Shaker Town (Taryn's Camera Book 4) (11 page)

T
aryn always left Rob with more than she went in with, and not just in terms of advice. This time she left with new ear buds, a paper sack full of candles, and some essential oils he swore that, when mixed with a carrier oil, would help ease the pain in her joints. The narcotics didn't offer much relief but she hadn't tried eucalyptus oil yet...Who knew, though. It might work.

The restaurant was closed by the time she returned but she'd gone through a fast food place and picked up a sandwich and milkshake and she had snacks back in her room.

As it turned out, she'd done a little more shopping than she'd thought and her arms were full of paint supplies, clothes, and music CDs as she made her way up the walk to her lodgings. She thought she was balancing everything pretty well but as she was jiggling for her room key her cell phone flipped out of her pocket and landed on the floor with a crash.

“Well. Shit,” Taryn muttered, peering over her bags to the floor. It was flipped open but at least it hadn't shattered. This was why she didn't own expensive electronics.

With her hands still full she carried the bags into the room and placed them up against the wall. Glad she left the lamp on while she was gone, the bedroom was filled with a cheerful glow now instead of being gloomy and uninviting.

Remembering her phone, Taryn turned around and started back out to the hallway. She stopped short, though, in the opening. The phone was no longer on the floor.

“What the hell?” Taryn asked, hands on her hips. Nobody was there. Nobody had come up behind her.

She was about to throw a little tantrum, convinced some phone thief had slipped up behind her and stolen her cheap Walmart phone, when something caught the corner of her eye. Her phone, now closed, was laying on the edge of her desk.

T
aryn wasn't usually up for breakfast but that morning she woke up at 8:00 am, sharp, and feeling like her stomach was going to fall out if she didn't fill it soon.

Everyone else must have felt that way, too, because the dining room was crowded. When Jenny, the hostess, asked her if she minded sharing a table with someone else she swore it wasn't a problem. Of course, that “someone else” wound up being Andy, the nonbeliever book writer.

“Hey, I'm sorry about being rude the other day,” Taryn apologized as soon as she was seated. “Working alone, not getting out much except to work, can kind of make you antisocial after awhile.”

“No worries, my dear,” Andy boomed. “I can get a little rude myself.”

Taryn ordered her breakfast and then sat back awkwardly, not really knowing what to say. Andy appeared uneasy, too, so the two sat together quietly, trying to look interested in other things. Finally, she broke the silence.

“You're here pretty early,” she observed with polite interest.

“Having some work done on my house,” Andy explained. His glasses were fogging up and she couldn't understand it, though it fascinated her. It looked like little clouds were forming under the glass and she just could not look away. “Thought I'd stay here a few nights and get some relief from all the dust and hammering.”

“It's a good place to get some peace,” she chattered brightly. “Pretty, people friendly, good food. I've enjoyed being here.”

“Yeah, well, they pay for you to stay here. I'm paying the regular tourist rate so I don't get much of a vacation,” he stated with pronounced bitterness.

Taryn smiled uneasily, not knowing how to respond. She wasn't going to apologize for working. The food and lodging was part of her salary and she could go months without working at all.

“Well, it's a working vacation for me,” she responded at last.

“You'd think they'd be able to find someone around here who could paint a picture,” he mused. “So they wouldn't have to pay someone to stay here and eat.”

What could she possibly say in response to that? If she agreed it was going to sound like she didn't think she should've been hired. But to say anything else would be argumentative. She just decided to let it go. Luckily the food arrived soon after.

They weren't but a few minutes into their meals, however, when Andy began ruminating again. “So you don't really believe that ghost nonsense do you?”

“Yes,” she stated without apology. “I do.”

Andy laughed, an unattractive sound coming from him. “Really?”

She concurred, unperturbed.

“But you went to college didn't you? Don't you have a degree?”

Taryn studied him with interest over her fresh fruit. “Yeah. I did. But what does that have to do with it? You know there are degree programs out there that study mythology, paranormal studies, religious experience, cultural anthropology, folklore...”

“Yes, but from a scientific viewpoint for the most part. In an observation kind of way. I think most intellectually evolved people these days wouldn't be giving in to supernatural explanations when science is reason,” he argued.

“And yet you're writing a book on the Shakers?”

“But not because I believe in what they experienced,” he stated. “I'm writing about the opposite.”

It was no wonder they weren't paying him to stay there. She kept this thought to herself. It would go over like a lead balloon.

“Do you go to church?” he pressed. “Have you been baptized, saved?”

“Am I washed in the blood of the lamb?” she asked mildly. “No. I'm not religious. I don't subscribe to any one particular faith. But I believe in something and I respect those who do, as long as they don't go out of their way to press their beliefs on me.”

“Some would say that's hypocritical, that you can't straddle both sides of the fence,” he remarked.

“I'm not so concerned with what others think. All I can worry about is myself.”

“So how much money do you make at things like this?” he asked, changing the subject.

“Not as much as I really need, but enough to get by,” she replied. Taryn had always thought it was rude to talk of politics, money, or religion with someone she didn't know. He'd almost covered all three.

“So you're doing this until...until what?” he pressed. “What's the ultimate goal? You know, what kind of job are you waiting for?”

Taryn was confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, artists can't
really
make a career out of painting. Not unless you're teaching or finding another way of supplementing your income,” he replied primly.

It was difficult for people to see what she did as a real job, with a bonafide income. Taryn imagined it was that way with any freelancing business.

“I manage okay,” she said simply.

“But back to these ghosts,” he continued. “It's clear to see what's really going on.”

“Yes?”

“Well,” he rubbed his hands together, as though excited. “Let's say someone sees an apparition in a costume. It's a ghost! They've time traveled! Whatever. It's obvious they've just caught a glimpse of a docent or employee. And as for the person disappearing or being able to see through them? A trick of the light maybe. The mind sees what it wants to see.”

“And the noises? The singing, the laughing, the talking when nobody's there?” Taryn asked, fascinated.

“Old pipes, the wind carrying voices from the other side of the park, people in another room...” he supplied, obviously quite pleased with himself.

“What about the people who wake up in the middle of the night and see a ghost in the room with them?”

“Dreaming, of course. Maybe a night terror, sleep paralysis. The power of suggestion because they've already come here believing the place is haunted.”

Andy leaned back in the chair, causing it to creak just a little, and drummed his thick fingers on his ample stomach.

“I guess you have it all figured out then,” Taryn mumbled wryly. She stood up and grabbed her knapsack. “I hope you have a good stay here and get lots of research done.”

And I hope you get an eye full in the archive room,
she thought to herself as she sauntered out of the busy dining room.

S
he might have been avoiding the archive room, but that didn't mean she had to stop researching. She was going to get to the bottom of the mystery, no matter what. It seemed clear to her that whoever was haunting the park liked her (why else put out the fire and rescue her cell phone) and probably died a violent death there. Taryn thought it was the young woman she saw from her window and that maybe she'd been attacked and killed, either in the archive room or schoolhouse. She didn't know how the Shaker Town murder fit into the scheme of things, or if it did at all. Neither Rob nor Julie could be certain the elder who was murdered was male or female, or what decade it had happened in.

None of this gave Taryn much to work with. Still, the Shakers had been excellent record keepers and many of them kept diaries and letters they'd saved. There was a very good chance that she'd find a clue somewhere.

She also knew she wasn't asking the right person. Someone had to know more.

It took her three days and being a lot more social than she was used to but she finally found her man in Eddie Jay, resident horse wrangler.

Eddie Jay, who went by both names, was in his early sixties and had worked at Shaker Town for more than twenty years.

“I figure I know just about any time somebody farts around here,” he bragged to Taryn. Incidentally, that's what everyone else had told her about him, too. He sounded perfect.

Taryn followed him around the barn, like a little kid, as he fed and brushed down the horses. They were big, beautiful beasts. She'd thought they were Clydesdale at first but he'd taken the time to explain to her that they weren't. And then he'd given her the long-running story on their history and how he was certain that the Budweiser horses weren't true Clydesdale, either. Taryn was itching to get on one of the horses and ride but her orthopedist back in Nashville had told her that with her Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome it could seriously injure her hip or back. She wasn't sure how hard she was going to take that advice yet.

“So you must know a whole lot about the history of the place,” Taryn maintained, encouraging him to speak further. It didn't take much to get him talking, though; she'd already learned that.

“Oh yes. Know just about everything there is to know about this place here,” he agreed. Unlike most of the other employees, he didn't wear a costume but his tattered jeans and short-sleeved flannel shirt were a different kind of uniform. She hadn't seen him wear anything else since she'd been there.

“So I was kind of wondering about the guy who was killed here, back in the 1800's,” she added, just in case there was more than one.

“Uh huh, yep,” he smacked his lips, a dry sound that made one of the horses shake his tail with vigor. “Hit aside of the head with something. Lived a few days before passing on. Never able to talk, though.”

“So they don't know who did it?”

“Naw. Most likely someone from town come in and done it, trying to steal something. There was some lean winters around here, some folks didn't have much. Lots of jealousy of the people up here. They might have thought 'em quacks but when their food supply was low and their feet was cold they'd come a runnin,” he grinned.

“So maybe somebody wanting something and they got caught?” Taryn pressed.

“Yeah, I'd say they got caught in the act and then clobbered the feller to keep him from blabbin.' They didn't take kindly to thieves back then,” he added.

“There was a girl here about that time, too,” Taryn badgered him, thinking of her ghost. “Maybe she was murdered, too. Or killed herself?”

Eddie Jay scratched the stubble at his chin and then ran his hand through his gray, but thick, head of hair. He considered her question as he studied the goats in the pen, like they might have the answer. Finally, he shrugged. “No, don't know of any woman dying. Leastways, not of anything unnatural. Maybe sickness or something. Ought to be in the record books, though.”

“A suicide maybe?” she offered.

“Well, those happened, of course, but they weren't talked about. Wait a minute, are you talking about the white lady?”

Taryn nodded.

“Yeah, I seen her once. Kind of skipping around. Don't know who she is, though. Awfully young. I'd say she was somebody who got the lung fever. It happened.”

Taryn was relieved to be speaking to someone who took ghosts in a matter-of-fact manner.

After thanking him for his time and giving both horses a quick petting, she started out of the barn and then stopped. “Hey, one more thing. Have you heard anything about babies in the pond?”

Eddie Jay snorted. “That's horse shit. They'd a been more likely to be pulling them out of the pond, not throwing them in. The more the merrier.”

L
ooking at the schoolhouse now, it was hard to imagine that it had ever resembled the sound structure in her photographs. Each time she stood before it, however, she couldn't help but see the young woman running towards it and disappearing into its walls. As she painted, she let her mind create a story. It was not only a way of entertaining herself while she painted and listened to Jason Isbell sing “Alabama Pines,” it was a way to see the building as something it used to be, so that it would hopefully comes across through her painting.