Jim Rubart Trilogy

by James L. Rubart

“What burned you so deeply about Christianity?”

  “That’s off-limits.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Drop it, Corin. I’m serious.”

  “So am I. The preachers who rail against gay people the hardest are the ones who are meeting other guys behind locked closet doors. The ones always talking about staying away from porn are the guys racking up hefty Internet bills.”

  “What’s your point?”

  “I think you see my point.”

  “I’m going to take a shower.” Tori kicked her towel into the air and grabbed it as she strode toward the locker room. “See you at your place in thirty-five.”

  CORIN’S DOORBELL RANG thirty-four minutes after he’d left Tori’s dojo and he smiled. She was always on time.

  “Come in, Queen of Precision.” He opened the door.

  “Are we okay?” Tori hugged him. “Sorry I got so riled up.”

  “We’re good.”

  Tori gave him a quick kiss, then strolled through the door and into his living room and stopped in front of his brick fireplace. “This mantel is stunning.” She touched it with her fingers and leaned in to take a closer look. “Really beautiful.”

  “I put it up yesterday.”

  “Where did you get this piece?”

  Corin smiled and ran his fingers over surface of the mantel. “You’ve seen it before.”

  “No.” Tori gave a tiny shake of her head and eased over closer to him. “This I would remember.”

  Corin laughed. “Let me show you something.” He turned and clipped toward his den, snatching a manila folder off his desk when he reached it, then turned and strode back to Tori. “Take a look.” He handed her an eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper with two photos on it and folded his arms.

  She glanced back and forth between the two pictures. “Same mantel,” she said, more to herself than to Corin. “Amazing. You’d never know. It looks like junk in the before picture.”

  “Yep.” He tried to keep from smiling.

  Tori tilted her head and stared at him. “You didn’t tell me your talents including restoring old furniture. I thought you only sold the stuff.”

  “The dream starting out wasn’t to sell the pieces; it was to make them.”

  “What happened?”

  “Not enough profit margin in selling new pieces. When someone sees something old they think it’s worth more than something new.” Corin rubbed the mantel. “I’ll give them that. The history, imagining who might have stood or sat or eaten at a piece hundreds of years before gives it a value you can’t hang a price tag on, but I’ve never thought it was ten times the value of a new piece. I think some things are better when new, then you can grow old with them.”

  Tori slid her arms around Corin’s neck and kissed him. “Like relationships?”

  “In some cases yes.”

  “Any specific piece you’d like to restore that you haven’t been able to yet?”

  Corin gazed at a picture on his wall of his brother and him skydiving over the badlands in North Dakota. Their photographer on that jump caught them with the sun lit up behind them like a trillion-watt spotlight. Two-man star formation, rocketing toward the earth at a million miles an hour.

  “Some pieces can’t ever be restored.”

  “We’re not talking about furniture anymore, are we?”

  Corin snatched his car keys off the mantel. “Let’s get out of here; we don’t want to miss the previews.”

  He squeezed his keys so hard they bit into his fingers and sent shoots of pain slinging up his arm. Why did he have to be reminded of his brother in every moment? Between thinking about Shasta during the day and fighting The Dream at night, he was ready to crack.

  And no amount of wood glue could fix him.

  CHAPTER 20

  No!”

  On Saturday morning Corin lurched up and out of bed and moved toward his door, dragging damp sheets with him, then crumpled to his bedroom floor as his legs were caught in the blankets.

  “Oh, wow. Hold on, hold on.” The words puffed out of him like blasts of steam from an old train. Corin tried to slow his breathing and raked his hands through his hair, as if he could tear the images out of his mind—of a torrent of water cascading into his lungs till they burst, the terror of it suffocating him, burying him in darkness.

  The Dream hadn’t been this bad for three years. Maybe more. He rose to his knees and held his head.

  Just a dream, just a dream, just a dream.

  “Whew.”

  C’mon, get a grip, Cor.

  After a few more deep breaths he glanced at the blue numbers on his digital clock: 3 a.m. Later than normal.

  He sunk back against the side of his bed and waited for his pulse to settle.

  The darkness rocketing out of the bottom of the lake had been thicker than he’d ever felt. Deeper, and the nothingness more consuming. He shook his head.

  Corin went to his bathroom, splashed water on his face, examined his puffy eyes, and cursed the face in the mirror.

  He’d slept long enough that he’d have to count a million sheep to get back to sleep, but he hadn’t gotten even close to enough rest to be up for the day.

  Besides, he wasn’t ready to submerge himself back into dreamland with the emotions of the drowning still churning through his gut.

  He stumbled into his living room and grabbed Demon: A Memoir off the coffee table, a novel he’d picked up at Barnes & Noble earlier that afternoon. He’d asked one of the clerks about the supernatural being real and she recommended that book along with The Screwtape Letters.

  After three chapters he set the book down and considered the implications. Demons and angels flitting around the world, taking on human form? Right. And little green Martians would be visiting his store tomorrow to pick up some European antiques for their home planet.

  And more chairs made by God would show up on his doorstep.

  His laptop pinged. He got up and ambled over to his kitchen table, reached over, and tapped the space bar to wake up the screen and see who was e-mailing him at three in the morning.

  From: NicolerIIV@gmail.com

  Subject: Good fortune

  To: CorinR@artifications.com

  Translation: Another Nigerian trolling for suckers who had been living under a rock for the past ten years and might still believe a fifty-eight-year-old Chinese woman dying of cancer wanted to share her vast fortune.

  He turned, trundled back toward the couch, and picked up his book. He’d plow through another couple of chapters and then try to get back to sleep. With no dreams.

  Another ping.

  He spun on his heel. Maybe it was the Tooth Fairy this time.

  Same name.

  Different subject: One more thing.

  He slumped into the chair in front of the table and wiggled the mouse. Why not?

  He set his book down and opened the first e-mail.

  Hello Corin,

  I hope you are well, although I would guess you are going through a number of strange mental machinations at the moment.

  Do not worry; there is purpose in what you’re experiencing. It is good fortune and favor on you that has drawn you into this journey. Believe this. And keep asking. Keep seeking. Answers will come.

  Keep pressing forward, will you now?

  Your friend,

  Nicole

  Corin rubbed his jaw. It had to be her. He opened the next e-mail.

  Corin,

  One more thing: I’m sure you know this, but trust is to be earned and not given lightly with regard to everything and anyone having to do with the chair.

  Exercise caution in all you do, will you? With everyone you interact with, yes? In both the natural realm and the realm of the sp
irit.

  Your friend,

  Nicole

  Friend? She wasn’t his friend.

  He pulled up Google and plugged in her e-mail address to see if he could trace her e-mail address to a phone number or address.

  Corin didn’t think she’d be that careless. She seemed savvy enough to block his efforts to try to track her down. But it was worth a shot. Fifteen minutes later he gave up and typed a response back to her e-mail.

  Nicole,

  You’re right; strange things are happening and I don’t know where to go for answers.

  When can we meet?

  Can I at least call you?

  Corin

  A moment after sending the e-mail a noise from his basement startled him. It sounded like a stuck door being forced open, the latch scraping against the doorjamb.

  He stared at the door that led downstairs. A dim light came from under it. He didn’t remember leaving a light on down there. Corin set his laptop to the side and slowly rose without taking his eyes off the light under the door.

  His pulse spiked. The light along the bottom wasn’t steady. It ebbed softer and brighter with the rhythm of a slowly beating heart.

  A moment later the light vanished and didn’t come back on.

  Corin glanced furtively around his living room, then stood and eased over to the basement door. He placed his hand on the knob and listened. Nothing.

  A fly buzzed past his head as he opened the door and flicked on the light at the top of the stairs.

  He swatted at the fly and descended the fourteen steps like each one was a thin layer of ice he was scared of breaking through.

  An electrical problem? The house creaking as it settled into the fall season? Maybe. An older house like his had quirks.

  When he reached the basement he flicked on the light and glanced around the main room. Nothing was out of place. But he let his imagination roam anyway. Could it have been the chair? Throwing off some kind of supernatural glow? Mocking him, teasing him about its secrets?

  No. Knock it off. The dream and the novel had scrambled his brain.

  He looked toward the padlocked door at the back of the room where he’d put the chair yesterday. It was open a few inches. Hadn’t he shut and locked it? Corin wasn’t sure. No light came from within.

  A moment later the room grew brighter, then immediately dimmed. Corin whirled toward the source of the light.

  The incandescent lamp in the far corner of the room flickered to life, then sputtered off, then back on again. It buzzed and started through its routine of off-on, off-on again.

  Corin sighed. Of course. If you turned the knob too far the lamp would come on and off, sputtering and humming as the current to the bulb ebbed and flowed.

  He sat on the lowest stair and rubbed the back of his neck. Maybe he’d move the chair to his storage facility east of town. That way his overactive comic book mind wouldn’t create bizzaro scenarios out of nothing and play ping-pong with his emotions.

  He turned his focus to the door behind which the chair sat. Corin wandered over to it, pushed it open wider, and flicked on the light just inside the door. The chair rested in the same spot he’d left it in the day before.

  Resting? Same spot? Did he except it to jump up and dance the rumba? It was an inanimate object! He sighed. But if the Son of God had made the chair, wouldn’t it be more than a chair? It would be alive in a sense. If His hands had touched it, crafted it, maybe even blessed it, it could hold a spark of His divine power.

  He stepped farther into the room and eased up to the chair. “Are you real?” Corin pulled up a small stool, sat in front of the chair, and stared at it. At the perfect lines. The intricate patterns in the ancient wood.

  “Where have you been over the centuries? And if you are a chair formed by a Jewish carpenter, how did you end up here? Talk to me.”

  Corin laughed at himself, but soon the moment of levity vanished replaced by a sense of foreboding. If it wasn’t the chair of Christ, he should sell it for as much as he could and be done with this strange adventure. But if it was formed by the Son of God . . . he needed to know more about it, needed to know what to do next.

  An ocean of questions was forming and Corin was drowning in them. He needed someone with skills to navigate the uncharted waters he now swam. He needed a boat.

  But where could he find one?

  A name popped into his mind.

  Yes. Why hadn’t he thought of Travis days ago?

  He trudged back up the basement stairs, across the living room to his laptop. After three minutes he hit Send, slinging off an e-mail to Travis. If anyone could provide a few answers it would be him. Not religious speculation but rock-hard, scientific answers.

  Which meant tomorrow he would reluctantly do a bit of necessary surgery on the chair.

  PASTOR MARK JEFFERIES jammed his finger into his cell phone’s End button. He didn’t like hanging up on people, but when they pushed the right buttons his reaction was automatic. And having women in his church challenge his authority was the hottest button in his brain.

  He stood and paced in front of his corner windows, gazing out on the trees littered with gold and red leaves about to fall and clutter the street with their failure to stay on the tree.

  A few minutes later he picked up the phone and hit redial.

  “Hello?”

  Mark clenched the phone. “Eric, it’s Mark again. Listen, I lost my temper. It shouldn’t have happened.” He sucked in a quick breath. “But you need to keep your wife in line. It isn’t her place to challenge me.” Mark paused. “Or any man in the church.”

  “All she was doing was expressing her opinion. She wasn’t saying you were wrong, just saying how she felt.”

  “That’s fine. Everyone is entitled to his or her feelings. But it has to be done in the right context. And a woman expressing her feelings to the senior pastor of the church during a small-group gathering with almost seventy people in attendance is not the place or the time. Are we clear on that?”

  The phone went silent.

  “Are we clear on that, Eric?”

  “Listen, Mark. You’re a man of God and you’ve helped both of us a tremendous amount, but we’re done. Best to you.”

  Mark rubbed his forehead and with his other hand mashed his Bluetooth deeper into his left ear. “You’re leaving the church? Over this?”

  “A lot of things, but this straw probably weighs the most.”

  “What other things?”

  “Good-bye, Mark. Thanks for all you’ve done.”

  Click.

  Mark waited a moment, then yanked his Bluetooth out of his ear. People leaving the church: his second hottest button. He should have kicked them out before they could quit.

  He lurched back to his windows, clenched his arms across his chest, and seethed, staring at nothing.

  A knock on his door broke him out of his daze. “What!”

  The door opened a few inches and Ben poked his head into Mark’s office. Mark motioned him in with his head.

  “Bad time?”

  “No. Perfect.” Mark didn’t speak again for over a minute. “You know, Ben. I hate it when I’m the quintessential example of Balaam’s donkey.”

  “You’ve been prophesying?”

  “No, I was referring to the species as representative of my behavior.”

  “Excuse me? I’m still not tracking.”

  “Forget it. Sit. Just in a bad mood today, which makes me do things I regret soon after. Happens to everyone, right?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Coffee?” Mark motioned toward his espresso maker, which sat on the counter that lined the wall to his left.

  “No, thank you.”

  Mark strolled toward the counter and stuck his h
alf full vanilla latte in the microwave next to the coffee machine and punched in forty-five seconds. “Talk to me. What did you find out about this antiques store owner?”

  “He’s not stupid.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “He’s not begging for our assistance.”

  “Pity.” Mark paced in front of the microwave. “Is he a Christian?”

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “Does he believe in God?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to know.” Mark drilled Ben with his eyes. “You should have asked.”

  “I’ll find out.” Ben shuffled his feet. “Sorry.”

  The microwave dinged and Mark marched back to snag his drink. “Does he know what he has?”

  “If he does he’s not letting on.”

  “Do you think the chair is genuine?” Mark settled back in his leather chair and took a sip of his coffee.

  “You mean do I think the chair sitting in an antiques store eight hundred miles away is the one you’ve been searching for most of your adult life?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t let me see it.”

  Mark downed another slug of his coffee and wiped his mouth. “I want you to keep a watch on this guy. You know what I mean, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Corin Roscoe.”

  “I want to know where Corin goes, who he hangs out with, who he talks to, everything. Understand?”

  “It’s done.” Ben cocked his head. “Do you mind me asking what you’re going to do with his chair if it does turn out to be the one?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “Yes, you did.” Mark took another drink of his coffee. “But it’s okay. I admire your ambition. I’d want to know the same thing if I were in your shoes. Well done.”

  Mark opened the top right-hand drawer of his desk, pulled out a full-sized notepad, and began jotting down what he’d learned from Ben. After few moments he glanced up at Ben. “Yes? Is there something else?”