Stained Glass

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,