Jekyll Island: A Paranormal Mystery (Taryn's Camera Book 5) Read Online Free Page A

found it comforting.
    Now, however, she caught a trace of something else–something potent and unpleasant. At the same time the scent hit her nose it reached her eyes and she found them watering, overflowing so that tears streaked down her cheeks and dripped on her jeans. As she wiped the water away with the sleeve of her sweatshirt she could feel her throat starting to tighten.
    The air around her was suddenly full of thick, dirty smoke and as Taryn coughed violently into the phone she began to panic.
    “You okay?” Matt asked with concern as she hacked and gasped, trying to hold the phone away from her mouth.
    “Ye-yeah,” she sputtered, momentarily able to catch her breath, but then gagged as the bitter poison slid down her throat and up her nose. “Smoke.”
    “Ew. Someone’s smoking?” (If there was one thing Matt couldn’t stand, it was cigarette smoke.)
    “No,” she heaved. It was getting worse by the second. “Fire. Fire smoke.”
    “Is the house okay?”
    Taryn jumped up, waving her hand frantically in front of her face to push the fumes away. She was startled to see from her watery eyes that there was nothing there. The ugly cloud was gone but the odor lingered. She quickly turned and studied the house, half expecting to see it going up in flames.
    It was fine.
    “House okay,” she stammered, retching in spite of the control she tried to maintain. Bile rose up but then slid back down again, mixing with the smoke and creating a vicious cycle.
    It wasn’t just the stench of the smoke now, though. As though someone had abruptly doused her with gasoline and flicked a match on her, her entire body was engulfed in an imaginary inferno as she felt the fever spread from the roots of her hair all the way down to her toes. With her skin on fire, burning from flames she couldn’t see, she let out a blood curdling scream.
    “Aakk!” Taryn cried, slapping at her skin and doing a panicky little dance on the patio stones. She thought she would surely die from the heat and the pain. She swatted at her head, her stomach, and at her legs–a hysterical woman doing a frenzied dance to music only she could hear.
    Tossing her phone on the chair she tore off her sweatshirt, ripping it up the back in the process, and flung it out into the yard, leaving her standing in the open wearing nothing but her bra. Sweat rolled down her scorching arms and back, soaking her shorts. The heat was unbearable, blistering her skin and making her wail in agony. She went for her bottoms then and tried tugging them off as well but was blinded by the pain and couldn’t get her fingers to function on the zipper.
    “Taryn? Taryn!” Matt’s muffled voice rose from the chair but she ignored it, panicked as she danced around and tried to rid herself of whatever was attacking her.
    Then, as swiftly as it began, it all stopped.
    The air around her cleared, her skin cooled rapidly, and she was left standing in her yard, half naked and wild-eyed.
    Taryn, still hyperventilating, bent over at her waist and tried to gather her thoughts. “Breathe,” she instructed herself. “Breathe.”
    In a trance-like state she walked back to the chair and picked up the phone. She could still hear Matt hollering at his end but he sounded very far away.
    “It’s gone,” she whispered, her throat still raw. “The smoke is gone. But my whole body. It was on fire.”
    “Could it be the EDS?” Matt asked, his voice shaky but always quick to find the logical explanation when there was one. “Sometimes it’s hard to regulate your body temperature.”
    Taryn nodded dully and walked out into the grass to gather her torn garments. Maybe she’d had a type of seizure or something. Didn’t people sometimes smell smoke when that happened? And maybe it was a medical thing. The EDS caused all kinds of weird stuff. She was still learning about it herself.
    “I’m okay,” she whispered again. “Let me call you back in a little while. I need to get another drink