“What about for our honeymoon?” he’d asked. If he’d been expecting her to say no then he was in for a shock; Taryn had thought it a fabulous idea.
For weeks they’d visited hiking and camping stores, buying travel-size toiletries and miracle towels and even a little water purifying system.
And then the accident.
The backpack was still in storage, along with the other things they’d shared in their house. Years later, she still couldn’t look at it.
Now, Taryn found herself wishing that the house was full of young travelers. That the room in which she was standing was untidy from pants drying on makeshift clotheslines, piles of dirty socks in the corner, daypacks open on the table with snack food and journals spilling out…She wished she could at least be a part of that scene, if only from a distance.
Sighing, Taryn turned and left. Freckles had apparently slipped out first because she no longer heard or saw him.
The hallway was lit by dusty and broken wall sconces. The bulbs were out in some, creating dark spots in the floor. The long corridor was symmetrical in design; to keep the symmetry although most of the doors led off to a bedroom or another corridor but, some were actually fake to balance the evenness. The main staircase broke the corridor up in the middle. At the top, it opened to a long gallery balanced by two overpowering stained glass windows. Due to the corridor’s length and width, it was often used as a kind of indoor walking trek during the winter and rainy days. The women would don their finest, hold on to one another’s arms, and walk the length of it if the weather was disagreeable.
That was a far cry from the sweat pants and sneakers Taryn would throw on when she wanted to go for a bike ride around the mud puddles of her apartment building parking lot.
Now, she walked down the corridor, poking her head into open rooms.
“There’s got to be fifteen rooms up here,” she whispered aloud. Although there was no real reason for her to be so quiet, the hushed stillness felt reverent, as though she were in a church.
She found bedrooms, little parlors filled with stacks of hardback books and outdated magazines, and storage rooms. There was a room filled with Christmas decorations, a room of nothing but photographs and paintings, and what had to be a nursery. Those were in addition to the guest rooms. It was clear that Miriam had her hands full with what few rooms she was able to clean–it would’ve taken an army of servants to see to the entire house.
Taryn hoped the new owners were loaded.
Above her, on the third floor, were the servants’ quarters. Taryn had climbed up the narrow staircase earlier and found a rabbit’s warren of tiny, cramped rooms that would’ve been reserved for the staff. There were very few windows in any of the rooms; the occasional roof light and oil lamp would’ve been all they had for light. She’d later found a second set of narrow stairs, possibly suggesting that the sexes were segregated there in the house.
It was all very “Downton Abbey” and “Remains of the Day.”
A lightbulb flickered at the end of the hall. With each burst, the tarnished sconce flashed gold. Taryn walked towards it, the wooden floors creaking softly under her feet. Miss Dixie lay against her chest, a comforting sensation and a reminder that she wasn’t truly alone.
The last door on the right was closed. The bulb flashed again, a sunburst of light, and then crackled blue. She was left in gloom.
Taryn rarely understood why she did some of the things she did and, later, would say that something else made her put her hand on the knob and turn it. Something else made her push the heavy door open, make her step inside the blackness, despite the rush of cold air that chilled her to the bone. Made her shut the door behind her, even before she’d found a light, so that she was standing in suffocating darkness.
There was a noise in the center, a faint muffled breathing. Someone trying to catch their breath. Barely audible. Taryn wasn’t alone; someone else was in that room with her. She gulped loud enough for her to hear it and then fumbled in her pocket for her phone.
With shaking hands, she felt for the button that would turn her flashlight on but, in her nervousness, dropped the phone to the floor. The clattering rang out through the room and the other sound stopped. Taryn held her breath and closed her eyes. Icy cold hands brushed across her cheek, fingertips as soft as clouds. The whisper of a breath, cold breath laden with the scent of the earth, swept her neck, blowing tendrils of hair around her face.
With wobbly legs and chattering teeth, she took a step backwards, her hand feeling behind her for the wall. When her hand landed on the switch and the room was flooded with light, she moaned in relief.
It was an ordinary bedroom. A white chenille spread covered a four-poster bed. Fake roses stood in a Waterford vase on the bureau’s lace runner. A Persian rug, fraying and threadbare in places, covered the center of the floor. A washstand with bowl and pitcher stood beneath a tall window with heavy maroon-colored drapes. They were pulled to, now, and spotty with holes from moths. Two framed pictures decorated the walls. The first showed a seascape–angry waves crashing against sharp rocks, castle remains in the distance. Taryn stepped forward and red the gold plaque below it.
“Aberystwyth,” she read aloud. She wasn’t familiar with the artist.
The second painting was of a woman. Her long black hair swirled around her shoulders in waves, gently falling to her waist. She wore a white dress with puffy sleeves and a high, lace collar. Her cheeks were pale, her complexion pallid. Her eyes, however, were bright green and no matter where Taryn stood, they followed. Her thick eyebrows were full and had been blackened; it was possible that they were comprised of mouse fur. Women in the eighteenth century sometimes donned fake ones, held to their face by glue. She sat up straight in a red velvet chair. In her thing, almost gaunt, hands she clutched a wooden cup. It was cracked down one side and appeared to be missing a chunk of wood on the other, but her knuckles were white from her solid grip.
Again, Taryn stepped forward to read the plaque. “Iona,” she whispered.
She might have heard a quick intake of breath or it could have been her imagination.
Taryn quickly moved back to the door but kept her eye on the painting. So that was the mysterious Iona, the one who had cursed the house. From where Taryn stood, the young woman didn’t appear to be so menacing or capable of death. And yet…
“You know something, don’t you?” Taryn asked.
She finally thought she understood what people had been saying about the Mona Lisa’s smile. There was something playing around the corners of the other woman’s lips, something not quite playful but spirited. And secretive.
And familiar.
To her surprise, Taryn did not find herself feeling spooked to be in the presence of the poor soul that had inspired such stories. Instead, she found herself feeling oddly reassured.
Behind her, Freckles meowed.
Chapter Twelve
“SO YOU FOUND IONA’S BEDROOM THEN?”
Taryn nodded then quickened her pace to fall in with Miriam. She felt a nuisance–a little kid underfoot while her mother tried to do the housework. For her part, though, Miriam didn’t seem to mind.
“I thought Iona was the lady of the house,” Taryn said. Satisfied that the Music Room had been swept and dusted to the best of her ability, Miriam balanced the broom and dustpan on her arm and pulled the double doors shut.
“She was,” Miriam nodded.
Taryn reached out and grabbed onto the broom before it toppled over. The two women then started back down the hall towards the main entrance. “I guess I just didn’t expect the room to be so, I don’t know, small,” Taryn explained. “I would’ve thought she’d been in one of the larger ones, like mine.”
Miriam paused and studied Taryn. Despite the fact that she’d been working all morning, not a strand of hair was out of place. Her plummy lipstick appeared fresh and her cheeks were rosy with rouge. She might have been preparing for a night on the town, not an afternoon with a mop.
>
“It wasn’t always her room, of course,” Miriam sighed. “You are smart about that now, aren’t you?”
“I’ve spent a lot of time in old houses,” Taryn concurred. “It’s kind of my job.”
“Yes,” Miriam smiled. “I read up about you a bit. I have a little understanding of what your job entails.”
Taryn felt her cheeks warming. She certainly didn’t advertise her “other” talents but they weren’t hidden online, either. A simple Google search brought up her and all her misadventures. Well, most of them anyway.
“Don’t worry,” Miriam laughed. She leaned in and touched Taryn’s shoulder. Her hand felt heavy and heartening as it lingered. Taryn couldn’t explain the motherly instinct she got from the other woman, especially since they were so close in age, but it seemed to exude from her.
“You’re in Wales now,” she soothed her. “Ghosts are a part of our lives here in Ceredigion. We many of us still stick to the old ways.”
“I heard that a lot of you still speak Welsh,” Taryn said.
“We do. I had to learn it in school, though it’s a dying thing these days. A real shame,” Miriam shook her head sadly.
Taryn agreed.
“So Iona changed rooms?”
“She moved to the larger of the two when her father died,” she explained. “That was the moment when she, er, became the ‘lady of the house’ as you said. Until then, she kept to the smaller one. It was far from her father’s room. I imagine, as a young lady, that was preferable.”
“I’m sure it was, even back then.”
They began walking again. Somewhere from behind a closed door Taryn could hear the trilling of a telephone. It was answered by the third ring and Paul’s muffled voice came through the walls.
“So you say she took over her father’s room, but what happened to her mother?” Taryn asked.
“Her mother died in childbirth,” Iona answered. “Of course, over time that was also attributed to Iona, seeing to how she was a witch and all.”
“Do you really believe she was a witch? And that this house and land are cursed?”
Miriam paused again and gazed thoughtfully into the space above her head. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’m not altogether sure I believe in witches, at least not in the storybook sense, but there were certainly some strange happenings here that can’t be so easily wrapped up in a pretty bow. You know about the Holy Grail?”
Taryn nodded. “A little, but I want to learn more about it.”
“It was here for awhile,” Miriam said. “In fact, you saw it in the picture of Iona that we keep in her bedroom.”
Taryn suddenly remembered the old wooden cup, the one with the missing piece. “That wooden thing is the Holy Grail?”
“That’s what they say,” Miriam laughed. “A bit of a letdown, is it not?”
“A little.” She turned on her camera and flipped through her shots until she landed on one taken in Iona’s room.
“This here?” she asked, pointing to the painting.
Miriam leaned over Taryn’s shoulder and nodded. “That’s the one.”
She started to pull away but then quickly leaned forward again, her nose just inches from the LCD screen. The look that came over her face was unreadable at first, and then she laughed.
“I see you’ve met Freckles,” Miriam chuckled.
The elusive cat had been at the foot of the bed when Taryn had taken the shot. She hadn’t even noticed him until she’d looked at her pictures later that night. “Yep, a few times. I keep trying to make friends with him but he doesn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me.”
Miriam patted Taryn on the back and shook her head. “You’ll probably be trying for awhile to make that happen. The cat lives in a world of its own.”
“I understand. Cats are like that.”
Miriam continued looking at Taryn with an expression that was hard to read. She wasn’t sure if she were interpreting it correctly, but Taryn thought there might be some renewed respect on her face.
“Did you happen to look out the window while you were up there?”
Taryn shook her head. “I saw the drapes but they looked fragile. I didn’t want to disturb them.”
“Wouldn’t have mattered if you had,” Miriam said. “The glass panes are painted black.”
“What for?”
Miriam gestured to a pair of chairs in the front entryway. They sat down and Taryn laughed when Miriam stretched her long legs out in front of her and moaned with relief. “I shouldn’t wear heels when I clean but I’m just so prideful about my legs. You never know who’s going to show up. Maybe a rich lad to come take me away from all this.”
“Would you go if he asked?”
Miriam looked around then wrinkled her nose. “No. Probably not.”
“So what about the black windows?”
“Ah, yes. So you see, Iona’s father had gone to Aberystwyth on business. That’s the seaside town about half an hour from here,” she explained. “Anyhow, it was a dismal day to be out and about. The rain was coming down something fierce and he was riding a horse that had only just been broken. Iona was seventeen at the time and, by all accounts, waiting for him to return. She was in her bedroom, watching out the window, when he came riding up the drive. It was difficult to see, of course, with the rain and fog but she heard his hoof beats on the ground so she knew he was near.”
As Miriam spoke, Taryn could see the image in her head. She saw the man riding through the mud on the galloping horse, his dark cloak soaked with rain and sailing behind him. Saw the rain pellets hitting him in the face so that he lowered his head to shield his eyes. Saw the young woman standing in the window, the panes streaked with water. The fog billowing across the moor, snaking its way over the lane towards the house.
“He had just passed the carriage house, just come into view really,” Miriam continued, “when, from out of nowhere, a small fox darted across his path. The horse startled and reared. He was thrown from the back and landed on his neck, killing him instantly. They say the cry Iona let out was enough to wake the dead.”
“And yet, people blamed her didn’t they?”
Miriam nodded. “Later, they did. Said she caused the accident. That she created the fox and made it dash in front of him like it did.”
Taryn tried to imagine a young woman left without parents, now facing the world on her own. It didn’t take much imagination–the same had happened to her when her parents died in a car crash years earlier.
“So she had those windows in her room painted black,” Miriam finished. “She couldn’t stand watching out from them again. She was afraid of what she might see.”
“Or she did it from guilt.”
Taryn looked up and saw Paul towering over them. His mouth was set in a hard line. With his arms crossed over his chest and his feet planted squarely on the ground, he was a picture of disapproval.
“She was guilty,” he reiterated, “and had those windows painted because she couldn’t live with herself.”
“Do you really think a young woman could cause an accident like that from so far away?” Taryn asked.
“I believe women are capable of many things,” he spat back. “Including sorcery and murder.”
Gee, Taryn thought to herself. I didn’t know that when I entered Wales I also went back to the Middle Ages.
***
She’d looked everywhere but Taryn could not find her spare battery. She was certain that she’d left it on the high boy in her bedroom but multiple searches had been fruitless. It was as if it had simply gotten up and walked away. She was glad that she had a backup battery in her backpack. Although she could have technically ordered another one, it would’ve taken it at least a week to arrive, setting her back and putting her behind schedule.
Taryn hoped she wasn’t losing her mind. The day before, she’d specifically placed her charcoal on her bureau so that it would be in line of vision and ready for when she started drawing. When she�
�d returned hours later, they’d been gone. After searching for hours, even going through the rooms downstairs where she was confident she’d never had them, she finally found them stacked up on the nightstand beside her bed.
Taryn knew they hadn’t been there when she’d started her search.
Chapter Thirteen
WITH HER LAPTOP OPEN on the table in front of her, Taryn snuggled down into the chair before the roaring fireplace, content and cheered.
With Matt’s words ringing in her ears, she’d hoofed it back to the village and garnered courage to try out a pub. Although she was the only woman inside at noon, the men grouped around the bar, passing jokes and sipping on dark liquid in tall glasses, had been nothing but friendly.
Taryn was surprised to find that the pub, the Black Lion, was nothing like the bar she’d anticipated. Although there was a bar with the expected tall stools and leather seat backs, the overall atmosphere reminded her more of a coffeehouse than a club. A coffeehouse with hard liquor. Chairs were grouped together in cozy clusters with low tables between them. Dim lighting brightened by the flickering of the lively flames in the fireplace gave the room a rosy glow.
A small bar menu offered chips, fish, burgers, chicken tenders, and lasagna. The special of the day was tomato bisque soup with soda bread. She’d had some and it had warmed her frosty fingers and toes. The walk from Ceredigion House had felt longer with her heavy laptop across her shoulders, but she was glad she’d made it. It was nice to be out and about.
Taryn was a social introvert–she mostly preferred to be left alone to her own devices but occasionally appreciated the feeling of being a part of something bigger. She like having other people around, just in case she desired conversation, but she didn’t want anyone breathing down her neck.
In their own way, she and Paul were perfect for one another; neither one wanted to talk to the other yet they knew each other was there, just in case.
Bloody Moor: A Ghost Story (Taryn's Camera Book 8) Page 7