Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) (3 page)

Yesterday had been unnerving, and she hadn’t slept well the night before, but new places always did that to her.
Besides, it was possible that she had simply been tired and had imagined what she felt. Old houses had personalities and perhaps this one’s was just a little strong. It didn’t mean that she slept any easier that night, however.

After a quick trip around the exterior of the house, Reagan went back to the kitchen door Taryn had entered the
day before. “This is about the only way you can get in and out. Front’s all boarded up. I can take the boards down if it will help with the doors and stuff.”

“
It would help, actually, especially if the original door is still there behind the planks. Why do you have them boarded up if you say people won’t come in here?”

“Well, when I first got the house
, I didn’t know that. Had the whole thing boarded up. When I saw nobody was going to bother it, I took them down in the back. I like to come in and check on things from time to time...not often though,” he added.

The kitchen looked the same, vacant and unused, but
was set for a breakfast scene that was never going to happen. On closer inspection, the tin cans had obviously been there for a long time, possibly twenty years or more.

Reagan took her into a room off the kitchen she hadn’t seen the day before. It was a small
, narrow room with a single bed and a battered dresser. Both were in bad shape. A man’s work clothes were scattered about the floor and hangers were tossed carelessly about. It appeared someone left in a hurry. The clothes didn’t give the impression to be that far out of style, and Taryn looked at them in confusion. “Was somebody staying here?”

“Yeah. Two summers ago
, we decided to fix this place up, me and my wife. Thought we could add on to it, it doesn’t have but two bedrooms upstairs and we’ve got three kids, and make it real nice again. I heard it used to be a real beauty. So we brought this guy in to pack up the good stuff and haul out the junk. Do some of the landscaping, too. Told him he could stay here while he did it, cause we knew it would take a couple of months.

“
Well, he stays for about a week and then ups and leaves. Tacks a note on my front door saying that he can’t stay no more and he’s gotta be getting back to Indiana, to home. So I call him and ask him if he wants me to send him his clothes and such that he left behind and he says no, he don’t need a thing. Beat all I ever seen.” Reagan shook his head at the memory and laughed. “I came in here and looked around and found his wallet, full of money. I mailed that to him. Must’ve been in a hurry. I’m gonna put in a call to the Salvation Army and see if they can use any of this furniture. My wife has everything at home the way she wants it and doesn’t want me bringing anything else in to mess it up.”

Taryn smiled pleasantly and gave a nod, hoping it looked to be in encouragement.

The jovial smile never left Reagan’s face. “You’ll understand that better if you ever meet the missus. She’s real particular about certain things.”

“If there are two bedrooms upstairs
, why didn’t he sleep up there?”

Reagan shrugged, and turned back to the kitchen. “Don’t know.
Might make more sense when you see one of them, though. Came in here that first day and looked around and then said he’d rather sleep down here. I hauled in a bed from our storage unit. He said that was fine.”

“So after that
, you decided not to fix it up?”

“No, we still thought we might. My wife came over a few times and worked outside.
Still keeps some gardening tools here because the shed here is bigger. We live in a subdivision I developed myself and only have but one outbuilding to make room for the swing set and swimming pool. Came in with some boxes—you’ll see them in the living room—and tried to pack up some stuff herself. Then she said she didn’t like it anymore and wasn’t going to come back by herself. She got spooked. That was the end of that.”

They were heading toward the
living room, and her breath caught. She hoped that whatever she felt before was nothing but the result of a long day of driving because she was damned if she was going to look like a fool in front of him. The scent that accosted her on her first visit was already less potent than before. But when they stepped across the doorway, she was still surprised. Nothing. Not even a chill passed over her skin.
Maybe it
had
just been an illusion
, she told herself.

“This here was the dining room,” Reagan continued. “
My daddy was going to use it as a living area himself. Must’ve been easier to heat than the living room and the parlor. I don’t know. There was an old couch in here. We already hauled it away.”

“
Was he related to the other owner? Your dad, I mean?”

“Oh
, no. He bought it at auction. And that guy did, too. None of us knew Robert Bowen, the one who lived here longest.”

“Did
Robert live here alone?” The personal background was probably more helpful to Taryn than any other research she could have done. Sure, she had her design books back in her room and a history of the area, but it was the people who made the house and figuring out how they lived put it all into perspective.

Reagan shook his head and went on into the adjoining room. “No. Well, at the end he did.
Died of a heart attack or something or other. In the beginning he was married. She died around five years into the marriage. One of those old-timey diseases that nobody gets anymore. I can’t remember what it’s called. Sorry. Don’t know much about her. They had a daughter but she died, too. That I do know. After that, he lived alone.”

“How did he make his money? And
what did he do through the Depression? Or was this area not hit very hard?”

“Oh, this area was hit. Kentucky was hit
just as hard as anyplace else, though the smaller towns didn’t get all of them riots and stuff cause they was fairly small to begin with and employment had always been bad around here. But it got hit. No, he made his money from tobacco, same as a lot of people here. Even in a Depression, people gotta smoke.”

So he was a farmer
, Taryn made a mental note. And this wasn’t a grand house inside, although it was large, so he probably did at least some of the work himself. She wondered when the wife and daughter died. Local records would show that, if she decided it was important enough to know. It might not be. She had a lot to work with already. She was already starting to get to know the house and too much more might muddle things up. But sometimes her curiosity got the best of her. It was funny how stepping through the doors of a place could instantly start her wheels turning.

The
living room was large as well. She hadn’t noticed before. She’d been too caught up in trying to figure out what was going on. It was the front room, and a glance at the boarded up door gave Taryn faint chills. She brushed them off by telling herself the boards simply blocked out the natural light and made the room unusually dark. That was enough to give anyone the creeps.

Reagan, as if reading her mind, chuckled. “Guess it does make the place spooky. Sorry it’s so dark in here. I’ll get those taken down. Won’t be able to take any pictures if you can barely see your hand in front of your face.
I read your website. I know you like to take pictures first,” he said at her bemused expression.

“That’s okay,” she shrugged. “I don’t mind being cyber stalked.”

“This here was the living room. Nothing left in here anymore except the fireplaces. And some old furniture, of course. When Dad died, we took most of the good furniture, especially from these front rooms. Sold anything we could. Nothing really in here, though. Never was. Seems like that’s as far as they got though because as you saw from the kitchen and as you’ll see from the upstairs, everything’s still left up there from when Robert and his family lived here in the 20s and 30s. Interesting thing about this room is the two staircases. See?”

Taryn looked around and indeed, saw
the two sturdy wooden staircases in the two corners of the room. “Where do they go?”

“One goes up to one bedroom and one goes to the other. Oddest thing I’ve ever seen. You’d think maybe they was added separately but they weren’t. House was built at the same time except for the back.
After the Bowens died off, nobody ever really used the place. Not for long anyway. Just farmed the land.”

Taryn nodded absently and then
wandered over to the nearest staircase and studied it. It was simple and sturdy, but not ornate. Something one might find in a farmhouse. A ray of pale light fell down through the steps, suggesting there might be a window upstairs. The fireplace mantle
was
decorative, however, with carvings and decorations adorning it. Why spend money on one and not the other?

Taryn was so intent on her musings she didn’t notice when Reagan wandered out of
one room and into the next. Suddenly, a wave of cold air blasted her and she staggered, caught off-guard. Cold needles pricked her skin and as she brought her arms up to cross in front of her protectively, the room began to swim. As if seeing it through a wave of water, she blinked her eyes, and watched as murky shadows began to manifest. Scared at first, she couldn’t help but be a little intrigued as well, and she experimentally reached out her hand to touch a nearby passing shape. As her fingers made contact, a flash of lightning struck them. “Ouch!” she cried out in pain.

“You okay in there?” Reagan’s voice was faint, as if coming from a well, with a slight echo. She could hear his footsteps coming toward her and she closed her eyes again. When she opened
them, he was standing before her and the room was once again empty.

“Sorry, splinter,” she tried to laugh. “From the staircase.”

A puzzled look flickered across his face and then it was gone. “You gotta be careful in here,” he shrugged. “This place is falling apart and you don’t know what all you can get into. The floor’s sound as a rock but I don’t keep insurance on it. I should, but I don’t. So don’t get hurt and sue me.” He flashed her a million dollar smile and winked. Taryn smiled back.

With shaking legs
that belied her outward appearance, Taryn tried to compose herself.
Am I losing my mind?
she asked herself worriedly.
What the hell is going on in here?
Reagan appeared easy and comfortable; an owner simply walking through the rooms of a house he had no use for. How was it possible he didn’t feel something a little off? Or did he?

The next room, a
smaller parlor, was similar to the front room and also boasted a fireplace, this one missing a mantle. Otherwise, the room was dark and bare, with little to distinguish it from any number of empty rooms Taryn had seen in other homes from the same time period. The darkness was throwing Taryn off, but she wasn’t surprised Reagan had boarded the place up; this was definitely the kind of place that teenagers and rounders liked to use for a party pad, except for the fact that Reagan said he didn’t have a problem with that.

“You wanna go upstairs?”
His voice echoed and bounced off the walls, a lonely and hollow sound in the darkness.

Taryn nodded and they began their ascent up the
plain staircase. “Do you think anyone was ever going to replace these staircases with something more permanent and just never got around to it?”

Reagan shook his head. “Don’t know. Kind of ugly for the house, huh?”

They both laughed.

“Still here though,” he added. “So many of these get vandalized and ripped apart. Guess nobody wanted this one. My uncle sold some of the mantles. My daddy runned an antique store for years. People like those old mantles. Them and the bannisters are usually the first things to get ripped out of these old houses. But not this one. Easy to see why.”

It was a surprise to find that the stairs opened up right into the bedroom. No hallway, no sitting area, nothing. An unusual lack of privacy for the time period, Taryn noted, especially since houses built in the mid-nineteenth century were so fond of their doors. It made conserving heat easier since you could always shut off rooms you weren’t using but in today’s designs, people were all about open concepts and wide-open spaces. Those wide-open spaces sometimes made Taryn feel a little claustrophobic. She liked her doors and actual rooms that had specific purposes.

Mysteriously
enough, if the living room and parlor were mostly empty and bare of odds and ends from the past, this room looked as if it had just been abandoned the day before. The paint on the old white wrought iron metal bed might have been peeling and the mattress moldy, but it was pushed to the window where dainty lace curtains still fluttered in the morning breeze. They were moth-eaten and dusty, but still fairly intact except for a few tears here and there. Mildewed sheets were thrown haphazardly across the bed and fell onto the floor, as if someone just recently pushed them aside. A featherbed was smoothed over the frame and a few loose feathers drifted in the air, aroused by the air currents Taryn and Reagan disturbed. A broken rocking chair sat in the corner of the room, staring into the middle of the floor, as if keeping watch.

A lone
waterfall dresser was pushed against the far side of the wall and it was to this that Taryn’s attention was drawn to the most. The drawers were all gaping, revealing articles of clothing that could have been slips or nightgowns. A small oak jewelry box set atop the dresser and it was open as well, displaying rings, cameos, and necklaces. Some of them, even to Taryn’s fairly untrained eye, appeared to be the real deal. A porcelain china doll was lying on its side, its once fine face smashed into pieces. A set of keys rested beside it: heavy, masculine skeleton keys that appeared out of place in the otherwise feminine room. The entire dresser looked as if someone just recently went through it in a hurry, maybe looking for something.