Rooms - James L. Rubart [37]
He looked down at envelope number three. It mocked him—dared him—to open it.
It slid out smoothly till a corner of the envelope caught on the twine that held the bundle of letters together. He wrenched it free and ripped it open.
October 25, 1990
Dear Micah,
Stick with the order.
Archie
Heat flooded Micah’s body. He picked up letter number four and tore at it in sheer defiance. But his hands trembled, and it took thirty seconds before he read it. When his eyes dropped to the page his fear was confirmed.
October 26, 1990
Dear Micah,
One per week. Trust me.
Archie
Micah closed his eyes and took deep breaths. In. Out. This was beyond strange. First the shrine room, then the painting room, then the memory room, now this. How? The man’s been dead for twelve years!
Sweat squiggled down his forehead. He glanced at his watch. One in the morning. Too late to call Rick.
He was out of control again.
Once more Archie showed his penchant for the strange twist—not only with the house but now with the letters.
He rubbed his temples hard. What was the point of living in one of Rod Serling’s nightmares? Archie’s letters were the straw, he was the camel, and he didn’t need any crushed vertebrae. He should sell the place and get back to reality.
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A week later Micah strode toward his deck with letter number five grasped in his left hand. His right held his cedar letter opener like a sword, and his heart pounded.
He wanted to read the letter outside. For all he knew, reading it would suck him into another psychotic room. This way he could at least process the letter before facing any new, unwanted expedition. He knew God could not be put into the tidy box Micah had tried to squeeze Him into these past six or seven years. And this house certainly seemed to be the field of battle where that truth would be played out. So it was with expectation of the extraordinary that he opened the letter.
He was disappointed.
December 3, 1990
Dear Micah,
I pick up my pen again. It is indeed a strange sensation knowing if and when you read these letters it will be a long time into the future. Forgive me. I am rambling and promised myself I would avoid that.
Your heart is a sacred and magical thing, Micah. From it flows the wellspring of life. It’s why the wisest man who ever lived said we must guard it above all else. You won’t reach it by your intellect. The pathway to the heart is always by the Spirit, and the pathway to the Spirit is by the heart.
Are you wealthy, Micah? To acquire a significant amount of money at a young age, elements of life must be neglected. Often the heart. This is what I meant in my introductory letter when I said if you are not yet thirty-five, your heart has not been suitably guarded.
No matter your current age, I imagine you have already experienced a number of extraordinary things in this home—some potentially frightening—and yet if you’re reading this letter, you’ve made the choice to press onward in your journey. This indicates your heart is coming alive again.
Now I finally arrive at the lesson of this letter. It is impossible for man to serve both mammon and God.
With great affection,
Archie
Micah set down the letter and shook his head. Some lesson. He’d heard it since he first became a Christian. The love of money is the root of all evil and all that stuff. What did it have to do with him? So he’d made some money. That meant he was serving it? No way. He’d made it too young? In Archie’s day he doubted IPOs could make a young company owner a multi-multimillionaire overnight the way it could today.
He sighed and walked back inside. Might as well pack for the trip back to Seattle even though he didn’t have to leave till the next afternoon. It had been fifteen days since he’d started working from the beach, and he was scheduled to show up for a day full of meetings on Friday.
Traffic on I-5 was light on Thursday evening, and he clipped off the miles back to Seattle at seventy miles per hour without having to