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

“
S
o
what’s the verdict, doc
?”

Taryn had been waiting on the examination table for thirty minutes. Her doctor always ran late, but since she usually had a book with her she didn’t normally mind. However, today the sky was clear for the first time in four days and she was itching to get back to the motel.

She’d wanted to reschedule the appointment. This was an important visit, though, and she needed to be there.

Her doctor, a young woman with long brown hair, closed the door and pulled her stool up next to Taryn. In her hands she held a folder, several inches thick. It was Taryn’s records from the past year. She’d turned into their biggest client; Taryn liked to think her insurance payments were keeping the entire office up and running. She’d been there so much that the staff had gotten together and bought her a Christmas present the year before.

“It’s not
great
news,” Dr. Culver warned her.

“Ruh roh,” Taryn grimaced. “Did it grow?”

“Yes,” her doctor admitted. “You started out at 3.8 and now we’re up to 4.2.”

For those with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, the aortic aneurysm was the development nobody wanted to hear. It was the one thing that took the painful, awful connective tissue disorder that made Taryn’s tissues and organs frail and fragile become something potentially terminal. Although the condition wasn’t life threatening in and of itself, it came with a multitude of complications that caused chronic, often debilitating pain, and plagued her with symptoms that attacked each and every one of her systems.

There was no cure for EDS, but the various symptoms could be addressed and treated individually, even if the “treatment” was just a temporary fix.

When you threw in the complication of an aneurysm, however, the game changed. She’d hoped to avoid one, but there it was. And it was growing.

“Are you having any new symptoms?” her doctor asked.

Taryn shrugged. “I can feel the pulsating in my stomach more often. It hurts to eat too, but it always has so I wouldn’t say that’s
new
, necessarily.”

“You’re down ten pounds from last month.”

“That might also be from the vomiting. I’ve been doing that a lot more.”

“I can give you something to help that. Anything triggering the vomiting?”

“Nah,” Taryn replied. “It’s usually a little worse at night and right after big meals. I’ve been trying to eat smaller ones throughout the day.”

“What about the tummy pain?”

“Mostly with eating. It’s taken me out of the game a few times and I’ve had to lie down and keep still for a few hours, but nothing specific seems to trigger it. It just happens.”

“You know that if you get that ripping, tearing feeling that doesn’t feel like your ‘normal’ pain you need to go straight to the hospital,” Dr. Culver warned her. “It probably won’t be anything serious, but we don’t want to risk it. We’re at that stage now where we have to start worrying about ruptures and dissections.”

“Is there
anything
we can do?”

“I’ve sent a referral to the cardiologist and gastroenterologist so you should be hearing from them soon. Your last echo was abnormal and showed some mitral stenosis and general hypokenesis. We need to keep an eye on those things. We’ll continue to monitor your blood pressure and try to keep your stress levels down, too. We
might
need to start talking surgery soon. It’s risky for you with the EDS and it doesn’t always work but it’s something we don’t want to rule out just yet. How’s your pain level?”

So Taryn spent the next fifteen minutes talking about her options, describing her latest symptoms, and scheduling more tests.

Over the past year and a half. her health had taken a dramatic turn and she was still having trouble dealing with the new developments. As though seeing the past through her camera and communicating with the dead wasn’t a big enough disruption, she now had these confounding medical issues to worry about.

And, as much as she wanted to ignore them, she couldn’t. They were progressing and she was getting worse, like it or not.

With each passing month the pain grew more difficult to manage, even with strong pain medication. It was becoming harder to walk, eating was no longer as fun as it had once been, and her energy levels were at an all-time low. She dutifully consumed her vitamins and supplements, was religious about taking her medications on time, ate a healthy diet (something that pained her since she did love her junk food), went through the physical therapy they sent her to, and did everything her EDS specialist recommended. She was a model patient.

And yet she continued to worsen.

Since there was no cure for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, however, she was basically putting a Band-Aid on everything until…

“Until I die,” she muttered aloud as she trudged to her car, angry and frustrated. “I’m going to die and I
still
don’t understand the ending of ‘Lost.’”

Sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

Aker
,
Taryn
discovered, was more accommodating than she’d initially given him credit for. After working with him for a little over a week she’d almost stopped apologizing every time she changed her schedule. Almost.

“Hey, sorry I didn’t call,” she spoke into her phone as she drove along Broadway through downtown. “I got held up at the doctor. Is it okay if we go now and work a few hours?”

“That’s fine,” he replied, his voice clipped but courteous.

“I’m on my way there but if you need some time I can–“

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. I’m ready. Don’t get out of your vehicle until I get there.”

That was another thing, too. He was
always
ready. Taryn wondered if the man just sat by his phone, waiting for her to tell him she needed to go to the motel.

The thought was kinkier sounding than she’d intended.

The Nashville skyline rose above her as she flew across the bridge towards East Nashville. She could remember a time when she’d been afraid to venture to that part of town, a fear that was probably as much urban legend as anything. Now more and more houses were being renovated and the area was teeming with young professionals, families with children, and funky businesses.

Things changed. Taryn wasn’t sure she always liked those changes but she was always happy to have new places to eat.

Over the course of the past week, she hadn’t gotten much work done. She’d shown up twice to take pictures but the brutal rain had restricted her to the motel’s interior. The interior, as luck would have it, was too dark without any natural light (the electricity was sporadic and mostly didn’t work). The motel’s open parking lot and motor lodge style didn’t offer plentiful protection from the weather.

Plus, with the rain being so bad, there wasn’t anywhere for Aker to go and still keep an eye on her. One afternoon he’d followed her into the small, cramped lobby to get out of the rain and that had been an uncomfortable experience for both parties involved.

Taryn was itching to get some real work done. She’d only taken a handful of pictures and none of them had been of the rooms. At the rate she was going, she was never going to get finished, much less meet her deadline.

The last thing she needed was a pissed off country singer. She’d never be allowed in the Ryman or Tootsie’s again.

“I should have been sketching by now,” she complained.

When her car rudely ignored her and didn’t offer a response, she popped in a CD and turned Shooter Jennings up loud. She was in the mood to jam, despite the dismal news from her doctor.

Determined to make the most out of what was left of the day, Taryn sped down the road with her windows down, her hair flying back from her face. She couldn’t do anything about the state of her health but she
could
do her job. That was something, at least.

Aker, true to his word, showed up exactly fifteen minutes later. Taryn had barely pulled into the decrepit parking lot herself when his vehicle came sidling up next to hers.

“Better weather today, huh?” she asked with a smile.

“Huh,” he grunted, which could have been interpreted any number of ways.

“I’m probably going to stay about two hours, is that okay?” she asked brightly, trying not to lose the smile she’d plastered on.

Taryn was determined to make this man like her. It had become a personal challenge.

“Take however long you need,” he barked. He was already unfolding his chair and dragging out his cooler.

As Taryn started towards the motel’s entrance, however, he jogged ahead of her. “Wait just a minute,” Aker ordered as he passed her by, a set of keys jingling in his beefy hand.

Obligingly, Taryn stood back while he unlocked the door. She waited impatiently as he marched through the small rooms, checking the dark corners and peering into nooks and crannies.

“Like a little kid at bedtime, asking Daddy to look under the bed,” she snorted.

Although, of course, Taryn’s father had never been
that
kind of daddy. Aloof and lost in his own head much of the time, he’d had more time for academia than a young daughter who might be afraid of the boogeyman.

She’d checked her
own
closets.

When Aker gave her the “all clear” sign, Taryn flashed him a thumbs up and entered the lobby.

She’d upgraded to an iPod fairly recently and was enjoying slowly adding her vast music collection to it. Heart was currently blasting from the tiny speakers but to set the mood she turned on Parker Brown. The song was about pine trees and being close to nature–or so she thought, he was a little elusive. For all she knew it could’ve been about his pet parrot. Ruby Jane sang backup and their voices blended in perfect harmony, soaring over the instruments and twisting and turning around one another until you couldn’t tell where one started and the other began.

Taryn had downloaded his albums the night before and uploaded Ruby’s from the CDs she already owned. She wanted to listen to them sing while she worked. It seemed right.

In spite of the sunlight, which probably only
felt
brighter since it had been so dreary lately, the room was still gloomy. Taryn couldn’t imagine the place feeling welcoming to anyone, even back before it was essentially a flop house.

“There must have been a time when it was okay,” she said aloud. “I need to check out some old pictures of it.”

Her voice got lost in the stuffiness and tepid darkness, but it was still reassuring to hear it.

“I might go crazy, but at least I have myself to keep me company,” she giggled.

The song changed to “Close Up the Honky Tonks,” a Buck Owens cover. The upbeat melody gave Taryn a boost of energy and she found herself working faster with the increased drive.

As she walked around and took her shots, she tried to imagine Parker Brown staying in such a place, and even weirder,
Ruby Jane
being there with him. Although, of course, Ruby had her house in Nashville; she had no real reason to spend the night at the Black Raven–unless the rumors about her and Parker had been true.

“Everyone thinks they had a thing going up until he died,” she’d informed Matt. “At this point it’s just assumed.”

“Why?” he’d asked, reasonably enough, so it had Taryn pausing.

“Well, I guess because they had such great chemistry. The pictures of them together, their singing, and all the song lyrics she wrote about him after he died.”

“How do you know they’re about him?”

Sometimes his logic frustrated her. Why did he have to be so darn reasonable?

“Because,” she’d stammered. “They’re about loving someone and them being gone. Like, gone as in
death
.”

“Hmmm…”

She knew what he wanted to say, that since she’d lost someone herself she read death into everything. And, the fact was, he might have been right.

But I’m also right about this
, she thought. Parker had died before she was born but even a fool could see and hear the love between the two.

No way was that superficial Matt
, she thought smugly.

“I clearly need a life,” she mumbled. “I’m walking around mentally examining the love life between a dead person and my boss.”

Even worse, she was having a make believe argument with Matt.

Taryn let herself get back to the task at hand. She couldn’t see the elegant Ruby being comfortable on one of the rickety chairs or what she imagined were hard, unforgiving mattresses. Even as a young woman in her twenties, Ruby had been sophisticated and looked every inch the lady, especially next to her fellow band mates who looked like they’d just robbed a motorcycle gang. It was as much Ruby’s elegance and beauty against their rough edges and wild reputation as it was their innovative style of country music that had given Silver Streak its fame.

Given its location on a main road, the motel was unnaturally quiet. Taryn felt like she could’ve been on an isolated mountaintop rather than downtown Nashville. As she got lost in her work she became even more focused on surroundings, the idea of Aker’s presence waiting outside and the faint sounds of passing vehicles drifted away. Miss Dixie provided a special rhythm for her that fell instantly in tune with and as Taryn moved from room to room, trying different angles and taking shots, she fell into her own little world, lulled by the “clicks” and flashes of light.

It was the closest she ever got to meditating, and the most relaxed she ever felt.

When she entered the small break room with the fetid mattress and garbage-covered table, Taryn turned in slow circles to ensure she captured the entire space. A rustling sound from one of the corners had her surprised and she hesitated, finger half pressed down on the button.

She couldn’t make out much more than the outlines of the furniture in the darkness, but when the noise came again, this time louder, a shadow materialized on the wall in front of her. As the rustling sound increased, filling the room with a crackling that was as painful as fingernails on a chalkboard, the hefty shadow grew and grew until it was nearly as tall and wide as Taryn herself. She watched in fascinated horror as the darkness of the silhouette swirled and seemed to move inside its boundaries. Then, in a move that should have been impossible, it seemed to
leap
at her, coming clear off the wall.

“Eeeekkk!” Taryn screamed, her voice muffled by the room’s stillness and dampness. In a reflex move, her finger pushed down on her camera, filling the space with the bright light of Miss Dixie’s flash.

Wasting no time for answers, Taryn turned to run and collided straight into the wall behind her, tripping over the large sewer rat that was also trying to escape the airless space.

“Miss Magill!” Aker’s voice boomed from the lobby. “Everything okay?”

Embarrassed, Taryn clutched her head in both hands and leaned against the wall. “In here. I’m okay.”

When Aker found her, she was rubbing at her temples and cursing. “What happened?”

“I heard a noise and saw a shadow,” she explained. “I thought it was–well, I don’t know what I
thought
it was. It just turned out to be a rat, though. A really big rat, like a 1970’s horror movie kind of rat that’s been eating radioactive cheese, but still just a rat. He’s gone now.”

“Would you like for me to find the vandal?” Aker demanded, face lined in determination.

“
’Vandal
?’” Taryn croaked. “It’s a rat. I think it will be okay. I’ll be ready for the sucker next time.”

Although Aker did not look convinced, he left her alone and went back to man his post.

“A damn rat,” she shook her head, embarrassed with herself. She’d done some foolish things on jobs before, but she didn’t usually have a witness. That was going to take some getting used to.