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

  “I like to be in on the secret,” Taryn sighed aloud.

  “Looks good now,” she’d overheard one of the reporters say at the post office. She was now able to tell the reporters apart from the locals. They were the ones with the inferior smirks and cell phones visibly strapped to their belts or hanging out their shirt pockets. “Just wait ‘til all these leaves are gone, though.”

  “Yeah, then the trash will really shine through,” his companion had sneered with a nasty laugh.

  “The armpit of America,” the first one laughed along with him. “Jesus H. Christ I’ll be glad to blow this dump.”

  It angered Taryn, their obnoxious behavior. It also embarrassed her. They’d had no consideration for the people standing around them at the time. For all they knew, she was a local herself. Sure, the reporters had zero problems showing up and exploiting a story for their own gain and using the resources at their disposal but God forbid they lower themselves to treat it with any kind of respect.

  “This is the twenty-first century, right?” Taryn muttered. She stood in the middle of what had once been the driveway, her hands on her hips. The region had been exploited for decades. The so-called “War on Poverty” had done little to help the area’s image of poor white trash, steeped in illiteracy, garbage, and dirt. Even now she occasionally ran into people in Nashville who still looked down their noses at their eastern neighbors, joking about their outhouses and lack of shoes. At what point had it become socially acceptable to make fun of the region and why was it still considered tolerable to demonize and belittle the “hillbillies” and “rednecks” when other groups had somehow earned the right to demand respect?

  Taryn shook her head. It wasn’t her fight, after all. She was not from Appalachia and had no real ties to it. But in her somewhat nomadic life she’d garnered respect for every place she visited. Taryn found beauty in everything, even in the bad.

  It was no wonder the people were mistrustful of outsiders, however. From so-called “documentaries” that showed the burned-out trailers with a dozen cars littering the lawn while ignoring the McMansion next door to the Hollywood movies that portrayed the region’s inhabitants as toothless inbreeds, she’d be cautious of strangers as well.

  “Nobody cared about Lucy Dawson until she killed someone.” Taryn said it quietly, a statement that didn’t need to be spoken aloud yet somehow felt compulsory. Somewhere, inside the building, something crashed. The sound echoed, a tuneless blast that startled Taryn and had her flinching.

  She was standing at the good end of the school, the part that was damaged by neglect and not by fire. Taryn walked to it and, brushing aside the tall daisies that grew in clumps, and placed her hand on the concrete wall. She expected it to be cold so she was surprised by the warmth that spread under her fingers. For a moment she held her breath, as though waiting for something. Then she laughed.

  “You’re freaking yourself out,” Taryn scolded herself. “All those talks of Bloody Mary and ghosts.”

  As though in reply, her fingers quivered and all but lifted from the wall. Something under her hand pulsated. It was as though the building was breathing, taking a breath. She might have imagined the sigh that followed but that didn’t make it any less real.

  Disconcerted, Taryn hopped back and stared at the place where her hand had just rested. “Well that was a surprise,” she said, her voice trembling a little. “Can you hear me?”

  A sparkle came from the window above her, a mischievous wink. Taryn turned and looked behind her, but the sun had disappeared back behind a cloud again.

  “You want something from me, too, don’t you?” Taryn asked.

  The music from her dream began to play inside. It began softly, barely discernible notes. She pressed her head to the wall, trying hard to hear what was playing. The same line, the one about the haunting, about the blue eyes, filtered outwards. Taryn closed her eyes and bit her lip even as her heart began to beat wildly inside her chest. Someone was in there, someone was singing, and the school wanted Taryn to hear it.

  “BOOM!” She ducked and flinched, feeling as though something had been thrown at her.

  “Oh!” Taryn yelped. “Geeze.”

  The clamor had her grabbing her ears and wincing in fear and pain. It was the sound of someone deliberately causing a ruckus, of anger. Although she stood a few feet back from the building now, she could feel the fury radiating through the layers of concrete and wrapping itself around her.

  As quickly as it came, the rage dissipated. The clouds parted and the sun remerged. The air was quiet and still again. Taryn closed her eyes and exhaled. “I’m getting too old for this,” she whispered.

  Miss Dixie, quiet against her chest, bounced as though in agreement.

  “I’ve got a job to do, though, and I am going to do it.” Unlike the reporters, the vultures as she was starting to think of them as, she was going to do her job and do it with integrity. The PTA deserved it. The school deserved it.

  She wasn’t yet sure what Lucy Dawson deserved.

  Twelve

  It was late, even for Taryn. She was used to carrying on at odd hours of the night, sometimes not going to bed until dawn when she was in a groove, but it was rare for her to stay up just to be awake. She just couldn’t sleep. She’d flipped through every television channel at least three times, pausing on shows for a few minutes at a time before losing interest and moving on. She’d listened as the reporters gathered outside to head off for dinner then listened again as they all filed back, some clearly intoxicated (despite the fact the county was dry). She’d listened to the late-night talk shows with half an ear as she fell down a few rabbit holes on the internet. She’d started researching the history of the county and had somehow ended up looking at vintage rabbit fur coats.

  Taryn couldn’t sleep.

  Miss Dixie rested beside her, watching her with disapproval.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know,” Taryn said, shooting her camera a withering glance. She’d yet to remove the memory card and take a look at the shots she’d taken that afternoon. She was uneasy, afraid of what she might have captured.

  “Aren’t you worried about getting involved?” But whatever Miss Dixie was feeling, she was keeping mum.

  There was something in her shots, Taryn knew it. Once she looked, however, she’d be stuck. She would be as sucked into the story as those reporters strolling outside her door, their shadows passing over her window as they made their way to and from the ancient vending machines.

  “See,” she began, almost pleading with her camera, “it’s not too late now. I can start painting right this minute. Not even look at the images until after the job’s finished. Just do my work and go home.” Taryn deserved that, right? Maybe, but that wasn’t who she was.

  Outside, howls of laughter rang out like a shot in the dark. It was Friday night. The reporters had apparently found a way to entertain themselves.

  “How many times have I become involved when it wasn’t any of my business?” she demanded. “And almost been killed for it?”

  The lamp on the bedside table flickered then, a quick flash that dimmed the room for a moment, leaving her with nothing but the glare of the television screen. It could have been a short. Or a bad bulb. For most people, anyway. For Taryn it was a sign.

  She was already involved. Ignoring her pictures would not change that.

  “Well, damn,” she sighed, blowing a clump of stringy hair from her eyes. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  She’d taken twenty-nine photos that day. They were the last of what she needed. She’d visit the library on Monday and do some research, see if she could get ahold of some images of the school before it was destroyed. She’d already planned on taking the weekend off, on doing some local sightseeing to get out of her own head. But the pictures, they were finished. That part of the job was done.

  The first eighteen looked exactly as they should. Nothing was out of place; the school looked as sad and deserted as it did in person.
r />   And then she arrived at #19.

  “Of course,” Taryn said, shooting Miss Dixie a look after she’d glanced at the image. “Did you know about this?”

  She could have sworn her camera winked at her.

  There was the school, pale green and full of life. Gone were the invasive climbers, the holes in the roof, and the blackened concrete. Windows so clean they glistened looked at Taryn smugly. The driveway, not full of potholes and overgrown with weeds, was freshly paved. Four vehicles were pulled up to the building, all parked in a neat little row. The front door, whose color was now indeterminable thanks to the fire, was a hunter green and wore a big “Welcome Back, Students” sign. A playground, now almost completely camouflaged by the overgrowth, held fresh mulch on the ground. A tall slide, towering jungle gym, and two sets of swings patiently waited to be filled with tiny bodies.

  If not for her own car, parked at an angle like a drunk after a bender, she might as well have been looking at a picture taken by a proud parent on the first day of school. The first day of school, twenty years ago.

  * * *

  “WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP?”

  Matt lived in his own little world, oftentimes spending hours and even days within his head. “Cerebral” was a term often used to describe him.

  “Weird” was another.

  When it came to Taryn, however, he’d always been as focused as he could be. Although there were times she’d had to rope him back down to Earth and snap her fingers to get his attention, when she really needed something he was there.

  “I don’t know where to start,” Taryn admitted.

  She sat in her car, the driver’s door open and her feet resting on the window. The view before her was something out of a picture. Although new mining efforts had presented the region with the unsightly mountaintop removal, the line of mountains that spread out for miles were all still intact. And they were on fire. Fall had arrived in all its full glory and it was a beauty. Taryn might as well have been sitting in a sea of crimson. She was glad Sandy had told her about the off-the-beaten-track side road that led up to what was known locally as “The Ledge.”

  “Well, we definitely know it has something to do with the school,” Matt said, all business like.

  Taryn smiled and felt her heart skip a beat. “We.” With Matt everything was a “we” for him. Even when he felt that logic dictated she step away from whatever she was involved in, whenever she committed to something he was right there with her, 100%. It was one of the reasons why she’d hung onto the relationship for so long. She wasn’t always certain that they worked as a couple, but as a team in general they were fantastic. She, herself, would’ve walked barefoot through hell or high water for him.

  “Right,” she agreed. “But we don’t know what I am working with here, or what I am meant to do with the little material I have been given.”

  “So let’s go over what we know. One, we know the school has a history of being haunted.”

  “Not necessarily,” Taryn interjected. “What we have is some kids who talk about it in an urban legend kind of way. Nothing truly concrete. We can’t ignore the fact that the spirits, if these are really spirits, are most likely from the school’s recent events.”

  “Well, that gives me something to do. I can do some research, find out if there is any history of other deaths, local tragedies connected to the building, etc.” Taryn could hear Matt making notes as he talked. She might ask for them later. One of them had to be the organized one after all.

  “While you’re at it, it wouldn’t hurt to get a general history of the area,” she pointed out. “If you can give me kind of the Cliffs’ Notes version of that, I’ll also do some man-on-the-street interviews and see what I can find out.”

  “Got it. So what else? Ah yes. We know that the school was abandoned for almost twenty years. We need to figure out if it was used for anything during that time period. Clubs? Organization? Devil worshipping rituals?”

  Taryn laughed. It wouldn’t be a small town in the south with at least one devil worshipping rumor.

  “There’s something else I want to know,” she said. “We have to figure out why Lucy Dawson is so curious about the happenings there. I swear, I’ve seen her in a few news footage type thingies and I didn’t see nearly the animation on her face as I did the other day when she was asking me about ghosts. I mean, Sandy I can understand. She’s a kid, you know? Of course she’s going to want to know what’s going on. I would’ve too, at her age. But why Lucy?”

  “Good thinking.” Matt paused and when he began speaking again his voice was softer, gentler. “There is another elephant in the room, and one we’re going to have to address.”

  “And that is?”

  “Lucy Dawson. Why did she do it? Was it an accident? Did she mean to kill those people? Was she trying to do something else? Is there remorse? What’s her motivation?”

  “Damn, Matt, you missed your calling as a prosecutor.”

  “Yeah, well, since being with you I’ve been watching a lot of Dateline and the Investigation Discovery Channel.”

  The last few rays of the light disappeared from the sky. Like a ball of flames, the sun slid over the mountains in the distance, leaving nothing behind but streaks of pink and deep purple. A slight wind blew, making it nippy. It would be nightfall soon. Dusk came quickly there. She didn’t want to be driving back the side of that mountain with it too dark so she’d need to go soon. It wasn’t just the lack of sunlight causing her to chill, however. The mere mention of Lucy’s deed troubled her.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve been thinking about it.” In her mind, Taryn tried to reconcile the mild-mannered woman she’d talked to on the porch with the woman she’d seen online–the wild looking woman with the blank eyes and impassive face that barely reacted to the mayhem she’d caused.

  “What kind of feeling did you get from her? Anything?”

  “Nothing,” Taryn sputtered, annoyed with herself. “Not a thing. It was hard to even remember that I was sitting with the same person. I tried to tune in, but she must have a brick wall built around her. I got nothing back whatsoever.”

  “Hmmm,” Matt mused thoughtfully. “Might have to bring in some bigger guns for that. Would you be open to visiting her again, this time using a little extra help?”

  “As long as it isn’t something that’s going to freak her out,” Taryn replied, envisioning her walking up the path carrying a bag full of voodoo implements and waving incense everywhere.

  “I’ll think of something,” he promised her. “So we’ve got a game plan anyway. We look at the history of the town, the history of the school–”

  “The history of the people who died,” Taryn interrupted him.

  “Yeah, you think?”

  “I do. I don’t know why, but they’re a part of this. They’re either innocent bystanders or…”

  “Or what?”

  “Or there was a reason,” Taryn whispered.

  Suddenly, she felt very alone up there on The Ledge. Without a single soul to be seen, she felt vulnerable. Taryn pulled in her legs and began rolling up her window. It was time to go.

  “There’s something bothering you,” Matt prompted her.

  “Yes.”

  “Better tell me now.”

  Taryn sighed. “The picture I sent you, the one of the school? The building wasn’t neglected. The picture was taken before the explosion, but long before it happened. Not just a few days or even a few months before.”

  “So you think we might be barking up the wrong tree?”

  “I’m thinking people need to start talking.”

  Thirteen

  The attorney’s words replayed through her mind as Taryn wandered up the crowded sidewalk, making her way to the public library. It was only a few blocks away, the WPA-era building, but the walk was taking longer thanks to the reporters who totally ignored her and refused to move out of her way. Still, it gave her time to think.

  “Work’s going fine,” he’d told
her on the phone that morning. “I’ve emailed you a breakdown on the roofing and electrical work they finished.”

  Taryn hadn’t opened that up yet. Why ruin a perfectly pleasant morning by looking at her finances?

  Taryn’s Aunt Sarah had passed away almost two years earlier. As her only surviving relative, the old New Hampshire farmhouse was left to Taryn. Still, it was a surprise when she’d received the news–both of her aunt’s death and of the bequeathal.

  Her death had been a blow to Taryn. Although she hadn’t seen her aunt in years, as a child she’d been as close to her as she was her own mother, in many ways closer. A former principal, Sarah herself had loved and related to children in a way that her sister, Taryn’s mother, never had. She’d never had any children of her own, however, and whatever maternal feelings she’d held she’d given to her niece and students.

  Taryn missed her. Some of her most treasured childhood memories were of visiting the big, rambling house in the woods. Of waking up next to her aunt in the big, four-poster bed with the wood crackling in the fireplace and the smell of sausage and eggs drifting up from the old kitchen. Of canoeing around the deep, shadowy pond with the woman who’d been a hippie as a young woman. Going on nature walks through the woods, looking for bear scat and moose.

  She’d gone up there a lot as a young child. Something had changed along the way and either the invitations had stopped coming as frequently or Taryn herself had grown up and found other interests. Either way, she didn’t visit as often as a teenager and young woman. Her aunt had spent the last few years of her life as a veritable recluse. Taryn hadn’t even known she’d been battling cancer. The fact that Sarah had fought the disease, and ultimately died, alone was something that ate at Taryn on a daily basis.