Rooms: A Novel (24 page)

“But those things did happen, Micah.”

“What do you mean?”

“How can you deny the physical existence of something like your ankle? Or the magazine cover?”

“I can’t.”

“So is it real? This other life?”

“I don’t know.” Micah rubbed his eyes and sighed.

“I’m going to really weird you out now.” Sarah sat forward and took his hands in hers. “But it might help you accept that this other life you’re getting bits and pieces of is real.”

“All right.”

“I remember you talking about it.”

“About what?”

“Your ankle. The original injury. How it happened.”

“Where was I during this supposed conversation?” Micah stared at her.

“We talked about it a month ago. You told me you messed up your ankle by landing hard on another guy’s foot playing touch football about six years ago. That’s why I noticed the slight limp and wasn’t surprised when you asked for the name of a good doctor in town.”

Micah smacked the sand with the back of his hand. “This is
exactly
what I’m talking about. As bizarre as my life has been the past four and a half months, don’t you think a sprinkle of terror is warranted?”

“I’ll admit it’s unusual.”

Micah stared at her in disbelief.

“All right, more than unusual, but God has done some amazing things in your life since you came down here.”

“Agreed.”

“So, do you trust Him fully or not? Are these bizarre changes part of His plan or not? Do you believe no matter what happens, you don’t have to control it because He’s in control?”

Again, he didn’t answer.

“I think the reason it’s so hard for you, Micah, is because you’re still hanging on.”

“To what?”

“Your life.” Sarah stood, brushed off the back of her 501s, and reached down to pull him up.

Micah stared at her. “I know you’re good for me, even though you drive me crazy sometimes.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Sarah smiled.

The car was silent most of the way back to Cannon Beach. Sarah was unusually silent. Perceptive as always. He needed time to process their conversation, and she was giving it to him. It might have been better if she had talked. In the quiet he had to face her words. As usual she was right. A wave of frustration swept over him.

He was getting tired of her pushing him, forcing him to wrestle with . . . Maybe he’d be better off without her. What? He blinked at how powerful the thought was. Dump Sarah? No way. Crazy thinking. He shook his head, as if to toss the idea from his mind.

As they drove through Arch Cape Tunnel, Micah held his breath, a habit left over from childhood. A perfect snapshot of his life. Feeling lost in darkness and holding his breath to see what would happen next.

Tomorrow he’d do something to take his mind off his dual existence. Something so engrossing he wouldn’t have time to think.

Something probably a little bit stupid.

CHAPTER 35

Micah woke Sunday morning still determined to take his mind off his two intertwined lives. Sea kayaking would be the perfect distraction. He’d read a book on the sport and decided it was the ideal day to forage the waves of the Oregon Coast. So he’d never done it. Big deal. Maybe it was a bit risky, but how hard could it be?

Ten minutes later he stood in Cleanline Surf Shop perusing kayaks. He’d need a wet suit, too. Even though it was early September, the water temperature wouldn’t be more than fifty-four degrees, and Micah had no desire to freeze out among the foam.

“You done this before?” the clerk said as he rang up the sale.

“Yeah.” Micah thought back to the time he’d paddled around the glassy surface of Lake Union up in Seattle during high school. “Sure. Why?”

“It can get a bit intense out there. I just don’t want people to be caught off guard.”

“I’ll be fine.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

||||||||

He would put in at Oswald West State Park, a fifteen-minute drive down the coast from Cannon Beach. He’d heard it was optimum for sea kayaking. Indian Beach just north of Ecola State Park was closer, but the bay here was wider, had fewer rocks to negotiate, and hopefully fewer people would be there to watch his freshman attempt.

A fine, steady rain fell as he pulled into the Oswald parking lot. By the time he had his kayak off the car, the wind had kicked up to fifteen miles per hour.

The walk down to the beach was longer than he would have liked, but its beauty eased the fatigue the hike brought on. Massive Douglas fir trees almost completely blocked the rain, and the stillness of the forest brought a feeling of peace. The only noise was a river he crossed twice with the help of rough-hewn wooden bridges.

Just before he reached the bay, he stopped in front of a sign that said, “Unusually high sneaker waves, deep water, and strong outgoing currents. Use extreme caution.” Micah glanced at the bay, then back at the sign. No problem. He’d be careful.

By the time he reached the sand, the winds had picked up even more, but the rain was dying into a fine mist that swirled, then settled softly on his face.

He waited a few minutes to catch his second wind and watch the chaotic pattern of the roaring waves in Smuggler’s Cove. He smiled. He felt alive. And alone. Surprisingly there had been no other cars in the parking lot, and he’d seen no one on the hike down except for a squirrel that screamed at him when he sat on a log to rest.

Securing his hood, Micah watched a mixture of sand, water, and foam swirl around his ankles. The waves moved slightly north to south, so he planned to paddle out to the north end of the bay and work his way back in, letting the waves push him to the center of the cove.

Nice plan.

He sliced through the first attack of surf as if it was whipped cream, and a rhythm built in his arms and paddle, but Micah struggled with the second set of waves. They were stronger and fought to push his craft sideways. But he pushed through as his breaths deepened and his eyes went steely.

The rain picked up again, and the winds were in concert. The soft kiss of the earlier mist became stinging needles on his face and forearms. But he was caught now in a web of determination, and he ignored the distractions.

The final set of breakers loomed, and the salesperson’s words blistered his mind.
“Just don’t want people to be caught off guard.”

Part of Micah wanted to make the intelligent decision, but a louder voice drew him deeper into the sea. He ached to recapture a life of living on the edge, with high risk and high reward. Like when he’d started RimSoft. He’d tasted it in the skydiving room, yes. But this wasn’t an alternate reality God had taken him into. This was here, now, in vivid living color. He wanted it. Needed it. It flicked at the edges of his heart and stirred something inside larger than himself.

A wave raced down. Above him. On top of him. Not one of the benign four-foot swells he had imagined, but the eight-foot wall he’d seen from shore but ignored. Micah strained to turn his kayak directly into it but was a few precious degrees off. Just a fraction, but it was enough, and the full weight of the water crashed down on him.

He sucked in a breath just before the ocean surged against his nose and mouth, pushing for a way in. Then a kaleidoscope of tumbling, shoving, and pulling as the wave ripped him from his kayak and shoved him to the bottom of the ocean.

Five seconds felt like fifty. He searched for sunlight—his only clue as to which way was up. The most powerful part of the wave moved over the top of him, and Micah fought to surface.

He was running out of air.

He broke the water ceiling and gasped.

Another wave broke, and he was plunged under the torrent again, somersaulting to the bottom where his foot ripped across a jagged rock. The thought of sharks leaped into his mind, then instantly took a backseat to simply surviving long enough to take another breath.

He surfaced again and swam hard toward shore. His hope was to keep breathing long enough to reach the smaller waves and bodysurf them to the beach.

Micah went under again but with less intensity. Hope rose.

He was going to make it.

Except for the rocks.

A jagged cliff lined the south side of the bay, and the wave pattern pushed him toward it, much faster than he’d anticipated from shore.

The beach was only fifty yards ahead, but the rocky crest was only ten yards away, the waves still five-foot swells—quite capable of depositing him wherever they liked. He’d been caught in an unrelenting progression that would end in bone quickly meeting rock.

Panic grabbed his gut, the mental battle now as fierce as the physical one. If he panicked, he’d have little chance of surviving. A voice screamed,
Give up!

“No!” he raged back. “Lord, hel—!” Micah cried out, but the words were smothered as another wave shoved him under and closer to the rocks.

Suddenly the miraculous struck. The next wave drove him north instead of south. On his right a slick, jagged, black rock slipped by his face, inches away. It didn’t make sense. Then another wave pushed him north, away from the cliff and into shore. Peace washed over Micah more powerful than any of the waves that had vowed to take his life. From deep inside a different Voice said,
Look up.

At the back edge of the beach, just in front of the tree line, stood a figure in an olive raincoat. Micah couldn’t make out the face within the shadows of its hood. He couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. The moment he looked, the person turned and strode into the trees. Micah’s view was swallowed by another black wall of water, and he was once more pushed toward shore.

After that he remembered nothing.

Micah’s eyes opened to the trees at the edge of the beach outlining the dark gray sky. Small eddies of seawater swirled around the side of his hood, but the waves were a world away now. The question of who was on the beach spun through his mind as he pushed up to his hands and knees, waited a moment, then sat back on his heels.

He knew there was a connection between the person he’d seen and his rescue. Without the hooded figure, he had little doubt his life would have ended on the bottom of the ocean floor.

He struggled to one knee, then stood and eased over to the spot where the person had been, hoping to make out a shoe print in the sand, a clue to the identity of the spectral observer of his near death. The sand was soft from the rain, and a clear impression of a boot or tennis shoe should have been easy to spot. But there wasn’t even the hint of a footprint.

||||||||

Less than a mile north of Ecola Creek a cape jutted into the ocean blocking the way to Crescent Beach except at extremely low tide, so the route wasn’t heavily traveled.

But Micah and Rick rose early enough on Tuesday to get around the point with only half an inch of water swimming up to kiss their running shoes. It had been almost a week since they’d talked, which was unusual, so a combination run and conversation was an excellent way to start the day.

The deep scrape on his foot Micah had gotten during his kayaking ordeal still stung but not enough to keep him from this run. It was good to be with the mechanic.

Micah glanced at Rick as they fell into an easy rhythm beside each other. He still didn’t know how to describe the man. A little too young to be a father figure; a little too old to be the wise big brother. Maybe he was simply a mentor.

Micah had had business mentors before, who had helped further his and their own careers as RimSoft grew. But his relationship with Rick was different. The taste of ulterior motive never flitted around the edges of their friendship. Rick never seemed to want anything from Micah, yet Rick pushed him, drove him, forced him to look at his life in ways he’d never considered.

He couldn’t see what Rick got out of the relationship and didn’t think about it too deeply. Micah didn’t want the illusion to be shattered that, for the first time in his life, someone knew about his money and success but couldn’t care less how either might benefit him.

They jogged around the point, and Crescent Beach opened up in front of them. It looked as if no one had stepped on it in months. With the old trail from Ecola Park above washed out, the only other way to access the beach was a much steeper and longer path from the parking lot above, which many people didn’t realize existed. So their indentations in the sand were possibly the first of early fall.

Micah challenged Rick with a smile, and they broke into a dead sprint across the sand. Even with the difference in ages, Rick wouldn’t give up without a fight.

Seventy yards down the beach, Micah glanced back. Rick pounded down the beach just three paces back. After about 150 yards Micah’s lungs won out over his mind, and he staggered to a stop. He bent over, hands on knees to catch his breath. Rick did the same not far behind him, both of them laughing between gasps for more air.

After their heart rates returned to normal, they found a log, long battered by the wind and waves into a functional seat, and sat down.

“You think about death?” Micah said after a few minutes of watching two otters joust in the water.

“Yep.”

“Yes? That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

Micah knew he was teasing and waited for the mirth to burst out of Rick’s mouth.

“What do you want to know?” Rick said after his laughter subsided.

“I went kayaking a couple days ago.” Micah paused as the emotion of the event swelled inside. “Nearly drowned. I was stupid. Thought I knew what I was doing. Wrong.”

Rick eyes drilled into Micah’s, but he didn’t comment. Micah thought he didn’t understand.

“I’m not saying I got in a little trouble out there. I’m saying I truly came within a breath of dying.”

“What were you thinking as you were about to be smashed against the rocks?”

“I felt like an alarm went off and I was finally awake after years of sleep. I haven’t felt that alive in years. As crazy as this sounds, even though a big part of me was scared out of my mind, another part of me loved it.”

“On the edge of life.”

“Exactly.” Micah picked up a handful of sand and let it slide over his fingers. “Ready for the weird part?”

“Sure. After you tell me about the
normal
parts of almost dying.”

The comment lightened the moment just enough.

“At the point I knew I was going to bite it, the waves tossed me
against
the current. Makes no sense. Then I look up and someone’s standing on the beach. Two seconds later? Gone.” Micah glanced at Rick before continuing. His face showed no expression.

“The thought riveted itself in my mind that this person standing on the beach and the waves saving me were connected. But after I get to shore, when I look for tracks, nothing’s there. So was the person a ghost? A hallucination?”

“Was the sand too hard to take a footprint?”

“It took mine. In the same spot I saw the person standing.” Micah pulled a long sliver of wood off the log he and Rick sat on and pushed it into the sand at his feet.

“Your conclusion?”

“He wasn’t there physically.”

“You mean it was all in your mind?” Rick said.

“No, and that’s where it gets strange. I saw someone. No question. But maybe what I saw was a vision. Maybe whoever it was, he doesn’t exist on a physical plane.”

“Or he didn’t think you’d see him. Forgot to leave footprints.”

“You lost me.”

“Could have been an angel.” Rick stood and stretched his hamstrings.

Micah chuckled but Rick didn’t join him. He glanced at his friend to see if he was joking. He wasn’t.

“You’re serious,” Micah said.

“Get sappy, pop-culture angels out of your mind. I’m talking about the fierce warriors you find in the Bible.”

“Warriors?” Micah stood and joined Rick in stretching his legs.

“Read Daniel 10 or 2 Chronicles 32. Angels are intense creatures with battle on their minds. God gave them incredible powers, and they continually wield that power on Earth.” Rick began stretching his back. “The Bible tells of angels taking on human form and people not knowing it. So I think it’s possible what you saw on that beach was an angel, sent the instant you called out to God. Was it God, a weird current, or an angel? Don’t know, but it’s worth considering all possibilities.”