In the hours that she worked trolleys traveled past her, guides dictating narratives over loudspeakers to red-faced tourists. There was one every hour and by the third time it stopped she knew their spiel about Adena by heart. Nobody paid her any attention; she blended in with the scenery after awhile.
When she got too hot or tired she’d stop, put her pencil down, and root around in her small cooler for a drink. She took several walks around the cottage, studying its walls and what was left of its windows. The cottage was quiet today, content with the fact that it had already done its part in revealing itself.
Taryn found herself staring at the lawn and trying to envision the pathway flanked by flowers, like what she’d seen in her pictures. Now it was just an empty expanse of grass–mowed and trimmed but otherwise unremarkable.
As she was wrapping things up for the day another trolley rocketed down the road and came to a stop in front of the cottage. She listened again as the guide, a young man in a top hat and tails, recited the history:
“If you’ll look out the window to your left you’ll see what’s left of Adena Cottage. Adena was built in 1898 by Lowell McGovern. He owned a fleet of cargo ships out of New York City and, during his time, was one of the wealthiest people in the world. His daughter, Georgiana, was his only child and often accompanied him to their summer house here on Jekyll. When he passed away the house fell to her and she lived here full time for many years. Unfortunately, she didn’t marry or have any heirs and when she died the house fell into disrepair. It’s the only cottage that hasn’t had any renovations done on it but that will change this fall.”
As they picked up their speed and carried on down the road, Taryn looked up at the cottage and studied it again. Was it Georgiana who haunted it or Lowell? Or maybe someone else altogether? And what did they want from her?
Taryn sighed and carried the first load to her golf cart. She didn’t know what they wanted but, as history had taught her, she’d probably learn soon enough.
Chapter 6
After what had transpired during her job at Griffith Tavern Taryn hadn’t been able to keep much of a low profile, at least not in the paranormal world.
The Friends of Griffith Tavern, the nonprofit organization set on saving the old stagecoach inn, had used her story to further their cause and gain publicity–as well as donations. She couldn’t blame them. At least it meant the old building got saved.
However, it also meant that her name was suddenly showing up on paranormal blogs, in magazines, and in random supernatural-based forums. She’d been asked to appear on a few podcasts and radio shows as well, but had so far demurred. She knew that there was supposedly no such thing as “bad publicity.” Still, she didn’t think becoming an infamous psychic would do much for her freelance landscape painting career.
Still, despite her rise in popularity, sitting in the coffee shop at the Jekyll Island Club Hotel and getting ready for her day was the last place she thought she’d be recognized.
“It’s Taryn Magill, right?” The man who towered over her had to be in his mid-to-late thirties but had a voice so deep and powerful that it made her table vibrate.
Assuming he was someone from the hotel, and probably someone she should know, she looked up and smiled politely. “Yes I am. Hello.”
“Jerry Guillen ma’am,” he said in that booming voice again, and stretched his hand to her. It was warm and soft but massive; it swallowed Taryn’s tiny hand and she watched it disappear in fascination as he held onto it. “I’m a big fan of yours. Big fan. Just love what you do.”
“Huh?” Completely confused now, Taryn was afraid he might have her mixed up with someone else. Unless he was into oils and watercolors and historical architecture she doubted he’d seen much of what she did. “My paintings?”
“Your photography!” Jerry grinned, wide-eyed. “Most of us in my field spend our lives imagining the past. The fact that you’re able to see it is incredible.”
It became clearer then and Taryn nodded. He still hadn’t let go of her hand. “Oh, yes, well, it’s…pretty incredible to me too sometimes,” she finished lamely.
“I’ve read everything about your story that I can find,” he said enthusiastically. “Everything! I know all about it.”
She highly doubted that. Nothing, for instance, had been written about her time at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill and people knew very little regarding her involvement in northern Georgia and the case of missing teenager Cheyenne Willoughby.
“Well, thank you. I think.”
“Listen,” Jerry began with marked enthusiasm, finally releasing her and pulling up a chair. “I’m one of the event organizers this weekend and we had a guest speaker cancel. Would you be interested in filling in maybe?”
Taryn paled. She wasn’t terribly good at talking in front of crowds. The brief teaching stint she’d done had been awkward enough. “Um, I don’t really have anything prepared for that kind of thing.”
“Oh, you don’t need anything formal! Just show up with some of your pictures. We’ll hook you up to the computer, and you can do a slide show presentation or whatever. People will love it,” he promised.
“Oh, I don’t know. I am here on a job, and I don’t know if that would be a conflict of interest or anything,” she hedged.
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll talk to the manager. We could really use the help. People pay a lot of money to come to this and we strive to give them the best experience we possibly can. So, are you in?” He’d barely given her a chance to think about it.
Feeling pressured, Taryn caved. “Okay. When do you need me?”
“How about 9 o’clock tonight? We have a ghost hunt at 11:00 pm so you’d be finished in about an hour. And then you’re welcome to come with us on the hunt. See if your camera can pick anything up?” he asked hopefully, looking like an eager puppy.
Taryn smiled. “Okay. I’ll see you tonight. I can’t promise that I’ll be very good, though.”
“You’ll be terrific,” Jerry assured her. “I have a feeling this will be the highlight of the weekend.”
Taryn remained unconvinced.
Ivy House remained unimpressed by her presence. Taryn was bound and determined to make friends with it by the time she left but, at the moment, it was doing all it could to snub its nose at her. And it knew exactly what she was trying to do.
If she attempted to sketch the edge of the porch, a clump of Spanish moss would fall from the roof above and land on the exact spot that she was attempting to draw. If she noticed a particularly beautiful pattern of shadows across the curve of a column then the moment she began capturing them, clouds would suddenly block out the sun, and she’d lose it.
“I know what you’re doing and you’re not going to drive me away,” she called out to the house, wagging her finger. “I need the money too much.”
A crash rang out from the inside in answer.
When the tour groups with their history and ghost tales filed by, the house snubbed its nose at them as well. She imagined it crossing its arms and turning its back on everyone. Unlike Adena Cottage, Ivy House didn’t yearn for attention or preen under watchful eyes. It wanted to be left alone.
Taryn didn’t envy the people who would eventually have to work inside it for the restoration.
By the end of the afternoon she had a rough sketch of the front of the house and she was quite pleased with herself. While she worked, she’d stood under a large oak tree that offered plenty of shade, making the experience a tad more comfortable than the open lawn of Adena.
When she finished, she turned the sketch around and showed it to the house. “See? I think I did you justice.”
The house seemed to consider her canvas for a moment and then, suddenly, a beautiful configuration of shadows fell across the front, providing mesmerizing contours and contrast.
Taryn laughed. “Well, you’re welcome then.” A woman passing by pushing a stroller with a sleepy toddler stopped in her tracks and glanced at Taryn before
shaking her head in worry and quickly moving on.
“It’s okay, ma’am,” Taryn wanted to assure her. “I was just talking to the house.” But she kept her mouth shut. If they couldn’t hear it, they probably wouldn’t understand.
Since 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?
Chapter 7
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.”
Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Page 5