Dark Hollow Road (Taryn's Camera Book 3) (18 page)

T
aryn was depressed.

She’d ordered a new Allison Moorer CD off Amazon and was excited to see it had arrived in the mail. When she’d taken it inside, though, she’d found Matt blaring Beck and dancing in the kitchen, baking bread. Ordinarily Taryn would’ve shrugged it off, taken her laptop upstairs, and done her own thing. She’d have been thankful that there was actually someone in the house baking bread.

But for some reason today it just ticked her off.

Except for brief periods in the car when she was on her own, and that wasn’t often since Matt usually drove her in, she barely had a minute to herself. He dominated the radio in the car and, because he took charge of the kitchen and cleanup, he also dominated the musical entertainment segment of the show in the house. She hadn’t been able to crank up Allison or Tift Merrit or Iris Dement or any of her women in weeks. And she depended on music to keep her going, to be her soundtrack to her work. She might not have possessed a musical bone in her body and couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, but music was important to her. When she did try to listen to hers, Matt would politely put on a pair of earbuds and go about his business. And that pissed her off.

Then there was the matter of the kitchen.

It was no secret: Taryn didn’t like to cook. However, just because she didn’t like doing it didn’t mean she couldn’t do it. She was actually pretty good at it. After being on her own for so long, though, she’d just gotten used to eating out. Most boxed items and packages vegetables were too much for one person and she didn’t like to waste.

It sounded whiney to complain, and she loved that Matt cooked for her, but she hated feeling like he thought she couldn’t. She listened to him ramble on about new recipes and new cookbooks and new things he’d discovered. She even listened to him brag about how his blueberry cobbler was the best he’d ever had and how he could replicate any food he tasted at a restaurant.

Sometimes, she didn’t want to eat at home. Sometimes she didn’t care that he could make O’Charley’s brown bread in his own kitchen. Sometimes she just
wanted to go to O'Charley's!

It was on the tip of her tongue to storm into the kitchen, announce that she didn’t like Sade and her weird music and that she was going to order a pizza. But that was wrong and weird and it would hurt Matt’s feelings.

It wasn’t about him, anyway. It was about her. Taryn craved people and attention like anyone else but she also worked best alone and had gotten used to being on her own. She just didn’t know how to deal with always having someone around. Andrew was different. They’d been so much alike in so many different ways. Although he was much more sociable than her, he’d been perfectly content on his, too. They often spent their afternoons in different parts of the house, working on their individual projects, or even in the same room without speaking, alone in their comfortable silence. She figured that eventually she and Matt would be like that, too. They were still trying to find their footing.

Her bedroom balcony was cool and inviting. Now that the morning rain had cleared up she was able to set up her easel. People called her talented when it came to her art, but she didn’t feel like it came easily to her; she worked hard at it and had to keep up with it or else she’d lose whatever skills she had.

In one of her college art classes her old professor, regionally acclaimed artist Ron Isaacs, had showered praise on a sketching she did of a live model. It wasn’t very good. In fact, she’d started over and changed things so many times that she’d actually made a hole in her sketch pad and had charcoal up to her elbows. Sheila Griggs, the student on the other side of her, was having no such problems. Her sketch was beautifully rendered, had taken her half the time it took Taryn, and was so realistic Taryn thought you could practically balance a glass on the model’s perfectly apple-shaped rump.

Still, Dr. Isaacs had praised Taryn’s work and not Sheila’s. Indeed, he’d even criticized Sheila’s work, something that shocked Taryn so much she’d nearly made another hole in her paper.

Later, as she was packing up to leave, she’d overheard Sheila arguing with the wired-hair, quiet professor. “I don’t understand,” she’d whined, on the verge of tears. Taryn knew a good cry coming on when she heard one. “I worked really hard and my drawing was good. Taryn didn’t even finish hers and it has all kinds of mistakes. Why did she get a better grade than me?”

Taryn had to admit, her sympathy for the budding artist dropped a couple of notches after that but, for curiosity’s sake, moved slowly. She wanted to hear his reply, too.

“Your rendering is superior,” he’d replied in that slow, steady way of his. His bushy eyebrows rose in an arch, the white threads of hair in them shining in the overhead light. He was so frumpy in his wrinkled khakis, oversized sweat shirt, and cheap loafers with a hole in them that the average person would have never thought his last painting sold for five thousand dollars. “But your work, your work was lacking.”

“I don’t get it. What’s the difference?”

Taryn wondered that as well.

“Miss Magill’s work shows promise. She is very good, but she has to work at it. Yours is very good and you know that. Therefore, you do not try. In the long run, I have much respect for the person who constantly works to achieve better. To work so hard at capturing the vision in their mind–that is more than technical skill; that is passion.”

Taryn still worked hard at what she did and never felt like a painting was completed.

There was a slight breeze outside and it ruffled what few leaves were left on the skeletal trees. She’d been able to hear Sade until she shut the door and then that sound, as well as all the house sounds, dissipated and she was left with the outside noises. Taryn had barely finished setting up her easel, however, when the other music started.

At first, it sounded like the radio. The music was twangy with a distinctive electric guitar. It could’ve been Dwight Yoakam’s “Fast As You” and she found herself humming along with it, even growling to the “Aw, sookie” part. Maybe Matt’s changed his mind, Taryn thought to herself as she poured in a tiny bit of linseed oil. If she’d known he was going to put in Dwight (what that man did to a pair of jeans) she might’ve stayed inside.

The music began fading out, however, and there was a stretch of uncomfortable silence that made Taryn’s mind start to wander again. To ward off any negative of unpleasant thoughts she began singing to herself, an old folk song about blackbirds her grandmother used to sing to her. But then the music started up, this time a woman. She would’ve known Patty Loveless’ “Timber I’m Falling in Love” anywhere. Matt must’ve found a classics station, she mused. The volume was turned up loud, loud enough for Taryn to catch an occasional lyric, and the comforting sound of a familiar song and voice she’d known all her life cut through the chill of the afternoon and warmed her bones.

When she grew a little thirsty, though, and started back inside to grab her a drink she stopped in her tracks. Sade was still blaring below; all traces of Dwight and Patty were gone.

“Well that’s weird,” she muttered aloud.

In an experiment, she closed the bedroom door and stepped back out onto the balcony. Sade stopped, Patty returned, this time singing “Lonely Too Long.”

Shrugging, Taryn went back to work, forgetting about her drink. She figured it must be someone on the other side of the woods, perhaps working outside. Maybe Cheyenne’s uncle working at the farm, getting things ready for the party the kids were going to have.

Later, when she saw Matt come out of the house and head to the car to retrieve something, she called down to him. “Can you hear that music?” she yelled.

Startled because he hadn’t known she was outside, he jumped a little and then looked up at her and grinned. “What music?” he asked, innocently.

‘The music playing outside. I think someone’s got a radio on or something. Sounds like Patty Loveless, but I can’t make out the song now.”

Matt stood still, cocked his head to one side, and listened. “Nope, nothing. Maybe cause you’re higher up?”

“Yeah, maybe,” she nodded.

He went back in and she returned to her landscape. Her head and joints might be killing her, but at least it appeared her hearing was in good shape.

S
omething woke her up again and it had Taryn sitting straight up in bed, gasping for breath like she’d been held underwater. Her lungs were full to bursting and she clawed at her throat in the dark, reaching for air her body told her she so desperately needed. In her half-dreaming state she panicked, fighting off an invisible attacker that was keeping her from moving, from breathing. But then she opened her eyes, her movements ceased, and she acclimated herself to the darkness. Once again, she was back in the bedroom with Matt snoring peacefully beside her, nothing out of the ordinary except for her heart trying to beat its way out of her body.

Still, something had woken her up–something more than a bad dream. It was another sound, a sound that wasn’t quite right in the house.

Straining her ears, she listened for a follow-up, fearful of hearing the pounding of heavy shoes on the staircase or the padding of unwanted feet below. The house was quiet, however, and the only thing she could hear was the white noise of the dehumidifier by the bed. Thelma’d installed it a few nights before. With all the rain they’d been having, she was worried about moisture and them getting sick with allergies and sinus problems.

Although her body was still trembling and her mind was racing with horrible thoughts of death and rape, she lowered herself back to the pillow, sneaking her leg over to wrap itself around Matt’s. The warmth of his skin was heartening and a gentle reminder that she wasn’t alone. Still, she was by herself in her fears and thoughts and the fact that something had woken her up was unsettling. The numbers on the clock flashed 3:15 am, and she groaned aloud. She never should’ve watched
The Amityville Horror
as a kid.

She’d nearly dozed back off again, lulled by Matt’s gentle breathing and the hum of the machine, when the room suddenly filled with sounds. This time, she was sure of it. The voices were low, conversational, and it sounded as though there were several people speaking at once. While she couldn’t make out what they were saying, try as she might to strain her ears, she could pick up on a word here or there.

Puzzled, she listened quietly, rising up on her elbows to hopefully catch more. There was no sense of urgency in their voices, nothing menacing that should have caused her any alarm. And yet the simple fact that a random conversation was going on around here when nobody else should’ve been in the house was unsettling.

At first she thought, hoped rather, that the voices were from Thelma and Jeff. Perhaps they’d needed something or were worried about her. But the thought was ludicrous; Thelma would never come into the house in the middle of the night like that. She wouldn’t have scared Taryn. Her next thought drifted towards another burglar, or somebody up to no good. But she was very good at reading tone and the conversation going on was light, airy, mild. It didn’t sound like people planning a sneak attack on the two sleepers.

Then there was the fact that the voices seemed to be coming from every direction, surrounding her. An echo from outside perhaps?

Softly letting her feet land on the floor, Taryn got out of bed and tiptoed towards the balcony door. It opened quietly and she stepped out onto into the night, gently pulling the door to behind her. The wood was cold under her feet, the October air bitter with a hint of moisture. There were no sounds, however, other than the night ones. She listened for a minute, willing them to start up again, but there was nothing. In something not quite fear, she walked back into the bedroom. The conversation immediately picked up again, the voices maybe just a little bit softer but still there nevertheless.