Windwood Farm (Taryn's Camera) Read Online Free PDF Page A

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.
    Reagan was watching her, his long arms folded causally across his chest, his polo shirt and jeans looking out of place. Taryn felt as if both of them were standing in the midst of a movie set. She was confused. “So you say that people don’t come in here and go through things?”
    “That’s right,” he replied with a faint smile on his face. He had seen all of this before and was watching her with amusement, waiting for her reaction.
    “Well, it looks like someone came in and went through this room ,” she muttered as she walked over to the dresser and ran her hand over the keys. They were cold and heavy under her fingers.
    “Wellll…not exactly. You see, this bedroom has been like this for as long as I can remember.”
    Taryn turned and looked at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
    “It’s always looked like this. I’m thirty-five years old and it’s been this way since I was a baby, probably before. The downstairs? Yeah, kids came and went down there some. But something kept them from going any further. Back in the 70s, my daddy said he ran a few off, some who had taken some silver and things from the dining room. But not in years. My wife, she come up here once and tried to clean. Pushed those drawers closed, put that jewelry back into the box, picked up those papers on the floor, even tried to make the bed. Said that it looking like this all the time bothered her. Then she went back downstairs for a little while. Heard some noises here. When she came back up, it looked just the same as it did before. This room just don’t want to be touched.”
     

Chapter 3
     
    Taryn and Reagan sat on the front steps of the old house, looking out over the fields and gravel lane. “It’s in remarkably good condition. I mean, to have been vacant for, what, how many years? Unbelievable.” She wasn’t sure if she was really going to believe that the house kept people