Rooms - James L. Rubart [73]
CHAPTER 28
The next morning a ray of August sunshine woke him at 6:30. The movie from last night splashed into his mind, and he groaned. Guilt peppered his heart as he threw on his sweats, laced up his shoes, and shuffled out the door to make himself pay.
He ran north toward Haystack Rock and pushed himself. Hard. He gasped for air within a few minutes but refused his body’s plea for relief. It was a self-inflicted penance he often performed after one of his “movie nights.” But it was a sponge in his ocean of guilt.
After a shower and breakfast, he started a biography of C. S. Lewis. No help. He picked up his Bible and through sheer willpower stayed with it for more than an hour. It was hot sand through his brain.
“You’re blowing it” pounded through his mind, and he knew it was true. Prayers sent skyward just bounced off the ceiling like racquetballs. He needed to give himself a break. All this guilt was a little over the top.
It was just a movie.
He walked out on the deck, down the stairs to the beach, and followed the tiny stream to his left that carved its way to the sea.
But still, why couldn’t he get control over this thing?
Micah drove down 101 all the way to Newport and spent the day poking through kite shops and art studios, looking for something and nothing, anything to divert his mind.
By the time he got home, it was late and he headed straight for his bedroom. That’s when he discovered the new hallway. It was short, maybe five feet long. A thick mahogany door stood at the end with detailed carvings on it, almost a language.
He started toward it, then hesitated. Although by now he fully believed God was in control, it still unnerved Micah every time he found a new room.
Fascinating.
Frightening.
Just because God was in it didn’t mean it was safe.
He inched toward the door and guessed the language was Hebrew. There was no doorknob. He pushed the door. It was like rock. “Lord, if You hear me, do You want me to get in?”
Nothing.
When he fell into bed a few minutes later, he tried reading, but the book slithered out of his fingers almost immediately, and sleep buried him.
When the dream came, he stood in front of the new door wondering how to get in. Then his surroundings went Dalí, and the door, carpet, and walls melted into each other. When the swirling stopped, he stood in a dimly lit room staring at the back of a door.
He instantly knew where he was—on the other side of the door, now inside the room. A small TV threw off a greenish tint, enough light to see the room was crammed with piles of something. As he groped for a light switch, a soft light streamed under the door from the hallway, enough to show him what the piles were made of.
DVDs, from floor to ceiling. All labeled, all in alphabetical order. Movies and TV shows from as far back as twenty years ago, right up to the movie he’d seen the night before. Every questionable show he had ever allowed to sink into his soul.
The ceiling of the room looked as if thousands of cigarettes had been puffed in it, a dull haze hanging in the air, as if the smoke had never fully dissipated.
A knock at the door stopped his heart. With the sound the brightness along the bottom of the door increased like a dimmer switch being turned up to its highest setting.
“Who is it?” Micah eked out.
“One who would help.” The light under the door grew even brighter.
A wild fragrance seeped in, full of oak and the smell of a surging river in the heart of summer.
Micah’s pulse raced. “You don’t want to come in here.” He used both his hands to push against the door.
“Why not?”
Silence.
“If you are from God, you know why.”
“If I know, why not let me in?”
“Because this is a room of . . . that I’ve . . .”
“I know what is in the room. It has been forgiven.”
Micah’s hands shook. Only One could forgive.
He whirled back toward the DVDs. Shame flooded through him. He loathed the idea of opening the door. It didn’t matter that the Lord knew about this room. It didn’t matter that he was forgiven.