Griffith Tavern (Taryn's Camera Book 2) (15 page)

She didn’t remember much of what they did the next day. It was a normal day. But she remembered that night.

Now, sitting there at the table alone, she was struck with a feeling of lonesomeness that hit her like a freight train. She was really and truly by herself, no matter how many people were around her. The punch in her gut was sharp but somehow made her feel as weightless as the feeling of going down that first big hill on a rollercoaster. With a little wave to Daniel out on the dance floor, she let herself out and drove back to her room.

A
re you okay?” Matt’s voice was groggy, unfocused. She’d woken him up. Of course, it was 2:30 am. Or 22:30 am. It was kind of hard to tell. The numbers kept jumping around. Taryn pulled herself to the edge of the bed to get a closer look at the digital clock and nearly tumbled off onto the floor.

“I’m fine,” she slurred. “Just stopped off at the store and picked up some cookies. I had the munchies.” Only it came out more like “punchies.”

“It sounds like you picked up more than that,” Matt said mildly.

Giving up on trying to read the time, Taryn fell back on her pillow and stared up at her ceiling. The ceiling fan was twisting around and around at an impossible speed and now it felt like the whole room was spinning. Bad idea.

“Maybe a little Bailey’s,” she admitted, glancing at an empty glass on the nightstand to her left. “And a small Jack Daniels,” she added, glancing at the empty bottle on the nightstand to her right.

“Well, I hope it was fun.” Matt didn’t drink; he was a straight arrow. That annoyed the hell out of her.

“I was!” she exclaimed brightly. “I had myself a little party. Only now I’m all out of cookies. And Jack. But I still have some Baileys left…”

If she could just get up and walk to the other side of the room she could remedy that. But the last time she’d tried she’d tripped over her boots and sent herself flying across the floor. She’d made such a racket Delphina had come up to check on her. The look she’d given Taryn was a sad one, but not too judgmental. Taryn was sure she’d seen worse.

“I thought you were going out tonight.”

Taryn kicked her feet up in the air, making little circles with her toes. Was one leg longer than the other? Oh God! What was happening to her? Oh, never mind, she sighed with relief. Half her bottom was propped up on a pillow. “I did go out tonight. But I didn’t do my drinking there. I
don’t
drink and drive.”

“Well, that’s good,” Matt said, relief in his voice.

“Because that’s wrong.”

“Yes it is.”

“And dangerous,” she added.

“That’s right.”

“And it would be nice if you were here in my bed with me.”

“What?!” In her drunken state the squeak in his voice sent her into peals of laughter. She muffled them with her blanket, lest Delphina come back up to see what all the racket was again.

“I’m lonely. I didn’t realize how lonely I was until tonight. Did you know I haven’t slept with anyone since Andrew died?”

“No, I don’t believe it’s a topic that’s ever come up between us,” he sighed.

“That’s because you’re a prude. And I don’t mean sex. Because I’ve done
that
. I mean, I haven’t
slept
with anyone, like actually slept. I miss that. I think it’s why my nightmares are so bad. There’s people around me in motels but it’s not the same. It’s not like I can just go knock on their doors and ask them if I can get in bed with them,” she rambled. She decided to try to make another go of the Baileys and this time she made it all the way across the room to the bottle. Patting herself on the back for this, her triumph was short-lived when she couldn’t figure out how to pour the contents into her glass. Finally, she gave up and tilted the bottle back.

“I guess you could but it would be dangerous,” he agreed.

“And make me look slutty,” she nodded. “’Hey, would you please come and sleep with me?’”

“What?”

“No,” Taryn shook her head. “Not
you
. That’s what I’d have to say to them.”

“Oh.”

“Well, I meant that though.
Would
you come and sleep with me? Just crawl in bed with me for a little while? No funny business,” she said sternly. Then, on second thought, “Okay, maybe a little funny business.”

“This is probably a conversation we should have later,” Matt said drily. “When you know what you’re saying.”

“I’ll you know I have exactly what I’m saying,” she touted indignantly. “I mean, I’ll have you know I know exactly what I’m saying. Oh, you know what I mean. Are you turning me down?”

The Baileys was gone, her Jack was gone, and now she was rooting around the Chips Ahoy package looking for crumbs and stray chocolate pieces.

“Hey, now, I didn’t say that,” Matt admonished. “I just said we should talk–“

“Because I’m a very good snuggler. And I’m good at other things, too, you know,” she declared.

“I’m sure you are.”

“Aren’t you just a little bit curious?”

“Very; I am
very
curious.”

“Hmph.” With the last crumb gone she wadded up the package and tossed it across the room in the general direction of the garbage can. “Well, I guess I’ll go to sleep now. Good night.”

With that, she tossed her phone on her nightstand, stripped down to her bra and underwear, and slithered under the covers. She slept all night with her lamps and television on, but she didn’t wake up once.

W
hen Taryn hobbled down the stairs a little after noon with a queasy stomach and feeling more than a little fragile, she was pleasantly surprised to find Delphina in the kitchen, cooking what smelled like breakfast.

“I heard you walking around upstairs,” Delphina called over her shoulder. She was standing at the stove with sizzling sounds emanating from two different skillets. “I thought you might be hungry.”

“I’m starved, actually,” Taryn admitted, despite the warning rumble in her bowels. She’d spent the past hour in her tiny bathroom. “But you don’t have to do this. I can grab something on my way to the tavern.”

“I don’t mind,” Delphina sang. “It’s what I enjoy and I wasn’t doing anything else. Go find yourself a seat.”

Taryn sat down at the dining room table with its starched yellow tablecloth, matching plaid placemats, and salt and pepper shakers shaped like lighthouses. A plate of toast, apple butter and jelly on the side, was already waiting for her.

She’d managed to scarf down two pieces by the time Delphina brought the scrambled eggs, English muffin, sausage, and fried potatoes in. “Geeze,” she laughed. “You went to a lot of trouble.”

“No real trouble,” Delphina shrugged her small shoulders. “I had a difficult night myself. This kept me busy today and took my mind off things.”

“I’m not usually like that,” Taryn said after a few bites.

“Like what, dear?” Delphina was busying herself around the room with the pretense of sweeping and dusting but it appeared to Taryn as though she was simply going through the motions.

“Drunk.”

“Oh, that,” Delphina waved her hand in the air, her assortment of rings sparkling in the sunlight. “A little silliness from time to time is good for the soul.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I imagine you had a lot on your mind for you to think you needed to do it.”

Taryn nodded. “I guess I did. I guess I feel lonely.”

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Delphina sighed. “Being a strong woman and then admitting that, as much as you’d like to, you really can’t do everything on your own.”

“Yes, it’s hard,” Taryn agreed. “I think I’m going to make some changes, though.”

She’d spent all morning, in between bouts of visiting the bathroom and lying back down on the bed to stare at Investigation Discovery (a marathon of missing people episodes) and had made an executive decision: She was going to call Jamie. She’d nearly forgotten about him but while cleaning out her jean pockets that morning his card fell out and she’d stared at the number for a long time. And why not call him? She could dig up more dirt, go horseback riding, and talk to someone. She was too embarrassed to call Matt, despite the fact he’d texted her three times that morning, and Daniel & Co. had their own things going on. Jamie was neutral. It was time she took another step in that direction anyway.

S
he called Jamie on the way to the tavern. If he was surprised to hear from her he didn’t show it. He did, however, sound happy which was a boost to her ego. She even laughed a few times on the phone, despite the fact her head and stomach were still soft. They agreed to meet on Friday. By the time she hung up the phone she was feeling quite a bit better so when she turned up the radio and heard “Glory Days” she cranked it up even louder and sang along in her off-key, flat voice. She
would
make this a good day. She had to. Enough of sitting around, feeling sorry for herself.

The sky was gloomy and slate-colored with the threat of rain by the time she reached the tavern. The breeze was still faint, though, and since there weren’t any sprinkles yet she set up her easel and got to work. She could always hightail it out of there in a hurry if it came down to it. She felt guilty, anyway, for getting such a late start.

“Sorry, dude,” she murmured to the canvas as she touched it with her brush. “I’ve been neglecting you.” And she was. She should’ve been a lot further along. She’d have to pull a few all-nighters and work in her room to get it completed on time. This playing Nancy Drew bit was getting in the way of her work. As a professional, she was embarrassed by this. She was always invested in her paintings, and in the houses and structures she worked with, but never to this extent. Now she was more concerned with solving a mystery (a mystery that might not even exist since she was the only one seeing anything) than doing her job. That
had
to stop. She needed to finish up, move on, and find something else. The tavern would go on without her. Or it wouldn’t. Either way, it shouldn’t be her concern.

Of course, it would break her heart if it got torn down.

When the first big splatters of rain landed on her head she quickly threw a sheet of plastic over her paints and moved her canvas to the car, protecting it first before going back to collect the paints, along with her easel and brushes.

By the time she loaded the last of it in the trunk the rain was coming down in torrents. Her feet were wet and muddy, thanks to her sandals, and she could barely see through her dripping hair that hung in chunks around her face. She’d have to peel her jeans off; they were plastered to her body. It was a cold rain, too, and chilled her to the bone. She was looking forward to getting back to her room, drying off, and curling up in the bed and watching more trashy TV for the rest of the day. But she was also glad she’d dragged herself out and worked, even if it was only for an hour.

Taryn was all the way in the car with the engine on and her foot on the brake when she noticed the glittering in a downstairs window of the tavern. At first she thought it was a trick of the light, or maybe even a brief flash of lightning, but when it happened a second time she knew it wasn’t. It was a light, a faint one, and it was slowly moving back and forth. Squinting her eyes, she peered forward and tried to see clearly through the rain drops. Was it a flashlight? Was someone in there? She didn’t think so. There weren’t any cars around and unless someone had parked very far away and walked, which was possible, she didn’t know where they would’ve come from. She’d been there for at least an hour and hadn’t seen anyone coming or going.

Against what she knew was her better judgment, she turned the engine off, pocketed the keys, and trudged back out in the wet towards the tavern.

Fog was beginning to close in now, creating a barrier between the property and the highway. She could almost imagine she was isolated, shut off from the rest of the world. Inside the house, the only sound resonating through the walls was the splash of rain against the windows and what was left of the roof. It smelled damp, a different kind of scent than what she was used to there. Normally, the tavern carried a dry, dusty scent. She worried if something didn’t happen soon, the whole building was going to collapse. Then she remembered that if something didn’t happen soon the whole building was just going to be torn down anyway. A little rain wouldn’t make a difference.

The overcast skies made the house even darker than usual, but she’d brought her flashlight back with her. With the added light she was able to examine the multiple layers of wallpaper in the parlor (six, as far as she could count) and see the scuffs on the floors a little better (left over from boots a century before or from moving furniture ten years ago, she couldn’t be sure) but with the house devoid of furniture there wasn’t much to poke around in.

She tried reasoning with the walls as she walked around them. “You’re going to have to give me a little more to work with,” she sighed in Permelia’s room. “I’m kind of starting to think this is all in my head or you’re just haunting me. Maybe you ARE just a regular old, pardon the word dear, ghost and I’ve made this out to be much more than it is. But I feel like you want something. If you didn’t, then why do you keep bothering me?”

The house was silent. She took a few experimental shots with Miss Dixie, but the images came back ordinary. There may have been an orb in one of them, or perhaps it was just dust; she couldn’t be sure. There definitely wasn’t some ghostly image of a woman emerging from a wardrobe, bed, or any other piece of furniture no longer there.

“Can we make a deal then?” she continued as she started back down the stairs. “If you don’t need anything can you just back off a little bit? I wouldn’t mind sleeping or not feeling like someone or something was staring at me every few minutes. A girl’s gotta have some privacy, you–“

The words were barely out of her mouth when a force so powerful she’d have bruises later shoved her and sent her flying. She was only two stairs from the ground, but the floor reached out to her at such a dizzying speed she was sure she’d sink right through it. With a shriek she flipped Miss Dixie over her shoulder and braced for impact. When she hit with a “thud” her right forearm grazed the rough pine floors and her legs twisted at an awkward angle under her. She lay there for a second, feeling blood starting to ooze out of her arm, and gently stretched her legs to make sure nothing was broken or sprained. Since she could wiggle her toes, she assumed everything was okay. But, damn it, she was going to be in pain tomorrow.

“Now what the hell was
that
?” she muttered, attempting to scramble to her feet. She was afraid to look behind her, afraid the set of eyes she could feel would turn out to be real and attached to something hideous and unimaginable.

Slowly, the wall next to her began to shudder. It was gentle at first and then made a grumbling noise as though it hadn’t been fed in a very long time. On her hands and knees, she backed up to the wall behind her and felt her way to safety, ignoring the pain in her arm and legs. The bead board trembled and then, with what sounded like a long sigh of frustration, popped. The wall opened.

Only, it wasn’t a wall. It was a door.

The door was tiny, only about two feet high. There was no handle. It was carved so perfectly into the wall it was no wonder she’d missed it. Taryn covered her eyes with her scraped hands and held her breath, certain something would jump out at her or try to drag her in. She’d seen far too many horror movies that had done the very same. Unfortunately, she was too terrified to actually move and run, turning her into one of those big-breasted bimbos who are constantly running up the stairs when they should be running out the back door.

When a few seconds went by without any further action, however, she opened her fingers and peered through them. Aside from it being deathly quiet (she couldn’t even hear the rain anymore) she saw nothing menacing. She was simply sitting at the bottom of an old staircase, with a small door open in front of her that probably hadn’t been undone in years.

Still not completely at ease, she removed her flashlight and aimed its beam at the entrance. The door wasn’t open wide enough to see all the way inside so she stretched out her foot and gave it a kick, ready to spring up and run if anything (dead or otherwise) came out at her. It opened with a deliberate moan that made her jump a little, but when nothing else happened she released a sigh of relief.

With her flashlight she was able to see three of the walls. It wasn’t a big room, she calculated; maybe three feet by three feet at most. Just a storage room. It was dark and dusty, but empty. With slightly more courage now, she waddled towards it on a crouch and peered inside. There were a few ugly looking spiders and an old boot but the room was otherwise vacant. No dead bodies, no vagrant hiding out and ready to pounce on her, no pot of gold.

Taryn was disappointed.