the power of the universe and destiny. Matt was a big believer in purpose, in things that were meant to be.

  It was the only way he could describe his relationship with Taryn.

  “Do you need me to do anything?”

  “Nah,” Taryn shrugged. “Nothing’s happened yet. I’ll let you know, though.”

  “This time, just make sure you let me know before something crazy happens,” Matt added drily. “I’m getting a little old for all this excitement.”

  “Me too, dude, me too.”

  * * *

  IN THE FULL MORNING LIGHT the school didn’t look nearly as intimidating as it had at dusk. The sky had been slate gray over the past few days, colorless. Today, however, had seen a turn for the better with the weather. Taryn was surprised at how much the blue sky, fluffy clouds, and bright sunshine prettied up the valley. Even with the severe neglect, the school looked like something from a painting. Hopefully, her own painting would look just as good.

  By the time she finished, it would look as though you could walk through the front doors. Viewers would swear they could hear the sounds of the morning bell, and the shuffling of little feet. All of the darkness associated with what the place had become would be gone.

  “getting excited about this job now,” Taryn sang to herself, trying to pump herself up.

  The school only looked at her warily. It was still playing its cards too close to the vest.

  Always wary of snakes, she’d tugged on a pair of scuffed cowboy boots. It was now cold enough to wear long sleeves, especially in the morning, although the sun warmed her through the flannel of her shirt. She might have to
strip down to her tank later in the afternoon. Her unruly hair was pulled up in a ponytail and hidden beneath a John Denver baseball cap–Thank God I’m A Country Boy.

  “Okay, then. Let’s do this!”

  As she made her way to the building, the tall weeds still glistened with dew. They left wet patches on her jeans and soon her tan boots were muddy brown. The Civil Wars rang through her earbuds. She was still mourning their breakup and hoped that by sheer will alone they might eventually get back together.

  Taryn enjoyed creating her own soundtrack to her life, shutting out the external world around her. She rarely went anywhere without her music. It had saved her on more than one occasion. When her fiancé, Andrew, had died several years before she’d gone through a deep depression. It was the unsettling Allison Moorer and the hopefulness of Kelly Willis that had finally dragged her back out into the sunshine.

  Her songs were her friends, as corny (and a little pathetic) as that sounded.

  Taryn stopped moving and stood back to study the windows that flanked the school’s main entrance. They were mostly intact; only a few thin cracks splintered the glass around the edges. The other windows were either broken or covered with vegetation. These, however, sparkled in the muted sunlight. Reflected in the panes were the outlines of the lofty mountains that surrounded the school. The leaves already changing colors and Taryn could see orange, red, and yellow blurs reflected in the window panes.

  She paced in front of the entrance at leisure, taking shots from every angle. When Taryn examined the images on her LCD screen, it was almost possible to forget that the school was in such poor shape. When she was only looking at the windows, it could just as well have been a regular Tuesday morning; the kids tucked away safely inside.