Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6)
Read Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) Online
Authors: Rebecca Patrick-Howard
Black Raven Inn
n’
s Camera
Rebecca Patrick-Howard
For Ruby Cravens, who gave me a picture of Elvis and said, “You’d better have that out someplace where I can see it when I come visit you”
and
Emma Jane Chumbley, who gave me a copy of Gram Parsons’ “Grievous Angel” and Emmylou Harris’ “Duets” and said, “You’d better actually listen to them.”
Did you read and like
Windwood Farm,
Book 1 in Taryn’s Camera?
If so, read to the end and download a special companion short story for FREE!
S
leep meant certain death. If there was one thing he’d learned, it was that.
He was heavy eyed, and lethargic. The jumbled thoughts in his head were all over the place, as rowdy and insistent as any child he’d known. As he sank back into the standard motel room pillow, however, his body began to change.
Warmth started at his feet and traveled throughout his body in calming waves, moving inch-by-inch all the way to his ringing ears and into his brain where his mind finally quietened and settled. The euphoria that followed had him smiling and flinging out his arms, the Messiah on the cross. His stomach moved up and down in shallow motions as his breathing became heavier, more labored.
The torment he’d been living with was gone; his problems dissolved into the air, scattered away by the ceiling fan above. He could do anything,
be
anyone…
Everything was going to be okay.
His head nodded back and forth in a familiar rhythm, crushing the pillow below. Was it one of
his
songs or someone else’s?
Well, it didn’t matter.
Beneath him, he could feel the firmness of the bed and slippery material of the generic quilt. He was touching them, yet both felt so very far away. Perhaps they belonged to someone else, or to another time period. He couldn’t be sure. He might as well be floating on a cloud.
Gratitude for the respite swelled in his chest so he closed his eyes and gave in to the sensation, the feeling of being
outside
his own body. The aching in his heart and the pains that regularly plagued his body began fading, replaced by a sense of relief.
His eyes shot open almost at once. “No!” In a blind panic he struggled to focus on an object in the room, anything to bring his attention back to reality.
He must
not
fall asleep. He wouldn’t.
His eyes scanned the room in alarm until they landed on something familiar. With an audible sigh of relief, he fixated on his guitar case propped up by the door. Beaten and covered in chipped paint, it was comforting to see the old case standing there like a sentinel. Or a friend.
For a brief moment, his head cleared. The pain returned with a vigor, but he was no longer swimming in the murky, dangerous waters. Maybe he needed a doctor. Something wasn’t right. He’d taken the same amount he always did. He was careful not to take more, just enough to make him human again. But he’d been around the block enough to know that something was wrong.
He wasn’t feeling sick, exactly; in fact, he’d never felt better. His mind was comfortably numb, his muscles loose and languid. He even felt a tinge of excitement about the new album and tour and God knew he hadn’t been able to feel that particular emotion since he was a little boy. The world was beginning to make sense again.
If he could just keep his frigging eyes open.
There was a dim throbbing sensation in his stomach but this he could ignore. It was just a nuisance, really. Probably his poor old liver. He’d given the old girl a workout, for sure. He was going to cut down on some things as soon as this tour started.
She’d
see to that. She always did.
The drowsiness struck him again, this time even harder. He wasn’t sure he could fight it. Again, he felt his eyes closing, the weights on his eyelids lowering them like a bucket in a well. Try as he might, he could not pry them open, not even when he rubbed furiously at eyelids with his black-stained fingers.
They felt so good closed, though. The second they were shut the pain disappeared and he was transported to another world, one in which he soared straight through the roof of the grungy motel room, where his friends and mother awaited him with open arms, where his body floated with weightlessness, free from the worry and restraints of the world below.
Maybe just for a second
, he thought with contentment.
Just a minute or two wouldn’t hurt. I’ll wake myself up…
He’d been on the road for weeks, after all, and in the studio nonstop for nearly seventy-two hours. He could use a little rest.
Though he was already lying down, he soon felt himself falling backwards and as he descended, an ethereal angel appeared before him. Her beautiful chestnut hair swirled around her lovely aristocratic neck and cascaded down her back; her bright blue eyes shone with heat. The silky dress she wore was covered in tiny roses and he knew without touching it that would be soft under his hands, just like her skin would be. He groaned aloud when she reached her hands out to him and smiled, the radiance stemming from her body brighter than the white light surrounding her. Without shame, a tear slid down his cheek as their fingertips touched.
He continued to plunge backwards, falling into a depth that swallowed him whole.
T
aryn didn’t just read
the email from Ruby Jane Morgan multiple times–she printed it out (on cardstock, no less) and hung it on the refrigerator. She was still trying to decide whether or not framing it would be a little much, a little
too
cheesy.
“Eh, what the heck?” She grinned with pride as she stood back and studied it. It wasn’t like she had tons of visitors over at her apartment to laugh at her corniness.
So, until she could find a frame worthy of it, the short but incredibly important message from her childhood idol hung in the middle of her ancient refrigerator, held up by a magnet from Daytona Beach. When she
did
frame it, she’d attempt to do it in the most tasteful way possible. Not cheap, plastic, fake wood but maybe a nice silver frame. Something from a real department store, not just the discount places where she usually shopped.
She’d had the email for three weeks now but that didn’t matter. Taryn was still experiencing the afterglow, similar the all-consuming elation she’d felt after attending an intimate Rosanne Cash concert at the Exit In when she was twenty-three. After that concert she’d replayed every note, relived each blessed moment, and thought of little else after the show ended.
And
that
afterglow had only lasted for a week.
“Ruby Jane Morgan,” Taryn had gushed to Matt, her best friend and sometimes boyfriend, over the phone. “Can you believe it?”
In excitement she’d forwarded him the email, the one propositioning her for a job, as soon as she’d received it.
“Well, she’s just a person, right?” he’d asked, mystified at her reaction.
Taryn gasped. She thought she felt her heart skip a beat. “’Just’ a person? Ruby Jane is
not
’just’ a person. She’s considered one of country music’s biggest legends. And she’s still alive which, you know, is kind of a big deal with legends. She’s right up there with Dolly and Loretta.”
“Who’s Loretta?” Matt asked innocently.
“Oh, you did
not
just say that.”
“I just don’t think I know who she is,” Matt said lamely.
Taryn felt an unreasonable irritation at his lack of enthusiasm over her exciting and unexpected news. She wasn’t sure how such a person had even known who she, multi-media artist Taryn Magill, even was. It wasn’t like she was the toast of the art world, though some wouldn’t even consider her a real artist, considering her subject matter.
“She’s done harmony on almost every important country album for the past forty years. Created an entirely unique sound that people from every genre use? Been inducted into both the Country Music Hall of Fame
and
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? She’s inspired multiple generations of artists, won five Grammys?” Taryn offered helpfully.
“What’s her famous songs?” Matt asked. “I probably know them.”
Taryn appreciated the fact that, in spite of his obvious lack of interest, he was still trying to play along but his question left her feeling deflated.
“Well, she’s never really had a
hit
. She’s more of an artist than a hit maker. But there was ‘Crying a River’ and ‘Remember December’ and ‘Angry at the Moon’? I mean, those songs didn’t go to number one or anything but they still get played on the radio and a lot of other people covered them.”
“Don’t think I’ve heard of them…”
Taryn exhaled and shook her head in disgust at her camera, Miss Dixie, who watched her from across the room. She was almost certain that Miss Dixie smiled back at her in sympathy.
“Well, and then there’s Parker Brown.” When Matt didn’t respond, Taryn forged ahead. “When he was still alive they recorded a lot together. ‘Watch Over Me in the Night’ is considered a gospel standard, even though technically it’s about needing drugs. Bet they’d love
that
in church if someone in the congregation ever figured out the lyrics. And ‘1,000 Roads’ was on at least three movie soundtracks in the 1990’s alone…”
“Parker who? I’m sorry. I just don’t know her,” Matt apologized. “But if you’re happy about it then I am excited for
you
.”
“Some people have zero appreciation for country music history or tradition,” Taryn grunted, feigning agitation.
Realizing the conversation was completely one sided, Taryn changed the subject. She later hung up trying to remind herself that she wasn’t exactly interested in everything that
Matt
was into, either.
Like end-of-the-world apocalyptic movies. (“The Day After” had given her nightmares for weeks; she still couldn’t hear the phrase “nuclear winter” without having a mild panic attack.)
Or space stuff and avocados.
Eating at restaurants and then returning home and trying to recreate the dishes they’d just had so that they never had to go back again.
And definitely not anything related to math, which seemed to rock
his
world.
It was okay that they were two different people, with different interests. What mattered was that they loved each other and, even more, that they were
friends
.
Still, she thought it would’ve been nice to have someone who shared her enthusiasm of being contacted for a job by one of the most famous, and important, women in music.
Now, as Taryn dropped onto the wilting, but still cozy, featherbed that had once belonged to her grandmother, she let her mind wander.
Whether Matt appreciated it or not, she, Nashville native/artist/photographer and sometimes ghost hunter Taryn Magill, had just been commissioned to create not one, but
four
paintings of the Black Raven Inn–one of Nashville’s oldest, and most notorious, motels.
And
she’d been hired by someone she’d grown up listening to so much that, to Taryn at least, Ruby Jane Morgan felt like more of a family member (distant cousin perhaps) than a celebrity she’d only met through recordings.
“I don’t care if nobody else understands,” Taryn whispered to her ceiling. “This is one of the most exciting things that has ever happened to me.”
Ruby Jane Morgan’s music had been there through so much of Taryn’s life that it was impossible to think of a past without her. Her music was
that
important to Taryn.
And later, when she’d lost her fiancé in the fiery crash, she’d felt Ruby Jane’s own personal tragedy coming through in her music and that, too, had meant something to Taryn.
In fact, on the long dark nights when Taryn had thought there was no longer a point in going on, Ruby’s music had saved her.
As a child she’d literally worn the 8-track version of Ruby Jane’s concept album out. The album (when listened to in chronological order) told a story about a woman who lived during the Civil War and dressed as man to fight alongside her husband.
She’d played it so much that her parents had dreaded going anywhere with her because it meant getting in the car where the album played on a continuous loop. In fact, Taryn wasn’t convinced that they didn’t have something to do with the mysterious disappearance of said 8-track.
“Sorry, honey,” her mother had apologized one hot August morning, they’d all piled in and Taryn had recoiled in surprise as the Rolling Stones spilled from the speakers. “It must have fallen out. Or something.”
But her mother had not sounded apologetic at all and, in fact, her father had even looked a trifle relieved. And guilty.
Luckily, however, her grandmother had bought her a new version, this time a ’45 record.
“Keep this here at
my
house,” she’d winked as she handed it to Taryn on her next visit. “We’ll take special care of it here and I can guarantee you it won’t go missing.”
Taryn had listened to it every time she visited, and played it out later when she moved in. Eventually, her grandmother Stella had replaced it with a CD, doing it quietly without making a fuss, as she did most things where Taryn’s needs were concerned.
And now…
She was going to meet Ruby Jane.
In person
. Not as a fan, either, but as someone the artist herself had sought out. It was a dream come true–to be considered an equal, more or less, by your idol. She was meeting her on equal footing, under the impression that she’d somehow gained the other woman’s respect.
“I knew that BA in Fine Arts would come in handy eventually,” Taryn laughed gleefully, tossing a throw pillow in the air. “It only took $60,000 in student loans to get here!”