Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (2 page)

“Hello!” she called into the house. She was met with silence.

Taking a chance, she crossed over the frame and entered the house.

Despite the warm summer
morning, the house was cool; almost cold. The sense that she was an intruder was amplified by the objects that littered the room. The plates, the utensils, the tablecloth, the coffee pot—it was as if someone had just gotten up and left. That is, if they had left twenty years ago or more.

A small door le
d from the kitchen into what she assumed was a dining room and she walked toward it, her ears tuned into the sounds of the house. She heard nothing. The dining room held an old metal table but was otherwise bare, save for a couple of empty boxes and some dated calendars on the wall. A living room awaited her on the other side. She stopped in the door frame and held her breath, listening. She had grown accustomed to working alone in deserted places and was usually able to tell whether or not anyone was nearby simply by listening and taking stock of her surroundings. Sometimes, the simple change of air currents was enough. This time, the house was deathly still. Letting out her breath, she continued on into the living room.

The moment she crossed the do
or, she held her breath again, but this time subconsciously. Second by second, the air thickened around her, a feeling of pressure increased on her chest and back, and cold chills raced down her shoulders to her fingertips. Her legs nearly buckled under her from the shock. To steady herself, she placed her left hand on the wall and felt crumbling paper under her fingers. It felt like dead flesh decaying beneath her touch and she quickly snatched her hand away and wiped it on her jeans. “Get a grip, dummy,” she mumbled to herself. She was a pro at giving herself pep talks. She might be used to exploring old places, and might have even been used to picking up on scents and energy, but that didn’t mean she didn’t get scared. She was no fool.

The room was dark, darker than the kitchen, and the one long pale ray of light that filtered in through the boarded up windows showed a dilapidated couch and a coffee table turned on its end. The
rug was old and moth-eaten, with rodent droppings speckling its once green and red design. The furniture was at least forty years old, if she were to guess, at least some of it. Other pieces were even older. The house had been empty for a very, very long time. There was nothing menacing about the room itself or the objects it contained, but the air…the air. It was stifling.

Taryn took another step forward and it hit her again, the wave of power
and the horrible scent. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, an old habit of self-defense, she slowly made her way toward the center of the room. It felt like walking through molasses, every step taking more effort than the last. Moving through the darkness didn’t feel real and for a fleeting moment, she wondered if perhaps she had fallen asleep in her car while she was driving and was dreaming. She stood in the center, slowly turning around and around, and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The air was still without even the sound of mice in the walls, and yet she felt as if she’d entered a cyclone. A dull roar started first in her left ear and then in her right and as pressure filled her head she got the overwhelming feeling she was chest deep in water, unable to properly catch her breath.

I’m not wanted here
, she thought to herself and the cold air rippled as if her inner voice was heard and the house was agreeing with her.

Giving into another habit, she quickly turned on Miss Dixie and began snapping pictures around the room. The brief flashes of light were soothing and the sound of the shutter hypnotic. She always felt less alone when her camera was on.
It had become a friend over the years, so much so that she continued to get it fixed rather than purchase a new one. The pressure slowly eased off her chest and back and the roar stopped as the camera clicked and flashed. Soon, it was just a gloomy living room again.

Gathering new courage again with her camera on, she decided against making a run for the back door. That didn’t mean she didn’t head for it at a quick pace, however.
Another room was visible through the doorway in front of her and there were two staircases on either side of the room that she assumed led to bedrooms, but instead of continuing on, she turned and went back to the kitchen, snapping pictures as she went. The moment she stepped into the brighter light, the feeling of coldness left her, as did the dread.

Back outside,
Taryn let out a huge exhale and a nervous laugh as she turned and faced the house again. “What the
hell
was what?” she asked aloud, accusingly, as she glared at the stone walls.

Sighing
, Taryn walked back to her car, this time with a quicker step. For once, she was afraid she might have encountered a house that wasn’t particularly pleased at her presence. She was going to have to win it over.

T
aryn checked into her hotel room, a nondescript chain with five stories that looked like every other place she’d ever stayed in, and went through her file on the house on Snowden Lane. Windwood Farm, it had been called, and that’s what she aimed to title her painting and call it from here on out.

A
purposeless reality show on VH-1 (her biggest vice, although not her only one) played softly in the background, mostly for company. She knew it might cost her some brain cells, but it somehow mollified her to see rock stars she had once idolized stooping to the level of looking for dates on television. Everyone was apparently going through a dry spell.

What
she’d felt at the house unnerved her. Okay, who was she fooling, it had
scared
her. But she didn’t have the luxury of giving into those fears. Last month, her car broke down and she’d needed a new transmission. Between that and some dental work back in the spring, her meager savings were cleared out. Lots of offers had come through, but they just barely covered the bills. Taryn was in financial trouble, hardly able to do more than make her credit card payments and rent. Everyone wanted her; nobody wanted to pay much. She
needed
this job. Without it, she might end up on the street. Whatever was in the house would learn to live with the fact that they were going to be stuck together for the next month or so. Besides, she didn’t really believe in ghosts and bad vibes couldn’t kill her.

She didn’t have much
history on the place other than dates. She knew a little bit about it from her correspondence with the president of the historical society, though. The first owner had the home built and lived there until 1902. The second owner, and the last person to really live there, bought it in 1903 and lived there until 1934. Although the next owner bought it right away and apparently moved furniture in from the looks of things, it was never truly lived in again, although the land was farmed. The house was sold again in the 1970s. The current owner was the son of the last owner. He inherited the house from his father. That was all Taryn knew. For all intents and purposes, despite the addition and the furniture inside, the house had been empty since 1934 according to her correspondence.

She was curious about what had happened to the house, b
ut Taryn wasn’t there to make judgments on the events that occurred during the house’s lifespan, at least not out loud. She would probably judge them eventually because, well, she was human. In Taryn’s occupation, it was more important that she painted the structures she saw as they would have been in their glory days, before the devastation they were currently facing. She was to see through their destruction and find remnants of their former splendor and life and try to capture that in paint for future preservation. Before they were demolished. Or, in some rare cases, to help with their restoration. It was true, anyone was capable of coming in and taking pictures of their house or property, even the owners themselves, but what she offered was something special.

Taryn’s talent was in s
eeing things and places the way they once were and then showing that in her paintings through creativity and a certain amount of sensitivity. Her degree and studies of historical architecture helped her look at even the most dilapidated of places and restructure them in her paintings, sometimes the only complete version of the building her clients had ever seen. She’d been called in to paint houses that had little more than the columns still standing and she’d been able to give the clients beautiful (their word, not hers, she wasn’t
that
narcissistic) renderings of their ancestral homes complete with second floor, attic, and gazebo.

It was true, of course, that most of the places she was hired to capture were in
shambles, which made her job a lot harder. This one, however, still looked secure from the outside. Painting it would take a little imagination on her part, since part of it had crumbled, although she had a feeling she would still need to use sensitivity.

Sometimes that sensitivity could get her in trouble. It was one thing to use your imagination to visualize the way a grand staircase used to look with its polished oak and
sparkling crystal chandelier above it. It was another thing to actually
see
it. And sometimes, just sometimes, she thought she could. If she closed her eyes hard enough, she imagined and even
saw
what the place would have looked like before time and neglect set in. She even dreamed about the places she worked in, sometimes seeing them fully furnished and ready for balls or weddings or decorated for the holidays.

Occasionally, she
became so wrapped up in a place she became attached to it and invested in it, and sometimes it was hard to move away from those feelings once the job ended. She’d become part of more than one house. It was an occupational hazard. Of course, she wanted to purchase every single one she fell in love with. But nobody paid her that well.

Reagan Jones was an energetic young man, no more than thirty, with a developer’s eye and a politician’s smile. Taryn had met many men like him over the years, those who thirsted for real estate development and hated to see an empty field as much as some people hated to see strip malls. This was the first time she’d met one quite so young, however.

He hopped out of his SUV with a big smile and had her walking around the property again in no time, pointing out landmarks and explaining his future plans for the area. “It’s all going to be a subdivision,” he said hurriedly. “But not one of those with all the houses looking the same. Each house will have at least one acre, maybe two if they want to purchase more. It will be like having a mini farm!”

It wouldn’t be
anything
like having a mini farm
, Taryn thought to herself, but she smiled pleasantly. He was, for the time being, sort of her boss. “I’m going to have to get a little more information about the property and was hoping you could answer some questions for me.”

“Well, I can surely try,” he said seriously, his large hazel eyes growing wide. He had a slight paunch and some of his features were a little large for his small face, but he wasn’t an unattractive man and Taryn was receiving a warm vibe from him, despite his enthusiasm for tearing down a large, seemingly structurally sound,
and beautiful home. He spoke with an easy drawl but even with his polished look and laid-back style (he wore loafers and jeans) he was calculating. She suspected that he was one of those men whom everyone liked, even when they were being bulldozed. “I don’t rightly know a whole lot about it. It belonged to my daddy who bought it from the third owner. It got passed down to me because I’m an only child. My daddy owned a lot of properties around here. Nobody’s lived in it since the thirties. My daddy was the oldest son, his other brothers died in the war, and he lived there on the property for about a year and then gave it up. Lived in a camper. Never used the house at all. Just storage, mostly. After he built our house he just used the barn here. The other owners before him didn’t really live in it at all. Maybe a few nights here and there. Nobody’s lived in it permanently, as far as I know, since 1934.”

“
It looks like it,” Taryn mumbled. “I’m sorry, but I stopped here yesterday and walked around a bit. I went inside because it was open and for a minute I was startled and thought someone might be staying here. It looks lived in.”

“Yeah,” Reagan laughed. “It does that to you. Me? I don’t like to go in there unless I have to. My wife won’t go in at all. Says it gives her the willies. Local kids don’t even bother it. You won’t find anyone sneaking in there to smoke or fool around. I could leave the door open year round and not a soul would touch it.”

Taryn must have looked skeptical because he laughed. “What? You don’t believe in ghosts? And I thought your job was seeing things that aren’t there. Isn’t that another way of seeing ghosts?”

Taryn shrugged. “I chalk it up to having a good imagination. And no, I’ve never seen a ghost. I don’t
think I believe in them. Not really.”

Reagan laughed and patted her shoulder. “Well, maybe that’s why you haven’t seen them.”

“I think I believe in something,” Taryn smiled. “I just don’t know what yet.”

“Stick around,” Reagan laughed. “Just stick around. You will!”

Considering her occupation, people were always asking her if she ever saw any ghosts. But what could she tell them? That she always felt the presence of something but could never quite put her finger on what it was? She liked to think of her talent as a kind of sensitivity to leftover energy. Like the photographs she took, she thought places held memories and figured she was tuned into those, or something to that effect. Occasionally, she did stumble across a spooky place that made her feel uncomfortable, like the old mental hospital in Danvers, Massachusetts (or that Victorian monstrosity that had her seeing shadows and questioning her sanity a few times), but usually after being in it for a couple of days she was able to get past whatever she felt and work well within the environment. As long as she remembered that what she was seeing and feeling was nothing more than a memory or hologram she kept the ill feelings at bay.