Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (9 page)

All of a sudden
, a loud crash from inside the house sang out and caused her to jump off the hood and drop her sandwich to the ground. “So much for the five-second rule,” she cursed as she watched it immediately get covered with mud and ants. She was hungry, but not
that
hungry.

Still, she was curious about the noise. She didn’t think anyone was in the house and it had been
a couple of days since she’d been inside. “Eh, why not?” she mumbled, and made her way to the front door. “What’s it going to do?”

Always taken a little aback by the
amount of darkness that existed even with the windows uncovered, it took her a moment to adjust her eyes when she stepped inside. The living room was cleared of any items and was stark and empty. Taryn thought this made it feel less intimidating than before, as though the boxes had made it feel more lived in, as though someone was coming back. Even the curtains were gone. The peeling wallpaper was still on the walls, though, and it gently flapped as she walked by, stirred by her movements, the only testament to the fact she was actually there.

The hardwood floors were still
rock-solid, despite Reagan’s concerns, and didn’t make a sound as she moved through the rooms. Not a squeak was made. She was surprised by the lack of dust and smiled at the fact that Mrs. Jones had dusted them; that effort was made to sweep the house before it was demolished. It must be a southern thing to clean something before killing it; to fix something before destroying it. She marveled at the beautiful fireplace mantle, so detailed and ornate and yet at the staircase banister, so simple and plain. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to why money was spent on some fixtures and not on others. Clearly, the original owners had possessed money, yet had been selective about how it was spent.

The dining room and kitchen were also bare of belongings, as were the downstairs closets.
There obviously wasn’t anything on the downstairs level that could have made such a loud noise that she heard it from the outside. At any rate, it was as quiet as a church now, or a library. It was hard to imagine this place ever filled with the sounds of a family: laughter, singing, dancing, chattering…Yet the house must have possessed such things and been host to such activities at one time, right? Someone lived in the house and loved it once. Yet there were no echoes of this former life in it now. She could barely even hear own breathing.

Without the boards on the windows and door, it was easier to see. She thought
(hoped) the extra light might make the house feel more gracious, yet the welcoming feeling she’d experienced outside disappeared as soon as she stepped through the front door.

Once she circled through the downstairs
, she made her way to the first set of stairs in the living room and put her foot on the first step. All at once, a roar so loud, she felt as though her ear drums would pop from the deafening sound filled the room to a raucous level. Staggering, she fell backward and scraped her lower back against the wooden stairs behind her. As she clutched at her chest, she pushed against an invisible force that seemed to thrust against her. The rumble continued all around her, filling the air at an incredible volume, the sound neither man nor animal.

An
astonishing wind swept through the room and up the staircase, whipping her hair around her and sending hot air down her throat, making her unable to talk or scream. Gasping for breath, she struggled to talk or breathe and began choking, gagging, wheezing. The front door, which she’d left open, closed with a bang. In horror, she watched small cracks appear in the living room windows and then watched as the glass shattered and flew out into the yard in hundreds of pieces. Using her hands and sheer strength, Taryn managed to grab onto the banister and pull her way up, inch by inch. Finally, by wrapping her legs around the banister, straddling it, and turning her back to the door and wind, she caught her breath. Using what breath she had left, she screamed with everything she had, “WHAT DO YOU WANT!?”

As quickly as it started, e
verything stopped.

Taryn was left on the banister, like a little kid who had simply been caught sliding down from the top of the stairs.
There was utter stillness again with no sign that anything had happened, other than the fact that the windows were broken and the door was closed.

Shaken, she unwound herself from the banister and ran out the front door, not bothering to close it behind her.
She’d let the ghost deal with that.

She let 24 hours pass by before she picked up the phone and call
ed Matt. Oddly enough—or maybe not—Reagan had not been too surprised when she called him. “Those windows are so old, I’m surprised they lasted this long,” he muttered. “Well, it will be a mess to clean up. Just be careful in the grass!” She wondered how he would react when he saw just how many pieces they had actually shattered into.

She knew she should have called
Matt sooner. She also knew he would already know something was wrong because he was intuitive that way; still, he knew better than to press. He was the only person in her life that knew Taryn as well as her grandmother did, but he’d learned a long time ago that it was better to let Taryn come to him first. The one time he had pushed, he’d pushed too hard and he nearly lost her. After that, she didn’t speak to him for almost four years.

“Hey you,” he spoke lightly
, but she thought she heard his voice tense up. “You holding up okay up there?”

“Just barely,” she answered. “Something’s really wrong,
Matt. Something bad.”

“Tell me.”

So she did. This time, she started at the beginning and told him everything she’d felt, seen, and thought about Windwood Farm. She didn’t leave anything out, including what the waitress had told her. When she was finished, she asked him what he thought.

Matt
, of course, had a very analytical mind and thought everything through with precision. That didn’t mean he wasn’t extremely open-minded. He might be a scientist, but he was also a spiritualist and it was something she loved about him. He lived on both sides of the line.

“There’s something dark in the house, Taryn, and I don’t think you’re being careful enough about it. You shouldn’t go back in there and if you do, you need to protect yourself. Are you using sage?”

It was nearly impossible not to smile. After all, he might work for NASA, but still wore a pentagram around his neck. He studied aerospace engineering, but occasionally wrote blog entries for one of the most popular Wiccan blogs on the internet. He knew his stuff.

“I don’t have any on me, no.”

“I could send you some if you’d like. Or you could drive to Lexington. There’s a shop there. I can send you the directions. I have a friend who could go ahead and have some ready for you at the counter. It’s very simple.”

That was
Matt. He was always ready to take care of her. He was nothing if not practical.

“It scared me. Not in the
‘the ghost wants me soul’ sense, but in the ‘it could kill me’ sense. It felt physical, Matt. I didn’t think spirits could be like that. When I talked to it, it stopped. Do you think that’s the key? That by communicating with it, I could make it stop?”

“I can’t tell you what it is. It might be a ghost, it might be leftover energy. It might just be a hologram of sorts. Until you know what you’re dealing with, my advice is to just stay away from it. Don’t put yourself in its path. Your energy might feed it, give it more energy. The fact the house is going to be demolished, the change
it’s feeling, that might be feeding it as well. Finish your painting and leave. You don’t know what’s going on there. Please, Taryn. I have a bad feeling about this and I’m rarely wrong where you’re concerned.”

“Why me, though,
Matt? I’ve worked in plenty of old houses before. Not to mention all the ones we used to break into. Why now?” That was her biggest question, really. Why had this started all at once? It must
mean
something, right?

“I don’t know,” he answered wearily. “Maybe it senses something in you. Maybe you’re sensitive in a way that it connects with. I’m not saying you’re weak
—don’t get me wrong on this—but maybe with what happened, there’s something going on that it can connect with. This is why you need to be careful.”

“And I thought it was just because the house knew how much I respected it.”

When she hung up the phone, she felt even more confused than before. She did, however, feel better having talked to someone else about it. She’d never been able to talk to her parents the way she’d been able to talk to her grandmother or Matt. Losing her parents made her sad, in the way losing a favorite aunt or uncle or anyone else she’d gotten used to would make her sad. But she hadn’t felt any real grief. She’d barely known them. Losing her grandmother had felt like losing her soul mate. And then Andrew…like losing a limb. But Matt knew her and understood her. She felt better having voiced her fears and knowing she wasn’t crazy. That helped.

T
he hotel didn’t have a gym, but that was okay. She wasn’t big on exercises that felt like exercising. Her body completely rebelled if she tried to make it do anything to gain muscle or lose weight. She did like swimming, however, and the hotel boasted both an indoor and outdoor pool, as well as a hot tub.

After taking several laps in the pool, she slid into the hot tub and turned on the jets, letting them beat against her back. She turned her nose up at the sign warning her not to swim alone (what about business people? What were they supposed to do?) and tried to relax.
The day’s events had shaken her up and taken off some of the excitement of the pictures. She obviously couldn’t deny there was something in the house, but she still wasn’t convinced that it was a ghost. At least, now that she was away from the house she wasn’t convinced it was a ghost. When she was inside the house, she was certain it was. But she wasn’t being rationale then. Whatever it was, though, it didn’t seem to want her there. Or anybody for that matter, considering the shape of the house itself and the fact everyone more or less left it alone.

Matt
was worried about her and that was normal. He’d been trying to take care of her since she was a little kid. Once, when she was in college, he even called her dorm director when she had the flu and made sure she was keeping fluids down and taking her anti-nausea medication. The other girls in the dorm swooned over him whenever he came to visit and went on and on about how much of a gentleman he was because he held the door open for her, took her out to dinner to nice places, and dressed well. All of those things she appreciated as well, and he really
was
a good friend, but his concern was sometimes stifling. She tried not to overburden him with too many problems because he wanted to take them on as his own and at times stressed about them more than she did.

The water felt hot and secure and flowed over her like a blanket. In this large room with the classical Muzak playing and the sky turning dusky and pink, it was easy to forget about the cold, dark rooms of Windwood Farm and whatever lurked in them.

She almost didn’t notice when the door opened and someone else entered the pool area. The sound was far away, in another time, and although she was aware that someone else invaded her space, she didn’t give it much thought until the water moved abruptly and splashed against her face—a sign that someone else had entered the water.

The man was pale and paunchy and probably in his early forties. He had dark hair that was still thick and curly and maybe twenty pounds lighter and ten years earlier
, he would have been attractive. “Hello,” he said cheerfully. She thought she detected a slight northern accent.

“Hi,” she smiled quickly and then closed her eyes; friendly but not encouraging.

A few seconds passed and she thought she might actually be able to relax a little longer in peace and quiet before the stranger started talking again. “You in town for business?”

Wishing she’d brought her book with her, she opened her eyes and peered at him. He was staying a respectable distance away from her on the other side of the hot tub, but taking a bath with a stranger was always a little uncomfortable. There were security cameras up, though, and the front desk was visible from where she sat. She wasn’t nervous, just irritated. “Yes, I’m here working.”

“Me too,” he offered. “Pharmaceutical rep. I come through here about every three months. What are you in for?”

“I’m an artist,” she replied simply and hoped he would leave it at that, and get the hint that she was not in the mood for conversation.

“Oh, that’s interesting. So you’re a painter?”

“Multi-media, actually, but I am here for a painting,” she explained with a sigh. He wasn’t going to let her off that easily. He seemed harmless
, but she just wasn’t in the mood for small talk. This happened almost every place she traveled to and even though it never amounted to much more than an annoyance, there were times when she wished she had a companion or at least a wedding ring to throw them off. It was never young, good-looking men who tried to talk to her, either, or else she might have felt differently. In fact, this guy was younger than most. The last one who tried to pick her up was literally old enough to be her grandpa.