2 The clock mounted on the face of the organ loft made a muted click as it measured off another minute. Charles glanced up at it - 4:30. It would soon be safe to leave for home. The inside of the old church was dim. The only light came through the stained glass windows that ran along both sides of the nave. For the first few minutes after you walked in, it felt as if you'd come into a cave walled in colored glass. But as your eyes adjusted to the lower light, the space took shape around you. The ribbed vaulting of the ...
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2 The clock mounted on the face of the organ loft made a muted click as it measured off another minute. Charles glanced up at it - 4:30. It would soon be safe to leave for home. The inside of the old church was dim. The only light came through the stained glass windows that ran along both sides of the nave. For the first few minutes after you walked in, it felt as if you'd come into a cave walled in colored glass. But as your eyes adjusted to the lower light, the space took shape around you. The ribbed vaulting of the ceiling stole from the shadows. Creatures carved in stone peered down from the pillar tops. Patches of flaking paint appeared on the walls. St. Bartholomew's was an old church that had definitely seen better days. It sat in the midst of what had once been a wealthy neighborhood of tree-lined streets and sedate old houses. Most of the trees had now succumbed to age or disease. The lawns had been bricked over, the houses broken into rooming houses. The old Caledon Psychiatric Hospital stood nearby, and outpatients tended to gravitate to the neighborhood. A lot of lost-looking souls walked the streets: people in their private worlds, broken worlds. Many of the stores along the main street where the church stood had died, or were looking poorly. Some had been boarded up, others turned into makeshift residences with sheets draped over the inside of the plate glass and withered plants languishing on the windowsills. He had discovered the church one Friday a couple of months back, shortly after he'd started skipping his piano lesson. It had been a March day, and bitterly cold. After wandering the streets aimlessly, he'd stumbled on the place quite by chance. The door was open, and he'd slipped in and spent half an hour sharing the empty church with a handful of homeless people, also escaping the cold. The silence of the place had shocked him. It was as if he'd breached some boundary between worlds. At the back of the church, as if by way of welcome, there stood a life-sized statue of St. Bartholomew. St. Bart had been one of the original twelve apostles. Tradition had it that he'd been martyred by being flayed alive. The statue depicted him holding the long hooked knife of his martyrdom in one hand, with the slack pelt of his skin draped over the other arm, the way Gran draped her sweater over her arm when she went out for a walk on a summer evening, in case she got cold. Often there would be one or two other stray souls scattered through the rows of wooden pews, but today the place seemed empty. Even the caretaker, who could normally be seen flitting quietly along the shadowed aisles as he went about his work, had fled into the sun. Charles had seen him perched on a high ladder outside, washing the windows. He could see the shadow of his arm now, moving silently against the glass, like the beating of some great wing. His book bag lay on the seat beside him. He opened it and pulled out his piano exercise book, turning to the little Bach piece he was supposed to have been practising. It was simply a question of time before they discovered he'd been skipping the lesson. There were bound to be consequences, but somehow it didn't seem to matter. Gran had always had a passion for the piano. The ornate old upright had sat in the corner of the dining room for as long as he could remember. One of his first memories was of sitting beside her on the bench while she played. He would bang away on the keys and pretend that he too was playing. She had promised him then that when he was old enough, she would pay for him to take lessons, as his father had taken lessons as a boy. And so, two years ago, when the bunch of them had moved in with her, she had talked him into going to lessons. But everything had changed by then. He was no longer the little boy banging away on the keys. And though he went dutifully to the lessons and dutifully practised for a long while without complaint, each not
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