Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) (9 page)

It
was nearly three in the morning by the time she and David stopped talking. He’d resisted her offer to drive him and his bike home, claiming he was just staying a few houses down.

“We’re neighbors,” he’d smiled and she’d blushed.

The thought of him being so close by was both comforting and unsettling. On the one hand, she liked the idea of someone she could get along with being nearby, on the other hand she felt disloyal to Matt since that “someone” was so good looking.

Unable to sleep, and with Matt on her mind, Taryn sat down and composed an email to him. She could’ve waited and told him all about her evening when she talked to him later, but sometimes she preferred getting her thoughts down on paper. They’d been exchanging notes since they were in elementary school, often getting in trouble with their teachers for not paying attention in class. In fact, they’d been writing to one another for so long that sometimes she found herself composing mental notes to Matt, letters he’d never receive, as a way of processing what was going on around her. In many ways, Matt was her second brain in the same way that Miss Dixie was her second set of eyes.

Taryn found she still couldn’t sleep, even after she was finished. There was nothing on television but infomercials and movies about animals taking over the world. She wasn’t opposed to either (indeed,
Night of the Lepus
was one of her favorite truly bad horror films and her Magic Bullet was her favorite small appliance) but she wasn’t in the mood for either.

Too tired to get out the canvases and paints and then clean it all up later she popped Miss Dixie’s memory card into her laptop for some photo editing.

Ignoring the pictures she’d taken in Bob’s hotel room because she just wasn’t ready to face them yet, she brought up some of shots she’d taken earlier that evening. She’d use some of the shots of the audience in the ballroom for her website. She wasn’t a great public speaker but some people made good money doing gigs. If she ever wanted to pay off her student loans then
she
might have to start doing them as well and just get over herself.

The rest of her pictures were of the hotel. They weren’t great, but she hadn’t been trying for professional shots, just something for herself and her scrapbook.

The hotel’s entrance looked grand in the late evening sky. The wraparound porch was lined with white wicker furniture with bright red seat cushions; she could almost hear it calling out to guests to sit for a spell and sip on ice-cold lemonade. The steps leading up to the porch were flanked with potted flower arrangements, the blossoms spilling over their containers in colorful cascades. The lush green ferns that hung from the ceiling offered vibrant contrasts to the hotel’s pristine white.

It was picture perfect, in spite of the pun, and every bit as lovely as the spreads she’d seen in magazines.

Still, something bothered her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. Maybe she was just tired.

“Shame that Steve’s picture didn’t turn out,” she said aloud as she flipped through the ones taken of the exterior. She’d had a problem with Miss Dixie while he posed for her at his valet stand, all
GQ
smiles and apple pie dimples. The photo was missing completely now; there wasn’t even a blurred or distorted version for her to study.

She liked Steve. He was handsome in an obvious, popular high school boy kind of way. He was also friendly and had a bit of a mischievous air about him too, though, and she appreciated that. He was the kind of man she could appreciate from afar, almost too perfect to truly take seriously.

David, though…David could be an issue. She felt her skin prickle just thinking about him.

Taryn was already up and starting into the kitchen for another drink when she realized what had been bugging her. Racing back to the desk she pulled up the pictures of the hotel again and began flipping through them. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. There was absolutely nothing foreboding or peculiar about any of her shots.

Or, at least, there wouldn’t have been to most people.

As Taryn stared at them a second time, however, she saw that it wasn’t just
Steve
missing from the pictures…his valet stand was missing as well. In the stand’s current location there was now an enormous marble potting container, perennials spilling from it. And the bright red seat cushions on the white wicker furniture? They’d been blue for the past week.

Taryn realized then that she was
not
looking at the hotel as it was today, but as it had looked before the fire. For more than a dozen shots, Miss Dixie had transported her back to 1907.

She
was falling through space and time, her body light as a feather. The weightlessness was alarming at first but soon Taryn grew fascinated by it and stretched out her arms to feel the air rushing past her. She was flying and reveled in the new freedom it brought.

Surrounded by darkness, she could see nothing. The blackness was thick and impenetrable, but its coolness was invigorating.

But suddenly she felt herself not flying but falling–spiraling downwards so quickly that she flailed her arms and clawed at the air, reaching for something she couldn’t touch. When she landed on the hard floor, her head rattled and her bottom ached from the impact. Surely, if this were a dream, she would awaken. She’d never hit the ground in a dream before.

Am I dead now
, she wondered to herself as she attempted to gain her bearings. Andrew, her parents, and her grandmother were nowhere to be seen, however.

Still, Taryn didn’t recognize the space around her. It was still dark, but a trail of light filtered through
a tiny hole,
and revealed a patch of pine floor beneath her. She crawled towards the opening and put her face against it. It was a keyhole. On the other side she could see a large four-poster bed, a coverlet turned down neatly and an old-fashioned porcelain doll placed primly against a fluffy pillow. A fire burned cheerfully in the hearth, but the warmth didn’t reach her. She was chilled and damp and suddenly realized with embarrassment that her bottom was wet, as though she’d sat in something. It smelled of urine.

Taryn felt around the space at once and exhaled with relief when her hand landed on a knob. To her dismay, however, when she turned it, nothing happened. It was locked.

Fear began creeping into her heart and as she pounded on the door in front of her, she found herself crying out for someone she didn’t know. Taryn had always been a little claustrophobic, but this was much different. The small universe was closing in on her, and the suffocation threatened to seal her throat, making breathing difficult. Choking, she gasped for air, clawing at her skin and chest and brushing the rough fabric that clung to her aside.

Taryn had decided to allow herself one meal out a day
.

Today, as a reward for getting up bright and early, that meal would be breakfast. She was actually enjoying grocery shopping in Brunswick and cooking in the house’s modern, clean kitchen but sometimes a girl just didn’t want to clean up after herself.

The small restaurant was attached to a hotel but it offered some of her favorite things: pancakes, biscuits, and grits. Her server was an older woman, Taryn judged her to be in her late sixties, and she was chatty.

When Taryn ordered nothing more than a pancake and sausage link, the server pursed her lips. “You sure you don’t want something else to eat?” she asked dubiously.

“Later I’ll probably regret not eating more but right now I’m still trying to wake up,” Taryn explained.

The server didn’t look convinced and shook her head as she walked away.

When she returned with Taryn’s food she lingered for a moment. “You here on vacation?”

“Sort of,” Taryn answered. “Kind of a working vacation.”

“You been to Driftwood Beach yet? You should if you haven’t.”

Taryn nodded. “I went the other day, but I need to go back and take some more pictures. Is there anything else I should see while I’m here?”

“A lot of people like taking those guided tours. They do one of the historic area and a ghost tour, too. You might like that.”

Taryn smothered butter and syrup all over her pancake and watched it sink in. “I’ve heard the ghost story about Mary the Wanderer. And about Ivy House being haunted. Are there other stories I should know?”

The server, whose nametag read “Eldean,” nodded. “Oh yes, we have lots of ghosts here. Let’s see…there’s the pirate ship that sails up and down the island. They supposedly buried their treasure here and now can’t remember where they put it. And then there are the ghosts of the Horton House. You can still hear drinking parties going on inside of it at night. Of course you know about Mary…What else? Oh! You might like the story about the haunted grave.”

“The haunted grave?”

“Yes, that one is my favorite,” Eldean smiled.

“Well let’s hear that one,” Taryn said. “If you have the time. I don’t want to hold you up.”

Eldean shrugged. “It’s okay. Slow morning.”

Making sure nobody was looking, she pulled up a chair and scooted in closer to Taryn. “So you know the story about William and how he murdered his wife and burnt the original hotel down?”

“Yes, I’ve heard that. And he was hung for his crimes, right?”

Eldean bobbed her head, her hair barely moving from all the Aqua Net holding it in place (Taryn had been around in the 1980s–she’d know that starchy fragrance anywhere). “Yes. Well, apparently while he was in jail he complained to anyone who would listen that he’d promised his wife never to leave her alone.”

“Shouldn’t he have thought about that before he killed her?” Taryn asked.

“That’s what I’ve always said. At any rate, I guess he put up such a fuss that the jailer finally felt sorry for him. So each night up until the day he was hung Juniper, that was the jailer’s name, carted William all the way across the island to her grave. When he got there William would light a candle and leave it burning. After he was hung, the light kept appearing from out of nowhere. Even now, on some nights, if you go over there you can still see the glow.”

In spite of all the ghost stories Taryn had heard, she was chilled by the tale. It struck her as…sad. “Well that’s kind of a nice story,” she said at last.

Eldean stood to her feet and pushed back a lock of silver hair. “Yeah, I always thought so. If you take away the fact that he killed her and then committed arson to one of the nicest hotels in the south, it’s almost a love story.”