Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera)

by Rebecca Patrick-Howard

  Handing her back the menu, Taryn nodded. “I’ll take those then. And some sausage. And hey, are you from around here?”

  “All my life, why?”

  Taking a moment, Taryn described the house she was in town for. “Let me go put your order in and I’ll be right back.”

  The restaurant was empty and she busied herself going through the pictures on her digital camera, still marveling at the images that shouldn’t be there, until the waitress came back. Sliding into the seat across from her, she leaned into Taryn and started chatting. “You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

  “I didn’t know anywhere still let you do that.”

  “Well, they don’t,” she said. “But nobody around here says anything or cares.”

  Taryn waited patiently while her waitress sat back and blew a few puffs, the white rings drifting off into the aisle and floating toward the empty counter. The sounds of dishes and silverware rattling back in the kitchen were the only noises in the otherwise quiet room. She must have missed the lunch crowd.

  “I know the house, of course. Everyone does. It’s kind of the town haunted house, if you know what I mean. Some people called it ‘the Devil’s house’ growing up or just ‘the stone gate to hell’ because the gate out front is made of stone. Well, you know. We used to dare each other to go in there as kids. As teenagers, really. I’m Tammy, by the way.”

  “Taryn.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she smiled, revealing her braces again. “Why you asking about the old place? You thinking of poking around in it?”

  “Well, actually, I’m working there for a while,” Taryn explained. “I’ve already poked.” She took a few minutes and explained what she was doing and then laughed when Tammy shuddered.

  “Better you than me, girlfriend, better you than me.” When Tammy smiled, her face lit up and she possessed the kind of easygoing all-American beauty that Taryn envied. Even in her waitress uniform and braces, she managed to be pretty and perky. In contrast, Taryn still felt tired and haggard and her wrinkled khaki capris and buttoned-down western shirt (a size too big) made her feel dowdy.

  “You ever go in there?” she asked, sensing a story waiting to be told.

  “Once,” Tammy answered conspiratorially. “But never any further than the kitchen. I was with my boyfriend at the time. We were sophomores. He’d just gotten his license, you know? Second day. It was the Friday after Thanksgiving and it was kind of cold like. There was a group of us and everyone else was poking around the property. Smoking, walking around. Just being kids, really. We decided to go in the house. Nobody else would. Lots of stories about that place, you know? Everyone daring everyone else to go in, but not too many people really did it. Anyway, we were going to be all brave and do it. So we walked up to the door, my boyfriend being all macho, and he pushed it in. We stepped inside and he pulled out the flashlight. He goes in first. It is dead quiet. Steps in, looks around. Says it’s okay. I go in. He’s all the way in the other room by the time I go inside. I’m halfway through the kitchen when he starts running back through the house and he’s out the door. I have no idea why so I just stand there, kind of frozen like. Then I saw it. Well, first I heard it.” Tammy shivered at the memory and snuffed out her cigarette into a saucer.

  “What was it?” Without realizing it, Taryn leaned forward.

  “A cry. It was the longest, saddest cry I’d ever heard in my life,” Tammy whispered. “It came from upstairs. A woman. Well, a girl, really. Maybe my age. Like it was just breaking your heart. It shook the whole house. I felt it all the way down to my toes. I knew that cry. I’ve cried like that myself when my own heart was breaking. You know when you’ve had a breakup or felt like nobody loved you and your world was ending?” Tammy stopped talking and waited for Taryn to concede.

  Not knowing quite how to answer, Taryn glanced down at the table and fiddled with her straw wrapper. “I know what you’re talking about. Hey, I was a teenager once, right?” She said the last part hurriedly, hoping Tammy would continue. She did.

  “I heard that and wanted to cry along with her. I couldn’t move. But then I did move because right after that, this figure appeared in the kitchen door. It was solid black and it wanted me. Don’t ask me how I knew—I just did. It was coming for me. It felt evil. You know what I mean? I turned and ran out of that house as fast as I could but I could feel it watching me all the way to the car. I will never forget it.”

  Tammy shivered again and rolled her eyes. “Sometimes, in my sleep, I still hear that cry. You know, the shadow, the evil thing? It bothered me, it scared me. But it was that cry, it was that sound that still bothers me. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. I still don’t know what my boyfriend saw. He won’t talk about it.”

  She gazed absently out the window at the passing cars and Taryn studied her. She had no reason to doubt her story, especially since it rang familiar. In fact, Taryn figured most people believed in the stories they told you, and there was a little grain of truth in everything.

  The two women sat in companionable silence for a few moments, each one last in their own thoughts. A bell at the window rang and Tammy jumped up and brought Taryn’s pancakes to her. “There are others in town that might be able to tell you their own stories. There has been stories about that place for years, ever since my mom was a little girl.”

  “Did anything happen there? I mean, is there a story? Did anyone die?”

  “Not that I know of,” Tammy replied. “I mean, not tragically or anything. Just old age and stuff like that. But I can talk to my grandma. She knows most of that stuff. Here, I’ll give you my email.” Hurriedly, Tammy jotted her information down on a slip of paper and then went back into the kitchen again.

  Obviously, it wasn’t the first time Taryn had heard a ghost story about the place she was painting. All old houses were meant to be haunted. It was almost an insult if they weren’t. She had found that if there weren’t any real tales to be told about the place, people were generally happy enough to make them up.

  Tammy had seemed perfectly reliable and honest. But there were many reasons why a person might see or hear something in an old house. Taryn explained similar stories away for years. She had to. If she didn’t, she might never step foot inside some of the places she worked in.

  But she couldn’t deny that Tammy’s story had given her chills, similar to the ones she herself had felt inside the house. There was something going on inside and apparently more than one person had picked up on it. She needed to remember that. This house was different. She couldn’t shrug these stories off like she had the others. Not after what she saw on her camera.

  Once, on a job site in Georgia, she’d been painting a picture of an old plantation home. Most of it was no longer erect, but the local historical society received a grant to restore it. They had brought in Taryn, along with an architect, to create images of it.

  Taryn didn’t care for working with other people, but the architect was a young man her own age, just out of college, and he was friendly. He, too, preferred working on his own, so their paths didn’t cross much and, when they did, it wasn’t unpleasant. They’d both shared a love of history and the antebellum style of the home. Both were equally glad it was being restored.

  Two weeks into the job, Taryn arrived onsite and found him standing outside, staring at the crumbling porch. He had a look on his face that was a cross between bemusement and horror. She touched his shoulder and he jumped into the air in shock.

  “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I must have been thinking.”

  “Is everything okay?” she asked, feeling foolish because everything was obviously not okay.

  He led her to a weeping willow tree and both sat down under it, the house in plain view in front of them. It was a beautiful structure with four large columns (signs of wealth) and a porch that had, at one time, stretched the length of the front. Even in its decay, she saw beauty in it and what it could be again one day.

  “I crawled in through
one of the back windows this morning,” he said softly. “I know it’s not safe, but well, you know…”

  She nodded. Of course, she did it all the time. She had also done it here to this house, too.

  “It was so quiet and peaceful. I walked around to the front of the house, real careful with my footing, and stayed where I knew the foundation was solid. There’s a mantle in there that just blew my mind. Can’t believe how perfect it is, considering that half the house is falling in.”

  Taryn let him talk without interruption, despite the fact that he kept taking long breaks in his speech.

  “I wasn’t inside for more than ten minutes, when I heard this sound. I wasn’t sure what it was at first. It sounded like music. I thought maybe you were here and had your car radio on. I don’t know. But something didn’t feel right about it. Then, I realized it was coming from inside the house. And it wasn’t a radio at all, but a piano.”

  The house was devoid of furnishings. There was no piano anywhere near it. They were at least five miles from the nearest inhabited house.

  “Are you sure?” Taryn asked tentatively, but she knew he was certain of what he heard.

  He nodded. “It went on for a few minutes and I just stood there and listened. It was maybe the most beautiful piano music I’ve ever heard. It felt as close as if I could just walk into the parlor and see someone sitting there, playing. And then it stopped. I thought it was over, but that’s when the laughing started. A high, feminine laugh. A woman’s for sure. It echoed through the rooms, like the sound was being soaked into the walls.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I got out,” he shrugged. “I couldn’t do it.”

  Taryn knew he was confident in what he had heard. She knew he wasn’t making the story up. She had spent many hours there in the house by herself and had felt like someone was watching her, listening to her talk to herself sometimes. But she’d never seen anything. She’d never heard anything. Sitting there under the tree with him, she almost felt disappointment.

  She spent a productive day at the house, her experiences from her previous visits not repeated. She even tried walking around, taking more pictures, but they came out like any other picture she’d ever taken. Maybe it’s just my imagination, she thought to herself. She probably did need more sleep.

  The house felt quiet, at peace. In fact, the day was amazingly calm and still. It was a day straight out of a summer calendar: the birds were chirping, the butterflies flew about, the bees buzzed, and the clouds were fat and white against the bright blue sky. With her sandals kicked off and the grass curled up between her toes, Taryn was at a rare ease with herself. She listened to Bruce Robison and Tift Merritt while she worked, alternating their CDs and singing along when the spirit moved her.

  The sketching went amazingly fast and within the first day she had most of the house outlined to her satisfaction. She enjoyed standing outside and working in this park-like setting and appreciated the fact that even though there were adjoining farms on either side of her (well, one was being developed as she worked) she rarely heard the sound of any kind of passing vehicle.

  As she sketched, she thought about the house’s former tenants. What had they been like? Had they thrown parties, celebrated a lot, worked hard? And what about the poor girl who had died? Taryn hoped she hadn’t suffered much. The scent of decay and death were still overpowering at times, but she was starting to think that perhaps the house was picking up on some of the tragedies it had seen over the years: first Robert’s wife and then his daughter.

  Taryn also appreciated the fact that the Stokes County Historical Society had contracted her at all. She could use the money especially since she wasn’t completely sure her car was going to hold up much longer. And the hotel wasn’t bad either; at least, not as far as hotels went. The swimming pool was actually kind of nice and the free breakfast was more than just cereal and bananas. And then, of course, there was the added bonus of it having indoor corridors—always a sign she was staying in a swanky place.

  But she wasn’t sleeping well and she was tired. Taryn’s dreams had bothered her over the past few nights; however, ever since she arrived in Vidalia (and what about that town name?). The previous night (morning) she dreamed she was falling into something dark and then awakened to the sound of crying. She was sure it had been someone else’s cries at first, but since the dream had shaken her so much, she wasn’t positive it hadn’t been her own tears that woke her up.

  And then there was the dream of being suffocated and unable to move. That was the worst one. It caused her to thrash about in her bed, as though held by ropes. She’d woken up struggling with her pillows and had slept with the TV on ever since. It might mean she was hearing used car commercials all night, but at least it offered her light and noise.

  At the end of the day, after loading everything into the car, Taryn slipped her sandals back on and went for a walk around the property. With the boards off the door and windows, the house appeared more inviting. The stones were polished and reflected the late afternoon sunlight; the wide front porch easy to envision a swing and rocking chair on and full of guests enjoying the evening after a hard day’s work. Taryn’s appreciated talent might have been in showing the world what the past looked like, but her real talent was in imagining what the past held. Sometimes, it wasn’t always welcomed. Sometimes it even hurt.

  Staring at the contrast between the older part of the house and addition and holding her camera in her hands, Taryn felt the weight of the day on her shoulders. “Off to a good start,” she whispered. “Going well.” The house seemed to shimmer in the light, as if agreeing with her. A ripple of cool air sent chill bumps along her legs and up her arms. She continued walking, but crossed her arms over her chest.

  Behind the house, the air was lighter and it was a little easier to breathe. It was also less magical somehow. She turned on her camera again and looked at the pictures she had taken that day. They were all normal images. But the ones before them, those, well, they were the special ones. Yep, she thought, still there. She hadn’t dreamed them. I’m not going crazy.

  It was during this time of the day that she should be winding down and feeling good about what she had done, but it was usually by now when she felt the loneliest. She wasn’t due to talk to Matt tonight, although she knew she could call him and probably should, especially after what happened. The sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that had plagued her for months and months was getting better there for a while, but she imagined she would always suffer setbacks.

  When the last rays of light had fallen behind the barn, she made her way back to her car and got in. She didn’t know why people were so afraid of the house; it just seemed sad to her.

  Chapter 4

  It had been all she could do not to hop in her car and drive back to the house in the middle of the night to take more pictures when she first saw them on her computer screen. She was giddy at the thought of capturing more images and being transported back into the past–creepy shadow guy that Tammy talked about not included. Miss Dixie, who had always been one of her prized (if not the most prized) possessions now took a place of honor in her hotel room. She set her next to her second favorite object, the television, so that she could keep an eye on both equally.

  Once she calmed down, she paced back and forth across the hotel room’s multi-colored carpeted floor and had a good long talk with herself. What if this was a one-time thing? What if it was just going to happen at certain times? Should she get back out there right away and take more pictures? And what time period were the pictures from? Well, that question was easy enough to answer. They had to be from the 1920s or 30s. Nobody had really lived in the house after that and the furnishings hadn’t looked 19th century. But why that time period and not anything before or after?

  On a lark, she tried taking pictures of her hotel room, wondering if anything would show up that wasn’t supposed to be there, but they came back normal: just her messy clothes rack, cluttered
sink, and shoes kicked off all over the floor. That had been disappointing, but she figured it was probably better than them showing some of the other things that had probably gone on in the room before her stay (things she definitely didn’t want to think about if she was going to sleep on the bed).

  In disappointment, she thought back to some of the other places she’d worked in the past, like the old farmhouse in Vermont with its gables and wrap-around porch. It was missing the entire backside and hadn’t been lived in for almost fifty years. It was so homey, though, and inviting. She’d loved to see what it looked like in its prime. It was too bad her camera hadn’t picked up anything there. Or the house in Mississippi. If only the camera could have picked up on something there and Andrew could have seen the piano making the beautiful music…He’d never had that experience again after that particular house, no matter how many jobs he’d worked on as historical architect.

  But she couldn’t think about Andrew right now or the other jobs they’d worked on together after Mississippi.

  Taryn had spent her entire professional career showing her clients the past and helping them see, but this was the first time she’d ever been able to see for herself. Nobody had ever given that experience to her.

  She did briefly wonder if she should contact Reagan or the members of the Stokes County Historical Society and show them what she had, but this wasn’t a thought she entertained for very long. They’d either think she was crazy or, more likely, they’d be over there harassing her about it every day. No, she wanted to keep this to herself as long as possible. She didn’t like a crowd.

  What she wanted was to take more pictures and see more stuff! What she wanted was to run around to every old building she could find and snap images like crazy, hoping to see things from the past emerge.