Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (11 page)

“It’s the girl’s bedroom that’s the worst,” the woman confided once everyone went back to their meals and the conversation picked up. “I been up in there, just once, when I was a teenager. I even thought about taking something from there, you know, like a souvenir? I know that’s awful
, but I was young. There were some keys on the dresser, though, and they were real old. I thought, why not? Nobody needs them now. Minute I touched them, all hell broke loose. I heard a crying and a buzzing and I don’t know what all else. I took off out of there like a bat out of hell. Never went ghost hunting again. I don’t care what them shows tell you on TV. It’s nothing to mess around with.”

Taryn shivered, imagining the room the way it looked now, untouched. No wonder nobody had done anything to it. “I heard something similar.
What do you think is going on there?” She didn’t want to tell her about the pictures, no matter how much she wanted to share it with someone else.

“I think it might be the girl who died in the house. Maybe her spirit is just hanging on and she don’t want nobody touching her stuff,” the woman laughed. “I don’t blame her
, I guess. I’m kind of particular about my own. But the whole place just feels sad, you know? Like you want to cry right along with it.”

Taryn nodded. “Yes, I know. I talked to someone else about it, too.”

“Shame, though,” she said as she turned back to her meal. “It’s a real pretty place. Could be fixed up. You know, if someone could really live there. The ‘Devil’s house.’ That’s what we always called it. Cause only the Devil hisself could stand to live in it.”

I
t wasn’t just that the people of Vidalia thought there were ghosts in the house—they all seemed to accept the fact and be okay with it. That was kind of unusual within itself. It was the fact that although almost everyone she’d met so far (okay, all three of them) had some kind of experience with the house, there was a kind of respect for its energy in that they all appeared to be in agreement to the extent that now people simply stayed away.

“The people who lived in the house, they died eighty years ago,”
she’d pointed out to the mother the night before.

The woman had looked at her like she had two heads. “Oh, that doesn’t matter,” she said in response. “You grow up hearing about the stories and about the people who lived in a place, they might as well have died yesterday. Don’t matter that nobody alive right now never met them.
The past ain’t really that long ago. It’s still alive.”

Taryn thought there might be a study somewhere in
this idea and if she had more time, she might try to write a grant proposal and find the funds to do it herself. The house and its history was a part of Vidalia and its former residents were as known and talked about now as they probably were eighty years ago. History really did live on, no matter what happened in the meantime.

The “Devil’s house.” She wondered what the Stokes County Historical Society thought about that.
She still resisted the idea of it being evil but it was probably safe to say that most of the people who knew about the house were probably in favor of its reputation. She wondered how they’d feel about Reagan demolishing it. Would they be glad it was gone? Sad they were losing a local landmark? People could be funny about these things. Unlike most local haunted houses, though, Windwood Farm was respected, almost revered for its haunting. That alone set it apart.

W
hen Taryn pulled up into the driveway this time, she didn’t get out and walk to the house and go inside. She didn’t unload her paints and set up outside in the yard. Instead, she stood in the driveway for a few moments and studied the land. Many of these older families were buried in family plots nearby rather than in local cemeteries. It was possible this family was as well. Scanning the property, she looked for a rise that might indicate a small graveyard and it wasn’t long before she saw something that stood out.

Behind the barn, which had seen better days for sure but still stood somewhat regally with its dilapidated roof and
with only one door off its hinges, was a knoll with what could be a rusty cow gate peeking through the tall grass. She lamented over the fact she’d worn her sandals and not her boots today, it had stopped raining after all and the ground was dry, but on her way she stopped and picked up a long stick just in case she encountered anything that slithered and hissed. Spiders and ghosts, she had decided she could handle. Snakes? Not so much.

The gravel road that led up to the knoll was well-maintained, probably thanks to Re
agan’s efforts at developments. The gravel was white and fresh and it was easy to walk on. White powder drifted up and landed on her soft leather sandals with each step she took, coating them with a fine layer. Her legs had already taken on a fine tan that summer and her shoulders felt good in the morning sun. It actually felt nice to be out for a walk and she enjoyed the exercise, despite the fact that the rise was turning out to be more uphill than it had looked from the car. She decided then and there that she needed to get out more and devote more time to physical activity. “Damn, I’m more out of shape than I thought I was,” she muttered to herself. “Gotta tone up or something.”

It took about ten minutes to reach the knoll and with a few pokes of the stick
, she discovered that she was right, it was indeed a gate. It was also padlocked, she saw in disgust. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just covered with grass and weeds, it was also covered with brambles and that presented a different problem: bees and thorns. Trying to protect herself from both getting scratched and stung, Taryn ducked and cursed until she had cleared off enough to successfully climb over it and hop to the other side.

Barbed wire enclosed a small yard of what
was probably only about eighty square yards, by her estimation. At first, the tall grass and shrubs made it difficult to make anything out and she was afraid she might have been wrong. A few rustles caused her to jump back a few feet, sure that snakes were coming to get her, but it turned out to be a rabbit.

She had freaked herself out long enough and was about to turn around and climb back over the gate when she noticed a glimmer of white reflecting from the sun. It was a small headstone, no more than a foot tall, and mostly covered in black algae from years of neglect and morning glory
, but the small patch of white marble that was still visible gave it away. Pulling off a patch of morning glory, the bright blur of flowers blinking merrily at her (how could such pretty little blooms really be considered a weed?) she squatted down at the tiny grave and tried to make out the shallow indentions. There were only three lines of inscriptions:

Clara Joyce Bowen

190
3- 1921

Daughter

Well, she figured, that about summed it up. This was the daughter and she was
eighteen years old when she died. How much more information did you need? Other than how she died, of course. Taryn felt a little melancholy at her sad little grave. The small headstone, tilted at a weird angle, covered in black gunk, strangled in weeds (albeit pretty ones, but still). Nobody cared. She felt the pangs of a panic attack forming deep inside her, the cold claws starting to scratch at her stomach and rise up into her throat. It wasn’t
his
headstone or
his
grave, or
his
cemetery. He didn’t have a place. His ashes were scattered over a hillside in eastern Tennessee years ago. He was gone, carried off by the wind. It wasn’t the same thing, she told herself. This was Clara. She’d been dead a long time. The world was starting to feel too big around her, too wide, too airy. She grasped the headstone and the moss felt slimy under her hand. The coolness brought her back.

For the next half hour
, Taryn did her best to clean off the gravesite. She left the morning glories because they were the only thing close to having decorations or flowers on the grave and she straightened the headstone to as close to upright as best she could. The algae would have to stay until she could find something to clean it off with, maybe vinegar? She was always reading about people cleaning everything with vinegar. She’d have to Google that. At any rate, she figured she’d taken her chances there long enough with the snakes and that now she might be pressing her luck and better head back down to the house and start her real work.

With a little bit of regret, she said goodbye to Clara and started back to the gate. She felt the oddest sensation of someone watching her as she climbed over it, but was too scared to turn around and look back. Instead, she simply scrambled over and then hurried back down the road a little bit faster than she had come up it.

On the way back down, it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen any other graves in the graveyard. Why? Why hadn’t he been buried with his daughter? Why hadn’t
she
been buried with her mother? Had she simply overlooked the other graves? In her zest to clean off the grave, had she just not seen the others, or had they all fallen over and crumbled and been overtaken by nature themselves?

E
xploring the graveyard was unsettling to her, but not in the way the activity inside the house had been. She hadn’t been scared at the headstone, just sad. There wasn’t anything evil near the grave, although she’d certainly felt a presence as she was leaving.

While she was painting the last of the steps leading up to the porch
, she couldn’t help but think about her own death. Who would be around to clean off her grave, other than the person getting paid to do it? Her grandmother had been dead forever. Her parents were gone and it wasn’t the sort of thing they would have thought of, except maybe on the major holidays when they were supposed to because of some sort of traditional obligation. She didn’t date, and not because of lack of opportunity (although that had been the case recently) but because she just really couldn’t trust herself to. The last few times she’d tried relationships, she’d become so obsessed with the dumbass in question that it had been disastrous, so she’d sworn off men altogether until she was able to pull herself together. A trunk full of self-help books were gathering dust.

Matt
. Matt would clean off her grave. The thought gave her comfort.

Or maybe she’d just get cremated and ask him to sprinkle her ashes around the ocean.
Nah
, she wrinkled her nose as she dabbed a spot of white on a column. She wasn’t big on water. Not on big bodies of water anyway. Swimming pools were okay, but she wasn’t that great of a swimmer. Not that she would care when she was dead, but it should be a place she liked. Something symbolic. That’s what people did when they were cremated, right? She just thought the ocean because he lived next to it and the location was convenient for him.

The problem was, there wasn’t a place that was meaningful for her. Her grandmother’s house had sold. Her apartment was…an apartment. Her parent’s house had never been a home for her
, and at any rate it sold a long time ago. There was no “family estate.” She didn’t grow up vacationing anywhere. She’d been working since she was eighteen, and although there were lots of places she liked, she never stayed in one place long enough to get attached to it. The hillside in Tennessee wouldn’t do. She hadn’t been able to go back. It was his, not hers.

Of course, she did like her Aunt Sarah’s place up in New Hampshire. She visited there, once, when she was eight. It was on a lake in the middle of the state, near Conway. She remembered the mountains and a big farmhouse. She couldn’t remember much about Sarah herself, other than the fact she’d been kind of quiet and a little bit of a recluse. Her mother called her a hippie. They’d stayed a week and Taryn spent the time running around and climbing trees and playing in the attic
with a vague feeling of someone watching her. It wasn’t a bad feeling; rather, she kind of liked it. She’d always wanted to go back, but they hadn’t. Sarah still sent a card every Christmas, but they hadn’t kept in touch much, which was a pity since she was the only family Taryn had.

Taryn sighed. Now she felt depressed. Thinking about family always did that to her. She’d also messed up both the porch and the column and had linseed oil dripping up her elbow and down her toes. Awesome.

Giving it up for the day, she packed it all in and considered the work portion of the day a loss, although the fun part of the day had at least given her a grave and that was something, not to mention the pancakes.

Before getting into
her car, however, she had a change of heart and turned back to the house again. It was only a little after two o’clock and there was plenty of day left. She hated to give up that early. “I’m going out of my ever-loving mind,” she sighed as she walked back up to the house, the oil slipping through her toes and mixing with the gravel dust. “Only a moron would do this again.”

T
here was no reason why she shouldn’t try to go back inside the house, other than the fact that something had tried to scare her out of it the last time she ventured in through the doors. On the other hand, there really wasn’t a reason why she should go into the house, except for the need to satisfy her curiosity.

“It’s just a house,” she said to herself as she stood on the front porch and stared at the door. “It can’t hurt me. Ghosts can’t hurt me. Whatever is in there has never killed anyone, just scared them. I
cann
ot
be scared.”