Dark Hollow Road (Taryn's Camera Book 3) (14 page)

“High school would’ve been so much better if I’d had girlfriends,” she muttered as she slid under the covers. Taryn had always been jealous of the girls who had best friends and a close circle of friends–people they could confide in and giggle with and act silly with. Television shows like
Sex and the City
depressed her and even though she couldn’t stand Carrie Bradshaw she found herself unable to take her eyes away, not because she liked the romance or tawdriness but because she was jealous of the relationships between the four women. Sure, Matt had always been there for her and was the greatest best friend one could ask for, but at the end of the day he was a dude and there were some things she just couldn’t share with him. She’d found that out in high school when she’d confided she’d lost her virginity and he’d refused to talk to her for a month. She now saw that for what it was–jealousy–but at the time all she’d felt was embarrassment and hurt.

Because she spent so much time on the road she didn’t have the opportunity to make lasting friendships as an adult. Her first few years after college were spent with Andrew, ensconced in marital bliss. Andrew was likable and friendly, but they didn’t have “couple” friends together, just acquaintances they mostly met during jobs. After his accident she’d delved into her work and stayed gone as much as she could. She didn’t even know her neighbors back at her Nashville apartment.

As she drifted off to sleep, the sound of the television in the bedroom turned softly to a crime show, she let herself think of the group of kids who’d grown up there in the town. What must it have been like, going all the way through school with the same group of people? To have folks know your name in almost every business you walked into? To have that feeling of being
known
by everyone, even if those people weren’t your friends? Was it comforting? Stifling? At the moment, it sounded nice.

S
omething was in the house. Taryn’s eyes flew open at the sound but still she laid in bed, her heart racing in her chest. She didn’t move a muscle as she trained her ears to the dark. The television, set to a timer, was off. The low rumbling of the heater was now the only noise pulsating through the air.

Still, she’d heard something.

By turning her head a little to the left she could see the clock on her nightstand. The red numbers flashed 3:15 am.
I should’ve known
, she thought to herself. Taryn had a tendency to wake up, unprovoked, at the same time on a regular basis.

The air around her was still, almost unnaturally so. Again, she strained her ears to pick up the sound that had awakened her, but all she could hear was the sound of her own labored breathing and the pumping of her heart in her ears.
Calm yourself, calm yourself
, she chanted in her mind. She would not give in to a panic attack. Taking a deep breath she held onto her air for several seconds, hoping to hear something. When she thought she would burst, she let it out. Of course if she tried to hear a sound she would. That didn’t mean anything was there.

Angry at herself for getting scared and disgusted with feeling like an idiot, she sat up in bed and stared into the darkness. She could barely see her hand in front of her face, but there would be a lamp on downstairs if she wanted to get up. But something made her stay. The darkness pressed in around her, a wall, and kept her rooted to the bed. Her blankets, bunched around her hips, were a shield and she wasn’t ready to let them go. Although the night was silent, and she was certain she’d locked all the doors, every nerve in her body was on fire, all going a million miles a second. If she touched something she expected to see sparks fly.

She might be scared, but she wasn’t crazy. Something wasn’t right.

Before Taryn could make a move, the noise came again. It was a definite creak, the sound of weight on a floorboard. The movement was hesitant, testing. She knew then, that what she’d heard had been real. She was aware of something downstairs and, whatever it was, it was equally aware of her.

Taryn’s overactive imagination immediately went into high gear. The creak was close, at the bottom of the stairs perhaps. A quick-moving figure could be to her in a matter of seconds. She had no gun, no knife, or weapon of any sort. It was so dark in the room she’d fumble grasping for something to use as one. Maybe the lamp? But how could she find it? She didn’t know where the plug was. Why had someone come in on her? What did they want? Were they there to kill her? Rape her? Worse? (And what was worse?)

Slowly, holding her breath, Taryn rose to her knees and shed the blanket. It dropped to the floor in a soft thud. Her weight shifted the box springs and as a small groan escaped from them, the creak came again, this time louder. Was it closer? Was it on the stairs?

Suddenly, Matt’s face appeared behind her eyes, his dark eyes flashing at her. She wanted to cry out for him, reach for him, but he was far away from her. She was on her own.

And then, as her phone on the nightstand let out a shrill call, she realized she wasn’t. Grabbing it in relief she flipped it open to the sound of Matt’s voice. “Are you okay?” he asked with urgency. “I-”

“Oh, good!” she cried into the phone. “I thought maybe you’d given up on coming tonight because it was so late!”

With newfound energy, Taryn pounced off the bed and fumbled for the lamp switch. The bedroom was filled with a soft glow. It was quiet downstairs, listening.

“What?”

“”So you think about five more minutes?” she asked loudly. “Oh, you can see the driveway? I’ll go ahead and get the coffee started.” She laughed at herself then, and the fact neither one of them drank coffee. It sounded so absurd.

“Taryn? You want me to call the police?”

“Yes please,” she nearly sobbed. “That would be great!”

Moving quickly to her door she pushed it to with an urgency and force she didn’t know she possessed and then dragged the small office chair and placed it under the knob. She knew then her activity meant she couldn’t possibly hear what was going on beneath her, but she didn’t care. She would be safe for a few minutes.

“Calling now,” Matt vowed. “Using the landline. Stay on the phone.”

“Okay.” She cried now, sliding down to the floor at the foot of the bed. “Please hurry.”

Matt stayed with her on the line until the blue lights reflected in her bedroom window. “I’ll call you back,” she promised. “They’re here.”

“I’m packing now. Be there in a few hours.”

There was no way she was going to argue with him.

The pounding on the door below was comforting but even as she flew down the stairs she was scared, scared someone might be behind her or waiting for her at the bottom. She opened the door without any trouble, though, and two middle-aged officers stood waiting for her.

While one sat with her on the couch, the other walked through the house, looking. “I’m going to feel silly if it was my imagination. Or a ghost,” she tried to laugh. The serious-looking officer, who introduced himself as Worley, smile grimly.

“Better safe than sorry,” he declared. “Especially you being out here by yourself.”

It didn’t take more than ten minutes for the other officer to scan the interior and exterior of the house. When he came back, Worley stood up to greet him. “Miss Magill here is afraid she might have just heard a ghost,” he stated.

“No ghost, ma’am,” he muttered. “Unless you have a very active one.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kitchen window is smashed. That’s how they got in. Probably what woke you up. You’re lucky you had someone call us when you did. This could’ve ended very badly for you.”

O
ther than the broken window, there were no other signs anyone, besides Taryn, had been in the house. “It was probably a random burglary,” someone had told her while she waited in the small police station, wrapped in a warm blanket. She couldn’t stop shaking. “That house is usually empty. They were probably surprised to find you there.”

“But my car was there,” she muttered. Nobody seemed to hear her or care.

After taking her statement, she had an officer drive her to the local Hampton Inn. There was no way she could go back to the cabin. Matt would be there soon and he agreed the motel was the best place for her.

Thelma, beside herself with worry, had wanted Taryn to stay with her. “We have plenty of room, sweetie,” she’d moaned, all but wringing her hands together. She blamed herself, even though she’d been miles away and nobody had ever bothered the place before.

“I’ll be fine,” Taryn assured her. “Besides, it has a hot tub and I could do with a dip.”

The false positivity she was emitting was a stark contrast to the terror she felt inside. She’d been confronted by an angry ghost, trapped inside a small room by a confused ghost, subjected to multiple dead bodies, and held at gunpoint. None of those things had prepared her for the helplessness and fear she’d experienced in the house.

Thelma continued to comfort her and engulf her in random, bosomy hugs until she was released and then she drove Taryn to the motel. “My friend will be here soon, and he’ll drive me back to the house.”

Thelma and her husband insisted on waiting while Taryn checked in and then accompanied her to her room. She hadn’t packed anything but her laptop and Miss Dixie so there was nothing to carry. “Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetie,” Thelma reassured her before they left. “We’re fixing that window first thing and installing security tomorrow. And we’ve paid for three nights here. If you need more, just let us know. You don’t have to go back at all if you don’t want to.”

A
s exhausted as she was, sleep wouldn’t come. The motel had interior corridors and these made her feel safe and secure, but every time she closed her eyes she could still see the darkness of the bedroom, hear the creak of the floorboard. A late-night black and white movie was playing on the standard-sized motel television set and she lost herself in it while she waited for Matt.

The sun was bursting through the sky, streaks of red and purple against white, when Matt knocked on her door. She opened it and fell against him, instantly feeling a mixture of relief and disgust with herself for not being able to hack it on her own. “Well that was fun, wasn’t it?” he tried to chuckle but she could feel him tense under her arms.

Gently, he led her back to the bed where he pulled down the covers and tucked her in. She curled her body in towards his as he sank down in beside her and began stroking her hair back from her forehead. “Sweet girl,” he murmured. “Go to sleep, and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

A
fter three days in the hotel she was ready to return to the cabin. “We don’t have to go. We can keep staying here,” Matt suggested. “You only have a few weeks left.”

Taryn was restless, though, and feeling silly for all the drama she seemed to have caused. Even her students were walking around her on eggshells, treating her gently. Emma and Lindy had visited her at the hotel twice. They claimed it was to make use of the pool and hot tub, but both had appeared worried to her and Emma even apologized for not offering to stay with her while Matt was gone. “I should’ve just moved in until he got back,” she swore. “What were we thinking, leaving you out there alone?”

“It’s okay, really.” Taryn was embarrassed not only by the attention but by the fact people didn’t seem to think she could take care of herself. “I’ve been on my own for a long time and have stayed in much more isolated places. I once stayed at a farmhouse in the mountains for almost two months and barely saw a soul.”

But, of course, nobody had disappeared on that farm and there was no ongoing investigation that quite possibly included people in the general vicinity.

Since Matt had gone to the cabin to look around and packed her an overnight bag, Taryn hadn’t returned since the night of the intrusion. She stood in the front yard now, looking at it against the harsh October sun. It appeared harmless enough, a picturesque log house set amidst a forest backdrop. But as soon as she stepped foot on the porch she could remember waking up in the darkness, the blind panic at not knowing what to do next, the rush of adrenalin as she’d pushed the chair in front of the door and then held her breath as she waited for the inevitable sound of her intruder charging up the stairs.

Could she really stay here?

Yes, she could and she would. She wasn’t a wimp. A new alarm system was installed and anyone coming in through the doors or windows after they went to bed would set off a shrill and notice that would go straight to the police station. And then there was a tiny part of her invigorated by what happened. There was no way the break-in was random. Someone was trying to scare her, or worse, and that meant she may have been onto something and didn’t even know it. She aimed to find out what it might be. Cheyenne deserved it.

M
att didn’t feel good about letting her roam around the property without him, but he was too polite to invite himself along. When she’d turned down his offer to accompany her he’d let it go. Still, as she walked across the yard towards the treeline she could see him standing in the kitchen window, pretending to wash dishes.

She felt safe in the daylight. Although she knew it was a false sense of security, hundreds of women were abducted every year in the middle of the day and even in public, she forced herself onward. She had a hankering to visit the old farmhouse again and to put herself back on the site where Cheyenne was last seen.

When the air was crisp and the sunlight shockingly bright against the naked trees and brittle grass it was almost hard to believe something frightening had taken place at the cabin just a few days before. She’d been surprised at just how calm she’d felt inside, sure she’d be plagued by post trauma that would keep her up at night. But Matt’s calming presence had helped and his positive energy filled the rooms with light. She was safe near him, protected.

The woods, though thick and quiet, were peaceful. She loved the country, even though she hadn’t grown up in it, and found a sweet solace in the soft pine needles under her feet, the burnt smell of autumn, and the closing out of the world around her.

But then she stepped out of the trees and into the meadow where the farmhouse stood and everything changed. Again.

“There’s something not right here,” she murmured to herself. Miss Dixie slapped against her thigh in agreement. “I wonder why?”

For the longest time, she didn’t move and stared in perplexity at the house and fields before her. They were innocuous enough. But she felt safer in the shadows of the trees, just knowing they were only a few feet behind her.

It didn’t make sense that’s she’d feel such a sense of foreboding there. Cheyenne hadn’t disappeared at the farmhouse. Witnesses had seen her leave in a pickup. They’d watched her drive out the gate. Other witnesses placed her in a house miles from here, long after the party ended.

And yet…

If it were Cheyenne’s energy she was picking up on, then why the fear? Why the gnawing sensation something was wrong? Cheyenne had been celebrating here; school was over and she had the freedom only youth in summertime could know. A bonfire, drinks, laughter, music… this should have been a happy place for her.

If Taryn closed her eyes and reached out past the corners of her mind she could almost feel the sweet, youthful energy of the eighteen-year-old around her. The mounting excitement of seeing friends, catching a glimpse of a crush, drinking something bitter and distasteful but loving the warmth it provided inside. Cars, trucks, and four-wheelers parked in the damp grass, someone’s radio on. Girls gathered around a group of guys by the fire, watching in earnest as they strummed guitars and tapped rhythm on their knees, maybe with dreams of moving up to Nashville or heading out west when they could afford to go.

It had been a long time since Taryn was a teenager, but things didn’t change much; people didn’t change that much. Girls would always segregate themselves in clumps, whispering and giggling as they talked about other girls and guys they liked. The guys would always fit into two groups–those who came across standoffish and those who came on too strong. Both would be nervous, their confidence shaky.

What had Cheyenne done? Had she sat by the fire, nursing a lukewarm can of beer? Or had she perched on the edge of the farmhouse steps, surrounded by her girlfriends while their laughter and sparkling smiles faded into the ethereal darkness? Had she danced around, her boots scraping the dirt and her dark hair flying behind her, carefree and oblivious to the world around her? Or had she been quiet, timid, and stayed close to her pack, finding safety in numbers?

What happened at the house after she’d left here? Taryn tried to see her, tried to see Cheyenne standing outside in the early morning air, puffing on a cigarette by herself. A car pulls up a few houses down, two men unknown around here. They watch her for a while, marveling at her youth and fragility. One gets out, offers her a joint or a drink. She’s not so nervous at first because he’s friendly and good looking. But then the other one comes. He’s bigger, threatening. He doesn’t crack a smile. She starts feeling the first waves of panic and turns to go inside but then feels a large hand crushing her shoulder, dragging her down. Before she can let out a muffled scream she’s unconscious, floating away to a car with an unknown destination.