Our Island Inn (Quirky Tales from the Caribbean) (2 page)

We ha
d always been enchanted by the idea of running an island inn. In our heads, we’d built up a romanticized notion of life in the tropics. Years of dreaming had left us primed to see the mirage.

We fell in love with Parrot Ridge the moment we
parked our rental jeep at the top of its weedy gravel drive and walked across its summit.

Others might have
been put off by the crumbling concrete buildings, half-covered in vines and other vegetation, or by the stench oozing up from the muddy pools of water in the bottom of the cracked swimming pool.

N
ot us.

We saw
only possibility.

That the tumbledown wreck
would require a complete renovation we deemed an added bonus. We could rebuild the place exactly the way we wanted. This was it, our chance to extend our annual two-week Caribbean vacation into a permanent stay.

Parrot Ridge
was a blank canvas on which to paint.

We never
saw the rotting frame underneath.

~
~ ~

WE
WEREN’T COMPLETE novices at the task of running an inn – or that’s what we told ourselves.

Although
neither of us had any experience in property management, we’d traveled the world together and had visited a number of boutique hotels in exotic far-flung locations. We’d seen what worked and what didn’t. We’d read everything we could on the subject, attended seminars, and spoken to others who’d made the same transition.

We were as prepared as we possibly could
be – so said the self-appointed experts. Nothing could stop us from diving in.

We would clear out the debris, strip
down the existing structures, and create our new island home from scratch.

And when it was
done, we would spend the rest of our years happily entertaining guests on a dramatic poolside terrace overlooking paradise.

That’s what we thought our future would bring.

We were wrong.

If I could go back to that fateful day when my partner and I first
stopped at the real estate listing for Parrot Ridge, I would tell those fools to run back to their rental jeep, reverse it down the hill, and never look back.

“
HEY, GLENN. TAKE a look at this.”

A
slender man with tan skin and golden hair called down from a concrete platform that stretched across the highest point of Parrot Ridge. He stood at the edge of the exposed foundation, taking in the view.

“Just a
sec, Oli.”

Glenn
stepped out of the jeep and gingerly shut the driver’s side door. He’d done his best to secure the vehicle’s parking brake, but he wasn’t at all convinced that the worn lever was attached to an inner braking mechanism.

Hands on his hips, he
walked around to the back bumper and shook his head at the hill below. “That is some driveway.”

Summoned by
another excited shout from the crest, Glenn scrambled up into the ruins, his flip flops slipping on the cracked pavement and loose gravel.

“I’m going to turn my ankle in here.”

After stumbling over rocks and tree roots, Glenn finally joined his partner at the overlook – and he saw with his own eyes why Oliver was making such a fuss.

“It’s…amazing,
” he whispered. Words felt inadequate to describe the natural beauty that lay before him.

T
he pair gazed out at the sea, silently watching a sailboat skim across the expanse of perfect blue water. Clouds drifted through the sky, casting indigo shadows on the liquid surface below. Closer in, beyond the lower perimeter of the ruins, the land dropped off in a near vertical slope, the steep terrain engulfed by an impenetrable jungle.

L
eaning over the concrete ledge, Glenn and Oliver could see past the precipice and the thick wall of greenery, down to a narrow band of turquoise water that flanked the shoreline. The speckled browns of a coral reef spread across the seafloor, decorating it like a necklace.

Glenn pointed
out a pelican hovering above the tiny bay. The big-mouthed bird flew a tight circle over a school of fish before jackhammer-ing into the surf to scoop up its lunch.

In all their travels, n
either man had experienced such serenity. Breathing seemed effortless, imperfections unimaginable. The peace of this location could not be replicated.

The decision was made without further question or analysis.

This plot of land would be their sanctuary from the rest of the world.

And i
n that moment, their fates were sealed.

~
~ ~

GLENN AND OLIVER
had been together for over a decade.

From the beginning, t
heirs was a courtship of opposites. They were both fair-skinned sandy blonds, but that’s where the similarities ended.

Glenn
sported the sturdy build of a former athlete. His legs and upper body carried the residual muscle mass from his stint as a college football linebacker.

Oliver
had a more delicate and refined physique. He’d spent his college days dodging tackles, not running toward them.

W
hen they first started dating, the men were shyly discreet in their romantic interactions, only gradually transitioning to rare public shows of affection.

During their
recent Caribbean travels, they had reverted to the earlier routine. Social acceptance toward gay couples was not as widespread in this tropical region as in their home state of California.

“No reason to cause trouble,” Glenn had said
in his typical “let’s go along to get along” manner. And so, to most observers, they appeared to be brothers or close friends.

Oliver was
perturbed by the romantic cooling, although he tried not to show it. He had a sensitive disposition, and, regardless of the stated rationale, the distance between them felt like a slight.

B
ut even he had to laugh when hunky Glenn attracted unwanted female attention.

Glenn had been married
once – to a woman – and he was still wary of both the female gender and the institution. The ill-conceived union had taken place during Glenn’s younger closeted years, terminating in divorce after nine turbulent months.

The experience had left him permanently jaded.

When same-sex marriage became legal in their home jurisdiction, Glenn had shied away from any discussion of he and Oliver potentially tying the knot.

Glenn’s marriage
phobia frustrated his partner, who dreamt of commemorating their relationship in a formal ceremony, one with lilies, a garden gazebo and gilded harps playing in the background.

Oliver
had filled a binder with details he’d planned for the special event, but he’d decided not to press the matter. Glenn would come around eventually.

He just had to be patient.

~ ~ ~

O
N THAT FIRST day at Parrot Ridge, as the pair stood on the hilltop looking out over the sea, none of that seemed to matter.

Oliver
couldn’t help himself. He grabbed Glenn’s hand and gave it a squeeze.

“
G, this is the place.”

OUR ISLAND INN
came at a remarkably cheap price, or, at least, the land did. The property had been on the market for several years with no interested buyers. My partner was able to negotiate a substantial discount from the list price.

The seller was
reportedly anxious to be rid of the place.

I guess that should have tipped us off that there
might be something wrong, but we forged ahead anyway.

On paper, the
lot covered nearly thirty acres. The scallop-shaped plot captured the entirety of Parrot Ridge, starting from the area that jutted up from the main road and extending over the summit all the way down to the sea.

F
or practical purposes, only about five acres of semi-flat land at the top of the property was accessible and suitable for building.

The rest of the lot was too steep
to navigate, even on foot. A tropical overgrowth of trees, shrubs, ferns, agave plants and ropelike vines covered the near-vertical grade, forming a green barricade that couldn’t be breached without the aide of a machete.

The
strip of sand on the shoreline below was effectively unreachable. Several boulders combined with the coral reef to block boat access from the water.

We were building atop a natural fortress.

As it was, a special crew had to be brought in to shore up the foundations for the new structures. The men were hired from a neighboring island and ferried over.

At the time, I
thought this was due to the technical nature of the work.

I
later learned that no local laborers would venture anywhere near the tangled jungle at the lower edge of the clearing.

They knew the history of the place
, what had happened to the previous innkeepers, and the legend of the tormented beast who lived below.

~
~ ~

THE MONTHS PASSED slowly by, as they tend to do in the sleepy Caribbean, and t
he main building began to take shape.

A
series of sturdy concrete pillars rose up from the reinforced foundation. The pillars framed thick stone walls and supported a sturdy metal roof that was nailed down and cinched in place with special brackets.

It was
a structure designed to withstand hurricane force winds and rain, the worst, or so we thought, that Mother Nature could throw at us.

Looking back, it wa
s a time of blissful ignorance.

At the end of each day,
I climbed onto the scaffolding that had been vacated by the construction crew. Sitting there amid the scattered rebar and stacks of lumber, I watched the sun dip toward the horizon. The shifting angles of light caused the sea to shimmer with a metallic sheen.

Lost there in my serenity,
I often wondered about what came before. Who had lived here and how could they have ever given up this perfect spot, this magical view?

A few clues
surfaced during the foundation’s excavation. The workers tossed the relics aside, but I gathered the items into a pile and placed them beneath a tree at the top of the drive.

The collection included
several cracked dinner plates, a rusted iron cooking pan, and a ceramic bird that had lost one of its wings. The bird’s feet were stenciled with a name, but all I could make out was the first letter, an O.

The
artifacts only spurred my interest.

After asking around, I finally found someone willing to tell me
about the previous residents of Parrot Ridge.

The
story permanently chilled my curiosity.

~
~ ~

IT WAS ELSIE
who relayed the tale to me, not long after I hired her to clean the inn’s guest rooms.

She was a
quiet girl, slight for her twenty-two years. I was surprised when she pulled me aside, even more so when she reluctantly whispered in my ear.

I guess she
felt it was her duty. My constant questioning could do nothing but hurt the new venture’s chances.

The
tragedy happened over fifteen years ago, she told me, but the memory was still fresh among the island’s West Indian population. A superstitious crowd, the elders could recount the locations and specifics of killings that took place during the slave era three centuries earlier, so they were unlikely to forget the details of such recent violence.

According to
the local lore, a husband and wife once operated a small inn at Parrot Ridge. Presumably, this was the source of the ruins that we had cleared for our buildings.

The location was just as
jaw-dropping then as it was now, and the business thrived, particularly when the pair opened a restaurant with seating on the deck by the pool.

It was an idyllic
layout, but trouble brewed beneath the surface.

E
veryone on the island knew the husband had picked up a girlfriend on the side. The wife tried to look the other way, hoping that his philandering was a phase that would soon pass. The husband interpreted her silence as acquiescence and expanded his flirtatious third party antics.

One night,
an argument broke out in the restaurant kitchen.

I
n a fit of jealous rage, the wife stabbed her cheating spouse with a butcher knife. He bled out by the pool in front of the dinner guests. Distraught, the woman threw herself off the deck, falling to the ground at the lower edge of the clearing.