Black Raven Inn: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 6) (3 page)

T
he Black Raven Inn
didn’t look that bad from the outside. Well, it was
bad
, but it wasn’t scary-bad. In fact, Taryn thought it was rather charming in a neglected, kitschy kind of way.

“Eh, I’ve seen worse,” Taryn said as she shrugged her shoulders.

Despite the ominous name, the building was painted a cheerful yellow. Or rather, it
had
been a cheerful yellow a long time ago. Over the course of several decades the color had faded and was almost white in some places; in others it had peeled and flaked off, leaving behind crumbling scars of bleak concrete. As an old roadside motor lodge, it only had one floor and was the kind of the place where you could drive right up to your door. The windows, now boarded up to slow down the vandals if not stop them completely, still mostly contained the bright red shutters that flanked them.

The 1950’s-era sign that still rose proudly above the building had once lit up the area at night, blazing stark neon colors across the sky.

It was miraculously still on, but only the letter “I” in “Inn” still worked. The other bulbs had either burned out or been intentionally damaged from people trying to
put
them out.

The parking lot and motel were surrounded by a makeshift plywood wall in an attempt to keep trespassers away. There was a gate, though, and Taryn squeezed through it easily enough.

Worried about people who shouldn’t be there, she carried her “weapons” in her back pocket. Although, to be fair, if someone attacked her she’d never have a chance. It took her a solid minute to get the blade out (the fear of cutting herself was strong) and the one time she’d tried the mace she’d almost blinded herself.

Still, it was something.

Taryn didn’t need to worry about people, though. She was the only one trespassing at the moment.

Up close, the motel didn’t look so much different from some of the roadside inns she’d stayed at on job assignments. The income she earned from recreating the past with her paintbrush earned her just enough to pay the major bills and give her a little left over–it didn’t exactly leave her living high on the hog.

Of course, things had changed over the past few months. The settlement she’d received on her last assignment on Jekyll Island had allowed her to live a very comfortable lifestyle and, if she continued to manage her finances prudently, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for awhile. She couldn’t quit working, of course, and would still have to take on jobs but she could select them more wisely now and not have to take everything that was thrown her way, like she had in the past.

“If I sold Aunt Sarah’s house…” Taryn mumbled as she trudged across the parking lot.

But that wasn’t a thought she liked to seriously entertain herself with. Sure, the old farm house in New Hampshire would fetch her a pretty penny if she put it on the market, and the attorney had assured her it would sell quickly, but Taryn couldn’t stand the thought of parting with it, especially after having paid it a visit at the beginning of summer. It was going to take a ton of money to fix it, and she’d need all those grants and loans she’d researched if she was going to preserve it, but it was worth it.

“Maybe I’ll even live in it,” she mused thoughtfully, her tennis-shoed feet crushing weeds that poked up through the cracked asphalt.

Matt, though.
Matt
would be a problem.

He couldn’t possibly leave his job at NASA and relocate to the woods of the northeast. He
said
he could, that he’d go wherever she went, but she wasn’t sure she could take on that responsibility. What if he hated it? What if he got up there, after quitting his job, and grew depressed and ended up resenting her for taking him away from the one dream he’d had since childhood?

“What if I’m not really in love with him?” she asked herself out loud.

That, of course, was at the heart of the issue and something she struggled with every day.

Taryn had loved Matt since the day they’d met as children–two misfits who had bonded together and created a magical childhood fortress nobody else had ever been able to penetrate or share. Not even Andrew, her fiancé who’d passed away in the car crash that had changed her life.

And they had a tremendous amount of chemistry together. Not only could they read each other’s thoughts from hundreds of miles away, but touching him was electric.

“But still.” She sighed.

That niggling “still” was what kept her awake some nights.

If they were truly in love, wouldn’t they have moved in together by now? Or made some kind of formal commitment? After all, they’d been in a physical relationship for a year. And although there had been talks here and there of the two of them moving in together or making a more central base together, the discussions were always vague.

“It’s a fact. I’ve been spoiled by romantic books and movies,” she groaned as she stood in the middle of the parking lot and stared at the building in front of her. “I’ve got to cut back on the Rom Coms. Kate Hudson and Sandy Bullock, we’re going to have to break up for awhile.”

She hoped they wouldn’t miss her too much.

Maybe
this
was what love felt like in real life. Maybe it was more complicated and stickier than she’d originally thought as a young idealist engaged to Andrew. Back when she’d felt butterflies every day.

“I still feel butterflies,” she said. And she did. In fact, she was feeling them right now, just looking at the Black Raven Inn. “I still get them.”

Now, the butterflies came from somewhere else. She got them from the old houses and buildings she worked with. Taryn had never met an old house she didn’t like. (Windwood Farm might have been stretching it, but to be fair she liked the
house
. It was everything that went on inside of it that turned her off.)

The
motel
before her had seen better days for sure, but there was still something mesmerizing about it.

It was nothing compared to the sprawling, glossy complexes built today. The chains with their cookie-cutter rooms and lookalike lobbies. Interior designed to include the same generic prints above all the beds, the same duvets, and same marble backsplashes.

The high rises that climbed into the air with their state-of-the-art fitness centers (key card entry only, please) and pristine indoor swimming pools with WiFi access in every corner.

Televisions that allowed you to order room service without even picking up a phone.

Wake-up calls set by pushing a series of numbers.

Checkouts by leaving your key card in the room and agreeing to the receipt via email.

Why, these days, you could stay in a hotel without ever interacting with another human being.

The Black Raven Inn consisted of twenty rooms, all with kitchenettes. It had boasted a swimming pool but that had been filled in years before; local skateboarders had used it for practice and one had actually broken his neck. That had put an end to that bit of fun.

There were parking spots in front of each room, as well as about two dozen general spots. The doors were made of cut-rate wood, some with holes in the bottom where someone had given them a good kick or fallen drunkenly into them. The rooms had never upgraded to key cards; they still used the “old fashioned” keys in their rusted holes. Brass numbers hung, some lopsided, in the middle of each door. Most were tarnished from years of neglect and some were missing altogether.

“Souvenirs,” Taryn laughed, the sound strangely hollow in the barren landscape. People would take just about anything if they could get their hands on it.

The main office's entrance was under an awning that allowed cars to drive up and stay covered while the owner checked in, was boarded up. Taryn couldn’t see inside.

Someone, or more likely several people, had graffitied over the pavement by the entrance and over the boards that kept people out (hopefully kept them out and not
in
). Some of the images Taryn found fairly interesting–popular cartoon characters and three dimensional graphic designs. These were interwoven with curses and would-be “Satanic” symbols like pentagrams and upside down crosses.

“Someone needs to do a little Googling.” Taryn sighed, tracing her finger over a pentagram with the word “Satan” scrawled inside it.

With the complex enclosed inside the fence, Taryn felt cut off from the outside world. She didn’t mind this.

Although she could hear the traffic speeding up and down the road less than one-hundred feet away, she couldn’t
see
it. With her music playing as she worked, it would be easy enough to block out the sound. She’d been promised that although the fence would remain, the boards and all barriers to the interior of the motel would be removed. She’d have free access to whatever she needed.

Taryn continued to walk around the outside of the motel, occasionally pausing to step back and take it all in, or move in closer to touch a board on a window or a door knob.

When she reached Room #5, Parker Brown’s room, she hesitated. It looked normal enough. It was just a door, after all.

Without warning, the sound of footsteps running down the pavement filled the air. There was an urgency in them, a force that had Taryn jumping and yelping. She turned, expecting to find a police officer or fellow trespasser coming towards her. Her hand immediately moved to her mace, just in case it was the latter. The sound was right on top of her.

There wasn’t anyone there. Taryn was the only person in sight.

Wrapping her arms around her for comfort, she stepped away from the hotel, walking backwards while still keeping it in view. Her skin had grown cold and clammy, her face chilled from a breeze that didn’t exist.

“Why is it so cold?” she asked herself. “The temperature around the motel has to be a good ten degrees colder than it is out here in the parking lot.”

Taryn got a flash of darkness then, like a shadow that crept across her line of vision. It was thick and opaque and smelled of decay.

But there was nothing there.

“The motel’s meant to be haunted,” Taryn had told Matt when she forwarded him the email from Ruby. “But it’s not like I haven’t dealt with
that
before.”

“I have to warn you,” Ruby Jane had said in her email, “it’s in terrible shape. It looks like a place that’s either full of ghosts or should just be torn down.”

Taryn smiled at the thought now, trying to shrug off what she’d just seen and felt. After all, Ruby’s words and the camera shop’s musings could pretty much sum up most of Taryn’s favorite places.

R
uby Jane Morgan might have
had multiple awards on her mantle, but from the outside her house looked like any other home one could find in any upscale subdivision. No towering gate with posted guard deterred autograph seekers. The circular driveway boasted a Prius (Taryn resisted the urge to peek in the windows) and a dirty blue Chevy truck. The side yard was fenced in and Taryn’s presence was met by a melody of barking dogs as they clamored over one another to check her out.

The expansive front lawn with its ornamental bushes, landscaping stones, creeping vines, and greenhouse flowers had clearly been professionally designed but there were also toddler toys scattered around the manicured grass. An electric pink Barbie car, big plastic slide, and a cheap inflatable wading pool with a sailboat floating upside down inside were basking in the autumn sunlight.

“Those are going to leave a mark,” Taryn said, looking down at the grass that was already yellowing beneath the toys.

She was thrilled that her idol was only human.

Still, it was hard to imagine that the woman whose albums Taryn had collected since she was a kid was basically just a grandmother with yapping dogs and generic toys from a strip mall store.

Taryn tensely smoothed her tunic down and ran her tongue across her upper teeth again, eliminating wrinkles and lipstick stains. She had stressed over her outfit all morning. She wanted to appear professional without looking like she’d tried too hard. The best thing about working
this
job out of Nashville was that she had access to her entire wardrobe. She’d made use of it too, trying on everything she owned at least twice before settling on the skinny jeans, knee-high boots, white peasant tunic, and infinity scarf.

She wasn’t sure what she expected, as she stood on the porch of the Tudor style home and rang the bell, but it certainly wasn’t that the lady of the house herself would open the door. When Taryn found herself face to face with the star, she thought she might pass out. 

“Hi!” Taryn said brightly instead, hoping her words would come out in the correct order. Her mouth was as dry as a desert. “I’m Taryn Magill. I’m a few minutes early but I wanted to make sure I’d find it and…”

She was talking too much and too fast. Ruby Jane, who stood barefoot in her foyer, holding the door open in welcome, smiled indulgently. She’d probably seen and heard worse.

“I know who you are,” she said pleasantly when Taryn paused to catch a breath. “I saw your picture on the internet.”

The thought of a celebrity kind of cyberstalking her sent Taryn reeling into a parallel universe. Now she thought she might throw up. Instead, she tried her best to smile wider. “I am
so
happy to meet you,” she bubbled.

And, with that, she was invited inside.