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

  People shocked the hell out of her.

  Ten

  On a quest for linseed oil, Taryn maneuvered the streets of Huntington, searching for the craft supply store she’d found online.

  “And she sounded normal?” Matt pressed.

  “Totally,” Taryn replied. “Well, sort of. There were a few weird moments. But she definitely didn’t act like she was going to break out the revolver and take me down. Or blow me up.”

  “I’d still be careful,” he cautioned her. “I don’t get a great feeling about this. Something’s bothering me.”

  Taryn nodded. “You know, the weird thing is that she’s not that much older than me. Maybe ten years? I can’t really tell. Maybe less. And yet she seems, I don’t know, so much older. Like she’s from another time period. It’s odd.”

  “So where are you now?”

  “Huntington. Looking for a store. Kind of nice to get out of town for a day,” Taryn confided. “I’ve even thought about getting a motel room for the night. Maybe you and I can do that when you come up?”

  “Oh, yeah, sorry about that…”

  Taryn’s chest heaved with disappointment. She knew that tone. “What’s up?”

  “Work. You know we got that new grant? There’s a lot of preliminary reports to file. I’m afraid I’m going to have to stick around and make sure they get gone properly.”

  You mean to make sure they get done the way you’d do them, Taryn retorted in her mind. Being involved in a relationship with someone who worked for NASA–an organization that required detail-orientated obsessiveness to successfully put people in a small tube and blast them into the stratosphere using highly unstable and dangerous chemicals and bring them back again safely– wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

  “Sorry to hear that, Matt. I was looking forward to it,” she said instead.

  “I think I can get some things moved around and come up next weekend, though,” he said cheerfully. “I’ll fly in and maybe we can get that hotel room after all.”

  “Sounds good. I’m looking forward to showing you around Muddy Creek.”

  “Or,” he said slowly, “we could just stay in the motel room…”

  Taryn snorted, but laughed. She remembered a time when a thirteen-year-old Matt had balked at the idea of ever having a girlfriend. He’d been a late bloomer but when he’d bloomed he’d bloomed.

  “So Huntington, eh? My parents took me up there when I was a kid. Dad had family there at one time. We went to an amusement park,” Matt mused.

  “An amusement park? You?” Taryn grinned. Matt did occasionally make a trip to Disney World, but it was more for the giant turkey legs and science stuff at Epcot than it was for Space Mountain.

  “It was during the days of trying to convince them that I was a normal eight-year-old and not a freak,” Matt sighed. “I still get nauseous thinking about the Big Dipper.”

  “Was it Camden Park?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. How’d you know?”

  “I saw the signs for it on the way in. I think it’s the same place that some of the country music singers used to play at in the 1980s when they were still getting their start,” Taryn said. Her third talent: she had a penchant for country music trivia. She couldn’t tell you a thing she learned in high school Algebra but could literally tell you every artist that had won Entertainer of the Year at the last twenty Country Music Association Awards.

  “It was. When we were there we saw Vince Gill. It was raining and they’d pushed all these picnic tables together under a pavilion. We only stayed for a few minutes. Mother sorted, called him ‘whiney’, and said he’d never make it. Clearly, Mother knew what she was talking about.”

  Taryn laughed along with him as she pulled into the big box parking lot. After the week she’d had, it was good to talk to someone about inane things. It made her feel normal.

  * * *

  “I’D JUST LOVE to come and watch you paint.” The woman before her wore black yoga pants, sported an orange bottled tan, and sipped on a gas station Slurpee. Upon meeting Taryn, she’d engulfed her in a bear hug, spilling some of the icy red liquid down the front of Taryn’s white T-shirt.

  “Well, I don’t normally work around other people but–”

  “Oh, well, you won’t mind me,” the woman screeched, slinging her bleached-blond hair back from her shoulders. “After all, I was the one responsible for bringing you here.”

  And you’ll be the reason I leave if you keep it up missy, she wanted to reply. The truth was, she was not at ease working with someone hanging over her shoulder. It usually led to “advice” and while Taryn’s temper was usually controlled, nothing pissed her off more than someone obnoxiously critiquing her. It’s why she worked for herself.

  “Louellen, leave the poor girl alone.” The other woman who sat on the other side of Taryn was tall and thin with hands that shook every time she spoke. Her muddy brown hair was chopped off crudely at her ears, like she’d taken pinking shears to her head. Unlike the other women at the PTA meeting, she was not outspoken or quick to offer her opinion. Taryn had barely heard her speak. She still didn’t know her name.

  “Well I’m just glad you were able to join us today,” Louellen declared, clapping her hands together. The multiple rings on her fingers sparkled in the incandescent lights of the school cafeteria. The other dozen or so women nodded their approval.

  Taryn offered a thin smiled and told them she was happy to be there. The truth was, however, it made her nervous to be back inside a school. The familiar cafeteria smell, the scent of floor cleaner, the bright lights, the stragglers that continued to pass by with their backpacks slung over one shoulder…it was too close to feeling like she was back in school herself. And Taryn had not been a fan of school, at least not until college. She’d been picked on, ignored, and generally made to feel like there was something wrong with her. She wouldn’t go back to being a teenager for anything.

  Ironic how she could enjoy being around an abandoned schoolhouse and had no trouble visualizing the past, but had fits of anxiety for the fully-functioning ones in the present.

  “It would have been nice, though, if you’d brought your canvases with you,” Louellen said. She offered a pleasant, toothy smile but there was steel behind it. She wasn’t joking.

  “Sorry about that,” Taryn replied. She toyed with the print outs of the images she’d brought with her. Expecting that question she’d printed off some of the pictures she’d taken with Miss Dixie, an offering of what was to come. “I usually just spend the first week taking photos and getting to know the place first.”

  “Perfectly understandable,” an overweight woman in a blue jean skirt that hit her ankles declared. Her long, stick-straight hair fell to her waist in split ends. It didn’t appear as though it had ever been cut. Her face, though pretty, was devoid of makeup. Taryn had immediately stamped her with “Holy Roller”, though she didn’t do it with maliciousness. The woman, in fact, had been nothing but pleasant to her. So what if she carried around a Bible and didn’t believe in musical instruments at church?

  “Just remember, we’re paying you by the job and not by the day,” Louellen laughed thinly. None of the other women of the PTA joined her.

  “Don’t worry,” Taryn said. “I’ve never missed a deadline.”

  An awkward silence followed. Some of the women glanced down at their hands and fiddled with notes or cookies. Others pulled out their phones and pretended to be focused on important messages (Facebooking, most likely). Finally, when Taryn didn’t think the air could get any thicker, someone slapped the table and told everyone to cut out for a ten-minute “refreshment and potty break.”

  The other women, and the lone man in attendance, shot up in tandem, scattering from the room in a race. Taryn was left sitting at the table next to the quiet woman with the short hair.

  “Don’t worry about her,” the woman smiled softly. “She’s always like that. I don’t think she means to be rude. You know she’s not even the pr
esident? She just takes over. A lot.”

  Taryn laughed. “It’s okay. I get it.”

  “My son goes here. My daughter will next year,” the woman said. “I went here myself. It’s a good school. I only belong to this so that I know what’s going on. He doesn’t tell me a thing. And it gets me out of the house.”

  “I know what you mean. If it weren’t for work I’d rarely leave myself anymore,” Taryn said.

  “A lot of us went to Muddy Creek. So we have, I guess you’d call it, an emotional investment in what you’re doing.”

  “It’s definitely an interesting place.”

  The other woman sighed and pushed back a lock of hair from her eyes. “When Lucy destroyed it, well, I about died. So sad to treat a building like that.”

  Taryn had trouble keeping the surprise from her face. Had it not registered that they’d actually let the building deteriorate even before Lucy had decided to become a pyromaniac?

  Could the woman before her actually have more sympathy for the building than for the people who’d died? People she’d almost certainly known?

  “So were they your teachers? I mean, the ones who died?”

  “Yes,” she nodded, eyes wide. “I had them all. I loved them. I loved it there.”

  Confused, Taryn wanted to press on but she was cut off when Louellen approached her from behind. Sharp fingernails dug into Taryn’s shoulder; she didn’t think it was unintentional.

  “Listen, I just wanted to throw something your way,” Louellen hissed.

  Taryn turned and looked at her, trying to shrug her hand off her shoulder. “What’s up?”

  “It’s just that we heard about your little visit,” Louellen said, her eyes bright. Although she put on the illusion of keeping her voice down and things private between them, it still reverberated through the room. Others who were filing back into the cafeteria stopped talking and paused to listen.

  “My visit?” Taryn asked innocently.

  How could they know, she asked herself. She guessed there really were no secrets in a small town.

  “With Lucy Dawson,” Louellen whispered theatrically. When Taryn didn’t react, she forged ahead. “I just wanted to let you know that there are certain things people here aren’t doing right now. Because of legal issues, you see?”

  Taryn nodded. Yeah, she “saw.”

  “I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea of you.”

  “But she hasn’t been found guilty yet, right?” Taryn prodded, feeling contrary.

  True, Lucy had been recorded on an iPhone by a firefighter holding a can of gasoline in her hand as she watched the flames rip through the building. The video of her, with blank eyes, watching the inferno had been viewed more than one million times on You Tube. Frieda Bowen played a snippet of it at least once a day on her show. She’d gone willingly with the police, even waited for them on the embankment, without any trouble. She’d all but admitted to setting the fire and not calling for help.

  But Taryn didn’t like where this conversation was heading. Nobody told her who she could or could not talk to. She didn’t need the job that badly.

  “Well, of course she hasn’t been found guilty yet…” Louellen blushed, feeling the piercing eyes of those around her.

  “I always liked Lucy.” The voice came from the other side of the room and Taryn was surprised to look up and see Jamey standing in a doorway, arms folded across his chest. “Most of us did at one time or another,” he reminded them.

  Some looked down at their feet, out of embarrassment Taryn imagined. She caught Jamey’s eye and sent him a grateful smile. Still, she remembered Lucy’s words about knowing each other and felt sad. What had happened? Everyone started out as friends in elementary school. Then things changed along the way. Had the social awkwardness of the teen years split them apart?

  “I liked her,” the quiet woman next to her all but whispered. “We were friends in elementary school. She thought the school was haunted. We all did. Don’t you remember playing Bloody Mary in the bathroom?” She directed this to Louellen.

  “Yeah. A long time ago. Before she started killing people,” Louellen retorted.

  Before things got out of hand, Taryn stood and picked up her photos. “Look, I realize this is a sensitive topic. I don’t know the full story. But my visit with her had nothing to do with the case. And it was kind of private. I’ve been an adult for a long time. A long time.” She tried not to let the tears sting her eyes, an old habit when she got upset or frustrated, but she could already feel her face turning hot.

  “Of course,” Jamey said soothingly, walking towards her. She felt comforted by his gentle smile. “We’re all adults here. Want me to walk you out?”

  Taryn managed to send a polite smile to the rest of the group before Jamey took her arm in a companionable movement. She could feel the group’s eyes on her back the whole walk across the linoleum floor.

  Man, it really was like being back in school. Back in school with the mean girls.

  Eleven

  “Hey Sandy,” Taryn smiled as she walked through the dusty doors of the front office.

  The receptionist glanced up and offered a small smile, something between boredom and frustration at being interrupted from the tablet she poked at. “Hey.”

  “I need to mail something,” Taryn began, “but I haven’t been able to find the post office. Can you point me in the right direction?”

  “Sure,” Sandy nodded. “It’s in the grocery store.”

  “Huh?”

  “The grocery store at the end of Main Street? The post office is connected to it, at the end.”

  Taryn laughed. She’d been in that store three times already, stocking up on snack food. She hadn’t once noticed a post office. “Thanks. I guess I missed it.”

  “Easy to do,” Sandy nodded. “The sign’s itty bitty.”

  Taryn offered a “Thanks” and turned to go.

  “Hey, wait a sec,” Sandy called.

  Taryn paused and turned. “Yeah?”

  “So you, like, seen any ghosts around the school or anything?”

  Startled, Taryn creased her forehead, a nervous habit, and chewed on her bottom lip. “Well, uh…why do you ask?”

  Sandy held up a hand and shrugged again. “I dunno. My mom always said that people thought the school was haunted. That some girl had hung herself in the bathroom. Or something like that. And that you can hear her crying.”

  Taryn started to remind Sandy that Muddy Creek had always been an elementary school and that it was highly unlikely that an eight-year-old would commit suicide. Knowing that facts and logic had no place in a good ghost story, however, she kept the thought to herself.

  “Haven’t really seen anything out there,” Taryn said at last. “But I’ll let you know when I do.”

  Sandy’s eyes brightened. “Awesome. My friends and I used to go out there before it burned down. We’d party and stuff behind the school, crawl in through the windows and shit. Dare each other to stay inside alone. Never saw anything myself but my ex said he heard something weird one night. I don’t know, though. He was probably high.”

  Taryn laughed. “Yeah, that might do it.”

  “But if you see something, please tell me. It’s, like, totally boring here all day. I don’t get to talk to nobody much. Everyone just gets up in the morning and leaves. You’re the only one who’s stuck around and talked.”

  “I’ll be back,” Taryn promised her. “And hopefully I’ll have some stories for you.”

  As she pulled out of the overgrown parking lot, Taryn couldn’t help but laugh. She had to be the only person in town that wasn’t hoping she’d see a ghost.

  * * *

  “WELL THAT WAS PAINFUL.”

  A year ago, the majority of Taryn’s bills were household expenses: rent, utilities, groceries for when she was home, internet, and cable. She had two credit cards and student loans that she’d been steadily chipping away at over the past seven years. Her car was finally paid off
.

  Then her health went downhill.

  Now she found herself paying on medical bills for everything from her CT scans and MRIs to her chronic pain treatments. She had a total of six medical specialists, including a neurologist, gastroenterologist, orthopedist, pain management specialist, and allergist. She saw all of them regularly and they all regularly sent her bills. She could have used her settlement and paid all of them off, but then she wouldn’t have been left with much to live on. Instead, she’d worked out payment plans for the biggest bills and sent each of them a small amount each month. It was painful to see the money go, especially since none of the doctor visits ever resulted in any changes.

  “I’d rather be shopping,” Taryn muttered as she pulled over the embankment and dove towards the school. “Mama needs new boots.”

  She didn’t, of course. Taryn could have opened a thrift store with all the clothes she had stuffed away back in her Nashville apartment.

  “Hello Pepto,” Taryn spoke to the sad-looking building in front of her. She’d decided that it needed a nickname. It made her feel closer to it.

  The school did not reply. A good sign.

  “Last day for you and me,” Taryn told Miss Dixie as she slung her around her neck. After today she’d start her sketching and then it would be on to the painting. She might still use her camera from time to time, but the rest of the job would be all on her. Miss Dixie had done her work, it would now be up to Taryn to do the rest.

  The sun had almost disappeared entirely. She could see it trying to poke through the steely sky, but it was only a shadow, a brilliant shadow whose glare barely reached the earth. The sky held no color at all, but thanks to the heavy rain the week had seen, a few orange and red leaves were peeking through the trees. Taryn could only imagine how beautiful the area would look when the hills were alive with fall colors and sunshine. She knew that people flocked to the New England states for fall foliage tours but she’d yet to see a place that did autumn like Appalachia.