Sugar & Squall (11 page)

It was Mom again. Man, she could make a piano sing. I never liked any of it when I was younger. It didn’t make sense. The outside notes, it’s what you don’t hear, blah-blah. I’d just shrug it off and go dance in my room to Destiny’s Child. Now I wanted to learn an instrument, any instrument. A damn triangle would do it

“You mean this was all just an excuse to lure me to this room?”

Logan shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I don’t know. Everyone’s missing, maybe sucked off the face of the earth by ET, there’s a half a body floating out there, a giant pool of blood and you want to play music?”

“Yes.
Forget about all that stuff. We can’t do anything about it. You said it yourself. Trust me.”

“
It’s not exactly my strong suit. Music, that is.”

“It’s
not mine either,” he replied.

He
turned the doorknob and we stepped inside. I followed cautiously behind.

The afternoon had brought with it a sort of softness. Dust and stray particles rose to the ceiling in the
gentle light. It seemed amusing all the instruments seated in complete silence. Yet even though there was no music in this room, it was still beautiful. I imagined there was nothing in the world more humble than a piano left unplayed. After all, everything about its design was an invitation.
Open me. Touch me.

The piano at the center of this room was truly grand. Instruments of various origins, shapes and sizes surrounded it in a circle. A quick visual summary, and whatdoyaknow, I couldn’t play any of them.

I sat myself down upon what appeared to be an extra-large bongo drum. “What did you have in mind?”

Logan held up his hand. He moved over to the piano stool, sat on it outwards and picked up a guitar. Seated stiffly upright, right and left hands hovering above the strings, he paused for effect and then started playing.

I recognized the song. I’d downloaded before I came to Carver. I’d found it on one of those indie websites with a design that hadn’t changed since 1995. It was a folky number, punky even, with depth you just didn’t get in mainstream music anymore.

The intro started with a series of arpeggios. They meandered up and down, rolling. Logan played well. His fingers wrapped and molded themselves to the neck
, carving intricate musical life from its rigid guise. They crept up and down its nylon ladder, dancing gracefully upon the wooden canvas.

Is there anything he can’t do?

“I tried to learn it yesterday afternoon,” he said, fingers caressing strings all the while. “I had to steal your iPod. Do you forgive me?”

His eyes. His cursed eyes. I couldn’t keep the hard-ass routine going when they were looking at me.

“Yes, I forgive you,” I relented, standing and moving closer. “How long have you been playing?”

“I learned when I was young, but I haven’t touched a guitar in years.”

“So,” I said, drawing out the ‘o’, “you learned this for me?”

“Sure.”

I swallowed, unprepared for what I was about to say. “It’s beautiful.”

“I only learned the intro. That took me long enough. I couldn’t exactly go searching for the sheet music, so I’ve been trying to work it out by ear. Now it’s your turn,” he said, handing the guitar over.

I started backing away. “I told you, I can’t play.”

“I think I’ll be the judge of
that.”

I took the guitar from him reluctantly. It was large and awkward. I struggled to find a comfortable position for it. A bit of hand-signaling on Logan’s behalf finally saw it in place.

I had no idea what to expect when I plucked the top string. It rang out, hollow.

I expected worse.

“Good,” came the voice of encouragement. “Now, just place your middle finger on the fifth fret there and pluck again.”

Fifth fret? This seemed more like math than music. “I don’t know what a fret is, and certainly not where the fifth one is.”

Logan laughed.

“It’s not funny,” I muttered.

“You’re absolutely right. Here, let me show you. Come sit up here,” he said, patting a small space on the piano stool.

When I’d scooted into position, he moved up beside me, laying his left hand over mine. At that instant, when flesh connected with flesh, when all was silent expect for the jack-hammer of my heart, all
the drama of the previous night, morning – gone.

Yet still I felt guilty. How could I sit here and enjoy myself with what was going on? Since when wa
s I worried about what jeans I was wearing? I was losing myself with Logan.

Over the course of the afternoon I somehow managed to work up enough concentration to learn a bar or two. My fingers found the alien positioning entirely to their disliking, but Logan seemed to be able to bend them into place with a deft and delicate touch.
And he was right. It did help me forget, relax.

True, I probably could have learned more without him leaning into me, his breath hot on my neck and his hand intertwined with mine. So many times I imagined myself swiveling my neck forty-five and kissing him. I didn’t. I could not force myself to do it, even when it seemed so right.

You only get one chance at a first kiss,
I told myself, but this deterred me instead of pressing me on. If the first kiss was a disaster, if he rejected me or I misinterpreted his signals, I could never, ever forgive myself. I had to be absolutely sure beyond any question of a doubt our feelings were mutual.

When my fingers felt like they about to fall off I begged for a break. We sat on the piano st
ool, closer, but still apart.

“Thanks,” I said.

“No problem. I thought it might help take you mind off, you know…”

“It did, trust me. I’
m actually feeling quite calm, which is weird.”

We continued talking
about nothing in particular.

The chapel came up.

“It gives me the heebie-jeebies,” I said, trying to visualize the only place we hadn’t really been. “There’s probably a bunch of baby skulls in there or something.”

“Baby skulls?” Logan was in hysterics. “There are no baby skulls there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve been inside.”

“You what? But we’ve only been here a few days,” I protested.

“I took a look around on the first night.”

“By yourself? Why?”

“I told you. I like to be prepared.”

“Don’t worry. No one noticed,” he added. “It wasn’t exactly hard getting out of the dorm, and my roommates could probably sleep through Armageddon.”

He diverted his eyes. “I saw you down at the beach
, the night everyone vanished.”

I gulped, hoping it wasn’t audible. “You saw me?”

“Yeah, you and some guy. I didn’t stick around.”

Damn.
It was going to take some serious shoveling to get out of this one.

“That
guy
was an asshole. I left before anything happened,” I lied.

I looked to Logan but couldn’t work him out.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I believe you.”

He brought his eyes back up. “How about we go down to the chapel and look around. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s something there after all.”

I agreed, thankful for the change of subject and scenery.

Fifteen minutes later we
took a right turn over the hill past the rat’s nest. And there it was balanced on the edge of the cliff – the chapel.

It was an odd structure, more a shack than a church. It hung out over the cliff precariously, the ocean hundreds of feet below. Wooden arms of timber supported each side, but the timber of the walls had slumped and sagged to the extent it looked like an invalid on crutches. Apart from the metal steeple and stained glass windows at the front, it was little more than holey planks held together by bird droppings.

“I’d say it’s been here well over a century,” Logan said, stopping to catch his breath. “It looks like it’s got about as much structural rigidity as a cracker. The boys said so no one ever comes down here. It’s either the rat’s nest or the beach.”

The beach, damn it to hell.

“Did they say who built it?” I asked, more to distract myself than anything else.

Logan stopped, hands on hips. “I don’t know. It’
s pretty small. You’d fit forty or fifty people inside at most. Here, I’ll help you across.”

He was serious.

“You actually want to go inside? You want us to poke around in the cracker chapel and plummet to our deaths?”

“Well, I don’t know about the plummeting part, but sure, the rest sounds good. It’s not so bad if you know what you’re doing.”

Trust – That’s what it had come down to, and I needed to restore some quickly.

“Okay, but if I end up down there like some human Bolognese on the rocks I’ll never forgive you.”

“And I’d never forgive myself. Now give me your hand.”

I took his hand and was transported right back into the music room moments before. We pulsed together. I was almost ashamed for enjoying it.

Logan took a step past the threshold and into the remains of the structure. “Stay right behind me and step exactly where I do.”

I gave a little salute. “Yes, master.”

Even on the first step, the floorboards sounded like bones breaking. As we took another, then two, I started to realize why no one came here and why we had to be so methodical where we trod. Between each good board were several that were weathered or eaten wafer-thin. And between each of those was nothing at all, providing a telescopic view to the water wrestling against itself far below.

It looked like the walls had been riddled with bullets from the interior. The stained windows sent odd anamorphic shapes scattering across the floor and furniture, the latter of which there was little.

There was a flapping in the corner of the room next to an old pulpit. A seagull struck its wings out and soared upwards through one of the many skylights that had accumulated in the roof.

We made it past the pews and to the front of the church. There was a stage there, a pile of rubbish and an old rug in the corner.

Logan shuffled forward and starting pushing the junk aside, pulling the rug away to reveal a hole in the floor.

“You absolutely cannot be serious,” I said, voice shaky. “What is this? Dracula’s Castle?”

I moved forwards, recalling his steps. I knelt beside him and looked down into the abyss.

The end of the chapel hung out over the cliff itself. There was nothing below I could see except for a massive drop. That was until I leaned further out and saw an impossibly small ledge about ten feet below. A wooden ladder ran down to it against the cliff-face. It appeared to be affixed to the rock ledge below and looked stea
dy enough.

“It’s
the only way down,” Logan said, “and believe me, I looked for a simpler option.”

“Come on,” he said, growing impatient. “The view’s amazing.”

Logan had already turned himself around and was edging down the ladder. “Just face the ladder and come down step by step. Take your time. There’s no rush.”

“I have used a ladder before, you know.”

“I know, just sayin’.”

I spun myself around and carefully planted my foot on the first rung. It groaned in protest. The edges of the ladder looked ripe for nasty splinters, so I grip
ped them as loosely as I could.

The ladder hugged the cliff at an angle, but it did so in absolute open air.
The wind was calm, but the ladder moved back and forth ever so slightly. It was playing with me. I was sure of it.

I almost didn’t realize when I’d reached the end of the ladder, stepping past it and out over the edge of the ledge. There was a terrifyingly familiar moment of freefall before I felt Logan’s hands guiding me away and inside a cave to the immediate left.

“Wow.” It was all I could muster. The cave was literally bored right into the cliff, almost a perfect cylinder of stone inside. It extended straight back quite a way, though it was hard to tell how far, as it graduated to almost pure black further up.

Logan was suitably chuffed. “Quite a view.”

“It is. Where are we?”

“I’m not entirely sure. My guess is that it was some kind of
miniature prison, maybe when Carver was an institution. It looks like there used to be an iron grate here,” he said, drawing it with his fingers.

I paced about. “Surely ships would see this place?”

“You would think so, but I can’t imagine they’d come around to this part of the cliffs. There’s a rock shelf just out there in the water that would make navigating a boat around the point quite dangerous. That’s why the pier’s on the other side of the island.”

Logan started walking down towards the rear of the cave.

“What’s down there?” I asked, as he started to disappear.