Memory's Door (A Well Spring Novel)

by Rubart, James L.

  One of her teammates passed Abbie the soccer ball. She moved to her left, faked to her right, and skittered around a defender. A second later she launched the ball toward the other team’s goal. The ball glanced off the goalie’s outstretched fingertips and ricocheted into the net.

  The crowd cheered and Abbie’s teammates hugged her as they bounced up and down on their toes. She turned and scanned the sidelines until she spotted Marcus. Abbie sprinted to him and when she got there threw her arms around his stomach. “My first goal! And you were here!” She gave him another squeeze. “I love you, Dad!” She turned and loped back onto the field.

  Marcus stared at her as he staggered toward the middle of the sideline, his mind trying to grasp the scenario. He glanced at the coach’s clipboard and the sun flashed off of it, and he shut his eyes. When he opened them he stood staring across the street he’d just crossed.

  His new friend was still there, in the center of Marcus’s vision just over the top of the cars passing back and forth in front of him. The man leaned against the Compton Building, his arms folded, a big all-knowing grin laminated on his face. Something in his eyes said he knew exactly what had just happened.

  As soon as his gaze met Marcus’s, the man pushed himself off the wall and strode in the direction of the campus.

  “Hey!” Marcus shouted at the man as he popped the crossing button like he was playing a video game, but to no avail. If the light took as long as last time, the guy would be to University Village before Marcus could cross. “Wait!”

  The man waved over his shoulder and kept going. Marcus rubbed his thinning brown hair. Over the past year he’d gotten almost used to strange things happening, but this one was new. It didn’t feel evil, it didn’t feel good, but it certainly didn’t feel normal.

  A flashback? Doubtful. Even if it was, a flashback to what? He hadn’t gone to any games when Abbie was that young. Was it the enemy trying to stir up the old regrets? About what a lousy father he’d— No. Take the thought captive. He’d put up a Dead End sign on the road of regrets and he wasn’t going down that street ever again.

  Marcus pushed the lingering emotions aside and glanced at his watch. He’d have to hurry if he wanted to drop in on Kat at the bakery and still make it to lunch with Tim Schwarzburg on time. He glanced at the street once more but the light still hadn’t changed. The glint off an old steel car bumper flashed into his eyes and Marcus half expected to be back at the soccer field but nothing changed this time. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and marched north up the street.

  The bells on the bakery shop where Kat worked jangled as Marcus pushed the door open and the smell of recently baked scones filled his nose. How she stayed so trim was a certifiable mystery of the universe. If Marcus worked in her shop he’d look like the Michelin Man, but the rubber around his middle undoubtedly wouldn’t be quite so firm.

  “Hey, you made it.” Kat appeared through the door leading from the kitchen to the display cases and clipped around a case filled with chocolate éclairs, apple strudels, and oversized maple bars. Her auburn hair was down, which meant she’d finished baking and decorating for the day.

  “Did you have any doubts pertaining to my arrival?”

  “Not at all.” Her brown eyes flashed at him. “I just know how the first day of a new quarter usually goes, so I didn’t know if you’d be able to stop by.”

  “I was, as you have now most assuredly witnessed.” Marcus glanced around the shop. “I wouldn’t miss your anniversary.”

  She frowned.

  He opened his arms. “This is your six-month anniversary of joining the work force again.”

  “Nice of you to remember the date since I didn’t.” She smiled.

  “Still pleased you made the choice to work here?”

  “I love it. Lets me indulge my love of baking and get paid for it at the same time.” Kat gave a mock curtsy. “And your visit today, oh spouse of mine, is well chosen, for I, your wife of many years, have created a new pastry sensation I’d like you to try.”

  “Is that so?” Marcus smiled. “By all means, make me the tasting subject of yonder new concoction, fair lady.”

  She scuttled up to him and poked a round, donut hole-like something into his mouth. “You’ll love this.” She licked her fingers and stepped back and watched Marcus chew.

  It tasted like a glazed donut but had a tinge of orange to it. Not too much, not too little. He swallowed the last of it and stood on his toes to look over the counter.

  Kat smiled. “Ah, the gaze that says you’d like another.”

  “What do you call those?”

  “OBs.” She traipsed back around the counter.

  “Out of Bounds? For the golfing crowd?”

  “Orange Balls.”

  Marcus laughed. “I’d stick with OBs.”

  “You don’t like Orange Balls?”

  “Some people might . . . I’m simply suggesting . . . Actually I don’t want to suggest anything. I’ll simply say in certain circles it would be a conversation starter.”

  “And in others it’d be an ender.” She laughed.

  “Precisely.”

  “Then I shall stick with calling them OBs.”

  Kat picked up another OB and tossed it in the air toward him. Marcus threw back his head, stutter-stepped to the left, and the Orange Ball plopped into his mouth. “Nuffin’ bud ned!”

  “Nothing but net?”

  Marcus nodded as he chewed on the little puff of paradise. “Remember when we used to do that with olives at your sister’s Thanksgiving dinners?”

  “It was always the highlight of the day for me.”

  “Not for her.”

  “Remember how she scolded us every single time?” Marcus laughed and pretended he held a sign. “And the signs! Do you remember them?”

  “The ‘Are You My Mother’ signs? The ones we brought out when my sister started in on us the next year for the entire gathering to see? The signs that made her barely speak to me for a year?” Kat glared at him. “Those I will never forget.”

  “Hey, you made them.”

  “Who gave me the suggestion?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  Kat held up an OB and studied it as if it were a diamond and she was looking for flaws. “You really like them?”

  To prove his palate had been conquered, he reached over the counter, held his palm up, and wiggled his fingers. Kat placed the OB in his hand and folded her arms, and for an instant the look he’d come to dread appeared on her face. It was only there for a nanosecond, but it was there. The look that said another kind of anniversary was approaching that would rip her heart out once again. And his more than she knew. More than she would ever know because he could never tell her the truth.

  Marcus spoke in a whisper. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “You know.” Marcus swallowed. “Layne.”

  She shook her head. “I just want to get through this week.”

  Relief and disgust flooded Marcus. Relief that he had asked the question like a dutiful husband should and disgust that he lacked the strength to tell her all the details of what had happened that day.

  Every year on the anniversary of their son’s death he asked Kat if she wanted to talk about it, and every year she said no. In the first months after the accident they talked about it incessantly. Late into every night. Began again early every morning. But as the serrated sting of losing their son turned into numbness and Kat’s and his tears came less often, Kat’s need or desire to talk about it faded as well. So often the death of a child ripped the parents apart. It hadn’t happened to them. But it would if she knew what he’d done.

  He buried the thought as he’d become so skilled at doing over the years. The regret so deep that no matter how far down the other Warriors or anyone else went into his soul, it would never be uncovered.

  “Do you?” Kat sighed. “Want to talk about it?”

  Marcus shook his head
and stood in the sweltering silence not knowing what to say, not trusting himself to speak even if he did know what words to offer.

  “I’ll be okay.” She brushed her hands on her tan slacks as if to flick the raw emotions they both carried onto the hard floor. “So will you. We’ll get through it like we do every year.”

  Marcus stared at her slacks.

  “Why are you staring at my pants?”

  “Are you behind on the laundry? Or did you run out of clothes?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’re wearing the same shirt and pants as yesterday. In all our years together, I’ve never known you to wear the same outfit two days in a row.”

  She cocked her head and gave him a quizzical look. “I didn’t wear this yesterday. I stepped out of my norm and wore a dress.” Kat stepped closer to Marcus and tapped him on the head. “All the neurons firing in order today? You even predicted my tips would be bigger, which turned out to be true.”

  “That was two days ago.” He popped the last piece of the OB into his mouth and savored its sugary coating.

  “No, it was yesterday.”

  “Two days ago.”

  Kat narrowed her eyes. “Marcus, we had a long talk about choice, that our ability to choose was what separates us from the animals and how we alter our reality in every moment with every choice we make. Remember? You turned choosing a dress over pants into a quantum mechanics lesson.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes. You did.” Kat gave him her dead-serious look.

  His body felt like it went from 98.6 degrees to 104 instantly. She wasn’t kidding. And he had no recollection of the conversation.

  “No I didn’t.” His conviction crumbled and he didn’t know what else to say.

  “I’m not making this up, Marcus.”

  “I don’t think you are, but we didn’t talk about it.”

  “We did.”

  He glanced at his watch. “I have to go. I have a lunch with Tim Schwarzburg.” Marcus turned to the door.

  “Stop.” Kat spun him around, her hands on his arms. “Look at me. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing. I honestly don’t remember the conversation. I’m probably processing an abundance of stress due to the start of the new quarter.” He kissed her on her forehead and then on her lips. “Or possibly I fell asleep while we were conversing. Or maybe you dreamed of the conversation.”

  “No, I didn’t—”

  “Then maybe I did. I have to go.” He pulled open the door and pretended the jangle of the bells kept him from hearing Kat call his name.

  The heat that had started while in the shop grew into an all-out blaze inside Marcus’s body. Even though he knew he wouldn’t see the man, he still strode back to the corner of the Ave and 45th and stared at the spot where the man had stood. Whatever was going on had something to do with the flashes of light that had come off the window and the car bumper. So what? He couldn’t make another flash of light happen because he wanted it to. As he stared across the street, a man to his right jostled him.

  “Sorry, man. My fault.” An Asian man raised his hands in apology and light flashed off his watch. There was no feeling of vertigo, no feeling anything had changed. But what if it had?

  On impulse he pulled out his cell phone and called Tim. “I’m going to be late for lunch. Sorry.”

  Marcus slid his cell phone back into the front pocket of his jeans and half walked, half jogged back to Kat’s shop. He didn’t know how he’d react if he saw what he expected. But he had to check. The bell jingled just as before when he pushed the door open, but that didn’t stop his body from going numb because nothing else was the same.

  “Hey, I didn’t think you were going to stop by. I thought you had a lunch.”

  “I do. I . . .”

  Marcus wiped the sweat from his forehead. Kat wore a pair of black jeans and a white blouse. No tan slacks, no red shirt, and her hair was pulled back.

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “And I’m Tinker Bell. What’s wrong, Professor?”

  “I don’t know. My stomach seized up just now.” He bent over. He didn’t think she’d buy it, but if she didn’t, she kept it to herself.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s feeling better already. It’s likely nothing more than my breakfast having a spirited debate within my intestines.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And it’s certainly not enough to keep me from missing out on your new creation, so I’m hoping you’re willing to give me a sample.”

  “What new creation?”

  “The one you wanted to try on me today.”

  “Nice mind reading, bucko. How did you know I’ve been trying to find something new to make?”

  “You haven’t made it yet?” The heat returned.

  “No. Why, you have an idea?”

  Where had he been ten minutes ago? Not here, based on Kat’s words and dress. But he had been here, there was no doubt in his mind. He needed time to analyze this. Ask the Spirit. Figure out what was going on.

  “I said, you have an idea?”

  Marcus blinked and frowned at her. “Yes. A glazed donut hole with a splash of orange mixed in. Call them OBs. They’ll taste sensational. Trust me.” Marcus turned and staggered out of the bakery. For the second time that day Kat called after him and for the second time he ignored her.

  He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and texted Tim, canceling lunch, then dialed Brandon.

  “Hey, brain boy, what’s up?” Brandon almost shouted over the sound of music in the background. “Sorry about the noise, we’re right in the middle of a sound check for tonight’s concert.”

  “No problem.”

  “You all right?”

  “Something . . . two incidents . . . just occurred that I can’t even start to explain.” Marcus trudged down the sidewalk, weaving in between other pedestrians, trying to breathe steady.

  “You? Not able to explain something? It’s a miracle. Did you call to celebrate?”

  “This is serious.”

  “Talk to me.”

  Marcus explained about the strange man on the corner and what had happened with the soccer game and being in two different versions of the bakery where Kat worked.

  “Were they visions?”

  “I don’t know. It didn’t feel like that.” He stood staring at the same corner where it had all started half an hour ago. Nothing looked unusual, but now everything seemed odd. The smells, the sounds of the street, the breeze in the air.

  “Maybe it was teleportation. The Spirit took you there.”

  “That might explain my visit to the soccer game, but it doesn’t elucidate why I was in two different editions of the bakery.”

  “Elucidate?”

  “Clarify, expound, explicate . . .”

  “You should have stopped at expound.”

  “Brandon! I need assistance here.”

  “Sorry.” The music grew softer. The musician must be finding a place of solitude. “I have to go back to it being a vision then.”

  “As I said, it didn’t feel at all like it did during my vision at Well Spring. This was concrete. I know I was there physically both times.” The light changed and Marcus crossed the street and strode back toward campus.

  “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t one just because you felt it wasn’t. Remember Paul going into the third heaven? He didn’t know if it was in his body or in his spirit.”

  “I know this was in my body, but still you raise a valid point.”

  “Not a vision, not teleportation, how ’bout a demonic implant was shot into your brain and altered your reality?”

  “I’m not exactly in the joking mood. This was strange.”

  “But we’ve been in the business of strange for the past year. Think of some of the things that have happened at Well Spring over the past
six or seven months. This kind of stuff shouldn’t surprise us. We should be more surprised when it isn’t happening. I’d shake it off. Let it go.”

  “Good, good. That’s why I needed to chat. To gain a modicum of perspective.” The red hickory trees on the edge of campus loomed in front of him. Somehow it seemed getting underneath them would provide a sense of protection and comfort.

  “Glad to assist.”

  Marcus slowed his pace as he stepped into the intermittent shadows of the trees. “And you? Anything unusual?”

  The music grew louder again. “I need to get back to the sound check.”

  “I have a feeling there are abnormalities you’ve experienced lately as well.”

  Brandon paused. “It’s true. I’ve got my own version of Strange Tales going on these days.”

  “Would you care to enlighten me?”

  “Yeah, soon, but I think I’m going to wait till we all get to hang on Sunday night. I have a feeling by that time I’ll be able to tell not only the beginning and middle of this story but the end as well.”

  SIX

  CARSON TANNER SAT IN HIS BROADCAST STUDIO EARLY ON Friday afternoon cradling a scalding cup of black coffee and pulled up the web page for Warriors Riding training at Well Spring Ranch. There was nothing to it. Just a splash page with a picture of a large cabin and white-chalk mountains behind it that shot into a deep blue sky. The only other thing on the page was a contact e-mail.

  If Reece and his pals were trying to grow their ministry, this site couldn’t be very inspiring to potential trainees to think about signing up. But that was the problem. From what Carson had been able to research after hearing about the ministry from one of his watchdogs, even with almost nonexistent promotion the ministry was growing exponentially. The only time the general public could catch wind of it was at Brandon Scott’s concerts. The musician asked people if they wanted to go deeper—told the audience a little about the training—and invited anyone interested to go to the site and e-mail for more information.

  That was it and yet little Warriors Riding weekends had popped up all over the country like dandelions gone viral. Men and women who had gone through the training were doing their own retreats from San Diego to New York to Chicago to right here in his hometown of LA—spreading the heresy like rabbits in heat. In ten months!