Dark Hollow Road (Taryn's Camera Book 3) (19 page)

Now she made herself walk out the bedroom door towards the stairs. Along the way she grabbed her curling iron. It wasn’t much but she might be able to beat someone off with it as she called for Matt if she had to and it was the closest object she could find.

The humming of the dehumidifier trailed off behind her, growing quieter the more distance she put between her and the bedroom. Likewise, the voices diminished, too. Nothing drifted up from downstairs; whatever she was hearing had to be originating from the bedroom.

When she turned around and started back towards the bedroom, Taryn came to a sudden halt. A candle burned in the room and its flame flickered, throwing odd-shaped patterns against the wall. From where she stood, the murky room looked distorted, like a carnival funhouse. Knowing what awaited her inside, her feet refused to move. She just couldn’t bring herself to go back in there. The fear of the dark she’d fought as a child was coming back to her now almost regularly and she was tired of it. She was going to be thirty-one soon, for God’s sake. She was behaving like a toddler.

Having her back exposed to the staircase, where anything could fly up the length and attack her in the dark, didn’t seem much better. Panicked now, she turned in circles and weighed her options. Go downstairs and spend the night on the couch, alone, or enter the bedroom and snuggle in next to Matt? The latter sounded more appealing but would she even be able to sleep?

At last, after giving herself a firm and stern lecture, she gave in and walked back to the bedroom. Matt woke a little when she slid in next to him (okay, maybe it was because she poked him hard in the ribs and tried to wake him up) and his voice was hoarse and thick from sleep. “Everything okay?”

“Do you think you could go downstairs and get my Benadryl?” she asked, embarrassed. “I’m spooked and don’t want to go alone.”

“Yeah, sure,” he answered without any questions. “Be right back.”

She flipped on the lamp while he was gone, unable to sit alone in the dark even for a few minutes. When he got back she popped two and then cuddled into the crook of his arm, wrapping her arm around his neck so that she could curl her fingers in his hair. “Matt?” she whispered when his breathing became steady again, a sure sign he was almost out.

“Yeah?”

“Do-do you hear that?” she stammered.

“Hear what?”

“The voices. There’s at least three. And they’re talking.”

Matt listened and then patted her on the head. “I don’t hear anything. Must be the dehumidifier.”

And somewhere, wherever they were coming from, someone laughed.

A
s soon as she heard Rob’s voice on the phone, Taryn felt like she was reconnecting with a long-lost friend, despite the fact it had been less than a year since she last spoke to him. Of course, what a year that was!

“Sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” Rob apologized. “I actually closed shop for a week and took the lady on vacation to Gatlinburg.”

“Oh yeah? That sounds like fun!” It had been a very long time since Taryn had been on an actual vacation, staying in a motel room she didn’t have to work in and doing nothing but relaxing and having fun. “What all did you guys do?”

“You know, the usual stuff.” Taryn could hear the grin in his voice. He sounded happy. “Go carts, mini golf, crappy buffets. Went through Wonderworks. Some of that shit just blows my mind. She dragged me through the Titanic museum–two hours of my life I’ll never get back again. Made me buy her a teacup, supposedly the replica of the exact pattern they had on the ship. She put it on the shelf with the shot glasses from Excalibur in Vegas and seashells she made me pick up off the beach in Daytona.”

But he didn’t sound like he was complaining. In fact, he sounded excited and proud. Taryn was happy for him. Despite some of the crazy-looking paraphernalia Rob carried in his shop, he was just about one of the straightest guys Taryn had ever met and, outside of Matt, the only other person she felt she could be truly honest about her gift with.

“It sounds like you’re really happy, Rob,” she said sincerely. “And I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah, well, I hear you’re shacking up with my buddy now. Good for you guys!” Both had trained in engineering; Rob went the alternative route and now sold ritual gear to Wiccans and repaired the occasional iPhone screen.

“Yeah, um, it’s going well,” Taryn agreed hurriedly. “So listen, I have some questions for you; things I’d like to talk about.”

“Shoot. What’s up?”

Taryn leaned back against the throw pillows on the couch and propped her feet up. She settled in for comfort–this was probably going to take a while.

“I don’t know how much Matt filled you in on,” she began.

“Very little. Just that you’re in Georgia teaching a class, kudos by the way, and he’s staying with you and taking some time off. Said a girl was missing and you were helping with that.”

“Yeah, well, I guess that’s the gist of it,” Taryn agreed. “The problem is, I feel like I am supposed to be here, and yet I can’t pick up on anything. A noise here, a flash of something there. One night I was certain I saw her in my bedroom, crawling towards me.” Taryn still shuddered at the thought. “It was horrible.”

“Are you doubting yourself now?”

“Yes and no. I guess in the clear light of day it’s easy to think it might have been in my head, that maybe I was dreaming or seeing things or had one too many Benadryl or something. But at the time…”

“Well, you’re a rational, logical-thinking human being,” he declared. “It’s no wonder you’d question such a thing. But after all that, what makes you think you’re not getting anywhere? Sounds like you’re getting into a lot.”

“True. But I am no closer to giving the parents any answers than I was before. I know she’s dead.” Even just saying it aloud gave her chills. Cheyenne was dead, and someone had killed her. And maybe even tried to kill Taryn, unless she was being too melodramatic. “I know she’s dead,” she repeated, “but have no way of figuring out who, where, or why.”

“Have you tried a clarity spell?” Rob suggested. “It might help.”

As someone who’d never been a church-goer and rarely prayed, much less experimented with alternative religions, Taryn was still a little taken aback by some people’s casual attitude towards spells, rituals, and the Craft. “No, no, that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you,” she smiled.

“I have something that might work,” he mused. “But you’ll need quite a bit of stuff to do it well.”

“I’m more of a kitchen witch,” she lamented. “Anything I could do that would just require a little garlic, a little olive oil? Maybe a nice tomato?”

“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Rob laughed. “In the meantime, I’m sure you’ve had Miss Dixie out and put her to work?”

“Yes, but only a few things and I don’t know how they fit into the big scheme of things.” She quickly filled him in on the image of Cheyenne she’d seen on the porch and the other subtle nuances her camera had picked up. Rob was as lost as she was.

“I’m afraid I haven’t been much help,” he apologized with regret. “I can try to come up with a simpler spell, though, that you might be able to use.”

“I’m willing to give anything a shot at this point.”

For the next few minutes they talked about the weather, the new season of their favorite zombie post-apocalypse show, and Matt’s cooking. Before she hung up, however, she asked him one last question.

“Oh, Rob, there was one more thing I wanted to run by you.”

“What’s that?”

“You know how you told me that sometimes you hear things that other people can’t?” she prodded.

“And things that are far away?” he answered. “Yes, it happens. Why?”

“I think I’m doing it too. Or else I’m going crazy,” she added nervously.

“I highly doubt that. I figured the longer you went on, the more your gifts were developed. Interesting that it would happen in this way,” he mused. “Tell me about it.”

Taryn filled him in on the voices, the music, and the other smaller things that she hadn’t even considered until she had him on the phone. When she was finished his end of the line was quiet. “You still there?”

“Yeah,” Rob replied, “just forming my thoughts.”

“So what do you think?”

“It’s called ‘clairaudience.’ Now, some people interpret it as another way of channeling, like a medium would. It’s a way of communicating with spirits, but through sound. It’s part of being clairvoyant, only instead of seeing things or feeling things, you actually hear them. You’re basically picking up on another frequency that’s not accessible to most people.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing. Why did it start all of a sudden?” Taryn asked. Although she shouldn’t have been surprised. Miss Dixie had certainly started picking up on past images out of the blue.

“My guess is you’ve always had a little bit of it, it just wasn’t very developed. Are you a big fan of music? Always have to have it on? Feel depressed when you can’t listen?”

“Yeah,” Taryn laughed.

“And my guess is that in a car you’re constantly changing stations, searching for that perfect song or sound. People might even complain about it…”

Taryn thought of her parents and even Matt who were driven crazy by her radio channel-hopping.  “That’s me.”

“And it’s probably easy for you to pick up on other people’s voices and tell them apart that way, maybe even better than looking at them,” Rob pushed.

“That’s so weird,” Taryn mused. “I never knew that was a ‘thing.’”

“Welcome to the world of clairaudience.”

“I notice it most in the bedroom,” she stated, remembering the overlapping of voices. “That’s where it was the loudest.”

“Did you have anything on at the time? A heater? Fan? Snow on television?”

Taryn didn’t have to think twice. “Yes, actually. I had the dehumidifier on. It’s been raining a lot.”

“Well, a lot of people, and highly respected people, think that white noise is a conduit for picking up on other frequencies. And you don’t even have to be psychic to hear it,” he explained. “I wish I had a better explanation for you but I’d say that coupled with what you get out of pictures and your feelings, this is probably just the next step.”

“So what you’re saying is that now not only can I see things through my camera but I can communicate with them through my microwave oven?”

“Well, when you put it that way, yeah.”

T
ravis Marcum sat in the booth across from Taryn at the Cracker Barrel. She tried, unconsciously, to watch him as he devoured his stack of pancakes and bowl of grits. They were both alone, and he sat at a table for two, shoved back into a corner by himself. She’d observed that, despite the fact his glass was empty from the minute she sat down, he was never offered a refill. Her server, on the other hand, badgered her almost to the point of annoyance.

It was cold outside and even starting to flurry a little bit–not something she expected to see this far south. They didn’t get a lot of snow in Nashville. The last big snow she remembered was when she was a lot younger. But, a few fat courageous flakes slowly drifted down where they were immediately soaked up by the parking lot. The fireplace was going full throttle just a few feet away from her, though, and a grandfather was playing a rousing game of checkers with his little redheaded grandson. All in all, it was a pleasant place to park yourself, even if it was a chain and most of the food probably got delivered frozen.

Still, she couldn’t take her eyes off Travis. Like most people probably did, she tried to envision him assaulting Cheyenne. Maybe peeling her jeans off while she kicked frantically at him, or perhaps laid unconscious on a hard floor. Her shirt lifted over her head, her bra ripped open revealing firm, teenage breasts. Had he smacked her? Banged her head on the floor? Did she vomit in the middle of the act, the liquid running into her dark hair and matting it? Had he held onto her while life faded from her eyes? To look at him now, an average-looking guy spreading butter on a biscuit, he looked young, incapable of killing someone. He kept his face down, staring at his food, and seemed oblivious to everyone else.

Emma said he’d lost his job at the factory he worked at, that he was still living at his mother’s house, sleeping in the basement. His clothes were clean and fresh; his flannel shirt looked ironed. Someone took care of him. Someone ironed his clothes, washed them, and gave him money to eat lunch out at a restaurant. Somebody loved him.

Taryn had met more than one killer in her life. Since Miss Dixie started doing her tricks it felt like Taryn drew them like flies. She shouldn’t be shocked anymore by the secrets people lived with. It felt like everyone had a double life these days.

She didn’t think Travis had noticed her but after he flagged his server down (the same one who had been so attentive to her but had completely ignored him) he paused at her table as he was passing by. “I know who you are,” he growled through his teeth, barely looking down at her. “You don’t have to keep staring at me.”

Embarrassed she’d been caught, she began to apologize in haste. “I’m sorry. I know it was rude. It’s just that-”

“You just wanted to know what a killer looks like?” he snorted.

Taryn did not think it prudent to point out that she’d met others who’d been accused of similar crimes, and those people had tried to turn their actions on
her
.

“Innocent until proven guilty, right?” she asked faintly. Suddenly, the fire felt just a little too hot, her red sweater a little too snug. She was aware that the people around her had stopped eating and were staring at them.

“Yeah, right. Well, you’re the psychic, right? Then you should know the truth. I didn’t kill nobody. I never saw Cheyenne after that party. I didn’t touch her, didn’t even talk to her except when she bummed a smoke off of me around the fire.”

There was no pleading in his voice, just a matter of factness that was hard to rebuttal. He stood there in the middle of the restaurant, a young man in work boots and a thick coat, and stared down at the floor, unable to make eye contact. She could feel the frustration rolling off of him in waves.

“You mean she didn’t go back to your place after?”

Travis shook his head. “Shit no. I know what they’re saying, what they say. And people gonna believe what they want to believe. Look, I don’t know where she went or who she went with, but it wasn’t me. I didn’t touch her,” he repeated, his face growing redder with anger.

“Then what happened to her, Travis?” Taryn asked gently.

“I don’t know. Isn’t that why they hauled your ass here? You figure it out!” And, with that, he marched away from the table, barely missing a server with a heavy tray of breakfast in his path.