A Summer of Fear: A True Haunting in New England (12 page)

Rebecca Patrick-Howard is the author of several books including the first book in her paranormal mystery trilogy
Windwood Farm
. She lives in eastern Kentucky with her husband and two children.

Rebecca’s other books include:

Windwood Farm (Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera)

Griffith Tavern (Book 2 in Taryn’s Camera)

Dark Hollow Road (Book 2 in Taryn’s Camera)

Four Months of Terror

A Summer of Fear

Haunted Estill County

More Tales from Haunted Estill County

Coping with Grief: The Anti-Guide to Infant Loss

Visit her website at
www.rebeccaphoward.net
to sign up for her newsletter to receive free books, special offers, and news.

Visit her website at
www.rebeccaphoward.net
and sign up for her newsletter to receive free books, special offers, and news.

Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera

Blurb: Windwood Farm has a terrible secret–one that’s been buried for nearly 100 years. Taryn Magill aims to uncover it…or die trying.

As a mixed media artist and urban explorer with a love for abandoned houses and a big imagination when it comes to the past, 30 year old Taryn has never really met an old house she didn’t like. In fact, she’s made a career out of painting these sad, often derelict structures, to show them in their former glory for her clients.

With Windwood Farm, though, she might have bitten off more than she can chew!

The locals refer to it as “the devil’s house” and even vandals have stayed away from this once grand stone farmhouse in Vidalia, Kentucky. Hired by the Stokes County Historical Society to paint it before it’s demolished by a land development company, Taryn’s determined to make friends with the house and farm everyone around her seems to be terrified of.

As it turns out, their fears may just not be unfounded.

Who is the woman whose cries echo throughout the farm and what does she want? What negative force about the house is so powerful that it won’t even allow the upstairs bedroom to be touched? Does the 93 year old vanishing of the next door neighbor have anything to do with the house’s mysteries?

Taryn wants the answers to these and the house may just be trying to tell her because now, when she looks through her camera, she doesn’t have to use her imagination to see the past–

SHE CAN 
SEE
 IT!

Will Taryn be able to figure out what happened here AND escape with her sanity and life before the house comes down? Because now it seems like someone is trying to kill her! Using what her camera reveals to her and her wits, she’ll try to unravel the mysteries of the farm and get out before it’s too late.

After several hours of what she thought was pretty good work on her part, she stepped back and admired her own work, gave herself a pat on the back, and took a break. “Well done, old girl,” she said aloud and then
literally
gave herself a pat on the back because, after all, she believed if you didn’t do it, then nobody else would.

The sun had come out by then and the ground was starting to dry, but it was still very muddy so she headed to the car and sat on the hood while she ate her lunch—leftover Subway from the night before.

Reagan had taken the boards off the windows like she had asked, and now that the sun had risen in the sky it caught the upstairs window and the glare made it appear to wink at her. In fact, it seemed to look right at her. Shielding her eyes, she turned away. “Damn it,” she muttered, as she looked at the ground and took another bite. The glare was so bright, however; she couldn’t ignore it.

She had grown used to the uneasy feeling she’d developed on the first day and thought she might be making friends with the house. It didn’t feel as unwelcoming to her as it did in the beginning and she was almost certain it had even preened a little today while she was painting it, as though it knew it was posing for something that would make it immortal.

Taryn was not a religious person, and wasn’t even sure she believed in God, or one powerful entity at all, but she did believe in energy and nature and if there was something bigger than herself in the universe, she always felt it outside when she was alone. She never found it inside the walls of a church or listening to someone preach. Sometimes, while she was painting, she’d get so lost in thought and deep into her picture that she even thought she might becoming a part of it, or with the world around her. It was the closest thing she’d ever had to a religious experience and the feeling of euphoria it gave her was similar to the one she’d gotten off some pain pills when she’d had her wisdom teeth removed.

All of a sudden, a loud crash from inside the house sang out and caused her to jump off the hood and drop her sandwich to the ground. “So much for the five-second rule,” she cursed as she watched it immediately get covered with mud and ants. She was hungry, but not
that
hungry.

Still, she was curious about the noise. She didn’t think anyone was in the house and it had been a couple of days since she’d been inside. “Eh, why not?” she mumbled, and made her way to the front door. “What’s it going to do?”

Always taken a little aback by the amount of darkness that existed even with the windows uncovered, it took her a moment to adjust her eyes when she stepped inside. The living room was cleared of any items and was stark and empty. Taryn thought this made it feel less intimidating than before, as though the boxes had made it feel more lived in, as though someone was coming back. Even the curtains were gone. The peeling wallpaper was still on the walls, though, and it gently flapped as she walked by, stirred by her movements, the only testament to the fact she was actually there.

The hardwood floors were still rock-solid, despite Reagan’s concerns, and didn’t make a sound as she moved through the rooms. Not a squeak was made. She was surprised by the lack of dust and smiled at the fact that Mrs. Jones had dusted them; that effort was made to sweep the house before it was demolished. It must be a southern thing to clean something before killing it; to fix something before destroying it. She marveled at the beautiful fireplace mantle, so detailed and ornate and yet at the staircase banister, so simple and plain. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why money was spent on some fixtures and not on others. Clearly, the original owners had possessed money, yet had been selective about how it was spent.

The dining room and kitchen were also bare of belongings, as were the downstairs closets.  There obviously wasn’t anything on the downstairs level that could have made such a loud noise that she heard it from the outside. At any rate, it was as quiet as a church now, or a library. It was hard to imagine this place ever filled with the sounds of a family: laughter, singing, dancing, chattering…Yet the house must have possessed such things and been host to such activities at one time, right? Someone lived in the house and loved it once. Yet there were no echoes of this former life in it now. She could barely even hear own breathing.

Without the boards on the windows and door, it was easier to see. She thought (hoped) the extra light might make the house feel more gracious, yet the welcoming feeling she’d experienced outside disappeared as soon as she stepped through the front door.

Once she circled through the downstairs, she made her way to the first set of stairs in the living room and put her foot on the first step. All at once, a roar so loud, she felt as though her ear drums would pop from the deafening sound filled the room to a raucous level. Staggering, she fell backward and scraped her lower back against the wooden stairs behind her. As she clutched at her chest, she pushed against an invisible force that seemed to thrust against her. The rumble continued all around her, filling the air at an incredible volume, the sound neither man nor animal.

An astonishing wind swept through the room and up the staircase, whipping her hair around her and sending hot air down her throat, making her unable to talk or scream. Gasping for breath, she struggled to talk or breathe and began choking, gagging, wheezing. The front door, which she’d left open, closed with a bang. In horror, she watched small cracks appear in the living room windows and then watched as the glass shattered and flew out into the yard in hundreds of pieces. Using her hands and sheer strength, Taryn managed to grab onto the banister and pull her way up, inch by inch. Finally, by wrapping her legs around the banister, straddling it, and turning her back to the door and wind, she caught her breath. Using what breath she had left, she screamed with everything she had, “WHAT DO YOU WANT!?”

As quickly as it started, everything stopped.

Taryn was left on the banister, like a little kid who had simply been caught sliding down from the top of the stairs. There was utter stillness again with no sign that anything had happened, other than the fact that the windows were broken and the door was closed.

Shaken, she unwound herself from the banister and ran out the front door, not bothering to close it behind her.  She’d let the ghost deal with that.