Sugar & Squall

by J. Round

  I took a step back, suddenly cold in the morning sun. “Maybe he fell, drowned in the rush to escape?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He might have been diseased, contagious or something.”

  “We don’t know.”

  He was right. We knew nothing. We could do nothing.

  “You’re saying we should just leave it here?” Logan said.

  “I am. Even if there’s the slightest possibility there is some disease, some crazy monkey virus, we leave it. We’ll just steer clear of the pier from now on.” I turned and started walking away. “In fact, I’d be pretty happy if I never saw it ever again.”

  #

  We walked side by side up the hill, Logan splitting his vision between me and the school all the while. It started to piss me off.

  “What?” I snapped.

  He chuckled.

  “It’s not funny, you know”

  He just smiled. “I know. It’s just that most girls I know would see a little bit of blood, a body and need to be carried off to the ER, but not you.”

  I agreed, even laughed a little inside. “I don’t know. I’m a girl deep down, Scout’s honor. The rest is just a coping mechanism.”

  “I see. I like the girl. You should keep her around more often.”

  “You really want me to be another one of those cardboard cut-outs? The ones that, like, like to say like a lot?”

  He laughed. “Maybe not that far, but it is nice to have a damsel in distress sometimes.”

  “First a lady and now you’re calling me a damsel? This isn’t the 1600s.”

  “Hey, it could be. We might have been sucked back in time.”

  I pushed the blood and the body right out of my head. They didn’t exist. “Well, hopefully it’s a time when they knew how to make a decent toasted cheese sandwich. I’m starving.”

  #

  Given the only cheese left in the kitchen looked like it was from the 1600s, I settled for salad instead. Logan took care of it all. I was definitely starting to feel better with a full stomach – anxious still, but better.

  “I think we should concentrate on the classrooms this afternoon,” Logan said, once we’d finished packing our plates away.

  We’d agreed days ago not to search the school any more. It just didn’t make sense. But I didn’t feel up for arguing.

  “As long as there’s not another pool up there somewhere. I don’t know if I’m in the mood for another impromptu skinny dip.”

  I loved his laugh. It was measured, just right. “No, unfortunately not.”

  I raised my right eyebrow so high it almost touched my hairline. “Right then. Lead the way, oh joyful one.”

  We walked up the stairs at the front of the middle building to the third level. It was mostly classrooms up here bar a teacher’s lounge and kitchen at the end. We hadn’t really checked this area thoroughly because it was rather hard to imagine hundreds of students all squashed together in the space of a living room.

  Nothing like what I was dreaming up, Logan’s grand plan was simply to search this floor a little more closely, though I had no idea why.

  We kept going right until the end, where Logan paused at the furthest door, the music room. “Last stop,” he announced, grasping the doorknob. He paused.

  “What are you waiting for?” I said.

  “We’re going to cross something else off that list of yours, whether you like it or not.”

  Number three – Learn to play a musical instrument.

  Damn you, DNB.

  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 c
ould I sit here and enjoy myself with what was going on? Since when was 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 stool, 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 steady 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 gripped 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 pace
d 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.

  “I found chains and shackles on the floor,” he said from the blackness. “By the looks of it, they were attached to the wall at some stage.”

  “You mean people were chained up down here, in the dark?”

  “Probably.”

  “There are no tunnels down here or labyrinth running under the school everyone could be trapped in?”

  “It’s a dead end. There might be some bats, but that’s about it.”

  I could tell by the volume of his voice he’d started walking back.

  “At night you can’t hear anything except for the ocean in here,” he said, drawing towards me. “It echoes. Even if something big did happen up there, I wouldn’t have heard it.”

  I imagined a private place like this might come in handy in what was otherwise such a public environment.

  “It’d make a pretty good make-out spot,” I suggested.

  Logan nodded silently, focused on the ocean.

  “We should probably go,” he suggested, bringing his gaze to mine. “It’ll be getting dark soon.”

  He was right. The sun was slowly surrendering to the ocean. Its amber glow filled the cave. I was torn. Being stuck here for the night wouldn’t be the worst scenario in the world. But I was dying for a shower, and hungry.

  “How do we get back up?”

  Logan started walking to the ledge and ladder. “One guess. I’ll hold the ladder while you go up and then you hold it for me from the top.”

  I eased myself around the corner onto the ledge, my body brushing his.

  I reached the ladder and reached up to the first rung. It creaked dangerously with each upward step. Water roared below. It reminded me of those early Christmases as a kid, crawling down the hall only to have each floorboard betray you no matter how quiet you thought you were. Here, it seemed the more I tried to dampen the noise, the louder it got. I kept moving.