Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (4 page)

T
aryn
couldn’t wait to get started on the initial photographing of the cottages, but first she needed to organize and then she needed supplies. She’d brought very little with her in terms of food, thinking there’d be a grocery store she could pop out to as soon as she arrived. She needed her late-night munchies; Taryn tended to stay up late working, and the night before had been brutal without something disgusting to snack on.

A seasoned gypsy, she packed light when it came to clothes. The majority of her summer clothes were lightweight and thin. They could easily be rolled up into her suitcase. She’d also brought her laptop, her external hard drive, and several lenses for Miss Dixie. These she set up on the dining room table, making herself a makeshift office.

To personalize the living room a bit she laid a handmade afghan, a birthday present from her grandmother, over the back of the couch. Her collection of sandals and boots were tucked away in the large closet in the house’s only bedroom and her assortment of prescription medications and supplements she stored in the bathroom’s medicine cabinet.

The last thing she did was place three photographs on the small dresser in the bedroom. The first was of her and Matt, taken when she was eleven. They’d bicycled to the lake that day, something she couldn’t imagine kids that young doing outside of Nashville now, and had set up a little picnic. A stranger stopped and took their picture. Taryn was wearing a red T-shirt, blue jean shorts, and her messy red hair was in a side ponytail. Matt wore his usual somber expression with clothes that were a size too small.

The second was a photograph of her parents and maternal grandmother, all gathered around a Christmas tree. It was the last Christmas her parents had seen.

The third was one Taryn was still trying to process and wean herself from, but had failed as of yet. It was a single shot of Andrew, her fiancé, standing in front of a dilapidated antebellum home in Mississippi. His boyish grin lit up his face, the excitement he always felt around houses he loved evident through the lens. His car crash had been just weeks later. Sometimes she still told people he was her husband, and not her fiancé, as though rewriting history the way it should have been. 

Taryn
had spent most of the day trying to forget what happened the night before. Now that it was dark again however, and she was all alone, it was impossible to let it go.

Now, as she sat by herself in her temporary living room and tried staring at the television screen, she let herself remember another part of the hotel’s history–the thing that nobody
ever
wanted to talk about.

The fire was the disaster that had almost brought it all to an abrupt end. New Year’s Eve, 1907. During the celebration in the ballroom there were more than two hundred people inside dancing, drinking, and laughing. Nobody saw the flames or smelled the smoke until it was too late. A fire that started upstairs in one of the apartments quickly spread through the wooden walls. With the main door engulfed in flames, partygoers had smashed through windows to escape into the fresh night air. More than seventy-five people were seriously injured. There were forty deaths in total, including guests and staff. It was still considered one of the greatest tragedies in American history.

The majority of the original hotel burned to the ground, nothing but ashes. The apartments were all destroyed. Investigators determined that William Hawkins, a forty-year old attorney from New York, had started the fire in his apartment over the ballroom. The reason? To cover up the murder of his young wife, Rachel. William was tried for both the arson and the murder, found guilty in both cases, and sentenced to death. The story still resounded with historians, not only due to the nature of the tragedy but because a white man was hung. Fifteen of the deaths from the fire had been prominent businessmen and their wives. That fact had not boded well for William.

The hotel was rebuilt a year later, an exact replica of the original, although it would never be the same.

Taryn had already been on Jekyll Island for four days
and had yet to visit a beach.

It was official: she was pathetic.

It was funny how she had almost zero problems when it came to her professional life and yet her personal life was just one big procrastinated effort after another.

Although she needed to get over to the cottages and start taking her pictures she decided that today was the day she must explore at least one of the beaches. Her best photographs were taken in the morning or late afternoon and since she was rarely up for the morning light she still had plenty of time to take herself for a walk in the sand.

“This is why I took this job, remember?” she reminded her bathing suit as she fished it from her dresser. “To relax.”

Taryn had honestly never been much of a beach person. Her mind never slowed down enough for her to kick back on the sand and zone out. Within minutes there would be a weird juxtaposition of song lyrics, movie reels, and bank figures dancing through her head. She loved watching the water, though, in all its forms. She’d never let her fear of what it could do detract from her enjoyment of watching it.

There were several beaches on Jekyll Island and the information pamphlet and map she’d picked up at the island’s gate had recommended Great Dunes Park as a good place to start. When she pulled into the parking lot, however, it was packed. After circling it twice and nearly hitting a man carrying two folding chairs on his back and dragging a cooler she decided to take it as an omen that it wasn’t the beach for her.

Getting back on the road she headed for Driftwood Beach

Driftwood Beach was named for the very thing it contained–driftwood. With visions of a normal sandy beach littered with a bunch of sticks, Taryn’s expectations were low as she pulled over the side of the road and parked her car behind two minivans. Driftwood didn’t have an official parking lot; you just kind of had to pull over where you could.

To reach the beach Taryn had to walk through a heavily wooded area. The narrow sandy path took her through a thick mess of trees, vines, and shrubs while mosquitoes and sand gnats flew around her head. She could barely see the ground for the undergrowth and had there not been a path there was no way she’d have been able to walk through the thicket. It looked like a jungle and for the first time since arriving Taryn had a better idea of what the original settlers might have been up against. She tried to imagine landing on the island and being met by the dense vegetation and sweltering heat, the mosquitoes swarming their heads and the fire ants below.

Had it looked like a paradise then, or hell?

Taryn was panting and swiping at the sweat burning her eyes when the trees opened up. Before her lay the Atlantic, wide and calm with just a hint of blue. A barge floated peacefully in the distance, its massive size barely a blip on the horizon. Straight in front of her, though, was something unlike anything she’d ever seen.

When she heard the word “driftwood” she expected logs, sticks, and pieces big enough to pick up. What she saw were the size of vehicles. It was as if entire trees had washed ashore and landed naked on the sand, creating a skeletal jungle. Their bare branches protruded upwards like emaciated arms reaching for the sky. They rose and twisted in impossible shapes, each one its own work of art, the shadows they left across the sand an intricate board game that made her feel like Alice in Wonderland.

Taryn walked amongst the monsters, stopping to examine tide pools and watch the dozens of sand crabs scurrying from her probing lens. When she got too hot she peeled off her tank top and walked around with her bathing suit sticking out of her shorts.

The beach was almost deserted. Although there were a few stragglers picking up shells and wading in the water, they were on the far end and nowhere near Taryn. She thought she had her part of the beach to herself so when a shadow loomed over her while she knelt to get a shot of tube worms covered in tiny shells, she flinched in surprise.

“Sorry to scare you!”

Taryn quickly rose to her feet and turned around. An elderly woman with a fanny pack and Birkenstocks stood facing her. “You kind of sneaked up on me there,” Taryn laughed a little. Where in the world had she come from? Taryn could’ve sworn she wasn’t there just a minute ago.

“I just wanted to ask you what kind of camera you were using,” the woman said. “I’m in the business for a new one myself.”

“Oh,” Taryn replied, removing Miss Dixie from her neck. “Well, you can take a look if you want.”

She didn’t normally like anyone touching something so personal of hers but there was something about the woman that Taryn couldn’t quite put her finger on, something familiar.

For several minutes the women talked about photography and their respective cameras. “I just doodle around myself,” the woman said, handing Miss Dixie back to her. “I like nature photography. It gives me something to do. I don’t have a lot to do these days.”

“Do you come out here very often?” Taryn asked.

The woman looked out at the water and Taryn watched as her eyes glazed over. Although her face was craggy with lines and her hair brittle and sparse, her eyes were ocean blue and for a second Taryn thought she could almost see a glimpse of the beautiful young woman she used to be.

“I come when I can,” she replied at last and offered nothing more.

“It’s a beautiful beach,” Taryn said politely. “I want to try to come back at sunrise one day and get some more shots.”

“Just don’t stay out too late or you might see Mary,” the woman warned her.

“Who’s Mary?”

“Why, she’s one of our resident ghosts,” the woman replied with a small smile. “She haunts this beach, and the beach on St. Simon’s as well, if that can be believed.”

“What’s her story?” Taryn asked. “Who is she?”

The woman smiled and sat down on a log, turning her face so that she could watch the water. Taryn followed suit and sat beside her.

“Mary the Wanderer was an immigrant many years ago. Her family died on the boat ride over but one of the wealthy gentleman on St. Simon’s offered her a job at his plantation. That’s when the trouble started,” the woman began.

Taryn nodded in encouragement.

“By all accounts she was happy there, although the gentleman was reportedly a hard man to like. Soon, however, she fell in love with the rich man’s son. And he fell in love with her.” A red glow spread across the woman’s cheeks, much to Taryn’s delight. She appreciated people who could get caught up in a love story. “As time went by Mary and her young man grew even closer. They were madly in love with one another and wanted to marry. Of course, that would not do. When the young man approached his father, his father was furious.”

“Because she wasn’t wealthy and was just a servant?”

The woman shook her head. “No, because
he
was in love with her as well!”

“Oh,” Taryn said with a frown. “I guess that would put a kink in their plans.”

“Yes, it did. When the young man found out he was furious as well. In his anger, he ran from the house and jumped onto his boat. He loved to sail and his boat was his pride and joy. He was just going for a little ride but a storm came on quickly. He didn’t come home.” Although Taryn assumed this story happened two centuries ago, the woman’s eyes turned downward and she sighed, as though the tale was almost too painful. “Well, Mary went looking for him. When she reached one of the cliffs she looked down and saw his boat. It was beaten to death and in pieces. Floating next to the boat was her young man’s lifeless body. In despair and hopelessness, she threw herself into the water. If she couldn’t be with him life, she’d be with him in death.”

“And now she haunts the beaches,” Taryn finished for her.

“Yes, because suicides don’t always turn out the way we’d hoped. She thought, once dead, they’d be together. They aren’t, however. She’s never found him and wanders the beaches each night, watching for his boat to come and take her away.”

Taryn grimaced. “Oh my, well, that
is
sad. Poor thing.”

“Mary the Wanderer is what they call her,” the woman smiled, her eyes lighting back up. “Our resident ghost.”

“Have you ever seen her?” Taryn asked.

The woman stood and readjusted her fanny pack. “When you get to be my age, dear, there isn’t much you
haven’t
seen.”