From a Cabin in the Middle of the Mountains: Part 5
Hi! Okay, quick explanation about this part: There's a lot more of it. This is only the first 1/3 or so, but unfortunately there's a part in the middle I have to patch up a little- I kind of changed my mind about what was going to happen while I was writing it. So the second half of this should be up tomorrow, if not a little later tonight.
But anyway. Here's part 5. Sorry it's so short as of right now!
The lid of the chest fell back with a soft click. Inside were two compartments: one filled with a hefty stack of papers, the other cluttered with an assortment of small items. Frank grabbed a couple of sheets of paper off the top of the stack and leafed through them.
He was looking at a stack of drawings- beautiful drawings, at that. They were all sketched in a dark, heavy hand with lots of sharp angles and lines, slightly messy but in a way that seemed natural. Frank rifled through the sheets, completely fascinated. His eyes pored over strange, dark images of people, empty streets, and creatures with bright eyes… And then some were goofier- superheroes, a few pages of brightly colored creatures that looked like they belonged in a children’s show. Several of the drawings were signed and dated in a scrawling hand- G. Way, ’05. Frank continued to flip through the pages in awe. Gerard was a damn good artist.
There was one sheet that caught his attention and held it there with a chilling grip. It was a flimsy sheet of notebook paper, less professional-looking than the rest, and all the drawings on the page were scribbled hastily in blue pen. Just sketches, but Frank found himself studying them closely, taking in the sharpness of the lines and the smudges of blue ink in the shape of Gerard’s fingerprints. The sheet was filled with sketches of people’s faces. Among them were sloppy blue-ink versions of a middle-aged man and a woman with frizzy hair, a young guy with a sizeable afro, and- Frank stopped and squinted at the paper- a thin-faced boy with spiky hair and glasses perched awkwardly on the end of his nose. The boy in the picture. Frank was sure of it.
Art was obviously what Gerard loved. Or used to love- Frank had been unable to find any pictures dated later than 2005.
The other side of the box didn’t seem to hold anything of much significance, it seemed: a thin silver chain with an empty heart-shaped locket, a broken pair of glasses, a small wooden top, and an assortment of thumbtacks were among the items jumbled up in the bottom.
Frank leaned back, holding the sheet of notebook paper at arms length, examining it, trying to call forth some sort of meaning from the blue ink. He wanted to know, he realized suddenly. He wanted to have names to match to these faces. He wanted to see what they meant to Gerard and why he had chosen to preserve them on this paper, sketched in that dark, scrawling hand.
Struck by inspiration, he began to pore back through the drawings, selecting one from the bunch every so often. One of the superheroes dressed in loud, bright, look-at-me hues. An angel with arms draped gracefully around a guitar. A street full of people with dark, hollow eyes. When he’d gathered a small pile of papers, he let the lid of the chest drop with a gentle thud and padded lightly down the stairs, coming to a stop in front of the only door in the cabin he hadn’t yet opened: Gerard’s.