The Chair (38 page)

His life couldn’t get any worse.

It couldn’t.

He staggered into his bedroom, flopped onto his bed, and closed his eyes.

Sure it could.

C
orin was only asleep for what seemed like seconds before his cell phone shattered his dreams. He glanced at his alarm clock. One a.m. He fumbled for his phone and squinted against the light coming from it and looked to see who was on the other end.

Adrenaline shot through him and in an instant he was awake. Shasta. Was it possible? Was he healed?

Corin rubbed his eyes and tried to remember how long it had been since his brother sat in the chair. Three days? With Brittan, A. C., and him the healing had come within twenty-four hours, so there’d been plenty of time for it to work.

Please.

“Shasta?”

He heard the faint strains of the soundtrack from
Gladiator
playing through the phone.

“Shasta, you there?”

“Yes, I’m here.” His brother paused. “Are you well?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

“How does it feel, to be ‘fine’?” Shasta’s voice sounded like ice.

No.

Corin stumbled to his feet.

“How does it feel to have sensation in your toes, your feet, your legs, your fingers, your arms, your shoulders? Tell me, brother, what is it like to be fine? I’m dying to know.”

“Don’t do this, Shasta.”

“I think it needs to be done. Because you had me. Really. Did you know that? I was convinced this was the time. Miracle city. When you told me that kid had been healed, I thought it was possible.

“When you told me A. C. had been healed, I called him. Did you know that? After talking to him I believed even more. Then the coup de grâce, telling me you’d been healed. In that moment I swallowed every worm on your hook.”

Shasta’s slow, labored breathing reverberated in Corin’s mind like a windstorm.

“Congratulations on ripping open a hope I’ve been trying to bury for ten years. Well done.”

“Shasta—”

“If you ever contact me again for anything, I will find a way to destroy you. No talking to Robin, no more presents for Sawyer, no e-mails, no Christmas cards, nothing.”

“I didn’t—”

“Do we understand each other?”

“Don’t do this.”

“You did it, not me.”

“I thought—”

“No, you rarely have ever thought, just acted.”

Corin dropped to his knees.

“Good-bye, Corin.”

He let his cell phone slide out his hand and clatter to the floor.

Then his despair twisted and morphed into an anger that lifted him to his feet, a burning in his mind that formed into a crystal-clear vision of what needed to be done.

He strode to his garage, his whole body on fire, and flung open the closest hiding all his old sports gear. He dug through the pile, flinging hiking gear, basketballs, his tennis racquet, his golf clubs, not turning or caring when the sound of them smacking into his car filled the garage.

Where is it?

There.

His baseball bat. The perfect instrument for the song he was about to play. A bat he’d crafted himself in junior high school after seeing that old movie
The Natural
about a player who’d made his own bat when he was a kid. The bat lay at the bottom of the pile, its surface still gleaming from the finish he’d put on it twenty years ago.

He lifted it out of the pile and ran his hand over its smooth surface.

He’d picked the perfect piece of northern white ash to construct the bat. The perfect choice for slugging homers off John Vanos in high school.

He stepped back and swung the bat as hard as he could. The perfect tool to bestow on it what had been bestowed on him.

Something inside tried to rise in protest, but he ignored the message and whipped the bat through the air again, the familiar swoosh filling his garage.

He’d lost little if any of his bat speed.

This was it. Payback time.

C
orin strode over the frost-bitten lawn of his backyard, his breath filling the air with clouds of gray rage. Before he reached the bunker he pushed the remote and the earth slid back, the stairs dark in the night’s shadows.

He staggered down the concrete steps, slid his key into the massive Master Lock padlock, and flung open the door, its momentum crashing the knob into the concrete wall of the bunker and echoing through the night like a gong.

Moonlight streamed into the room through the tiny skylight in the far corner of the room. One side of the chair was bathed in radiance; the other side cast a shadow that reached the wall. Light and dark. Yin and yang. Demon and angel.

He was about to be the former.

Corin’s gaze moved from the chair to the moon framed by the skylight. Was the man in the moon smiling? Or laughing? At him, with him. It didn’t matter.

Man in the moon. Man in the chair. Man of despair.

His stare returned to the chair as he strode into the room and stopped a foot in front of it, wishing he had Superman’s heat vision to simply incinerate the chair instantly.

No, this way would be better.

“It’s time to end this.” Corin smacked the bat into his palm. “Are you ready? I certainly am.”

Would God stop him? Freeze him in place, or make his muscles turn into syrup till someone arrived who would keep the chair from annihilation?

He angled around the right side of the chair on the balls of his feet as if he were a famished lion ready to pounce.

“You destroyed me. You destroyed everything and now I am going to return the favor.”

Corin spun back and crossed in front of the chair back the way he’d come, the drumbeat of the bat smacking his palm in rhythm with his footsteps. The anger inside him surged like a strobe light going on and off, on and off, with each flash his rage growing brighter. He was going nova.

The bat felt as heavy as a sledgehammer and time slowed as he stopped pacing, lifted it straight over his head, and brought it down on the seat of the chair, his muscles straining to deliver all his strength.

Would the chair turn into something made of steel like the time he took a sliver from it? Would it protect itself? It wouldn’t matter. He would find a way to destroy it.

The first blow crunched halfway through the seat, the second sent splinters spinning to the floor, the third—a full level baseball swing from his heels—tore the back of the chair apart and launched it into the air with a twisting spin till it crashed into the left wall.

Indestructible?

Hardly.

He tightened his grip on the bat as a voice in the back of his mind again asked,
Why are you doing this?

He closed his eyes and squeezed tighter.

“Shut up.”

Why?

“Shut up!”

Corin’s eyes fluttered open, he screamed, then leaped toward the chair, bat high again in his hands, his grip so tight now his fingers ached.

Muscles taut, he rained another ten thousand blows onto the olive wood, each crunch of bat on chair fueling his rage.

“You took my life away!”

Another blow.

“Why couldn’t you heal my brother?”

Another.

“Any hope of Shasta and me gone!”

Another.

Sweat seeped from his hands onto the handle of the bat.

“How does it feel!”

Two minutes later he slumped against the far wall gasping for air. The bat slid out of his damp hands and clattered to the floor as he braced himself with his palms and gazed at the pieces of the chair.

None was more than a foot and a half long and three inches thick. The inside of the wood was the same color as the outside, as if the years on the outside had seeped into the inside giving a uniform color to the whole chair.

It lay in a pile, not moving, not speaking out against what had just been done.

Corin shook his head and grunted out a laugh. What was he thinking? This wasn’t a person. It wasn’t a talisman—it was a plain, ordinary
chair
!

He expected his rage to subside as he stared at the wood, but the intensity of his anger grew.

“We’re not done.” He stumbled forward on his knees and reached out to grab the pieces of the chair. Smaller. The pieces needed to be reduced to splinters. The air felt thick, as if he were pushing his hands through Jell-O to reach the pieces. Harder.
C’mon grab them. There!
He snatched up a handful of pieces and dropped them a second later.

Hot. Burning hot. Corin rubbed his hands on his sweatpants and blew on his palms. He looked at his hands expecting to see blisters forming.

Nothing.

Hot? Impossible. It was just his imagination.

He grabbed the pieces again—now almost cool—and brought them down hard across his knee.

Pain streaked through his leg and he groaned. It was like slamming pieces of iron across his quad. “What the . . . ?”

He grabbed a piece the size of a letter opener and tried to snap it in two. Steel. Corin let go and it rattled onto the concrete floor. He kicked the shattered wood at his feet and staggered out of the room, swiping at the door with his heel to shut it. The door didn’t close more than halfway and he glanced back for one more look at the remnants of the chair.

They lay, not moving, not glowing, just a pile of wood with no magic in them.

As he stepped back to his house all emotion left him and an overwhelming emptiness rushed in to fill the vacuum in his heart.

He shoved his back door open and slammed it shut behind him as the grandfather clock in the hallway chimed one thirty.

Corin trudged toward his living room, then glared at his reflection in the full-length mirror at the end of the hall. The look in his eyes surprised him. It wasn’t relief, fear, or anger; it was sorrow.

Sorrow? Sure. Sorrow he hadn’t destroyed the chair sooner. For a moment he embraced the thought. In the morning life would begin again. No, life had begun the moment he’d picked up the bat and took his first step toward the bunker.

What had Nicole said about the chair? Destined to be in his family for generations? Sure. Why not? He’d give one piece each to the hundreds of kids he wouldn’t be having someday.

He glanced at his watch: 1:35. Tori wouldn’t be up, but he didn’t care. He wrenched his phone free of his pocket and dialed. Two rings. Four.

“Wondering what I’m doing? I’m wondering what you’re doing, so leave me a message. I’ll call you back and hopefully we’ll both get what we’re looking for.”

“It’s me. I’m wondering if you’d reconsider us. Just wanted you to know it’s over. The chair is gone and I’m free.”

He set the phone down and tried to believe the words he’d just spoken.

A few seconds later another emotion joined his pleasure. Horror. As if he stood on the edge of the beach as a tsunami was about to strike with nowhere to escape to.

Deep down he knew the chair was real. Knew the healing he’d experienced wasn’t a mind game he’d played on himself. Same with A. C. Same with Brittan Gibson.

Instantly his living room filled with a brilliant light with so much power he gasped. Then an overwhelming peace swept him up and spilled over him like forty-foot waves.

A moment later the light vanished and the peace was gone.

Corin moaned and slumped to his knees in front of his couch as an image of the chair lying battered and broken filled his mind. He tried to wipe it away by picturing what the chair had done to Nicole, but he couldn’t hold the thought, and the image of the chair intensified. It lit up his vision, filling the air in front his eyes like he was staring at a movie screen.

Why have you done this?

The enormity of what he had done filled him.

What had Nicole said ages past?

“Do not let it go. Ever.”

He’d failed her.

No.

Corin moaned and eased his head forward till his forehead rested on the carpet. He closed his eyes and pressed his head into the floor hard, then harder till it felt like his head would crack open. More pressure. More pain. More pressure.

When the throbbing in his skull wouldn’t grow any stronger, he flopped onto his side, opened his eyes, and stared at the picture of Shasta and him skydiving that rested on the mantel he’d restored.