Corin peered into the pipe. Ten feet at the most before the darkness swallowed up the light. He could hold his breath for two and a half minutes. It was a trick he’d learned to give himself a shield of seconds against the panic onslaught. For some reason while holding his breath, the fear flitted at the edges of his mind and didn’t enter until he’d released the air. If only it worked for more than just the first lungful. “I’ll try, but I doubt I’ll do any good.”
“Thank you,” the woman whispered.
Corin closed his eyes, put his ear next to the pipe, and listened for the dog’s whimper. Nothing. How deep had the mutt gone?
Arrooo.
Faint.
Wonderful. The thing was probably three hundred yards in. Concrete could magnify the sound making the dog’s cry seem closer than it was. Maybe she was six hundred yards in by now.
“What’s the dog’s name again?”
“Scoundrel.”
Corin squinted up at her. “You don’t happen to have a treat she’d be interested in?”
The woman shook her head.
Of course not.
“Like I said, I’m not fond of tight spaces so I’m going to give this a shot, but I won’t be able to last in there very long, understand? A couple of minutes at the most.”
The woman nodded.
“You don’t happen to have a flashlight, do you?”
She nodded again, reached inside her purse, and pulled out a small pink flashlight.
“I was kidding. I didn’t think—”
“Always be prepared I say.”
Except for having a new leash. Or a treat.
Corin took the light and flicked it on. It would help. Not much, but he’d take it. At times seeing how tight a space was helped. Most of the time it made things worse.
He studied the pipe again. He’d have three or four inches on each side, but it wouldn’t be easy to turn around once—if—he found the dog. Backing out if he couldn’t turn around? Lots of fun. And twice as long to do that as going forward.
“Once the panic button in my brain starts buzzing, I’ll have to come out and I’ll go get some help.”
The woman nodded again, wiped her eyes, and pointed. “Now? Please?”
“Okay.” Corin grabbed the sides of the pipe and pulled, as if he could expand the opening to three times its size, and took three long breaths. Here we go.
He sucked in hard, filling his lungs to capacity, then slung himself into the dark tube. Corin dragged himself forward by his elbows, pushing with his feet. This situation was a good thing. Fate was training him, pushing him to overcome the fear. He tried to believe it.
Aroooooo.
Close. The dog sounded close.
Think logically. The tube won’t collapse—wrong! Not the right kind of talk. Wrong word. The tube is strong. There’s plenty of air. This will be over soon. Stay strong.
There was no sensation of panic; he felt calm. But as soon as he needed another breath the feeling would vanish, replaced by a tingling sensation that would quickly morph into full-blown terror.
The pressure in his lungs built, pressing to get out. No. Think. You have plenty of air in your body. Ignore the pain. He didn’t need to breathe yet. He’d only been in the tube thirty, maybe forty seconds and was thirty-five, maybe forty yards inside the tube.
Two minutes thirty seconds.
He could hold his breath at least that long.
Steady. Plenty of time left.
Another whimper. Closer.
Time to turn on the flashlight. He pulled it from his hip pocket, flicked it on, and shone it down the pipe. Nothing.
Wait.
The light flashed against something metallic. Ten yards away. He had about twenty more seconds before he had to turn around.
“Scoundrel, come on, girl.” Corin puffed out, letting some of his precious air escape.
Another whimper, but no closer.
He pushed farther in and shone the light toward the sound. It reflected off Scoundrel’s eyes and he smiled. Corin was wrong. He’d misjudged. Scoundrel whimpered at him only five yards away.
They were going to make it.
Five seconds later Corin reached Scoundrel.
What the—?
The cockapoo wasn’t stuck. It strained against a thin rope that ran from its collar to a small piece of rebar that stuck out of the concrete pipe. Scoundrel wasn’t snagged; she was tied. Tight.
Corin ignored the sick feeling growing in his gut and dug into the rope. Too long, it was taking too long.
Finally he got it untied and yanked the cord through Scoundrel’s collar. The dog sprinted past Corin toward the light fifty yards behind them, claws rapping against the dry floor of the pipe.
Corin mashed himself into a ball and turned around, the walls of the pipe scraping against his arms and legs, then he glanced at his watch. Fifteen seconds to get back to the opening.
Not enough time.
Come on, Superman, move!
With twenty yards to go his lungs refused to hold the air any longer and it whooshed out of him like a geyser. He gasped and sucked in air like he was hanging on to a rubber raft in the middle of a class 4 rapid.
“You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine,” he puffed out as he waited for the fabricated wall of control to be demolished and the familiar waves of panic to rip through his mind. Let the battle begin.
But panic didn’t fill the empty space in his mind.
It would. He had only seconds now.
Think about being in Belize sipping a drink with an ugly little yellow umbrella. But he knew it wouldn’t help.
As he pulled in his second breath, he steadied himself for the onslaught of panic and continued to crawl toward the opening. But the fear didn’t come. Ten more seconds passed. Twenty. Thirty. Still nothing but calm sweeping through his mind.
He pictured the walls crushing in on him. Nothing. No fear. No panic. Just a peace that seemed to swirl from his feet to the top of his head, then it reversed itself and completed the circuit through his body again.
It made no sense.
An image of the chair filled his mind.
Yes, it did.
Unbelievable.
It was real.
Thirty seconds later he looked up toward the opening, a silhouette of the woman filling the opening of the pipe, sunlight streaming past the outline of her curly hair.
“Are you all right?” she called out to him.
“I’m good. Scoundrel is okay?”
“She’s fine.” The woman’s voice seemed different. The emotion gone from it. “You seem like a kind man.”
“Thanks, you seem kind too.” Another fifteen yards and he’d be outside.
“Which makes me feel really bad.” She kicked the inside of the pipe.
“What do you mean?”
“I’m so sorry for this. I don’t want to, but they told me I had to help and if I didn’t they’d . . . Well, I don’t want to talk about that, so just forgive me, okay?” Her arm disappeared as she reached up above the pipe. A moment later the iron grating slammed in front of the pipe and echoed in Corin’s ears.
She wouldn’t.
No.
“What are you doing?” Corin crawled like a wild man, tiny specs of gravel digging into his elbows and knees. Five yards.
The woman wrapped a padlock around the grate and slammed its latch shut. “I’m so sorry; I am.” She bent down, the crossed iron bars of the grate framing her large face. “I’m supposed to say you should have dropped it off like they asked you to, whatever that means.”
“Don’t lock me in here.”
“I’m so sorry.”
The woman lumbered away, Scoundrel’s bark fading as
Corin slumped back and rubbed his face with dirt-covered hands.
He’d jumped right into their web and cuddled up next to the spider.
If he hadn’t been . . . he didn’t know what to call it . . . cured? healed? of his claustrophobia, his brain might have short-circuited.
Exactly what they’d wanted.
And when they came again for the chair, he would have melted in front of them and told them whatever they wanted to know. Maybe they’d be by in a hour, or two, or three and make him a simple deal: tell them where the chair was in exchange for setting him free.
Who had set him up?
At the moment it didn’t matter. All he wanted was to escape the pipe.
Corin spun and crawled back into the blackness till he reached a T in the pipe. He flashed on the light on his watch. He’d crawled for fifteen minutes. Right or left?
Left. It just felt right. He tried to laugh at his lame joke, but his brain gyrated with too many other questions.
Why had the chair healed him? He hadn’t felt anything when he sat in it.
Was it Jefferies? He was the obvious choice, but Corin couldn’t convince himself the pastor would go this far.
Would this lead to a way out, or was the pipe closed off at both ends of the T?
Seven minutes later he had his answer as he pushed up out of a storm-drain grate on a side street. Ten minutes after that he was back at his car, firing up the engine, knowing three things with absolute certainty.
First, he wouldn’t be selling Jefferies the chair.
Second, he had to tell Tesser and Nicole about his healing.
Third, he had to find a safer place to hide the chair.
CHAPTER 35
You’d better be there, old friend.
Corin had reached Tesser the night of the tunnel episode and arranged to meet out at Seven Falls on Sunday morning before Corin opened his store.
When he arrived, the old professor was already there, sitting on a bench perfectly centered in front of the 181-foot thundering waterfall, sipping a cup of coffee.
“Why do we have to meet here?” Tesser swatted at a mosquito on his wrist, then picked up his coffee and poured a splash on his forearm to wash it off. “I hate bugs.”
Corin had asked Tesser to meet him at the base of the falls for three reasons. First, it would be private this time of year. Back in August the tourists would swarm like the mosquitoes attacking Tesser. In late October people were stacking wood and starting to think cozy.
Second, he was paranoid. Whoever had tried to scramble his brain by locking him inside that pipe would likely be watching him closer than ever now. Technology certainly made it possible for the people after the chair to bug his home, Tesser’s home, and his car, and the thunder of the falls would keep their conversation private.
Third, he didn’t want Tesser distracted by all his books and the Internet.
“They wanted me to crack open like an egg, so they could spread it in their pan and figure out where I’ve hidden the chair,” Corin said as he sat beside Tesser.
“That would be a sterling example of stating the obvious.” Tesser shifted on the thick, planked bench and stared at the falls towering above them. “Now what is this startling news you need to tell me but couldn’t and wouldn’t tell me about on the phone?”
“I’m getting paranoid in my old age.”
Tesser patted his leg. “Old age doesn’t kick in till you’re eighty.”
Corin cleared his throat. “There’s no doubt about the chair: It is healing people.”
“Has there been an addition to the pantheon of healings you’ve told me about?”
“Yes.”
Tesser tugged on his right ear, then in apparent innocence rubbed his forehead with his middle finger. “You actually think the chair is truly 100 percent grown in America, healing people?”
“Yes. Ninety-nine percent of me believes it. And there’s still the one percent that doesn’t know what to believe any longer.”
“But you seem more convinced of its healing power now than when your friend was cured. Your skepticism has waned.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you.”
Tesser leaned back and rubbed both ears this time. “You want to know what the book says about it. If multiple healings would break out like this. If this is part of the legend.”
“That and I want to know if you think it’s possible.”
“Who was the latest person healed?”
Corin stared up at the wall of white cascading down in front of him. “Me.” He turned to watch Tesser’s reaction.
If his face could have gone whiter than it already was, it probably would have.
“No, is this true?” Tesser rubbed his hands together. “It truly healed you?”
Corin told him the story of the pipe. When he finished Tesser said, “Fascinating. Utterly fascinating.”
Tesser picked up his coffee and poked at the outside of the cup with a twig for a long time before answering. “I’ve always liked you so much, Corin.” He turned and smiled. “You were my best student ever. And my friend. I’m sorry.”
A burst of autumn wind rained leaves down around them like giant gold snowflakes.
“For what?”
“That you have to get mixed up in all this.” Tesser dug into his kneecap with his fingers.
“What are you talking about?”
Tesser sighed. “No, I think I’ll leave it at that.” He stood and ambled over to the bridge that crossed over the stream that flowed out from the pool under the falls and stared down at the water.
“Uh, I don’t think so.” Corin stood and joined Tesser on the bridge, waiting till his old professor looked up. “Talk to me. What are you worried about?”
The old man puffed out his cheeks till he looked like a giant squirrel with a mouth stuffed full of marshmallows. “Think about it. Any time you get an object or an idea that purports to have powers beyond our understanding, you start attracting others like . . . like . . .” He swatted at another mosquito that landed on his arm. “See what I mean?”
“Bloodsuckers out for my chair.”
“Well, someone convinced that woman to lock you in that pipe.” Tesser rubbed the blood from the dead mosquito on his arm. “But they want more than blood, more than the chair. They want its power. They’ll be coming out of the woodwork soon. And they’ll be willing to do anything to get it.”
“I think I know who is behind all this. This religious whacko has been after me to see the chair, telling me he can protect me from its powers.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Does it matter?”
“No, I suppose not, but still.” Tesser shuffled his feet on the concrete as if he was doing an impromptu dance. “Maybe it matters. Maybe not.” His feet kept moving. “If the Mob was after it, that would be different than if it was a lady running a local day-care center.”
“Hey, some of those day-care ladies are pretty tough.”
“Tiz true.”
“It’s a guy named Mark Jefferies. Pastor of a huge church down around La Jolla.”
A startled look flitted across Tesser’s face and vanished a moment later.
“You know him?”
Tesser looked away. “No, but I’ve heard of him.”
“How?”
The professor waved his hands above his head. “Doesn’t matter, but it proves my point.”
“That people are coming after it.”
“Yes. Exactly. Which means it must be hidden well.” Tesser waved his hands again. “You must hide it. I want no part of that piece of this chaotic equation.”
Corin tapped his knuckles on the railing and watched the curtain of mist float across the pond at the base of the falls that hid the surrounding foliage.
Tesser shuffled over the end of the bridge and back, grabbing the scraggly tufts of gray sprouting out of his chin and yanking on them like he was starting a leaf blower. “Where is the chair now?”
“It’s in my vault in the store.” Corin lied. He was done trusting anyone 100 percent, including Tesser. Including Nicole.
“Not good. Not safe. Need to have it someplace safe.”
“No one is breaking into that thing.”
Tesser stopped pulling on his goatee and glared at Corin. “The right people can break into anything.”
His friend was right. His basement wasn’t secure enough. The incident in the pipe convinced him he needed to move the chair to the secret bunker he’d built years ago in the woods behind his house. He would move it soon.
“Any thoughts on where I should hide it?”
Tesser paced past Corin and back three times before answering. “Maybe to my house.”
“What?”
Tesser stopped and stared. “You must move it to my house. Soon. Tonight.”
“Why yours? I thought you said you didn’t want to get wrapped up in this problem.”
“Equation. I said equation, not problem.”
The surge of a car engine startled Corin. He turned to see a Honda Accord with tinted windows pull into the parking lot.
“I thought you said no one would be coming out here today but us.”
The car crunched over the gravel parking lot straight toward them.
“Let’s take a little walk,” Corin said.
“You are paranoid.”
“Thank you.” Corin strode down the path on the other side of the bridge, glancing back to make sure Tesser kept up with him. “C’mon, let’s move.”
The old professor shuffled along somewhere between a slow jog and a fast walk.
“A little faster, Prof., yeah? I don’t think we want to be meeting any new friends at the moment.”
“I haven’t moved like this in decades, maybe centuries.”
They turned left down a path that would provide a screen of trees in another thirty yards.
“You with me?” Corin asked as he looked over his shoulder.
Jim Rubart Trilogy Page 84