Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (7 page)

S
ince
she had a few hours before her speaking engagement, Taryn zipped back to her house to get ready for the evening. She needed to sort through her photos and find some that were worth sharing and discussing. Some were intensely personal to her and sharing them with anyone other than Matt felt like an invasion of privacy. Others, though, were okay. At least in a room full of amateur ghost hunters they’d probably be appreciated.

Taryn was surprised to see another vehicle in her driveway. The front door was open a crack so she knocked first before going in. When nobody answered she stepped just inside, ready to bolt in case it was someone who wanted to hit her over the head with something and drag her away.

When she heard the roar of the vacuum cleaner in the bedroom she knew she was safe. It was just the cleaning service.

Taryn let herself on into the house and closed the door behind her. Not wanting to disturb the woman who was pushing the vacuum and singing Madonna at the top of her lungs, Taryn stayed in the living room and fired up her laptop. She had thousands of photos saved on her external hard drive and it would take hours to get through all of them. She didn’t have that much time. She was in desperate need of a better organization system. She tried creating folders and sub-folders and all of those good things but then she forgot what she’d labeled them.

Lost in her files, she didn’t hear the roar of the vacuum stop or the footsteps coming into the living room.

“Oh my God!” the other woman screamed.

Taryn jumped a foot off the couch, knocking over the Coke that she’d set on the coffee table in front of her.

The terrified housekeeper dashed into the kitchen and returned with a roll of paper towels. Together they attempted to clean up the mess before it ran across the floor.

“I am
so
sorry,” Taryn apologized. “I didn’t want to bother you so I just thought I would stay in here. I figured you’d see me.”

The other woman was in her mid-forties, very attractive, and had dark, curly brown hair that just skimmed her shoulders. Her face, tanned from the sun, was nearly the same shade of chocolate as her eyes.

“It’s my fault,” she replied as she gathered the wet paper towels in a plastic bag. “I had my ear buds in and got lost in my own little world. I’m Carla, by the way.”

“Taryn,” Taryn introduced herself. “And you certainly don’t need to clean up after me. I can do it myself. Just sit down and take a break if you can’t leave yet or whatever.” The truth of the matter was, Taryn was a little embarrassed to have maid service where she was staying. At a hotel it would’ve been different but at the house it just felt lazy.

“You know, I don’t mind if I do take a little rest,” Carla laughed. "I'm trying to break in new shoes and they’re killing me.”

She took a seat in a chair across from Taryn and stretched her legs out in front of her. Her strappy sandals were cute but didn’t look comfortable to work in.

“Gotta big date tomorrow night and wanted these all ready,” she explained. “I usually wear tennis shoes but this is the only way I could get ‘em turned in good.”

Taryn nodded. “I understand. I collect cowboy boots. I love them but until I’ve worn them for a few weeks they’re not the best to walk around in, especially if the heel is tall.”

“So I see you’re an artist,” Carla said. “I saw your paint stuff.”

Taryn nodded. “Yes, I am here to paint a couple of the cottages for the hotel.”

“I’ve never met a real artist before. I mean, we get a lot of photographers in here who call themselves artists but I don’t know about that,” Carla said. “Seems like these days if you can afford yourself an expensive camera and editing software anyone can call themselves an artist.”

Taryn knew what she meant. There were quite a few people she’d graduated from college with who were trained photographers and complained about the same thing. It was getting harder for them to make a living now since so many people were able to take their own pictures these days and make them look good.

“Some people don’t exactly call
me
an artist either,” Taryn explained. “They say my paintings are too literal, which is a nice way of saying I don’t use my imagination and just paint things the way they are.”

“Can
those
people paint?” Carla countered.

Taryn laughed. “Sometimes not.”

The irony was that while Taryn might paint what was in front of her, rather than draw from inspiration, she did have to use her imagination for the majority of her work. She reconstructed things that were no longer there. But that was another can of worms.

“So do you live here on the island or do you commute?” Taryn asked.

Carla snorted and smoothed down her khaki shorts. Taryn envied her long, brown legs and decided then and there that she was going to make a better effort to get back to the beach.

“I can’t afford to live here. I live over in Brunswick.”

“Is it expensive here then? It’s hard for me to judge since I am just a visitor.”

“Housing is high,” Carla said. “High here and high on St. Simon’s next door. Didn’t use to be. Used to be you could live in a pretty nice house with a yard for not much more than what things were going for in Brunswick. Now you pay twice, maybe three times as much.”

“Who’s living in these expensive homes?”

Carla grimaced and rolled her eyes. “Mostly people from out of the area. They come in and build these new developments over on St. Simon’s. Put in their half million dollar homes, call them ‘vacation’ homes because they want to be a part of the island life, and then throw up big gates around them and close themselves off. They’d do it here, too, except they can’t.”

“Because it’s protected?” Taryn asked.

Carla nodded. “Yeah, but they find ways around that. Did you see that big new hotel they’re putting up by the water?”

Taryn said she had noticed it.

“Well, don’t
even
let me get started on all the drama that’s caused.”

Long after Carla left, and as Taryn was going back through her pictures, she let her words replay themselves in her mind. It was interesting that the rich people were coming to the islands and buying things up. It seemed like someone was always after Jekyll and St. Simon’s. The Native Americans had been there first and then they’d been run off by the first settlers. That first group had been run off by a second group, and then they’d fought for the island as well.

And then the glitterati of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They’d come in and built their big fancy hotel and cottages. And now the upper middle class was taking over, building their big homes and hotels and chain restaurants.

Who else was left?

Taryn wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from the crowd
of ghost hunters,
but she was still surprised at what she saw.

As she looked out into the sea of faces she could feel nerves building in her stomach. The people before her were a mix of ages, races, and genders. There were more than a few elderly men and women, the ballroom lights casting ethereal lights on their white and silver hair. There were young men and women who looked college age, all appearing fashionably bored without trying to look too interested in what was going on around them. Then there were the average middle-class looking folks, mothers and fathers with rounded bellies, fanny packs, and coffees. Most of the audience members were dressed in regular clothing, slacks or shorts with sandals and pullovers. There were a few alternative members, however, and they stood out in their black tights, red and green streaks through their hair, and multiple piercings.

Apparently, there was no stereotype for ghost hunting. It was a free for all.

Taryn stood to the side of the small stage and waited while her introductions were made.

“Ladies and gentleman,” Jerry, the man she’d met in the coffee shop earlier, announced, “I’d like you all to offer a warm welcome to Taryn Magill. Taryn is a special kind of psychic and we are all grateful to have her here with us tonight. Not only can Taryn act as a medium with the spirit world around us, she can also see it and capture it with her digital camera. She’s helped solve several cases with her skills and has been written about in numerous publications. I’m sure you all are as excited as I am that she’s with us now!”

And, the thing was, the audience
did
look excited to have her there.

Taryn stepped up to the microphone, her hands shaking. She didn’t want to let anyone down and hoped she’d be as interesting as they were expecting her to be.

“Hi guys,” she began. “I’m real excited to be here tonight. I brought some pictures to share with you all but I wanted to start by telling you a little bit about myself. In spite of the lovely introduction, I don’t think I am a psychic or a medium. Most of what I’ve been able to do has been thanks to my camera and I am sure that, without it, I wouldn’t be here today.”

The audience members watched her and Taryn was startled to realize they were hanging onto her every word.

“The thing is,” she continued, “I have always loved old houses. Old houses, old stores, old train stations…if it was built before I was born I’m almost certain to feel a bond with it. I think these buildings have stories to tell and even souls of their own. Maybe they get them from our energy or maybe, as they’re built, they can create their own. But I’ve always felt a connection with them.”

She could see a few people in the front nodding their heads in agreement. Sensing kindred spirits, Taryn felt her nerves ease up.

“In my job I recreate structures that are usually in disrepair. I help restore them to their former glory through my art. I’ve always had a huge imagination and been able to visualize these structures. Well, I took a lot of historical preservation and architecture classes in college, too. Those helped.”

The audience gave her a round of polite laughter and Taryn’s ears reddened.

“The best part about what I do is that now I can actually see some of the things I’ve imagined for years. And I guess, in a way,
that
part is a gift,” she finished.

For the next half hour Taryn showed them more than twenty-five photographs, all featuring before and after shots of rooms that had once been bare and then suddenly filled with remnants from its past. She watched and listened as the onlookers gasped, laughed, and shook their heads in awe. Never before had Taryn felt so comfortable talking about this part of her life, expect for when she spoke to Matt and their mutual friend Rob. The people there were all strangers to her, but she could tell they were totally invested and interested in what she had to say.

When she was finished Jerry opened up the floor to questions and brought Taryn a chair to sit in on the stage while she answered them.

The first question was from a young woman in a long peasant skirt and hair that reached her waist. She had a loud, booming voice that carried across the room with ease. “Have you always been able to see and communicate with spirts?”

Taryn shook her head no. “This started fairly recently. A friend, and someone who is kind of an expert on these things, believes my thirtieth birthday might have been a factor. I did have some experiences as a child but I’d forgotten about them and written several off as something else.”

The next question came from an elderly gentleman. His wife helped him stand and then continued holding his hand as he spoke. “Can you talk to the spirits yourself? Do they answer you?” His voice shook and he looked on the verge of tears. Taryn was troubled by the way his eyes bore into her, pleading.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I don’t think some of them were actual spirits. I think they may have been leftover energy. But there have been others I communicated with and, at the time, it felt like they could understand me.”

He continued to stand while his whole body quivered. “We lost our grandson in a fire last November. Have you ever tried contacting anyone on purpose?”

The hopeful look on his face just about broke Taryn’s heart. She hadn’t planned on that kind of question. “I’ve tried,” she admitted. “I think it did work once, but it may have just been a coincidence. I lost my husband, well, my fiancé really, and I would like to contact him as well. I understand how you feel.”

He nodded his head in disappointment and then slid back into his chair. Taryn watched as his wife wrapped her arm around him and nestled her head on his shoulder.

“Does this happen everywhere you go?” someone shouted from the back of the room.

“No,” Taryn replied. “Not everywhere. And not even every time at the same place. For instance, I might take a picture of this room and see a party set up from one hundred years ago. An hour later I might stand in the same spot, take the same picture, and get nothing but an empty room.”

“Can you try it and see?” Jerry asked, smiling.

Taryn bit her lip. If it didn’t work, would they think her a fraud? She’d already taken dozens of pictures in the hotel and none of them had been unusual.

The rapturous applause following his question left her no choice. Jerry gestured to someone in the back and the overhead lights were flipped on, filling the room with artificial sunlight. “You’re on the spot now, Miss Dixie,” Taryn whispered as she turned her camera on. “No pressure.”

Standing on the stage and facing the audience, Taryn aimed her camera at the middle of the room and snapped. She took three pictures in total, trying to visualize the past as she did. The ballroom was original to the first hotel. Although many people had died in the ballroom, it had been from smoke inhalation and not from flames. The flames had only destroyed one end of it, the end the stage was located on, since that’s the part that was connected to the hotel. The rest had been damaged by smoke and water, but salvaged and restored.

As the audience waited impatiently, Taryn removed her memory card and inserted it into her laptop. Within moments the pictures had uploaded and they were looking at them on the big screen. The lights were dimmed again.

As the first image appeared the audience caught a glimpse of themselves from Taryn’s viewpoint. The room was bright and cheerful, the expressions on people’s faces nervous and excited.

In the next image, the round tables full of cardboard coffee cups, Coke cans, and digital cameras were a little harder to see. The room was darker, the expressions on faces difficult to make out.

At first, Taryn wasn’t sure what she was looking at in the third. The tables were still there and still covered with drinks. The digital cameras had been replaced by plates and silverware, however. The audience was no longer standing. Some were running, some were lying limply on the ground, and some were clawing at their throats, eyes bulging and tongues protruding as they screamed in vain.

The excited and nervous expressions on their faces had been exchanged for sheer terror.