The Chair (23 page)

He shuddered.

Lake Vereor.

The lake he’d drowned in.

Died in.

Where his heart had stopped and he hadn’t filled his lungs with anything but water for over five minutes.

When he arrived at Woodmoor Lake, he parked his car in his usual spot, then sat in his car for ten minutes.
Get out and face the fear. Wrestle with the dream demons and crush them under your heel.

After throwing on a raincoat and scrunching an old Rockies baseball hat onto his head, he got out and meandered up the small grassy rise shielding the lake from the parking lot. When he reached the top, Corin jammed his hands in his pockets and squeezed his fingers into fists.

The sun briefly poked through gray clouds as it slithered its way down into the night and Corin blinked against the intermittent moments of brightness.

His breaths shortened as he stared at the lake and he forced himself to breathe slower.

No fear.

Nothing to fear.

Nothing he couldn’t conquer.

If only it were true.

NICOLE WATCHED CORIN settle onto the bench overlooking the lake as she’d done for the past nine years. How many hours had she prayed for him as he sat there? Probably hundreds if they were added up. Finally time to see if those years of prayer would bring healing or hell.

So much good surrounded the chair. So much evil drawn to it because of its power. Impossible to have one without the other.

Had he discovered the chair’s healing power yet? Most likely yes. Corin had to realize the boy with asthma was healed because of the chair. She walked toward him, determined not to reveal too much of who she was, even though she desperately wanted to.

Nicole asked once more for wisdom before she would enter Corin Roscoe’s life and stay in it no matter what happened.

CORIN LET THE memory of the drowning flood his mind, let the fear wash through his heart, and tried to fight the terror that seemed to claw at his brain.

No, it’s over; you lived. You have nothing to fear. Nothing to fear. Nothing to fear.

But it didn’t help. It never helped. The dream would still come.

Why couldn’t he shake it? Why couldn’t he accept the fact he didn’t die in the lake that day; accept the fact he’d lived and get over the fear? He’d been to counselors who kept asking him, “How do you feeeel? How do you feeeel?” without ever giving him concrete steps to eradicate the incident from his mind.

The sky shifted, a set of dark clouds cobbled across the sky, and a few minutes later a fine rain drizzled onto Corin’s Patagonia jacket, the bench he sat on, and the grass that surrounded him. A minute later the rain thickened. He was about to get up when the sound of drops dancing on an umbrella made him spin to the left.

Nicole.

She stood ten feet to his side, a smile shining under her intense eyes. Eyes that seemed to drill into his soul. Eyes that seemed to know him beyond what they should.

She stepped toward him and stopped in front of him.

“Do you mind?” She motioned toward the bench.

“Please.”

Nicole sat, her umbrella covering both their heads. She wore a black raincoat, which contrasted sharply with the sun-bleached bench. Black gloves covered her hands.

“How is your life progressing these days, Corin?”

He studied her face. Joyful. Serious. At the same time. One moment she looked thirty-five, the next she was ninety.

“I e-mailed you back. I’ve been dying to talk to you.” Corin rammed his hands deeper into the pockets of his coat. “Is this the point in the script where you tell me exactly why you showed up at my store two weeks ago and gave me the chair? And if the chair was really made by Christ? And if you’re one of the legendary Keepers of the Chair, some kind of spiritual being?”

She laughed—a kaleidoscope laugh that made him think of a rainbow. “I am no angel. Of that you can be certain.”

“Why did you give me the chair?”

“That is something I am anxious to tell you, but not before the time is right.” She removed her gloves and reached over and patted his shoulder. “We don’t want to move too quickly, I don’t think.”

“Maybe you don’t. I’m ready to slide behind the wheel of a Ferrari and mash the accelerator to the floor.”

“The faster you go, the higher the chance of an accident.”

“I’m willing to take the chance.”

Nicole turned her gaze to the lake. “Why do you come to the water?”

“Is the legend true? Has this chair been passed from mother to daughter for centuries?”

Nicole nodded.

The rain pinged the surface of the lake as it grew darker. “And does it truly contain the healing power of Christ?”

“At this point it doesn’t matter what I tell you; it matters what you believe.” Nicole adjusted the umbrella so it covered Corin’s legs. “Has it healed anyone?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

Corin hesitated. “Yes.”

“I see.”

They sat in silence, as the clouds continued their trek north across the sky and the rain returned to a drizzle, then stopped.

“Why do you come to the water?” Nicole repeated her question.

“I think you already know.”

She smiled. “I don’t know everything about you.”

“How do you know so much?”

“Enough.”

Corin stared at the dark undulations in the water’s surface, mocking him, laughing at him, daring him to enter the lake.

“Do you know what happened to me when I was younger?”

Nicole shook her head. “Only that you almost drowned. I know none of the details.”

Corin leaned back and pulled his baseball hat farther down his head. Tell her? Why not?

“When I was ten my family took a camping trip to Lake Vereor. The third day of the trip we rented these pontoons with bikes welded on top of them side by side. They looked like they were made by someone in their garage who took a shot of whiskey with every weld. You pedaled the bikes and they moved underwater paddles that propelled us around the lake. I was with my dad; my brother was with my mom.”

Corin rubbed his face. “We all had life jackets, being safe you know. After we tooled around for fifteen or twenty minutes, we decided to switch. I’d join my mom, my brother, Shasta, would push the pedals with my dad.”

Corin closed his eyes as the memory pressed into his mind as if the Incredible Hulk was squeezing his brain into pulp.

“You step here next to me, Corin,” his mom said.

Corin hesitated, then stepped on the back of the pontoon next to his mom and brother.

“That might be too much weight . . .” His dad stared at them.

Corin glanced at the pontoon as it sank into the dark green water, then back at his father. “Dad?”

“Get off!”

Too late.

“Jump! Before it flips and hits you—”

His dad’s words were smothered as the combined weight of his mom and him flipped the craft over and Corin was pulled underwater.

Something thumped him on the head and he started to go dark. No, he had to get to the surface. He kicked hard but didn’t move. Corin opened his eyes and looked up. The pontoon was upside down, and he was next to one of the bicycles. Next to the handlebars. He kicked again.

Nothing.

Then he saw why. One of the straps of his life jacket was wrapped around a handlebar of the bike.

He yanked on the strap. It was like a steel cable.

Suddenly, movement beside him. He whirled to see his mom next to him. She grabbed the strap and yanked on it. It didn’t budge. She pulled again. Nothing.

She wrapped the strap around her hand and wrenched on it a third time. Slight movement. Too slight.

He was running out of air.
Please, Mom! Get me to the surface!

Twenty more seconds. He could hold his breath twenty more seconds.

She motioned with her hands as if to tell him to stay calm and then swam for the surface.

No! What are you doing? Don’t leave me!

Fifteen more seconds before his air was gone.

An instant later his dad was next to him, grabbing the strap with his iron hands and yanking it so hard the handlebars bent.

Ten seconds.

He was still tied to the bike. He clawed at his dad, tearing into his skin, not caring, only knowing he had to breathe.

Seven seconds.

Another heave with all the strength his dad possessed. Corin kicked his legs as hard as he could, knowing it wouldn’t help but unable to stop himself.

Three seconds.

Another pull by his father. Corin grabbed the handlebar as if he could break it in two. His eyes went wide, his mouth opened to scream.

One second.

A moment later Corin let out his air and sucked in the coldness of the lake.

His dad was still pulling on the strap when the darkness took him.

Corin laid his shaking hands on his jeans and tried to smile. Although he’d relived the memory thousands of times, when awake and in his dreams, it was the first time he’d told the story out loud.

“You didn’t almost drown that day.”

He shook his head.

“You died.”

Corin nodded at Nicole and sucked in a quick breath. “Clinically dead for five minutes. Revived and the doctors said there was no damage to my mind.”

“Except for your fear of the water.”

Corin took off his hat and massaged the Rockies logo with his thumb. “If there is a God behind this chair of yours, He certainly has a sense of humor.”

Nicole tilted her head and glanced at him. “How so?”

Corin let out a bitter laugh. “Did you know that Olympic-caliber coaches can spot an athlete with innate natural talent as young as three?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“I was picked out of a crowd of four-year-old boys as having exceptional talent, and I exercised that talent for the next six years.”

“What was the sport at which you showed such aptitude?” She asked the question as if she already knew the answer.

Corin stared at the water for a few seconds before turning and looking at Nicole. “Swimming, of course.”

“I’m sorry.” Nicole sighed and gave a tiny shake of her head. “Do you ever miss it?”

“Never.”

It wasn’t true. Swimming wasn’t an extreme sport, didn’t give him the rush that hang gliding or BASE jumping or street luging did. But in the water he’d always felt free, alone with the surge of the water as he pulled himself to another record-breaking time for eight-year-olds, then nine, then ten-year-old boys. While the water terrified him now, an atom-sized part of him missed the water, missed what it used to be to him.

“Did your mom carry guilt for what happened?”

“She had giant backpacks stuffed with guilt and she carried them everywhere she went till the day she died.” Corin picked up a handful of gravel and started tossing the pieces at the water. “I never stopped trying to convince her to let the guilt go, but she couldn’t ever watch Olympic swimming after that. She blamed herself for my not wearing gold around my neck. Never could accept that the accident wasn’t her fault.”

“Then whose fault was it?”

“Everyone has some kind of kryptonite in his or her life. I suppose that’s one of mine.”

“So you need a lead box in which to mute its power?”

Corin rubbed his collarbone. A lead box? Sure. If only the solution for his life could be as simple as it was in his comic books. “Are you offering?”

“In a way, yes.”

“How so?”

“The chair.”

“It can heal me, huh?”

“It is a way to healing.”

“What does that mean?”

Nicole patted his hand. “I’m sorry; I can’t tell you that part.”

“I have to figure that out on my own.”

She nodded. “A man who is told learns with his head; a man who experiences the lesson learns with his heart.”

“Who said that?”

“I did.”

Maybe it was time for him to sit in the chair again. He wasn’t sure what had kept him from trying it a second time. Maybe he was scared it wouldn’t work. Maybe he didn’t know exactly what to believe for when he sat in it. Maybe it was because it might peel back a fear so deep he’d never faced it.

Then again, maybe it was time to sell it. “There’s this pastor of a megachurch who wants to buy the chair.”

“I see.” Nicole glanced at the sky and folded up her umbrella. “Do you think you should, or is there something or Someone orchestrating a symphony here greater than you know? Can’t you feel it?”

Corin hesitated. The obvious answer was to say yes. But was there? Emotions were not reality, and even though he’d felt an affinity toward Nicole, felt hope after A. C. was healed, felt a sense of wonder after little Brittan was supposedly healed by the chair, it didn’t mean some Higher Power was directing the whole thing.

And what if God
was
behind all of it? Maybe Mark’s offer was God’s way of sending him a boat to rescue him from the encroaching waters. A path of hope he could offer Shasta that might lead to a healing that seemed insane to hope for two weeks earlier. “I don’t know if something greater is going on here.”

“When does this pastor want his answer?”

Corin smiled at her. “You know who the pastor is. I think you’re tracking me.”

“I’m watching out for you.”

“It seems a common hobby for people these days.”

“Quite.”

Corin tried to stir up a feeling of mistrust toward Nicole. Impossible. Tesser had said to trust no one, and the counsel was wise, but with Nicole he couldn’t help it. “I have three days to decide. And one of them has already passed.”

“Why would you sell it?”

“I need the money to keep my store from going under.”

“Anything else?”

Corin shrugged. “A friend of mine has to have an operation.”

“Has to?”

Corin hesitated. “Yes.”

“And this money could pay for it.”

“Yep.”

“Why not have your friend sit in the chair?”

“Because from what I’ve seen, the chair decides what it wants to heal and what it doesn’t want to heal, and I can’t risk this friend sitting in the chair and getting nothing.”

“Why is that?”

Corin stood and stepped toward the lake. Sorry, no one got that story. After two or three minutes he sat again.